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“He was doubly foolish, then, to obsess about her for his whole life.”
She gave me an odd look then — a look both critical and pitying. “Ah, monsieur scientifique—does your heart always obey the orders of your head? Have you never been foolish in the thing you wanted or the person you loved? Have you never loved unwisely, never grieved too much for someone you lost?”
Her question blindsided me. I felt light-headed and reached out to steady myself on the trellis beside me. Years before, when my wife, Kathleen, died of cancer, I’d retreated from people for two years, burying myself in my work. Then, just as I felt myself beginning to come alive again — just as I started falling in love with Jess Carter, a beautiful medical examiner from Chattanooga — Jess was killed. Then there was Isabella, with whom I’d had a brief romantic encounter, and who’d died in Japan when the tsunami struck the coast where she was staying. And now? Now I was struggling with my feelings for Miranda, a young woman who, because of her age and position, should be as off-limits to me as Laura was to Petrarch.
Elisabeth reached out a hand and laid it on my arm. “I spoke too strongly,” she said. “I think I have reminded you of something painful. I am sorry. Please forgive me.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s all right. It’s my fault. What do I know about what’s foolish and what’s wise, or what’s the best way to cope with pain? When I’m in pain, I study a skeleton. When Petrarch is in pain, he writes a poem. Most people prefer his way to mine. And who can blame them?” I gave her a rueful smile; she returned it with one of warmth and kindness.
“You find poems and stories in the bones,” she said, and Jean nodded. “Good night.” She gave my cheek a quick kiss, took her husband’s arm, and walked with him across the courtyard into the golden light spilling from the windows of their home.
I wondered if it was too late in life to take up writing sonnets.
CHAPTER 26
Descartes settled into a chair. I’d expected his eyes to light up at the array of pastries and berries — Jean and Elisabeth had started doubling the portions for his sake — but he looked bleak and bleary. “I’ve been up all night,” he said, in answer to the question in my eyes. “Fishing. We have some information on all three of the fishes.”
Coffee sloshed from my cup as my hand began to shake, filling the saucer. When I set the saucer down, milky coffee sloshed onto the table and dripped through the wooden slats, splatting onto the stones of the courtyard. “Tell me.”
“The one in London is a British art dealer.”
“An art dealer?” I was surprised, though I swiftly realized I shouldn’t have been. After all, if collectors and museums prized fractured Roman pottery and gem-encrusted Aztec skulls, why wouldn’t someone covet the bones of Christ, arguably the most revered figure of all time? “What else do you know about him?”
“Not him. Her. A woman named Felicia Kensington. She’s very shady. She’s been on the watch list of New Scotland Yard and Interpol for years now.”
“What for?”
“Buying and selling black-market art. Forgeries and fakes. Stolen antiquities. Her name has come up more than once in cases like this—”
“Murder cases?”
“No, nothing violent. Cases where a valuable piece of art — a painting, a sculpture, a precious document — disappeared, or mysteriously reappeared. Sometimes with fake papers, sometimes with no papers at all. But she’s slippery. Someone else always takes the fall.”
“She’s never been convicted of anything?”
“She’s never even been arrested.”
“Sounds like she’s lucky, or smart, or both,” I said. “What’s your take?”
“My take?” He looked startled, then he frowned. “Isn’t that what you call a corrupt policeman’s bribe — his take?”
“Ah. Not quite.” No wonder he’d looked confused and unhappy. “We do say that a crooked cop is ‘on the take,’ yes. But the money that a cop gets when he’s on the take is called his ‘cut,’ I think. ‘What’s your take?’ means ‘What’s your impression, what’s your intuition?’ So, what’s your take on this shady art dealer, Felicia Kensington — could she have killed Stefan?”
He studied the biggest of the strawberries, then plucked it from the platter and bit off the lower half. “My take is, she’s a morceau de merde—a morsel of shit, you would say?”
I smiled at the translation. “Americans don’t say ‘morsel’ a lot. We tend to say ‘piece’ instead.”
“Okay, she’s a piece of shit,” he said, popping the rest of the strawberry in his mouth. “But I don’t think she’s the killer.”
“Because?”
“Because she’s a woman, for one thing. Women almost never kill. They only kill their husbands or lovers. Well, sometimes their kids, but that’s rare. Besides, this woman has an alibi. She’s been in Cairo for the past two weeks. Probably buying mummies or robbing tombs.”
“Okay, so we can probably rule her out. Who’s suspect number two?”
He crossed himself, then raised his eyebrows expectantly, waiting for some sort of response. I shook my head and shrugged. Looking disappointed that I’d not understood the clue, he said, “The pope.”
“The pope? The pope? As in the Holy Father in Rome? Holy smokes.” The inspector nodded, cheered up by my dramatic reaction. “Well, well. I’ll say this for Stefan — he might have been stupid, but he wasn’t guilty of thinking small, was he? That’s a damn big fish.”
Descartes wagged a finger of clarification. “Not the pope himself, I think. The fax number belongs to the Vatican, though. The Vatican Museum, to be precise.”
“I’ve been to the Vatican Museum,” I said. “Took me six hours to go through it, and I skipped a lot. I’m guessing it’s not a one-man operation. Any idea who Stefan was negotiating with?”
“Not yet. The wheels of the Vatican roll slowly.”
“Gosh, there’s a revelation.” He didn’t seem to get the pun.
“They have two different police
forces. The Swiss Guard is there to protect the pope.”
“Like the Secret Service in the U.S.,” I said. “They protect the president.”
“Exactement. The other force is the Vatican police — they do everything else. But neither group will cooperate with me unless someone très important commands it. The Catholic Church has had too many scandals lately. They don’t want bloody hands from a murder.” His lips twitched in an ironic little smile. “En particulier a crucifixion.”
“That wouldn’t look so good,” I agreed. “But do you think it’s possible that someone at the Vatican Museum would want the bones enough to kill for them?”
He shrugged. “I’m no expert. There’s plenty of blood on the hands of the Church. The Crusades. The Inquisition. Sexual abuse and cover-ups. But would the Vatican kill to possess the bones of Christ — or to destroy them? Only God knows.”
I slathered cherry preserves on a croissant and took a bite; for some reason, I’d started imitating Descartes, who seemed unable to string together more than three sentences without refueling. “So what do you know about the third fish, the one in Charlotte? Is it the Institute for Biblical Science, the place that contacted me?”
“No, that is not the place, but maybe there is some connection. This is a church.”
“Catholic?” He shook his head. “Protestant? Why would a Protestant church in North Carolina want to buy the bones of Jesus?”
“It’s not typical Protestant, I think. It’s called the Church of Dominion and Prophecy. A church gigantesque—a megachurch, oui? — with twenty thousand people. Also radio and television stations. The preacher is named Jonah Ezekiel. Not his original name; he changed it. He calls himself ‘Reverend Jonah, Apostle and Prophet of the Apocalypse.’ He’s — how do you say it? — on the fluffy edge of crazy.”
“Lunatic fringe?”
“Exactement, lunatic fringe.”
“Why do you say that, Inspector?”
“He thinks the world will end soon.”
