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“You think Delaney took the mummy?” Ed asked.
“Who else would it be? He wants to stop me from publishing before him.”
“He plans to publish the same research?” Ed said.
Patricia snorted. “Of course not. He has another theory entirely. You think I would spill my research as pillow talk? Not likely. The man was an idiot. Great body, full head of hair, but dumb as dirt. And before you ask, if Alice did sleep with him, she wouldn’t have shared any secrets either.”
Julia groaned again, and Joe rubbed her back some more.
The issue wasn’t who told this Marcus guy about the importance of the mummy—the issue was finding out what he knew so they could get the damn thing back.
“Patricia.” Joe was just about out of patience. “The guy found out somehow. It didn’t happen by magic. One of you must have told him.”
“It’s possible we might have mentioned something at the get-together last week,” Patricia said. “Things got out of hand and we got a little drunk.”
“By we, you mean you and Alice?” Ed asked.
“All of the mummy crowd. We were celebrating someone’s new research and it turned into a party.” Her eyes stayed firmly fixed on her drink. “And, well, we might have gotten a bit carried away with the occasion and shared a little too much with the people who were with us.”
“In other words, you got drunk and blabbed your plan to a room full of mummy hunters,” Joe said.
“Honestly, I can’t remember what we blabbed,” Patricia said. “I find it difficult to remember most of that evening.”
“Was this Marcus guy there?” Joe asked.
Patricia nodded.
“So basically, you’re telling me you told a guy with a grudge how to get back at you.” Joe seriously hoped Patricia’s crazy behaviour didn’t run in the family.
“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. Obviously Marcus heard everything and is behind this whole mess. Why else would Alice mention him?”
“This guy still in Peru?” Joe said.
“If he is, and he hasn’t absconded with the mummy, then he’ll be regaling other idiots with his tales in the English bar at the Country Club—which is exactly where we were last week. It’s his haunt. I think it makes him feel like an English lord.” Patricia held out her empty wine glass and, with a smile, Ed filled it for her.
“Gran.” Julia sounded weary. “What’s the message on the missing mummy’s textiles? What did you tell everyone that night to make Marcus want the mummy so badly?”
Patricia slumped back into her chair. “It’s directions. A map, if you like.” She looked at each of them in turn. “We think, but we won’t know for sure until we study the textiles, that it leads to a hidden cache of Incan gold.”
Ed let out a low whistle. “There are a lot of people who’d like to get their hands on some Incan gold. I know I would.”
“But it can’t be real,” Julia said.
“Yeah, it can,” Ed said. “We’ve only discovered a fraction of the artefacts left over from the Incan Empire. Someone finds something new every year. If Patricia here thinks she has a map that leads to gold, then people would kill to get it.”
“Let’s make sure Alice isn’t the first to die,” Joe said.
Chapter 7
A treasure map.
Someone had kidnapped Alice and wanted to trade her for a treasure map. One that was written in the clothing of an ancient mummified body. Julia wasn’t sure what was crazier: the thought people actually believed some old textiles might show the way to buried treasure, or the fact they might be right.
“You sure this is the place?” Joe asked Patricia from behind the wheel of the SUV he’d rented.
Patricia looked out the back window at the palatial building claiming to be Lima’s Country Club, and nodded. “Definitely. I remember thinking it was terribly grand, in a dated, colonial sort of way.”
“My mother used to love this place,” Ed said.
