The Mask of Atreus Read online

  In a telegram later dismissed as apocryphal, Schliemann reportedly wired an Athenian newspaper and announced with customary hubris that he had “gazed upon the face of Agamemnon.”

  He hadn’t. In fact, the bodies and their accompanying grave goods were three centuries older than Agamemnon, if such a person had ever existed. More to the point, some scholars were wary of the spectacular “Agamemnon” mask. It was the wrong shape, they said. The style of the nose didn’t match the other pieces. The mustache looked positively nineteenth-century… Could Schliemann have graduated from theft and manipulation of the truth to outright forgery?

  But as Deborah sat back in her chair, taking it all in, a new possibility was growing in her head. Was it possible that more had been found in the Mycenaean digs than Schliemann had admitted? Was there even a chance that the somewhat unconventional death mask associated (albeit inaccurately) with Agamemnon, which now had pride of place in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, was a fake, and if so, had there been a real one which Schliemann had replaced? Had the real mask been made to “disappear” as Priam’s Treasure had disappeared from Troy? Had that mask been in Richard’s bedroom only hours before, and if so, how on earth had it gotten there?

  Richard could be a little blinded by his boyish hopes, but he was no fool. If he had believed that the room behind the bookcase contained the greatest single collection of Mycenaean artifacts outside Greece, then he must have had evidence to point to its authenticity. Almost certainly that evidence had to do with provenance: where and when the mask had been found. In archaeological circles, provenance was all. Had Richard been able to trace the piece back to the moment it had first been unearthed? If he did, who else knew? His killers? Whoever he had been calling in Greece? Was it a coincidence that an elderly Russian who had appeared only days before should die on the same night and less than two blocks away? Could he have known something about these ancient artifacts?

  She took the phone book out of the nightstand and placed a call, pen in hand.

  “Dekalb County police station,” said a female voice.

  “Yes,” said Deborah, “I’m calling with regard to a Russian who was killed close to the Druid Hills Museum two nights ago.”

  “And you are?”

  “Deborah Miller,” she said, suddenly sure they would tell her nothing. “I work at the museum. And,” she added on impulse, “I helped identify the body.”

  It was true. To a point.

  “That’s Detective Robbins’s case, but he’s out. Can I take a message?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I was just checking in to see what the status of the case is.”

  “It’s pretty much closed,” said the woman on the other end.

  “Already? They have a suspect?”

  “No,” said the policewoman, “and unlikely to get one in the circumstances. I wouldn’t expect many leads to develop unless we can match the bullet to a known weapon.”

  “In the circumstances,” Deborah repeated. “What does that mean?”

  The woman sighed conspicuously, and Deborah thought she heard the shuffling of papers. When she spoke, she sounded like she was reading.

  “Mr. Sergei Voloshinov was not a U.S. citizen. He was a foreign national who had overstayed his visa and was, so far as we can tell, mentally unstable. He was wandering the streets at night and probably bumped into the wrong people. Simple as that. I don’t think there is much for us to do.” “Voloshinov,” said Deborah, scribbling on a hotel pad. “How did you find out his name?”

  “He was carrying a stamped envelope. Been living rough for at least a couple of weeks. Russian authorities and next of kin have been contacted, but he’ll probably be buried here.” “Next of kin?”

  “A daughter in Moscow. Alexandra.”

  “What about the letter? Was the translator able to get anything from that?”

  “Wait,” she said, searching. “Translator… translator. OK.” She began to read directly from the file she was apparently consulting, her voice automatic and a trifle bored. “Translator David Barrons reported that the letter was badly damaged, with only a few words surviving definitively. Part of one sentence read, ‘I am more sure than ever that the remains never reached Mary,’ though that last word is hard to read and may be incomplete. The letter appears to be at least twenty years old.”

  She paused.

  “That’s the lot,” she said. “You can call back, but Detective Robbins probably won’t be able to tell you anything new. Now, if you don’t mind…”

  “I am more sure than ever that the remains never reached Mary…”

  Deborah found herself turning the phrase over in her mind. Could the remains be archaeological? Could they include a Mycenaean death mask? Could this enigmatic Russian have been pursuing them when he fell afoul of whoever took them from the secret room in Richard’s bedroom?

  CHAPTER 17

  Deborah returned to the museum conscious that she still had nothing more than speculations, but they excited her, and she wanted to share them with Cerniga, with Calvin Bowers even, it didn’t really matter who. A Mycenaean death mask unknown to the world, smuggled out of Greece by Schliemann a century ago and pursued by a lone Russian to Atlanta, Georgia! It was extraordinary. It was almost enough to keep her mind from Richard’s death, and sharing her thoughts with the police would be her contribution: a way to pay homage to Richard and unravel his murder. Who knew, maybe the mask he had died for would be rediscovered. She could think of no more fitting monument to his memory.

  But one thing had to be done first. She hadn’t eaten all morning and was suddenly ravenous. Remembering that there was food left over from the party, she went downstairs to the kitchen at the back of the building. Tonya, mercifully, was nowhere to be seen.

  She uncovered the trays in the fridge and picked over the food, sniffing cautiously. She tried the pâté and found it as unappetizing as she had two nights before. That reminded her. She unhooked the phone from the far wall and dialed the caterers. Rambling her half thoughts to Cerniga (with Keene smirking darkly in the background) would have to wait a moment. “Taste of Elegance,” said a voice, “Can I help you?”

  “This is Deborah Miller from the Druid Hills Museum,” she said. “Can I speak to Elaine, please?”

  There was a pause by way of answer, a crackle as the phone was handed off, and a new voice, slick and prim, came on the line.

  “This is Elaine Shotridge.”

  Deborah began listing her grievances. She had dealt with Shotridge before and knew that polite delicacy would get her nowhere. For a moment it was like nothing had happened. This was just another business call. Richard would be working in his office upstairs, waiting gleefully to hear about Deborah’s run-in with Elaine Shotridge, the tyrant queen of Atlanta catering.

  “In our defense,” said Shotridge, “the fridge space was not what we had expected.”

  “Fridge space does not account for why your people didn’t clean up after themselves or why we ran out of red wine.”

  “We’ll be glad to make a deduction from the bill that takes those things into account,” said Shotridge. “Say, ten percent?”

  “Let’s say fifteen,” said Deborah. “I wasn’t blown away by the canapé selection.”

  “Miss Miller,” said Shotridge, cooling rapidly, “I have no objection to factoring actual errors into the invoice, but mere matters of taste don’t justify an attempt at price gouging. I resent the implication that our canapés are anything but the finest, handmade…”

  This was the point that she should tell the woman that Richard was dead and that haggling over a few plates of blue cheese tartlets did not rank very highly on her priority list, but she just couldn’t. She was functioning adequately for the moment, something she wouldn’t be able to do if she started talking about Richard’s death. She fell back on the sarcasm she had tried to avoid.

  “I resent paying thirty bucks a plate for ham-wrapped melon balls that taste like sheep’s eyes in shoe leather,” she said, “so let’s leave the claims to haute cuisine out of this, shall we?”

  “Mr. Dixon’s Greek friends praised me personally for the cheese in my feta and spinach pastries,” Shotridge huffed.

  “Wait a minute,” said Deborah, refocusing. “Mr. Dixon’s Greek friends? What Greek friends?”

  “The two gentlemen he was talking to during your presentation,” she said slyly.

  “How do you know they were Greek?”

  “They looked Greek,” said Shotridge. “They sounded Greek and—oh yes—Mr. Dixon said they were Greek.” Shotridge had apparently taken over in the sarcasm department.

  “What else did they say?” said Deborah. There were, she was sure, no Greek names on the guest list.

  “Nothing,” said Shotridge. “They were talking among themselves—in Greek—and I was walking past with a tray, and Mr. Dixon asked if he could take some more for his Greek friends because they liked them so much. Best feta cheese they’d ever had, he said. They nodded and smiled and took three each. Then I left them.”

  “They said nothing else?”

  “No,” she said. “Twelve percent. That’s my last offer.” “Done,” said Deborah, hanging up.

  It was time to talk to the police.

  CHAPTER 18

  Deborah crammed another finger sandwich into her mouth and rinsed it down with a sloppily poured glass of cranberry juice. She was turning to leave when Calvin Bowers came in.

  “Calvin,” she said, not thinking, just speaking on impulse. “Did you like Richard?”

  He frowned as his mind adjusted to the unexpected question and her use of his first name.

  “I never actually met him, of course, but yes, I think so,” he said. “Why?”

  “Would you find it hard to believe that he would put the museum ahead of his own personal fortune, even in front of his reputation?”

  “Not for a second,” he said.

  Deborah nodded. It was the right answer. She felt herself warm to him a fraction.

  “Me too,” she said.

  For the briefest of seconds she saw the entire Greek collection, with the mask as its centerpiece, laid out in gleaming cases for the world, all downstairs in the lobby, or in a purpose-built room at the end of a long dark corridor lined with educational text and images: the finest gathering of Greek antiquities outside Athens. This, surely, was the image Richard had been chasing.

  Calvin, who was watching her as if he could see the pictures in her head, nodded once.

  “I see,” he said. “If there’s anything I can do…”

  She smiled and, exhaling, realized that she had been holding her breath.

  “By the way,” he added, “I’m missing some of Richard’s legal correspondence. Was anything stored down here?”

  “In the office,” she said. “I keep most of the museum-specific stuff there. Are you looking for something in particular?”

  He looked a little sheepish.

  “As I said, Mr. Dixon was processing some paperwork that touched on both his personal holdings and his stake in the museum. They may have some bearing on his will. The police are going to want to see how his estate stands legally, in case it has an impact on issues of motive.”

  Deborah nodded, businesslike, careful to show that this gave her no consternation at all.

  “That would be personal then,” she said, “and should be in the residence files, not the museum’s, unless it came very recently.”

  “How recently?”

  “If it was addressed to the house, no more than a day or two,” she said. “If it’s personal but comes to the museum, it takes a few days. The residence has a different street number: one forty-three. The museum is one fifty-seven. They’re the same building, so don’t ask me why. But there are two mailboxes. I deal with the business stuff, sift out the junk and pass along what’s left for his consideration. There usually isn’t much, and unless I flag something, he gets to it when he gets to it. Is that a problem?”

  He was still, and his eyes were narrow, but at her question he shrugged the mood off and grinned.

  “I doubt it. I just hate having official papers going through the hands of anyone other than the addressee. It’s the lawyer in me.”

  Detectives Cerniga and Keene were upstairs in the study next door to Richard’s bedroom, where they were going over the guest list and the museum inventory. Deborah considered the staircase and then opted for one last precaution before she went up to speak to them.

  The ladies’ room beside the office was a single boxlike chamber reserved for museum staff. There was a toilet and a washbasin with liquid soap and one of those electronic hand dryers that always left her wiping her hands on her trousers. The light switch was hooked up to an extractor fan which hummed and whirred almost as loudly as the toilet flush. With that and the hand dryer going, it was amazing you could hear anything at all, so the sound of raised voices was a surprise.

  It took Deborah a second to realize where it was coming from. There was a vent set in the wall above the toilet, not the extractor fan, the heating and air system. At first she barely paid attention, but then something in her head noted that the voices were male, were, in fact, the voices of the detectives with whom she was about to speak. Even over the hand dryer’s automatic blowing she was sure of it.

  The pipe must rout directly through the study upstairs.

  She had never noticed it before, but then why would she? How often did anyone even speak aloud in that room? It was Richard’s private sanctuary.

  One of the voices was louder than the other. Cerniga? No, Keene.

  You should ignore it, she thought. You’ve done enough snooping.

  The hand dryer died with a descending whir, and the voices got clearer.

  “That’s what you say,” Keene roared. “How the hell would I know?”

  A muttered response from Cerniga, inaudible, and a single bark of laughter from Keene in reply. Then Cerniga was murmuring again, but Deborah couldn’t catch the words.

  On impulse, she reached out and snapped off the light switch. The room was plunged into total darkness and a new silence as the extractor fan stopped. Cerniga’s voice, slightly metallic from the echo of the vent, coiled out softly like smoke.

  “I’ve already told you,” he said, cool but irritated. “If you have a problem with it, talk to your captain.”

  “I already did that,” Keene shouted back, “and you know how far it got me.”

  “Then that’s the end of it, isn’t it?” said Cerniga.

  “No, it damn well isn’t,” said Keene. “You transferred from Henry County? I called them this morning, and no one there has ever heard of you. No one.”

  Deborah suddenly felt cold and uncertain in the dark. The hair on her neck was prickling again as it had when she had smelled the cologne and pipe smoke at the door to her apartment.

  “Your captain gave you the order to work with me,” said Cerniga. His voice was steely now, as if he was restraining a great anger. “If you have a problem with it, you should take it up with him.”

  “Are you even a cop?” said Keene. “I saw the look on your face when I gave you those forms. You’ve never filled out anything like them before. I wanna see your badge.”

  And then someone was pulling on the bathroom door from outside, and Deborah heard no more.

  CHAPTER 19

  It was Tonya.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding so till she registered something in Deborah’s ashen face. “I didn’t see the light under the door so I assumed…Are you OK? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “It’s OK,” said Deborah. “I was just… I’m a little tired. It’s been a rough couple of days. I think I’m going to…”

  But she didn’t know what she was going to do. She waved a hand vaguely and tried to smile, but the concern in Tonya’s face said she wasn’t pulling it off.

  “You need something?”

  “No, really.”

  “You want me to get the cops down…?”

  “No,” said Deborah, more urgently than she had meant. “I mean… No. It’s fine. I’ll talk to you later.”

  And then she was walking away, down the hall, away from the staircase up to Richard’s study, and down to the museum. Her pace quickened with her resolve, and by the time she was passing those ghastly specimens of Victorian taxidermy, she was almost running. She ducked into the museum office, opened the safe, and removed her passport. In two minutes she was in the lobby with the T. rex and the dragon-lady ship prow. In four she was in her car and driving away.

  Her cell phone was switched off, and she left it like that.

  She just needed to go home or at least back to her hotel. Get some sleep. Clear her head.

  That won’t change what you heard through the vent.

  That was true enough, she thought as she pulled through the lights at Buford Highway and moved toward the interstate, but maybe what she had heard would somehow make sense if she could put a little distance between herself and the museum with its strange treasures. She just needed a little time to herself.

  As she turned onto I-85 heading south toward midtown, she was startled by a squeal of tires on the road behind her. She checked her mirror in time to see a dark van tear through the signal at the top of the ramp and come pelting down after her.

  Atlanta drivers, she thought. Always ready to risk life and limb to get home five minutes early.

  She stayed in the right lane to give him room, and wondered where to go. She had instinctively begun to head home, moving away from the Holiday Inn, which was too close to the museum. Too close to Cerniga and Keene.

  Maybe I’ll just drive around for an hour. Or go and walk in Piedmont Park. Yes. Follow the route home, park on Juniper, and take a walk round the lake.