Dead Men's Hearts by Aaron Elkins Read Free Book Online

crossed the workroom with its pottery fragments in open trays and its containers of glue and preservatives, Saleh sniffed the air appraisingly. “I smell… what is it?”
    Gabra knit his brow. “Pizza?”
    “Must be the glue,” Jerry said, straight-faced. He led them confidently through the storeroom to a floor-to-ceiling set of open metal racks on the end of which was taped a flyblown, typewritten placard: “El-Fuqani, 1921-23, C. Lambert.” The three-shelf racks were loaded with heavy cardboard boxes stacked two high. Jerry moved down the racks, forefinger extended, scanning the numbers on the front of the boxes. A few stacks in, he stopped.
    “Here we go, 4360.”
    He pulled out the box, set it on an empty rack, and, with a flourish, swept off the lid.
    Except for a crumbly accumulation of bone dust, it was empty.
    “So,” Saleh said with his cool smile, “the mystery is solved. Nothing very serious, it seems.”
    Haddon’s bearded jaw had stiffened. “I consider it quite serious enough,” he said, looking directly at Jerry. “These specimens are housed here on the assumption that they be given proper care and protection. They have received that protection for some seventy years, but now it seems that some rather slipshod practices have been allowed to take hold.”
    “I’ll look into the matter, sir,” Jerry said with that serenity that sometimes infuriated TJ, sometimes filled her with admiration, and never stopped amazing her. Even after living with him for twelve years. How did he do it? And he wasn’t even nursing an ulcer from suppressed emotions; he just didn’t give a damn. In his place, she thought, flames would be shooting out of her nose.
    “I think we’d better look into it right now,” Haddon snapped, “while we still have the services of these good gentlemen.”
    “I don’t know what—”
    “How many more of our specimens have been made off with? Are
any
of them still in their boxes?”
    The same question had occurred to TJ, but she had hoped to examine the rest of the collection with Jerry later on, without anybody—especially and above all others, Clifford Haddon—watching balefully over their shoulders, waiting to pounce.
    “Well, let’s just see,” Jerry said amiably, and took the lid from 4370, the box that had been beneath 4360. It was full of old brown bones. So was 4340, 4350, and 4370. So were the other fifty-two boxes. Everything was as it should have been; only 4360 was not peacefully resting where it was supposed to be.
    Gabra, who had opened cartons with the others—Saleh had stood watching, glancing occasionally at his watch— rubbed dust from his hands. “Very good. Merely an error of some untrue sort.”
    “Gentlemen,” Haddon said ardently, “you have my sincere apologies for wasting so much of your time.”
    “I assure you, it was no trouble,” Saleh said formally. “I am only happy that it was not a more serious matter requiring continued police attention.”
    “No, no, I take full responsibility for the actions and oversights of my staff.”
    TJ silently ground her teeth again. What an unfailingly petty sonofabitch the man was. In his spiteful, self-centered way he managed to see all this as some kind of personal loss of face, which meant, from his point of view, that somebody— anybody but him—had to be blamed.
    “Please, please,” said Gabra, who seemed like a nice guy. “It was a most interesting morning with no apologies being necessary.”
    This elicited a few curt, unintelligible syllables in Arabic from Saleh, and a moment later the policemen had gone, leaving Haddon, Jerry, and TJ staring at one another over the empty box.
    “I hope you understand,” Haddon said, “how deeply displeased I am, and that I am forced to consider the two of you responsible for the lapse in proper procedure that allowed this ludicrous incident to take place. As the major said, we’re fortunate it wasn’t more serious. This entire collection might well