Erased From Memory (20 page)

Bunny looks at me; I’m not sure whether her scrutiny is solicitous or prying. “Y’know?” she pushes.

I say, “Sort of.” Of course I know what she means; it’s the manic phase of Alzheimer’s and it comes with being over-stimulated. Which is happening to my dad. Happening here. Talking to Egon, whatever that amounts to, gets him all excited, and so does fussing with a computer, whatever that involves. Bunny is watching me interestedly. I turn a bland expression her way. Somehow I don’t really trust this lady.

“An’, dear,” she is saying, “then we got the little objects, you know? The artifacts? Like them getting snitched. And your dad . . . well, I don’t like to tell you this, but he had one of those things—an unkh, is it?”

“Ankh,” I say. “A symbol of the life force.” I suspect Bunny knows the correct name just as well as I do. She works here; she deals with the material all the time.

“Yeah, ankh, right. Little blue thing.” She makes the bowknot shape in the air. “Well, he had it in his pocket. And pulled it out and showed it to me, just as bold as brass.”

“He has a couple of those of his own.”

“Yeah, but this one was ours. It had a splash of orange paint on the bottom, and I remembered that. Knew it right away.”

She pauses, looking at me, triumphant. “He told me he found it lying on a table, but we don’t do that, lie them out in public. It was locked up, and he had to of got the key and taken it.” She looks at me again, sideways, which comes out oddly on her, since she has a broad face and fat cheeks.

“Bunny,” I say, “you want something from me. What?”

She and I are both sitting on the same entry-hall bench. She slides away a few inches. “Hey, baby. Want something? What could I possibly want?”

Well, damned if I know, Bunny my dear
.

Bunny is a ridiculous name for a fat lady in a tan guard’s uniform.

“I don’t know,” I say aloud. “Thank you for telling me. That was considerate.”

But I know my dad well. He wouldn’t take artifacts from the museum. If an object were carelessly left lying around, though, he certainly would pick it up.

“You bet it was nice of me to tell you,” Bunny says belligerently.

So I’ve made an enemy. Seems as if I already had one anyway.

 
 
I tell Bunny I’m going into the museum to see some exhibits.

“You just help yourself, sweetcakes,” she says. “I get fifteen minutes now. That’s in my contract.”

In the main hall the public has been organized into orderly lines. People are queued up to look at the stone head of Osiris, at the wooden head of Hathor, at the calcite carving of the Vizier Papy, at the canopic box containing four canopic jars. (Canopic jars are animal-headed jars containing the vital organs of the mummy.) One of the Harouns is serving as guard to marshall the crowd, and Egon is delivering a lecture.

“Here we see the goddess in her guise as a cow’s head,” he says. “We acquired this image from a dealer in Paris, but before that . . .”

People are staring, mouths open and eyes glazed. I’m not sure what holds their attention. Maybe it’s that Egon looks so white-haired and learned, just the way a museum expert ought to look. Maybe they’re hoping that if they hang in long enough, they’ll understand something. But Egon doesn’t deliver that sort of lecture. He doesn’t tell his audience who Hathor was and why she was worshipped. He just talks about how this particular artifact he’s pointing at got to come live in Egypt Regained. “Before 1910 the provenance is unclear,” he announces.

Maybe all these people are thinking about the murders and trying to fit them into the setting.

I lurk on the outskirts, observing people, categorizing, feeling like an anthropologist watching the natives at their cultural recreations. I should be taking notes.

And also, I’m observing Egon. Everything makes me uncomfortable lately; I add Egon to the list. My main question about him is the one about my dad. Of course, Egon sees what everybody sees. My dad has Alzheimer’s. Medium badly. Egon is faking when he says my father helps in the museum research. Daddy couldn’t possibly help in anything; he costs money and gets in the way. And now the sheriff and Bunny both think he swipes the tchochkes.

I have to get my dad out of here. He’ll be heartbroken; he’ll protest and sulk, but it’s got to be.

Suddenly, without any visible shift, Egon in his lecture begins saying something interesting.

“Now this collection”—he’s talking about the canopic box—“was found in the exploration in 2001.”

I turn off the note-taking anthropologist and start listening, since 2001 was the year when everybody was in Thebes. I’m interested in the expedition of 2001.

“The box was found by a group, a group of my friends, actually.” Egon is constitutionally incapable of telling a story straight. “Found in the tomb of the merchant Intep but behind a wall, a wall that we all thought had been . . .” He rambles on before announcing, “I have a picture here, quite an interesting photo actually, a photo of us, actually, on the scene of the discovery, so to speak.”

The photo, framed, is laid faceup on top of the glass case. I’m fast at getting to it; I circumvent a batch of pink-haired ladies and bend over the photo frame. I’m interested in any picture of the gang back in 2001, the year of Rita’s Thebes stories. But especially I want to see what Danielle looks like in the picture. Also Marcus Broussard. I’ve thought about both of them a lot. And I’ve been making my usual mistake of forming an image beforehand. The images are blurred around the edges but include the following details: Marcus, whom I’ve only seen laid out flat and dead-appearing, is trim, suave, and foxy. Danielle looks like me, which is a stopper. She also looks like a man-killer. Another stopper. Come on, let’s see that picture of these people and clear this stuff up, all the gang cheek by jowl at the entrance to the tomb.

So here we have it: a photo. It’s a standard flashlit dark tomb setting: dust, rocks, hanging electric bulbs, a passageway off to the right, a crumbling plaster wall. Five people lined up in a matey row, mostly smiling that forced dead-on photographic smile you get when the cameraman says, look up, now smile, say rhubarb. Egon’s on the end, white-haired and avuncular, holding the canopic box aloft. And I guess that’s Marcus under the hard hat. A disappointment, the picture doesn’t tell me much; one guy in a hard hat looks like any other guy in a hard hat. Sturdy, medium tall, well-muscled arms protruding from short sleeves, hat down too far.

Off to the side is something I recognize. That little shape back there is my darling father. The sweet thing. Standing in the passage so as not to grab the glory.

But wait. Don’t leave yet. There she is, of course, Danielle: tall, and despite her khakis, curvy, and yes, as George said, with plenty of hair. Radiating a lot of something. Nervous orgones. Vivacity, brains. Staring straight at the camera, but you feel she’d stare straight at you just that way—assessing.

The perfect archaeological babe. I could put her in a movie today.

Does she look like me? Hey, I wish.

She’s the kind that puts her arm around people. One arm encircles the neck of Marcus, dislodging his hard hat some; a hand plays with the corner of his shirt. And the other arm is around the neck of a perfectly recognizable Scott, smilingly handsome, manly, and silly. Egyptian archaeologist meets photo op. Next to him slouches Rita, black hair short and upstanding. The two younger guys are wearing hard hats, the rest of the gang not. Why? The rest of the crowd doesn’t go into places where rocks get dropped on them?

 
 
I put my finger on Danielle’s image and raise my voice. “Egon, who’s this?”

Maybe I sound commanding or excited; Egon moves in right away, squeezing people aside, excusing himself to the ladies. He peers. I think his faultless brow furrows. He says, “Hmm.” He adds, “You know, I’m not absolutely sure.”

Like hell you’re not sure, Egon. “Listen, she’s special. You’d remember.”

Egon furrows his face; he does a spot of thinking with hand pressed against brow; finally he says, “Oh,” and “Yes.” He has made a discovery. “That lady was named Danielle. She was a friend of . . .” He pauses before deciding whose friend she was. “A friend of Scott’s.”

“Yes,” I say. “She was a member of the dig.”

Egon is judicious. “Well, not exactly.”

“But she was there. Everyone talks about her. She gets into this picture.”

Egon looks vague. “Yes.”

After a minute he seems to have made a discovery. “She was on a neighboring dig?”

We are standing there, me with my forefinger on Danielle’s nose, when further evidence is supplied by a guard. One of the Harouns, complete with label and turban.

He has squeezed his way through the crowd and now bends over the picture. His turban is on crooked, and pink scalp shows through his close-cropped blond hair.

“This lady here?” He points at the smiling face. “That lady’s name is Danielle.”

“Haroun,” I ask, “how on earth did you know?”

“Your dad. I got interested because she looks so sort of—special—and I asked your dad and he said, ‘That lady there? Why, that lady is Danielle.’ Then he went on to tell about how interesting it had been, finding that box of stuff.

“He said the box held some of the insides of the mummy,” Haroun elucidates. “They take the guts out of the mummy and put them in separate boxes. I thought that was a real interesting fact.”

 
 
I have moved from the museum into Egon’s office. I am sitting there now.

I haven’t been in Egon’s office since we first moved in here. It spreads out around me, the usual luxurious Egon mix of oriental rugs, marble-topped furniture, Egyptian artifacts. There’s an Egyptian lamp stand with a fake taper. A picture window with a picture of part of the garden.

Egon sits behind his slate desk, hands folded relaxedly on top of it. He smiles. “No need to thank me, my dear. We were glad to have you stay here with Edward. What a fine person he is.”

He knows that I’m leaving him soon, going back to the Manor; he thinks I’ve come to say what a great visit this has been. Even though there was a murder or two while I was here.

“Egon, I want to ask you something.”

He lets a slight frown appear on his forehead. “Truly, Carla. I do not know much about her. That Danielle.”

Well, that wasn’t what I was going to ask, but it’s interesting that he thinks so. “I want to talk about my father.”

“Oh. Yes. Wonderful, wonderful.”

“I’m curious about what you’ve learned. From interviewing him.”

“Interviewing? Oh, surely.” Egon leans forward and frowns at his slate desktop as if an answer resides there. “Well, you know. It was to talk about archaeology.”

My expression probably indicates doubt.

“He is, of course, you know—yes, surely you know very well—a truly well-informed man.”

I let that sit for a while. Then I ask, “Yes, but what did he
say
?”

Egon seems to think I’m being rude. “Well, my dear, of course.” He waves a hand. “Details, you know.”

“He has trouble remembering. You know that.”

Egon again does a hand-wave.

“I don’t understand. Honestly, Egon, I really don’t. What could you want him to talk about?” When he simply looks polite at this outburst, I decide to invent some facts. “He seemed troubled afterwards. Upset. Thinking about what he’d been telling you.”

That gets results. Egon sits up straight and undoes his hands, which have reclasped themselves. He says, “Oh, my.”

“It troubled me. I hate to see him upset.”

He says, “Hmmm,” and “Upset.” He broods. “I wonder what . . .”

This is offered contemplatively, as if the rest of the sentence would be, “I wonder what exactly,” or “I wonder which of the things he told me got him upset.” He doesn’t sound as if he were going to finish, “But none of that stuff was upsetting.”

“I think I should know about it,” I say, pushing my advantage. “It’s troubling.” I probably add something extraneous and stupid, like, “I’m his daughter.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Egon angry. But to my surprise, unexpectedly, I see it now. It’s an impressive sight. Moses, confronted by unbelievers. He gets lines in his face. He half gets out of his chair. He raises an arm. “Carla. Professional archaeology. Things that matter. Part of what an archaeologist does.

“Much of it is
serious
work.” He hits
serious
hard, to indicate that I am frivolous and wouldn’t understand.

He leans on the desk. “And now I am quite busy. And I truly feel we’ve consulted enough.”

No, Egon, we haven’t consulted enough. But I don’t want to arm-wrestle you on it. I’ll just mill around and ask some other people some more questions.

Chapter 16

I come down Egon’s steps two at a time, which is not a good idea, considering that they are marble and are slippery.