Chapter 3
Chris and Ryquist set off for the Midstate Museum of Art through the crisp late fall air. The snow that had fallen over the weekend clung in tiny patches on the shady side of trees. The leaves on the sidewalk were a sodden brown, no longer vivid. Chris, preoccupied with wondering what the police expected of her once they got there, said nothing as they walked.
The museum burst into view as they rounded the corner of the biology building. The newest structure on campus had been open a year and a half and opinion was still sharply divided about it. It sat right on the quad, a gleaming aluminum-skinned bunker amid staid English Collegiate Gothic classroom buildings. Partially embedded in a hill, adorned with false walls and lots of windows that let in light but no direct sun anywhere, it was bringing campus architecture into the Twenty-First century so fast the more traditional were getting whiplash.
They passed the bronze bust of former Midstate president Hartwell Turner (1923–1934). It was one of seventeen such commemorations scattered around the campus. Chris barely registered the sunglasses with rhinestones he was wearing, she was so used to the indignities these objects attracted, but Ryquist stopped to inspect them closely. As he turned back to the sidewalk, he said, "So who would have it in for Page, Doc? Got any ideas?"
"You know, she wasn't very popular, but murder? I can't believe she did anything to deserve murder."
"Nobody deserves murder, but it happens all the same." Ryquist stuck his hands in his coat pockets. "She have any particular enemies? Someone from her past maybe?"
"It sounds strange, I know, but I hardly knew her, Hjelmer," Chris shrugged. "I mean, I never knew of anyone that she socialized with other than the people on her board. She would come to division functions sometimes, but not often. She kept to herself, at least as far as I was concerned."
They walked on in silence for a bit. Ryquist jingled the keys in his pocket. Finally he asked, "What's been happening at the museum lately? Anything big?"
Chris nodded. "There's the Picasso. That's about the biggest thing to happen to the museum since the new building. Maybe longer."
"I heard she was getting a big-time painting."
"She wasn't getting it, the university was. It's a gift from an alum, Howard Randall. I gave you his name last night, didn't I?"
"Yeah, you did, Doc. Haven't found him yet, but we're looking. This is a big deal, right?"
"One estimate sets the worth of the painting at more than twenty-five million. That's almost as much as the new museum building cost."
Ryquist whistled. "Where is this painting?"
"It's somewhere in the museum, I'm sure. I've never seen it myself. Elizabeth was planning a gala unveiling for December eleventh and no one was supposed to see it before hand. She was guarding it like Cerberus."
"Like who?"
"The three-headed dog that guards Hades," Chris responded, immediately regretting the elitist allusion.
"You get along with the deceased, Doc?"
"I got used to her being perpetually crabby. Most of the time we had a working truce going."
When they arrived, the doors were still crisscrossed with yellow crime scene tape. Ryquist knocked and an officer Chris recognized from the night before pushed one open enough to admit them. As they entered the broad, two-story atrium, Chris glanced longingly to the right where Lotta Latte was dark and empty. Ryquist led the way to the sculpture gallery. The first thing Chris noticed was how quiet the place was. All the sculptures had been unplugged. The second was the large hole in the carpet where the bloodstain had been. Two officers were measuring distances, one using a tape measure, the other noting the dimensions.
"Anything different in here, Doc? From when the show was going, I mean."
"Nothing's working, you mean?"
"Got to be too distracting. No, I mean is anything missing, rearranged, what have you." Ryquist stood with his arms folded just inside the gallery door. "Go ahead. Walk around if you want."
Chris walked in and looked around. The ladder was standing now. She noticed black smudges on its sides that she presumed were left over from fingerprinting. She took in the large rectangular hole in the carpet and the spotlights, one of which was still out. She looked at the sculptures.
The room seemed remarkably unfinished without the motion and noise the kinetic sculptures normally made. She walked slowly around the room and stopped by the Pencil Sharpener.
Ryquist joined her. He chuckled. "This is a good one." He bent and plugged the "Do-Nothing" back in. When he pushed the ostentatious red button on top of the polished walnut box, soft whirring began and a metal extension arm rose out of a trap door at the rear. This arm reached for a pencil lying in a trough on top of the box. When it had clamped firmly on the pencil, it rose again and moved to the front where a second arm pushed a metal flap aside exposing a pencil-sharpener sized hole. The first arm inserted the pencil and grinding replaced the whirring. After about three seconds the arm withdrew the pencil and returned it to the trough on top of the box before it retracted and disappeared from sight with a decisive bang.
"I had to unplug all these things because the guys were spending more time playing with them than working the scene," Ryquist confided under his breath.
Chris smiled. "You should have seen it yesterday during the opening, Hjelmer. It was like my son's eighth grade science fair."
"I can see why. So okay, Doc, keep looking around. Tell me about anything that's different or out of place."
Chris continued to move around the gallery, wondering what she was supposed to be seeing. Then it hit her. One piece was missing. Its pedestal was the one normally illuminated by the burned-out bulb. How did I miss that last night? She pointed at the pedestal. "Did you take the sculpture that's supposed to be there, Hjelmer?"
"Nope. Describe it."
"It was about eighteen inches high and all chrome." She gestured with her hands. "About this wide. It had five or six metal tubes about eight inches long arranged sort of like a Gatling gun. They shot big ball bearings at a concave dish about every five seconds. It was one of the noisiest pieces in here." She looked around, expecting to see it somewhere on the floor.
Ryquist didn't move. "Interesting, Doc. How'd it do that?"
"Electro-magnetism, I was told, but I don't really understand it. Richard would be able to explain it."
"Was it working all right at the opening?"
"Yes. My son and his friend were particularly fascinated with it. Where did it go?"
"Let's look around. You'd recognize it if you saw it?"
"Sure, but why didn't I notice it was missing last night?" Suddenly the earlier revelation surfaced about the "big round metal thing" in Elizabeth's ruined skull. A startled, "Oh!" escaped unbidden.
"You see why I'm interested?"
"Yes."
Ryquist headed toward the docent's desk and the door leading down to the working areas of the museum with Chris trailing after.
"I even looked at the pedestal to see if she'd hit her head on it. I just didn't register that it was gone." She shook her head.
"You were in shock. Weird stuff happens in that kind of situation.
They stopped in Elizabeth's office and Ryquist picked up the keys that lay in the middle of an otherwise clean desk. "Everything's been printed in here so we can use these." He started for the door.
Chris, with newfound sensitivity to anomalies in her environment, asked, "Was the desk this free of papers when the police found it?"
Ryquist stopped to look at her. "Yep. Why?"
"It's just that her desk was usually a mess. I never saw it this tidy before."
Ryquist stopped to make a note in his small black leather notebook. "Interesting."
Detective Sergeant Ryquist and Chris Connery started on a tour of the art museum storerooms using Elizabeth Page's bundle of keys. The crate that contained the Picasso was in the first storeroom they entered. Chris wanted to open it right then and there, but Ryquist was on a mi
ssion to find the missing Bjornson sculpture and shooed her through the door and on to the next room.
By the time they had inspected every room, closet and cubbyhole in the museum it was nearly four-thirty. There was no trace of the small sculpture.
"You know, Hjelmer, Richard will have a photo of the piece. Artists usually photograph their work before it's exhibited or sold."
"Guess I'll have to go see him pretty soon," Ryquist said as they climbed the back stairs to the main level of the museum. "So tell me, Doc, what's that article Westphall wrote got to do with the price of beans?"
"You mean why was Antonia mad?"
"Yeah. And why'd Page cut it? Something wrong with the article?"
Chris knew her answer could put Antonia high on Ryquist's suspect list. She considered her words. "Elizabeth said it was too long and would add too much to the cost of printing so she cut it. The printer says it should be done by Wednesday or Thursday, by the way."
Ryquist stopped and turned to face her. "So it's fixed."
"Yes... at least, it soon will be." He regarded her without speaking. He obviously wanted more. "It was important to Antonia since she's up for tenure next year. It would be a good thing to have on her résumé."
"Tenure," Ryquist said as they continued back to the sculpture gallery. He stopped in the doorway and turned to face Chris. "Hey, I've got a minute. Tell me about tenure, Doc." Arms folded, he listened attentively.
Chris fumbled around for a moment. Tenure is nearly inexplicable outside of academe, she thought. Where do I start? "Tenure protects a professor's right to teach what he or she believes to be the truth... the best information available. You can't be fired for espousing unpopular ideas or researching things someone might not want you to research." She stopped, trying to collect her thoughts.
"So someone with tenure could tell students the world was flat, right?"
Chris shook her head. "Someone who believed that wouldn't be likely to get hired, let alone get tenure. You need to produce research that's reviewed by your peers, experts in your field. Articles in refereed journals, papers presented at conferences—stuff like that. A flat-worlder wouldn't be able to get an article into a legitimate professional journal. Other scientists would laugh it out of town."
"So if a guy went around the bend after he got tenure, he could tell kids the world is flat?"
"Lots of people think that, but it isn't true. You can be fired, even with tenure. It's just harder. Tenure is meant to protect the higher education system from political pressure and the vagaries of intellectual fads."
"So Antonia Westphall doesn't have tenure and this article is going to add to her credentials, right? Why would she care if she got tenure or not? What kind of political controversy could there be around artists who've been dead, what, 400 years?" He gestured toward the painting they were standing next to, an impossibly pretty nude man seen from the back and yet looking out at the viewer so completely that Chris always expected his head to fall off. "Nobody would be likely to kick up a political fuss about some dead painters, would they?"
"Well, for one thing, if you don't get tenure, you don't get to keep your job."
"So it matters to her, even though nobody gets excited about dead artists."
"I didn't say that, Hjelmer. You wouldn't believe the controversies swirling around dead artists. Just the fact that she didn't include any female artists in the exhibition or the article will get her flack from some quarters. The fact that she didn't emphasize the fact that a couple of these guys were gay will bring the house down on her in other quarters. That fact that they are all dead white men is hugely controversial right now and has been, off and on, for thirty years."
Ryquist stood looking at the floor and pulling his lower lip. "Tempests in teapots," he said at last without looking up.
Chris shrugged. "Still a big deal to the folks inside the teapots."
"Reason enough for murder, Doc. Teapots are always coming to a boil."
Chris gasped. "But she knew it was taken care of, Hjelmer! She didn't have a reason to kill Elizabeth!"
"Yeah, that's what you said. Still, I bet she wasn't over being mad about it." Ryquist turned into the sculpture gallery doorway and looked around. "Don't worry, Doc. I need to cover all the bases, but I try not to jump to conclusions."
Chris was not much comforted by that. After a moment she asked, "Do you need me any more today? I've got a lot to do at the office and—"
"Yep, but not much longer, Doc. Let's go back to Page's office where we can talk a little bit. Then I'll let you go."
Back in the museum director's office Ryquist invited Chris to sit and took the desk chair for himself. He sat for a moment, opening and closing drawers. "How big a mess was usually on her desk?"
"Most of the time it was six inches deep in spots. I never did understand how she found anything, but she seemed to know right where everything was."
"She clean it up for the opening?"
"Why? Nobody comes down here. This is off limits to the public. Besides, I remember once her assistant came in here and hunted for something when Elizabeth was out of town. She almost fired her over it. Said she'd messed up her system."
"Okay. Now tell me about anyone else you know had a beef with her." He sat back in the chair and swiveled back and forth as he listened.
"It's a long list, Hjelmer. She was rude to her employees and sometimes even to her volunteers. I never could figure out why they put up with it. They aren't even getting paid."
"That's what we've heard from a lot of people." He stopped swiveling and looked at Chris. "She was even giving the Picasso guy—what's his name? Randall?—a hard time, I hear."
"That was out of character for her, Hjelmer. I noticed that Mr. Randall didn't seem to be too pleased with her at the opening, but I can't imagine why or what she would have done or said to annoy him. That was one thing she was extraordinarily good at."
"What was?"
"Dealing with the rich and powerful. She could get a donation out of Scrooge himself. She raised the majority of the funds by herself to build this museum. She was thrilled to be getting the Picasso. I can't believe she'd have said or done something on purpose to offend him."
"Maybe not on purpose," Ryquist said. "Anyway, we hear Randall was pretty frosty with her. Someone said he cut her dead at the opening."
Chris grimaced. "Not a happy metaphor, Hjelmer."
He grinned.
Chris shrugged. "I guess you'll have to ask Mr. Randall about it, but I wouldn't read too much into it."
"So who else, Doc? Somebody disliked the lady enough to plug her. There's usually some forewarning. Who else had trouble with her? She screw anyone else out of getting tenure, for example?"
"Not that I know of. She'd been here three years longer than I have, but I would have heard something, I'm sure. You can't keep a secret on a university campus. The grapevine grows faster than the speed of light."
After going over the list of people who'd had regular dealings with Page, Ryquist rose and stretched. As they climbed the stairs back to the main level, he said, "Thanks, Doc. You've been helpful."
"When can I get a look at the Picasso?"
"Soon. Like I said, if we don't find anything new, we'll release the building tomorrow morning."
"By seven a.m.?"
"People need their art fix at that time of day?"
"More likely their caffeine fix," Chris said, staring longingly at the shuttered Lotta Latte.
Ryquist held the yellow tape up for her to pass through. "Maybe you should bring a Thermos, just in case we find some reason to hang on to this joint."
Chris trudged back to Fine Arts with that happy thought as her companion.