Mummy Dearest, стр. 18

I peered blearily at the computer screen. Was the screen flickering or was that me? “Did you talk to Dr. Solvani while you were arranging to film this segment of your show?”

“Sure.”

“Directly?”

“Not directly. I think Jeannie talked to his secretary. We mostly corresponded by email.”

I too had communicated strictly by email with Solvani. “Why would the curator of a tiny museum the size of the Lasse need a secretary? How would they even afford to pay her on what that museum must bring in?”

Fraser was briskly toweling his head. “I don’t know.”

“He wouldn’t. I’ll tell you something else.” I winced and shielded my eyes as the Windows logo came up with that earsplitting start-up sound. “The Great Solvani is a character in The Mummy’s Hand.”

Fraser stopped mid-toweling. At last he said, “I’m sure more than one person in the world has been named Solvani.” But he came over to join me at the desk, watching the screen as I began typing.

“Yeah, well Babe Jenson is another character from the same movie.”

There was a sharp pause. “Are you serious?”

I nodded—which was a mistake. I moaned and pressed my fingers to my temples. Fraser’s hands landed lightly on my shoulders, and he began to knead them very gently.

“Oh my God, don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”

He laughed quietly. “I won’t.”

After a time, I sighed and resumed clicking away at the keys. “I’m a big fan of those goofy old mummy movies. I’ve seen them all a million times. In fact, I can’t believe it took me this long to figure out what was going on.”

“What is going on?”

“She’s trying to save her museum by manufacturing a mummy curse.”

“Who is?”

I brought up the Lasse Museum website, clicked on the About Us button.

A thumbnail-size photo came up next to the words “Museum Director.”

Fraser bent over my shoulder, peering down at the screen. “Hey is that…? Why does that picture look so familiar?”

“That’s the photo we knocked over in the museum last night. I mean, a smaller image, obviously.”

“Hmm. I guess so. They need to update this page.”

“I think it is updated.”

“But that’s not…”

“Yes,” I said. “It is.”

“That’s not Dr. Solvani.”

“That’s what I keep telling you. There is no Dr. Solvani.”

“That’s impossible. She referred us to Dr. Solvani.”

“She being?”

“Her.” He nodded at the laptop monitor. “Jillian Hiram. She said Dr. Solvani was now the museum director and she put us in contact with him.”

“With her.”

“With…what?” He straightened, staring down at me.

I said patiently, “Look at this page. Look at this photo. This is a one-woman operation. And that woman is Jillian Hiram. AKA Babe Jenson. AKA Dr. Solvani.”

Chapter Eight

She knelt on the floor like a modern-day temple singer, sweeping up the shards of calcite from the broken canopic jars. When we walked into the main exhibit room of the museum, she spotted us and rose. I wondered how I could have missed the fact that “Babe” moved like a woman half her age. And then there were those wonderful aquamarine eyes of hers.

I didn’t think I misread the wariness in them as she watched our approach.

“It looks like we had some kind of break-in last night,” she greeted us.

Knowing what I knew now, the deep, rough voice sounded totally fake. But as the Great Solvani would have said, people see what they expect to see.

“You can save the act,” Fraser told her. “We figured it all out this morning.”

Babe bridled, looking from Fraser to me. “I beg your pardon?”

“Dr. Solvani, I presume?” I said.

She stared at us, scowling, apparently completely perplexed.

Then she laughed. All at once she was a young woman in a funny wig and stage makeup. “Damn!”

“Damn?”

“I was afraid of this after the look on your face when you were examining the sarcophagus yesterday. Okay, you got me. Jillian Hiram.” She offered her hand. First I, then Fraser shook it.

“You are one crazy lady,” Fraser told her. It almost sounded like a compliment coming from him.

Jillian seemed to take it in that spirit. She laughed again, but then peered more closely at us. “You’re not mad are you?”

Fraser and I glanced at each other. Were we mad? Speaking for myself…no. I was puzzled, exasperated, but no, I wasn’t mad. In fact, considering how much fun I’d had the night before, I wasn’t mad at all.

Fraser had been pretty irate this morning, but coffee, aspirin, and then more coffee and a couple of doughnuts had mellowed him considerably.

She must have read it on our faces because she nodded, looked down at the broken pieces of canopic jar in the dustpan, and said, “It’s a shame about these. My great-great-grandfather brought them back from Egypt in 1914. Right before World War One broke out.”

“Just so you know, the mummy did that.” Fraser was firm on that point, no doubt thinking of his insurance premiums.

“I know,” Babe—Jill—said. “He called and told me when he got home. He said he gave you a good run for your money anyway.”

“Literally,” I said.

Fraser put in, “Yeah, he pretty much ran us all over the damned town. Is everybody in Walsh in on the joke?”

“Not everybody, no.” Jill struggled to hide a smile. “My cousin Jack runs the Blue Moon.”

Fraser muttered to me, “I knew that guy went inside that joint.”

Win some, lose some. I nodded acknowledgment. I should have let him chase the mummy out the back. Fraser might have caught him and saved us a few hair-raising moments at the museum last night.

“Where did he come up with that costume?” I asked.

“Oh, Ted used to run the theater next door. He’s got access to lots of costumes. He could have shown up as Marie Antoinette if I’d needed it.”

I was trying to think of what circumstances would have required Marie Antoinette making an appearance when Fraser said, “Let me see if we’ve got this straight. You hired some guy named Ted to follow us around and pretend to be a mummy?”

“Ted Alwyn. We go way back.”

“Why?” Fraser and I demanded at the same time. We exchanged quick looks.

Jill blushed, but said steadily, “Oh come on, you know why. Promotion. Advertising. Marketing. That’s what it’s all about now days.”

“But you already had our interest. He was writing his article. We were already filming the segment,” Fraser said.

“I know. That was the start. But I needed more. I knew that. Once we caught the attention of the media, we had to find a way to hang on to it.”

I protested, “But you’re a museum.”

“A dime museum.”

“But you’re still a museum. Why would you try to promote yourself like a…like a circus?”

“Ouch,” murmured Fraser.

“I just don’t understand this.”

“I know. I’m starting to recognize that fretful expression.”

Jill was already turning away. “Maybe some of my tactics weren’t strictly orthodox, but the princess is real. You want to see the mummy’s provenance? Here.”

We followed her past the mummy case, shoes crunching bits of sand. We left the exhibition room and went down the hall to her office. She went straight to one of the wooden file cabinets, opened a bottom drawer and began going through folders.

She rifled through the files, muttering to herself, then she jumped up and went to her desk. “It’s right here. I had the folder out earlier in the week.” She dragged open a drawer and began scooping odds and ends out. Loose pens, rubber bands, Cheez-Its, Wite-Out, coffee coasters, and something that sparkled and glittered as it rolled to a stop on a pink legal pad.

A ring. A heavy gold signet ring with an oblong carnelian intaglio of a Ptolemaic queen. I reached for it automatically. “Wait a minute…”

“Where did I put it?” Jill stopped searching and removed her wig. Her own hair was a dark, sleek bob. She ran an absent hand through it and scratched her scalp. “I got the sarcophagus on eBay a couple of years ago. It looks great, doesn’t it?”