Ghost of a Chance

31 The Hieroglyph

Alex spent the rest of the afternoon working through Leslie’s stack of potential clients. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it was work and if it kept up like this, they’d have next month covered in a week or two.

By five o’clock, Alex closed the office and took the crawler across town to the Waldorf hotel. Anne Watson didn’t look much better when she let him into her suite. She listened patiently as he told the story of Duane King and her husband’s involvement in North Shore Development.

“Thank you, Alex,” she said when he finished.

Alex could see that the knowledge of what her husband had done, even though it was decades ago, weighed on her like a millstone.

“Do you think the police have enough evidence to convict the man who killed David?” she asked.

“They do,” Alex assured her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as if she bore some responsibility for what had happened years before she’d even met her husband.

She paid Alex and wished him well, but it was clear that she just wanted Alex to go and hopefully take the pain of her husband’s past with him.

Alex thanked her and left. He wanted to say something to help, but there really wasn’t anything he could say.

Alex puffed on a cigarette as he rode a crawler along Central Park North to the station near Dr. Kellin’s shop. It had been a good day, and he hoped it was about to get better.

“What are you doing here?” Jessica asked when she answered the back door to the lab.

“I wanted to apologize again for cutting our date short,” Alex said.

Jessica leaned against the door jamb, crossing her arms with a raised eyebrow.

“Okay,” she said, the ghost of a smile playing across her lips. “Let’s hear it.”

Alex suppressed a smile of his own. Jessica wanted her pound of flesh for ditching her to solve his case. Still, if she wasn’t willing to forgive him, she would have slammed the door in his face.

He told her about the museum heist and Andrew Barton’s traction motor, then about Duane King and the ghost murders.

“I read about those in the papers this morning,” she said. “They didn’t mention you.”

Alex explained about Billy Tasker and his deal with the reporter.

“How modest of you,” she said.

Alex wasn’t sure if she believed him or not. Jessica had a great poker face.

She had great everything.

“So,” she said, her barely-visible smile shifting to a mocking one. “How will you ever make it up to me?”

Alex found himself grinning this time. He’d anticipated that question and he had a damn good answer.

“Well, if you had a few hours free tonight,” he said, “the curator of the American Museum of Natural History owes me a pretty big favor. How would you like a private tour of the Almiranta exhibit with myself and Dr. Bell?”

“You’re bringing a chaperone?” Jessica smirked and stepped close to him, so they were almost touching. “Do you need protection from me?”

“No,” Alex said, resisting the urge to close the gap between them. “But Iggy knows a lot about this stuff, and he’s an excellent tour guide.”

Jessica stepped forward, pressing her body against his.

“Well,” she said, her eyes boring into his. “I’ll get my handbag.” She leaned in and pressed her lips against his for a long moment before she pulled back.

Alex slipped his hand around her waist, preventing her from moving.

“In a minute,” he said, then pulled her in again.

“So we’re on a treasure hunt?” Jessica said as Alex handed her a pair of yellow spectacles.

They’d had a tour of the Aztec and Mayan gold from the curator and Jessica had enjoyed every minute, clinging to Alex’s arm the whole time. Of course that wasn’t the part Alex was worried about. That came when Iggy opened the doctor’s bag he’d been carrying and pulled out Alex’s multi-lamp. He had no idea how Jessica would react to their ulterior motive for this visit — the search for the entropy stone, or, failing that, some sign of ancient runecraft.

“That’s exactly it,” Iggy said.

“If you don’t want to help, I’ll understand,” Alex said. “I can take you home.”

“Don’t you dare,” Jessica said, fitting the spectacles on her perky nose.

“Told you,” Iggy said.

Alex put on his oculus, then lit the ghostlight burner in his lamp.

“What am I looking for?” Jessica asked.

Alex pulled out his rune book and opened it to a page with a vault rune on it. He shone the green light from the lamp onto the page and the rune glowed an iridescent yellow in his oculus.

“Oooh,” Jessica cooed.

“Just call out if any part of the treasure glows,” Iggy said, clipping a yellow pair of pince-nez spectacles to his nose.

No bigger than the Almiranta exhibit was, they were able to search it twice in just over half an hour. When they didn’t find anything, Jessica pouted adorably.

“Oh well,” she said.

“What about the Egyptian exhibit?” Alex asked.

“Good idea,” Iggy said. “They’ve got a couple of mummies here.”

A quick chat with the curator, and twenty minutes later Jessica was pouting again.

“No luck,” Alex said. They’d been over the mummies and the various artifacts from their tombs three times to no avail.

“There is another mummy in the basement,” the curator offered. He was a little man in an expensive suit with slicked back hair and a pencil mustache. “We didn’t have room for all three with the Almiranta display in the big room,” he continued. “And she’s not really anyone important anyway.”

Jessica snaked her hand into the crook of Alex’s arm.

“Can we try that?” she said. Despite having no success, she was clearly having fun. Alex had forgotten how rarely she got out.

Since he had no objection to spending more time with Jessica, Alex asked the curator to show them the mummy in storage.

There wasn’t much to her, just the wrapped body in the bottom half of a wooden sarcophagus, sitting on a sturdy table. A few unimpressive-looking artifacts belonging to the dead woman were stacked neatly on a shelf nearby.

“She was some kind of priestess,” the curator said. “A trusted advisor or something like that.” He looked at his pocket watch, then glanced back in the direction of the stairs. “I need to check with the security office,” he said. “Just meet me upstairs once you’re done.”

Alex tried to light the lamp, but his burner had run out of fuel.

“Ano…” Jessica said, trying to read a long Egyptian name from a card mounted on the foot of the wooden coffin.

Alex glanced at it and saw the name, Ankhesenpaaten Tasherit. He decided not to try it.

“Anox-en-pay-a-teen Ta-sher-eet,” Jessica managed at last. “Priestess of Ra.”

“Pleasure,” Alex said, nodding toward the mummy as he replenished his burner from a glass bottle in his kit bag.

“Who’s Ra?” Jessica asked.

“Egyptian god of the sun,” Iggy said, pointing to a stylized eye printed on the card. “This is his symbol.”

Alex relit his lamp and this time, when the green light washed over the mummy, the shelf behind it glowed.

“Look,” Jessica gasped, digging her nails into Alex’s arm in her excitement.

“Carful with those things,” Alex said, prying her poison-tipped manicure off his arm.

“Sorry,” she said with fake remorse.

“It’s these jars,” Iggy said, pulling one of five roundish jars about a foot and half tall from the shelf.

A glowing line ran up the side of the jar to some kind of animal head on top. As Iggy turned it, they could see more lines and shapes on the back of the jar.

“It’s only on the one side,” Iggy said, putting the jar back on the shelf with the glowing lines visible.

“Check the other jars,” Alex said, holding the light steady.

One by one, Iggy checked the jars. Each of them had a pattern of lines and shapes on its back, but none of them looked complete.

“They form a pattern of some kind,” Iggy said.

“Try rearranging them,” Jessica said.

It took Iggy a few minutes, but he finally managed to put the jars in an order where the lines on one seemed to be continued on the next.

“So what is it?” Jessica asked, breathless in her excitement. “What does it mean?”

“It means that the ancient Egyptians knew rune magic,” Alex said.

“As for what it’s for?” Iggy said. “Haven’t got a clue.”

Alex pulled out his notebook and sketched the strange Egyptian glyph. Iggy did the same, and then they compared notes.

“Now what?” Alex asked.

“Now we go to work,” Iggy said. “Jimmy Cortez and his Talon friends were trying to uncover lost rune knowledge. We need to figure out what they were after and why.”

“Is this part of it?” Jessica asked.

“I don’t know,” Iggy admitted, stroking his mustache. “I’ll go thank the curator and tell him we’re leaving,” he went on, turning to Alex. “You take Jessica home. I imagine we’ve kept her from her duties long enough. Then you can meet me back at the brownstone.”

Alex nodded, and Iggy headed out through the museum’s vast storage basement toward the stairs.

“Well this was one hell of a date,” Jessica said, leaning against a table full of wooden crates. Alex noticed that she like to lean against things with her hip cocked. She probably thought it presented her figure to the greatest advantage like that.

She was right.

Alex grinned at her as he finished putting away his gear.

“We’ll have to do it again, then,” he said. He offered her his arm and began walking the same way Iggy had gone.

“Yes, we will,” she said. “I am sorry about Dr. Bell, though.”

“What about Iggy?” Alex asked, confused.

“Well, he seems very eager to go over all that ancient rune stuff with you,” she said. She took a quick step forward and turned directly into Alex’s path. He stopped short to avoid running into her. “I’m sorry because he’s going to be disappointed.” She leaned in, pressing herself against him like she had done before. “You see, you’re not coming home tonight.”

Before Alex could reply, she kissed him.

She was right. Iggy was going to be disappointed.