Last Breath Page 7

  “This will just take me a second. Come on in.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  She jogged up the back steps and unlocked the door. “Want anything besides water? I might have some pretzels.”

  “Just the water, thanks.” He stood with his hands on his hips overlooking the gardens behind the house, where hydrangeas top-heavy with blooms fought a wild tangle of roses for space.

  True to her word, Daria was back in a flash, the water bottles held against her body. She handed two to Connor.

  “Great. They’re cold. Thanks,” he said.

  “So,” he said after taking a long drink from one of the bottles and replacing the cap. “Tell me about Shandihar. I have to admit I’d never heard of it. All I know is what you’ve told me, that it was a city in southern Turkey and was found by Alistair McGowan in 1908.”

  “What exactly would you like to know?” She began to walk.

  “Who were its people? What was its culture?” He followed along the path.

  “At first, it was little more than a crossroads on the Silk Road, populated by merchants from all over the region. Greeks, Turks, Mesopotamians, nomads. Shandihar was quite the melting pot, with religions and superstitions and cultures blending over time. As the years passed, the society became matriarchal, with the import of the goddess Ereshkigal from Mesopotamia, who somehow came to prominence. My great-grandfather’s journals mention several temples dedicated to her, and writings that indicated that the priestesses who served her pretty much ran the city. Travelers passing through had to pay tribute-essentially, a toll-to come into the city.”

  “They couldn’t have gone around it?”

  “The walls of the city offered safety after dark,” she explained. “Beyond the walls, at night, anything could happen. There were tales of wild animals that hunted at night and that were most fond of human flesh and blood. And of course, there were bandits.”

  “So, in other words, it was worth paying the toll to be able to sleep safely.”

  “I’m sure that was the idea. In addition to the tolls, the merchants who did business in the marketplace had to bring tribute to the temples twice each year. If you wanted to spend the next life in heaven, you paid up. The more you gave, the better your chances of a happy afterlife.”

  “What did the priestesses do to keep everyone in line? Surely there were some who didn’t want to cough up their share.”

  “These ladies were pretty shrewd. Here’s the thing about Ereshkigal. She was the goddess of the underworld. The place where you do not want to spend your afterlife.” Daria smiled, pleased by his interest. “When you died, you had to face the goddess at the junction between heaven and hell. If you wanted to get into heaven, you had to bring offerings to the goddess.”

  “They had to bribe their way into heaven?”

  “Exactly. You were to appear at that gateway with something in each hand. Then you would tell the goddess all your good deeds, so she could judge your worthiness.”

  “So far, so good. You bring the bribe, you brag a little.” Connor nodded. “Everyone can come up with something good that they did over the course of their lifetime. So where’s the incentive to pay the tribute?”

  “Those who refused to pay were brought before the priestesses, who would pass sentence on the offender.”

  “I have a feeling the punishment may not have fit the crime.”

  “One or both hands were cut off,” she told him. “If you really pissed them off, they’d have your tongue cut out as well.”

  “Ouch. Why not just kill them?”

  “It made more of a statement. Everyone knew you were marked for the underworld, and no one would assist you because you were the walking dead. It was just a matter of time before you starved to death or died of thirst, since no one was permitted to help you. And once you died, you’d go straight to the underworld, because when you showed up at the gate, you’d have no gifts for the goddess and because you had no tongue, you couldn’t tell her about all the good things you’d done. So off you went, right into the pit.”

  “I imagine that made quite the impression.”

  Daria nodded. “Enough that the tongueless head is a recurring theme in Shandihar art. I found several pieces in the collection that depict the goddess or one of her priestesses holding one in her hand. Remind me to show you.”

  “Great. Looking forward to that.”

  Daria laughed.

  “Why haven’t I heard more about this city?” he asked.

  “A few years after the discovery-around 1914, I think-an earthquake buried it under tons and tons of sand, so it’s lost once again. I don’t know if the site could even be located, since the landmarks are all gone.”

  “Has anyone looked?”

  “Not that I know of,” she told him as they approached the museum from the side. “Here we are.”

  “That’s it?” They rounded the corner and faced the courtyard. “That’s the museum?”

  Daria nodded.

  He scanned the front of the building.

  “You said on the phone there’s security.”

  “There is.” She nodded.

  “Where?”

  “I guess the guard’s inside. Let’s go see.” She took the key from her pocket and walked across the courtyard to the door, which opened with a push.

  “Stan?” She called out.

  “Right here.” His voice came from the stairwell.

  The guard, a tall, thin, balding man in his mid-forties, came up the stairs from the office level.

  “Sorry, Dr. McGowan. I had to use the facilities,” he told her.

  “You leave the door unlocked when you take a break?” Connor asked skeptically.

  “No one’s around.” Stan shrugged. “No harm, no foul, right?”

  “Next time you leave your post, lock the door behind you,” Connor told him pointedly.

  Stan glanced at Daria.

  “Stan, this is Special Agent Shields, from the FBI.”

  “Oh.” Stan stared at Connor with no small interest. “Here to see if anything’s been pinched, huh?”

  “Here to assess the situation.”

  “I thought there were two guards assigned.” Daria frowned.

  “One of us takes the night shift, the other the day. This week I have day shift, next week we’ll trade off.”

  “So at any given time there’s only one guard,” Connor noted.

  “That’s right.”

  “I guess if you’d noticed any activity around the building you’d have notified Dr. Burnette,” Connor said.

  “Sure. But there hasn’t been any.”

  “Go on back to your post, Stan. But Agent Shields is right, the door should be locked at all times,” Daria told him. “Starting now.”

  She locked the door with the key and slipped it back into her pocket.

  “I’m going to be showing Agent Shields around for a while,” Daria told the guard, “so you can go back to doing whatever it was you were doing.” She gestured toward the folding beach chair inside the front door. A stack of paperback novels, several crossword puzzle magazines, and a large bottle of water sat nearby.

  “Give a shout if you need me.” He ambled over to the chair and sat down, and took the first book from the stack.

  “That’s your security?” Connor whispered to Daria.

  “Don’t knock it,” she whispered back. “That’s the most they’ve had here in almost fifty years.”

  “And Burnette wonders why things went walking out of the museum.”

  “Well, they did have the building completely boarded up for a while. It isn’t likely anyone got in then.”

  Connor walked around the perimeter of the room, checking the wide, oversized windows that arched at the top.

  “None of these open,” he noted.

  “They’re really only designed to let in natural light for the exhibits. They’re well placed, so only indirect light is allowed into the room, but no direct sunlight, which could have an adv
erse effect on the artifacts.”

  “Any windows on this floor that open?”

  “I’m not sure. I didn’t check them all.”

  “Let’s do that now.”

  She led him from one room to the next. In each, he examined the windows, those that opened to the outside, and those that were fixed. When he finished, he said, “I don’t see any sign that any of the windows were tampered with. No indication that anyone’s tried to break in on this level.”

  They went back into the great hall, and Connor studied the door frame.

  “I guess Dr. Burnette would know if this door or the frame had been replaced over the years?”

  “I would think there’d be a record of the expenditure someplace or a copy of the work order. We can ask Louise to look into that.”

  “Let’s check the windows downstairs,” Connor suggested.

  “There are none,” she told him.

  “No windows in the basement?”

  “No.”

  “There must be another door to the outside, though,” Connor said. “There couldn’t be just this one and the one we found at the end of the hall. That one showed no sign of having been forced, and even when you opened it, the outside is obscured by all those overgrown shrubs.”

  “I’ve asked Louise to have those removed. They could provide protection for anyone who’s looking for a way to get inside. And I’m afraid that as soon as the story gets out, there will be more interest in the building and what’s inside it than there has been in a very long time.”

  “There’s another door on the office level,” Stan said without looking up from his book.

  “Let’s check it out.” Daria headed for the steps leading to the half level below. “All the offices are down here. I think there are four of them. I haven’t gone into them all, just this first one. If there’s a door to the outside, I missed it.”

  She switched on the lights at the bottom of the steps.

  “We left the flashlight here on the desk yesterday. And it’s still here.” She tucked it under her arm and stepped back into the hall. “Let’s check out the door. I’m guessing it’s at the very end of this corridor.”

  “Lead the way.”

  They passed three more glass-paneled doors leading to the other offices. Daria shined the light straight ahead, and at the very end of the hall was another door.

  “Could I have the light?” Connor asked and Daria handed it over. He ran the beam around the door frame.

  “Like the others,” he said. “No sign of a breakin, at least from this side. Try the key, let’s see if they used the same lock as upstairs.”

  Daria took the key from her pocket and tried the lock, but it wasn’t a fit.

  “Any idea where this opens?”

  “I’d say at the back of the left wing of the building, assuming I haven’t gotten disoriented somehow. We can take a look at the door from the outside when we leave, unless you want to do it now.”

  “We’ll do it on our way out.”

  “Shall we take a look in the basement?”

  “Lead on.”

  “Down this way.” Daria beckoned Connor back to the stairwell, then down to the next level. She used the flashlight to find the lights for the hallway.

  “It really is dark down here,” he noted. “Dungeon dark.”

  “Louise’s secretary thought it was quite creepy.” Daria smiled.

  “Don’t you?”

  “I’ve been in so many tombs and crypts over the years, it takes a lot to raise my hackles these days. Dark rooms don’t quite do it anymore.” She unlocked the door to the storage room and turned on the overhead light.

  Connor followed her inside, then stood with his hands on his hips, taking it all in.

  “Where shall we start?” he asked.

  “Let’s start with crate number one. It’s there on your right.” Daria walked past him and pointed to the number on the side of the crate. “This is the number Alistair painted on before the crates left the dig. He itemized the contents, sealed it, then marked it. The X up here is mine. It indicates that I have gone through the crate and examined every piece, and marked it off on my list. The list you have in your hand is the one I ran off my computer. It has both mine and Alistair’s checks.”

  He placed the list on the top of the crate and studied it.

  “So, this item here-necklace of solid gold with gold beech leaves and lapis beads-he packed into the crate and later unpacked, but it was missing when you checked the contents?”

  “Right.” She nodded and began to lift the lid.

  “Here, let me give you a hand.” Connor picked up the wooden top of the crate with ease and set it aside. “Let’s see what’s in here.”

  “Okay, first item here is a goblet, it’s the third item on your list, see?” She unwrapped it carefully and held it up.

  “Golden goblet with griffins set with carnelian?”

  “Right. See, it’s checked off on both lists.”

  “Got it,” he said. “By the way, what is it with griffins?”

  She smiled as she rewrapped the goblet. “They’re wonderful mythological beasts. I actually went on an expedition to the Gobi Desert not too long ago in search of proof they really existed.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you look so normal.”

  Daria laughed and set the wrapped goblet on top of a nearby crate, then reached for the next item, which was enclosed it its own wooden box.

  “It was a spoof, of course, and wasn’t something I’d ordinarily have spent time on, but the professor in charge of the expedition was a legend in the field, and I thought, if he could take a month off, I could, too.”

  “What did you do? I mean, you didn’t actually find anything?”

  “We found exactly what we expected to find. Sometimes animals die in proximity to each other, say, for example, an eagle and a lion. When archaeologists from the past century, century and a half, found them, they often put the bones together incorrectly.”

  “Incorrectly, as in, the eagle wings on a lion’s body?”

  “Exactly. There was a time when people really did believe that griffins had been found. Dr. Allen-Elwood Allen, from Cambridge -put together the expedition and invited several other archaeologists to go along. I was one of them.”

  “What was the point?”

  “He was making a documentary for the BBC. It was quite clever, actually. We took bones from different animals found in the Gobi and made up the most fanciful beasts and put them on display. It was great fun.” She carefully removed the next artifact. “Here we have something really unusual. It’s a jar made from an ostrich egg.”

  “Ostriches in the Near East?” Connor frowned.

  “They were not uncommon several thousand years ago. What is uncommon is that this is in such lovely condition. Old Alistair certainly did treat everything with kid gloves. I’m really impressed with the care he took to ensure that every item made it to the States intact.”

  Connor studied the jar for a moment, then referred to the list. “Here it is. Ostrich egg jar. With two check marks. What’s next there?”

  Daria took pains to wrap the precious jar securely before setting it aside.

  “Let’s see what else we have in here…oh, I love this one.” She grinned and unwrapped what appeared to be carved stone. “This is an amulet, worn to protect against demons.”

  Connor leaned closer for a better look.

  “I can’t really tell what that is.” He turned on the flashlight and examined the piece. “What are those things?”

  “Demons.”

  “I thought you said this was supposed to ward off demons.”

  “It is. These are particularly fierce ones.”

  “My demons are more evil than your demons?”

  “Something like that.” She grinned. “They are ugly things, aren’t they?”

  “This never gives you nightmares?”

  “Never. I d
on’t do nightmares.” She pointed to the list. “This is fourth or fifth on the list.”

  “Got it.”

  “Seen enough to get a feel for the situation?”

  “I think so.” Connor nodded.

  Daria returned the items to the crate and Connor helped her to replace the lid.

  “What’s your next move here?” he asked.

  “I almost don’t know what to do first,” she said. “I need to compile an official list of what I believe is missing, complete with Alistair’s sketches, and the photographs that were taken at the site, if I can find them. Then I’ll compile a similar list of the items that are still here so that an appraisal can be made of the collection. The university is hoping to use that as collateral for a loan to pay for the repairs to the museum and the preparations for the exhibits.”

  “Off the top of your head, what are we looking at here?”

  “In terms of value?” She shook her head. “I can’t put a number on it.”

  “Ballpark.”

  “There are some things that are truly priceless, things that are so unique and valuable that they cannot be reproduced. What is that goblet worth? It’s hard to come up with a price. The gold is high quality, the carvings are beautifully done, add in the age of the item, the fact that there may only be that one in the entire world…” She shrugged. “How do you place a monetary value on that?”

  “So you’re saying the collection, in its entirety, could be priceless.”

  “In its entirety, absolutely. Priceless. This is all that’s left of a civilization that existed thousands of years ago. Its people, its art, its history, its religion…this is all that is left of Shandihar,” she told him. “There are individual pieces that could be considered priceless in their own right. This was a major find a hundred years ago, made even more valuable, I believe, because it’s been hidden for all this time.”

  “Why are you not as nervous as I am about having only Stan up there guarding the door? At the very least, I’d have a couple of armed guards and the most sensitive alarm system money can buy.”

  “And if anyone knew what was here, I’d agree with you. But right now, no one knows. And as long as we keep it quiet and out of the public eye…”

  “Daria, someone knew.” He corrected her. “At some point over the past hundred years, someone knew and helped themselves. And that someone did not come from outside the university. Whoever stole from your great-grandfather’s collection was someone on the inside, someone who had access to the building.”