Murder at the Library of Congress - Margaret Truman [0]
Margaret Truman looks inside one of D.C.’s great institutions, the Library of Congress, the place where much of the wisdom of the nation is collected, and finds blood on the floor.
Was there a second diary, beyond the one Columbus kept, describing his voyage to the New World? Leading scholars at the Library of Congress think so, and Annabel Smith, with her pre-Columbian interests, has been commissioned by the library’s magazine, Civilization, to write about it.
She is not the only person interested. Word comes through the rare-books black market that a wealthy bibliophile has been offered the second diary: He’d not only pay, he’d almost kill to possess it. Starting her search in the library itself, Annabel soon finds herself competing with an ambitious TV journalist. As both women come closer to finding the hidden documents, other questions creep up. Was the murder of the library’s most prominent Hispanic scholar connected to the missing diary? Further research leads them deeper into barely explored corners of the library and closer to having to face their own mortality. Murder in familiar yet surprising surroundings—a great library—leads to a surprising conclusion in this latest Capital Crime novel.
MURDER AT THE
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
A Novel by
Margaret Truman
Capital Crimes Series: Book 16
Copyright © 1999
by Margaret Truman
eISBN: 978-0-307-42229-3
Dedication:
To Gates Bennett Daniel,
with love from Grammy
Quote
“They [the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution] are more than historical relics…. We may think we have them safely bottled up, but the ideas they express will go on forever. They will continue to give energy and hope to new generations of men, here and in other countries, in the long struggle to create a better society on earth.”
—HARRY S. TRUMAN, President of the United States, addressing the Library of Congress on its 150th anniversary honoring its founder, Thomas Jefferson, May 17, 1950
Chapter 1
Esteban Reina looked down from the tall stepladder. Above him was the skylight he’d just repaired. He’d explained to his boss, the museum’s manager, that the repair he’d started that morning was more complicated than he’d anticipated, and that he would have to remove the entire skylight to do the job right.
“Before it rains,” the manager said. “Make sure it’s fixed before it rains.”
Reina had taken his time, but kept an eye on the sky. Rain wasn’t forecast until the night, plenty of time.
It was now five o’clock. The skylight had been removed, the weather stripping replaced, and the skylight again rested in its opening, allowing gray light to filter into the small, single gallery of Casa de Seville, a not-for-profit museum of sorts supported by a grant from two Hispanic-American businessmen and donations at the door. Devoted to bringing a taste of Seville, Spain, to Miami, it was located on Southwest Eighth Street—“Little Havana.”
The collection wasn’t especially important in a historical sense, nor was the worth of the displays, maps, dioramas of fifteenth-century Seville, and costumes replicating what was then fashionable very high. If worth was determined by size, a large painting by an obscure, modestly capable nineteenth-century artist, Fernando Reyes (influenced by the respected seventeenth-century religious painter, Murillo), was the most valuable offering in the small space. The scene was Columbus on his knees in Seville offering up his Book of Privileges to King Fernando and Queen Isabel. It was but one of myriad paintings done over the centuries depicting that event; Reyes’s work was considered by collectors to be barely adequate; he was perhaps not influenced enough by Murillo.
Reina, Casa de Seville’s part-time maintenance man, went to a rear door, opened it, and placed the ladder outside. He then went to the men’s room, where he washed his hands, changed out of work clothes into slacks, a floral shirt, and sandals, and left the museum, pausing to say good night to the manager.
“Fixed good as