Murder at the Library of Congress - Margaret Truman [48]
He’d retired from active leadership of the brokerage house a dozen years ago and traveled the world with his wife, mostly to Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, where he added to what was a superb collection of Hispanic and Portuguese art and artifact.
David Driscoll was a man to be reckoned with, which Cale Broadhurst was perfectly willing to do in order to sustain his generous interest in the Library of Congress. The LC depended upon two types of books: the millions of them in the collections, and the double-entry type that tracked the millions of dollars needed to keep the institution afloat.
Annabel and Lucianne Huston returned to the library after lunch. Lucianne went to the public affairs office, and Annabel to her desk to do some more reading before her appointment at three to go to Michele Paul’s apartment.
“Look,” Lucianne said to Joanne Graves the minute she was inside and had shut the door, “I need to interview some people from the library. Trying to keep this under wraps is stupid.”
“We’re not trying to keep anything under wraps, Lucianne,” Graves said, her words wrapped in exasperation. “What I am trying to do is approach this in an orderly fashion. And that means no special treatment for individual journalists. You’ll just have to wait like the rest of your breed.”
“Well, that’s just perfect,” Lucianne blew up. “I’m sent here on a wild-goose chase by that idiot boss of mine, and now some twerp of a librarian tries to keep me from my story.”
“If you’re going to take that tone with me, I’ll have to ask you to leave my office. Or else I could have security—”
“Fine! I’ll leave. But you’ll hear from me again,” Lucianne said, stomping out of the office. “And from your boss,” she added, echoing the slamming of the door. Frustrated, she decided to corner Cale Broadhurst; maybe he’d have something useful to say.
Annabel sat at her desk in the Hispanic section and found that she couldn’t keep from staring at the empty seat to her right and thinking what an abrupt end Michele Paul’s life had come to. And in another hour she would be going to his apartment to, in a way, plunder the bounty of his research for her own article.
She decided to get some air. On her way out of the library, she ran into Lucianne. “Hi again. Did you learn anything new from public relations?”
“No, not a thing. I asked about the John Bitteman disappearance, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. Said it was never officially labeled a murder.”
“Consuela told me a little about him and his disappearance. Do you think there could be a connection between Michele’s murder and what happened to Bitteman?”
“I don’t know. Bitteman and Michele were rivals, I’m told, both trying to be the first to land the Las Casas diaries or the map. They barely spoke.”
“Did Bitteman leave a family?” Annabel asked.
“They say he was openly homosexual. The police theorized it might have been a gay love affair gone awry.”
“I was hoping to see Bitteman’s files on Las Casas.”
“Good luck. Paranoia seems to run in Las Casas scholars. Bitteman took most things home, too, like Michele.”
“But surely he left something.”
“Check with your buddy, Consuela. Sure you want to go rummaging through a dead man’s apartment?”
“Not on my wish list, but sharing a cramped space with someone who’s murdered two days after I got here wasn’t either.”
Chapter 19
The two MPD