Murder at the Library of Congress - Margaret Truman [62]
“We worked together,” Dolores said.
“Lucianne Huston was here this morning,” Consuela said. “She’s really trying to make a connection between Bitteman’s disappearance and Michele’s murder.”
“I never took her for a tabloid-TV type,” Dolores said.
“It’s the Columbus celebration coming up that’s driving it, I think,” said Consuela. “Nothing like a juicy contemporary murder to bring history alive.” To Annabel: “She wanted to talk with you. I told her you were hibernating, but that you’d get hold of her through Public Affairs this afternoon.”
“Thanks. Anyone hungry?”
“I am,” said Consuela. “Dolores?”
“I brought something from home.”
An hour later, as Annabel and Consuela passed through the European reading room on their way back from lunch, Lucianne Huston intercepted them.
“How’s it going?” Annabel asked.
“Slow. Got a minute?”
“Sure.”
“Got an hour?”
“No.”
Consuela said, “Take all the time you need, Annie. Dolores and I will be there whenever you get back.”
At Lucianne’s suggestion, she and Annabel left the building and sat on a semicircular concrete bench on East Capitol Street, directly across from the Supreme Court. The smell of rain was in the air.
“You went to Michele Paul’s apartment to go through his files,” Lucianne said.
“That’s right.”
“Nice apartment.” It wasn’t a question.
“I take it you’ve been there,” Annabel said.
“This morning. Got the super to let me in. Paul lived pretty well. Fancy apartment, a boat, closets full of expensive clothes.”
“He lived nicely, but extravagantly?”
“You know what he was paid?”
“No.”
“Seventy-five thousand a year. He was a GS-Fourteen with over twenty years.”
“Not a fortune, but enough to carry his apartment, I’d think.”
“And build up a savings account of more than three hundred thousand?”
Annabel had been watching one of LC’s police officers yell at a pedestrian for jaywalking. Now, she turned to Lucianne and asked, “How do you know that?”
“I have a friend in the police department here.”
“You seem to have friends everywhere.”
“In this business, you’re only as good as your little black book. The police are running down his finances. Routine in a murder investigation. They traced an account to New York. That’s where he had most of the money.”
“Did it ever occur to you that someone in his family might have left it to him?”
“If so, that someone died just before Paul did. He deposited a check for a hundred thousand in the New York account the day before he was killed.”
“Who was the check from?”
“They’re tracing that now. What do you think of John Vogler?”
“A nice enough man. I don’t know him. I’ve only had one conversation with him.”
“I think he’s a fruitcake.”
Annabel laughed. “I haven’t heard that term in a while. Why do you say it?”
“Just my reaction. The police are looking hard at him as a suspect.”
Annabel nodded. “That’s understandable, considering his past relationship with Michele Paul. He’s evidently a considerable scholar. I hear nothing but good things about him; he’s a little eccentric, maybe.”
“They haven’t written off your buddy Dr. Martinez, either.”
“Preposterous! No one would ever think Consuela is capable of murder. Why are you telling me this?”
Lucianne ran her tongue over her lips, smiled, and said, “Because I think we have a common failing.”
“And what is that?”
“We’re both always looking for something. I wanted no part of this story when my boss assigned it to me. It was based on a rumor that these so-called diaries and a map might be discovered and offered for sale through some kooky underground rare books network. And there was that theft of a painting in Miami and the guard who died. But when I got here and tried to get some decent material on the diaries, I came up empty, except for what little you told me on camera. Then, the leading scholar on the subject gets his head bashed in, and soon I learn another leading Las Casas scholar disappeared under mysterious circumstances eight years ago, probably murder. The most recent victim, the charming Dr. Paul, is