The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [116]
But Chief Ballard’s description had been smack-on. De Buitliér had been out to Shetland Falls snooping around. Or had he been in on the deal? Had LeBlanc double-crossed him? I had a moment of unease wondering about the authenticity of the other items in the Greco-Roman Collection.
The first thing I did the morning after I returned was to call the financial office and tell them I wanted to review phone records for the last couple of months.
A patient voice directed me how to access the file on my own computer. It proved childishly easy. I clicked into the subfile for Greco-Roman Collection Curatorial Office. Lots of long-distance calling. And then, there it was, the 413 number for LeBlanc’s operation. It had been called three times, once in March and twice in April.
I subdued a frisson of predatory anticipation and pondered my next move. I knew I should call Lieutenant Tracy and tell him what I had found so far. But what had I found? The forger? Possibly. But I had no real proof.
In the midst of these cogitations I received a text message from Alphus containing what sounded like good news. Esther Homard, the literary agent, has a renowned and well-financed publisher interested in his memoirs. So interested, in fact, that they are chartering a plane to fly him to the great big apple for a meeting.
Alphus wants me to accompany him, but frankly, I think Felix would be far more useful. There’s already been some e-mailing back and forth about establishing a trust of which I would be one of the trustees. It strikes me as strange that Alphus is not recognized as a legal entity.
I sent back a text message (I am not comfortable with text as a verb) congratulating him. I also asked him to stand by for a lie detector exercise in the afternoon.
I called Diantha out at the cottage. “Angel,” I said, using my Humphrey Bogart voice, “could you do a background check for me on Feidhlimidh de Buitliér? There’s a site called something like Who Was Who.com.”
“I could try. How do you spell that?”
I spelled it out for her and then told her about Alphus’s good news.
“Fly him to New York?” She sounded skeptical.
“On a private charter. I think he would do better in a car.”
“Whatever.”
I heard some of her old exasperation. I said, “Diantha darling, if Alphus gets a nice fat advance, he’ll be able to afford some place of his own and hire a keeper.”
“If …”
“Yes, if.”
Rather than call my latest suspect and arrange to have him come by for an interrogation, I decided to drop in unannounced at his small office on the third floor.
He wasn’t in, but a young man, a veritable ephebe of Hungarian birth named Josef, asked me if he could be of any help. I told him who I was and that I wanted to speak directly to Mr. de Buitliér.
“Doctor de Buitliér won’t be back until later,” he said vaguely. “Do you want that I take a message?”
“Yes, tell him to call me the moment he gets in. Tell him it’s very important.” Then, neutrally, I asked him what he did in the museum.
“I’m Doctor de Buitliér’s assistant.”
“Really? I don’t think personnel knows about that.”
“Actually, now I am only an intern.”
In the course of this exchange, I happened to glance out the window. It was, like most of the windows at the museum, a large, generous thing. It gave out onto both the museum and Center for Criminal Justice parking lots and would have afforded de Buitliér a direct view of what happened on the night of von Grümh’s murder. That is, if he had been around.
Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I asked myself. I had not even checked the electronic log for him or others who might have been at the museum that night.
Cursing myself for neglecting such routine yet critical investigative tasks, I took the elevator down to the basement to see Mort. He was in his office keeping an eye on the big panel of security screens while watching a baseball game on one of those little things that fit into a drawer.
I let it