Short Stories from Wing's Authors.

Then Fall, Caesar

by

Sarah Wisseman

The Emperor Augustus hovered over the elevator shaft. Light danced on his snow-white limbs and gaudy parade armor and he hardly noticed the bonds that held him standing erect in an unusual chariot.

“Are you ready?” I called to Colin Luneau, our museum preparator, who was poised at the top of the elevator shaft on the fourth floor.

“Almost!” said Colin. I could barely see his brawny brown arms around the edges of the platform as he adjusted the cables. He was surely dripping sweat down the elevator shaft, just as I was shedding droplets after running down the stairs to the first floor of our ancient classroom building at Boston University. It was a steaming August day, and the only air-conditioning was in the Dean’s office on the second floor.

Ellen Perkins, our conservator, was standing next to me at the bottom of the shaft. She was positioned near the buttons so she could make sure the elevator doors didn’t close at the wrong time. Her blond bob caught the light from the hallway as she gazed upwards. My eyes followed hers, and I shuddered.

The enormous bulk of our biggest, heaviest plaster cast lurked overhead, invisible to us since the floor of the open-sided elevator car almost filled our sky. I sure hoped Colin knew what he was doing. We’d already moved the Apollo Belvedere, complete with pigeon shit (a result of being housed in an attic museum with broken windows), but that one was easy because Apollo could be broken down into sections. Moving Augustus in one piece was much more dangerous.

 “Who thought of this hare-brained scheme, anyway?” I asked Ellen.

 “Victor. You know he wouldn’t agree to lift the statues out with a crane through a hole in the roof. Too expensive.” Victor Fitzgerald, our penny-pinching director, had finally agreed to remove the regular elevator—a model almost as old as some of our artifacts—after careful measurements had convinced him that our biggest statues couldn’t fit in the shaft any other way. Taking them down four flights of stairs in Wigglesworth Hall was out of the question; the job would require a small army of paid-by-the-hour musclemen from Operations and Maintenance. Our puny university museum budget didn’t allow for that kind of expenditure.

I could hear Nick Skirvin’s voice at the top of the shaft. “Hey, Colin, shouldn’t there be another tie-in at the corner of the base?” Nick was a skinny, intense graduate student who acted as Colin’s assistant.

“Nah, it’s okay, I’ve got it under control. You run down to the third floor so you can monitor the statue as we lower it.” The statue was balanced on the car platform between Ethafoam bumpers to shield the plaster during its journey.

“Ready at the top!” called Colin. I could hear the murmur of other staff, but I wasn’t sure what floor they were on. The acoustics of an open elevator shaft were peculiar, to say the least.

“Okay, here!” replied Nick, from the third floor. His light build made him a fast runner.

“Ready at the bottom!” I said, glancing behind me at the packing crate that was standing ready to receive Augustus after he had descended the narrow shaft. I was relieved that the media hadn’t picked up on this event.

My relief was short-lived. Around the corner appeared my boss, Victor, with two reporters bearing camcorders, microphones and notebooks. Behind them was Dean Saltonstall, a dapper little man with salt-and-pepper hair.

“Don’t look now,” I whispered to Ellen.

She looked anyway, as I knew she would. “Good grief, why now? Wouldn’t it be nice if the darn reporters didn’t show up until the grand opening of the new museum?”

“They’re probably hard-up for human interest stories,” I said. “After all, no one else moves Greek gods and Roman emperors around.”

Susie Blake, our assistant director, waltzed up behind me. She was as sleek as ever in a navy-blue pantsuit and matching suede pumps. Smoothing her dyed red curls, she chirped at us, “Now, now, Lisa. You know that publicity is always good for a university museum!’

 I smiled cynically. Ellen and I could both remember times when publicity had been a severe handicap, such as when our accountant had been caught embezzling from the Friends of the Museum fund. The reporters had made our lives miserable by camping out in the parking lot and pouncing on us whenever we showed our faces.

 We heard the creak of cables as the heavy burden began its descent.

Victor stepped into the elevator shaft and looked up. “This should make a good shot,” he said, motioning to the video tech. The cameraman, standing just outside the shaft for a better angle, pointed his camcorder up. Ellen moved closer, craning her neck to see what the camera saw.

“Victor!” said Susie, who had the boss’ ear at most times since they were a couple outside of work hours. He glanced at her as she coyly put a hand on his sleeve. “Don’t you think we ought to…”

What Susie thought was never revealed, because the cable broke and the car tilted.

The Emperor Augustus hurtled down, hitting the bottom of the shaft with a horrible thud. Victor and Ellen vanished in a maelstrom of plaster dust. Stunned and choking, I could see nothing but I could certainly hear; Susie’s banshee scream sounded for a full thirty seconds before an awful silence enveloped us.

~ * ~

The dust lifted. Victor, Ellen and the video technician were lying on the floor, mostly out of the elevator. They were all covered with bits of plaster. The bulk of the statue was just to the left of Ellen’s head, but part of a plaster arm rested on her right shoulder. The wall of the shaft was dented in several places.

  Victor, who had missed being crushed by a millimeter or so, emerged with his dark hair almost as white as his face. He struggled to stand, leaning on Susie. “Hush, Susie. I’m not hurt. But someone was very careless. We will have to have a thorough review of procedures.” His voice squeaked with shock, but his manner left us in no doubt that someone would pay for his or her negligence, one way or another. Susie, tears oozing from her limpid blue eyes, helped Victor move away from the mess.

The video guy stood up with help from Dean Saltonstall, dazed but unhurt. I stumbled to Ellen’s side. She sat up shakily but said she was fine except for a very sore shoulder. We clutched each other.

“We’re going to get you checked out,” I assured her, not convinced she was really uninjured. My own legs were a bit wobbly.

 “Colin! Get down here at once!” Victor’s bellow startled me. He was the sort of manager who never had to raise his voice to get instant results.

 Colin Luneau dashed up, out of breath from running down three flights of stairs.

“I don’t know what happened, Victor,” he panted apologetically. “I checked the cable fastenings first thing this morning.”

 My gaze moved to the detached cable end, lying next to the fragments of Augustus. The glint of something shiny made me step closer. “Oh, no!”

“What is it, Lisa?” asked my boss.

I pointed and everyone moved closer. The hook closure was taped open with a piece of clear packing tape so that the metal pin couldn’t snap into place.

The Dean Saltonstall sprang into action. “I’m calling the police,” he said. He steered the reporters toward his office. “You guys come with me.”

I looked apprehensively at my boss. Victor’s face was frozen into an icy mask and his eyes reflected a deeper gray than usual. He looked at Ellen and me leaning against the wall and his lips twitched slightly. Realizing I must present a comical sight, I snapped my mouth shut.

 “Everyone okay?” Victor asked.

We nodded.

 “Staff meeting as soon as we can get everyone together,” he said. “Lisa, get some extra chairs from my office and put them in the Library.”

A subdued staff rode the second elevator on the south side of Wigglesworth Hall to the fourth floor. Ellen turned into the lounge to make a fresh pot of coffee, moving stiffly like a woman with arthritis. I hurried to Victor’s office to fetch chairs.

~ * ~

Thirty long minutes later I sat at the huge, scarred library table, waiting for Victor to start the proceedings. My knees had stopped trembling, but my brain refused to engage.

We were halfway through the move to our spiffy new building on the other side of campus. The old museum had been closed to the public for six months and no one outside the staff knew we were moving statues this week. Because of the huge amount of labor needed to pack and move forty thousand artifacts, we’d had a kaleidoscope of temporary staff, summer student help and workmen of all types. Only Victor, and presumably Susie, knew how many people had been hired and fired since April. With so many people and objects involved, it wasn’t surprising we’d had a few minor accidents. But nothing like this.

A medium-height stocky cop with piercing dark eyes and his tall, skinny colleague followed Victor into the room. Victor’s habitual poker face revealed nothing as he introduced us to the police.

 Colin and Nick took their seats. I could tell from Colin’s tense shoulders that he was dying for a cigarette. Nick slumped dejectedly in his chair, his whole attitude saying “I’m an underpaid, underfed graduate student—kick me.”

“Let’s start with where everyone was just before the Fall of Augustus,” said Sergeant McEwan, pulling out his ballpoint pen and nodding at Colin.

I swallowed a chuckle. It sounded like this guy was a historian.

Colin, ruffling his blow-dried hair in frustration, described how he’d attached the cables the night before. He’d checked all the fastenings this morning before he sent Nick downstairs. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said, looking directly at McEwan.

“It does if someone put the tape on after your last check,” said McEwan. His sharp gaze moved around the room.

Colin could easily have missed seeing the tape in the dim light of Wigglesworth Hall. We’d all missed it. My mind spun like a clothes dryer. Who would do such a thing? Was it just a sick prank, aimed at the whole museum? Or was it the attempted murder of one individual? That didn’t make sense; the culprit couldn’t know exactly when the cable would fail or who would be underneath at the time. And if you wanted to kill someone, why choose such a haphazard way to do it?

It was certainly the first time I had ever thought of a Roman statue as a weapon of mass destruction.

 “It didn’t happen while I was there,” Colin said, red-faced.

But what if he’d left the area to go to the men’s room or out for a smoke? Or maybe Colin had done it himself. He had a competitive streak. Colin had a double M.A. in European History and Museum Studies—almost the same training as our boss—so maybe he thought he was over-qualified for his current position. But why would he try to bump off his employer in a time of job shortages and looming budget cuts?

McEwan returned to questioning Colin. “Did you take any breaks during your set-up?”

“Well, Susie brought me a cup of coffee and I may have stepped out for a minute,” he said sheepishly.

 Great, I thought. Then it could be anyone. People were in and out of the hallway all day since our building was still used for classes.

McEwan raised one inquisitive eyebrow at Susie. “Miss Blake?”

“I was in and out, checking on things, so I could tell Victor when we were all ready,” she said quickly.

 “Miss Perkins?”

“I was in the lab until Lisa came to fetch me. Our post was on the first floor, at the bottom of the shaft,” said Ellen.

McEwan continued around the table, pinpointing where each of us had been during the morning. Just before he got to me, my stomach rumbled loudly. I looked around, pretending it was someone else, but the sergeant’s smile made it clear he knew who was guilty.

“Ms. Donahue?”

“I was at the elevator entrance on the first floor, with Ellen. I heard Nick and Colin’s voices from up above, but I couldn’t see anyone because the elevator car blocked my view,” I answered. Had I heard Susie’s voice, too? I couldn’t remember. I listened while McEwan asked who had been in the building the night before. Answer: we had all worked late since we were behind schedule on the move.

McEwan turned to Victor. “Dr. Fitzgerald, any chance it could be a former employee who had a grudge against you—or someone else on your staff?”

Victor toyed with his pen, rolling it over and over between his long fingers. “We did have one young fellow last May who was pretty upset when he was fired. What was his name, Susie?”

“Harry. Harold Weinberger. But I haven’t seen him around.”

No one else had either.

Ellen piped up. “What about Steven, that weedy little guy who tried to tamper with the database last semester?”

“I saw him last week,” said Colin. “He was hanging around the Sociology department on the second floor.”

McEwan made a note. “I’ll need the details on both those individuals. Miss Blake, you’re in charge of employee records, right?”

 Susie nodded.

 “Have there been any other incidents I should know about?”

We all looked at each other, but no one said anything.

  “Okay,” said McEwan. “Detective Brady and I will be interviewing each of you this afternoon and collecting fingerprints.” His gaze fastened on a tray of white cotton gloves that we all used when handling artifacts. “I suppose everyone has access to those gloves?”

Several people nodded and McEwan groaned. “The elevator shaft will be closed for at least a couple of days while we investigate. That’s all for now.” He snapped his notebook shut, looking exasperated.

 No wonder, I thought. The Campus Police department was busy enough with robberies and attempted rapes without crazy academics trying to smash up each other with statues.

~ * ~

I drove Ellen to the new Chinese restaurant Susie had recommended for a late lunch. On the way, I extracted a promise from Ellen that she’d visit the Boston University Clinic on the way home.

The Rainbow Garden was a small hole-in-the-wall eatery on Boylston Street. We walked in past two malevolent-looking Fu dogs guarding the entrance to a red and gold dining room. The enticing smell of shrimp, ginger and Chinese spices made me sniff the air like a little terrier. Maybe I had an appetite after all.

We were seated immediately in one of the cozy booths near the window. I loved window seating. Watching people hurry past, I reveled in the more bizarre student fashions. The Boston street scene included the full range of piercings (nose, upper lip, tongue, and ear), blue hair, and weird combinations of layered clothing with the shortest garment on top. Baggy clothes with the crotch at knee level (young male) and midriff-baring, tight outfits with killer platform shoes (young female) provided endless free entertainment.

Today I ignored the scenery and studied my best friend and colleague. Ellen still looked awful: pinched and rumpled, with smudges of fatigue around her eyes.

 “I’ve heard they have fabulous eggplant here,” Ellen began, clearly eager to talk about something besides criminal colleagues and falling plaster.

 “You mean that stir-fried dish of little purple eggplants with tons of garlic? I love that!”

“Here it is,” Ellen showed me. She was going to order just an egg roll, but I bullied her into a selecting the more substantial chicken-and-cashew special. I added soup and a pot of green tea for both of us.

The waiter appeared and took our order, returning with tea and chopsticks. I sipped the hot tea, grateful that my hands were no longer shaking. The fragrant drink was much more soothing than coffee--and we both needed soothing.

The hot-and-sour soup arrived. It was steaming and delicious.

Ellen’s color was beginning to improve. “So how do you think the statue fell?”

“How it fell is pretty obvious. What we really need to worry about is who did it.” I was willing to bet McEwan would not find any fingerprints in the elevator shaft or on the brittle remains of Augustus. “I’d love to believe it was a disgruntled employee we fired last spring or someone from the outside, but it’s much more likely to be a member of the current staff.”

“I hate it when you’re right,” Ellen sighed. She thought a moment. “I know Colin is miffed because Victor wouldn’t recommend him for the job at the Met, but I don’t think he’s crazy enough to pull a stunt like trying to squash his boss with a statue.” She pushed chicken around her plate.

I hadn’t known about Colin’s job search, but it was not really surprising since his current position would expire when the new building opened. Colin, who prided himself on his European degrees and his success with women, certainly had a large enough ego. Did he think he could get away with murder?

“Besides, he can always go back to Paris,” Ellen continued.

I wasn’t so sure about Colin’s job prospects. He was full of great ideas, but lacked follow-through, which was probably why Victor wasn’t writing glowing letters about him.

“Another thing that puzzles me is how the culprit could be sure that anyone would be in position at the right time. What if Victor wasn’t the intended victim?” I took a big bite of spicy eggplant. “Mmmm…it’s fantastic—try some.” We exchanged samples.

“Or the culprit didn’t care who was hurt,” said Ellen. “He or she just wanted to cause maximum damage and slow down our moving operation.”

That was an interesting possibility. Then I remembered Susie’s fixed stare during our staff meeting. “Is everything okay between Victor and Susie? I thought I picked up some strange vibes today.”

Ellen’s reply startled me. “No. The forecast there is stormy. Victor’s had a couple of dates with the new director of the MFA and Susie is ready to unleash thunderbolts—either at Ms. Hawthorne or at Victor, I’m not sure whom.” One of the occupational hazards of having a large Classical collection was a tendency to view events in terms of Greek mythology.

“So that’s it!” I liked Susie in the same way I liked cats; cats always put Number One first. Food and soft, sunny places to sleep and bathe—you never had any question about their priorities. Was Susie ruthless enough to try to murder Victor because he had strayed? As far as we knew, she had marriage in mind. She’d been trying to hook Victor into a commitment for two years or more. No, it was much more likely that she’d try to punish him somehow.

“What about Nick?” I asked Ellen. “Isn’t he bogged down with his thesis?”

“Oh, yeah. I don’t envy the guy having his advisor also be his boss. Nick told me Victor hasn’t approved a single chapter without demanding extensive revisions. If he has his way, Nick will still be a grad student when he’s thirty-five.”

Hmm. Virtual imprisonment by a picky advisor. Life as a perpetual grad student would certainly be motive enough for me to kill someone. Was Nick at that point yet? Or maybe he hated Victor because Victor had Susie, and Nick had a crush on Susie.

 Ellen looked done in, ready to crawl away and hibernate. I tried to distract her by picking up my fortune cookie. We found the usual Chinese fortunes too bland and impersonal, so we liked to make up our own. Now I pretended to read, “You are strong of mind, except around chocolate.”

Ellen responded, “Happiness is a fat cat--to eat.”

  “You will meet a tall, bushy lawyer,” I shot back.

“You are admired for your ability to sleep through meetings.”

 I laughed and looked at my watch.

 “Yikes! McEwan wants to interview me at two. ” I started groping for money in my cavernous shoulder bag.

 Ellen flagged down the waiter and we gathered up our coats.

~ * ~

Days passed with little progress on the part of the police. They found no fingerprints and no clear evidence to tie any one person to the Augustus calamity. Also, McEwan agreed with me that there was no indication that Victor was the intended victim.

Life at the museum wasn’t exactly normal, but the moving schedule was too tight for us not to push ahead. The elevator was out of commission until McEwan removed the police tape two days later, but we kept busy lining up the next victims—plaster casts, that is—in the hallway.

 Ellen and I were supposed to help Susie and Colin move a statue out of storage. One of the signs that Ellen was feeling better was her ability to laugh about men again. We were giggling over the story of one of Ellen’s disastrous dates.

“So did you ever see him again?” I asked, sitting on a bench just inside the Egyptian storeroom to change my loafers for sneakers.

“Are you kidding? After the way that jerk behaved?” replied Ellen, dumping her purse on a nearby table. She didn’t need to change her shoes since she was already wearing Rockports with rubber soles that gripped well.

Susie was next on the scene, carrying a pair of immaculate white tennis shoes that looked like they had never been worn. She sat down and slipped off her delicate and expensive Italian heels. Lucky Susie; she had an inheritance so her clothing budget wasn’t limited by her pathetic museum salary.

“Where’s Colin?” I asked.

“He’s not back from lunch.”

“It figures.” said Ellen. “What are we moving this time?” she asked, bracing herself for action.

“That,” said Susie, pointing to an enormous replica of the Pharaoh Khafre sitting on a flatbed cart. Khafre was the divine ruler who supervised the building of the first pyramids in Egypt. His statue was so big that almost one-third of it stuck out over the edges of the cart.

“Ye gods,” I groaned, shoving my hair behind my ears. “Couldn’t Victor afford the maintenance guys for this one?”

“Not if you want your full exhibit budget,” said Susie, knowing how I would respond. My exhibit on Greek vase technology was supposed to be ready in time for the grand opening of the new building in just five months time.

“Right.” I gave in quickly and walked around the cart to survey just how tricky it was going to be. “Okay, ladies, let’s see if we can get it out of storage.”

We took up positions around the cart, which was an elderly model with squeaky wheels. With some tricky shifting and a lot of panting, we managed to get it out the door. The elevator was down the hall, around two corners.

We approached the first corner. I was walking backwards, facing Ellen and Susie who were pushing forwards.

“Watch out for the…” Susie said, just as there was a sickening crash.

“…restored foot,” Susie finished, gazing in horror at Khafre’s right foot that was now lying on the floor.

We stood there in stunned silence. I looked at Ellen expecting a wry grimace or comically raised eyebrows. Instead, her face was once again as pale as a plaster cast.

 “Well,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Victor can’t fire all three of us. He’d have no one left to move the museum.”

Ellen moaned, “Victor will have a fit. Can you just imagine what he’ll say? I should have been on that corner!”

Susie usually told Victor way more than the rest of us wanted him to know. This time, she surprised us. “Take it easy. Victor doesn’t need to know a thing about it. You can fix it can’t you, Ellen?” She fixed a beady eye on Ellen.

Ellen stared at her. “I think so.”

 “How?”

 “Well, spackling compound and a little black paint, with some white specks to look like granite.”

“Maybe you should go into business,” I said, trying to cheer Ellen up and remove that awful whiteness from her face. “Ellen’s Pseudo-Stone Restoration.”

“Sounds like faux-marbling,” said Susie. “So that’s what they teach at NYU.” Ellen was still too upset to respond to this slur on her old school.

 “Let’s get this baby back to Ellen’s lab,” I said, hoping to head off any more comments from Susie.

After dragging the cart to Conservation, Susie and I left Ellen contemplating her faux-granite project and headed for the Starbuck’s across the street.

~ * ~

We settled ourselves at a corner table overlooking Commonwealth Avenue. Susie slid her bulging drawstring purse under her feet.

 “So, how are things with Victor?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager.

Susie smiled and said nothing, concentrating on stirring three generous spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee. She could afford the extra sweetener; she never put weight on her statuesque figure, unlike me, who only had to look sideways at a piece of chocolate to gain an inch around my waist.

I tried again. “He seems a little preoccupied these days—or maybe that’s just the pressure from the Dean to get everything done on time.

Susie’s large, almond-shaped eyes fixed on mine suddenly and chillingly. “He isn’t the only one operating under pressure. I’ve been overloaded ever since he fired that creep George. And he’s been so busy with wining and dining donors, he’s had precious little time for me.”

But he had had time for the decorative Ms. Hawthorne.

Susie had an uncanny ability to read minds. “He isn’t dating that cow Diana anymore,” she announced with a satisfied smirk. “Not since the accident with the statue. Getting all shook up reminded him how much he needs me.”

Uh-oh. Maybe Susie was less like the god Zeus who hurled thunderbolts and more like his jealous wife Hera, who transformed some of her rivals into animals.

I was still curious how she was going to deal with Victor’s defection.

“You’ve forgiven him?”

“That’s what he thinks. I’m reserving judgment,” Susie said. “I know he needs to schmooze a little with his fellow directors, but he doesn’t have to do it with intimate, candlelit dinners at Angelo’s.”

True. Angelo’s was Susie’s favorite restaurant. Victor should know better than to take another woman, even a colleague, to the same place he took Susie on her birthday.

 Susie thwarted me from learning further juicy tidbits by changing the subject. “Ellen’s still pretty upset by that near-miss in the elevator. I think she may need counseling.”

We reviewed all the therapists we knew about--an easy task, since so many of the museum profession were in some kind of therapy. I told Susie I’d talk to Ellen, but privately I thought Ellen just needed some time and the distraction of engrossing work.

 I looked at my watch. “Time to get back,” I said, shoving back my chair with a screech.

Susie rose quickly and kicked her white purse over, tumbling its contents onto the tiled floor.

 I knelt to help her pick up the pieces. A rabbit’s foot, two Clinique chapsticks, a small solar calculator, cell phone in a pink leather cover, three used tissues, a cosmetic bag…quite a haul, I thought. A torn ticket to “Macbeth,” loose change, a metal nail file…

And a roll of clear packing tape. I looked up at Susie, who was watching me with an inscrutable expression.

 “Packing tape, Susie?”

“I swiped some to repair my cosmetic bag. See?” She turned over the little flowered bag, revealing one torn corner covered with tape. “The stuff’s all over the museum.”

That’s right; anyone on the staff could acquire a piece of packing tape. Feeling a little faint, I sat down again.

Susie smiled. “Meet you at the cash register,” she said, shrugging on her jacket and turning away from me.

 I remembered Susie’s proprietary hand on Victor’s elbow, just before Augustus fell. How her fluffy appearance hid her intensely practical nature, her essential single-mindedness.

 She could have pushed him into the path of a ton of falling plaster or chosen to hang onto him. Either way, I couldn’t prove a thing.

I watched her now as she moved gracefully toward the front of the coffee shop, padding softly in her Gucci shoes with her long skirt swishing.