The Unspoken

“Oh, oh, oh!” she said at last. “Oh! You’re here about the professor or the Egyptologist or the…whatever he was who died so tragically!” She pushed a button on the single piece of office equipment before her. “Mr. Landry, the FBI is here to see you.”

They heard an impatient reply. “The FBI? Whatever for?”

Kat leaned over the desk. “Agents Katya Sokolov and Will Chan, Mr. Landry. We’d like to speak with you. We’re hoping you can help us.”

There was a moment of dead silence, and then Landry said, “Of course. Come on in. Ms. Bertelli will escort you.”

Sherry Bertelli rose quickly. “This way, please.”

It was hard to tell where glass walls and doors met. They went down a long hallway. Eventually Sherry Bertelli pushed on a glass panel, and they were ushered into another state-of-the-art ultramodern office where Landry was standing behind a black chrome desk.

“How do you do, how do you do?” he asked, stepping around to shake their hands. “I’m Stewart Landry. Have a seat, please, have a seat. Would you like coffee or anything?”

“No, no, thank you, we’re fine,” Kat assured him. Will held one of the chairs for her, then took his own. Stewart Landry sat back at his desk. Sherry Bertelli just stood there.

“That’s all, Sherry, thank you,” Landry said.

Without a word she turned and marched out of the office. Landry cleared his throat. “Sherry’s, uh, very popular with our clientele,” he said, as if excusing his receptionist’s undeniable limitations.

Landry was somewhere between fifty and sixty years old. His suit was designer label, his nails were clean and buffed and his silver hair was well groomed. Kat had to wonder if there wasn’t something more intimate going on between him and Sherry than the typical employee-boss relationship.

“Now, how can I help you?” Landry asked.

“Frankly,” Will said, “we’re trying to find out if you’d considered diving the site of the Jerry McGuen. We understand that a group called the Egyptian Sand Diggers was encouraging local interest and, as I’m sure you’ve read or seen on the news, a diver died at the site.”

Landry frowned. “Yes, I saw the news, and I knew Brady Laurie. He was quite angry at that reception and behaved rather badly. He wasn’t a member of the group, made very clear that kind of thing was beneath a true historian such as himself. He argued with the members that he was already on the case, and that he and his colleagues needed to find the treasure, not any of us ‘money-grubbing bastards.’ Don’t get me wrong—the death of any young person is lamentable. But Dr. Laurie was out of line. The Egyptian Sand Diggers invited us all to that soiree, and I think it was because they didn’t believe Laurie was right in his calculations. He was, of course. That’s obvious now.”

“Did you plan to dive the site at all?” Kat asked, returning to the original question.

He shrugged. “Honestly? It was an intriguing thought. But as to planning any operation—no. Our big ship is out in Lake Huron working on a ferry that went down. We have some smaller vessels working more shallow waters, but as to the Jerry McGuen… If Laurie hadn’t found her, we might’ve made an attempt to see what our sonar could identify in the area. Thing is, no one really knew exactly where she went down, other than that she was supposedly near Chicago. You might not realize it, but the lake is huge. Searching it is almost like searching the North Atlantic. When you’re just looking at the lake, it seems to stretch out forever. And when you’re boating on it alone, you can feel as if you’re the last man on earth.”

“But the treasure in the Jerry McGuen is of inestimable worth,” Will commented.

Landry nodded. He smiled suddenly. “But searching for that kind of treasure—needle in a haystack. I can tell you that Brady Laurie was obsessed with it. I wasn’t shocked when I heard about his death. He was threatened by all of us—no, no, that came out wrong. No one ever threatened him, but…check with the Egyptian Sand Diggers. They were pointing out the historic value of the find, which we already knew, and he got furious. Their president is a fellow named Dirk Manning, and what they call their ‘guardian’—an old fellow who’s been involved in it since he was twenty-one—is a man named Austin Miller. Talk to one of them about Brady Laurie. In my opinion, he had no real interest in joining the group, but he probably spoke to those gentlemen more than anyone else. Me? I believe Laurie was so obsessed with the ship that he signed his own death warrant.”

Will stood up and shook hands with Landry. Kat stood, too. “If there’s anything I can do, please let me know,” Landry said.

“Thank you.” Kat smiled—then remembered Will’s earlier remark about her niceness.

“I’ll have Ms. Bertelli show you out,” Landry offered.

“We can find our way,” Will told him, “but thanks.”

When they passed Sherry Bertelli, she was sitting behind her desk, flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine. She looked up long enough to smile vaguely at them and wave. “Ta-ta!”

“Yep, ta-ta,” Kat responded.

She didn’t realize Will was laughing until they were in the car again. “Ta-ta?”

“I simply returned the courtesy,” she said primly.

“I get the feeling they didn’t hire her for her math skills.”

Kat shook her head and turned to him. “This is just about impossible,” she said. “No one, not even the first responders, really knows if anyone else was near the site when Brady died—or was killed. It sounds like he could be extremely hostile about anything concerning the Jerry McGuen. He did dive alone—and went down almost a hundred feet in cold water. This wasn’t a pleasure dive to a warm-water reef.”

Will glanced at her, then looked at the road again. “But you saw his body.”

“Yes. I saw his body. And seeing his body made me believe this is worth investigating. But what we saw doesn’t guarantee that Brady Laurie was murdered. There are other explanations for the bruises. It’s possible that he might have gotten into an altercation with someone. He was furious with the Egyptian Sand Diggers and apparently everyone knew it.”

“So you think one of the Sand Diggers was out on a boat, slipped into the water while pretending to fish and killed Laurie?” Will asked. “Why? The Sand Diggers supposedly wanted someone to find the treasure.”

“I don’t know,” Kat said. “We’ll have to ask them. Logan should be getting back to me with some information pretty soon. We can check them out tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow morning we dive the site.”

Kat turned to him. “You sound excited about it.”

“I am. A shipwreck like the Jerry McGuen? Come on, you have to be somewhat excited!”

“Thrilled to pieces,” she muttered. Maybe one day, she’d tell him about the experiences she’d already enjoyed because of Amun Mopat!

“You don’t believe in a curse, do you?” he asked, grinning.

“No. I do, however, believe that people can go a little crazy because of them.”

“I agree,” he said. “I spent a lot of time in the Caribbean. Islanders can be very superstitious. I’ve seen men who felt convinced they were possessed, and women who managed incredible feats of contortion in a ceremonial dance. The mind is a powerful influence on the body.”

Kat nodded.

“You think someone would sabotage the mission to keep Amun Mopat from being brought back to the surface?” he asked. “That’s an idea.”

“Crazy people can latch onto anything, but…at this point, I don’t know what I think or feel,” Kat told him. “Except that it’s been a really, really long day!”

“And it’ll be an early morning,” he said.

She was glad he’d said that; his stamina seemed to be on a par with the Energizer Bunny’s. She hoped he was taking her back to her hotel. “I’m at a place called the Edwardian off Michigan Avenue.”

“Yep.”

“You know that, of course,” she said.

“Of course.”

He didn’t just drop her off; he brought the car in front to the valet. She sighed as she saw him get out and walk around to her. “You’re staying here, too.”

“Government dollar.” He shrugged. “We go where they get their deals,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby at eight.”

“We’re diving at 8:00 a.m.?”