46. Emmy

46

Julia fucking Strand.

Once we had a surname, the web of secrecy began to unravel. I left Slater babysitting Carole-Ann Murray, and it turned out she'd bought more than just a rocking chair—there was a whole IKEA warehouse worth of flat-pack furniture sitting in her conservatory, just waiting for a willing sucker to get stuck in. It was a whole different kind of screwing than Slater was used to, but who cared as long as he kept her occupied?

What we didn't yet have was a location.

Miles had taken a break from his dig to run down leads, and honestly, I never realised archaeologists liked to gossip so much. Turned out that if you put fifty grand's worth of funding up for grabs, they practically fell over themselves to dish the dirt. I'd holed up in a conference room in Blackwood's San Francisco office with a triple espresso, a selection of donuts, and a screen full of bearded, middle-aged-to-elderly men who were all talking over each other.

"I always thought there was something hinky about that incident," Clovis Buttermere said. "Someone bought off the investigators."

"Which incident?" Mike "Indiana" Jones asked. "The car accident or Omar Sharawi's disappearance?"

"I was talking about Omar's disappearance, but now that you mention it, the crash was a little unusual."

Unusual. Yes, slightly. The driver of a gas tanker had run a red light and T-boned Julia Strand's Mercedes. The resulting fire had taken the emergency services hours to extinguish, and by then, there was nothing left but charred bones. She'd been identified via the serial number on her hip replacement.

Dusk called the meeting to order. She'd joined the call with Tulsa, and Echo was there too, albeit as an avatar of a rabbit wearing a top hat. Dan, Ryder, and I were representing Blackwood while Knox packed bags and put gas in the rental car.

"Thank you, everyone, for dialling in. First question, does anyone know anything about Julia Strand's family?"

"Oh, yes," Clovis said. "A great-great-great-grandfather on her mother's side was Stan Cantley. He made a fortune during the gold rush, which his son Bryson consolidated when he invested in silver mines across the country. And one of his sons, Jim, opened the first?—"

Good grief. "Can we focus on living family for the moment?"

"Right. Of course. No, I'm not aware of any living family."

But at least it explained where Julia Strand had got her money from. There wasn't much to be found online, not about her personal life anyway. Her existence had been reduced to a bunch of academic papers, some vague mumblings about the disappearance of her expedition partner near Taposiris Magna in Lower Egypt—the whole Upper/Lower thing had always confused me because on the map, Upper Egypt was at the bottom—and a bunch of sensationalised articles on her death. Oh, and there were several videos of her funeral pyre on YouTube, accompanied by thoughtful commentary like, "Man, it just went boom!"

Dusk took over. "Next question… We believe a man she treated as a son inherited her estate. Do any of you recognise him?"

A picture of Anton Hebert popped up on-screen, the best likeness Romeo Serafini had been able to find from his employee file. He stared straight ahead, unsmiling.

Five men shook their heads, but one scrunched his mouth to the side. Norman Allenby, a professor from Brown University.

"I think that maybe I met him once? It would have been years ago, when Julia and I were both on staff at the University of Minnesota. For the most part, Julia was a very private person, but one year, she agreed to hold the departmental cookout at her home. I think that fellow was there. I remember because he was the only person whose name I didn't know."

"She didn't introduce him?"

"No, I don't believe she did. He couldn't have been older than sixteen, and I assumed she'd brought him in to help with the food, but we did chat for a while. A remarkably articulate young man with a deep affection for all things Ancient Egyptian. That was probably why Julia took him under her wing. Can I ask why you're trying to find him?"

"His affection for Ancient Egypt is so deep that he believes he's Mark Antony," I told Norman. "Which in itself wouldn't be too much of a problem, but last Saturday, he abducted a woman who he believes is the reincarnation of Cleopatra from her hotel room and disappeared." Gasps all around. "Clues are thin on the ground. We're trying to track down any property that Julia Strand might have owned. She sold the place in Elk River, and Luna's not at the house in Berkeley. It's possible our suspect might have bought a new property with whatever money he received, but as you said, Norman, he has a thing for the past."

He would have hung on to whatever reminded him of the mother figure he'd lost.

"She had a villa in Alexandria," Norman said. "Quite a nice one, actually."

"Are we talking Alexandria, Minnesota, or Alexandria, Egypt?"

"Alexandria, Egypt."

"No, no, no," another guy said. His screen name was "Moises the Great," and he was one of Miles's new hires, brought in to help after the Ay-and-Ramesses debacle at al-Nahas. "She gave the villa to Omar's family."

"Blood money," Clovis Buttermere muttered.

Allenby took offence. "You don't know that."

"Why would she give them a house unless she knew he wasn't coming back? Why leave Egypt, for that matter? She spent her whole life trying to find Cleopatra's tomb, and suddenly she just quit? That makes no sense unless something tragic happened. I heard she was involved with Omar. You know, involved."

"Julia didn't do romance. She was married to her work."

"I always thought she was a lesbian," Mike Jones put in. "Sig Sch?fer made a pass at her once—you know, suave Sig?—and she turned him down flat."

"That doesn't necessarily mean she was a lesbian," Miles told him. "Sig Sch?fer is a womaniser, plus he's always looking for funding."

"Omar's brother drives a good car now," Moises added. "A top-of-the-line BMW, very expensive."

On-screen, Dan rolled her eyes at me. I noted Ryder was muted, and I was fairly sure he hadn't done that himself.

I clapped my hands together. "Guys, can we stay on topic? It's unlikely the suspect managed to load our missing woman onto a plane, so let's stick with the US, okay?"

"She had a place in New York," Mike Jones suggested.

"I think she sold it," Herman Dekker said. "When we met at the Who Were the Ptolemies? exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum four or five years ago, we were both staying at the Marriott."

"The Marriott?" Allenby looked puzzled. "I thought she was more of a Ritz-Carlton sort of woman."

"Don't forget she spent most of her money trying to be the next Howard Carter."

"Well, her estate still had enough left over to spend on an adult-size copy of the Tiye coffin found in Tutankhamun's tomb," Jones said. "Although realistically, she could probably have made do with one the size of the original after they scooped up what was left of her."

Allenby didn't look amused. "There's no need to be so crude."

"I'm just saying."

"Did you go to her funeral?" Dan asked Jones.

"I got an invite and I was in the area, so I figured I should pay my respects. The pallbearers nearly buckled under the weight. Say, can you put that picture up again? The suspect?" It appeared on the screen. "Maybe I did see him there, but he didn't talk to anyone."

"Where was the funeral held?"

"Utah."

Utah? That was right next door to Nevada. My heart skipped, one of those delicious flutters that told me we were fucking close.

"Can you narrow that down a bit?"

"Beaver County. Her whole family is buried there. Guess they bought up a plot when land was cheap."

Beaver County. That had to be it. If her family seat was there, it would be the last property she sold. It had sentimental value. Black and I owned plenty of properties, but the only one he had any attachment to was Riverley, even though it was ugly as fuck. It had been in his family for generations, and I wanted to say it would stay for many more, but the idea of kids totally freaked me out, and at the moment, things weren't looking hopeful for his nephew either. His niece was the strongest contender for an heir right now.

I didn't have to ask to know that Echo was searching for any sign of Julia Strand in Beaver County. Or Omnia, or Amor. But if the pattern continued, whatever property she owned would be held by a third shell company. Caro was wading through murky finances and leaked databases and whatever else she could find, but I knew from experience how easy it was to hide money if you had enough of it. Julia Strand might have fallen on relatively hard times, but old habits died hard, and if the corporate structures were in place, it would be easy to keep using them.

"Nothing yet," Echo said. "Property records for Beaver County are only available in person from the recorder's office. They're not online."

Fucking marvellous.

"What time does it close?"

"Five p.m."

The nearest Blackwood offices were in Vegas and Salt Lake City, but either way, it was a three-hour drive.

"How fast can you get somebody there?"

"Storm took the helicopter, uh, somewhere, and it'll take her forty minutes to get back. So a couple of hours at least."

It would be too late. I'd have to call the recorder's office and beg someone to stay after hours, and then we'd have to trawl through records that may or may not be computerised, looking for a needle in a haystack.

"Did Julia ever mention a company name to anyone? We believe she had at least three, and we only know two of them so far. Omnia Inc. and Amor Inc., so it's possible we're looking for something Latin."

"Vincit Inc.," six archaeologists shouted back at me. Huh.

"Amor vincit omnia," Miles explained. "Love conquers all. The words of the Roman poet Virgil."

Hmm. Seemed there had been a scrap of romance in Julia Strand after all.