Free Sunken Pyramid (Rogue Angel) by Alex Archer

well-heeled. I have nothing to sell this time. Like you, I am just buying.” Aeschelman leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “There was to be one more buyer.”
    Garin knew the number of buyers would be low this venture; the fewer people involved, the less chance their illicit business would draw attention. In larger cities, especially in Europe and in Japan, a few dozen serious collectors would be invited, and the bidding wars could be fierce. Garin had attended several of the “meetings” and had purchased small, expensive things to ingratiate himself with the market and the people who ran it. Nothing he particularly wanted, but it was all a means to get him in deeper and thereby eventually get what he was really after, which according to Aeschelman would be within his grasp tomorrow.
    “One of the archaeologists who died?”
    Aeschelman didn’t answer.
    Garin waited a moment, then asked, “Where will this take place? The auction?”
    Aeschelman lowered his voice. With the traffic sounds and the jackhammer and a radio one of the picnickers had turned on, Garin could scarcely hear him. He leaned closer. “In a large hotel suite, Governor’s Club level, during the banquet. Not everyone at the conference attends those things, meal functions—expensive and dull and only three choices of entrées.”
    “Enough people there, enough people absent,” Garin observed. “So none of those actually attending the conference will be missed either way.”
    “Precisely.”
    “You said there was to be one other,” Garin pressed. “What about—” He raised an eyebrow, always curious, leaving his question hanging. He wanted to know which one of the fallen attendees had been involved in—and now removed from—the competition.
    “A mistake, Mrs. Elyse Hapgood,” Aeschelman returned. “She made a mistake.”
    “The woman from this morning?” Garin watched the tour guide lead the teenagers up the capitol steps. She was still pointing to this and that, still lecturing. Thunder rumbled again. “Who took—”
    “I took care of her.”
    “Poison? Did you use poison?”
    “It’s only detectable in autopsies, tissue samples, and only in the best labs if it is done quickly. Never shows up in the blood. It degrades fast, and so it will be gone by the time the Madison coroner makes the first cut. Usually they chalk it up to a heart attack or stroke.”
    “So she’s dead, this Mrs. Hapgood.”
    “Not yet. Two more hours at best, I should think.” Aeschelman flexed his fingers. “That’s the beauty of it. The stuff draws the death out long enough—”
    “—so that the poison is gone by the time it is over.”
    “Yes,” Aeschelman said. “There is nothing for the coroner to find. I’ve used it a few times before. I use any means, Mr. Knight, to get what I want.”
    “And you poisoned her...why?” Garin rested the back of his neck against the top rung of the bench. Aeschelman was dangerous in daring to admit this to him. Garin nearly asked why he would do such an imprudent thing and draw the attention of Annja Creed. “Why eliminate Mrs. Hapgood’s pocketbook?”
    “Pity I had to do it. She had provided many items for our auctions in the past. I purchased one of her Babylonian demon jars a year ago. She provided us another demon jar this weekend. Intact. She was more of a provider than a buyer. She knew how to acquire things and give us leads for rare pieces.”
    “Then why—” Garin persisted. He wouldn’t ask again, not wanting to provoke Aeschelman. Yet he had the sense that the man wanted to talk about it.
    “In the end, I felt we had more to lose by keeping her. I wanted to be rid of her, that’s all. I just wanted to be rid of her.” Aeschelman stood and rubbed his hands on the sides of his pants, retrieved his name tag and looked toward the hotel. Then he squinted up at the darkening sky. “I wanted to be rid of her because she was talking. Talking. Talking. Talking. I was the one who invited her