Free The Hours of the Virgin by Loren D. Estleman Page A

asked him if Harold Boyette had been in lately. As noses go it was a keeper, as big around as bratwurst and shot through with red and blue veins. It belonged behind a zipper.
    â€œBoyette? I think that’s in another wing.”
    â€œHe’s a man, not an exhibit. I met him here day before yesterday.”
    â€œI just watch the paintings. You better talk to Mr. Ruddy, he runs things. He’s in the gift shop this time of day.”
    â€œWhat’s he look like?”
    â€œYou won’t miss him. He won’t be no more than an arm’s length from the cash drawer.”
    The gift shop was doing better business than the rest of the establishment; there are people who shop those places weekly who have never gone to see the exhibits. A mixed-race couple couldn’t decide whether the poster from the Empire Period tour or the photographic mural of the British Crown Jewels would go better with the Care Bears wallpaper in the nursery, and a gang of kids in eight-ball jackets were trying to imitate the facial expressions of the souls in torment in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights on a set of coffee mugs. The cashier, a busy young thing just tall enough to reach the keys, rang up a purchase directly under the thin pale nose of Mr. Ruddy.
    I figured the name on the tag pinned to the lapel of his navy blazer was a celestial joke. He was six-two and looked taller because you can only get a hundred and thirty pounds to go so far, and he appeared to be completely bald at first glance. On closer inspection, his fine smoothed-back hair was the same bled-out color as his scalp and face. He hadn’t much face, but he had a lot of angular chin and a broad forehead the shape and color of a plastic bleach bottle. At the moment I spotted him, he turned away from the register and the fluorescent light seemed to shine right through his skin and clothes, showing the shadowy outlines of the bones beneath. He was a walking Visible Man.
    â€œMr. Ruddy?”
    A frosty blue eye fixed and card-catalogued me from his inch and a quarter of superior height. “Yes?”
    I showed him the ID. “I’m handling a little matter for Harold Boyette. Is he around?”
    He reached up and adjusted his name tag with a finger. It wasn’t crooked. “Mr. Boyette is no longer associated with this institution.”
    â€œHe quit? When?”
    â€œThis institution doesn’t discuss matters of personnel with the outside.”
    â€œThat means he got canned.”
    â€œI repeat—”
    â€œI heard. Thing is, Boyette seems to have dropped out of sight. From here I go to Thirteen hundred, that’s Detroit police headquarters, and file a missing persons complaint. There’s extortion involved and maybe kidnapping. You won’t mind cops coming around asking questions, strictly on the whisper. Open cases are public record, but unless it’s a slow news day I wouldn’t worry too much about the press. This has Section B written all over it.”
    â€œPlease join me in the stock room.”
    I considered it a breakthrough; he’d stopped referring to himself as “this institution.”
    The room was smaller than the one where I’d spoken with Boyette, considerably neater, and a whole lot less interesting. Shrink-wrapped picture books were stacked horizontally on built-in shelves and there were boxes marked FRAGILE on the floor and packing material and a postage meter on a worktable. Ruddy drew the door shut and stood with his back to it, in case I tried to make a run for the cophouse.
    â€œIf you’re working for Mr. Boyette’s attorney, I advise you to inform him that legal action is unwise. We allowed him to resign without prejudice rather than take the matter to the police. I’m afraid there is no smoking allowed,” he added.
    I lit up anyway. Smoke kills viruses and clears muddled thinking. “What’d he do, fondle the Venus de Milo?”
    This time