The Puzzle of Piri Reis (5 page)

Before Edna could reply, Ted strode in, dressed in
gray slacks and a white Polo shirt. "Ah, Tony. Good to
see you" He extended his hand. "I see you've met Edna.
She's invaluable. Neither Father nor I could get along
without her."

I nodded perfunctorily. "I met with Chief Ibbara. I
dropped in to pick up the list of names, and take a
look at your father's den. Then I'll check in at the
hotel."

His eyes widened. He plopped in a red leather
wingback chair at the end of Edna's desk. "You can
stay here if you wish. There's plenty of room"

The last thing I wanted to do was spend a night in
that house. For all I knew, the Frankenstein monster could be hiding behind one of the doors. "No, thanks.
Sometimes the job calls for odd hours. I wouldn't want
to disturb anyone"

"Oh, you wouldn't be disturbing anyone. After Edna
leaves, I'm the only one around"

He just handed me another reason not to stay. Before
I could reply, Edna spoke. "Don't nag Mr. Boudreaux,
Teddy. He knows his job. He knows what he's doing."

I could have kissed her.

Ted shrugged. "Well, whatever. So, now what?"

"The list?"

"Oh, yes" He fished a folded sheet from his pocket
and handed it to me. "Here"

I opened the sheet of paper. "Let's see. Ervin Maddox" I glanced at Ted from under my eyebrows.

"He owns an antique shop down on the River Walk.
Cassandra's Baubles" He nodded to the list. "The next
on the list, Leo Cobb-well, I guess you could call him
an art broker."

Edna glanced at her watch on her right wrist. `By
the way, Teddy, Mr. Cobb called a couple of hours ago.
He wanted to come by and talk to you.'

"Anything important?"

"He didn't say. I told him you were out"

"Did he say what he wanted?"

"No, but I did tell him about the map, and that you
were hiring a private investigator to find it. I hope that
was all right." She looked at me, then hopefully at Ted.

"He'll find out anyway," he replied. "Don't worry
about it, Edna"

She smiled gratefully.

Ted turned to me. "Leo finds artifacts and acts as a
middleman between buyer and seller. He and my father
were once good friends but they had a falling out."

"Oh" I lifted an eyebrow. "About what?"

"Nothing really. Leo insisted the map was as much
his as Father's. They argued about it. Leo swore he
would get the map one way or another."

"Why did he think the map was his?"

Pursing his thin lips, Ted hesitated a moment. "As I
understand it, he found the map. He claimed Father, as
a commission for finding the map, was going to share
ownership with him." He shrugged. "Father, of
course, denied the allegation."

Tucking that little tidbit of information back in
my head, I glanced at the next name. "What about Joe
Hogg?"

"He's a rich used-car salesman."

"An unbearable, disgusting man," Edna said bitterly.

Ted laughed. "As you can see, Edna doesn't think
much of Joe Hogg"

"Okay, and next, Father Bertoldo Poggioreale." I
looked at him in surprise. "Father Bertoldo Poggioreale?"

Ted nodded. "Yes. He's a teacher at L'Universita di
Grazia e la Fratellanza. He is an expert on ancient maps.
In fact, he was a student under the seismologist Reverend William Chanlin, whom the United States Naval
Hydrographic Office took to the Antarctic to learn if there was land under the ice as the Piri Reis Map suggested" He paused and glanced at Edna. "Edna can tell
you that Father Poggioreale tried, on more than one
occasion, to purchase the map from Father."

She nodded. "He did, Mr. Boudreaux. Three times as
I remember. Once he even offered two million dollars."

I whistled. "Why does a teacher need a map like
this? And where did he get the money?"

Ted shook his head. "I have no idea."

I pulled out my note cards on which I jot all my
thoughts and findings. "All right. With you two helping,
let's take each name, and you tell me why you think they
wanted the map"

Fifteen minutes later, we had finished the job. "Now,"
I said, pulling out another card, "in addition to these
four, who else could have benefited from the map?" I
nodded to Ted. "You could, right? You inherited it."

His eyes widened in surprise. "You don't think that
I-"

"No. Not at all," I hastened to assure him. "But are
there any others?"

He thought a moment. "Only one, I guess. My
cousin, Lamia. Lamia Sue Odom. Father took her in
when her parents died about fifteen years ago"

Jotting down her name, I nodded. "I see. Was she
going to inherit anything?" I looked up from my note
cards in time to see a furtive glance pass between Ted
and Edna.

"Yes. Father bought a five hundred thousand dollar
insurance policy with Lamia as a beneficiary."

I whistled softly.

"He bought one for me also"

"For five hundred thousand?"

With casual nonchalance, he replied, "Yes. Plus the
map. "

I glanced at Edna who nodded perfunctorily. Good
thing it was an accident, I told myself. Otherwise, these
two would have dandy motives. "That seems, ah, unusual."

Edna spoke up. "You'd had to have known Mr.
Odom. He was fairly eccentric."

Ted chuckled. "Fairly isn't the right word, Edna.
Fanatical would be better."

She lowered her gaze to her hands folded in her lap.
"I was trying to be nice, Teddy."

Sheepishly, Ted grinned at me. "What she means,
Tony, is that Father was a wealthy man. He was worth
probably two million or so, not counting the map. He
had planned for years to leave the Wingate Museum
of Art fifty percent of his estate, Edna fifteen percent,
and the remaining thirty-five in trust for maintenance
of the estate in perpetuity."

He saw the amazement on my face and quickly explained. "Edna had been with my father for thirty-four
years"

"This was my only job," she put in. "Mr. Odom hired
me right out of high school. I've been here ever since as
his personal secretary." For a moment, I sensed a hint of
wistfulness about her.

My fingers were cramping from the notes I was
scribbling on the cards. With a relieved sigh, I emphatically popped a period at the end of the sentence and
looked up. "What about his niece, Lamia? Does she
live here?"

With a wry twist of his lips, Ted glanced upstairs.
"Here, in the house? Not quite. She has an apartment
in the Elena Towers on the River Walk when she's in
town" When I frowned, he explained. "Lamia is one
of those free spirits who goes wherever the impulse
leads her. She's spent most of her life in Europe. She's
been back this time for about six months."

"This time?"

"Yes. She comes back for a few months each year."

I finished taking my notes and slipped the cards
back in my pocket.

Ted leaned forward. "So, what's next?"

I studied them a moment. "What about his den?"

"Fine, but first, let me give you a tour of the house.
We're quite proud of it."

I started to protest, but spooky as the house was,
there was still an intriguing, ominous charm about it
that pandered to my curiosity.

The first floor included a living and dining area plus
a huge kitchen. The second floor was bedrooms, each
with its own bath, and the third floor held a recreation
room and three small studies. One of the watchtowers
was an observatory; the other, a storage room filled with
file cabinets. Ted laid his hand on the first cabinet. "We have records here going back to my grandfather. Everything having to do with the Odom family. This is
Edna's bailiwick."

"She said she was your father's personal secretary.
Just what all does that include?"

Holding his hands out to his side, he lifted his eyebrows. "You name it. Everything. Bookkeeping, paying
bills, writing letters, researching grants. She always
did a remarkable job, but now even more so since she
learned to use computers"

"Oh?"

Ted's eyes laughed when he saw the puzzled frown
on my face. "Hard to believe, huh? Edna was of the old
school. Real leery about computers, but Dad and I finally talked her into giving them a shot. That was five
or six years ago. And, like they say, the rest is history."
He rapped his knuckles against the dusty cabinet. "Anytime father needed anything, he called on Edna"

I nodded, impressed.

Back downstairs on the southern corner of the mansion, he paused in front of an ornately carved door.
Just inside the door, Ted stepped aside and gestured
to the room. "Here it is. Just like it was when I found
him." Heavy gold crosses, each about three feet long,
I guessed, hung on the interior walls on either side of
the door. The couch and two matching chairs were
heavy and plush with richly woven fabric. Thick pillows of matching fabric trimmed with gold piping lay
on the couch.

An elaborately carved desk sat before a span of
windows overlooking San Madreas and San Antonio.
On either side of the desk stood some sort of Oriental
statues. Could have been Genghis Khan or even Tokyo
Rose for all I knew.

In front of one set of bookcases sat a long table of
heavy timbers, almost black from age with a lion's head
standing out in relief on each panel on either end of the
table. Several books were stacked on top.

The room reminded me of a gloomy old library
straight from a Frankenstein movie. In fact, I might
have been startled but certainly not surprised if the
bookcases had opened up into a secret room.

I frowned and scanned the fairly neat room. Unlike
my own apartment where papers are scattered, books
lie where I tossed them and unwashed dishes fill the
sinks, everything in Odom's den was stacked or filed.
"I thought you searched this room for the map?"

"Oh, yes. After the police had completed their investigation. But I put everything back just as it was. I
even looked under the carpet. Father was a stickler
for neatness. Every scrap of paper, every folder had its
place."

I surveyed the room.

He drew a deep breath. "I'll never forget. It was October second. I'd been out with some friends. I came
in and headed for the kitchen for a nightcap." He hesitated, blinking back the tears suddenly filling his watery
blue eyes. "It was almost eleven. When I passed the den, Father's office, I saw a light under the door. I opened it
to see if Father wanted to join me in a glass of wine.
We often had a nighttime drink together."

I kept my mouth shut and nodded.

"He was lying right over there in front of the couch,
between that end table and the coffee table. The police
decided Father stumbled over the ottoman, struck his
forehead against the end table, and when he bounced
away, hit the back of his head on the coffee table"

I made a wry note to myself that more bouncing went
on there than in a pinball machine. "And so if someone
had taken the map that night, it would have had to be before eleven."

For a moment, Ted didn't reply, his attention focused on the plush red carpet between the end table
and coffee table. He jerked himself back to the present. "What? Oh, yes, yes. Eleven. I stayed in the den
until the police arrived thirty minutes later."

"Did the medical examiner suggest a time of death?"
Ted frowned. I explained. "That might let us know just
how much time the killer had to search"

"Oh" The pasty-faced man nodded. "They put his
time of death around nine." He shrugged. "Something
about body temperature"

That I understood. Upon death, under normal conditions, a body loses around one and a half degrees of
heat per hour. If they measured body temperature at
eleven-thirty or twelve, it would have lost four or five
degrees.

Jotting down my notes, I asked, "Did you see anyone around that night, someone who might have wanted
the map?"

"No. Edna left at seven, her normal time. I saw Father about eight when I returned his Encyclopedia of
Ancient Phoenician Maps just before I went out for the
evening, and like I said, when I came in, I stopped to
see if he wanted something to drink with me. He was
lying on the floor there with the encyclopedia at his
side."

Studying the den, I remarked, "You searched the
room thoroughly."

"After the police left. Yes"

I glanced at the pictures on the walls. "Even behind
the pictures?"

He grinned. "I even took the pictures out of the
frames. I'd heard about papers hidden behind paintings and that sort of thing." He chuckled and nodded
to the framed crossword puzzles on the wall. "I even
worked Father's crossword puzzles to see if they gave
any clues."

Chuckling, I studied the various pictures. There were
a couple of oils by unknown artists, several smaller
frames displaying crossword puzzles, and between two
floor-to-ceiling bookcases two abstract printings sideby-side, each with a single line of what appeared to be
geometric symbols. I nodded to the frames. The symbols looked familiar, but I couldn't place them. "What
are those?"

Print Number One