A face to die for, p.5
A Face to Die For, page 5
“We had perfectly good reasons for doing both,” Eve said quickly. “Which are none of your business.”
“Absolutely,” Riley said. “If no one knew how close you were to your family. But if they did, it looked like you were hiding out. Not that I care.”
“Really?” Eve asked skeptically. “And you’re telling me that’s all you know about why we left Atlanta?”
“I told you, it was distant surveillance. It appears you’re in trouble, but it doesn’t affect what I need from you. Maybe we can help each other.”
“I doubt it.” Eve got two cups down from the cabinet. “And I’m not sure how much you actually know about that period, or if you’re ready to make trouble for us.” She was pouring coffee into the cups. “Blackmail, perhaps?”
“It won’t be blackmail,” Riley said. “Though I’m sure my father would have considered it. He would have thought he’d paid his dues and should get a return. But I won’t play that game.”
“And what about your uncle Dan?” Eve asked as she carried the cups across the room toward her. “He sounded like a man who took advantage of opportunities whenever they presented themselves.”
She nodded. “One has to be careful around Dan, but he is what he is. Most of the time I can trust him. I’m not saying you could.” She took the cup. “Thank you. Does this mean you’re going to listen to me?”
“It means I realize that if I don’t listen to you, you’ll never leave me alone. It doesn’t mean that I appreciate being stalked, or that I’ll believe what you tell me.” She sat down in a chair opposite Riley. “And it means you know a little too much about me, and I have to determine how that’s going to affect how I handle you.” She lifted her cup to her lips. “So start talking, Riley Smith. You might begin with telling me who the hell you’re trying to force me into doing a reconstruction on.”
“Persuade you,” Riley corrected. “Neither my father nor I wanted to force you. It might influence the quality of your work. That would be a disaster.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t want that,” Eve said sarcastically. “Who is this Bronze Age queen you want to persuade me to do the reconstruction on?”
“Her name is Eleni,” Riley said quietly. “And that’s the last thing I want. It would be a disservice to her, and I won’t have that happen. She had enough problems in life; they shouldn’t follow her in death. I won’t allow it.”
Eve’s expression suddenly altered as her gaze searched Riley’s face. “You do care about her as a person. She’s not just a prize exhibit to show off in a museum, is she?”
Riley shook her head. “She’s been a part of my family since before I learned to read as a small child. Other children were told bedtime stories. My mother told me about Eleni. She became my friend. I even dreamed about her.” She smiled faintly. “And that’s why I could understand why my father said that you had to be the one to do the work on her. He told me that every skull you worked on you treated as if they were still alive and you had to bring them home.”
Eve nodded. “But you have to admit it’s not quite the same thing. In what century did your Eleni live?”
“Thirteenth century B.C. or thereabouts. There’s some dispute on it.” Riley grinned. “It’s all how you look at things. People are people.”
“Really? Yet everyone seems to believe she’s so unusual. Particularly your father.”
“And she was,” Riley said. “But don’t the people left behind by those poor victims you deal with believe the same thing? Most people have someone to mourn them.”
“If they’re lucky,” Eve said. “I always pray they do.”
“So do I,” Riley said. “But Eleni had no problem. Though there were others who didn’t feel the same way about her.”
“Jill said her tomb is in Azerbaijan. Did the stories your mother told you about her take place there?”
Riley shook her head. “Not exactly. She was kind of a world traveler, but she ended up in Azerbaijan. And she made enough of an impression that her descendants kept her story alive for all these centuries. Some of the tales became almost mythical as they were passed down through the family.”
“Then why did Dakar think raiding her tomb would be so lucrative?”
Riley hesitated. Then she decided to go for it. “Besides rumors of the treasure buried with her, sometimes a myth can be worth more than the truth. Particularly this one.”
Eve’s gaze narrowed on her face. “Don’t play games. Tell me what the hell you mean.”
Riley shrugged. “She’s always been Eleni to me because that was what my mother called her. It’s Greek for ‘the shining one,’ and some people thought it must have been meant to refer to this queen.” She added, “And because the mummy in that tomb was known for a good portion of her life as Helen of Troy.”
Eve’s jaw dropped. “What! Don’t give me that shit. What are you trying to pull? Everyone knows that Helen of Troy never existed.”
“Do they? Then why do stories about her persist in practically every library on the planet?” Riley asked. “And why did my father spend the last thirty years searching for her?”
“I have no idea, but my respect for him is dwindling by the moment.” She frowned. “And I never heard any tall tales about him searching for Helen of Troy. Though he made several other discoveries that earned him credit over the years.”
“Yes, he did. He valued his reputation, and he was always careful to not try to be compared to Schliemann, who spent years searching for the site of Troy. Schliemann earned a hell of a lot of disrespect from the scientific community until he found Hisarlik. But the search for Helen was the driving force of my father’s career. Whenever he was off on any other projects, he was always on the alert for any other information that might pertain to her.” She smiled wryly. “I believe he married my mother because he was able to convince her that someday they’d discover Helen’s tomb. My mother was also a scholar, and I’m sure that idea excited her more than marriage to him. My father had only one real passion in his life, and it wasn’t my mother. I think I was something of a surprise and inconvenience to both of them, but he was very relieved to have her along on the treks to help take care of me.”
“And how did your mother feel about the situation?”
She shrugged. “I think she liked me better when I was a toddler and didn’t cause as much trouble. I remember her smiling more then, and that was when she started to tell me the Eleni stories. Though she really didn’t know what to do with me. I was a wild child, and she and my father became a little impatient when my lessons didn’t go as well as they thought they should.” She grimaced. “But you’re not really interested in me. You want to know about Eleni.”
“Actually, I don’t,” Eve said coolly. “I’ve told you that I have no intention of becoming involved with this fairy tale you’re spinning me. The only reason I even wanted to hear about it was that you managed to get my friend Jill to come here and speak to me about it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be listening.”
“I know that,” Riley said. “I would much rather have approached you in a different manner, but there wasn’t time. I had to reach you as soon as possible. That’s why I asked Jill to help me.” She held up her hand as Eve started to speak. “But since I’m here and you’ve heard the start of my spiel, would it hurt to learn the rest so that you can tell Jill you’ve totally heard me out?” She smiled coaxingly. “Aren’t you the least bit curious?”
Eve hesitated. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. I’ve always been a sucker for a good story. And if Jill is intrigued, it’s probably a very good story. But I don’t want to encourage you, Riley.”
“I’ve lived with a myth all my life. Don’t you think I’ve grown callous to discouragement?” She added softly, “Give me a shot at convincing you. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important to me.”
Eve shrugged. “Go ahead. Entertain me. You’ve been warned.” She took a sip of her coffee. “By all means, tell me how your mythical Greek queen ended up in a tomb in Azerbaijan.”
“First, I’ll have to go back to the basics. Have you read Homer’s Iliad?”
Eve shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I wasn’t heavy into literature when I was in college, since my sole purpose in going was to become a forensic sculptor and to learn the medical information I’d need to reach that goal.” She smiled. “And later when I tried to get into it, I couldn’t stomach reading a book about gods and goddesses and sea monsters who were the villains. Not when I dealt with the real thing whenever I started working on a skull.”
“I can see that,” Riley said quietly. “Particularly when the reason you became a forensic sculptor was that your little girl had been killed.”
She stiffened. “Jill told you that?”
“No, my father had a complete dossier on you that he gave me to read. You were always part of his long-range plans. I can see how you were turned off by Homer. But I’ll leave you a copy, if I may. Once you get through the bullshit, you’ll recognize that Homer knew human nature very well. Though it’s possible that it’s the fairy tale you called it, Helen’s story has been told and retold over the centuries until no one can tell what was true about her and what was total lies. Most people believe she’s the myth you called her. But you have to start somewhere, and Homer is as good a place as any. I can give you dozens of other things to read, but everyone has their own twist on who she really was.”
“Including you?” Eve asked. “No, thank you. I’ve seen the movies and the TV shows and that’s enough for me. I’m afraid I was disappointed. All the Helens were pretty but not unusual or stunning enough to cause a war. And why were most of them blondes? I kept wanting something…different.”
Riley chuckled. “Lord, you’re tough. I can’t answer for the casting, but I might be able to answer your blond question. The casting directors probably thought they were doing their research. In most literature, Helen is referred to as having fair hair. Homer’s Helen certainly did, and Alcman, a poet from the seventh century B.C., praised the Spartan female athletes with their golden hair and violet eyes. There were both dark- and fair-skinned Greeks and Spartans, of course, but the poets of the day evidently were more inspired by light than dark. Even some Greek vases in museums portrayed women with fair or red hair and with blue eyes. So blame the poets and the artists.”
“Interesting. But I’d rather skip the research and form my own opinions.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll leave the Iliad for you anyway. But you should know that almost everyone agrees that Helen wasn’t Greek. She was a Spartan princess who later became a Spartan queen after she chose her husband from all the suitors who wanted her.”
“She chose? In the Bronze Age?”
“She was a princess, and an heiress, and Spartan women were trained and treated much like their warrior brothers and cousins while growing up. Very strong, very tough. She could probably take any of them down if she chose. That kind of upbringing was different from that of the women of Greece, who were encouraged to love the arts, be meek, and speak only when permitted. Helen was a warrior. She would fight to get her own way.” She shrugged. “According to Homer, she wanted Menelaus. Though she was probably too young to know what she wanted at that time in her life.”
Eve’s eyes narrowed on her face. “You seem very sure of that.”
Riley chuckled. “I’ve studied everything about her background and the problems she must have faced. She’s no myth to me. I’ve lived with her all my life.”
“Imagination?”
“Perhaps. Call it what you like. Imagination. Obsession. These days she’s like an old friend.” She paused. “And I wouldn’t like to have an old friend’s grave robbed or her story used to feed the media. She deserves better than that.”
“If she even existed. You still haven’t convinced me that she did. Or that you’ve managed to find her. Azerbaijan?”
“Sorry. I became distracted. Eleni has a habit of doing that to me,” Riley said. “Over the years my father and I traveled all over this part of the world, trying to find proof that she did live. We visited Greece, Crete, Egypt, and of course Turkey, where the supposed ruins of Troy lie. But during that period when Helen lived, the entire area was being torn apart by earthquakes. City-state after city-state was leveled, and new ones took their place. If the Trojan War did happen, there’s no proof that Helen had a part in it outside the works of Homer and other storytellers.
“My father was getting very discouraged, but he decided to try one other path. He began to gather the ancient stories and tales of the bards in all the countries we visited. Some of them were fascinating, and a good many had references to Helen. Of course, they didn’t all tell the same stories about her. Some said she was a demon temptress; others that she was a beautiful martyr. But a few were worth checking out the locations where they originated. None of those proved interesting.” She smiled. “Until we discovered the works of a young poet, Charon, in northern Turkey near what later became the Azerbaijan border. He described a beautiful, rich woman who had fled the wars of the south and come to live in peace with her lover in the hills of his homeland. The time was exactly right. His description was of a golden-haired woman as fair as the moon. He was obviously besotted with her. He spent no time telling us about her lover, Demetrius. He didn’t exist for him.” She added ruefully, “We had to find out more about Demetrius later when we followed up on the young poet. But thankfully, Charon couldn’t seem to stop writing about the woman. He made her his lifework. He referred to her as Eleni, the shining one. Only now and then would he call her by another name.” She met Eve’s eyes. “It was Helen. She ran away from the life that had almost destroyed her after one of those earthquakes I mentioned. But she took her lover, Demetrius, for company and several chests of treasure with her. She might have been in hiding but she had no intention of living the humble life. I’m sure she thought she deserved the best at that point.”
“You actually found her?” Eve asked.
“We found the story of her last years. We only got hints about where her tomb was located. We spent three years in the small village of Lahar just searching for every scrap of information that poet had written. The story was passed down from generation to generation in his family. First by mouth, later by tablets that they hid in caves in the hills.” Her face lit up with excitement. “After several years searching the property, my father found several references to the tomb on tablets from one of the caves. We actually discussed possible locations. I’ll be able to find it.”
“While you’re being hunted by this tomb raider?” Eve asked sarcastically.
She nodded. “There has to be a way. I’ll find it.”
“Good luck to you,” Eve said. “You tell an interesting story, but I’d advise you to get help before you take a chance like that.”
“I will.” She hesitated. “I realize how dangerous it might be to have you with me, so I want you to know that I won’t try to persuade you if I can’t do it safely. And I’ll make sure that there won’t be a threat to you if you agree to go with me.”
Eve shook her head. “Even if I believed you’d actually found that tomb, it’s too much of a risk. For one thing, the government would probably claim it.”
“They’d have a difficult time doing that. My father bought the property from the descendants of the Charon family, including all rights to any tombs or treasure found on the grounds. He had the documents approved and certified by the head of the Azerbaijan government. He was very specific.”
“That might not help if the local politicians are crooked enough.”
Riley nodded. “Which is why we’d have to remove the tomb from Azerbaijan as soon as we find it and take it somewhere safe.”
Eve gazed at her skeptically. “Where?”
“I’ll find a place. It would have been easier if my father were still alive. He could have appealed to one of the museums he worked with to accept custody until he worked something out.”
“That should have been one of the first things he considered after he thought he’d found it,” Eve said.
“He didn’t have time. It was a dream to him, and then suddenly it wasn’t.” She gestured impatiently. “Now it’s up to me, and I’ll do it. But first I have to find it and make sure it’s the genuine article. That’s why I need you.”
Eve shook her head. “No way. I told you that before you began.”
“Yes, you did.” Riley was nibbling at her lower lip. “And I understand perfectly. But you really do need to come with me so that I can take care of you.”
“Take care of me,” Eve repeated incredulously. “What do you mean?”
“What Jill was trying to tell you. Dakar knows about you from my father’s notebooks. He’s going to try to get his hands on anyone who might be able to give him more information. That’s why I didn’t come with Jill. I’ve been worried that he might have already connected you to my father. I didn’t want to make the situation any worse by showing up here.”
“Yet here you are.”
“I was careful, and I made sure no one was watching your studio.”
“And might have gotten yourself shot.”
“Not by you.” She held up her hand. “I can tell I’m just upsetting you. Look, I’ll leave right now, but think about what I said, and I’ll call you in the morning.” She was heading for the door. “Lock up after me. Okay?” The next moment she’d slammed the door behind her.
Riley drew a deep breath and stood there until she heard the key being turned in the door.
It hadn’t gone well, she thought as she moved away from the door and into the shadows. She hadn’t really expected it to, but she’d had to start the action rolling. It would have been so much better if it had been her father approaching Eve. That might have had a chance, at least.
