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thinking back to that trip down to Raven’s Croft to tell her what had happened. The way she said, “He wouldn’t!”
    Diantha’s disclosure was very much on my mind the next morning when I found a message on my voice mail to the effect thatLieutenant Tracy wanted to drop by. I left word that I would be in, all the while worrying even though I knew what it was he wanted to talk about.
    I was restive, anyway, the result in part of an e-mail from Worried regarding the coins Heinrich von Grümh donated to the museum. Worried, some may remember, is the anonymous tipster who works in the Genetics Lab and who has proved helpful if not instrumental in resolving some decidedly tangled mysteries in the museum. He wrote:
    Dear Mr. de Ratour:
    I see you’re back in the news with this Grum [sic] guy murder. And I don’t know if what I’ve got to tell you has anything to do with the case. But the scuttlebutt going around the Labs is that the coins he gave the museum are fakes. The way I heard it is that the guy with the long name in charge of the Greek stuff brought some samples down to Robin Sylphan who runs the electron microscope which gets you in as close as you can get. It’s all very hush hush for some reason. You might want to check with Robin. I mean she’s a dike but she’s nice. I thought you’d want to know this because maybe it had something to do with the murder. It probably don’t mean squat, but you never know.
    Worried
    Professionally, of course, I am concerned by even the remote possibility that the coins are forgeries. There are so many good fakes out there that it has become the bane of the collector’s profession. And that, ultimately is what people in my position do: We collect rare and beautiful things; we study and classify them; we curate and exhibit them. Quite aside from the aestheticbliss such objects afford, their beauty, utility, and timelessness give meaning to our past, indeed, to our very existence. At another level, any forgery undermines the appreciation of what is genuine and unique, of things that, in their essence, cannot be duplicated. Which is not an insignificant consideration as the world lapses ever deeper into a coma of virtuality.
    Truth be told, I don’t entirely trust Feidhlimidh de Buitliér, Curator of the Greco-Roman Collection. A few months back he proposed that I appoint him assistant director of the museum, intimating that he could be useful in that position in our ongoing efforts to remain independent of the university. When I asked him how he might be useful, he evinced an evasiveness that had an undercurrent of insolence. It wouldn’t surprise me to find him in league with the ever-looming Mr. Morin.
    But then, possible forgeries seemed the least of my concerns as the lieutenant took his accustomed seat in front of my desk. Though we remained cordial enough in our greetings, I remarked an edge of wary reserve as he told me he wanted to bring me up to date on the murder and that he had questions about Heinie von Grümh’s relations with the museum. Doreen, who is very happily married to and now hugely pregnant by the divinity student who came by as a grief counselor in the wake of the Ossmann-Woodley murders, brought us coffee and closed the door.
    I took some solace from the thought that the officer’s attitude toward me undoubtedly sprang from a weariness with investigating murders at the museum. He began with a sardonic jest, wondering if we shouldn’t call it the Museum of Murder. I countered that we could certainly consider starting a collection or perhaps mounting a special exhibition that would draw from other museums and from the grisly detritus of homicide kept in police departments all over the world. Certainly, I said, warming to my rejoinder, murder and man, both as a gender designationand in the larger sense of
Homo sapiens sapiens
, go together like cakes and ale. But I did wonder to myself why the MOM attracts these acts of ultimate violence.
    I reminded