Chapter 7

Chapter 7



         Monday morning dawned cold and clear. Jordan stepped out of her vehicle with a heavy heart. Today she had to rebuild her office. She tried not to dwell on the events on Saturday night. Finding that man in her room going through her underwear, tussling on her bedroom floor, and then having him pull a gun on her. Why didn’t she just call the police? She was certain to her very bones Jared Sullivan broke into her office on Friday. Her face flushed at the angry memories of their encounter. She sighed heavily and walked up to her office. Gary was standing outside.
         “I was waiting for you Dr. C.” He looked at her with concern, his brown eyes going soft. Gary thought she looked as if her best friend just died. He believed it was probably very hard for her to face the devastation awaiting them. He opened the door and gently ushered her in.
         Hot tears prickled behind her eyes as Jordan surveyed the damage. It looked even worse today than it did on Saturday. She turned to help Gary bring in garbage bags.
         “Did the insurance company get any pictures?” She distractedly asked as they began to pick up large pieces of broken pottery. Jordan remembered getting the 300 year old bowl on a dig in Greece. She dumped it into a large garbage can. Gary looked at her in surprise.
         He cleared his throat. “Doc, I just dropped the pictures off at the post office this morning. They won’t receive them until the end of the week. Ummm, do you want me to do this for you?” He indicated the broken pottery shards and other debris littering the floor. Jordan shook her head in denial and kept picking up her collectibles. By five that evening, the office looked almost new, but had big pieces missing from the wall, as if someone was moving instead of cleaning. Jordan couldn’t stay and look at her office after Gary left, so she made her way down to her car and headed home.
         She needed something to occupy her mind, to take it off the state of her office. As she made dinner, her mind drifted back to snatches of the journal that Dr. Wyatt sent her last week. After examining the book for hours, Jordan had opened it to the first page. Written in a thin, spidery handwriting was the name Paul A. Matthews. Matthews spent his life dreaming of far away places, and wondrous treasures. As a young man, he attended Eaton and later Oxford University in his native England. Considered bright by his instructors, he also exhibited a fanatical lust for anything gold. Throughout his career, he became known as an antiquities thief, stealing what he couldn’t buy.
         Settling down in her office with a plate of sausage and yellow rice, Jordan pulled a sheaf of papers from her briefcase. She read slowly through the first page’s contents.
         “From the journal of Paul Andrew Matthews. January 12, 1797. “’I think I’ve found something. I have been looking for that gorgeous Lady for over ten years now. I had almost given up hope. It was rumored all references to her was lost with The Great Library at Alexandria. But that is not true. A minor general with Alexander’s army wrote about it in his memoirs. He says that the Lady brings great fortune to whoever possesses her. He says that Alexander will not part with her, and takes her on all his travels. When you look at her, the eyes seem to glow. She has diamonds for eyes. Her body seems to glow with some sort of light. Alexander’s advisors warn him to part with her. They probably want her for themselves. She beckons to me. She wants me to find her. I think I’ve found another reference to her in another journal. I am going to Macedonia to find it. I will close for now; someone is at the door.’”
         A shiver ran through Jordan’s body. He sounded crazy. She picked at her food listlessly as ideas ran through her mind. She wondered where in Macedonia Matthews headed to. There hadn’t been any mention of his ultimate destination in the next few entries she perused. Well, there was a lot of entries to get through. Maybe Dr. Wyatt could point her in the right direction. Jordan made up her mind to call him in the morning. The phone on her desk rang.
         Jordan frowned at it as she reached for the receiver. “Good evening, this is Dr. Carmichael.”
         A slight hesitation came through the line. A throat cleared. “Dr. Carmichael, sorry to bother you this late. My name is Detective Mitchell Tarabian.” Jordan groaned at the mention of another detective’s name.
         “Detective, I thought Detective Abrams was working my office break-in.”
         “Ma’am, I don’t know any Detective Abrams. I’m calling from the New Haven Police Department.
         A ripple of fear trilled down Jordan’s spine. New Haven was in Connecticut. The only person she knew there was Dr. Wyatt.
         “I’m sorry to have to tell you this Ms. Carmichael, but a colleague of yours, Dr. Anthony Wyatt, is dead. He was found on Saturday night by a neighbor. It appears he was killed sometime between Thursday night and Friday afternoon. You were the last person he had contact with before his death. We would like to ask you a few questions.”
         Jordan couldn’t speak for a moment. After prompting by Detective Tarabian, she answered him. “Ummm, yeah, we can meet. Do you want me to ummm, come to New Haven?” She mentally made plans and shifted a few things in her mind.
         “No, ma’am.” The detective’s smooth voice came through the line. “My partner and I will come to you. It really doesn’t make much sense for you to travel all the way up here. Now, did you say your office was broken into?”
         Jordan swallowed hard, her grief threatening to choke her. She cleared her throat. “Yes. Some time Friday night my office was ransacked. I spoke to Anthony, er, Dr. Wyatt, Friday morning.” She couldn’t believe it had only been three days since she talked to him.
         The detective’s smooth voice came in again. “Well, Ms. Carmichael, that answers one of our questions. We knew someone used the phone at his home to call you.”
         “Are you sure he was murdered? I mean, he was an old man. He was in his seventies when he was my professor. And I got that Ph.D over 10 years ago.” Jordan remembered the tall, distinguished looking older man with a shock of white hair he kept in a sort of Don King style. He always had on a rumpled tweed suit, no matter what the season. The typical absentminded professor. She began to cry silently as she remembered his twinkling grey eyes, and the dimple in his ever smiling face.