“We have the paperwork to prove otherwise, Mr. Ho-Tep. Now stop this nonsense and put down that gasoline!”
To solidify his threat, Ramen Ho-Tep unscrewed the fuel cap. Fumes wafted up, and the guards backed away.
“I’ve got this,” Robin said to me and pushed forward. “Excuse me, excuse me!”
The mummy turned toward her. Behind the bandages on his face, his chapped lips twitched in what might have been a surprised smile.
In that moment of hesitation, Steffords yelled to the guards, “Now! Jump him!”
But Robin threw herself between them and Ramen Ho-Tep. “You’ll do no such thing! This man is my client!”
Steffords looked at her. “And who the hell are you?”
“Robin Deyer, Esquire, of Chambeaux and Deyer.”
I reached into my jacket pocket, withdrew a business card, and handed it to the curator.
“I shan’t go back on display,” the mummy said. “I’d sooner burn myself and let my ashes join the river of time.”
“He’s been going on like that for an hour,” one of the guards said to me out of the side of his mouth.
“We can resolve this, Mr. Ho-Tep,” Robin said. “Think about the loss to history. Please give me a chance.”
“I’ve waited quite long enough, thank you. I shall no longer endure being a prisoner. I was Pharaoh of all Egypt, and I deserve to be treated with respect!”
“Ask him if he had a girlfriend or something,” the curator said. “Maybe we can dig her up and add her to our museum display if he wants companionship.”
“I wish to be a free man!”
“And I want to be the King of England,” Steffords quipped, imitating the mummy’s British accent. “But that isn’t likely to happen, is it?”
“Bloody hell, don’t you disrespect me, you insignificant grave robber!” Ramen Ho-Tep sloshed the gas can, and a few drops spilled onto his brown gauze bandages. Clutched in his left hand was a disposable butane lighter, but I saw, like everyone else did, that he was holding it upside down. The ancient mummy had no idea how to use a lighter.
Robin said in a plaintive voice, “Mr. Ho-Tep, you’re only hurting our case. We have to make our appeal according to the law. The law is the safety net that holds society together. This is not a solution. If you strike that lighter, no one wins: You lose everything, the world loses your priceless knowledge, and I lose a friend.”
The mummy’s hand wavered.
“I’m going to set up mediation so both parties can discuss this matter as adults.” Robin glared at the curator. “Mr. Steffords, I suggest that you and your legal counsel attend. After airing grievances, we’ll see if we can’t reach some kind of compromise. We all want this to work.”
“The bugger’s going to have to make some damned hefty concessions,” the mummy said.
“And I’m tired of this melodrama,” said Steffords. “Our artifacts are supposed to be on display, not on stage. This is a respectable museum, not vaudeville.”
I relieved the mummy of his gas can, capping it gingerly.
“How about ten A.M. Tuesday?” Robin suggested.
The curator fidgeted. “I’ll have my secretary check my schedule.”
“Clear your schedule,” I said. “Ten o’clock. Tuesday.”
Robin looked at Ramen Ho-Tep. “Are you busy at that time, Mr. Ho-Tep?”
“My calendar’s been open for thousands of years.”
“We look forward to seeing you, then.” She slipped her arm through mine, and we walked out of the south wing and made our way to the museum entrance.
And yes, Robin did insist that we pay admission before we left.
Chapter 25
As we drove away from the museum, pleased at having averted a tragedy, Robin suggested we make a surprise visit to Jekyll Lifestyle Products and Necroceuticals. “We might unsettle him.” She gave me an eager smile. “And it’ll give us something to report to Miranda next time she pops in.”
“I like the way you think,” I said. Maybe I would pick up a clue about why Jekyll had been sneaking around with Brondon Morris. “Besides, we’re out together anyway. It’s good for you to get away from the office.”
“Visiting a chemical factory that makes perfumes, deodorants, and toiletries isn’t much of an outing.”
I had been inside the factory before—illicitly—while investigating the garlic-laced shampoo lawsuit. I’d posed as a worker on the chemical mixing lines and then, after hiding out at the tail end of a shift, I crept into the main admin offices after hours and got my hands on proof that the shampoo contamination was a matter of record and that JLPN was culpable. The company complained to the court about the evidence submission and appealed the ruling, but they never managed to pin burglary charges on me, although the judge found it unrealistically convenient that an “anonymous source” would produce the precise documents Robin needed to win the case and secure a large judgment.
When we pulled into the JLPN guest parking lot, Robin’s car was definitely the oldest one there. A limousine sprawled across two spots, both of which were designated “For Harvard Stanford Jekyll.”
Inside the fence, the mammoth industrial building was capped by a tall smokestack spurting purple and green fumes. The sign in front of the entrance said JEKYLL LIFESTYLE PRODUCTS & NECROCEUTICALS—WE BRING FRESH BACK TO A STALE WORLD. Then, in smaller letters, AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER. In front, a tan-brick administrative office building sat apart from the factory.
“It smells like a thousand mall candle shops crammed into a trash compactor and left out in the sun,” Robin said as she got out of the rusty Maverick.
I saw a loading dock and many trucks parked in a line, ready to be loaded with the new line of necroceuticals for distribution in the Quarter. A flurry of workers used hand trucks and forklifts to haul crates out of the chemical factory; each box was stenciled with Try Our New Line! The workers rushed around like turbo-charged termites. A few golems would have been great for heavy labor like this, but as far as I could see, all of the JLPN employees were human.
A delivery truck backed up to the big doors, and men hurried forward with pallets of new shampoos, deodorants, liquid soaps, perfumes. As soon as a fully loaded truck drove off, the next empty one backed up to the dock.
A lawyer on a mission, Robin walked briskly to the front door of the admin building, and I pulled it open for her, trying to formulate what I could accomplish by seeing Harvey Jekyll face-to-face. Robin didn’t seem to have a plan.