Agent Cooper laughs. He nods toward the row of filing cabinets that covers one wall of his office. “No. His folder is right there. This one is yours.”
I lean forward and grab it, and Cooper flinches, but doesn’t try to stop me. Inside I find a copy of an old résumé from a decade ago, one I think I uploaded to a public headhunting site. It’s woefully out of date except for my degrees and a few internships. Behind this are printouts of various columns I wrote for the Times. They go back quite a ways, and I have a feeling all of this was printed out recently, like Cooper has been cramming rather than studying.
“If this is all you’ve got on me, I need to live it up a bit more.”
Agent Cooper laughs. He opens a drawer in his desk and reaches inside. I half expect a different folder with some of my college exploits. Instead, he brings out a small plastic case, bright orange, about the size of a closed fist. “Three months ago, a man was found dead in his apartment in Portland, Maine—”
Cooper pauses as I gasp out loud and lean forward, eager to hear more. Worse, I think he can see my genuine excitement at the idea that Ness Wilde is guilty of actual direct murder rather than the indirect kind.
“The gentleman died of a heart attack,” Cooper says. “He was seventy-two years old. No foul play suspected.”
The reporter in me sags in her seat. The rest of me is happy for the deceased. I guess.
“Two weeks later, this goes up for auction alongside other items from the gentleman’s estate.”
Cooper slides the plastic case across the desk. It looks like one of those waterproof boxes snorkelers use to keep things dry while they’re out in the surf. There’s a complex latch with a slot for a key. It’s unlocked, but the latch is stiff. A tight seal. When I lift the lid and see what’s inside, the air seems to evacuate the room.
A lace murex, one of my favorite shells, is nestled inside. Medium-sized, just over an inch long. I move the box into the cone of light from the lamp and note the bright pink aperture and tight apex. The inner lip is so shiny, the shell must be wet. But touching it, I find it to be dry. It just hasn’t lost its luster.
“It looks flawless,” I whisper.
“It is,” Cooper says. “I understand you know a thing or two about shells.”
I think of all the articles he has in that folder, many of them from back when the Times had a science section where my shelling column used to run. “I studied to be a marine biologist,” I say. “Being a reporter happened by accident.” Which isn’t quite right, but the truth is too complicated to get into.
“I’d like to hear your expert opinion on this piece.” Cooper places a loupe on the desk, but I reach into my purse and retrieve my own. My palms are already a little clammy. It’s not often that I get to handle shells this rare.
“Can we open those blinds and get some more light in here?” I ask.
He hesitates, then gets up and raises the blinds. The sunlight streaming into the office catches the ensuing shower of dust. “Thanks,” I say. I bring the loupe to my eye and pull the shell close until it comes into focus.
The murex is distinct for the chaos of crenelations that adorn its edge. They jump off like crashing waves, like amoebas, or a pattern or paisley. The crenelations on this particular specimen are incredibly crisp. Untouched. And the sutures between the whorls are deep and pronounced. The lip of the aperture, where the slug would reside, hasn’t been chipped. And there’s no sign of sand-wear, no dulling of the periostracum from having been tumbled up a beach.
“Was it stolen from a museum?” I ask. For a moment, I wonder if maybe Ness Wilde isn’t a suspect in a case at all, but that perhaps this shell was taken from his collection.
“At what price would you value that shell?” Cooper asks me. He waves his hand when he sees I’m about to complain or make excuses. “Ballpark,” he says. “I’ve had others look at it. I just want your opinion.”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” I admit. “It doesn’t look like it rolled up on any beach.” I look at the crenelations again. They rarely survive any kind of rough handling. “I shouldn’t even be touching this without gloves, to be honest.”
“Just throw out a number,” Cooper says.
“Well, the market is a tad down right now, but a shell like this, I would guess the right buyer would pay between two and three million for it.”
Just hearing myself say this, I have to put the shell back into the box. Gingerly. Cooper quietly laughs at something, and I have to assume it’s my estimate, that their experts said something much different. So I start to defend it.
“You have to keep in mind that this species has been extinct for twenty or thirty years,” I say. “And price is all about condition. I have a murex in my collection that I’d be lucky to get a thousand dollars for. It has dozens of chips, plus a hole clear through the—”
“Your number is solid,” Cooper tells me. “Here’s the problem: we dated that shell, and it’s between two and three years old.”