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"I'll take that as a compliment."
They went through the revolving doors into a blast of cold air. A dusting of fresh snow glittered on the sidewalks beyond the covered walkway.
"Brrr!" Viola said, recoiling. "When I left Capraia, it was a balmy twenty degrees. This is barbaric!"
"That would be twenty degrees Celsius, of course," said Diogenes with a wink. "How I envy you, able to live there year-round. My car." He opened the door for her, then went around, waited for the skycap to dose the trunk, then slipped in the other side.
"I don't actually live there year-round. Normally at this time of year, I'm in Luxor, working on a dig in the Valley of the Nobles. But this year, with the blasted state of the Middle East, I ran into some permit problems."
Diogenes accelerated smoothly from the curb and merged into the traffic headed for the airport exit. "An Egyptologist," he said. "How fascinating. I myself spent some time in Egypt, a junior member of the von Hertsgaard expedition."
"Not the one that went into Somalia looking for the diamond mines of Queen Hatshepsut? The one where Hertsgaard was found decapitated?"
"The very one."
"How exciting! I'd love to hear about it."
" 'Exciting' is certainly one way to describe it."
"Is it true that Hertsgaard may have found the Hatshepsut mines just before he was murdered?"
Diogenes laughed quietly. "I sincerely doubt it. You know how these rumors get started. What I find more interesting than those mythical mines is the very real Queen Hatshepsut herself-the only female pharaoh-but, of course, you know all about her, I'm sure."
"Fascinating woman."
"She claimed legitimacy by saying that her mother slept with the god Amon and that she was the issue. How does that famous inscription go? Amon found the queen sleeping in her room. When the pleasant odors that proceeded from him a
Viola was intrigued: Diogenes seemed to be as much of a polymath as his brother.
"So tell me, Viola. What kind of work are you doing in the Valley of the Nobles?"
"We've been excavating the tombs of several royal scribes."
"Find any treasures-gold or, even better, jewels?"
"Nothing like that. They were all robbed in antiquity. We're after inscriptions."
"What a marvelous profession, Egyptology. It seems my brother appreciates interesting women."
"I hardly know your brother, to tell you the truth."
"That will change this week, I have little doubt."
"I'm looking forward to it." She laughed a little self-consciously. "Actually, I still can't believe I'm here. This whole trip is such a… a caprice. So mysterious. I love mysteries."
"So does Aloysius. It seems you two are made for each other."
Viola felt herself coloring. She quickly changed the subject. "Do you know anything about this case he's been working on?"
"It's been one of the most difficult of his career. Fortunately, it's almost over. Today, in fact, will come the denouement-and then he'll be free. The case involves a serial killer, a truly insane individual, who for various obscure reasons has conceived a deep hatred for Aloysius. He's been killing people and taunting my brother with his inability to catch him."
"How terrible."
"Yes. My brother was forced to go underground so abruptly in order to conduct his investigation that it gave everyone the impression he'd been killed."
"I thought he was dead. Lieutenant D'Agosta told me as much."
"Only I knew the truth. I helped him after that Italian ordeal, nursed him back to health. I saved his life, if I may be allowed a moment of self-congratulation."
"I'm so glad he has a brother like you."
"Aloysius has few real friends. He's very old-fashioned, somewhat forbidding, a bit standoffish. And so I've tried to be his friend as well as his brother. I'm so glad he found you. I was so worried about him after that dreadful accident with his wife in Tanzania."
Wife? Tanzania? Suddenly, Viola found herself wanting very much to ask what had happened. She resisted: Aloysius would tell her in good time, and she had always had the English abhorrence of prying into someone else's personal life.
"He hasn't really found me yet. We're just the most casual of new friends, you know."
Diogenes turned his strange, bicolored eyes to her and smiled. "I believe my brother is already in love with you."
This time Viola colored violently, feeling a sudden mixture of excitement, embarrassment, and foolishness. Stuff, she thought. How could he be in love with me after one meeting?
"And I have reason to believe you are in love with him."
Viola managed a careless laugh, but she was tingling all over with the strangest sensation. The car hurtled through the frosty night. "This is all far too premature," she finally managed to say.
"While Aloysius and I are much alike, I do differ from him in terms of directness. Forgive me if I've embarrassed you."
"Think nothing of it."
The Long Island Expressway stretched ahead, a snowy alley of darkness. It was almost one o'clock in the morning and there were few cars on the road. Flakes of snow were drifting down, whipping up and over the windshield of the car as they hurtled along.
"Aloysius was always the indirect one. I could never tell what he was thinking, even when he was a boy."
"He does seem a bit inscrutable, I suppose."
"Very inscrutable. Rarely does he ever reveal his real motivations for doing things. For example, I've always believed he devoted himself to public service to make up for some of the black sheep in the Pendergast line."
"Really?" Viola's curiosity was piqued again.
An easy laugh. "Yes. Take Great-Aunt Cornelia, for example. Lives not far from here, at the Mount Mercy Hospital for the Criminally Insane."
Curiosity was replaced by surprise. "Criminally insane?"
"That's right. Every family has its black sheep, I suppose."
Viola thought of her own great-grandfather. "Yes, that's true."
"Some families more than others."
She nodded, glanced over, found Diogenes looking at her, quickly lowered her eyes.
"I think it adds interest, spice, to a family lineage. Much better to have a murderer for a great-grandfather than a shopkeeper."
"A rather unique point of view." Diogenes might be a little odder than first impressions indicated, but he was certainly amusing.
"Any interesting criminals in your ancestry?" Diogenes asked. "If you don't mind me prying."
"Not at all. No criminals, exactly, but I did have an ancestor who was one of the great violin virtuosi of the nineteenth century. He went insane, froze to death in a shepherd's hut in the Dolomites."
"Exactly my point! I felt sure you would have some interesting ancestors. No dull accountants or traveling salesmen in your lineage, eh?"
"Not that I know of."
"Actually, we did have a traveling salesman in our own ancestry- contributed greatly to the Pendergast fortune, in fact."
"Really?"
"Indeed. He concocted a quack medicine by the name of Hezekiah's Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative. Started by selling it from the back of a wagon."