The Rose Conspiracy Read Free Page B

are you an athlete?”
    â€œDear no,” she replied with a little giggle. “Why?”
    Blackstone ignored her question and probed further.
    â€œDon’t lift weights, do gymnastics, anything like that?”
    â€œNo, I don’t.”
    He took in her entire frame with a long glance, then he spoke up.
    â€œIn that event, I presume you are a sculptor. Right?”
    She laughed.
    â€œThat’s right,” she replied with surprise. “So you must be familiar with some of my work.”
    â€œNo, not at all,” he replied.
    â€œThen how did you know?”
    â€œObservation. You are a petite woman, yet you have powerful, deeply veined hands. The kind of hands that result from kneading clay. You have your makeup done professionally, yet you don’t any have nail polish on. And I notice you have what appears to be modeling clay under one of your fingernails. Your artist’s smock is a little dingy and worn—it is a working piece of clothing for you. But I don’t see any watercolor, acrylic, or oil paints on it. So you’re not a painter. All that leads me to say you’re a sculptor.”
    â€œI’m impressed,” she said with another big smile.
    Blackstone motioned for the letter, which she quickly gave him. Her countenance changed almost as if on cue. Now she had a frightened, confused look.
    The letter was on the letterhead of the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. It was announcing that Vinnie was the “target” of an ongoing federal grand-jury investigation into “crimes occurring at and in The Smithsonian Institution, including murder and theft of federal documents.”
    â€œThis is all a huge mistake,” she began.
    â€œI hope for your sake that you’re right.”
    â€œThis is serious, isn’t it?”
    â€œYes. Killing a federal official like Horace Langley is a capital offense.”
    Vinnie had a puzzled look.
    â€œThat means that the prosecuting attorney could ask for the death penalty.”
    The dark-haired beauty was speechless.
    â€œBut let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Blackstone replied, trying to be consoling. “This is merely a target letter. It doesn’t mean you’ll get indicted. And it certainly doesn’t mean you are going to get convicted. It may mean absolutely nothing…or it could mean something. Depends on what you tell me about your involvement in this thing.”
    She paused a moment before she spoke. Then she started to explain.
    â€œI knew Horace Langley,” she said.
    â€œHow well?”
    â€œProfessionally.”
    â€œDefine that.”
    â€œI was with him,” she said with a stunned look on her face, as if finally realizing the depth of the trouble she was in, “there in his office…with him in the Smithsonian, at the Castle, the day he was murdered.”

CHAPTER 4

    J .D. Blackstone wasted no time digging into Vinnie Archmont’s relationship with the Secretary of the Smithsonian. She said it was strictly professional. On the surface, it seemed to fit.
    She said she had received a commission from a nonprofit foundation to sculpt Horace Langley’s likeness. The two of them had had several sittings, all of them in the Castle. She had been working on a clay model of his head and shoulders. The plan was to then complete that, fire it in her kiln, and use it as the prototype for the final bronze version. All of the sittings had been in Langley’s ornate personal office. The last one, on the day of the murder, was in that same office.
    Blackstone buzzed Jason, his paralegal, and had him pull up the schematics of the building off the Internet. In a few minutes, Jason scurried in with a printout.
    â€œRight here,” Vinnie said, pointing to a section of the cutaway diagram of the Castle, “that’s where we met the day he was killed.”
    â€œIn that last session, did anything unusual