Turned to Stone Read Free Page B

say?”
    “An essay on classical iconography in Italian baroque sculpture. And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. Laura Rodríguez—”
    “Laura Rodríguez may look like an alien, with that red dye she puts in her hair, but she’s actually a human and she does make mistakes. Sorry, but if you don’t mind I’m here for a few days’ relaxation and—”
    “Just one moment.” Amatriaín turned on his iPad. “You claim you have never written an essay on Italian baroque architecture—”
    “Because it’s true.”
    “Then can you explain this to me?”
    Jaime froze when he saw the PDF document shown on the screen: “Gods and Monsters in Italian Baroque Sculpture.” By Paloma Blasco and Jaime Azcárate.
    Hit and sunk by damn technology. “All right,” he conceded. “Am I supposed to feel guilty about this?”
    “I suppose not. But I’d like to know why you lied to me.”
    “Because my tenderloin’s going cold.”
    “It’s a serious question.”
    “And a serious answer. I’ve had a tough few days, and I’m trying to unplug from work.”
    “I understand. But what can you lose by giving me a few more minutes? I’m sure you already know the bust of Medusa disappeared last month from the museum where it was on exhibit.”
    Jaime admitted that he’d seen it in the news. The Pontecorvo House Museum in Verona. A robbery in the middle of the night, a security guard killed, and the statue gone. Amatriaín gave him a look. “Didn’t you say you don’t watch TV?”
    “I get my news on Twitter.” Jaime realized right away that he’d put his foot in his mouth. What if this bore decided to follow him online? He sliced off a piece of tenderloin and tried it. Immediately, he regretted not ordering the pickled partridge. What part of “medium rare” had that chump with the haircut not understood?
    “Both the plundering of archeological sites and thefts of works of art are on the rise,” said Amatriaín. “Since 2004, the number of cases has risen fivefold. While there have been isolated cases like the remarkable robbery at Oslo’s Munch Museum, most of the thefts have been from houses. This incident at the Pontecorvo is one of the rare occasions when thieves have been bold enough to break into a museum.”
    “The Pontecorvo House Museum is hardly the Louvre,” Jaime pointed out. “Force a door, load the sculpture onto a wheelbarrow, and breeze out of there the same way you came in. It doesn’t seem like a particularly spectacular feat.”
    “That’s the thing: there wasn’t even a broken window. No forced door. Nothing. The morning after the robbery, everything except the statue and the poor security guard were in their places.”
    “What happened to the security guard, exactly? The press was vague on that point.”
    “The girl in charge of opening up the museum found him on the floor. His back was broken from a fall. He was still alive when they took him to hospital, and en route he kept muttering something about being attacked by a woman with snakes for hair. He died two hours later.”
    “How many security guards were there?”
    “Just him. It’s a small museum, so they don’t need more than one.”
    “Clearly they do. Any other leads?”
    “The autopsy revealed something strange in his blood—a toxin that couldn’t be identified. Tests on the Aperol Spritz he had drunk that evening revealed traces of an extract of Psilocybe semilanceata .”
    “A hallucinogen.” Jaime showed no sign of surprise.
    Amatriaín nodded. “I’d heard that you were a capable mycologist.”
    “An enthusiast, nothing more. My grandfather was the expert on fungi. I simply learned a few of their names when I was a boy.” Jaime smiled. “There are some things that, for better or for worse, one never forgets.”
    “In this case, for better. As you said, Psilocybe semilanceata has potent hallucinogenic properties. Combining it with alcohol, especially for a man nearly seventy years old,