The Adventure of the Reliquary Chest

“Cordy! Over there, he’s over there! He’s just entering the café!”

Lieutenant Cordelia O’Leary turned around sharply, following the direction of her husband, Dr. Henry Kingston. Ah-ha! There you are, you little creep!

The creep in question was a young man, somewhere in his mid-thirties, of medium build and pale countenance, dressed sloppily in a disorganized suit of light-gray material, his red hair already thinning. He hovered by the salad selection at the café in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Atrium, his eyes darting around nervously as he clutched a large paper bag from Macy's to his chest. Cordelia knew what was inside - a large box, wrapped in brown paper and tied together with a thin cord.

“Well? Aren’t you going to grab him?” Henry chirped in her ear, growing more irritated with each passing second. Cordelia frowned, resisting the growing urge to pull the earbud out and throw it away as far as she could.

“Shut up, Hal,” she growled in a low, threatening voice as she started towards the café. She heard a similar sound on the other end of the connection, indicating her husband’s mock irritation at the use of her nickname for him. Good, she thought with a small smile.

She eased her way up to the salad selections, pretending to look over the options as she eased closer to the target. “Mr. Smith?” She whispered softly, leaning in close to the man, who visibly jumped at her words.

He stared at her for a moment before swallowing, mustering up the courage to speak. “Y-yeah. You Marsh?”

“Yup,” Cordelia lied, showing him the fake museum ID with her picture on it. “Is that it? The reliquary?”

“Shhh!” His hazel eyes were wide and frantic. “Not here! Isn’t there, like, an empty conference room we could use?”

“Of course, follow me,” replied Cordelia, motioning for him to follow her. “Did you have a hard time getting here?”

“I’d rather wait until we’re alone for useless pleasantries, thank you very much," Smith snapped. Cordelia could only resist the urge to deliver a scathing comeback, and stayed silent, lips pursed together in reluctance. Any other response would have made the man suspicious, and she couldn’t have that.

They were about to head towards the employees entrance to the lower levels of the museum when a voice, rough and deep, called out. “Hey! Boyle!”

The man that Cordelia knew as Smith paled visibly and started to whimper in a high-pitched voice. Cordelia’s hand slowly moved to her side, where her Beretta waited in its holster.

Two men came up to them, clad in jeans and dark sports coats. One man was muscular and menacing, the other shorter and wearing glasses. Cordelia silently nicknamed them Brains and Brawn.

“Terry Boyle,” Brains shook his head, laying an arm around Smith’s shoulders. “Terry, Terry, what have you been up to? Boss has been real worried about you, hasn’t he, Horace?”

The big man that Cordelia had named Brawn only nodded in response. She stared at him in disbelief. His name is Horace? Who names their kid Horace?

“I-I,” Terry Boyle, alias Mr. Smith, stammered uncontrollably as he and Cordelia were herded away from the lone doorway and towards the front entrance. “I’m sorry, Jay, I’ve been a little busy-“

“I can see that,” Jay interrupted, eyeing Cordelia with an unsettling look. “Now this lady here can’t surely be with you, eh, Terry boy? Far too pretty for you, really.”

Oh, goody, lecherous gangsters, Cordelia thought in disgust. This should be tons of fun.

“She’s just a friend, Jay. That’s Vivian.” Boyle stared at Cordelia with desperate, pleading eyes. “We were just meeting up for a quick bite and-and look around the museum, right, Viv?”

Yeah, this isn’t going to end well, Cordelia realized just as she heard Henry’s voice over the comm link.

“Cordy, what the hell is going on? Who are those men?”

Sorry, Hal, can’t answer right now.

“Well, since we haven’t eaten yet, why don’t we treat you two to lunch? My treat,” Jay smiled coldly as he and Horace started herding them to the main entrance. “I know this nice little place in Chinatown…”

Crap on a stick, Cordelia growled silently. Everything was going south, fast. These have to be the little prick’s loan sharks, they just have to be. They picked a fine damn time to collect on his dues, didn’t they?

She had to do something to keep Terry Boyle in the museum, anything. Then they passed the help desk in the center of the main lobby, and a crafty little idea formed right then and there. Thank God that there’s barely anyone here right now, or else there would be massive panic.

She suddenly said, very loudly, “Hey, aren’t you that guy from the news? The one wanted for murder in five different states?!”

That drew the attention of the plain-clothes detective under her command who was currently undercover at the front desk as a docent. Thank God. If he hadn’t heard that, I’d have had to smack him for being an idiot!

Detective Tristan Barr tensed up, recognizing the situation at hand, and left the desk.

Jay looked at Cordelia as if she had steam coming out of her ears. “What are you talking about? What are you, nuts?” He turned to Boyle. “Is she nuts? That why you didn’t want us to meet her?”

“I-I-I,” Boyle stuttered, his fingers’ grip tightening around the handle of his briefcase. “See, Jay, the thing is-”

“What’s that you got there, Terry? That wouldn’t happen to be our money, would it?” Jay leered greedily at Boyle’s precious cargo, while Horace moved ever so closer to Boyle.

“No!” Boyle practically shrieked, moving behind Cordelia in a frantic manner. She frowned at the man’s cowardly behavior before balling her hands into fists, ready for a fight. It was time to shed her cover.

“Gentlemen, I suggest that you all calm down and lay off each other, okay?” She said, smiling coldly.

“Oh?” Jay chuckled in disbelief. “And why would that be?” He motioned to Horace, who towered over Cordelia by a good two feet, before reaching inside his jacket.

“NYPD, that’s why,” said Tristan as he held up his Beretta to Jay’s head, while Cordelia revealed her own and aimed it at Horace in one hand, her badge in the other.

“Hands in the air, you’re all under arrest,” Cordelia commanded, watching out of the corner of her eye as another one of her detectives, Jessica Gregory, arrested a bewildered Terry Boyle and his briefcase was confiscated.

Inwardly, she breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God I put Tristan at the front desk…

...

“So, this is what all the fuss was about?” Cordelia said, watching as the briefcase was opened and its important cargo was revealed. She, Tristan Barr and Jessica Gregory stood around the large, stainless steel examination table, while Henry Kingston and the real Vivian Marsh, the museum’s newly hired curator of medieval art, handled the official examination of the recovered item. It had been packaged and wrapped in heavy brown paper and tied with a thin but coarse cord of rope.

Henry gave Cordelia a quick wink, happy that everything had ended without injury, especially to his wife. “A reliquary chest? Doesn’t look like much to me,” she added, glancing at it closely.

The reliquary chest in question was a little over a foot tall and two feet wide, box-shaped with a simple arched top, with an image of the Virgin Mary in gold emblazoned on the facade. A simple design, to be sure, but attractive nonetheless. It had been stolen from the private safe of an antiquities dealer with a dubious reputation, Royston Booth, who had been found murdered on the balcony of his apartment the same day - a crime of opportunity.

“You’d be surprised, it’s worth more than all our townhouses and apartments combined,” Vivian chuckled. “Thank heavens we were able to get it back from Boyle after Mr. Booth’s death. How did you know it was him anyway?”

Cordelia couldn’t hide the proud smirk that crossed her face. “You remember that awful smell in Booth’s apartment when we found his safe empty? You know, after we found his body on the balcony?”

“I remember,” offered Barr.

“Definitely the most foulest thing I’ve ever smelled in my life,” Gregory commented, making a sour face.

“An ugly mixture of what I can only describe as sardines and poppy flowers,” Henry said, shaking his head. “Blech. Why?”

“I recognized it,” Cordelia grinned like the Cheshire cat. “Boyle’s cologne, Indescribable. Only sold at one store in the city, thank you very much, and he’s one of the very few customers who buys it. Ha!”

“Is she always this boastful after solving a case?” Vivian asked Henry with an amused smile.

Dr. Henry Kingston watched as his wife begin a not-so subtle victory dance and smiled lovingly. “Every single time, Dr. Marsh, every single time.”