Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 04 - Miami Mummies by Barbara Silkstone Page A

belt. He unlocked the door and flipped on blindingly bright lights.
    Roger gave Igor a hard stare. He gulped and said, “I’ll leave you to your examination. I have to check on some cultures in the lab next door. Just don’t tamper with the glass cases.”
    Roger gave him an even harder look. Igor’s glasses slid down to the end of his nose. “Let me know when you’re finished so I can lock up.” He backed out, closing the door behind him.
    The room smelled like antiseptic, disinfectant, formaldehyde, and bad news. I shivered. Goose bumps covered my body.
    My guy strode to a large autopsy table in the center of the room. “I’ll be damned, they are sitting mummies!”
    Each was contained in a separate temperature-controlled glass case. The bodies were in cross-legged squats, their heads drooped on their chests. They could have been two little kids wrapped in tattered blankets huddled around a campfire except that they were thousands of years old.
    Roger paced slowly around the glass cases. His eyes never left the mummies when he whispered, “These are the missing Incan child mummies. They were stolen from the museum in Peru last month. I was investigating their theft less than a week ago.”
    I stepped aside feeling a weird mixture of fear and sadness. Incans had a tradition of mountaintop child sacrifices. Were these children drugged and left to die on frozen summits? What agony did they suffer before they died? Were they accepting of their fate or did they struggle calling for their mothers?
    The thud of a compressor kicking in made me jump out of my shoes. Heavy-duty air conditioners and dehumidifiers labored to fight the Florida heat and humidity.
    Roger leaned closer to the mummies. “There’s no gauge on these cases.” He put the back of his hand against the glass. “Damn. It’s not cold enough for these children.”
    I sensed his tender heart torn by what should have been purely scientific observation, but the setting had become a requiem for his younger brother kidnapped so many years ago. “I must call Delaquez and tell him his Incan children are in Florida.”
    He turned to face me. “That downtown site was salted with these mummies.”
    “Salted mummies?”
    “They were planted there. Sitting mummies are indigenous to the Incans or the Mayans, not the Florida Tequesta tribe. No way were these mummies originally buried in Miami. I don’t even have to take soil samples from their wrappings to confirm it. I can tell they are the stolen Peruvian mummies. Why anyone would stick these valuable specimens into a dig in Florida is the real question.”
    “Are they fake mummies?”
    “They aren’t forgeries. Not like the Hackensack mummy.”
    Hic’s password! I heard a gulp. It was mine. “What made you say that ?” I studied his face for a sign. No response. He was lost in thought. I made a mental note to Google Hackensack.
    Roger circled the cases, stopping on the opposite side of the table and shaking his head, “This must be the work of—”
    A loud crack followed by the sound of glass crashing to the floor. A second crack. I looked toward Roger. There were two bullet holes in the wall above his head. We dropped to the floor and met under the autopsy table.
    A third shot ricocheted off the concrete floor near Roger’s ear.
    We were the proverbial sitting ducks. I snatched Roger’s Indiana Jones fedora from his head, Frisbeed it toward the hole in the window, and croaked, “Roll.”
    The unseen shooter flinched and fired. The bullet flipped the hat in the air while we dove and rolled against the wall under the window. The shooter would have to stick the gun through the hole in the window and aim downward to have a chance to hit us.
    The door flew open and Igor did a Kramer entrance sliding in and saying, “What was that noise? Did you break a case?”
    When he came to a complete stop, his horn-rims flew off his face. The shooter’s next blast sent them to eyeglass heaven. Igor’s eyes