The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

dead bodies down here, do you?”
    “The door, Dr. Robinson.”
    Shaking his head, he unlocked the door. Cool, dry air spilled out. They stepped into the room, and Jane heard startled murmurs from the other detectives as they glimpsed the vast storage area, filled with row upon row of crates stacked almost to the ceiling.
    “Please keep the door closed, if you could,” said Robinson.
    “This is a climate-controlled area.”
    “Man,” said Detective Crowe. “This is going to take us forever to look through all of these. What’s in these crates, anyway?”
    “We’re more than halfway through our inventory,” said Robinson. “If you’d only give us another few months to complete it, we’d be able to tell you what every crate contains.”
    “A few months is a long time to wait.”
    “It’s taken me a year just to inspect those rows there, all the way to the back shelves. I can personally vouch for their contents. But I haven’t yet opened the crates at this end. It’s a slow process because one needs to be careful and document everything. Some of the items are centuries old and may already be crumbling.”
    “Even in a climate-controlled room?” asked Tripp.
    “The air-conditioning wasn’t installed until the 1960s.”
    Frost pointed to a crate on the bottom of a stack. “Look at the date stamped on that one. ‘1873. Siam.’”
    “You see?” Robinson looked at Jane. “There may be treasures here that haven’t been unpacked in a hundred years. My plan was to go through these crates systematically and document everything.” He paused. “But then I discovered Madam X and the inventory came to a halt. Otherwise, we’d be further along by now.”
    “Where did you find her crate?” asked Jane. “Which section?”
    “Down this row, back against the wall.” He pointed to the far end of the storage area. “She was at the bottom of the stack.”
    “You looked in the crates that were on top of hers?”
    “Yes. They contained items acquired during the 1910s. Artifacts from the Ottoman Empire, plus a few Chinese scrolls and pottery.”
    “The 1910s?” Jane thought of the mummy’s perfect dentition, the amalgam filling in her tooth. “Madam X was almost certainly more recent than that.”
    “Then how did she end up underneath older crates?” asked Detective Crowe.
    “Obviously someone rearranged things in here,” said Jane. “It would have made her less accessible.”
    As Jane gazed around the cavernous space, she thought of the mausoleum in which her grandmother had been interred, a marble palace where every wall was etched with the names of those who rested within the crypts.
Is this what I’m looking at now? A mausoleum packed with nameless victims?
She walked toward the far end of the basement, where Madam X had been found. Two lightbulbs overhead had burned out in this area, throwing the corner into shadow.
    “Let’s start our search here,” she said.
    Together Frost and Crowe pulled the top crate off the stack and lowered it to the floor. On the lid was scrawled: MISCELLANEOUS. CONGO. Frost used a crowbar to pry up the lid, and at his first glimpse of what lay inside, he flinched back, bumping against Jane.
    “What is it?” she asked.
    Darren Crowe suddenly laughed. Reaching into the crate, he pulled out a wooden mask and held it over his face. “Boo!”
    “Be careful with that!” said Robinson. “It’s valuable.”
    “It’s also creepy as hell,” murmured Frost, staring at the mask’s grotesque features carved into wood.
    Crowe set the mask aside and pulled out one of the crumpled newspapers used to cushion the crate’s contents. “London
Times,
1930. I’d say this crate predates our perp.”
    “I really must protest,” said Robinson. “You’re touching things—contaminating things. You should all be wearing gloves.”
    “Maybe you should wait outside, Dr. Robinson,” said Jane.
    “No, I won’t. The safety of this collection is my responsibility.”
    She turned to confront him. Mild-mannered though he appeared, he stubbornly stood his ground as she advanced, his eyes blinking furiously behind his glasses. Outside this museum, if confronted by a police officer, Nicholas Robinson would probably respond deferentially. But here on his own territory, in defense of his precious collection, he appeared fully prepared to engage in hand-to-hand combat.
    “You’re rampaging through here like wild cattle,” he said.
    “What makes you think there are more