Sunken Pyramid (Rogue Angel) Read Online Free PDF

had been removed from it, clothes neatly folded. She craned her neck, but she couldn’t see into the bathroom; the door was halfway closed.
    The oldies station aired a brief commercial about a local auto lube service, then Morris Albert’s “Feelings” cut in. Annja wrinkled her nose; she hated the song.
    “I am... I was—”
    “—a friend of this Professor Schwartz,” the detective said. “You’ve mentioned that a few times, if I recall.” The detective had a long face, heavily lined more from the outdoors than the years, Annja decided, based on its ruddy color. She thought it made him look like a piece of carved tree bark. His eyes were dark and set wide, his forehead high and his hair thinning and gray.
    “I need to know, Detective—”
    “Manny. Manny Rizzo.” He closed the notebook and sighed deeply, the sound reminding her of dry leaves blown across parched ground and adding to her image of a tree. He shut the suitcase and snapped the latches. “You’re not going to give up, are you? Figure I’m the easy mark, eh? A softy. Arnie...Lieutenant Arnold Greene’s in charge of this investigation and wouldn’t give you the time of day. But me, you figure—”
    “He was a friend,” Annja repeated.
    “Yeah, I heard you the first time.”
    “A good friend.” Annja didn’t have too many good friends, and now she was down one.
    “Look, Ms. Creed, I know who you are. A beauty queen or supermodel or somesuch who traipses around Egypt and the Amazon pointing out old buildings and creepy—”
    Annja felt her cheeks reddening. Her blood simmered whenever people didn’t take her seriously, didn’t think she was a real archaeologist.
    “Listen to me,” she cut in. “I know... knew ...Edgar pretty well, better than anyone here at this conference, most likely.”
    “You’re not a relative.”
    “No.”
    “Not sure if they’ve notified his next of kin yet.” Detective Rizzo scratched his nose. “Hope they took care of that, though, from the station. People downstairs are probably tweeting and texting and whatever else they can do on their little telephones. Hate to have his wife find out by—”
    “Edgar was divorced.”
    “—or his kids hear by—”
    “—and grandkids.” Annja remembered Edgar happily showing her pictures of them.
    “Yeah, hate to have them find out on Facebook or wherever. I better check to make sure the notification’s gone out.” He pulled out his cell phone and punched in some numbers, muttered a curse and tried it again, his fingers seeming too big for the buttons.
    Annja blatantly listened in. The conversation took Annja aback. The investigation was indeed very fresh if Edgar’s sons were only just being notified now.
    He finished and dropped the phone in his pocket.
    “Anything else, Ms. Creed? I’m working here.”
    She took the edge off her voice. “What makes you, Detective Rizzo, think it was murder? I take it Lieutenant Greene doesn’t share your—”
    “He’ll come around,” the detective said. “Right now he’s going with the M.E.’s preliminary report. All by the book, Arnie is. But he’ll come around real soon. Bright boy. Before the rest of the morning’s gone, he’ll—”
    “What makes you think that Edgar...that Edgar was—”
    Detective Rizzo picked the suitcase off the bed and rested it next to the desk, then put his back to her, not out of rudeness she realized, but because he was looking around to see if there was anything else to close up and take with him. He ran his long fingers through what little hair he had and let out another leaf-blowing breath.
    “Detective.” Annja tried again. “What makes you think—”
    Detective Rizzo turned, a perturbed expression marking his long face. “Oh, for the love— Seriously? Why would you think it wasn’t murder, Ms. Creed?”
    Annja answered with a question. “Was there a power outage last night in the hotel?”
    “No.” He shook his head. “We checked.”
    “Then Edgar took the