Mansions Of The Dead by Sarah Stewart Taylor Page B

now that she had told the class about sites on the Internet where you could purchase mourning jewelry. Brad might have bought some jewelry online and then gone to the Blue Carbuncle to make sure it was authentic.
    But why had he been wearing it at the time of his death?
    It was when she caught sight of the student essays piled on her desk that she remembered Brad’s presentation. Her senior seminar students had been working on semester-long papers. Sweeney liked to have them present their work to the rest of the class during the week they were to turn in their papers. She found her syllabus and saw that Brad had signed up to present his work on mourning jewelry in a couple of weeks. Knowing him, he’d already started writing. Surely his early draft of the paper would offer some clues to the possible significance ofthe jewelry, or at least what his concerns had been. So how could she get hold of it? It was something to think about.
    She had found out something today, she told herself. She had found out that Brad had acquired the jewelry before his death and that he was concerned about it for some reason.
    Should she call Quinn? This new bit of information meant that the police would likely be wasting their time trying to trace the jewelry to a third party. But Quinn had told her not to talk to anyone about it. If she went to him and told him what she now knew, he would be very angry. What could she do? Who would know what Brad’s concerns about the jewelry were? Brad might have told Becca and Jaybee, but it would be awkward to ask them. What about his family? She had no idea if he was close to his family. Would he have talked to them about it? How could she talk to his family about the jewelry?
    She decided that the key was finding Brad’s paper. Then she’d have an excuse to call Quinn.

ELEVEN
    BUT AS IT TURNED out, Quinn called her first.
    She was busy most of the next day and didn’t get his message until she had finished her last class and checked her mailbox in the third-floor department office. Mrs. Pitman had written the message on a pink “While You Were Out” form. They had voice mail in the department, but it was impossible to convince Mrs. Pitman that it was more convenient to be able to listen to the message oneself than to scramble around for the slip of paper.
    She dialed the number and when she heard Quinn’s voice, she had a moment of panic. Had he found out somehow that she had gone to the antique stores? Had someone been following her?
    But no. He was wondering if she would be willing to come along when he questioned the family about the jewelry that afternoon. The police were going to ask the family if they’d seen the jewelry before and they wanted to have someone present who knew about it, in order to figure out where it might have come from, on the off-chance that it had been known to Brad’s parents or siblings.
    “We’ll ask you to keep the details of the conversation confidential,” he said sternly.
    Trying to keep the satisfaction out of her voice, she told Quinn that she’d be happy to help out.
    She was antsy, so she locked her office door and headed for Mount Auburn Cemetery. The trees were just budding—in a week they’d be covered with blossoms. She’d brought her well-worn map of the cemetery and she perused it as she walked, locating the Putnam family plot on the list of prominent Bostonians buried within Mount Auburn’s walls, and finding it on the map. It was one of the older plots, on Asphodel Path, not far from the main road, but private because it was at the end of the little path.
    The plot was surrounded by a low, granite fence that had a finial at each corner and read “Putnam” on either side of the low gates. Sweeney stepped between them into the plot to look around.
    The highlight of the plot was the large marble monument that sat in the very center, with the rounded heads of the twenty or so other family stones surrounding it. The monument was in the shape of a