Chapter 33

CHAPTER 33

TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1926

L auren didn't want to be a coward. She didn't want to run from the truth anymore, the way she had as a child, and the way her father had throughout his life. So she'd shared everything with her roommates this weekend and grieved as though Lawrence Westlake had died. Indeed, she had lost the father she thought she had. It was a different kind of pain, to mourn what she'd never had in the first place.

When Lauren returned to work this week, she immersed herself in ancient Egypt only because it was her job, and not to escape from the hard realities of the present.

She needed to notify the Vandermeers they'd purchased forgeries, but there would be no containing that news once Victoria learned it. Lauren needed to connect with Joe first and see how best to proceed. She'd called over the weekend but had missed him. He'd returned her call, according to Ivy, but Lauren had been out with Elsa. With every delay, the evidence she held grew heavier. Joe would have enough now to arrest her father. His denouement, and by association, her own, was inevitable.

Beneath the Egyptian rooms, in the basement of the museum, Lauren took her lunch break without eating. Her appetite had vanished with her hope of reconciliation with Lawrence. She would not think of him as "Dad" anymore. He'd betrayed the closeness that title suggested.

Organizing the stacks of paper on her desk, she came across the letter from Miles Vandermeer. The poor man had no idea he would soon receive some very bad news about the jewelry in the photographs he'd sent to her. If they are to be used in some kind of publication, he'd written, we would be grateful to be named as the owners.

Not even close.

Although...

She pulled one of Mr. Clarke's books from the shelf above her desk. This was one of the volumes he'd had published on his finds from the years 1915–1917. She didn't care one whit that he'd had others write the chapters. She wanted to see the photographs.

She flipped to the chapters about digs from 1917 and found the image she was looking for. There it was: the ointment jar made of Egyptian alabaster, inscribed with Hatshepsut's titles as queen. The jar Mr. Clarke had gifted to Newell St. John, the first fake she had identified last fall. The provenance had declared it had been purchased from a dealer in Luxor.

Then why would it be included in a volume of Mr. Clarke's excavation finds?

She searched the text for an answer and found it. The ointment jar was uncovered from tomb 1, wadi D in the Wadi Gabbanat el-Qurud. Along with several other artifacts from this site, it was snatched by a tomb raider when the guards fell asleep and turned up in a shop in Luxor the next day. Upon finding it there, Mr. Clarke purchased the artifact to recover it, adding to his personal collection.

The provenance document was not wrong. It just hadn't explained the whole story.

Pulling a magnifying glass from her drawer, she enlarged the hieroglyphs etched into the jar.

They were perfect. This was genuine. It was most decidedly not the same jar she'd pronounced a forgery.

Joe's suspicions weren't wild imaginings. Based on everything else she'd learned about her father recently, it was easy to believe he'd swapped out the genuine jar for a lookalike he'd forged, just so she would find it. Just so he could tarnish Mr. Clarke's name, even if only a little bit.

How petty. How cruel to Mr. Clarke and Mr. St. John and her. Lawrence had probably been coming out of his skin waiting for her to find the fake.

There was no doubt in her mind that her father was a crook. When it came to light, she could only imagine her career would be finished, too. Not by a court of law. No, she was confident she would not be convicted as an accomplice to this ring. But in the court of public opinion, especially among those in the art world, she'd be cast as guilty, like Luigi Palma di Cesnola, the first director of the Met, accused of forgery and only technically exonerated. The detail of where the guilt truly belonged wouldn't matter. The scandal would be enough.

That wasn't enough to stop her.

Taking a deep breath, she reached for the phone to call Joe.

It rang beneath her hand.

She answered it, and the operator connected her with Theodore Clarke.

"Mr. Clarke?" Lauren flashed hot, then cold. This legendary Egyptologist had been to her house and brought her mother flowers. He might even have courted Mother once upon a time. He'd never mentioned hearing that Lauren had called his ointment jar a fake. She wondered if he knew.

"Yes, hello! I hope you're sitting down, my dear, because I have news that will sweep you off your feet."

Lauren racked her brain for what might be coming next. "Yes? I'm sitting down, go ahead."

"It's Hatsudora, Dr. Westlake. Your Hetsumina's twin. We found her."

She nearly dropped the phone. "I'm sorry, can you repeat that?"

A warm chuckle carried over the wire. "You heard me correctly, I daresay. My team has found Hatsudora's coffin."

Lauren struggled to make sense of what he was trying to say, and why he was so excited. It was a French team that had found Hatsudora, and she was most likely reposing in the Cairo Museum now. Lauren had practically memorized the letter from Mr. Lythgoe about this. They'd found her on December 1, but the news hadn't reached her until December 30.

"Hatsudora. In Cairo, you mean? In the museum?"

"No, no. A member of my team was on the spot when it appeared for sale in Luxor. This was three or four weeks ago. After my tour with you at the Met, I gave my expedition director the challenge, granting him the authority and resources to pay any price for her recovery. Now he is quite literally delivering."

Impossible. "I don't understand."

"Well, seeing is believing," he said. "Prepare to do both on Friday. I know how important this find is to you, so my instructions are to have the crate with Hatsudora in it delivered directly to the Met's receiving room. We'll open it together, all right?"

"What makes you so confident it's Hatsudora?"

"They're twins, aren't they? I've seen the photographs. It's a remarkable match for Hetsumina's coffin. What a thrill it will be to open the crate at the Met. We can view both sisters. If not side by side, close enough. Is Friday agreeable?"

"By all means," she managed to say, making a note to arrange it with Mr. Klein. "I'll add it to our registrar's schedule. Nine in the morning?"

Mr. Clarke agreed. "We'll enjoy the discovery together. Then we can haggle about whether the Met would like to purchase her from me before your spring exhibition or simply wait it out. You know you'll get it eventually."

"Oh, Mr. Clarke." She never knew how to respond to his references to his death. "Let's hope ‘eventually' is a very long time from now."

He laughed. "Between you and me, if cash flow is a problem for the museum, I may be persuaded to let you have it on loan for the duration of your show. But never mind about that now. We'll see you soon. Take care."

Lauren placed the receiver in its cradle.

If her instinct was right, the millionaire was about to deliver the biggest forgery they'd ever seen. Big enough to make what the Napoleon Society had done seem like child's play.

She picked up the phone again, and waited for the connection she requested.

"Joe." Relief broke her voice on his name when he answered. "You were right about everything. I'm so sorry for the hurtful things I said to you. Please forgive me." Saying it didn't feel like enough, especially not through a telephone wire. She was gutted, and all she could give him were a few paltry words and the pauses between while she pushed through the burning in her throat.

"I do, of course I do. I hated bringing that evidence to you, Lauren. I hated hurting you that way."

She pulled in a steadying breath. "You weren't the one who hurt me. Deep down, I think I knew that even before you left my building."

"What's happened since then?"

Lauren stared at Mr. Clarke's book still open before her. "I'll tell you everything. In person."