Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1925

L auren rubbed at the kinks in her neck before shuffling her papers together and stacking them under the Hatshepsut paperweight.

Quarter past five already. It had been another full day of planning for the Met's spring exhibition on the Egyptian afterlife. She had been in talks with a few different museums around the country over the last several weeks, confirming the terms of their loans for the show. Most were cooperative, but the Boston Museum of Fine Arts required a more delicate touch. She supposed it might have something to do with the decades-long rivalry between the MFA and the Met. At least they'd agreed to host her for a visit after Thanksgiving to finalize the details. Some things were simply better discussed in person.

Standing, she put on her coat and found in her pocket the mail Anita had passed to her earlier today. She had recognized her father's handwriting and ignored it.

Drawing a fortifying breath, she opened the envelope and pulled the card free. After skimming his thanks for coming to the gala, she tossed it in her waste bin, turned out the light, and stalked away. The letters she was truly interested in were the ones Nancy had referred to yesterday. Surely the box that held them remained safely within her aunt's house. It was only a matter of finding the time to search.

Locking thoughts of her parents into a corner of her mind, she bade the security guards a good night and exited the rear of the building. Snow fell from a dove grey sky, sticking to the tops of trees and cars but melting on the sidewalks almost as soon as it landed. She blinked flakes from her lashes. Central Park would be magical tonight, but her shoes weren't made for a walk in the snow.

When she reached the narrow drive, a shiny black Studebaker Six pulled to a stop right in front of her. The back seat window lowered.

"Dr. Westlake!" Ray Moretti called, his wife waving beside him.

Lauren greeted them both, hiding her surprise at seeing them at the Met.

"Get in, would you? It's freezing out there!" Christina crooned.

Before she knew what was happening, the driver had hopped out and come around to Lauren's side. He opened the door to the far back seat and waited for her to enter.

She didn't move. "What's going on?" She tried to keep her voice light.

"I heard a rumor about you, and I want to talk to you about it," Mr. Moretti told her. "But please, don't make us get snowed on to do it. Let us give you a ride home while we chat."

Mr. Robinson's directive to repair the relationship with the Morettis echoed in her mind.

Lauren slid into the back seat. It was a six-person vehicle, so Ray and Christina were in the seat in front of her, and the driver had the front seat to himself. The couple angled sideways to see her, lights from other vehicles casting shadows from their profiles.

"Good." Mr. Moretti smiled. "I heard from other guests at the gala Saturday night that you're on the hunt for a forger."

"Well, forgeries, yes."

"Right. You've been offering to look at private collections to see if any fakes have snuck in among the genuine artifacts. True so far?"

"Yes," Lauren admitted. "I've offered to discreetly do this for our valued patrons as a service to them. I hate to think of anyone being deceived by forgery."

"And are we not your valued patrons, Dr. Westlake?"

She inhaled sharply. "I—that's not at all what I meant."

A car behind them honked, the beams from its headlamps shining in through the Studebaker's rear window. Mr. Moretti's pupils constricted in the light.

The car rolled forward, then steered into traffic. It would probably take just as long to drive all the way around Central Park as it would have for Lauren to walk straight through it as usual, but at least she was warm and dry.

Mr. Moretti turned toward her again. "And yet you didn't make this offer to me when you had the opportunity Saturday night." His tone was smooth and cool, his smile fixed in place. If this was him putting her at ease, it wasn't working. "Is that because of all this unpleasantness with Mr. Robinson? Has he turned you against me? I'd so hate to lose your esteem."

"Not at all," Lauren rushed to say. "You haven't lost my esteem. The only reason I didn't offer to examine your collection is that I was—I still am—convinced that no forgeries are among it. At the benefit soiree you hosted at your Long Island estate last year, you told me how you came into possession of all your pieces, and I saw them myself. The forgeries I'm looking for would have been acquired stateside in the last three years. I understood—or at least I thought I understood—that you acquire pieces yourself or through a personal buyer in Cairo." She was sputtering like an idiot. Making herself sound guilty when all of this was the absolute truth. "Please believe me, Mr. and Mrs. Moretti, I assumed your collection was above question. I never meant to exclude you from any service you might find helpful."

"That's quite all right, sweetie, I'm sure." Christina lit the end of a cigarette and puffed smoke from the side of red-painted lips. "That makes perfect sense."

Lauren glanced out the window as they turned east, not west. "Excuse me, but my apartment is the other way."

"I appreciate your confidence, Dr. Westlake." Mr. Moretti seemed not to have heard her. "But as it happens, I did acquire a piece fairly recently. If the forgeries are as rampant as you say, I'd like you to take a look at it. Would you mind?"

"Right now?" Their estate was twenty-some miles east of here, among the mansions of Long Island's north shore.

Mr. Moretti lit his own cigarette, and wispy curls of smoke snaked up to the ceiling, spreading throughout the car. "Well, we're here, you're here.... No time like the present."

Lauren tried not to cough but failed.

"But do you have time, dear?" Christina asked. "We're not going all the way to the country house. Just to the Fifth Avenue apartment."

Fifth Avenue. She could manage a detour of a few blocks. With effort, Lauren steadied her breathing and agreed.

Minutes later, she stepped inside the most opulent penthouse apartment she'd ever seen. Larger-than-life oil paintings hung in ornate frames in the entryway. The space opened into a drawing room that had been styled to resemble a German hunting lodge, complete with dark wood beams on the ceiling, a chandelier fashioned of elk antlers, more wood paneling the walls, and a taxidermy bear standing at full height beside the massive stone fireplace.

"Don't worry, Dr. Westlake, I have my own salon." Holding her cigarette between two fingers, Christina beckoned Lauren through a set of double glass doors and into what appeared to be a salon right out of Versailles. Cream-colored furniture was gilded with gold leaf and upholstered in shades of blush and pink. A pug sat on a round tufted ottoman, eating undercooked steak from a silver tray while a servant stood ready to take the remains away. Toile wallpaper depicted scenes from the French countryside between floor-to-ceiling silk drapes.

And all this inside a stately-looking brownstone. Lauren had never seen anything like it.

"Over here, Dr. Westlake. Come take a look at this." Mr. Moretti led the way into the dining room, and Lauren covered her gaping mouth. Life-sized hieroglyphs and vignettes covered the walls in bold colors that fairly leapt off the plaster. It was a landscape of stiffly posed Egyptians going about their daily tasks.

"Who painted this?" Lauren asked. It looked as though it could have been done by one of the restoration painters on the Met's Egyptian department team.

Mr. Moretti waved the question away. "I hired the work out. I used lantern slides to project the images on the walls, and painters had no trouble tracing the forms and filling them in with color. But that's not what I wanted you to see, although I'm gratified by your reaction. Look here."

The dining room table had been customized so that a glass case was set into its surface. The case was three feet long, the perfect proportions to display a two-and-a-half-foot length of the Book of the Dead, which was a common collection of spells to help navigate the afterlife. What an odd choice of art to join the Morettis and their guests for meals.

"Isn't it morbid?" Christina asked. "This is where we eat and entertain, for goodness' sake."

"That's what makes it perfectly placed," her husband countered. "It's a reminder to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!"

Removing her hat and gloves, Lauren leaned over to inspect it with a magnifying glass Mr. Moretti supplied.

"Well?" he pressed.

"The fibers of the papyrus look authentic. The text, too, has been written with a steady, confident hand, which is a good sign. Forgers often wobble or make other mistakes."

"Such as?" Christina asked.

She moved the magnifying glass over the figures. "The ancient Egyptians represent the human form in ways that don't make sense to us, and if forgers aren't careful, they'll ‘fix' part of the body without realizing what they've done." She looked up and pointed to the wall where a woman had been painted with her hands outstretched. "You see the position of her thumbs? That's not natural, but that's how the Egyptians painted them. And the way the eyes face front even though they are on a profile. Some forgers don't pick up on the fact that men are always painted red-brown, and women are always painted yellow. Furthermore, men are portrayed with one leg forward, as if in motion, whereas women are typically portrayed with feet together."

Mr. Moretti looked from the wall to the papyrus, squinting at the figures drawn there. "I don't see any of those mistakes here."

Lauren smiled. "Neither do I. Your section here looks immaculate."

"Really?" Christina frowned. "It looks a little tired to me."

Lauren allowed herself a laugh. "If you were three thousand years old, you'd look a little tired, too. Honestly, if the ink was darker and easier to read, that would be another sign it was faked. But to my eye, this appears appropriately tired, as you say."

Mr. Moretti squared his shoulders. "Well, you've set my mind at ease, Dr. Westlake. My habit is to make my purchases personally or through my buyer in Cairo or Luxor, but when I came across this opportunity, I couldn't pass it up."

Only half listening now, Lauren leaned in closer, studying the figures once more.

"You noticed something else." Wariness edged his voice.

"It may be nothing to worry about," she hedged.

"Too late for that." Mr. Moretti's smile looked more like a grimace. "What's giving you pause?"

She straightened, gathering her wits about her. The last thing she wanted to do was cause alarm unnecessarily, especially since his relationship with the Met was already tenuous. But he was already agitated by her hesitation, so she drew a deep breath and forged ahead.

"It's the coloring in the corner. Do you see this body of water? It would have been painted blue."

He frowned at the spot in question. "It is painted blue."

Lauren inwardly cringed, uncomfortable with correcting him. "That's a shade of green."

"Regardless, it matches the facsimile I have in my library. The British Museum's Sir E.A. Wallis Budge's elephant folio from 1890. I believe that's the standard, is it not?"

"It is, but not many people know the story behind the printing of that book. Reproducing color illustrations of the Book of the Dead was exorbitantly expensive, you see. There were only a handful of sections in the original scrolls that had been painted blue. In order to save money, Budge's publisher decided not to add the blue ink, and to instead substitute this aqua-green already used throughout the book. The variation is slight, and not many would even notice the difference."

Christina leaned over the glass, her bob coming to points on either side of her face. "But how do you know?"

"It's my job," she said, as humbly as she could. "And I've seen an original in the British Museum."

Mr. Moretti clapped his hands, and a servant appeared at the door. "Drinks."

The servant went to the sideboard and began filling glasses. From the smell of it, he wasn't pouring grape juice. Or near beer.

"I'm sorry if I've disappointed you, sir," Lauren said, suddenly anxious to make her exit. "Everything else about this section of papyrus is so convincing, I almost didn't catch it."

When the servant appeared at her elbow, Mr. and Mrs. Moretti plucked two of the glasses off the silver tray and waited for her to take the third.

"I—I don't drink."

"Yours is only a fruit cocktail, sweetie," Christina said. "Go on."

Lauren took a tentative sip from the tumbler and found it to be as sweet as cherries.

Mr. Moretti cocked his head and looked at her with an intensity that might flay the skin from her thoughts. "So you're sure this is a forgery?"

"I wish I wasn't." She looked again at the beautiful, meticulously done piece. "But I'm sure." She took another sip.

"Maybe I haven't been clear." Gripping the telephone tighter, Joe kept his voice as cool as he could. It was exhausting, being this polite. He really didn't have time for it. "I'm not selling anything. I spoke with Mr. and Mrs. Vandermeer at the Napoleon Society gala two nights ago. We were introduced by Dr. Westlake, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art."

"The Vandermeers have already made their donations for the year. Their charitable giving cycle will begin again after the new year, so you may make an application after that."

Joe white-knuckled the end of his rope with the Vandermeers' secretary. Why didn't these people answer their own phones, for pity's sake? "I'm not asking for charity, either. As I said earlier, I'm calling from the police department. I want to make sure your employers have not been victim to a crime."

"I assure you, nothing has been stolen, and they are both in perfect health."

"Would you take a message, please, and have one of them call me at their earliest convenience? If I don't hear from them soon, my only recourse will be to pay a personal visit." He imagined none of that ilk would appreciate a police car at their home for all the neighbors to see. The news might even make it into Town Topics , the society rag their type adored.

After hanging up, Joe leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. He'd been fighting a black mood all day, and dead-end phone calls like the one he'd just ended were only part of the reason.

Across the desks from him, Oscar McCormick ate a corned beef and sauerkraut on rye. Loudly. It didn't smell good.

"You couldn't wait until after your shift to eat dinner?"

"Hm?" He looked up, a little too delighted at having been addressed. "Have you had one of these yet? If you had, you wouldn't wonder why I'd eat one at any time of day. I'd eat it for breakfast."

"You have eaten it for breakfast," Joe reminded him.

"Exactly." He grinned.

Joe shook his head and bit his tongue. The kid probably had no idea that had been Connor's favorite thing to order from Katz's, the Jewish deli on Houston Street, less than a mile from headquarters. The first time McCormick had brought the sandwich into the station, Joe had smelled it before McCormick had even come in the room and plopped down at Connor's old desk. For a fraction of a second, Joe's senses had tricked him into thinking Connor was back, that it had all been one big misunderstanding and things could go back to the way they'd been. The way things ought to be.

"Hey." McCormick brightened. "Next time I go, I'll get one for you, too, okay? This is the best thing on the menu."

"Make it a pastrami with mustard," Joe muttered.

Over McCormick's protests, Joe straightened up his desk, locked the drawers, and left. He needed to let off some steam.

The police academy occupied the fourth floor of the station, including physical fitness equipment. He changed clothes in the locker room, stretched, and started running on the track.

Breathe in. Breathe out. He always thought better while he was running. Then again, right now, he wouldn't have minded not thinking at all. Frustration simmered at how little progress he'd made in the last month with the hunt for forgers.

Circles. Joe was running in circles, literally, and he was stuck in the circuitous tracks in his head. His lungs burned as he lost track of laps and pushed himself to his limits before finally calling it quits. Hitting the showers, he wished he could rinse away the foul temper he'd been soaking in all day.

By the time he was clean again, he at least felt ready to call Lauren and see if she'd had better luck arranging meetings with collectors. It was after five, so he had the operator ring her apartment. After a brief hold, he was connected.

"She's not home yet, Detective," one of her roommates told him. "I have to go out, but I can leave a note asking her to call you at the station."

The last thing he wanted to do was spend another minute across from Oscar McCormick and Connor's old desk. "I'm leaving the station for the night," he told her. "I'll head up your way and wait for her in the lobby."

After a brief ride on the subway, Joe emerged and walked the rest of the distance to the Beresford. Wind bit his cheeks, announcing winter had made its entrance ahead of its calendar appointment, as it normally did in New York.

The rush of taxis on Central Park West filled his ears. Taillamps shone red as vehicles braked their way through the precipitation. Flakes swirled in the fan-shaped arcs of light cast by lampposts along the sidewalk. As he approached the Beresford, a Studebaker Six rolled up to the curb and parked, exhaust pluming from its tail pipe. The rear door opened, and a woman stepped out on unsteady legs, a lock of long hair tumbling over one shoulder as she slammed the door shut again.

Joe frowned. "Lauren?"

Adjusting her hat, she looked at him and smiled. "Joe!" Immediately, she put her hand to her head again and grimaced.

At once, he was at her elbow, supporting her. She reeked of cigarettes. "I thought you didn't smoke."

"I don't, although you'd never believe that by the smell of me, would you? The Morettis both smoked in the car with me. I couldn't get away from it."

Her breath carried an all-too-familiar scent. "Have you been drinking?"

"Hm? Fruit cocktail," she mumbled.

The doorman opened the door. "You all right, Dr. Westlake?"

"Fine, George. Thank you. Although..." She turned bleary eyes on Joe.

"I'll see you safely to your apartment," he said, fighting to keep the edge out of his voice. Something was going on.

She smiled and patted his chest. "Gentleman," she called him.

The words forming in his mind were anything but chivalrous. By virtue of his self-control alone, he made it through the lobby, up the elevator, and down the hall to her apartment without letting any of them escape.

Inside her living room, he set her on the couch and took the armchair across from her. "What were you doing tonight?"

He didn't bother hiding his surprise when she told him the Morettis had rolled up in the drive behind the museum as she was leaving it. "How did they know when you'd leave work? How did they know you take the rear exit?"

She frowned. "When did you get to be so suspicious? Oh, I know. It's part of the job."

"Actually, my father taught me that long before I wore a badge." He found it ironic that the most valuable lesson he learned from Pop was one his father never intended to teach. As a teen, Joe couldn't help but question why his father's behavior didn't match his words. Everything was fine, Pop had said. No need to worry. But he paced instead of slept. A crate of rotten tomatoes reduced him to tears, and he exploded at Joe for taking the bus when he could have walked and saved a few cents. Pop even yelled at Mama—just once—for being too generous with portion sizes, and then stormed out of the restaurant, disappearing for hours. Joe and his brother finally found Pop and peeled him off the bar where he'd apparently spent enough money to pass out drunk. The confrontation that followed Pop's uncharacteristic behavior and binge was one Joe preferred to forget. But no one was allowed to treat Mama that way. Not even Pop.

So, yeah, Joe was suspicious, and he wouldn't apologize for it.

"Well, in this case, there's nothing shady going on," Lauren said. "I usually leave at quitting time, right around five. I'm a creature of habit, and they must have noticed. It wouldn't be hard."

"Okay, but why couldn't they pick up the phone instead? And are you in the habit of climbing into your patrons' vehicles?"

Lauren waved a hand dismissively, as though he were an overreacting parent. Fine. If that was so, she was behaving like a na?ve child. She closed her eyes and leaned back her head. "I didn't want to imply they were dangerous people by refusing. All they wanted was for me to examine a recently acquired papyrus and see if it was fake."

Nothing about this made sense. "You told me two nights ago you were sure Moretti didn't have any forgeries."

"Well, I'm sorry to say, I was wrong. We can't track it, either. He purchased it from someone who bought it in Cairo. It was forged in Egypt by a true artist, but one who we'll never meet, I'm sure. Which is why he served a round of drinks."

Joe stifled a groan. Either Ray Moretti had served genuine alcohol smuggled in from Europe, or he'd served locally distilled alcohol, which could make a person sick, blind, paralyzed, or dead. "Tell me you didn't," he said.

"I told them I don't drink, so they gave me a fruit cocktail."

"Uh-huh, and how is that drink making you feel right about now?"

"What?" Her eyes popped open. "You think—"

"Lauren, a fruit cocktail is still a cocktail. If there hadn't been alcohol in it, you wouldn't feel the way you do."

"Oh no." She covered her mouth. "Please don't tell me you're going to arrest them. I'm supposed to improve relations with them. I can't be the cause of this kind of trouble."

Lauren was far too concerned with pleasing people. Then again, she always had been. She wanted to keep the peace. He wanted justice. You couldn't always have both.

"Prohibition is a funny thing," he told her. "It's not illegal to drink in private. It's only illegal to produce alcohol, sell it, distribute it, or drink from a flask in public. So as long as you didn't pay for that little dose, I've no cause for legal action."

Still wearing her coat, she kicked off her shoes and folded her legs beneath her, leaning into the side of the sofa. "Good."

But it wasn't good. None of this was. Joe paced to the window that looked over Central Park. It was dark, with nothing to see but lampposts, traffic, and his own dour reflection. He looked older than thirty-five. He felt older, too. By a lot.

She'd surprised him tonight. He was sick to death of surprises. They felt like deception, and deception felt like betrayal. Betrayal meant he'd been hoodwinked, and that felt a lot like shame.

"Don't drink anything if you don't know where it comes from," he said. "It's dangerous. You clearly have no idea how people are making liquor these days. The stuff they put in there isn't fit for rats."

"Okay, Joe. I won't do it again."

"And for the love of all that is holy, I don't want you going off on your own to people's homes, no matter how well you think you know them or how trustworthy they seem. Especially when you don't have your own transportation out of there."

"You're yelling at me. Stop it." She curled into the corner of the sofa, hugging a decorative pillow.

He hadn't really been yelling.

Joe looked around the apartment and realized it had no kitchen. It did, however, have a type of wet bar. He filled a glass with water from the sink and brought it to her. "Drink. The water will dilute the alcohol in your stomach. When was the last time you ate?"

"Lunch. Or—no, I skipped lunch."

Given her build and intolerance to alcohol, it was a wonder she hadn't passed out yet.

"Do you have food in the apartment?"

"Maybe?" She sat up straighter and drank. "I try to keep chocolate in case of emergencies, but I've exhausted that supply."

"Pitiful," he mumbled, more to himself than to her. "What you need is protein to soak up the sugars. I'll be back."

Having a badge had its perks. Figuring the kitchen was active since the dinner hour wasn't over, he located it, entered without hesitation, flashed his ID, and requisitioned two steaks with sides of mashed potatoes and green beans topped with almond and bacon. Then he returned to Lauren's apartment with the tray.

"Room service." He set the plates and cutlery on the table and told her to join him.

"I don't remember you being this bossy," she said as he pulled out the chair and seated her.

"I don't remember you being this reckless. You have no concept of the danger you courted."

Her eyes were closed, lashes dark against her cheeks. At first, he thought she was studiously ignoring him, but then he realized she was saying grace. "And thank you, dear Lord, for keeping me safe, despite my walking into the lion's den, if what Joe believes is true. Thank you for bringing him here to take care of me while he scolds me into oblivion. Amen." She smiled up at him, apparently unintimidated. "Let's eat."

Joe cut into his steak with more gusto than the task required. His middle clenched, but only because of what could have happened. He wasn't speaking in hypotheticals. Women disappeared in this town. They were preyed upon, sometimes by men they knew and trusted. They were assaulted. Worse.

Lauren closed her eyes and swallowed, clearly enjoying her meal. Then she turned those blue eyes on him. "I can see you've had a long day."

His hand went to the scruff shadowing his jaw. He had shaved, but that had been before four o'clock this morning. "I'm worried about you." There, he'd said it. "I pray to the same God you do, and I do thank Him that you're safe. That doesn't mean you get to throw caution to the wind."

If he wanted to put a finer point on it, he could talk about all the other victims he'd seen who most likely had cried out for divine assistance in the hour of their ultimate need. He'd never pretend to know the mind of God—why He answered some prayers and not others. But Joe did know the minds of criminals.

"You're only hunting forgeries because I asked you to. If something were to happen to you while you're doing this job, that's my responsibility. I can't let that happen, Lauren. I can't."

She stopped chewing and placed her fork on her plate, giving him her full attention. "I'm so sorry you were worried. I didn't realize you had so quickly resumed the role of guardian for my well-being."

"Yeah, well, the position didn't seem to be taken." Then again, maybe he'd gotten this all wrong. "Is it?" He took a drink of water and tried again. "That is, am I overstepping here? Is there another man already—and I'm not talking about your father."

Her eyes narrowed. "If you're asking if I'm seeing anyone, the answer is no."

"I thought you were. I heard that you were engaged a while ago."

A rueful smile curved her lips. "A lifetime ago. I was twenty-four and had recently finished graduate school. Richard had just enlisted to fight in the war in Europe. Did you go, Joe? I thought of you and wondered. I prayed for your safe return, just in case."

She had? That surprised him. "I stayed. The department needed a corps of us veteran officers to stay behind as a stabilizing force." He'd been twenty-seven years old when the US joined the fight. So many young men had enlisted right away and spent months in camps, waiting to go over. Many of them never saw action before the war ended. Joe hadn't felt like he was shirking a patriotic duty by remaining with the police. He'd been fulfilling a duty he'd sworn an oath to years prior. His service was protecting the home front by upholding law and order. He'd never regretted that choice. "What happened when Richard enlisted?"

Lauren sighed. "He wanted me to marry him before he left, but I wasn't ready. I told him I'd wait for him, and that we could chart a path when he came back. It wasn't enough for Richard. He went to war without saying good-bye."

"And that was it?"

She lifted a forkful of beans. "That was it. Never heard from him again. It's all for the best, though. My work doesn't leave much time for relationships outside of a few."

The scoundrel left her. Abandoned her. Just like her father had done. He hated to think of the heartache Richard had caused her, but if he wasn't willing to wait, he wasn't worth much.

"So the position is open," he said, his tone much lighter than he actually felt. "I formally accept. As the guardian of your well-being, I'm responsible for your safety while you consult on my investigation. In all seriousness, I need you for this work, Lauren, but promise me you won't go into other people's homes alone anymore. If you're going, I'm going. Clear?"

"Clear. Thank you," she added. "For caring."

Joe didn't want to admit, even to himself, how much he did.