“Vroom, vroom,” Harvey answered.
“Good.” Enrique nodded, turning to leave.
“Papi—” Alma chased after him. “Is there really nothing more that can be done?” she whispered urgently.
Enrique shrugged and replied in a tone that made it clear he wanted to be heard. “It is Harvey’s private property. He is entitled to do anything he wants to it. Losing the windows would be regrettable, I agree. But only he can decide if it would be more or less regrettable than losing his deal. Perhaps you can help him with that decision, but not me.”
Noting the sound of pattering of rain, he slipped on his coat and placed his hard hat into his duffle bag. Then he kissed his daughter on the forehead and promptly departed, leaving Harvey alone with Alma to fend for himself.
“Your father is an extremely efficient man. I always liked that about him.”
“You’re gloating.”
“Me? Gloating? I wouldn’t know how to gloat, even if I tried.” He stared at her, his smile beaming brighter.
“Congratulations. You win. You’re getting exactly what you wanted.”
“I want you not to hate me.”
“I don’t hate you, Harvey. I just hate everything you do.”
“Yeah, for some reason that’s not very comforting.”
She turned away from him and headed for the front door.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“I’m supposed to take you there, remember?”
“I prefer to walk.”
“In a thunderstorm?” He grabbed her hand, but she shook it off.
“Yes, absolutely. I prefer to take my chances on getting stuck by lightning over having to spend another minute with you.”
Now, she was being almost as melodramatic as he could be.
“Come on…don’t do this.” He reached out to her again, but her eyes warned him that she would bite off his hand like a dog if he dared to try.
“Are you going to destroy this building? Yes or no?”
He hedged. “Alma, everything is not always black and white.”
Ignoring him, she crowded into his space like a boxer waiting for an opening to throw the first punch. “Yes or no, Harvey?”
He looked into her searing brown eyes, realizing he couldn’t lie to her anymore about anything. “Yeah, probably yes,” he reluctantly confirmed. “Because if I don’t destroy it now, Jacques will just come back to me tomorrow with another preservation summons, claiming this building is a shrine or a mausoleum or private chapel of Chicago’s most beloved vaudeville entertainer, Foie Gras Ménage à Trois.”
Alma narrowed her eyes at him, silently condemning him to man-childhood. He distinctly heard her unspoken words.
“Good luck on building the tallest towers in the world, Harvey. If you succeed, they will serve as proof that your ambition for money and fame are exactly the reasons why we’re no longer married.”
Her words struck him like a slap as she turned to leave, fully prepared to abandon him forever.
“Then tell me why I should save the building?” he called after her.
She stopped in her tracks, keeping her back toward him.
“Tell me the windows are valuable Louis Comfort Tiffany masterpieces. Give me a reason—a concrete reason—to at least consider ruining my net worth over them.”
“I can’t confirm that Harvey,” she said slowly. “These windows don’t have signatures. Many of Tiffany’s earliest windows weren’t signed and it would take weeks of research and documentation for me to confirm that with professional authority.”
“Then tell me they’re some of the rarest examples of stained glass that you’ve seen in all your years evaluating antiques.”
Alma stared at Harvey through the grey muted light of the rainy day. She flicked the headlamp back on and studied the nearest windows in the bright beam. “They’re lovely examples of nineteenth-century opalescent stained glass. But the ones on the ground floor are small and secular, and their flower motifs and color palette aren’t particularly rare or original. And even the balcony window, the most impressive of the collection, is most likely the work of one of Tiffany’s studio artisans or craftsmen, or a competitor who admired his work and skillfully replicated it.”
“So it’s far-fetched to think they’re true original Tiffany masterpieces,” he replied, seeking out support for his case, but he didn’t get the confirmation he wanted. Instead, she shifted her helmet’s light onto the shattered marble floor where they had discovered the metallic box and skeleton key inside it.
“What about the key hidden in the floor?” she retorted. “And the message in the Tiffany wall paper at the Field’s building? And the survey description in the frame of Tiffany’s Guiding Angel, leading us back here?”
Harvey shrugged. “What about them, Alma? You tell me.”
They hopelessly locked eyes, their impasse as frequent and familiar to Harvey as his inability to make things right between them. Lightning flashed outside. Alma flinched as the crack of thunder followed, rattling the building’s crumbling foundation. It was all very gothic and tragic and menacing, Harvey reflected. Fitting, since Jane Eyre was one of her favorite novels.
Silence smothered their bitter deadlock until an awkward sound beneath their feet became too difficult to ignore.
Alma was the first to break into an uncomfortable smile. “So…what’s that noise?”
“You mean the noise that sounds like a ghost taking a very long piss?”
She shut her eyes and relaxed into tempered laughter as the singular stream of water continued to pour down a clanking drain pipe. “I’m afraid to even consider that option.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely not Casper the Friendly Ghost.” Harvey paused, listening hard to the gradual crescendo of urination. “It sounds like it’s coming from the basement.”
“Basement? What basement?”
“The basement that’s below us. It’s the only way a building like this could still be standing after a hundred years…with a foundation dug and poured beneath the frost line.”
“So what’s in the basement?” she asked.
Harvey glanced at her, knowing exactly what she was thinking, and wanting nothing to do with it. “Not a long-lost, hundred-million-dollar Tiffany stained-glass window, I’m certain of that.”
Like a dismissive reply, she retrieved the sledgehammer from the corner and handed it to him. “Two or three more strikes through the floor, and I’ll be able to shine my headlamp into the hole, just to see what’s down there.”
“Two or three more strikes?” He gawked at her. “You say that like I’m the almighty Thor, and wielding my hammer is easier than living among mortals and stringing together a coherent sentence.”
Alma crossed her arms, challenging him. “The comparison is not that far off.”
Harvey hiked the hammer over his shoulder and glared at her. Some piece of work.
“Yeah, thanks, but no thanks. Two days ago, I was trying to impress you. But now, we’ve already had sex and you still detest me, so I don’t see how sledging through a solid marble floor, and crippling myself like Quasimodo, is going to win me any brownie points.”
She paused to consider his ability to earn brownie points. “Well…I always had a soft spot for Quasimodo. It’s one of the reasons why The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of my favorite novels.”
“Yeah, so is Frankenstein,” he quipped. “But every man has his limits.”
“I’ll give you a massage afterwards,” she said, clearly annoyed that he was being as uncooperative as a two-year old.
He considered her offer—carefully. “Where?”
“On – your – back,” she answered emphatically.
Disappointed, Harvey dropped the sledgehammer from his shoulder and handed it back to her. “I’d just rather use the stairs.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Stairs?!
Alma coughed through the plume of dust that overwhelmed them
after Harvey battered through the old iron padlock on the pine door with the sledgehammer.
Why didn’t he tell her there were freaking stairs? And a freaking basement?
Flicking on her headlamp, she shone it down the stairwell, illuminating a series of modest, descending planks leading into the underbelly of the building. The cold, dank air reeked of mildew and rotting leaves. Feeling like she was submerging herself underwater, she pinched her nose and held her breath, taking the first step down the staircase.
Harvey yanked her back by the straps of her overalls. “You must really think I’m an asshole if you believe I’m letting you go down there ahead of me.”
Holding her like a cat by the scruff, he deposited her behind him and blocked her attempts to resume the lead.
“Really, Harvey? After all these years, you still think I can’t handle myself?”
“Oh, I definitely know you can,” he said, assessing the stability of the century-old staircase. “And every time you told me about trespassing into some abandoned shell of a building for lost antiques, my heart almost stopped. Which is why I’m absolutely not letting you do it now.”
Shining her headlamp ahead of him, she caught a glimpse of the basement. “I’ve been through dingy crawl spaces and creepy attics that were way worse than this. And it’s not exactly trespassing if I’m with the owner of the property.”
“Exactly. So let’s leave the unfortunate event of getting crushed by a loose support beam to me.”
She heaved a sigh, just to ensure he heard her excessive eye roll. But secretly, deep down, she appreciated his attempt to protect her
“Well, there certainly isn’t anything to find down here,” he called back, sweeping his flashlight across the dirty wooden floors and crumbling stone foundation. Soggy bundles of old newspapers and cords of rotten firewood littered the space along with pine benches and wooden tables buried beneath piles of grey soot and rubble.
“There’s your fireplace,” Alma joked, nodding over to the cast iron stove toppled onto its side like a useless heap of junk.
“Yeah, not doing much good warming anyone down here.” He turned to the right, spotting something else that was pot metal black and overturned in the corner.
With her spotlight, Alma trailed the intonation in his voice. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure…” Ducking underneath a dislodged rotting ceiling beam, Harvey waded through mounds of unidentifiable debris to the opposite end of the basement.
Alma followed closely behind him. “Harvey…I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you probably shouldn’t be charging ahead like that.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
She reached out to brush off something crawling on his shoulder blade. “Because there are definitely going be to spiders down here.”
Freezing in his tracks, Harvey held up his hands and shivered in revulsion. “Just tell me you still have that key, so we can get out of here.”
“What key?”
“The skeleton key,” he punctuated.
“Ohhhhh-hhhh,” she acknowledged, patting down her overalls, realizing it was likely in one of her pockets. “Voila!” she exclaimed, whipping it out of the bib’s pocket and handing it to him.
“Good. Now, just keep your light shining on me, and if you see anything else crawling up my back, slap me like I’m your greedy, egocentric, opportunistic ex-husband.”
“No problem,” she smarted back.
Crouching onto his knees, he hoisted the black metal strongbox upright onto its feet.
“Is that a safe?” she inquired.
“Yep,” he confirmed.
“And you really think our key is going to fit it?” Her heart raced as she pondered all the possibilities.
Slipping the key into the keyhole, Harvey grinned like a bank robber when it clicked to the right. “Yep.”
The moment its rusty door screeched open, Alma rushed forward, squirreling in front of him to obtain an unobscured view of the safe’s interior.
He stepped back, allowing her the honors of the big reveal. “Stacks of cash, bags of diamonds, bars of gold. I’ll be content with one out of three.”
But when Alma didn’t respond, he glanced over her shoulder and released an obscene noise of disgust. “Tell me that’s not the only thing in there.” He bent down and swiped his hand through the safe, confirming there was nothing else inside the strongbox. “I braved spiders for that? A photograph?”
She gazed at the photograph. “Harvey…this is big. Really big,” she whispered.
“Not bigger than diamonds or gold, Alma.”
“Yes…maybe—” Her voice choked up, almost unable to speak. “It’s a photograph of the Eternal Love.”
Giving her the benefit of the doubt, he peered over her shoulder and examined the photograph again. “Alma…all I see is a black and white picture of two men, shaking hands in some old-fashioned room that is one velvet curtain and crystal ball away from resembling the place where we got hitched in Las Vegas.”
Alma looked up from the photograph and frowned. “There was a crystal ball?”
“I’m not surprised you don’t remember. You were so tipsy that you giggled all the way through our vows. But I clearly remember the fortune-telling Elvis pronouncing us man and wife.”
“Harvey—” she said, adamantly shoving the photograph into his face. “Look closer at the reflection in the mirror directly behind the two men.”
Harvey squinted harder. “Maybe a woman. Maybe a child. Maybe it’s a stained-glass window or maybe it’s just a painting. Alma…you’re really reaching here.”
“Now, look directly at the two men. Look at them, Harvey. One is Louis Comfort Tiffany and the other is Marshall Field.”
“Or,” Harvey countered, “just two men with white beards who bear uncanny resemblances to Santa Claus.”
She ignored him. “This is incredible. I have to figure out where this photograph was taken.” She started toward the staircase until he snagged her by the elbow, restraining her.
“You’re not going anywhere without me, remember? Your father specifically assigned me the role of your chauffeur.”
“Then chauffeur me to the Chicago Historical Society so I can verify the authenticity of this photograph.”
“No, Alma. I’m done.” He resolutely stepped back, releasing his hold on her. “I’ve got a deal to close by tomorrow, and I can’t keep going on like this.”
“But Harvey…if it’s true that this photograph really shows Tiffany and Marshall Field together in a room with one of his windows in the background—possibly the window we’ve been searching for—then it would only prove that this building is significant in some way to Tiffany.”
“This building?” Harvey questioned her, spreading his hands out to emphasize the filthy remains of whatever “this” used to be. “Do you really think if this building was something important to one of the most esteemed designers of the twentieth century, it would’ve been left like this?”
Alma nodded, as if he had just made her point for her. “Tiffany died a broken, penniless man. His company went bankrupt and looters ransacked his studios and destroyed many of his works in order to steal valuable bronze and copper parts. So yes, this building could be nothing at all, or maybe it’s an example of what happens when people value bars of gold and bags of diamonds more than preserving history for future generations.”
“Well…when you put it that way, you make it seem like I’m a monumental asshole.”
“So don’t be an asshole then,” Alma challenged him.
“Are you still going to the gala tonight with Jacques? Or will you consider going with me instead,” he challenged her back.
“Are you trying to make me a deal?”
“No, I just want to know where I stand.”
“I can’t separate who you are from the things you do, Harvey.”
“But this is business. You have to recognize that.”
“It wasn’t always business for y
ou. Not always. There was a time when we would have worked together to save this building, or at least you would’ve supported me in my quest to discover its secrets before the world decided they weren’t worthy of being discovered. Now, you’re on the other side, battling against me, and there’s no way for me not to take it personally.”
Without warning, Axl Rose screamed out “Welcome to the Jungle” from Harvey’s phone. He fixed his steely blue eyes on her, recognizing it as an unspoken test, before finally breaking away and answering the call.
“What the hell is going on down there?” his beast witch real estate lawyer shrieked.
Alma could hear every word of Nicolette’s banshee voice, matching the pitch of Axl Rose’s screech. “I just got the phone call from City Hall. That was the fastest clearance of title I’ve ever seen. How in hell did you do that, Harvey?”
He shifted his phone against his jawline. “Well, let’s just say I got some help from an old friend.”
“She better not be prettier than me!” Beast Witch cried out.
“Certainly not as skillful at making me money, darlin’,” he replied.
Man-child, Alma seethed, turning away from him.
Beast Witch peeled into excessive grating laughter. “Well, save some of your celebrating for tonight. What time are you picking me up?”
The gala, Alma thought, suddenly remembering they were going together.
Harvey paused, glancing over at Alma.
Was he waiting for her to change her mind? Was this her last chance to move beyond their differences and reconcile everything that had separated them?
When he was only greeted with silence, he deliberately turned his back on her. “Eight o’clock,” he answered into the phone, like the verdict in the trial of their relationship. “And don’t forget to bring me that matching tie.”
He ended the call and pushed past Alma toward the staircase.
“So that’s it? You’re destroying the building, selling the property, and celebrating your victory?”
The defiance in her voice halted him in his tracks. “You can’t expect me to be the same man that you married. People have to be allowed to grow and change and move on. So, that’s what I’m doing, Alma. I’m moving on.”
Exes (Billionaire Romance #3) Page 22