“Wait,” she said as he started to slide out of the booth, “wait. It’s gone.” When Bale looked at her, his eyes were wild. “The plant. The Euphorbia. The lieutenant told me it wasn’t at the scene of the—crime.”
Bale went utterly still. “Are you telling me it was stolen?” His voice was so low she could hardly hear him.
It was important to be clear. What could she say for sure? “The cops didn’t find it. The plant is not there.” She searched Bale’s face, trying to gauge the impact of that information. He was unreadable. As he told her he’d be back, the waiter arrived with the cheese plate, nearly dropping it as Bale pushed by him. Val watched him head quickly for the entrance to Old Town and step outside, settling his phone by his ear. She broke off a corner of a slice of Gorgonzola and discovered she was so profoundly tired she could hardly lift it to her mouth. Even chewing a cracker felt beyond her. She’d been drop-kicked into a world she knew nothing about—cops, monks, secretive dead boys, disappearing plants, fake manuscripts, clogged pipes in Beverly Hills, and an Ivy League Ivy who had it in her to make kind gestures. Not even eight hours’ sleep could revive her. And she’d promised Aunt Greta to meet her at the office of the Hunter College professor who had a beef with a holding at the Morgan Library at noon tomorrow.
Val felt small. Smaller. Alice after “Drink Me.” Her clothes were looser. Her shoes hung half off her feet. Her silver bangle bracelet could slide right off her wrist. And in her mind neurons were sparking and popping into oblivion like stars. Get to go cheer for New Jersey. Leaning her head against the paneled wall, listening to the bar noise like a distant love song, Val closed her eyes and didn’t give a damn if she was vulnerable. Before she drifted off, her fingers curled around the phone in her lap.
“Val, I have to go.” A hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped. Bale was sitting beside her. Something was different. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I’m staying at the Iroquois over on 44th.” He slipped a business card under her hand. “Here’s my number, if you need it.” She squinted at him, caught the sharp smell of rain and citrus, and ran her hand over her eyes, trying to wake up. The wine weighed her down. “I called the abbey,” he said, barely audible. “It’s the middle of the night over there, but I managed to get one of the more sleepless monks—” He winced a smile at her. “He’s checking something out,” he went on, distracted, “and will get back to me.”
“And you need to be alone.” She nodded slowly, not really understanding a thing. Her fingers tried scrabbling at her coat, which Bale managed to slip out from under her.
“Right.”
As she pushed herself out of the booth, he held her coat open for her and eased her into it. “Did you find out something about the plant?” she said softly, buttoning up with fingers that felt too small for any serious work.
“It’s not a plant.” Bale pulled three twenties out of a black billfold and left them on the table. As he straightened to his full height, he slowed, leaning his head close to hers. His breath ruffled her hair. “I’m pretty sure what Adrian found,” he said tensely, “is not a plant.”
8
She discovered the business card the next morning when she was walking to the subway in the cool, shimmering spring sunlight and rooted around in her purse for her Ray-Bans. Her one extravagance that had nothing to do with having aromatic oils rubbed into her body twice a year, which was all she could afford. On this morning after Adrian’s murder, Val tried to trap the fact of it in some inaccessible part of her brain, for the time being, so she could earn her paycheck and get through the editorial day. She slipped on the sunglasses and looked at the card Bale had given her the night before. The logo on the left side was brown, white and gold, featuring a crown, a shield with three stars, and an upraised sword. The motto: Zelo Zelatus Sum Pro Domino Deo Exercituum.
Br. Antony Bale, Cellarer
Burnham Norton Abbey
Sidestrand, Norfolk NR27, U.K.
1-216-533-6174 (US)
01793 744860 (UK)
Cellarer. Did the abbey make wine? Was Bale a vintner? When she realized she was famished—nothing since that corner of Gorgonzola last night, which, she realized, even Adrian’s brother hadn’t shared. It felt disrespectful to Adrian somehow. The things of the flesh. For her best friend, no longer a joy, no longer a bother. No longer an issue.
Hunger, sex, the first gray hair, the latest UTI, the inescapable root canal. Bills, Facebook, dark thoughts about growing old alone and forgetting things like love. Would that happen to her? Had Adrian simply been spared?
Val turned into a Starbucks across Third Avenue from the subway entrance, snagged a tall dark roast of the day and a butter croissant, which she tucked into her red tote. By the time she slung her tote and her purse onto her mostly clean desk at Words on Fire, the coffee was half gone, but the croissant was still ahead of her. There were a couple of new yellow Post-it notes stuck to her laptop, the red light was flashing on her office phone console, and she realized with horror she hadn’t charged her iPhone before falling into bed the night before. Down to seventeen percent charge. Val swore, then tugged open a desk drawer and pushed around the junk until she found a charger.
Four missed calls, all gone to voicemail.
Aunt Greta, reminding her of the noon meeting at Hunter.
Lieutenant Cleary, needing to clarify some points about her interview.
James Killian, wondering if they could get together to discuss a new project. Val frowned. In terms of Killian’s present book, whole chapters needed to be rearranged. Content needed shifting. If Killian could lift that swill to the level of social commentary, they might really have something. But she’d have to hear him out about his “new project.”
Finally, Antony Bale. “I could use your help,” was all he said. “Call me.” His message clocked in at 10:32 last evening. She’d already been asleep for two hours.
Killian she could put off until the afternoon, possibly even tomorrow. No need to call Greta. Cleary she’d postpone until after she’d gotten some food in her stomach and some serious work done. For a bad moment she wondered exactly what needed to be cleared up about her interview yesterday. Val had thought it had been a conversation—hell, not an interview. Her arms went cold when she wondered whether Homicide was thinking she could possibly be implicated in Adrian’s murder. No, if her imagination slid off in that direction, she was a goner. Good for nothing.
So she made the call she had angled to make all along.
She snapped her fingers against the white vellum card and called back Br. Antony Bale, Cellarer.
They agreed to meet at six p.m.—somehow, Val would have to make it—on the front steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. There was a five thirty Mass that Bale wanted to attend at the end of his daily two hours spent in contemplation. Soon, a trip to the Coleman-Witt to see the scene of the crime—if he could get in—and talk first to the director and then to the guards who found Adrian. To Val, he sounded rushed. When she tried to prolong the conversation—Bale was the closest living relative to her dead friend—by asking whether he had heard back from the insomniac monk, Bale put her off. “Let’s talk at six.” A beat. Then: “I can’t do this over the phone.” After they said goodbye, she wondered why he suddenly seemed to be throwing himself into the investigation. For the homicide team, it was still early days. Had they lost his confidence that quickly? What had Adrian’s brother learned that—did what?—upped the ante for him somehow between hearing about her murder and the day’s objective to study the crime scene?
The Euphorbia milii. The plant Adrian had enticed Val to come see, the plant she said she couldn’t hang on to for very long, the plant that wasn’t a plant…was at the heart of it somehow. What had Adrian gotten herself into? As Val pulled apart the croissant as though it was a party favor with a cheap little toy inside, she stared at nothing. In her experience, answers never just offered themselves up, neatly
displayed and labeled like an exhibit. She powered up her laptop and scanned the New York Times homepage.
There it was in the Metro section: Local Curator Slain. Adrian Bale, Coleman-Witt, Egyptian and Sumerian Art and Antiquities, found dead in her office. Suspected foul play. A quote from Terrell Hampton, museum guard who discovered her body. Bale often worked early before the museum opened. A quote from Eva Toscano, director, who praised the murdered curator’s expertise and professionalism and mourned her death. Bale was working on several projects at the time of her death. A quote from Lt. Cleary of NYPD Homicide inviting persons with information to call this number.
In short—Val closed the page—Adrian Bale had been reduced to just another violent crime statistic. Maybe, when it came right down to it, that wasn’t so bad. Somehow Cleary had squelched any mention of the security camera’s being shot out—for that matter, no early theories of the crime were either ruled in or ruled out. No persons of interest. Yet. No brothers of the victim, no best friends. Val could see how the coverage left a lot of freedom of movement—without exciting any anxieties for the person responsible. The killer. It was a new thought for Val, this killer. Had that person overheard Adrian leaving a message for Val? Or not? And was that message totally irrelevant to the murder? Right before she died, Adrian had unwrapped an urn given to her by Antony Bale’s prior. She had made an exciting discovery: a “stowaway.” She had called Val.
And she had died.
With a funny little frisson that made her doubt even the smallest things around her, Val wondered if she herself was at risk. Not possible. Not at all possible. She had no connection to the urn, and no connection to the plant—whether or not it was an actual plant or, for that matter, missing. The sole link to Adrian on the day of the murder was…her phone. Could the killer have overheard Adrian leaving Val the voicemail? Could the killer have assumed Val knew more about whatever was at the heart of the murder than she actually did? Adrian’s phone held Val’s contact information. Where was that phone? Tucked safely by the CSI team into an evidence bag and shelved at the 20th precinct? Or—
In the hands of the killer?
Bumping her hip as she rounded the corner of her desk, Val opened her office door with a clammy hand and stood in the doorway. Trying not to sway, she gripped the frame. Right at that moment she could use some of Antony Bale’s quiet poise. With no more information than she had, all Val knew was that she had to stay busy every hour of the livelong workday until she could meet Greta at Hunter College and talk to someone completely unrelated to Adrian’s murder…and then on the steps of St. Patrick’s soak up whatever news Adrian’s brother had discovered since they had split a bottle of something—Malbec?—last night at Old Town.
“Ivy,” she said, surprised that her voice sounded as next to normal as it did, “could you please get James Killian on the phone and get him in here as soon as possible?” Whatever the fake plumber to the stars had in mind in the way of a new project suddenly sounded downright fascinating. At that moment, Val believed she would have written him a contract for even a loathsome memoir. Ambitious and good-looking and disturbing—what she needed in the worst way was to be disturbed by someone extremely far away from the death of Adrian Bale.
9
“Tell me again why I’m here,” said Val, cupping her aunt’s elbow as they stepped out of the elevator on the 8th floor of Hunter College, undecided how to find the office of Saul Bensoussan, Associate Professor of Romance Languages, Chair of Latin and Caribbean Studies.
Greta narrowed her gray eyes at Val and opted for her airy and stuffy routine. “Because the man has discovered what he believes is a fake manuscript. You like manuscripts. I thought you might be interested.” She slanted a smile at Val. “Besides, who knows, dear? He might have a book in him.”
Val pointed to the left, then bumped her wily aunt. “No, really, why? Not that I don’t enjoy your company.” She wasn’t about to launch into her resolve to fill every conscious minute with material that was either dense, knotty, or completely beyond her probably for the next few months, until the shock of Adrian’s death receded by even just a little bit. While she was in the building, she’d see if she could audit a class in quantum physics.
Greta had the decency to look put out. “Oh, all right, if you must know,” she hissed, then pushed back a beautiful hank of her Lauren Bacall hair. “We’re short-staffed at the moment. Three of my field ops are on assignment, and I thought if I could interest you in Bensoussan—”
Ah. “In Bensoussan,” Val repeated carefully, knowing her aunt very well indeed, “or in Bensoussan’s case?”
Greta grabbed Val’s shoulders. “Oh, why split hairs? Especially now, with Adrian’s death. It’s good to immerse yourself—”
An incorrigible matchmaker. Val eyed her mother’s younger sister, then sighed. “Somehow I’m not finding murder a turn-on, if you can believe it.”
Her aunt stepped back, colliding with an earnest girl pulling a rolling suitcase. Back-saving wheels for serious students. “Then please check out his gripe so I can close the file and archive it.” She lifted her elegant shoulders. “How hard can it be? An old manuscript at the Morgan—we’re not talking a pattern of international smuggling here.” They arrived in front of the closed door to the office of Professor Saul Bensoussan. “Besides,” Greta lowered her voice, “it’s about fifty-fifty he’s got it wrong. He teaches literature. He’s not an expert in art forgery.” With that, she rapped on the frosted glass of the door.
“Venga!” came a voice from inside.
Val followed her aunt into Bensoussan’s office. Her first impression was of heat and light, filtered through a single, old window with an exterior haze of scratches and city grime. The glossy white walls were rimmed with large framed posters of Gabriel García Márquez, Paulo Coelho and Isabel Allende, all exuding warmth and a kind of quiet cheerfulness. Suspended from the ceiling was a jungle of mobiles. One was a beautiful chaos of colored paper birds in flight. Another was tiers of different metals cut into the shapes of children that, when the pale currents hit them, moved to tunes only they heard.
Surrounding two nice Crate and Barrel bookcases stuffed masterfully with books was a gallery of framed book jackets, book reviews, book events—one a signed photo of what appeared to be Coelho shaking the hand of the man standing behind his desk, smiling at Val and Greta. She had expected a young academic hotshot who had made a career decision not to pay too much attention to wardrobe. But that would be someone other than Saul Bensoussan. White polo shirt, pleated khaki pants, a sport coat that looked like it had been altered. And bobby-pinned to his head, a blue and white yarmulke in tiny crochet.
The professor extended a hand first to Greta, who introduced herself and passed him her official DOC badge. He glanced at it, smiling, and then turned to Val with a questioning look. “My niece…and assistant,” Greta said smoothly. “Valjean Cameron.” With a sweep, Bensoussan indicated the old wooden chairs that had been painted two different shades of glossy red and decorated with bold blue frogs and yellow snakes. Val folded her hands in her lap and wondered if she’d have time to grab a sandwich at One East Ace before going back to her office.
“Well, Professor,” Greta smiled, “what have you got for the Artifact Authentication Agency?”
Bensoussan raised both hands as though he had scrubbed them down to a new layer of skin and was letting them air dry. He had a high forehead, Van Dyke facial hair, and hazel eyes. Either he never smoked or drank coffee, or else he had a professional teeth whitening job done recently. All very groomed. Very nice. Val looked around. Everything was just enough, nothing too much. There was a normalcy to this place, but a heightened one. Life of the mind set in a playful nature. His students must love him. Twisting his wrist toward his office walls, Bensoussan explained he was a professor of Latin American literature. But as a Mexican Jew, he leaned toward Val and Greta, he had a special—here he studied the fl
ying bird mobile for the exact word—feeling for the history of the Inquisition. “I have been researching that three-hundred-year period for a few years now. Tracking down documents,” he went on in lightly accented English, “searching for any literary work to come out of those times.” He fell silent.
Overhead, metal children danced a shy gavotte.
“And—?” prompted Greta.
“Eight years ago I was given tenure based on my monographs on various, oh, cultural aspects of the Mexican Inquisition.” His eyes disappeared in his smile. “Un caffé?” he offered. When they nodded, he turned to a small espresso machine at the edge of his desk and set to work, adding water from a glazed blue pitcher and grounds from a small covered urn. “For me,” he said slowly, scratching his chin, “the problem is that I was logging many hours of research and finding much in the way of very interesting material. But literature?” The smell of strong, exotic coffee circulated. Val thought she might not need to duck into One East Ace after all…
Pouring carefully, Bensoussan handed them their coffee in cups that looked like they had been painted from Frieda Kahlo’s palette. “Gracias,” said Greta in the extent of her Spanish—the professor smiled—and Val muttered a thanks. With a demitasse spoon he slipped one tiny cube of sugar into his own cup. Then he stirred reflectively, telling them he had studied all the documents, the last will and testament, the diary, and original liturgical prayers written by the famous Jewish martyr Luis de Carvajal. With the exception of his brothers—one who had become a Franciscan friar, two who had escaped the Inquisition in New Spain—Luis’s entire family had been put to the stake. On a trip to Istanbul, Bensoussan told them he had even uncovered an account by one of the escaped brothers who had made it safely to the Ottomon Empire, where religious toleration ran high.
“So,” he finished, “I was finding enough prose to analyze for a book, but,” here he brushed off some stray coffee grounds from his desk, “what I was really hoping for was a work of prose fiction.”
A Killer's Guide to Good Works Page 6