“I’m sorry for bringing him here. I didn’t know.”
Lino looked at me and his whole expression changed. “Are you all right? Do you want a glass of water?”
I said yes, so he would leave the room for a couple of moments while I got myself together. When he returned with a tall glass of chlorine-scented water, I took a long pull. He gestured for us to return to our seats, and I made a point of using the coaster.
“Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for not throwing me out.”
“You’re welcome. We were talking about the list, weren’t we? Would you like to see it?”
“I don’t know yet. I don’t think so. Did the burglar take any money?”
Lino sighed heavily. “I wish I had money to take.”
He had gone right back into the interview, which helped me steady myself again. I was grateful. “Does a woman live here with you?”
“What?”
“You know that some of these … odd break-ins have been attacks on women.”
“Rapes, you mean.” He said it with the air of a man who didn’t like comforting euphemisms. “No. There are no women here. The trust has provisions for spouses and such, but I live alone. I’m an introvert and I find the quiet soothing. I don’t even open the curtains that often. I do have a partner, but he doesn’t like the collection. He finds it unsettling.”
That made things clear enough. “Does the owner ever have people stay here? Friends or relatives visiting from out of town, maybe?”
“Not here. Mr. Francois doesn’t even bring his wife here. He has nicer accommodations across town.”
“Wait. What was that name?”
Lino stood and crossed to the mantel. “Mr. Steven Francois,” he said. He took down a framed photo and handed it to me. “That is him there, with his wife. He keeps personal items here as part of the ruse that this is his home.”
The photo showed Linen—Steve Francois—on a beach somewhere with a towel over his bony shoulder. The woman beside him, his wife, was tall, thin, and blond, with a Doris Day haircut. Her smile had the cool superiority of self-righteous affluence.
“I don’t know where that was taken,” Lino said as he returned it to the mantel. “I don’t like to ask personal questions of my employer. His manner doesn’t encourage it.”
I tried to imagine how Swizzle Stick fit in. “Do they travel together a lot?”
“Sometimes. Not always.” Lino shrugged. “They are both quite rich—her more than him, even. They live unusual lives.”
I gestured toward the picture. “She looks tough. Are they having any problems? Money or marriage?”
He gave me a look. “I don’t pry into his personal life.”
“I have to ask,” I said. “If she wanted to hurt him, could she do something to violate the terms of the trust? Hire someone to steal something and break up the collection?”
“I don’t believe so, but I don’t know all the details of the trust. Also, I don’t see why she’d bother. Her family runs a successful law firm, and she is one of the top litigators in the country. If there was a problem between them, it would be played out in a courtroom, I think. Not here.”
I could see that he was uncomfortable with the subject, so I changed it. “What about the video? I saw the marks on the door out front and the camera.”
“Yes.” He sounded grateful to talk about it. “The police collected the disc and the machine as evidence. The camera isn’t plugged into anything anymore. Sorry. I did watch the video before I reported the break-in, obviously.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Nothing to tell. I came home from my trip. I was surprised to see the front gate standing open. I didn’t even realize it had been broken until later; I thought I’d forgotten to lock it. The door was open slightly. I saw the scratches and pushed it wide. When I walked in … it felt weird, you know? I was suddenly really afraid, as if I would find a burglar waiting for me. I went inside anyway. Only one … nothing was missing. I checked the security camera, and it had been turned off. I played the last fifteen minutes that it had recorded and …”
“What did you see?”
“Nothing. The video showed the front stair and front walk, but there was nothing to see. After a while, the door burst inward suddenly as though it was hit by the wind. A minute or so later the video ended.”
Something was off about this story, but I couldn’t figure what. “Can I see where the machine was set up?”
Lino shrugged and led me into the hall. On the other side of the house was a small library, although it had more knickknacks than books. He opened a little closet and showed me a bare shelf with a bundle of wires running out of the wood. “The insurance company lowered the rates when the trustee put this in, for all the good it did.”
“Could someone have been standing to the side when—”
“No,” Lino answered, as though he’d answered that question many times. “The video showed the whole door. You saw how the camera was placed. I haven’t moved it since it was installed.”
“What did you see that made you afraid? Why did you say ‘Only one’?”
He looked uncomfortable for a moment, then shuffled his feet. “Come with me.”
He led me to the dining room at the end of the hall. There were cupboards along each wall, with more plates and odd objects displayed on shelves. There was a place setting at the table, with a bowl of pita chips sitting out. Lino snacked on one as he walked by.
“See this?” He indicated a not-quite-square mirror about two feet wide. “The frame is walnut with gold leaf.”
I expected him to tell me he had seen a reflection in the mirror, but it wasn’t positioned where he could see it from the front hall. Next he showed me a surgeon’s kit—a wooden case filled with knives, saws, and needles. Then he showed me a battered copper kettle, a drum with an eagle on the side, an apothecary balance that predated the Revolutionary War, and a daguerreotype of a husband and wife who had been friends of the owner’s great-great-grandfather.
Why was he giving me the tour? I leaned close to the picture and studied the faces. I half expected to recognize them. “They don’t look like anyone’s friends.”
“Dour, aren’t they? And over here—”
“Lino, you were going to show me something.” He was standing next to a wooden object that I could never have guessed the purpose of. He looked both confused and secretive. He glanced down at the shelf beside him, and I followed his gaze.
There was a little metal sculpture on the shelf near the items Lino had been describing to me. It showed a seated man with an open book in his lap, while a second man behind him chopped off his head with a sword. In fact, the figure was in midstroke, and only a little bit of the seated man’s neck still connected his head to his shoulders.
I leaned in close, even though it seemed like an unbearable imposition on Lino’s privacy to do it. The swordsman didn’t have a face—was he wearing a hood? It didn’t seem so. The seated man’s face looked serene. I guessed he’d finished the book.
“When I came into the house after the break-in,” Lino said, “this little statue had been moved into the hall. Someone had taken it off the shelf and set it down right in the middle of the floor over there.”
Lino offered me another glass of water, and I gratefully accepted. I wasn’t thirsty, but it felt good to follow him into the kitchen away from the statue—it felt profoundly wrong to pay attention to it.
This had happened to me before, I suddenly realized. Some kinds of magic—very powerful magic—could make you think certain thoughts. Every time I looked at that statue, I felt like I was intruding on someone’s privacy, and it was unbearable.