Afterward, Matt had tried to convince Lucian to have a drink with him. To talk about what had happened. Lucian had refused and sat in his office on the computer ostensibly working but just staring at the screen trying to figure out how to deal with the information and its ramifications. He’d been made a fool of. He’d wanted to believe something so badly he’d risked his credibility, his job and his fucking sanity.
He’d forced himself here, not for the celebration, but for the confrontation. He’d even dressed for the magnitude of the event, wearing black slacks, not jeans, a jacket made in Italy and suede loafers that replaced his everyday boots. The only item that was the same was the Glock in his shoulder holster.
There were two bars set up at opposite ends of the gallery. The one with the smaller crowd backed up to a Frank Lloyd Wright living room that had been transplanted to the Met in 1982. Since Lucian was officially off duty, he ordered vodka on the rocks and, while the bartender made it, he stared out the windows into the park’s lush green backdrop. A familiar sense of loneliness overtook him as he remembered someone who was gone, whom he’d almost been able to reach out and touch. Emeline had raised the specter of Solange’s ghost, put flesh on her bones and blood in her veins. It was a mean trick. She should have stayed a memory. Even if he’d mythologized her, as a myth she’d done him no harm.
He could smell her, as if she were right there. It was the curious mixture it seemed he’d been smelling all his adult life, either in reality or in his imagination-that particular mingling of lilies of the valley with turpentine and linseed oil. Solange’s scent.
But it was Emeline approaching, leaning on her father’s arm. More sickly looking than ever, Jacobs was probably leaning on her but disguising it well. The man’s navy suit hung on his frame, his illness all the more obvious for the excess fabric.
Lucian’s hand gripped his glass as he fought the urge to throw it in the man’s face, battled with the overwhelming desire to beat him to a bloody pulp right here, right now. And Emeline? He had to force himself not to turn away.
Emeline and her father had reached the bar. Her scent was so pervasive. She’d never used Solange’s perfume before. Why tonight? To continue the farce?
As she smiled at him, a faint blush rose in her cheeks. She was wearing cream-colored, wide-legged silk pants with a narrow, fitted blouse of the same fabric. On her feet were flat ballet slippers in the same shade of cream with gold strings tied in a bow. Her hair was sleeked back and pulled into a chignon, almost as if she was showing off her scar. In her ears were round diamonds that caught the light and reflected back the sunset’s glow.
Reaching up, she brushed Lucian’s cheek with a kiss that would appear innocuous to anyone watching-including her father-but wasn’t, and then whispered that signature line Solange had always used on greeting. “I very much missed you.”
Lucian couldn’t help noticing the swell of her small breasts. Despite everything he knew and all the emotions roiling in him, he was still overwhelmed by an urgent need to touch her skin-to make sure it was warm, not cold-to reassure himself that she was real, that she was still here, that she was not about to evaporate into the past. His heart hadn’t caught up to his head yet.
Coming here had been a mistake. He suddenly knew how the men he had put in prison felt. This wasn’t the place to pose the questions he needed to ask or to hear the answers he was almost afraid to learn. He needed to get out.
“Good evening, Lucian,” Jacobs said formally.
“Good evening, Mr. Jacobs, Emeline,” Lucian responded. His own voice sounded forced. He wasn’t managing this very well. “Would you like drinks?”
Emeline told the bartender she’d take champagne and Jacobs asked for gin. “No rocks,” he muttered, and Lucian noticed Emeline stiffen.
He knew, because she had told him, that Jacobs’s daily promises to stop drinking never lasted long past each evening’s cocktail hour, despite the fact that the liquor was killing him.
Around them, as more and more people poured into the luminous stone-and-glass gallery, the sounds of tinkling crystal and excited voices rose and hovered in the air along with the mixed scents of flowers, burning candles and perfumes. Satins and silks shimmered in the twinkling light from the votives scattered around the room on the cocktail tables. Diamonds hanging from earlobes, necks and fingers glinted; sequined jackets and beaded handbags shone.
The festivity was an affront to what he knew about the two people standing beside him. Lucian wanted to climb up on a bar and scream at them all to be quiet, to honor the memory of a dead girl and take revenge on the man who was responsible for her death.
The bartender delivered the Jacobses’ drinks just as the string quartet stopped playing and the museum’s director, Tyler Weil, stepped onto a platform to the right of the screened-off area.
Weil scanned the audience, found who he was looking for and motioned for Marie Grimshaw to join him. Then, picking up the microphone, he welcomed everyone.
Beside Lucian, Emeline took his arm and pressed close to him. She smiled up at him, and he was struck by her enigmatic expression. She looked as if she was trying to be happy but at the same time was struggling with where she was, with who she was, with trying to assimilate it all. The stress was no doubt real but its source was not what she’d led him to believe. Before tonight he would have been empathetic about her dilemma. Now he knew it was a lie.
SIXTY-TWO
The lights in his office were off except for a table lamp, and so Beryl’s face was in shadow, but Malachai could read her expression from the way she was gripping her cane-not for support but like a weapon.
“How dare you laugh at me?” Her voice strained with rage.
“But what you’re saying is surely a joke, isn’t it? What can you think I’m planning? Betraying our patients? Relax, Beryl, please. I’d never do anything to risk the reputation of the foundation.”
“You wouldn’t? But you have. I can’t allow you to do it again. I can’t take a chance you’ll put us back in the news and harm us further. I’ve called our lawyers, Malachai. As of an hour ago your name has been removed from the deed of the building, I’ve stopped your salary and you are no longer co-director of the institute. You’re on a temporary leave of absence.”
He stood up quickly, his hands clenched at his sides, a muscle twitching in his neck. “You can’t do that.”
“I most certainly can. I’m the chairman of the board, and I have the unanimous support of the other board members.”
“I’m a member of that board.”
“You’ve been outvoted.”
“Whatever it is, you owe it to me to listen to what-”
“Here’s what I’m offering you,” she said, not waiting for him to explain. “If you stay away from Veronica Keyes and James Ryan and make no attempt to use therapy or hypnosis to delve into their psyches to find out more about this sculpture you’re obsessed with, then six months from now you can come back to work and start receiving your salary again. Six months after that, your name can go back on the lease. And six months after that, if everything is still status quo, you can resume your duties as co-director. I’m serious, Malachai. I’ve put up with more than I can stand-and I can’t stand that well anymore.”
“You bitch.” He said it low and deep, and the single word rushed out of his mouth so quickly and came at her so hard she flinched as if it were a physical blow.
“I want you to understand something else. If anything happens to me, or to Iris Bellmer, the directors have instructions to tell the police you are the prime suspect. You’re ill, Malachai. You’re obsessed to the point that it’s threatening your own mental health. My last stipulation is for you to see a therapist. Not a past-life therapist, but a psychiatrist. You need help, even if you can’t see it. You are a world-renowned reincarnationist and have everything a man could want in terms of prestige and money. It should be enough, but it’s not, and-”