Lucian sat in his car, unsure where to go. He couldn’t get Emeline’s voice out of his head. She’d lied to him about everything, and he’d believed her. Worse, he’d believed in her. And because of her, he’d delegated his responsibility for bringing a job to a close for the first time in his career.
The traffic was heavy, and it took Lucian almost forty minutes to reach Madison Avenue and Eighty-Third Street. He pulled into an illegal spot and then sat there staring at the storefront. He’d avoided this place for the past twenty years. Even during the past few weeks, he’d dropped Emeline off here once but had never gone inside. The framing store was the only ghost left.
She was happy to see him and so relieved the police had caught her stalker.
“We didn’t catch him,” Lucian told her.
“Then why did you call Broderick and tell him I didn’t need protection anymore?” She was frowning and clearly confused.
“Yesterday we arrested an art dealer for trafficking in stolen goods. With very little provocation he told us the names of the men he’d worked with-one who procured a Van Gogh for him, another who’d gotten him a Matisse. A landscape. View of St. Tropez. That man was Andre Jacobs.”
Lucian stopped, waiting, hoping Emeline would protest, that she’d argue and offer up an explanation, or lash out, indignant, insulted by his accusation. Or insist she had no idea what he was talking about. But she didn’t do any of those things. Emeline remained completely silent. As good an admission of guilt as any.
“Your father may be old and he may be sick, but that doesn’t preclude him from being the devil. And if he’s the devil, what does that make you?” Lucian waited for her to respond, and was infuriated all the more for her silence. “What did you think? That if you pretended you were Solange reincarnated I’d be so blinded and confused that Andre would be safe?” Lucian laughed bitterly. “Well, congratulations. You did an excellent job. What did you use? Solange’s journals? Letters? How did you find out about the carving on the tree? Where’d she write about that? The cherry on top was how hard you fought against the idea yourself. That was priceless. All that protesting about how you wanted me to see you for who you were, about how hard it was for you to live with Andre’s and Martha’s desperation.”
There were clues to what she was thinking in her pale, pale face and in her sad eyes, but he didn’t trust himself to read them.
“Tell me how you knew about the tree, Emeline.”
“It was in her journal.”
“And that she’d asked me to paint her?”
She nodded.
“Did he ask you to set me up like this?”
“You don’t understand. It was the tragedy of his life,” she said, throwing the words out at him as if he should be able to understand this. “An accident that shouldn’t have happened. He never thought the theft would result in murder. It was supposed to be a simple robbery.”
“He was a greedy bastard, responsible for his own daughter’s death.”
“Don’t you think he knows that?” she shouted.
Lucian walked over to the door. He put his hand out, about to leave. “Your father’s going to be arrested tomorrow morning.” He stood there for a moment longer looking across the room at her, at the storefront, at the whole sorry scene, one last time. “Tell Andre if he turns himself in before we come for him, the courts will be more lenient. At his age, in such poor health, with a good lawyer, he should be able to work out a house arrest agreement.”
Lucian opened the door. On the other side was a man just about to ring the bell. Well dressed, he was wearing a light brown suit and carrying a rectangular package wrapped in plain brown paper. He had his head down, but something about him looked familiar. Lucian didn’t care who he was. He wanted to get out and get away. He left the door open for the customer and walked to his car.
Lucian put his key in the ignition. He was angry-mostly with himself-for getting so emotional. It had been a mistake to even come here. But at least it was done. He looked at the clock on the dashboard-it read 6:26 p.m. He’d been there for less than twenty minutes. It had felt like years. Twenty years, to be exact. He stared at the storefront.
The gold lettering on the black glass read JACOBS FRAMING-EST. 1933. The plate glass window showcased a half-dozen elaborate gilt frames. During the day you could see in though the front door, but the shade was pulled down now. The hours were painted on the glass in more gold lettering. MONDAY TO SATURDAY, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. CLOSED SUNDAY.
He could see the words from where he sat. The store closed at five o’clock. So why had there been a customer waiting outside when Lucian left?
But it wasn’t a customer. Lucian knew who it was. He’d met the man twice. Put his hand on his arm. Consoled him.
Leaping out of the car, Lucian raced up to the storefront. The door wasn’t locked. No one was in the front room. Brown wrapping paper and a length of string littered the floor. Voices and the scents of glue and sawdust wafted out from the back.
Lucian pulled his Glock out of its holster.
The hallway was dark. At the far end the light shone, casting the two people in a warm yellow glow. Emeline was standing at a large wooden table, laying frame corners on the edges of a painting, trying out different combinations. The customer stood beside her, looking over her shoulder.
Everything seemed completely ordinary-they were picking out a frame-except the new customer was holding a gun in his right hand. Emeline couldn’t see it. But Lucian could.
“Drop it.” Lucian assumed a shooting stance, his gun trained on the intruder’s chest. A perfect bull’s-eye shot.
Charlie Danzinger grabbed Emeline around the waist, jerked her in front of him and shoved the barrel of his gun into her temple. He did it so quickly and smoothly, almost as if he’d expected an intruder-almost as if he welcomed one. The hand holding the weapon shook slightly, but Danzinger didn’t look scared. The Met’s top restorer looked deranged. And that bothered Lucian more than anything else. A cogent argument didn’t work with someone who was lost to logic.
“Why don’t you let her go, and you and I can work this out.”
Danzinger, who’d killed in this very room so long ago, and looked ready to kill again, shook his head. “Can’t.” His tongue flicked out, fast like a lizard’s, and he licked his lips.
Lucian tasted bile. “Why can’t you?”
“She’s a witness.”
“To what?”
“To what happened. To everything that happened. She saw it, she knows.”
“What does she know?”
“I worked for Andre Jacobs. He was like a father to me. I was all alone in the city. Trying to get started. He said nothing would happen. He was like a father to me. But she was here. She was here…” His voice wavered and Lucian wondered if he was going to cry. “I’ve never meant to hurt anyone. Never. Never told anyone. But if she knows…” He nodded to Emeline. “If she knows and if she tells…I’ll go to jail. And I can’t go to jail. Can’t be away from my work. I do important work. I restore things.”
Emeline was as still as if she were painted there-not real at all.
Danzinger licked his lips again.
“You don’t really believe all that stuff about reincarnation, do you?” Lucian asked him. “It’s just some hocus-pocus the papers printed because they needed to sell copies. There’s no such thing as reincarnation. She has no idea who you are. She lied about being reincarnated to get sympathy. She doesn’t know anything.”
“I can’t go to jail. I can’t be away from my work.”
“Charlie, she doesn’t know anything. Tell him, Emeline. Tell him how you lied about being reincarnated.”