Lauren knew, then, that she had little choice but to do the job for the Dendur Ball, even if it would lower her to the level of making a reproduction.
“I tried to get out of it,” Lauren explained to Sebastian and Sabrina. “I mean, I don’t want to create some tacky thing that looks like you could buy it at a museum gift shop.” The whole thing depressed her, but she felt as if she didn’t have a choice in the matter.
“Let me guess,” Sebastian said, laughing. “Letty Chilton strong-armed you. The woman can be very persistent. God, what her daughter has put our salespeople through recently!”
“Really?” Lauren was curious, but she wanted to stay on point. “I guess I’ve warmed up to the idea. It could be fun.”
“The jewelry of that era is very beautiful,” Sebastian said. “Can you imagine that they could create that kind of thing thousands of years ago? It’s really quite incredible.”
“What are the materials?” Sabrina asked.
“We would use enamel and semiprecious stones,” Lauren said. “Nothing too expensive. Carnelian, lapis lazuli, turquoise. This would be a simulation, basically. But the important thing is that it has to look real. It will be really stunning to have all the young women wearing these, while the real thing is in a case just yards away.”
Lauren handed Sabrina a manila envelope with the specifications from the curator at the Egyptian wing.
“Now, we need to talk about something more important,” Sebastian said. “The jewelry is a hit. We’re actually selling even more abroad than we are in New York. I told you that Colette picked it up?” Colette was a boutique-style department store, similar to Giroux, in Paris. It sold everything from limited-edition books to one-of-a-kind fashion to the latest DJ mixes to designer waters. Lauren knew that to have one’s designs represented there was an enormous honor.
Lauren nodded. “That’s fabulous.”
“It’s better than fabulous. They want to do a window display for spring this year featuring your pieces.”
“Oh my God. Wow.”
“There’s a catch, though,” Sabrina said.
Lauren groaned quietly. There was always a catch.
Sebastian continued: “They want the designs to be Colette exclusives. They would only be sold in the store on rue Saint-Honore and online.”
“Can we do enough volume there?” Lauren asked. “Does it make sense to do a line just for one store?”
Sebastian and Sabrina laughed.
“My dear, you take care of the designing,” Sebastian said. “We’ll worry about the business side of things.”
Lauren smiled weakly as she flushed a little bit. She resented when Sebastian-or any adult, for that matter-assumed that just because she was in high school, she wasn’t interested in the details. She wanted to learn all about fashion, not just about how to make jewelry or how to cut an A-line dress, but about merchandising, marketing, shipping, sales. Maybe she would have to wait until college to get that type of knowledge.
“So can you do it?” Sabrina asked.
“Of course,” Lauren said, with the air of an old pro. “Just give me my deadline, and I’ll make it happen.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The weeks leading up to the Dendur Ball passed quickly for Nick, though his grandfather’s challenge was never far from his mind. When he wasn’t thinking about it, Nick focused on his schoolwork, as he continued trying to repair the damage caused to his reputation during the previous semester. College applications were less than eight months away, and he had already started thinking about where he wanted to go. His entire family had gone to Yale, but he wondered if that option wouldn’t be open to him anymore if he was released from the Society.
That was a risk Nick would have to take.
On a string around his neck was the key Thad and Patch had procured from the opening on the Egyptian slab in Palmer Bell’s study. Nick couldn’t stop thinking about it, though he was unsure what the next move should be. Ever since coming back from Florida, Nick had kept the key with him everywhere he went, whether at school, going running, or in the shower. It never left him.
It was an old-fashioned key, not the flat kind used to open most doors, but the type with a long, cylindrical base and a set of teeth. It was weightier than the average key; it could have opened a door, a chest, or even a set of drawers.
In short, it could have opened anything.
Or it could be a dead end.
Before leaving Florida, Nick had tried it on every door, locked box, secretary, and trunk he could find in the Palm Beach house, with no success. Because the clue that Palmer had given them involved “both beaches,” Nick didn’t feel like the solution-if there was one-would be found in Palm Beach. The Florida house was only part of the puzzle.
On the first Saturday morning in February, a few weeks after their last trip, Nick and Phoebe drove out to Southampton, to his family’s house at the beach.
When Nick and Phoebe arrived at the Southampton house, they tried the key on every possible lock. When the caretaker, who happened to be on the grounds that weekend, asked what they were doing, Nick said they were picking up some ski equipment he had been storing up in the attic.
Nick and Phoebe searched every room meticulously, trying every chest of drawers, every closet, even an old campaign chest in the attic.
In the last guest bedroom, Phoebe wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “This feels hopeless,” she said, stifling a sneeze. “We’re kicking up dust you didn’t even know this house had.”
Nick nodded wearily. “I know. I’m just not seeing it here.”
It was an unseasonably warm day for February, so the two decided to go for a walk on the beach. In contrast to the summer, the beach was completely empty, the surf frothing up and then retreating, the ocean behind it vast and gray and unknowable. There had been a storm the week before, and some of the dunes had been nearly demolished.
They walked for a few minutes, the light breeze nipping at their cheeks. It felt like they had accomplished nothing.
“I don’t know where else to turn,” Nick said after a few minutes, with the frustration of knowing he had complained to Phoebe about this more times than he could count.
“You’ve tried every lock in your parents’ apartment,” she said. “You’ve tried Palm Beach. We’ve tried Southampton.” She reached out to him as they walked through the sand, to touch the key that was now hanging around his neck, grazing the V-neck of his cable-knit sweater. “What if it opens nothing? What if it’s all just an elaborate ruse, something to keep us occupied while the Society continues to cover its tracks?”
Nick felt the wind rustling his hair. “Remember what he said about my brothers and me playing on the beach? About the treasures being buried in the sand?”
“So what are we supposed to do? Start digging?” Phoebe asked. “Do you really think he buried something under the sand?”
“I don’t think so. I think he was just reminiscing. With all the winter storms, there’s no way anyone could keep something buried for long.” Nick stopped and glanced up at the dunes, just before the house, near the edge of the Bell family’s property line. There was a stone block that he had never noticed before, a piece of rough-hewn granite lodged into the ground. Nick loped up the embankment to it and walked through a few yards of dune grass.
He gasped when he saw what was carved onto its face. Phoebe joined him. The block read:
P.M.E.
1962-1997
“Is that… a grave marker?” Phoebe asked.
Nick shook his head. “I don’t think so. I remember my father telling me about this once, but I’ve never seen it. The storm must have uncovered it. It’s a memorial marker.”
“Who is it for?”
Nick paused. It was too much to think about-everything he knew, and everything he didn’t want to believe. “It’s for Patch’s father,” he said quietly. “He drowned near here. It was when our parents were close, and the Evanses were staying here one weekend. Patch and I were at summer camp. Patch’s dad was caught up in the surf while swimming one evening at dusk. No one thought to look for him until dinnertime. That’s what my father told me, when I asked him about it once.”