Joe reached for her hand, and she grasped his fingers. “I don’t know what happened to your dad. But I do know the photographer here this morning wasn’t here for you. His name is Oscar McCormick, and he’s a police officer. I asked him to come and take photos of Dr. DeVries.”
“Why?”
Joe opened his notebook, revealing pages that were dated at the top. He pointed to what he’d written on January 1. The phraseDaniel Bradford = Daniel DeVries?had been circled in dark pencil lead.
“The art dealer?” Lauren whispered. “I hardly think...”
Joe brought a finger to his lips and turned the page, tapping it. There, she followed the progression of clues he’d put together based on the provenance documents, the doctor’s distinctive vocabulary, and the physical description offered by Mr. Sanderson.
Her mouth went dry. “You were irritating him on purpose today,” she guessed.
“So you saw it, too.” He pointed to the note about the agitated twitch beneath his left eye.
She admitted she had.
“Let’s take a walk.” Joe put on his overcoat and led her out of range of listening ears. Their footsteps echoed across the marbleas they exited the reading room and began descending the double-wide staircase.
“Mr. Sanderson has seen Daniel Bradford,” he continued quietly. “I asked McCormick to take the photos so I can show them to him and see if he can identify him that way. Then we’ll know for sure if he’s been working with this alias.”
Lauren buttoned her fur-trimmed coat and focused on the step in front of her, and the next, and the next, as she descended. If Dr. DeVries was indeed Daniel Bradford, that meant he’d played an active role in at least two forgeries. And this man was on the board of the Napoleon Society with her father.
“There must be another explanation,” she whispered. Reaching a landing, her skirt flared at her calves as she turned to walk down another flight. Through the arched opening, she watched well-bundled library patrons trickle through the entrance and into the grand lobby below. “They’ve asked me to write articles about how to identify forgeries to print in the society newsletter.”
“Your father asked you to do that. Correct? Not Dr. DeVries.”
“True, but DeVries is the editor. He didn’t have to include the article. You’re suggesting that Bradford is somehow involved in forgeries, either by selling them or by creating them as well. But if Bradford is DeVries, why would DeVries also print an article about how to tell the difference between fake and genuine? It would be counter to his purposes.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Didn’t you tell me that his secretary was the one who actually put the newsletter together on the doctor’s behalf? Maybe the editor isn’t as involved in the process as we think. Maybe he didn’t even know about the article until after it was printed.”
Lauren forced herself to consider this possibility. Her footsteps slowed, her mood sinking with every lowering tread. “If he’s found to be guilty of anything illegal, it will be far worse for the Napoleon Society than the small matter of the fire at the museum. It could put an end to everything my father’s been working for. The society would never recover.”
Joe took her hand and walked beside her, matching his pace to hers. “Let’s take this one step at a time. If what you describe comes to pass, you will get to Egypt another way. A Napoleon Society expedition is not your only ticket.”
She nodded. “My concern is more for my father. Shouldn’t we warn him?”
“No.” His answer was immediate and firm. In the next breath, they reached the main lobby on the first floor. He drew her around the corner of an enormous pillar so they stood in the shadows beneath the staircase. “You can’t say anything about this to him. If DeVries and Bradford are the same man, he is already on edge because of this incident with the horse-and-rider forgery. We can’t risk your father hinting anything else to him. We don’t want to give DeVries a reason to run or destroy evidence. So it’s imperative that we keep this to ourselves for now. Understand?”
She ached with the weight of this burden. “I hate secrets.” Her voice was small, and she felt smaller still, especially here, surrounded by cold white marble vaulting high above her. “Secrets expand between people, pushing them apart.”
Joe pulled her closer, until their foreheads were almost touching. “It doesn’t have to be that way. Secrets are part of the job.”
“Part ofyourjob,” she corrected. A couple passed by but paid Lauren and Joe no mind.
“You are a consultant on this case, Dr. Westlake. I need you to promise me you’ll do nothing to sabotage it. I know this is hard for you, but that means you won’t breathe a word of any of this to your father. Remember, he is keeping secrets from us, too.”
She wrestled with his words, not wanting them to be true. But her dad had lied about falling onto the tracks. He was afraid of something, or someone, and wouldn’t tell her what. Besides which, she recognized that Joe could have kept this from her, as well, for fear that she’d tell her father. But he’d trusted her enough to be honest. The last thing she wanted to do was make him regret it.
Lauren buried her dread. “I trust you, Joe. And I promise.”
MONDAY, JANUARY 4, 1926
Cold sliced through Joe’s open coat, but he kept it unfastened so he could reach his gun in an instant if he needed to.
He prayed he wouldn’t need to. Not here, following Lauren on her walk to work through Central Park. But her description of the man with broad shoulders taking her picture at Grand Central had jogged his memory of the man spying on her the day they ice skated.
Joe had spent the rest of the weekend surveilling her, or rather, watching to see if anyone else was watching her. If there was any chance she’d been right about a man stalking her from Newport to New York City, Joe wanted to know about it. Lauren had agreed to his plan.
Snow settled like powdered sugar on her hat and coat. Methodically, he scanned the environment and backed off when Oscar McCormick walked past him, taking the lead. The young man had been only too eager to help. Switching places every so often gave them a broader perspective on the area. It also lowered their chances of being noticed.
