CHAPTER
8
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1925
Lauren rubbed at the kinks in her neck before shuffling her papers together and stacking them under the Hatshepsut paperweight.
Quarter past five already. It had been another full day of planning for the Met’s spring exhibition on the Egyptian afterlife. She had been in talks with a few different museums around the country over the last several weeks, confirming the terms of their loans for the show. Most were cooperative, but the Boston Museum of Fine Arts required a more delicate touch. She supposed it might have something to do with the decades-long rivalry between the MFA and the Met. At least they’d agreed to host her for a visit after Thanksgiving to finalize the details. Some things were simply better discussed in person.
Standing, she put on her coat and found in her pocket the mail Anita had passed to her earlier today. She had recognized her father’s handwriting and ignored it.
Drawing a fortifying breath, she opened the envelope and pulled the card free. After skimming his thanks for coming to the gala, she tossed it in her waste bin, turned out the light, and stalked away. The letters she was truly interested in were the ones Nancy had referred to yesterday. Surely the box that held them remained safely within her aunt’s house. It was only a matter of finding the time to search.
Locking thoughts of her parents into a corner of her mind, she bade the security guards a good night and exited the rear of the building. Snow fell from a dove grey sky, sticking to the tops of trees and cars but melting on the sidewalks almost as soon as it landed. She blinked flakes from her lashes. Central Park would be magical tonight, but her shoes weren’t made for a walk in the snow.
When she reached the narrow drive, a shiny black Studebaker Six pulled to a stop right in front of her. The back seat window lowered.
“Dr. Westlake!” Ray Moretti called, his wife waving beside him.
Lauren greeted them both, hiding her surprise at seeing them at the Met.
“Get in, would you? It’s freezing out there!” Christina crooned.
Before she knew what was happening, the driver had hopped out and come around to Lauren’s side. He opened the door to the far back seat and waited for her to enter.
She didn’t move. “What’s going on?” She tried to keep her voice light.
“I heard a rumor about you, and I want to talk to you about it,” Mr. Moretti told her. “But please, don’t make us get snowed on to do it. Let us give you a ride home while we chat.”
Mr. Robinson’s directive to repair the relationship with the Morettis echoed in her mind.
Lauren slid into the back seat. It was a six-person vehicle, so Ray and Christina were in the seat in front of her, and the driver had the front seat to himself. The couple angled sideways to see her, lights from other vehicles casting shadows from their profiles.
“Good.” Mr. Moretti smiled. “I heard from other guests at the gala Saturday night that you’re on the hunt for a forger.”
“Well, forgeries, yes.”
“Right. You’ve been offering to look at private collections to see if any fakes have snuck in among the genuine artifacts. True so far?”
“Yes,” Lauren admitted. “I’ve offered to discreetly do this for our valued patrons as a service to them. I hate to think of anyone being deceived by forgery.”
“And are we not your valued patrons, Dr. Westlake?”
She inhaled sharply. “I—that’s not at all what I meant.”
A car behind them honked, the beams from its headlamps shining in through the Studebaker’s rear window. Mr. Moretti’s pupils constricted in the light.
The car rolled forward, then steered into traffic. It would probably take just as long to drive all the way around Central Park as it would have for Lauren to walk straight through it as usual, but at least she was warm and dry.
Mr. Moretti turned toward her again. “And yet you didn’t make this offer to me when you had the opportunity Saturday night.” His tone was smooth and cool, his smile fixed in place. If this was him putting her at ease, it wasn’t working. “Is that because of all this unpleasantness with Mr. Robinson? Has he turned you against me? I’d so hate to lose your esteem.”
“Not at all,” Lauren rushed to say. “You haven’t lost my esteem. The only reason I didn’t offer to examine your collection is that I was—I still am—convinced that no forgeries are among it. At the benefit soiree you hosted at your Long Island estate last year, you told me how you came into possession of all your pieces, and I saw them myself. The forgeries I’m looking for would have been acquired stateside in the last three years. I understood—or at least I thought I understood—that you acquire pieces yourself or through a personal buyer in Cairo.” She was sputtering like an idiot. Making herself sound guilty when all of this was the absolute truth. “Please believe me, Mr. and Mrs. Moretti, I assumed your collection was above question. I never meant to exclude you from any service you might find helpful.”
“That’s quite all right, sweetie, I’m sure.” Christina lit the end of a cigarette and puffed smoke from the side of red-painted lips. “That makes perfect sense.”
Lauren glanced out the window as they turned east, not west. “Excuse me, but my apartment is the other way.”
“I appreciate your confidence, Dr. Westlake.” Mr. Moretti seemednot to have heard her. “But as it happens, I did acquire a piece fairly recently. If the forgeries are as rampant as you say, I’d like you to take a look at it. Would you mind?”
