“What’s wrong with them?” She kicked out a foot, then glanced at the iced-over pond. “Oh.” She chuckled. “I needed to talk to my dad and wasn’t about to make him balance on skates to do it. He managed to fall off a train platform, remember? He wasn’t likely to stay upright on ice.”
Joe angled to see the man with the newspaper on the bench. He wasn’t there. Slowly, Joe surveyed the surrounding area and didn’t see him.
Maybe he’d been wrong about the man watching Lauren.
Or maybe he’d found a better spot to hide. Joe puffed out a breath, squinting into the light bouncing off the snow.
“Do you still skate?” he asked Lauren.
“Not in many years.”
“Shoe size?”
“Seven!” Ivy called out, and Joe turned in time to see her grin and wave from the rail before catching up with Elsa again. He had to admit, her timing was good.
Lauren laughed. “There’s no point in you standing in line without me.”
Minutes later, they’d both traded their shoes for skates and stepped onto the ice.
Joe knew his movements were a little stiff. But he wasn’t trying to be graceful. His masculinity wouldn’t stand for it. He did, however, intend to remain vertical. At least, if that spy was still around, he wasn’t likely to follow them onto the ice. From outside the railing, he wouldn’t catch their conversation, either.
With that in mind, he reached for Lauren’s hand, but instead of tucking it in the crook of his arm, he simply held it and steered them both away from the edge.
They skated side by side, finding their rhythm, while Joe kept an eye on the perimeter.
“I’m really glad you came,” she said. “You would not believe the conversation I had with my dad.”
He looked down at her. “About Theodore Clarke?” he asked. She’d told him about the tour she’d given him the other day, including his insecurities since Tut’s discovery and his comments about her parents. There was definitely more to learn there.
The wind whipped a strand of her hair across her eyes. She brushed it away, then relayed what Lawrence had told her.
“So will you leave it alone?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Her brow furrowed. “Maybe I don’t want to know what happened between them, especially if I’m to keep up a positive working relationship with Clarke for the Met. But I already repliedto Dr. Breasted and asked him for more details about what might have caused the rift between him and Dad.”
“Attagirl.” In his line of work, secrets were made to be exposed.
She chuckled. “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Lead the way.”
“I’ve been thinking about Peter, and everything you told me from your chat with him on Tuesday. He certainly seemed like the most promising suspect for the Book of the Dead papyrus, but we were forgetting one important detail. Peter couldn’t have forged that papyrus. Mr. Moretti said it came directly from Egypt, so it must have been forged before it reached the States.”
Joe didn’t like how much she trusted Moretti’s word. “Lauren,” he said. “You do realize that Ray Moretti could have been lying about that, or he could have been lied to himself. A buyer says he got it in Egypt, but he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t want to displease his boss, which I understand. What was his reaction, by the way, when you told him his papyrus wasn’t genuine?”
“No one enjoys hearing news like that, but he responded as well as any other collector in the same position. He lost a small fortune on it.”
“A small fortune to us might be small potatoes to him. In any case, doesn’t he want to report it to the police?”
“Not as far as I know. Maybe he didn’t believe me.”
He pulled her closer, wrapped his arm around her waist, and spoke so only she would hear him. “Or he might not want to get the police involved. People like him have their own ways of handling things.Capisce?”
She shook her head but couldn’t hide a small smile. “Oh, Icapisceplenty.”
“No, no.” He tried so hard not to laugh. “I say, ‘Capisce?’ That means ‘Do you understand?’ And you say, ‘Capisco. I understand.’ Except for I wonder if you really do.”
“I’ve heard the rumors about the Morettis, Joe.”
