A laugh escaped Tom. “This has to be better than Luke’s attempt last weekend.”
Oh, how she loved that he’d tried.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1926
Days passed. Two evenings this week Elsa had spent with her mother visiting florists who were possible vendors for her cousin’s wedding. The opposite evenings, she’d spent in Central Park, leading anyone who wished to go bird-watching with her. The Saturday evening expedition, which had begun with just Luke and Tom, had quickly picked up eager birders along the way. Guiding that little group had filled her with such satisfaction, she decided to repeat it, even without her friends. To her surprise, whenever she held her chickadee cane in the air and called out her offer to guide, people flocked to her. There were so many benches in the park, too, that it was easy to rest along the way. The thing about birding was that it involved being still and watching. She didn’t always need to be moving, and when she did, a slow pace was better than fast.
Still, she thought about Elmhurst, the Petrovics, and the aviary. In her office at the museum, she gazed out her window over the trees changing color in the park. A pigeon alighted on her windowsill and looked at her sideways.
“Hello, you,” Elsa greeted him absent-mindedly, and the pigeon flapped away.
Her gaze fell on the old book on field ornithology she’d found in the tunnel at Elmhurst.She’d suggested to Mr. Chapman that it be added to the departmental research library, and he’d agreed but insisted it be cleaned first. One of the conservators had putit on his schedule to remove the mold spots, but until that time, she kept it in her office.
Sliding it toward her, she started flipping through the pages, stopping when she found a card tucked into the table of contents with Birdie’s handwriting.
Linus,
You never knew what true treasure was when you had it. And you’ll never find what you’re looking for unless you pick up all the pieces of my broken heart.
A chill slipped down Elsa’s spine. She read it again. Surely the treasure she referred to was their daughter, Sarah. The second line had to be a clue as to the aviary’s whereabouts. Linus would find what he was looking for if he grasped all the pieces of her broken heart.
“Oh, Birdie, what did you mean?” Elsa murmured.
She knew Birdie’s heart had broken over Sarah. For a moment, she thought perhaps Birdie had buried the aviary at Sarah’s final resting place, and then remembered that according to Agnes, Birdie didn’t even know where that was. After Sarah died in the hospital due to complications from the surgery, Linus had never brought her home or given her a proper burial, instead allowing the hospital to “dispose” of the body. Birdie had no tombstone on which to lay flowers for her daughter, no resting spot where she could pin her grief.
Elsa recalled, then, the portraits of Sarah she’d found in the dressing room, both on the walls and in the bureau drawer. No wonder she had painted so many. With no grave to visit and a husband who wouldn’t support her, painting must have been her way of mourning and remembering.
Elsa read Birdie’s note to Linus once again.
Was she so confident that he wouldn’t “pick up all the pieces”that she was simply taunting him, believing he’d never find the aviary? It did sound like an impossible task. Or did shewanthim to find it, after all? Was she trying to lead him to the pieces of her broken heart so that he would have to confront them himself?
Frustration buzzed through her. She was asking the wrong questions. All she needed to know waswhere. Tomorrow, the county would begin leveling the mansion, and all hope would be gone for finding the answer.
It was five o’clock. Maybe walking home would help clear her mind and get the gears turning better. Ivy wouldn’t be joining her today, as she had an event with the New-York Historical Society commemorating the 150th anniversary of the British occupation of Manhattan. Lifting Birdie’s card from the field guide, she tucked it into her satchel.
As she did so, her fingers brushed a few scraps of paper. She fished them out. They were a few old strips from the notebook she’d used when charting field data at Elmhurst. The notebook whose pages she’d ripped out, cut up, rearranged, and copied into a fresh ledger. Crumpling the strips, she tossed them into the waste bin, grasped her cane, and left her office.
Halfway to the elevators, she stopped, struck with a new idea.
Had Birdie done something similar to the aviary in order to hide it? Would she have cut out the pages, changing the shape of the treasure everyone sought?
Elsa leaned on her cane, mind swirling, then rummaged through her satchel until she found the small notebook she’d used to take notes when Agnes had shown her Birdie’s letters. She skimmed to the exact quote she’d copied.
Even if he discovers the switch, he’ll never find it now. I must keep the aviary safe and close by. It won’t be easy to showDanielle anymore, but it will be worth it. She’ll have them soon enough, and forever.
Themshe had written in that last sentence. Notit. That had struck her as odd when Elsa had first read it. Could it mean Birdie had cut out the pages and hidden them flat in many different places? The collection wouldn’t be worth as much that way, but the individual pages would still be worth a small fortune.
And they could have been hidden almost anywhere. Tucked into books in the library would have been a reasonable option, so long as they were books Linus didn’t actually read. If he wasn’t interested in the subject matter, he certainly wouldn’t be looking for his medieval aviaryinsideany other books.
Pulse galloping, Elsa continued walking to the elevators. At least Luke and Tom had removed all those books, and they were safely at the Dupont & Son warehouse, well out of harm’s way when the mansion would come down tomorrow. That was a relief beyond words.
Inside the elevator, Elsa pushed the button for the lobby, then pulled out the card. She read it again and frowned. By the time the doors opened, she wasn’t so sure Birdie would have hidden the pages in the library books after all.
Her cane tapping across the marble, she circled the giant meteor in Memorial Hall and stepped out into the sunshine. With every step down the stairs, she went deeper into her thoughts, deeper into everything she’d learned about Birdie and what was important to her.
When she landed on the sidewalk, she stopped again, vaguely aware of pedestrians parting and streaming around her, of traffic honking and pumping fumes into the air.“Unless you pick up allthe pieces of my broken heart.”
The pieces of Birdie’s broken heart were not in random books in the library.
