“Tom’s been okay without Barney?” Elsa asked, wincing. Her throat still burned from the smoke, but she’d just have to push past that.
Luke smiled. “It was his idea.”
A knock sounded. “Tatiana? It’s Ivy. Tom’s here, too.”
Tatiana opened the door, and Ivy practically fell on top of Elsa in her rush to embrace her. “Are you okay? Mercy, what afright you gave us! What on earth were you doing? We saw the flames from the road, and I tried not to imagine the worst, but you know how that goes....”
Luke took Elsa’s water glass so she could hug her roommate with both arms. “I’m all right.”
Ivy drew back, likely alarmed at the sound of Elsa’s voice. “I want to hear your whole story, but it sounds like you ought to keep drinking that water for now.”
Elsa agreed. “You tell me yours.”
Ivy nodded. “I got home late from our event and saw your note. You hadn’t come home by the time you expected, so I was worried. Naturally. There are no phones here, after all, and with all those other people after the aviary, too, I didn’t know what to think. First I called the Tarrytown train station to see if the trains had been on schedule and ask if anyone had seen you boarding one for Manhattan. Those answers were yes, and no, respectively. So I rang up Luke and Tom, took a cab to their place, and together we hightailed it to Tarrytown. Let me tell you, those twenty-four miles never seemed so far.”
Tatiana shuffled to the kitchen and returned with a fresh washrag and bowl of clean water. Elsa washed her hands and face while Tom picked up the story.
“We all agreed that maybe Wesley or Crawford or Dr. Geoffrey had been keeping you under duress and needed to be held accountable, but there would be no way of notifying police from Elmhurst.” He pulled a pen from his pocket and flipped it between his fingers. “So Luke dropped off Ivy and me at the station to convince them to send out an officer. While we were doing that, Luke tore off to come straight here. We might not have persuaded anyone if a call hadn’t come in from a motorist reporting a fire he’d seen while passing by Elmhurst. We just now hitched a ride on a fire engine to get here.” Tom sat on the opposite side of Barney. Giving up on the pen, he sank his hand into the dog’sfur. Sandwiched between two such attentive humans, the dog rolled to his back and practically grinned.
“When I arrived,” Luke added, “the first floor of the mansion was on fire. Tatiana and Danielle met me on the lawn, and Danielle told me she’d seen Archer pull Elsa inside hours ago, and that Elsa hadn’t been seen since.”
“I figured you would come visit us after your business at the mansion,” Tatiana said. “It seemed like a bad sign that you hadn’t.”
“I thought Barney could help,” Danielle added. “He used to find people in the war. I thought Barney could help.”
“He did.” Elsa’s heart squeezed at Danielle’s obvious agitation. Elsa wanted nothing more than to put everyone at ease. “My turn,” she said. “A short story.”
With a stark economy of words, she told them why she had come this evening and what had happened to her since. “Luke, could you open that suitcase, please?”
He brought the suitcase into the living room and opened it on the coffee table. Discarding the pillow, he held up a framed painting of Sarah, questions in his eyes.
Elsa smiled. “Open the back of the frame.”
As he did so, a mass of butterflies fluttered inside her stomach. When Luke drew away the waxed paper and layer of muslin, a collective gasp filled the room. Tom held on to Barney’s collar so the curious dog couldn’t get close enough to sniff at it.
“You found it!” Ivy cried.
“This is the aviary? She cut it to pieces in order to hide it?” Tatiana asked.
Elsa nodded. “I only checked a couple of frames before I had to pack them, but I suspect many, if not all, of these hide several pages of the aviary.”
Danielle studied the page Luke had exposed. “Miss Birdie’s book. I remember that. Miss Birdie’s book.”
“But ... is it still valuable?” Tatiana asked.
“I’m sure it is.” Luke replaced the layers and screwed the frame back together. “If you’d like, I can take these, along with the provenance, to get authenticated. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently curating a new museum that is exclusively for medieval art. I don’t want to speak out of turn, but if you want to sell these, they’d likely make you an offer. If they don’t, I know several private collectors who would.”
Tatiana watched Danielle. The girl wasn’t looking at Luke while he spoke, but she was clearly listening. “What do you think, Danielle? Birdie left this to you. Do you want to sell?”
“I want to keep one.” She twisted and twisted the strand of hair. “My favorite.”
Tatiana rubbed Danielle’s back in a slow circle, and the child seemed to relax. “I don’t know anything about how this works, but I don’t see why you couldn’t.” She looked to Elsa, then to Luke. “What would it mean if we sell most of the pages?”
Luke smiled. “It would mean, Mrs. Petrovic, that you’d have enough money to purchase from the county the land your cottage is sitting on now. If they agree to sell it. And if they don’t, you could buy a different plot in the area, I’m sure.”
“It means you don’t have to worry.” Elsa’s lungs and throat tightened again, but this time it had nothing to do with smoke. “Birdie is taking care of you, as she always intended to do.”
CHAPTER
