Chapter Three
R ayan came home to find the house empty, which was odd as it was almost eight. When Mathias worked late, the man forgot to eat, and then he returned home irritable and impossible to deal with.
Rayan flicked on the light in the kitchen and took out cured ham and cheese from the fridge.
There was bread left over from breakfast, which he cut into slices and used to assemble two simple sandwiches.
He ate one standing at the counter and placed the other into a small paper bag.
In the hallway, he pulled on his jacket and shoes and headed back out in the direction of the warehouse.
It was a short walk from the house, and as Rayan drew closer to the building, he saw the lights were on inside.
He made his way to the staff entrance and was about to turn the handle when the door swung open and Elise appeared, her face drawn and shoulders sagging.
She let out a yelp and clutched her bag tightly against her chest, her car keys gripped between the fingers of her other hand.
He hadn’t expected her to be there. Most days she was gone by five.
“Rayan,” Elise said, quickly masking her terror. “Sorry. I’m always a little jumpy after dark.”
“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She pocketed her keys and held open the door then followed him back inside. “Oh no, don’t worry,” she said, returning to her usual buoyant tone, which he knew set Mathias’s teeth on edge. “He’s in the office.” She led the way as if Rayan had never been there before.
He’d only spoken with Elise a handful of times since Mathias had brought her on as his appraiser.
They’d first met after he’d shown up at the warehouse unannounced one afternoon.
Elise was consulting an auction catalogue with Mathias at his desk when Rayan walked in.
He’d expected Mathias to be annoyed, but he simply looked up and said, “Rayan, this is Elise Dumont.” She’d stepped over to eagerly shake his hand, and that was the extent of their introduction.
It was Mathias in a nutshell—he didn’t feel he owed anyone an explanation.
Since their move to France, Rayan had found himself navigating uncharted territory.
There was an openness about their living situation, though they maintained a shroud of caution that had followed them from Montreal.
They were still careful around each other in public, but for the first time in Rayan’s life, the prospect of being seen didn’t carry with it a heavy sense of dread.
Whether that was true for Mathias, he couldn’t be sure.
In either case, the caution remained. He only visited Mathias at the warehouse in the evenings, sometimes in an effort to lure him home but more often to see his most recent acquisitions.
While Mathias had little interest in the pieces he collected for his clients, Rayan found them fascinating.
One would think—considering the man’s line of work—their house would resemble a gallery.
But Mathias almost never brought anything home, and if he did, it was for purely practical purposes.
An August Endell coatrack stood by the door because the house didn’t have a closet in the entranceway.
A set of Carolean dining chairs—so intricately carved they could have belonged in a museum—were used to prop up Mathias’s feet when he read the paper at the kitchen table.
It was a riddle, attempting to figure out why a particular item had caught Mathias’s interest.
One day, a silver frame decorated with tiny ornamental vines had appeared on the living room bookshelf.
Rayan knew without asking that it was absurdly expensive and might have once belonged to a Bavarian prince or Swiss countess.
Yet the frame, despite its obvious value, was rendered insignificant by what had been placed inside: the photo of Rayan with his brother and their mother.
It was the photo Rayan had kept for years inside the book she’d given him.
At moments when her face had grown blurry in his memory, the features no longer clear, he would take the photo out and study it carefully, angry at himself for forgetting.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that, so he hadn’t been sure when the photo had been spirited from the pages of Saint-Exupéry’s memoir to a frame in their living room. But he had no doubt who’d done it.
Fortunately for Rayan, that evening Elise seemed distracted enough to carry the conversation on her own.
“We’ve been trying to make a dent in cataloguing the pieces from this latest trip.
You should see some of the stuff we found.
The deliveries are starting to trickle in, and the paperwork’s all over the place.
You know how it is with estate sales and small-town dealers—things always seem to get misplaced. ”
He didn’t know the first thing about estate sales or small-town dealers, but that didn’t seem to matter much to Elise.
“And then there’s the Louvre next week. They’re selling a small collection of pottery shards from the Cour Napoleon excavations, and one of my old colleagues has promised us a preview before everything goes to auction. Some of the shards date back to the thirteenth century.”
The office was located at the far end of the warehouse, and the route there took them past a series of large shelving units.
Mathias kept the more delicate pieces in a separate climate-controlled section installed to one side of the main hangar.
As they neared the door to the office, Rayan spotted an open crate of smashed clay figurines.
It looked like someone had taken to them with a baseball bat.
He wondered what lay behind that ominous sight.
“They found all sorts of things when they dug up the area during construction of the new museum. It’s like a time capsule of life in Paris. I’ve always loved that collection.” Elise spoke quickly when she got excited. “The French decorative arts is another favorite of mine. What about you?”
“Sorry?”
“Do you have a favorite collection at the Louvre?”
“I’ve never been.”
Elise stopped to look at him, cocking her head. “Oh.” Then she strode over to the office, gave a sharp rap on the door, and swung it open. “Rayan has never been to the Louvre,” she announced in lieu of a greeting.
Seated at his desk in the corner, Mathias didn’t look up from the papers in his hand. “And…?”
“He should come with us to Paris. I can give him the full tour.”
Mathias gave a disapproving grunt and glanced up at Rayan standing in the doorway. Rayan raised his eyebrows, and Mathias turned pointedly to his appraiser. “Weren’t you leaving?”
Elise held up her hands defensively. “Okay, but think about it. The place is a national treasure, part of our collective cultural education.”
“Go home, Dumont.”
She clasped her hands together and flashed Rayan a smile before bidding them both good night and taking her leave.
“She’s concerned about my cultural education?” Rayan asked when Elise had gone.
Mathias snickered. “You’re a hick from the colonies, remember? She considers it her patriotic duty.” He leaned back in his chair. “The price I pay for employing the only qualified appraiser willing to work in this town.”
“Guess there’s no harm in being eager.” Rayan stepped over and placed the paper bag on the desk. “Thought you might be hungry.”
Mathias glanced down at his watch as though only having realized the time. Then he picked up the bag and took out the sandwich. “Look at this—full service.”
While Mathias ate, Rayan looked around the office.
Behind Mathias’s desk were a metal filing cabinet and several shelves heaving with document boxes.
On the other side of the room, Elise’s desk was scattered with strange objects affixed with white tags.
A labeled display of what appeared to be marble fragments was mounted to the wall.
“It’s not that I don’t want to see it,” Rayan said absently. Naturally, the prospect of exploring one of the country’s most prestigious museums appealed to him. And he’d certainly heard enough about it.
“Ignore her breathless fervor. The Louvre is mildly interesting.”
“But you’d prefer I didn’t come?”
“You’re perfectly capable of making your own decisions.” Mathias tossed the empty paper bag into the trash and got up from his chair. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
“The crate of broken figures?” Rayan replied, catching the way Mathias’s expression darkened. “What happened there?”
Mathias pulled open the office door. “Someone made a bad call.”
He tilted his head for Rayan to follow, and they stepped back into the warehouse.
Mathias led him down an aisle between two shelving units crammed with merchandise in marked crates and boxes.
Rayan stopped in front of a powder-white sculpture of a woman holding a child to her breast. Behind her head spanned a sort of halo, and the dress that draped her body had been carved to resemble the gentle fall of fabric.
“That’s ivory, late Gothic,” Mathias said from the end of the aisle.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s worth a mint. Some of this shit, you wouldn’t believe.”
Mathias reached a section of shelving that housed a clear container of books and opened the lid to remove one of the titles from the box. He handed the book to Rayan. Its red clothbound cover was slightly faded, and the corners were scuffed to reveal glimpses of the binder’s board beneath.
“You’ll be pleased to know I rescued it from a fascist treasure trove.”
It was an early copy of Albert Camus’s L’étranger . Rayan couldn’t recall the number of times he’d read it. Someone had stamped the name D. Montecot in the top left-hand corner of the inside cover. Below that, the publishing house and the year it was printed were listed neatly in black type.
“It’s a first edition,” Rayan marveled.
“It’s yours.”
Rayan closed the book. “I can’t take this.”
“What am I going to use it for, a paperweight?”