Chapter Twelve #3
“Don’t you usually work up to that question?” Rose adjusted the chrysocolla crystal she was wearing on a chain, recalling that she’d worn it on her and Aaron’s first date. “No, I don’t.”
It wasn’t completely a lie. She knew she’d dragged Henry into her timeline before he’d posed for the painting, but none of them understood the time glitch that had left the painting here at the museum, in its unfinished state, with everyone remembering the completed painting that no longer existed.
“Why were your brother and Daniela lingering by the painting on Friday night?”
She felt hot all over. Even though they’d just made nice, if Aaron accused her brother of doing anything wrong, even indirectly, he was going to regret it.
“Daniela was telling Ryan about the restoration work she was going to do.”
“Why were they talking about that?”
Rose gave a little huff of impatience. “Just making conversation? Conservators always like talking about their work.” It occurred to her for the first time that maybe Daniela had been a little bit interested in Ryan.
“You were also talking with your brother right after the ceremony ended.”
“Creepy,” Rose interjected. If he’d noticed that, he must’ve been staring at her.
Aaron ignored this. “Did either of you say anything about the portrait then?”
“No! We hadn’t seen it yet.”
“How long did you look at the painting with Ryan and Daniela?”
“I don’t know. A few minutes?”
“Why so long?”
Well, she wasn’t going to tell him that it was partly because she’d been riveted by the image of the duke. She touched the chrysocolla again. “It was a new acquisition, so I was thinking about what I would post about it.” Plausible, if not exactly true.
“So you three discussed the portrait for a few minutes, and then you walked directly from there to the reception?”
Rose nodded.
“That’s an affirmative,” he muttered, for the sake of the recording, she supposed. “When you were walking to the reception, did you see anyone coming the other way?”
“No. But wouldn’t you know if someone did? This museum has cameras everywhere, doesn’t it?” They even had security cameras in the windowless photo rooms of the conservator labs now, she happened to know, though that hadn’t been the case when Griffin had come to life.
He asked, “How well do you know Daniela?” He hadn’t answered her question about the cameras, she noticed. Maybe there was something wrong with the footage. Or maybe they suspected it had been messed with, somehow.
Rose shrugged. “I haven’t known her for that long.
Emily got to know her when they were both working on a piece together—like a cabinet with painted panels?
I went to lunch with them both a couple of times.
And I saw Daniela a few times because of the wedding.
” She gave Aaron a skeptical look. “You can’t honestly think she had anything to do with it. ”
“I don’t think anything yet.”
“But if Daniela’s right and it’s a different painting, how does that make sense? Someone stole the duke and hung this new forgery in its place? Why would anyone even do that? And how?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. How well do you know Jason Yun?”
Maybe she should’ve expected that question.
In addition to both the knight sculpture and the duke portrait, Jason had also acquired a haunted suit of armor.
But that didn’t seem to be haunted anymore, and Jason had managed to convince everyone that what had happened with the armor had been theatrics.
Besides, he’d acquired many things over the past few years.
The ancient Egyptian mirror with the Isis handle, which Emily had restored.
The contemporary sculpture of a cow that appeared to be made from butter, though it really wasn’t.
The dollhouse-like interior, a New York ballroom in the late Gilded Age, that was a new addition to the Thorne Miniature Rooms. None of those were magical. Were they?
“I barely know him,” Rose said. It was true, even if the guy had convinced her to go creeping around a man’s mansion soon. Jason struck her as hard to get to know, now that she thought about it.
“Did you talk to him at the reception?”
Rose thought about that for a moment. “No.” She’d FaceTimed with him later that night, but she supposed she didn’t need to volunteer that information.
“What time did you leave the reception?”
“A little after eleven. I’m watching Emily’s dog, and I wanted to check on him.”
“Did you go straight home?”
“Yeah.”
“And what time did you get home?”
“I don’t know exactly, but about eleven thirty?”
“Can anyone vouch for that?”
“Other than the dog?” she quipped, though it unsettled her to be asked about her alibi.
“Actually, the lady who lives downstairs can probably vouch for me. You cannot believe how loud that dog barks when someone comes to the door. Oh!” She lifted a finger, realizing something.
“There’s a record of my ride, too. On the app. ”
“And you were home alone the rest of the night?”
Fresh heat rose to her cheeks. “That’s none of your business.”
“It literally is.”
She could take the moral high ground. She leaned closer to the phone to make sure what she would say got picked up on the recording. “Well, I don’t feel comfortable talking about my personal life with you, and that’s your fault for fake-dating me and lying to me before.”
“So you’re in a relationship,” Aaron said, unfazed.
“What did I just say?” And was this a Special Agent question or a Sort-Of-Ex-Boyfriend question? Either way, she didn’t want Aaron sniffing around to see if she had some new art crime genius lover, so she added, “No, I’m not in a relationship. I’ll say that much.”
“Do you know what time your brother left the reception?”
“No. I left before him.” She wanted to tell him that if he bothered Ryan, he’d be wasting both of their time, but she didn’t want to sound like she was covering for anything.
Aaron scrutinized her face. Then he touched the button on his phone to stop recording.
“Any thoughts on why this museum is becoming the home of seemingly impossible art crimes?”
Rose glanced around them. No one was listening.
“I don’t think it is,” she said. “I know Griffin told you he used to be the stone sculpture. You’re his friend. You still don’t believe him?”
After a pause, Aaron said, “I believe he believes it.”
“You mostly believe him,” Rose guessed.
He gave a thoughtful tilt of his head. “More than I believe you.”
“What?”
He sighed. “Rose, I’m pretty good at telling when someone’s not being truthful. And you have an obvious tell.”
What tell? Rose realized she was touching the crystal at her neck again. She jerked her hand away.
Did he really suspect her of something?
She said, “One minute you’re telling me you still like me, and the next minute you’re telling me I’m a liar.”
“I didn’t say lying. I can tell there’s something you’re not telling me. That doesn’t mean I don’t like you.”
There was no way she was going to explain to Aaron that she’d accidentally made a duke from the early 1800s time travel to her apartment. If he didn’t completely believe Griffin, he definitely wouldn’t believe her.
And what if the U.S. government really did believe Henry was from the past? And Griffin, too, for that matter? She hadn’t thought about that before. Would men show up and stuff them in vans and take them to some undisclosed location to study them? It wasn’t hard to imagine.
“I don’t know anything that’ll help with your investigation,” she said.
He stood up, so Rose did, too. He said, “Listen, after I get this case wrapped up, we should go out again.”
Rose gaped at him. “Seriously?”
Aaron spread his hands. “You know I’m just doing my job here, right? Like I say, not while I’m still investigating.”
He must not really suspect her, if he was bringing this up again. Or Ryan, Emily, or Griffin, either, for that matter.
Probably, she should say no. How would they ever overcome such a weird beginning?
But the few dates she’d been on with him, even if they’d been mostly fake, had been nice. Fancy restaurants, but not fancy enough to make her feel weird. Conversation had never hit an awkward lull.
She’d never had that electric feeling around Aaron that she had with Henry—as though the very air between them were charged.
But what good had that feeling been? Either Henry hadn’t felt it, or he hadn’t cared.
The truth was, now that Henry had backed away from her, it was pretty flattering to have a good-looking, intelligent man be genuinely interested in her. Persistent, even.
“Give it some thought?” Aaron suggested.
“I’ll, uh, I’ll unblock your number,” she said with a fake laugh—feeling misgivings as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
With a sparkle in his eyes, he said, “You do that.”
He told her he was meeting Jason at the café, and Rose wondered how that would go. Maybe Aaron was good at getting information out of people, given his job, but Jason seemed equally adept at not sharing. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Jason, unlike her, was an excellent liar.
As she walked back to her office, she checked her phone and found she had a text from Emily.
I’m here! Meet me at the doors at 1?
They usually went out to the food trucks that parked between the museum and Millennium Park. Rose’s spirits lifted as she gave Emily’s text a thumbs-up.
Back at her desk, she spent some time monitoring comments on a couple of museum accounts, then edited and uploaded a lecture to YouTube.
The lectures didn’t get a lot of views, but she was trying to do a better job with the keywords so that more people would stumble across them.
A little before one, she left her desk, and she was halfway down the light-filled Modern Wing when she heard Emily’s voice behind her, calling her name.