Chapter 22
CHAPTER
NEW YORK CITY
How ironic, Elsa mused, that the Gothic country estate where she had expected to be isolated had actually brought more friends into her life than she’d ever had before. She could scarcely believe her work at Elmhurst was over.
All day Friday, after she returned to the museum with the last of the tagged specimens, she carried on with her usual work in the ornithology department. But without the anticipation of the next visit to Tarrytown, her office felt more lonesome than usual.
So when Luke called her after dinner and asked if he and Tom could meet her at Central Park the next day, she didn’t need to be asked twice.
Now the three of them sat on the steps of Bethesda Terrace, facing Bethesda Fountain. Ivy would have joined them but had to work on an upcoming event for another historical anniversary.
Barney stayed on a leash but remained alert as he watched other pedestrians. Many sat along the fountain’s perimeter beneath the angel looking down from twenty-six feet above. Pigeons bobbed along the ground, their feathers iridescent in the sun.
“How about that view, Tom?” Luke extended an arm as though to encompass not just the fountain but the lake behind it and the sun-streaked sky. The heat of the day had mellowed to a golden haze over the city’s most-beloved park. “And the jazz!”
At the bandshell a mere three hundred feet south of Bethesda Terrace, Fletcher Henderson and his orchestra performed his hit “Shanghai Shuffle.” It was plenty loud enough to be heard without being in the concert audience. A couple sitting nearby tapped their toes to the beat.
But Tom’s attention snagged on the pigeons. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. With his other hand, he gave the dog a good scratch behind the ears.
With no other response forthcoming from Tom, Luke asked Elsa how work had been yesterday.
“Typical, for the most part,” she started. “Although I did try to clear the air with Archer over his surprise visit to Elmhurst.”
“Yeah? How’d that go?”
“He apologized for any misunderstanding but not for being there. When I asked him outright if he had been gambling, he admitted that he had. Percy was more of an influence on him than the other way around. Now he’s cut Percy out and is pals with Wesley instead.”
Luke took all this in with a single nod. “Nothing about that shocks me. Did you tell him anything about the aviary?”
“Only that we hadn’t found it—and only because he asked.” She glanced to Tom, who blew smoke from the side of his mouth but seemed to be following along. “Do you have any news from Elmhurst?”
A light wind feathered Elsa’s skin, and geese and swans glided across the surface of the lake. From the opposite direction, Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra played “The Stampede,” a lively song she recognized from the radio. She felt very far away from the mansion indeed.
“We spoke to Mr. Spalding,” Luke said. “He and his family have everything they want out of the house. The county has scheduled for it to be torn down on Friday.”
Her stomach hollowed. She’d known from the start this day was coming, but now that it was upon them, the end seemed impossibly soon.
She tried and failed to picture that piece of land on the Hudson without the turreted mansion upon it.
“Did he say whether the Petrovics still had until the end of the month to stay in their cottage?”
“We confirmed that they do.” Tom tugged at the brim of his straw boater. “We also finished taking all the measurements and photographs inside so we can build the new one.”
“But there are still some elements we want to salvage before the mansion is bulldozed,” Luke added. “Mostly doors and lighting fixtures. It will be a challenge to get it all out of there in time, so I’m afraid we won’t see much of each other this coming week.”
She told him she understood.
Even with the music in the background and children playing in the fountain, a heaviness seemed to surround both Luke and Tom.
“I wish we could find the aviary for Tatiana and Danielle,” Tom said. “But . . .”
“I know,” she said. “If we haven’t found it by now, chances are really slim. And I know you won’t have time to do anything but the job that brought you to Elmhurst to begin with.”
He nodded, his face clouded with what looked a lot like defeat.
Luke regarded him, then turned to Elsa, a fresh sparkle in his eyes. “In the meantime, I can’t think of a better way to spend Saturday night than wandering around in the woods looking for birds. If only we had someone to help us.”
Beaming, Elsa accepted his hand to help her stand. With her other hand, she gripped the chickadee cane he’d carved for her. “Nothing would please me more.” And she was pretty sure Luke knew that. He also knew bird-watching might help his younger friend decompress.
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 put it 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 she want him 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 was where. 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.