Chapter 1
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY
Dead people were easy to talk to. It was the living ones that often gave Lauren trouble. Even her father.
No. Especially him.
Rolling her shoulders back, she headed toward the Central Park bench where he waited. At seventy years old, he’d diminished from the giant he’d been to her in childhood. And like the giants in her storybooks, her father had been just as fabled. Outsized in her heart and mind and not quite real.
Bridles jangled on a pair of horses pulling a carriage full of tourists. Lauren watched it pass, then crossed to the lawn spreading from the Egyptian obelisk erected by her employer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Lawrence Westlake stood to greet her. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
She wouldn’t stay long. “You said there was something specific you wanted to ask me?” She sat on the opposite end of the bench from him, near a barrel sprouting orange chrysanthemums. Behind the obelisk, trees flamed with autumn’s glory beneath an azure sky.
He lowered himself to the bench. “There is. But first, how are you? How is your work?”
“Busy as ever. We’re expecting another shipment of crates from the team in the field any day now.” As assistant curator of Egyptian art, with the curator on an expedition, Lauren was doing the work of at least two people until the team’s return next spring.
“Anything exciting?” Lawrence’s eyes glinted. From a nearby pushcart, the smell of roasted pumpkin seeds and apple cider carried on the breeze.
After a quick glance at her watch, Lauren told him about the most recent mummy and coffin to arrive and felt herself relax.
Lawrence Westlake might not have been the best father, but he’d been the one to instill in her a love for Egyptology.
Aside from the curator, Albert Lythgoe, and the expedition director, Herbert Winlock, she couldn’t think of anyone else who might share her enthusiasm for the nuances of ancient Egyptian artifacts.
“I’m proud of you.” His smile brought a gentle tapping on the wall she’d built around her heart. Then he pulled a photograph from inside his jacket pocket. “Look what I found.”
Lauren took it and stared at the little girl in the photo, standing as close to the man beside her as he would allow. It had been taken twenty-seven years ago. She’d been five years old.
“How small you were,” Lawrence murmured. “Do you remember that day?”
“Of course.” She recalled every detail. Someone from a geographical society had come to their home to photograph Lawrence before one of his many trips.
Lauren had pestered to be in one of the photos, and they’d finally appeased her.
She’d wanted to sit on her father’s lap but hadn’t been brave enough to do more than hold his hand.
She fingered the torn corner of the image. “Do you remember this day?”
He frowned. “When you tore off the corner? It was an accident. Out of character for you since you were always so careful with your things. You treated everything as though it were in a museum even then.”
His expression held no hint that he remembered the circumstances. Lauren had been upset that he was leaving her behind again. Lawrence had tucked the photograph into the front pocket of her dress, saying that she was to keep the picture close, and in that way, they’d always be together.
Lauren had ripped the photo when she yanked it out of her pocket and thrust it back at him. She didn’t want a piece of paper. She wanted him.
“I’m going on another trip,” Lawrence announced above chittering sparrows. “To the field. Come with me.”
Snapping the photo into her handbag, she thought of the times he’d said this to her before. There was always a reason she couldn’t or shouldn’t come after all. But all she said was, “I thought you’d given up traveling.”
“I tried. Staying in one place won’t stick.” A sigh gusted from him as he leaned back against the bench. “How long do I need to do penance for missing your mother’s death?”
But it was the life he missed that bothered her most, both before and after her mother died. He didn’t understand that or didn’t want to.
“You had your aunt and uncle and your cousin,” he said. “You and your mother left Chicago to spend every Christmas vacation with them. Staying there after your mother died was best for everyone.”
She hadn’t said a thing about Mother, and still he argued, bringing up feelings and memories she’d rather leave buried. Was it any wonder she hadn’t sought his company during the last four months he’d been living in Manhattan?
Wind teased a strand of hair from Lauren’s chignon, and she tucked it behind her ear. “I don’t want to do this today.”
“It’s time to make good on a promise I made to bring you with me.”
A promise made and broken more than once. She was unwilling to argue with him anymore, and yet unable to agree.
“The only problem is, the board isn’t convinced you ought to have a spot on the expedition team.”
“Since I never asked for a spot, we’re in perfect agreement.” She plucked a petal from the chrysanthemums beside her.
“You’re qualified to come. I know that, and you know that. But you need to prove it to the board. You know, with publications, that sort of thing.”
Lauren stifled a dark laugh. She had proven herself to many people and institutions along the way to earning her doctorate in Egyptology and attaining this position at the Met. She most certainly did not need to prove anything for a role she hadn’t looked for.
“I have no time to impress some nameless board,” she began.
“Not nameless.” He cut her off, handing her a business card: Lawrence A. Westlake, executive board, Napoleon Society. A phone number and Manhattan PO Box followed.
She’d heard of the society but hadn’t known that her father was involved with it, let alone on the board. Still in a fledgling state, the organization was devoted to celebrating Egyptian history and culture, and was named for the man whose explorations in Egypt inspired so many others.
“Imagine what this could do for your career,” Lawrence said.
Lauren had gotten further in a career in Egyptology than most women could ever dream of. Still, she couldn’t deny the pull of the field.
“We’ve secured the perfect spot for our new office building and museum in Newport,” he went on.
“Newport? That’s a little out of the way, isn’t it?”
“It’s perfect!” he repeated. “New York already has the Met, and Boston has the Museum of Fine Arts. But Newport is where all those patrons spend the summers, and the Providence Athenaeum, a short drive from there, holds all twenty-three volumes of Napoleon’s Description de l’Egypte.
It’s only fitting for the Napoleon Society to host a world-class collection nearby.
I’ve been curating it for a few years now, and I expect it will be ready to open to the public in another two. Eighteen months if we’re lucky.”
“So this expedition is for that purpose?” she asked. “To discover and bring back artifacts for your new museum?”
“Precisely. We’ll have to do some maneuvering around the new regulations over there, but that won’t stop us. I’m inviting you to be part of that.”
She broke from his dancing gaze and watched the wind move through the trees. Beyond those, Manhattan’s skyscrapers needled the sky. Far beyond that lay an ancient land she’d been to as a tourist and then later as a student, but never as a professional.
As much as she’d like to believe this opportunity would work out, that she could uncover history herself, she knew better than to hope.
“No, thank you.” Rising, she looked down at the white-haired man who had so often broken her heart. “But best wishes as you go about your business.”
She tried to ignore the hurt etched on his face. She refused to feel guilty for rejecting the offer before he had a chance to take it away.
As he walked her back to the Met, she tried to talk to him of something else—anything else. But the conversation fell flat.
Little wonder. Egyptology was all they had in common.
“One more thing.” Lawrence extended an engraved invitation. “The Napoleon Society’s fundraising gala will be November 21. Please come and hear more of what we’re all about.”
She took it, and he tipped his hat to her. “Thank you for meeting with me today. I am sorry, you know. And I am proud of you. I would recruit you to this expedition even if you weren’t my daughter. You’re good enough to be on the team, Dr. Westlake.”
Lauren hated that she didn’t believe him. She hated that she wished she could.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1925
Humming a melody from Verdi’s La Traviata, Joe Caravello emerged from the subway station into the mottled dark of predawn Lower Manhattan.
The sky was a bruise, the sidewalk a series of cracks and broken pieces.
He trod the final few blocks to work, eager to reach the place where his thoughts had been for more than an hour.
Longer, if he counted thinking in his sleep.
At 240 Centre Street, the five-story granite and limestone police headquarters filled a wedge of land bordered by Grand, Centre, and Broome Streets. Streetlamps illuminated the columns and porticoes over the three arched doorways but failed to penetrate the shadows gathered in his mind.
The clock on the dome began chiming the five o’clock hour as he climbed the steps and entered. After passing through the marble reception room and into the detective bureau, he poured himself a cup of tar-black coffee and took it to his desk.
“Detective Caravello?” A lanky figure approached.
His sleeves were a half inch too short. Must be fresh out of the Police Academy on the fourth floor.
“Oscar McCormick.” He shook Joe’s hand with a firm grip.
“We’re neighbors now, so I thought I’d introduce myself.
” He jerked a thumb toward the desk across from Joe’s.
Up until two weeks ago, it had been Connor’s.
“I heard about what happened with Connor Boyle,” McCormick added.