Chapter Seventeen
Margo
Edinburgh
“Did you hear from the police?” Luke asked her in the taxi on the way from the train station to his client’s restaurant.
“Still nothing. I called the station and left a message for the detective since his voicemail is full. I checked in with Bea and all is going well on her end. She hasn’t noticed anyone following her or anything.
No more fake emails, either. It seems like things are calming down, which makes me wonder if whoever is behind all of this didn’t anticipate the police attention that they’ve gotten. ”
“It’s possible. Whoever is responsible for the break-ins is likely bankrolling the operation rather than getting their hands dirty. Maybe the people working for them took things too far and now they’re trying to reel it in.”
When they exited the taxi, Luke moved to the outside, positioning himself between Margo and the road. She could feel the tension in his body, his eyes tracking the crowd around them.
Adriana’s restaurant—The Red Bull—was in a prime spot near the Royal Mile.
The restaurant sign was a cute red square with the overlay of a bull outlined in black.
It looked like the kind of place where bankers would take dates on Friday nights, and reservations would be hard to land; glowing write-ups would appear about it online with quotes like “daring,” and “innovative.”
From the location, she would bet that Adriana was doing just fine, but whether that meant she had the funds to hire someone to follow Margo around London was still unknown.
They stepped through the entrance.
The restaurant’s interior resembled a cave, and Margo instantly felt as though she had left the cobblestone streets of Edinburgh behind and descended into some subterranean lair with the truly excellent scent of meat and cheeses lingering around her.
“It reminds me of—”
“That place in Barcelona,” Luke finished for her.
She nodded.
He’d proposed in Barcelona. They’d just finished their winter grad school exams and they’d both been exhausted from two weeks of subsisting on caffeine and takeout.
Luke had gifted her the trip as her Christmas present, and they’d spent three glorious days wandering the city.
On their last night, they had stumbled into a restaurant that was so tiny, it had barely been able to fit more than a handful of tables.
They’d pushed their chairs together, and suddenly he’d looked at her and said, “Marry me.”
He’d had to repeat himself, as he loved to tell their friends when he shared the story, because Margo had been so struck by the proposal that she’d felt like a lightning bolt had hit her.
The entire thing seemed inconceivable—Luke himself was like a unicorn, given some of the truly horrible guys she’d dated—and the idea of marriage wasn’t one she had contemplated for herself.
To be fair, she wasn’t sure Luke had planned on marriage any more than she had, considering the way he had blurted out the proposition sans ring in the most unlike-Luke way possible.
When she’d told the story to her friends, that was the part she loved the best—that there hadn’t been a ring or rose petals or candles or any of the traditional hallmarks that screamed romance.
Just the two of them drinking sangria at a little restaurant in Barcelona that resembled a cave, dizzy in love with each other.
“That was a good night,” she said.
Luke nodded. “It was.”
He held out his hand to her, indicating for her to lead the way.
Margo and Luke walked up to the hostess stand, scanning the restaurant for any sign of Adriana Josephs.
The restaurant had just opened and there were only two occupied tables. If Adriana was the one behind Mr. Thornton’s murder, at least they were facing her in public, even if it was on her turf.
Margo waited patiently while Luke gave his name and told the hostess he had a meeting with the owner.
The hostess led them to a private table near the corner, where they were greeted by a waitress who promptly took their order—some tapas and a bottle of red that she recommended—and then gave them privacy.
When the wine arrived, Margo could hardly do more than take a few sips of it, given the nerves rolling around inside her, but she figured it looked less suspicious for them to appear as though they were a couple out on a casual lunch.
“Thank you for letting me meet with your client,” Margo said.
“Of course. Maybe it was overkill coming here in person, but I felt like I needed to look her in the face, to assess the situation for myself.” Luke gave her a rueful smile.
“I get like this. With work. And life. Once something sinks its hooks into me, it’s hard for me to let go until I see it to the end. ”
“When you were a detective, it was one of the things I struggled with most. You never talked about your job when we were married.”
“I know. It just felt like you were a sanctuary, and I didn’t want the ugliness of my work to invade our home life.
I like what I do. I always have. Before we met, when I was working violent crimes, I couldn’t ever turn it off.
The things I saw, the cases I investigated, haunted me.
And then when I started working with organized crime and art crimes, I don’t know—I thought it would be different.
I thought I could leave my work at the door when I came home.
But it still followed me. It was still horrible people doing horrible things.
You saw the beauty in art, the joy that it brought your clients when you found a necklace or a painting.
You were so excited by it. And I guess I didn’t want to put a damper on that excitement, didn’t want to bring up the other side of things that I experienced in my job where the same kinds of paintings were used as currency by crime syndicates. ”
“I didn’t know. You walled off this part of yourself that I couldn’t reach. I wish I had asked why. I wish I had understood better.”
Suddenly, Luke’s gaze drifted to something beyond her, and he leaned forward. “Adriana Josephs just walked in.”
Margo shifted in her chair, casually glancing over her shoulder. Sure enough, a blonde woman had entered the restaurant and was speaking to their waitress, her gaze on their table. Margo recognized her instantly from the picture on the restaurant’s website.
In that split second before their eyes met, Margo catalogued the woman’s response, searching for some recognition in her expression, some sign that Adriana Josephs was behind the murder, the break-in.
Margo didn’t see it, but then again, maybe Adriana was really that good of an actress.
Adriana said something to the waitress before she walked toward their table, a polite smile on her face. It was a customer-facing smile, just like the one Margo had reproduced dozens of times before.
Adriana stopped in front of their table, her gaze drifting from Luke to Margo, who rose from their sitting position.
“Are you Luke? I’m Adriana Josephs. I was so sorry to hear about Mitch. How is he doing?”
“Better,” Luke replied. “He’s still in the hospital, but the surgery went well.”
Luke shook his client’s hand before introducing Margo as a colleague.
“Good, I’m glad. I don’t know if he told you, but he and my husband were roommates in college, and he’s a great friend.”
Luke nodded. “He was worried about not being able to help you. You know how Mitch is.”
“I told him not to worry about it, couldn’t believe he was emailing me from the hospital to offer his apologies.
“You said that you wanted to speak with me about the book? Did you find it?” Adriana asked after they had all sat down.
Luke shook his head. “No. We do have some questions about A Time for Forgetting , though. Mitch’s notes said you had a personal connection to the novel, that it belonged to your family in Cuba, that it was lost during the revolution.”
“Yes. My grandmother was given the book by her mother, my great-grandmother, and was tasked with returning it to the author, Eva Fuentes,” Adriana answered, glancing toward Margo.
“It always bothered my grandmother that she was forced to leave it behind, that she was unable to fulfill the promise she’d made.
She felt like she’d failed her mother’s friend.
It was a matter of honor for her. My great-grandmother was friends with the author, Eva Fuentes.
They were roommates together for a summer. ”
Summer…
“Did your great-grandmother go to the Cuban Summer School?” Margo asked, remembering the research that they’d unearthed on Eva Fuentes, the fact that she had traveled to Boston at the beginning of the twentieth century.
“Yes, my great-grandmother Dolores and Eva were roommates. Eva gave my great-grandmother a copy of her book. I don’t know why.
I never met Eva. My great-grandmother died in Cuba before I was born, and after she died, my grandmother inherited her belongings.
My grandmother promised her mother that she would return the book to Eva Fuentes, but before she was able to, she was forced to flee Cuba. ”
“Do you think the book is still in Cuba?” Margo asked.
“I don’t know. When my grandmother left Havana, she gave it to a neighbor in her apartment building—a librarian—for safekeeping.”
“Do you know the librarian’s name?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. My grandmother died when I was eight years old.
If she told me as a child, I don’t remember it and I haven’t found anything in my parents’ papers, although I can certainly check again.
I’ve looked through them quite a bit, but they moved more than a few times throughout their lives.
This was one of those family stories that was passed down, but I wish I had known to ask about it when I was younger, wish I had more information.
I’ll try talking to some of my older relatives to see if they know anything else. ”
“Do you know if the librarian is still alive? Or if she stayed in Havana?” Luke asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know what the book was about?”