Chapter 14
The moment the lock clicked, before the door opened, before he stepped into view, Olivia knew she had made a mistake. Actually,
she knew it would be a mistake before she had even taken the papyrus fragment from the safe, before she slipped it into her
briefcase, before she’d repinned her hair and changed into a better dress. She knew this was a mistake.
And yet here she was. Staring at the man who had given her a chance, promised so much. But even Max Lienhardt couldn’t ensure
her future, or stop the degenerative condition of her eyes.
She blinked as if she would hide them from him.
“Olivia,” he said, as if he’d expected to see her at his door after two long years of trying to forget.
Her courage failed. Perhaps she could turn and walk away now, and he would think that he had drifted off at his desk and merely
dreamed that she stood at his door.
“Come in.” He opened the door wider and stepped to the side. Like a moth to the flame, a flame that would incinerate her,
she stepped through into another world. A world that she had thought would be hers. When her future was a tiny mote in one
eye but was now forever locked to her.
He hurried ahead, gathered up a messy array of papers from the chair in front of his desk. Looked quickly around and dumped them on the top of a Grecian plinth.
“Please.”
She sat down, and he pulled up another chair to sit beside her.
Olivia took a breath, perhaps her first since entering the office. She glanced to the corner where her desk still sat, piled
high with manila envelopes and papers and several old books, obviously unused for anything but storage.
And a stab of pain sharp as a spindle took her breath away.
They just sat there silent for a few moments, each looking down at their own hands.
Until Olivia unclasped her briefcase. “I need your advice.” She opened the case, took out a large manilla envelope in which
she’d deposited one sheet holding a two-inch scrap of papyrus. She had transcribed and translated it. But she didn’t have
the expertise to assure its authenticity.
Max glanced quickly at the envelope, pushed his chair back, and strode around to the viewing table, pulling his chair behind
him. He clicked on a light. She followed him naturally, and a minute later she had carefully slid the page of the papyrus
remnant onto the desk beneath a protective glass frame.
She heard his intake of breath. The past wrapped its arms around them, and they leaned in, heads together, his hair black
and overlong, hers dark and coiled in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. His hand automatically reached for the magnifying
glass. Neither of them daring to breathe as he studied the small fragment.
After a long perusal, he sat back.
“God, Liv, where did you get this?”
Olivia smiled slightly. She hadn’t seen him in two years. He hadn’t changed much. His hairline might be a little higher, his frame possibly even thinner. He’d never had much flesh to spare.
Her smile grew. “Is that a new suit?”
“Last year. Now you.”
“We’re not sure.” Seeing his frown, she added, “My sisters and I. We all inherited the store when father died.”
“I remember. You should have come back to work.”
Olivia shook her head.
“Okay, we won’t discuss it . . . for now. Go on.”
She explained about the raid, finding a packet in their throwaway box. “Someone must have dropped it; it was a free-for-all
outside, and I was afraid the crush of people might break our window. We didn’t find it until it was all over and we were
cleaning up. Perhaps it got dropped in the scuffle, and they meant to come back for it. But it was late, and we just pulled
everything inside and didn’t discover it until the next morning. It could be someone placed it there meaning to keep it safe.
I have no idea. Only that we ended up with it. I knew if it was authentic—and I think it is—it would create a furor in both
the art world and with the censors.”
“Is this the only fragment?”
She shook her head.
He nodded toward her briefcase.
“No, I couldn’t take the chance of bringing them. They’re well hidden.”
“Thank God for that. Does anyone else know?”
“About the fragments? My sisters. I didn’t tell them what I was doing. Is it what I think it is?”
“There would have to be tests, of course. But if these are unknown poems . . .” He took the magnifying glass, studied the writing, then read aloud first in Greek, then in impromptu translation.
His voice was clear, and Olivia thought of days when he’d read verse aloud to her, though to her even a laundry receipt would
sound beautiful because poetry was in his voice. Sometimes taking their work down to the lake, they’d lie beneath the trees
and eat their lunch and translate as Max laughingly told her, “As the ancient Greeks would do.”
But most of the time they worked in this tiny windowless office, until the light began to hurt her eyes and it became harder
for her to see, and he would say, “That’s enough for today. How about a walk to clear the cobwebs?”
It had been a glorious year. Until it all came crashing down. She shouldn’t have come. She should—
“You know it’s probably stolen, on its way to some private collector. You could all be in serious trouble, if not in danger.”
She knew that. She also knew what he was about to suggest. In spite of their time apart, she still knew him so well. “You
can’t have it, Max.”
“We can transcribe it together.”
“I already have.”
“Then what are you going to do? If someone dropped this, they’ll be back for it. It’s worth God knows how much. To own such
a find could drive someone to extremes.”
“It’s safe where it is.”
“But are you, and your sisters?”
She’d been so worried about it being discovered by the Suppression of Vice agents that she hadn’t thought of the criminals. She suddenly needed to get home to make certain her sisters were safe. She stood, he stood at the same time, stopped her by caging her between his arms and the desk.
She didn’t try to move away, and she wasn’t afraid—she wanted to stay just as they were.
“What do you want me to do? Why did you come here?”
“For a second opinion.” But that was a lie. It wasn’t because of Max’s expertise, or because she trusted him more than others—she
didn’t. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, say, Because this is where I belong.
The late afternoon saw the usual end-of-day surge of customers on their way from work. Celia was tidying the window’s book
display when several people entered the shop. Daphne was in the back with a customer, so Celia nodded a Can I help you? smile toward them, then started when another man stepped in behind the others.
At first, she wasn’t certain why he looked so familiar. The rimless eyeglasses. The Derby hat. And then it came to her. He’d
been looking in the window that afternoon. Maybe this time he would actually buy something.
The little group spread out when they reached the rows of books. And Celia went back to her task. It was when she had stretched
over to straighten a 1910 first edition of Tom Swift and His Airship that the memory hit her with such force it took her breath away. The face in the window was that face in the window. The night of the postcard man’s arrest. He’d been forced against the window: those glasses, that Derby
hat, and a brown wrapped parcel.
She knocked over the Tom Swift, which set off a domino effect involving several first editions. That was the least of her
worries. Her speculation was running far ahead of her rationality.
She stayed put, collecting her wits and searching the shop for the newcomer. She might be letting her imagination run wild, but it was too much of a coincidence not to wonder. Wasn’t it?
She started down the middle aisle, ostensibly to help customers. Most customers didn’t want help—they wanted to browse—but
Celia continued doggedly on, with one ulterior motive: to catch a better glimpse of the man she thought she recognized.
And somehow managed to miss him as she perused row after row of books. She made another pass, just going by the end of each
row, and still he didn’t appear. Had he left while she was looking elsewhere?
She felt an urgent, irrational need to know. She hurried back to the front of the store, where she should have stayed to discourage
pocket thieves. But he wasn’t there, either. She crossed the aisles again, peering to the back of each one with no success.
She hadn’t seen him go upstairs, so it was possible he’d left the shop. She turned just in time to see him step from the opening
to the side hall, where the elevator and kitchen were.
She hurried toward him. “May I help you? This hallway is for employees only.”
“I beg your pardon. I thought you might have a second floor.”
“The stairs are over there, but the second floor is mainly medical texts and lawbooks.”
“And more?”
“No. The other floors are not a part of the shop.”
“I see. Thank you.” He turned to go and practically ran into Daphne and a customer who were on their way to the cashier’s
counter.
Daphne smiled at him, and he lifted his hat to her. Blond hair a little long and today pomaded back. Not hatless and falling across his forehead. It was the man from the window, grasping the package, the package that ended up in their throwaway box.
Was it possible? Celia hurried to the bow window.
She was just in time to see the man stride off down the avenue.
As she turned to go back inside, she caught a glimpse of another man standing across the avenue; he also seemed to be watching
the man. Joshua Starling. He caught her eye, touched the brim of his hat, then stepped inside Kirsch’s Art and Fine Illustrations.
This couldn’t be a coincidence—the same man twice in one day, and Joshua Starling just happened to be standing on the sidewalk
across from the shop both times?
A chill ran across her back as an image fell into her mind. The face in the window, the night of the postcard seller’s arrest.