The Cloisters(73)

“Does everyone have access to storage?” I said, popping my head in the door.

“You’re letting out all the AC,” complained Hal, the security guard on duty. I stepped inside.

It had never struck me that the security operation at the museum was sophisticated but casually run. There were banks of monitors and computer equipment recording a constant loop of film—a record of the movements of visitors and staff. But it was also a makeshift kitchen, stacked with boxes of pastries and an extra coffee machine. A pile of unused radios was tangled in the corner. It didn’t really matter, after all; everything was wired with an alarm. Except, of course, for storage.

“I think so,” said Hal. “We don’t monitor it much because it’s just staff. Why?”

“I was just curious.”

“Something wrong?”

“No.” I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I hadn’t thought about what I should say if they asked me why I wanted to know. But Hal returned to his monitors, and I stood there watching the flow of visitors through the galleries, their bodies like schools of fish merging and breaking apart. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone anyway. I wanted to put all the pieces together first.

I decided to walk through the museum on the off chance the piece was actually on display. Each glass case, though, confirmed my suspicion. My stomach tightened into a knot, and I regretted the moment I had reached for the stack of hats.

What bad luck, I thought. No, I knew now it was something else. It was fate. The way Leo had encouraged me to take what I wanted suddenly took on a darker resonance.

Before returning to the library, I scanned my key card and went back into storage. Nodding at the conservation staff, I began to pull out shelves of objects, looking specifically for the small valuable ones. The ones that had precious stones or were made of expensive metals or materials. I also made a point to look up at each of the cameras. There were four in the storage room, each recording a separate quadrant. There was no way Leo could have been missed if he was in here, but there was little chance that the cameras were sharp enough to pick up a palmed object.

I started to notice a pattern: every third or fourth drawer had a piece missing. The accession number neatly labeled, the object space blank. I knew it was possible that some pieces were on loan; others could be down at the Met. It was even possible that Conservation was cleaning a few of them. But as I kept methodically pulling out the drawers, I noticed that none of the larger objects were so obviously absent. It was harder, I thought, to take a carved capital out of the museum than it was a pocket-size work of art. And the medieval and early Renaissance periods had no shortage of such objects.

I closed the last drawer and made my way back to the library, where Rachel looked up at me expectantly.

“Where did you go?” she said.

I wasn’t ready to tell her. To admit to her—to myself—what Leo had been doing. I didn’t want to expose the intimacy of the discovery, to acknowledge that the man I had slept with just a few days before had a motive for murdering Patrick. I was still too busy running through the excuses: maybe it wasn’t too late to return them, maybe it was a coincidence. But that was the difficult thing about research; it was an impulse, a drive, but you could be disappointed, sometimes devastated, by the results. I was about to lie and tell Rachel that I’d just gone for a quick walk when the door swung open and Moira entered the library, trailed by Detective Murphy.

“Oh good, you’re both in,” said Moira. “Detective Murphy is here to talk to you.”

“Thank you, Moira.” Detective Murphy stood there, waiting for Moira to leave.

She lingered by the door, until finally lifting a hand and saying, “Okay, I’ll be in the lobby.”

Once the door closed behind her, Detective Murphy pulled out her notebook and flipped through it.

“We received an anonymous tip last night,” she said, speaking directly to Rachel, “that corroborated the fact that you and Patrick were involved in an intimate relationship that may have been in the process of dissolving when he was murdered?”

Rachel looked up from her notes at both of us.

“This witness can place you arguing with Patrick in his car in The Cloisters’ parking lot. The same witness says they saw you many times coming and going in the garden shed area.”

“When we last spoke,” said Rachel, “I informed you that I would only speak to you with my attorney present.”

“In that case, I’ll ask Ms. Stilwell if she has anything to add to this new information.”

I started to say something when I saw Rachel shake her head, an imperceptible no.

“Ann has retained counsel as well.”

“Is this true, Ms. Stilwell?”

I looked between the two of them.

“She has retained counsel,” said Rachel, watching me and nodding.

“Ms. Stilwell?”

“I have,” I said, even though, of course, I had not.

“I hope you didn’t make this trip all the way for us,” said Rachel.

“I didn’t,” said Detective Murphy, flipping her notes closed. “And we look forward to interviewing both of you, with your respective attorneys, of course, very soon.”

Once the door had closed, Rachel returned her gaze to me.

“You don’t think…” She let the sentence die off. The mask she usually wore—serene, smiling, assured—had slipped, if only for a moment, her eyes haunted, bloodshot. Perhaps it was the first time she looked down and saw the tightrope on which we had been walking, the vertigo overwhelming.