The Cloisters(77)

“They’re going to handle it from here.”

I looked up at him, part of me desperate to press my face into his chest, to feel him stroke my hair and tell me that it was okay. I longed to hear him tell me he would get away with it. The other part of me knew that would never be possible again. Out of all the secrets we kept at The Cloisters, I hadn’t kept his. I hoped someday he would understand; he would understand that I had to protect my work above everything else. It was the only thing he could understand.

“All right,” said Leo, “I can tell them where all the pieces went. But I need to get ahead of this thing.” Again he ran a hand through his hair. “Ann, you need to know, I had nothing to do with what happened to Patrick, okay?”

I met his gaze.

“Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

He walked over to where I was sitting at the table and kneeled down in front of me so that our eyes were level.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his hand wrapped around mine.

Then he let go, stood, and walked back out the door. And in his absence, I couldn’t be sure what his apology was for. Was he sorry we had met, that he had spoken to me that day in the garden? That he had done it? Or that I had been the one to discover it? That he hadn’t done a better job of covering it up? I wasn’t sure. But it felt like time was pushing me forward in fits and starts, lurches and jumps, and I was growing nauseous, ready for the ride to stop.

I knew Leo believed that he and I were fundamentally the same. We were two people trying to make it in a world that favored everyone else, and so, we had to scramble for every advantage we could get. And he wasn’t wrong. We were survivors. Climbing out of the dusty places from which we had begun, destined for bigger things. In deciding to protect myself and Rachel, that’s all I had done. Made sure that I would be able to keep climbing.

The realization crystallized in me—that we were all out for our own best interests, our own goals and dreams. That here, in The Cloisters, although it was easy to forget we were in Manhattan, everyone was still out for themselves—on the come-up—and willing to do whatever was necessary to make that happen. Especially me.

I looked back at the table covered with books and notepads and thought to myself, the worst thing I could do wasn’t turn in Leo. It was waste this opportunity. I would keep climbing.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


The next morning, the museum remained open, despite the detectives who everywhere scribbled notes and photographed storage trays and the paints of the conservation lab, the tools in the garden shed. A search warrant had been produced early that morning and furnished to the security team on duty, who allowed them access and immediately notified the Met. But there was nothing for Fifth Avenue to do except let them dust and photograph and pry, their movements watched closely by an attorney who had been duly dispatched to observe. Moira did her best to keep them out of the lobby away from visitors, and for the most part she was successful.

Michelle had been summoned north as well to where she now stood, arms crossed, in the cool stone hallway that led to the staff offices, occasionally answering questions, but mostly, scrolling through her phone and consulting with the public relations firm the museum had hired in the event the news developed legs. Already we had heard there was a small piece planned in the Times. But it would run in the Arts section on Tuesday.

Enough time had passed since Patrick had been murdered that no security footage had been preserved. All we had were rumors, and for me, the awkward way one moved on after death: at first hesitantly, and then, with growing confidence, even if it was fake.

In the staff kitchen, I heard two conservators complaining to each other that the security tapes didn’t go far enough back. They’re on a loop, said the retoucher. Can you imagine? Every seven days. Which meant there was no recording of Leo, no hard evidence.

Outside, everything in the garden shed had been tagged and placed in thick plastic bags. The dried flowers that Leo had so lovingly gathered and hung from the hooks had been cut apart and forced into brown bags, dried petals scattered on the ground where they had been shed in the process. The greenhouse where I knew Leo kept his personal plants, those he sold for profit, had also been stripped bare, although it seemed the police didn’t notice that there was anything different about that greenhouse. All plants, it appeared, were the same. Even the compost heap was being excavated, each object painstakingly photographed and catalogued.

And if the visitors to The Cloisters that day seemed oblivious to what was unfolding around them, the staff was not. With every opened door or set of footsteps on the stone passageways, we craned our heads or looked up from our work. We had been briefed by Michelle that we should not ask questions, only answer them. But the only questions we encountered that day were inquiries like, Did you see a man with a camera come through here? Do I access the lobby through Gallery Eight or Twelve? The forensic team seemed constantly lost in the maze of The Cloisters—they wandered from room to room, poking their heads through the next Gothic arch to see if they had finally found their way.

One of them, a young man, the botany specialist, seemed to take an interest in Rachel. He came through the library on his way to Patrick’s office to notate which plants he had cultivated indoors, but he lingered longer to ask us questions.

“What’s it like working here?” he said, staring up at the rib vaults that crisscrossed the ceiling above our heads.