The Cloisters(81)

“Is there something else you want to tell me?” she asked finally.

“I don’t think he did it,” I said softly.

“What makes you say that.”

“He doesn’t have it in him.”

“Sometimes we don’t know what other people are capable of.” She paused. “Sometimes we don’t know what we’re capable of.”

“Do you think he did it?”

On the other end of the line, I could hear Detective Murphy mulling over the question; the telltale tap of her pencil came through the phone line, a quick staccato.

“I think he could have,” she said after a beat.

“But there’s a big difference between could have and did.”

“Is there?”

“Of course there is.” It seemed like such a silly distinction, the line between might have and did. The difference between being a murderer and just thinking how much you would like to see someone dead. “What has he been charged with?” I asked.

“Right now? Just the thefts. We don’t have enough to hold him on the murder charge. But we do have enough for grand larceny.”

I didn’t know what else there was to say. Below me, I watched pedestrians stream in and out of the park. Had the line always been this thin? You didn’t have to have been a killer to kill? Leo was nothing more than a resolution for Detective Murphy, a check mark that meant she didn’t have to look any further.

“Actually, perhaps you could help me with one thing.” Now I could hear Detective Murphy paging through her notes on the other end of the phone. “Leo’s attorney told us who Leo had been using to fence the objects. It’s rather surprising actually. We thought he might have struggled to find a broker. It’s not easy to find someone so willing to move objects with such questionable provenance, but it’s a place downtown. On East Fifty-Sixth Street. An antiques dealer called—”

But as she searched her notes for the name, I knew it instinctively. My breath was short and catching in my chest. A frantic lightness bubbled in my arms and legs.

“Ketch Rare Books and Antiques?” I said.

“Yes. You’re familiar with it?”

“Not really. I’ve been there once or twice.”

“With Patrick?”

“Yes. And Rachel.”

On my finger, the eyes of the ram’s head ring she had bought me caught the light. I tried to pull it off, but it held fast, tight around my swollen finger.

“When was this?”

“A month ago,” I said. “Maybe longer?”

“Did you see any objects there that matched the description of the missing pieces.”

“No. But I wasn’t looking for them either.”

“They have nice things?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you know how Leo might have become familiar with the shop?”

“No.”

“You never went there with him?”

“No, never.”

“A few of the objects already sold,” said Detective Murphy. “We’re in the process of tracking those down, but it seems like a few may still be in the shop.”

I thought about the beautiful brooches and rings Stephen had, about Rachel’s familiarity with his inventory, about the way my arms were still tan from the afternoons we had spent on the stone wall at the museum, lounging, sharing stories.

It struck me then that no one had really told me anything. Neither Leo nor Patrick, certainly not Rachel. They had all kept the truth from me, kept it hidden for their own uses. Only Aruna had been there, Delphic in her words and her timing.

And even though it had been in front of me all summer, I had never seen the triangle between Rachel, Patrick, and Leo until now. Only, it wasn’t a triangle at all. It was a wheel, and at its center, the place from which all the spokes radiated, was Rachel. Regno, Regnavi, Sum sine regno, Regnabo: I reign, I have reigned, I am without reign, I will reign. She turned us all like we existed on her axis. Each of us separated, mediated only by her. But of course, the details were hazy, occluded by Rachel’s deft storytelling and the way she had brought me in and held me close.

“Where do I go if I want to see Leo?”

“His bond is being processed,” said Detective Murphy. “As soon as that’s complete, he’ll be released.”

“Who paid his bail?” I asked, curious.

“It looks like he did,” she said.

“When will he be released?”

“Tomorrow.”

I was about to say something else when the door to the apartment creaked open and I saw Rachel standing there, only lightly sweaty.

“I forgot my watch,” she said, then grabbed it off the entry table and slid it across her slender wrist.

I hung up the phone and walked casually away from the window. How I missed her returning to the building I didn’t know. Maybe she had cut back through the woods and run along the avenue.

“Anything exciting happening out there,” she said, gesturing to where I had been standing.

“No,” I said. “Just taking in the end of the day.”

“When I get back, let’s go to Altro Paradiso for dinner.” She held the door in her hand. “I feel like Italian.”

“That sounds great.”