The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(18)

“I’m trying to protect you,” Francis said.

“What protection do I need in all this?” Liesl stayed standing, to try to retain some power, but her face went saggy.

“Your reputation needs plenty. Or it will if people find out we lost the Plantin on your watch.”

“That seems inevitable now,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to be. Wait for Garber.”

“What does that even accomplish? He calls the police and not me? What’s the difference?”

“Well,” Francis said. “He can give us the resources to search properly.”

“I don’t believe it was mislaid.” She shook her head while she said it, but she had turned her back to him so he wouldn’t see how undirected she looked, how firmly she was biting the inside of her cheek to stay in control.

“And I don’t believe it was stolen. Wait for Garber.”

“One more day.”

“It’s the right choice, Liesl.” He had risen from his seat and was standing behind her. She still didn’t turn, but he put a hand on her shoulder, and it was a comfort.

“If I can’t get through to him tomorrow,” she said, with more resolve. “I’m going to the police.”

***

That evening, John was standing at the front door to greet her. Their front walk was visible from their kitchen, and she’d lingered there, crouching by her chrysanthemums, picking yellow leaves off sunny centers, the tips of her shoes lodged in the soil. John, who was usually still in his studio at this time of day, must have been watching her from the kitchen window, might have waved at her even as he stood over the sink and poured a glass of water or rinsed brushes and waited for his wife to run into the house and greet him.

They’d planted those chrysanthemums together, an idea of Liesl’s to extend the feeling of summer with a fall bloom. She usually smiled when she saw those flowers and thought of that hot afternoon when, after hours of work in the garden, she’d gone inside to find a streak of dirt across her left cheek, and John had confessed it had been there all day, but he’d found it so fetching that he hadn’t wanted to tell her for fear she’d wipe it off.

Liesl had tried Garber’s direct line again as she walked home; she had the crisp tones of his outgoing voicemail message memorized and was reciting it to herself over the flowers when John opened the front door and called out to her.

“Wine?” John said. “I have a Riesling chilling.”

Liesl pulled her hand back from the flower petals.

“I’m not sure I should.”

“Oh? Are you well?” He walked out in his stocking feet to join her on the front walk, his big frame casting a John-shaped shadow over Liesl and the chrysanthemums in the slanting late-afternoon light.

“Heavy day at work.”

“All the more reason for the Riesling,” John said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and leading her into the house.

“The misplaced Plantin,” Liesl said, throwing down her purse where she stood. “I’m beginning to think it was stolen. I’m going to have to call the police in tomorrow.”

“The police? Lord. Is that what the administration recommended?”

“It’s the right thing to do,” she said. “Rather than bury my head in the sand.”

Liesl followed John into the cool kitchen and didn’t protest again as he poured her that glass of Riesling. She had wanted to keep her head clear, but he seemed to be doing so well that she didn’t want to disrupt the equilibrium by being argumentative, by disrupting the picture he’d painted of the two of them, sharing slow drinks and gossip as night fell outside their kitchen window.

“Shouldn’t it be up to administration when to involve the police, darling?”

John wasn’t tangled enough in the details of the case to recognize the flicker across Liesl’s face when he asked her that question, but her desire to avoid argument evaporated immediately.

“Not you too. They don’t know or care about the collection. I do.”

“I know it,” John said. “But they know and care plenty about the university’s reputation.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “A reputation that will be damaged if it gets out that we failed to alert police to a major theft.”

“It’s not your call to make, my dear.”

“Have your decades spent in the workforce convinced you of that?”

She regretted it as soon as she said it. Later that evening, when things had cooled down, she went up to his studio where he was working late and offered her apologies. He put his cool palm on her hot cheek and forgave her. Of course he forgave her. She went to bed before he did, knowing for certain that she would contact the police the next day, no matter what anyone said.





6


One of the pink-faced young men approached Liesl and shook her hand with vigor. He was waving a croissant closer to the library’s copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio than she would have liked, but she didn’t snatch it from him and she didn’t steer him away. She nodded. She introduced herself. She answered his questions. He was from the English department. Young men from the English department always treated Liesl like she was their mother. That is, when they noticed her at all. Young men from the English department were often the favorite great-grandsons of oil barons. She looked up at the rows and rows of books above her. There were buildings on campus that were architecturally more impressive than this library, but there was nothing as beautiful. Christopher once said that he wished the building were less beautiful, that people would take it more seriously if it were. Liesl disagreed. She had never been beautiful. She knew that a lack of aesthetic appeal was no way to get yourself taken seriously.