The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(21)

Liesl took a breath to buy time. She wished this event had been scheduled in the evening so she’d have had access to wine. “I opened it last week. The Plantin wasn’t inside the safe,” she said.

“Where the hell is it if it’s not inside the safe?” Garber shoved the trail mix into the pocket of his suit jacket. It bulged. “Somewhere else in Chris’s office then.”

She shook her head. “We have to contact the police. Today.”

“Let me understand this,” Garber said. “Chris would have put the Plantin in the safe while he waited for the insurance appraisal. You’ve opened the safe, no Plantin. It’s been two weeks, maybe more since it’s been seen. You haven’t actually called the police yet, have you?”

“Well, no.”

Across the room, a man wearing a blazer with suede elbow patches that someone at some point must have told him looked professorial was waving excitedly at Garber. Garber gave a sharp nod in his direction and huddled more closely to Liesl.

“Good, good. That’s very good.” He spoke mostly to himself. “It could be in the library or it could have been stolen, but if it was stolen, then it would have to be by someone in the library. Were you alone in the office when you opened the safe?”

“Pardon me?” Liesl had never considered herself on any list of suspects.

“I take that back. Has anything like this ever happened before?”

“At other libraries. Never here,” Liesl said.

“I wish you had told me this earlier.”

Liesl said nothing. She couldn’t remember how many times she had tried to gain access to Garber in the preceding days, but technology being what it was, she was certain she could have someone take a look at phone records and create a tally.

“Look, Liesl. I know you’ve been trying to get a meeting with me, but there are some instances where you bang down the door. Wouldn’t you agree this is one of those instances?”

Liesl looked up to see that Miriam, cocooned again in that big burgundy sweater, had entered the reading room and was barreling toward them, her face red.

“What’s the matter, Miriam?”

“Can I speak with you?” she said, staring at Liesl as if Garber weren’t even there. “It’s important that I speak with you.”

“Not right now, miss,” Garber said.

Garber went to take Liesl’s arm and pull her to another part of the room to continue their conversation, but Miriam’s features, shaped by their wild indignation, gave Liesl pause.

“Miriam, President Garber needs me for a few minutes. We’ve been trying to connect for days. Can I come find you when we’ve finished?”

It was fading back to pink, Miriam’s face, as her anger faded to embarrassment and then to a kind of sadness that expressed that even when she was demanding of attention, she didn’t warrant it.

“When you’ve finished?” she asked in a little-girl voice.

“You’ll be in the workroom, is that right? I’ll come and find you as soon as I can.”

Garber and Liesl stood in silence while they waited for Miriam to get out of earshot.

“Miriam Peters, isn’t that right?” Garber said. “Didn’t you say that she was the receiver for the Plantin when it arrived here? I don’t think I know much about her. Francis and Max and you, I’ve worked with all of you in the past, but why don’t I remember her?”

Liesl said nothing.

“We have to be honest here, Liesl. If there’s an odor, we have to say it stinks. That woman, that panicked-looking woman who just came to see you as you were reporting the possible theft of the Plantin to me… She did or she did not have physical access to it?”

“She did.”

“She did. So let’s have an honest conversation about that woman. Let’s look into that woman a little further. Let’s think about everyone who might have had access to the Plantin, and let’s create a little plan, and let’s do our due diligence. Then when Chris wakes up he can have a good chuckle at our panic, and he can tell us exactly where the Plantin has been all along, or we can have a good chuckle and tell him how we lost sight of it but only for a moment.”

“What about the police?” Liesl didn’t sound as sure about the police as she had when the conversation began. She’d been warned that Garber wouldn’t want them called, but now that the warning was coming to pass, she didn’t know what to do with it.

“We’re not there yet. There is no way to involve the police without further undermining our credibility with our donors.”

She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Will it not undermine us further if they find out that we knew the Plantin was missing and didn’t call?”

“How would they find out?”

“All right. Putting that aside for a moment, I’m not sure how you’d like us to proceed. If the goal is to recover the Plantin before anyone suspects it is missing, but we can’t use the police to help us recover the Plantin, what’s the next step?”

She didn’t have to put on her glasses to tell he was glaring, and she was embarrassed for having asked because it was clear that she was supposed to be in possession of the answer herself.

“You look for it. You ask intelligent questions, like why does the woman who arranged shipping and receiving of the Plantin all of a sudden look so panicked? You take initiative.”