The Magnolia Palace(37)

Joshua entered, holding two mugs of coffee, and handed one to Veronica. “I was listening to the radio in the kitchen, and the mayor’s declared a state of emergency due to the snowstorm. The city’s shut down through tomorrow morning,”

“You mean we’re stuck here until Wednesday?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Her modeling career was lost for good, then. She had no way of reaching anyone to tell them where she was, or what had happened. Veronica had been given one opportunity to turn things around for her family, and gone and mucked it all up. It would be back to her uncle’s pawnshop, back to her old life of worry and loss. Poor Polly, she deserved so much better than that. While some of the other residents of Kent House had no idea where they were, or why, Polly knew exactly what was going on, that she’d been put away because they couldn’t afford to keep her anymore, like some child’s pony bought on a whim.

Something had to be done.

The treasure was still out there. Whereas last night the idea of taking something that was not hers seemed more theoretical than real to Veronica, today something had shifted. She could not return to England with nothing to show for all this. Polly was counting on her.

Maybe this extra day was a sign, a gift of sorts. She wouldn’t let these next twenty-four hours go to waste.

“You said you’d fallen asleep last night, before we found each other,” she said. “Where do you work?”

“I’m down in the basement, in the old bowling alley. There are no windows, no light, so sometimes I lose track of time.”

“There’s a bowling alley in here?”

“The Fricks had it installed with the very latest in 1914 bowling alley technology. Works like a charm, still. If we get bored enough, I’ll take you down and you can try it out.” He seemed less suspicious of her than he’d been last night, or maybe the fact that they were stuck for longer than expected had tempered his distrust.

“Entertainment. I like that. Why did they put you in the bowling alley?”

“When they were putting in the alarm system, the workers discovered several boxes of files and letters down there. They’d been tucked away in a closet and forgotten all these years, so I’m going through and cataloguing them, finding connections.”

His eyes danced as he spoke; this was a man who enjoyed his work. She felt flashes of that sometimes at the pawnshop, like the day she was unpacking boxes from an estate sale and came upon a pile of old letters. Uncle Donny said to just toss them in the bin, but she’d saved them for when the shop was slow and read through each one, imagining what the letter writers might have looked like, where they might have lived, who they had loved.

“Intriguing,” she said. “What have you found so far?”

“Lots of things, including a series of correspondence between Henry Clay Frick’s children, Childs and Helen.”

“How do they feel about the discovery?”

“Childs died last year. I’m not sure if Helen Frick, or ‘Miss Helen,’ as she’s referred to by the staff, knows. I’m guessing that’s why they have me down in the basement, working in secret. She’s difficult, you see.”

“How old is she?”

“Almost eighty, I believe.”

“It would be hard, I suppose, to have your home ripped away from you and opened up to the public as a museum. Tossed out into the streets.”

“She moved to a six-hundred-acre farm upstate, so I wouldn’t say she was tossed into the streets. As for being difficult, well, she has strong feelings against certain types of people.”

Veronica paused, trying to figure out what he meant. “You mean she’s racist?”

He laughed. “Not quite. She hates Germans. For years, she wouldn’t let anyone with a German surname work for her in any capacity, or even enter the art reference library she runs next door. Refused to have German-made equipment on her farm. Something to do with World War I, apparently.”

“She sounds beastly.”

“I don’t think she cares what people think.”

“What’s your last name?” Veronica asked.

“Lawrence. So I’m safe from her wrath. And yours?”

She swallowed. “Weber.”

“Dear God, girl. That won’t do at all. I have to say, the reversal is refreshing.” In the firelight, his face looked almost smug. “This must be what it’s like to be white.”

She suppressed her laughter, not sure if it was appropriate or not.

“That was meant to be funny.”

“Sorry. I thought it was. But then I thought I oughtn’t think that.”

“Oughtn’t? Now, that’s a ridiculous contraction. Very British.”

He was taking the piss. “Why is it ridiculous?”

“I don’t know. Very fancy, upper-crust.”

That was rich, coming from a man with university education and a posh internship. “Not what a model would say?”

“No, I didn’t mean that.”

The fire emitted a large snap, a welcome interruption. Joshua got up and used one of the irons to maneuver the logs around.

Veronica hadn’t meant to sound so harsh. The conversation had gotten away from her, and she reminded herself of why she’d brought up his work in the first place. “If you like, you can catch up on whatever you need to do today. Why waste the time if you’re here anyway, right?”