Illuminated (5 page)

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Authors: Erica Orloff

BOOK: Illuminated
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He replaced the phone on its receiver. “Penthouse,” he told us, and pointed to the elevators.
“We’ll take the stairs,” August said.
I stared at him.
The concierge looked at him strangely. “It’s forty-five floors, sir.”
“That’s okay.”
I think my mouth actually dropped.
The doorman pointed to a far door in the lobby that had a brass plaque that read STAIRWELL. I followed August as he nonchalantly headed for the door. He was halfway up the first flight when I, already
slightly
out of breath, asked, “Is there some reason why we have to walk forty-five flights?”
“I’ve got this thing about elevators.”
He said it matter-of-factly, but I followed him wondering if he was slightly crazy, or at least had inherited a tiny bit of his dad’s illness. I didn’t love elevators. I sometimes wondered, when one jolted a little as it arrived at my floor, if it might snap a cable and plummet, sending me to a spectacular death below (okay, so I can be dramatic). I sometimes worried about electric grid blackouts, like the one that had happened the previous summer, trapping people in elevators and on subway cars.
But given a choice between forty-five flights of stairs and a possible snapped cable, I was taking the elevator.
By flight twenty-five, I had to stop and catch my breath. “I . . .” I panted, “won’t be . . . abl. . . . to spea. . . . when we get there.”
“I’ll do the talking in the beginning.”
He was shockingly not winded. And he saw my look and shrugged. “I do this all the time.” Finally, sweating and sucking air, legs slightly rubbery, I arrived, with August, at the forty-fifth floor. If he wasn’t so cute, I would have killed him.
He patiently waited while I caught my breath, and then we walked down a marble-tiled hushed hallway with only two apartments on it, to James Rose’s 45A. August knocked, and it was opened by a butler—or at least what I assumed was one—in a pressed uniform. He was an older gentleman, and as he led us into the living room, I leaned over and whispered to August, “It’s like Batman’s Alfred.”
We were shown into a room that was bigger than a bowling alley and overlooked Central Park from every window—all of which rose from nearly the floor to the ceiling and shone in the summer sun.
The apartment was stark. Modern sculptures of bronze and other metals emerged out of the floor like alien creatures clawing out of someone’s stomach. There were few pieces of furniture—one sleek couch in all white and a matching chair. The place was cooled to a temperature more appropriate for a polar bear—which I actually appreciated, considering my calf-aching, thigh-busting hike to get there.
James Rose emerged from another room. I guess I was expecting a man who befitted an apartment like that. I was expecting Bruce Wayne.
Instead, we got the Penguin. A short, squat man with birdlike features.
“Hello,” he said. I thought he was talking to us, but then I noticed the Bluetooth headset in his ear. Apparently, we weren’t going to get his undivided attention. He barely glanced at us as he paced.
“Mr. Rose,” August began, “we’re appraising the collection, which is most impressive. And we were wondering if your father left any information on the illuminated manuscript. The one with the thick pages—the Book of Hours.”
“Hold on,” James Rose said into his earpiece. “I don’t know anything about the book you’re asking about. To be honest, I don’t know anything about the entire collection. And neither did my father.”
I shook my head slightly, “But he had—”
James Rose lifted a hand and cut me off. “No. The collection actually belonged to my mother. It was her passion. But when they got divorced, my father got it in the settlement. I don’t know anything about the books. I collect twentieth-century sculpture. I manage the family trust. I just want the proceeds from the auction. I’m not interested in the book. I can’t help you.”
“Well, could we talk to your mother?” I asked.
“Sure. If you can find her. We don’t speak. I don’t know where she is.”
I exchanged glances with August. He said, “Thanks for your time, Mr. Rose. If you think of anything that might help us, here’s the card for the auction house. You can speak to this man.” He handed him Uncle Harry’s business card, on a thick ivory vellum stock with raised gold lettering.
“Whatever. Listen . . . I have to take this.”
He turned, not even bothering to say good-bye.
“Well, that was a waste,” I said to August. “Not to mention an agonizing forty-five-floor climb to have the guy tell us
nothing
.”
“Well, not nothing.” August moved closer to me. My heart started beating like I had just climbed the stairs. How could someone I’d just met yesterday have this kind of effect on me? “His mother is the one who loved the collection. If she’s like every other collector I’ve ever met, she knows every scrap of history about the book.
Someone
cared about this collection.”
“So where is she?”
Alfred the non-Batman butler returned to escort us to the door.
“I don’t know,” August said. “But she’s somewhere, right? She didn’t just vanish. We find her, we find a piece to our puzzle.”
We followed Alfred out of the apartment and started the long walk down the stairs. My calves burned.
“August?”
“Hmm?”
“You don’t
ever
ride in elevators?”
“Nope.”
I sighed. We kept descending, the stairwell hot and stuffy and smelling of concrete. We finally arrived at the door to the lobby. When we pushed it open, Rose’s butler was standing there with a bag of trash.
“Here,” he whispered, and thrust a piece of paper in my hand. “He thinks I’m taking the garbage to the incinerator.”
I looked down at the piece of paper.
MIRIAM ROSE
448 Shore Hollow Lane
Ocean Beach, NY
 
“Thank you,” I said gratefully.
“Mrs. Rose was the most decent woman I’ve ever known. I was with her for twenty years. Her husband was horrid . . . their son not much better. And it would crush her if the manuscript was sold. It meant everything to her. Let her know it’s being auctioned.”
“We will,” August said.
“Thank you. I better return before he gets suspicious.”
“One more thing,” August said.
“Yes?”
“Does he really have no idea where she is?”
“Of course he knows where she is. He doesn’t want you alerting her about the collection.”
“Thanks.”
As August and I walked across the lobby, I asked him, “Why did you want to know that?”
“Because that means Rose at least knows the collection is worth something. Something more than a bunch of pages. To someone. Means, I’m sure, that he knew it was more than a simple Book of Hours before we ever got there. That book belongs in a museum, not locked away where no one cares about it.”
“Poor A.,” I murmured.
“Why do you say that?”
“A.’s secrets. Hidden away. I think A. had something to say. It’s like he wanted us to know something. Wanted the world to know. Whatever it is, we should find out. Someone should know about A.”
“You said ‘he.’”
I laughed. “Or
she
.” But as I thought about it, somehow I
knew
A. was a guy. The doorman opened the door for us, and we walked out into the noonday sun.
“We don’t need to be back anytime soon. Want to take a detour to Central Park for lunch?” August asked.
“Sure,” I said.
We walked toward the park, the sun strong and steady. As we stepped through the entrance near the Museum of Natural History, the trees shaded us.
“Hot dog?” August asked, pointing to a vendor beneath a blue striped umbrella.
“I’m so going to regret this, but yeah.”
August ordered us two hot dogs and two Cokes. “Let’s go to Turtle Pond,” he said.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever been to it.”
“Come on.” We took our food and walked side by side. “The best thing about Turtle Pond is that it’s designated as a quiet area. No loud music. No skaters. Just turtles.”
We arrived at the pond, and except for the skyscrapers in the distance, you could forget you were in the middle of Manhattan. We found a flat rock and sat down. I slipped off my sandals and stretched my legs.
August kicked off his sneakers. He ate his hot dog and sipped his soda. As we were sitting, a green turtle poked its head out of the water near the shoreline and began pulling itself up on a log.
“You should get a turtle for your garden,” I said.
“I actually thought of that.” He laughed. “But a box turtle can live sixty or seventy years. We’re talking a big commitment here. It would be like Sokolov and Sons and Turtle.”
A yellow butterfly flitted near my feet, then rose up and toward my face before fluttering away.
August stared at me, and for a moment our eyes caught. He was so sexy, and still, there was something in the way he looked at me, something behind his gaze that made me flush. I prayed the sun had already reddened my face so he wouldn’t see.
He rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky at the clouds. “I see a camel.”
I looked up. Which was better than looking at him and feeling flustered. “I see it. All right, over there. A cherub. See it?”
“Yeah. But look at that.” He pointed.
“What do you think it looks like?”
“You tell me.”
I leaned back on my hands and studied the cloud. “I don’t know.”
“It’s a palimpsest.”
I playfully slapped his arm. “Sure.”
“Come on! A. is trying to tell us something.”
“Oh, yeah . . . okay, August.”
“A. is saying ‘Come find me.’”
I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around my legs, resting my chin on my knees. “I see it now,” I played along. “Look. The cloud’s shape is changing. It looks like a question mark now. A. is saying, ‘Figure out the mystery.’”
“Now you’re talking, Callie. And you know, you can’t go back to Boston until we figure it out.”
“We have eight weeks.”
Eight weeks,
I told myself. Then I would go back to my real life in Boston. If this turned into anything . . . it was a summer thing. I heard my father’s mantras for me.
Calliope, be reasonable. Calliope, be practical. Calliope, keep your eye on the prize.
“What if we can’t figure it out in eight weeks?”
“That’s all I have.” I needed to face reality. Eight weeks.
“Well, then we better get going.” He stood up and held out a hand to pull me up from the rock. I took it and felt all wobbly inside again.
I slipped my sandals back on and looked up at the cloud. It transformed from our fantasy back to being a wisp of fluff and not really looking like anything.
5
 
I long.
—A.
 
“
O
kay, you two will be heading out to pay a visit to Miriam Rose,” Harry said, holding up the strip of paper we had gotten from the butler. “I called her. I know Miriam. I’ve met her at a few society functions, a charity ball one year. Of course, that was when she was still married. Before she became a New York society pariah, the poor thing. She’ll see you tomorrow morning. You’ll love her.”
“What do you mean, society pariah?” I asked. I was sipping a Diet Coke in Harry’s office. August had an iced tea. My face felt pink from our lunchtime sun.
Harry fired up his desktop computer, clicked on the keys, then turned the flat-screen monitor so we could see.
“Miriam Rose,” he said. “On her wedding day.
New York Times
archive photo.”
I held my breath. The picture was black-and-white, but I had truly never seen a more beautiful woman in my entire life. She reminded me of an old-time movie star. Her Grace Kelly ash-blond hair was swept up into a chignon, and her neck was long and graceful. The intricate lace wedding gown fit her close, narrowing to a tiny waist then sweeping out into a cathedral train. Her hands resembled a porcelain doll’s, her lips, a perfect rosebud, her cheekbones stretching up to pale eyes.
“She’s gorgeous,” I said.
“And she was married to Rose for years. She apparently turned a blind eye to his extramarital escapades and the fact that he was known as an emotional bully. But there was some sort of ‘last straw’ a couple of years ago, and they got divorced. He pretty much slashed and burned her life. Destroyed her. Fought her tooth and nail in the courtroom, and made sure that all their friends—and their two children—turned their backs on her.”

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