Lethal Legacy (17 page)

“Saxton’s cartographic survey of England and
Wales,” Herrick said, “commissioned by Elizabeth the First.”

“Is Tina capable of reproducing something as
beautiful as this?”

“These days, Ms. Cooper, digital processing would
make it possible for almost anyone to reproduce documents such as that one.”

“I mean, a copy good enough to fool—well, to fool
a dealer or a collector.”

“Are you talking about a forgery? Heavens, no, Ms.
Cooper. To begin with, one would have to have the proper vellum, which would be
pretty difficult to come by these days. The best quality vellum was made from
the skins of unborn animals. In England, you know, we still print our Acts of
Parliament on it, but you’ll never find something that could be dated and
matched to the original. On top of that, she’d have to be a first-rate artist,
not just a meticulous restorer. Then I’d say we’d need to give her three or
four years to work on it.”

“What is it that Tina did on the map you started
her with?”

“Minor repairs, mostly. Decades ago, when maps
were mounted for display—like this one was, in Hampton Court—they were first
backed with muslin. The glue that held it in place was very destructive. So
Tina removed the backing, cleaned up the tears and discoloration, and
deacidified it.”

“Where did she do the work?”

“There’s a state-of-the-art facility in the public
library—the Goldsmith Conservation Laboratory. She did it there.”

“Are you on the board of the library?” Mike asked.

“No, Mr. Chapman, but I make handsome
contributions. You’ll find I’m quite welcome there.”

“You must have a system for doing background
checks on your employees,” I said. “I assume you don’t just meet a conservator
and invite him in with free access to possessions as valuable as yours.”

Herrick stood up and leaned against the desk.
“There’s a very serious vetting process, and Tina passed with flying colors. I
never considered her a security risk.”

“There are people at the library who think she—”

“People at the library should take their heads out
of their books and stop pointing fingers at the worker bees. Every time there’s
been a major problem, it’s a trustee or a donor who was responsible.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“All the new money on the board—hedge fund
managers and the like who think that if they splash enough cash around they can
buy themselves some instant class—it’s created considerable tension at the
library. There’s a man called Jonah Krauss waiting like a vulture for that last
great dame to die—the one before Brooke Astor—so he can sell some of her
collection.”

Mike was making notes of the names.

“And I can’t think why they’d go after Tina Barr
when the real map thief was paroled just a few months ago.”

“The
real
map thief?” I asked.

“Eddy Forbes, Ms. Cooper. The chap Minerva Hunt
was in bed with,” Herrick said. “I don’t mean that literally, but I don’t doubt
for a minute that she subsidized his travels.”

“What travels?”

“Eddy Forbes flooded the market with stolen goods,
Detective. Some of the finest maps the world has ever seen, stolen right from
under the noses of all the brass at the public library, on Jill Gibson’s watch
at the Beinecke, from the Boston Library, the British Reading Room, The
Hague—shall I go on or do you get my point?”

“How did Forbes get access to all those
collections?”

“He was a dealer, of course. A dealer, a
scholar—so he liked to think—and a complete fraud. It’s always the inner
circle, Ms. Cooper. That’s where you’ve got to look, not at the earnest young
worker bees.”

“I don’t understand,” Mike said, reaching out to
touch the four folio-size volumes stacked on Herrick’s desk. “How does the
librarian, or the security guard, let you get out the door? You walk out of a
library and nobody notices you’re carrying these great big books in their fancy
leather jackets with shiny gold lettering? Maybe once you could fit one in a
shopping bag, but most of these are even too large for that.”

Herrick opened the desk drawer again and removed a
small object with his right hand. He rested it on the blotter and closed the
finely tooled cover of his sixteenth-century copy of
Cosmographia
. Then
he reached for an even larger black leather-bound book with gold lettering on
its spine.

“No need to wince, Ms. Cooper,” Herrick said,
holding up an X-Acto knife—a short, sharp blade mounted on a metal body the
size of a pen. “I’m not going to cut anyone’s throat.”

With a single swipe, he ran the blade down the
length of the page, separating it from the binding of the book. He rolled it up
and slipped it through the cuff of his sweater.

“Don’t fret, either. This book was already
disemboweled by one of the thieves before I bid on it. Here’s the rub,
Detective. Steal a single page from a first folio of Shakespeare and you walk
away with nothing of value. An interesting sheet of paper, perhaps, but of no
value in the marketplace without the entire folio.”

Herrick held up his arms, as if in triumph for
making the page disappear. “But slip just one sheet like this up your sleeve—a
single map, say, from John Smith’s great atlas of Colonial America—and you walk
out of the library with a ready-to-sell, largely untraceable treasure worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

FOURTEEN

“Much less punishing than my last encounter
with the police,” Alger Herrick said as he led us up the staircase to the
elevator.

I turned my head to look at Mike. “And what was
that?”

“I was on my way to the country from London a few
years ago, after a spectacular score I made at auction. Mercator’s atlas—1595.
The first book in the history of the world to be called an atlas, in fact,”
Herrick said. “My wife took me out to dinner to celebrate, and I’m afraid I
should have known better than to drive.”

“Wind up in the hoosegow?” Mike asked. He
dismissed my concern with a smirk.

“No incarceration, Detective. Had my license taken
away for a few months, plus a hefty fine, but not as hefty as the purchase I’d
just made,” Herrick said, opening the door to the elevator. “If I can be of
help with any introductions, I’d be happy to do that. I’m hoping Tina will calm
down and come back to work before too long.”

“We’d like very much to find her,” I said. “Thanks
for your time.”

“Pleasure.”

Mike made small talk on the way down in the
elevator, waiting to get away from the building’s workers before he asked me
about Herrick. “I don’t know about you, but I’d still bet there’s enough grit
in that guy’s upper crust that he could swing our murder weapon or just about
anything else.”

“You just don’t like him because he doesn’t share
your affection for Minerva.”

“We’ve got to get back on her dance card, don’t
you think? Fill in some blanks.”

“Tomorrow morning when I get to the office, I’ll
sit down with McKinney and stroke him. You’ve got to talk to all the
Hunts—Minerva, Tally, Jasper. As long as I make Pat feel like he’s in charge,
I’m sure he’ll let me go along with you. See what you can schedule.”

“Did you open a grand jury investigation on Barr
today?”

“Yes,” I said. “Right before lunch. Laura’s typed
up subpoenas for her cell phone records, credit card—anything to tell us if
Tina’s on the move. It’s sad that she doesn’t really have a network of any
kind.”

“All that freelance work—some of it in the library
and a lot of it at either Jasper Hunt’s home or Herrick’s—so it wasn’t like she
was in a setting where somebody would be concerned during the first day or two
if she didn’t show up.”

“You think there’s any point in talking to the
guys at Missing Persons again? Don’t you think it would help to get her photo
out on the news?”

“Catch-22. Tina Barr’s an adult, for one thing.
With no signs of foul play after she walked away from the ambulance, you got
the forty-eight-hour rule,” Mike said. “Nobody’s complained that she’s missing,
Coop.”

It was well known in law enforcement that the
overwhelming number of adults who vanish without any indication of criminal
activity do so voluntarily.

“We’re just going on forty-eight hours now. Maybe
I can push Battaglia to leak her disappearance to the press. Think that’s the
way to go?”

“Start making your lists of things to do, kid.
We’ll find her,” Mike said, unlocking the car. “I’ll drop you off at your
place.”

“You don’t have an extra ticket for tonight? Can’t
sneak me in?”

He started the ignition and grinned at me. “Who
squealed?”

“Vickee called. Told me Mercer snagged four seats
right behind third base.” The Yankees had won two out of three games in the
division playoff series and were back at the stadium tonight, looking to
clinch. “I’m insanely jealous.”

“He’s invited Ned and Al,” Mike said, referring to
two of my favorite detectives from the Special Victims Unit. “And I’m his date.
Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Then you might as well scoot me home,” I said.
“It’s after four-thirty.”

“I’m psyched. Haven’t been to a game since July.
We make it to the pennant, your pal Joan is going to collect on my promise.
Told her last year I’d take her.”

My best girlfriends—in the office and apart from
it—all adored Mike and had gotten to know him well over the years. They liked
his intelligence and his humor, too, but mostly appreciated the way he covered
my back in every conceivable circumstance.

Nina Baum and Joan Stafford were my two closest
confidantes, lifelong buddies with whom I’d been through every triumph and
tragedy. Nina, my college roommate, lived on the West Coast with her husband
and son, while Joan and her husband split their time between New York and
Washington, D.C.

“Joanie’s in town. I’ll be watching at her place
tonight,” I said as we went through the underpass in Central Park. “She’ll
never let you welsh on that one, so you’d best get on that advance ticket line
at the crack of dawn. And count me in on that round.”

“Deal.”

By the time we made a rough plan about our
approach to the witnesses we needed to interview, we were less than a block
from my apartment.

“I’ll jump out here, Mike. I need to stop at the
cash machine and pick up some groceries.”

“Call you in the morning,” he said, pulling over
to the curb.

“Only if we win. If you don’t pull the Yankees
through tonight, I may hand you back over to McKinney.”

He whelped at me once as he drove away, and the
coven of little old ladies on the corner of the street turned to stare.

I did some errands and walked another block to my
apartment, enjoying the opportunity to be at home much earlier than was usual.
Neither of the doormen stepped out to greet me as I approached, but one of the
porters came running from the mail room when he heard my footsteps. “Sorry, Ms.
Cooper. Need a hand?”

“I’m fine, thanks. Where’s Vinny?” I said, walking
to the elevator.

“He’s on meal and Oscar went home sick. I’m trying
to cover, but it’s been crazy busy.”

When the elevator reached the lobby, I pressed
twenty and rummaged through my tote for my keychain, replaying the information
that had unfolded throughout the day.

If Billy Schultz was telling the truth about
recognizing Minerva Hunt, why had she been to Tina Barr’s apartment on other
occasions? Was it weird, or was it just natural curiosity that led him to pick
up the mask that the perpetrator had worn—if he had not in fact been the masked
intruder?

I turned the key in the lock and went inside,
flipping on the foyer light. I left the bag with the orange juice and English
muffins next to the credenza and started down the hallway toward the linen
closet with the cosmetics I’d bought at the drugstore.

The bedroom door ahead of me was closed. In a
split second I reminded myself that it was Thursday and that my housekeeper had
not been in today. I was sure I had left the door open, as always, and I slowed
my pace.