The Book of Illumination (30 page)

I shrugged. I was a little unnerved at how he was staring at me. Finally he spoke.

“So answer me something: what’s in this for you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said, “what do you get out of this?”

“I don’t get anything.”

“Oh, cut the crap,” he said. “You expect me to believe that you’re not working some kind of angle on this thing?”

I scrutinized his features. Finny had been right not to trust him with the manuscript. Tad was an operator, through and through.

“I’m not,” I said. “I have gotten paid before, plenty of times, but I’m not getting paid for this. I’m just … trying to help.”

The look on his face said he didn’t really believe me, but he wasn’t going to say any more.

I glanced at my watch. Henry would be standing on the steps of the school. The rest of the kids would be gone by now, and one of the teachers would be waiting there with him, annoyed by the fact that yet again, a preoccupied parent had lost track of the time.

“Oh my God,” I said. “I really have to go.”

As I gathered up my things, Tad asked, “So when are we going to do this?”

“Any time,” I said.

“Don’t you work?” he asked.

I felt like asking him the same question. “Yes,” I said pointedly, “but I have a flexible schedule. Why don’t you find out when Esther can come and then call me.”

Tad fished a BlackBerry out of his coat pocket.

“Let’s make a tentative plan,” he said, fooling around with the device. “How about this Friday?”

“Friday night could work,” I said. “I drop my son off at his dad’s at suppertime.”

“All right. I’ll call Esther and get back to you. What’s your phone number?”

I recited it for him while I pulled on my coat. Though it was clear that I needed to leave, and soon, he seemed reluctant to end our conversation.

“So he’s in the house,” Tad said. “Woolsie is. Right now.”

“Correct.”

“Where does he—”

“Hang out? He can go anywhere he wants, but I met him in the upstairs hall.”

“Could he hear me if I called out to him?”

“He could.”

“Can he read my mind?”

“No.”

“But he could hear me,” Tad said, “if I talked to him.”

“He could hear you,” I answered quietly, “if you talked to him.”

D
ECLAN CALLED AT
about ten. I knew it was Dec because no one else ever calls me at that hour. I also know that some people get anxious with late-night phone calls, assuming the caller will have terrible news, but neither Dad nor Nona believes in delivering bad tidings at night. The phone ringing at seven in the morning is what gets
my
heart thumping.

“You still up?” he asked.

“Barely,” I answered. I’d been flipping TV channels, but nothing had drawn me in. I’d been trying to decide between making cinnamon toast, conducting a thorough search for my favorite silver earring, which was lost, but was definitely in the house someplace, or getting all the recycling and trash outside so I wouldn’t have to deal with it in the morning.

“How are you?” I asked.

“How are you?” he said. “Helluva weekend, huh?”

“Yeah. I felt bad for the kids.”

“Oh, they loved the drama. Nell couldn’t stop talking about Max and the campfire and the pumpkins and all the play clothes up in the attic.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Well, I’m glad. I know they were disappointed about the Children’s Museum.”

“It’s not going anywhere,” Dec said. “So listen, we’ve got something unfolding here.”

“What?” I sat up.

“Might turn out to be good luck for us after all that Scully was sprung. He can do more for us on the street than he could from a cell.”

“Yeah, if he still feels like cooperating,” I said.

“Oh, he’s on the case, you bet your life he is. Before he left, I put the fear of God into him—I’d dug up some old parole violations and spoken to a guy up in Hamilton, a retired cop in his seventies who just can’t seem to leave a couple of old cases behind. And a new one, come to that.”

“What kind of cases?”

“What kind do you think?”

“Paintings?”

“You got it. Guy’s name’s Mullen, and he hasn’t a doubt in the world that Scully had a hand in a theft from the Biggs Gallery, up there at Danforth Academy.”

“When was this?”

“Six or eight months ago. They’ve shut the place down for a big renovation, moved a lot of stuff into storage, and somehow, during the move, one of the crates went missing.”

I wasn’t really following. “How does that help us?”

“Well, Scully may be a luckless bastard, but he’s no fool—he knows he’s got some things coming at him, down the pike. Especially if Mullen ties him to this Andover heist; with everything else Scully’s already on the hook for, poor sod’ll be collecting Social
Security by the time he gets out. So he went to work for us over the weekend.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. He called half a dozen people from here down to Florida, people he knew had dealings with Van Vleck. Sure enough, Van Vleck’s on his way to Nantucket.”

“Does he have the book?”

“He does.”

“Oh my God! Why’s he going to Nantucket?”

“To meet whoever commissioned the theft. They’ve got the use of somebody’s vacation house for the weekend.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Serious as hell, darlin’.”

“So how do we find him?”

“We?”

“You, me—I don’t know! I’d like to help.”

Dec laughed. “I don’t know what I’m doing yet.”

“Well, when you do know. Please?”

“We’ll see.”

“Dec!”

“We’ll see! These guys play for keeps, sweetheart. I’m not putting you or anyone else in harm’s way.”

I loved it when he said things like that.

“Isn’t there anything I can do?” I pleaded.

“Yeah. Convince Sylvia to file a report. It’s a hell of a lot easier when you don’t have to be sneaking around. Remind me again why this all has to be so hush-hush?”

“I told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“There are lots of reasons.” I paused. I had been coming to my own theory, though, and it had nothing to do with Tad or the
Athenaeum or Sylvia’s being afraid of getting fired or drummed out of the profession for questionable conduct.

“Because I’m not really buying it,” Dec went on. “All that clatter about art history and the barbarian son.”

This is why Dec is a great detective. I had to smile.

“So any time you want to let me in on the real story …,” he said.

“I think—she thinks—that
is
the real story,” I said.

“And you’ve got a brain in your head,” Dec said. “What do you think?”

“It’s just a theory,” I answered.

“That’s where it starts.”

“It’s not even a theory. It’s barely a hunch.” I paused.

There was silence on the other end.

“I’m all ears,” he finally said.

I took a deep breath. “Okay.” I felt kind of disloyal to Sylvia, but Dec was really out on a limb here. And after all, he was the father of my son.

“I think she couldn’t bear to part with it. She couldn’t let anyone have it, not Tad and not the museum, because it was something she and Finny had shared, something beautiful and meaningful that belonged to just the two of them.”

Declan didn’t comment. He was still listening.

“And?”
he finally said.

“And,”
I said, “I think she was in love with him. And he wasn’t in love with her. He probably didn’t even know how she felt.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because if he had been—in love with her, I mean—he might have left her the book. He would have trusted her to pass it on if the time came.”

“Bingo,” replied Dec.

Father Fran came through on Tuesday. Not only did he come through, he came through big: with an auxiliary bishop. The Boston area is big enough, and Catholic enough, that the cardinal can’t do everything the top man of the Church is expected to do, so there are five bishops appointed to help him out, one for each of the regions into which the Archdiocese of Boston is divided.

The one who had agreed to come and help us, who was assigned to the area northeast of Boston, was named Bishop Soares. I am not a good enough Catholic to have heard of him—I don’t read the Catholic paper or keep up on church events—but Father Fran assured me that he knew Soares pretty well; they’d served together on something called the “Migrants and Refugees Subcommittee.”

“How’d you convince him to help us?”

“It didn’t take much. He’s had a couple of encounters himself.”

“With ghosts?”

“Not exactly,” Father Fran said. “But he leads meditation retreats and pilgrimages to Laus and Avila, so he’s no stranger to the mystical experience. I had a hunch he might be open to this, and he was.”

“Gosh, thanks so much,” I said.

“Anytime.”

“Should I call him?”

“He’s coming into town on Wednesday.”

“Wednesday, as in tomorrow Wednesday?”

“He’ll be in meetings at the Chancery all day, but he said he could stop by to see you before he heads back up to Gloucester.”

“That’d be fantastic,” I said. “Should I call his office?”

“I’ll put you on hold and have Rosemary pick up. She’ll give you the number.”

“All right. Great. Oh, and one more thing.”

“Shoot.”

“What’s the protocol? For when he comes?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Father Fran.

The stress was taking a toll on Sylvia. I doubted she’d ever been hale and hearty, but the circles were darkening under her eyes and her collarbones, and the bones in her face appeared sharp and angular. She was starting to look like someone who lived on Cream of Wheat.

“I can’t sleep,” she confessed. “I keep thinking of … that
person
being in my bedroom. And that incredible manuscript being God knows where.”

“Is there someone you could talk to?”

“Who?” Sylvia demanded. “There’s a therapist I used to go to, but I haven’t seen her in a couple of years. It would take me forever just to
explain
everything. Besides, you think she’s going to believe that I’ve been hobnobbing with ghosts?”

She had a point. In the psychiatric manual on which psychologists relied, “seeing ghosts” could get you diagnosed as anywhere on the spectrum between delusional and psychotic.

“What about Sam?” I asked. “At least he knows about the book.”

“Maybe,” she said, in a tone that made me doubt she was going to call him.

Thinking of Sam made me remember Julian and the roses. I hadn’t called him yet to thank him. Nor had I figured out what to say.

“If it would make you feel better to tell Sam the whole story, I could go with you.” I paused. “At least then you’d have someone you could talk to.”

She shrugged.

“Or ask him to come by,” I urged her. “Nobody’s here but us. You know how he loves to come visit.”

“Maybe,” she said, looking slightly more hopeful. Involving me would take the pressure off her; she wouldn’t be the one claiming the ability to speak with ghosts. I would.

“Call him,” I said. “I really think you should.”