The Book of Illumination (18 page)

“
A,”
Henry said, refreshing my memory, or educating me, in case I was bluffing, “e …
i
…
o
…
u
…”

“And sometimes
y,”
I sang.

He looked relieved to learn that I wasn’t completely illiterate.

Channeling Miss O., he continued. “Why do we need vowels?”

I shrugged. He had a definite answer in mind, so I let him go for it.

“Because otherwise,” he explained patiently, “words would sound like this: nklprtstrlkdtrplmpwxlpthk!”

“Mlpktrbxlpdyrtszmlpywt?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, grinning now and adding more loudly, “LMNPKLTRBZKHTRGY!!!”

“
That’s
a mouthful.”

“Yes,” he said triumphantly. “So you put a vowel next to a constenent so you can say it!”

“I see,” I said seriously. “I always wondered about that.”

“But the
tricky
part is, there’s only one vowel you can ever put with
q!”

“Really?”

“Yeah!
U!
”

He sat back with a swagger, flush with confidence. “Never
a?”
I said. “Nope.”

“
E
?”

“Unh-unh,” he said firmly, shaking his head. “Or no
i
. Or no o. Or no
u
. I mean,
yes u.”

“But no
y,”
I said.

“Yeah, so that’s why we’re having a wedding, so we’ll always remember. Dylan’s going to be
U
and Katie R.’s going to be Q. And Miss O. will marry them.”

“Katie R.?”

“Yeah. There’s Katie M. and Katie R.”

“And you’re absolutely sure there’s going to be cake? Because it isn’t really a wedding without cake.”

“Yup,” he said proudly. “Vanilla. We took a vote.”

“Then count me in,” I said.

H
ENRY HAD JUST
fallen asleep when the phone rang. I lunged for it before the ringing could wake him and sentence me to another half hour of his stalling and claiming to be unable to fall back to sleep.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Dec.”

This was a surprise. “Hi! Where are you?”

“Down in the driveway. You busy?”

“Nope; I just got him down.” I glanced out the window and sure enough, there was Declan’s truck. “You want to come up?”

“Yeah, if that’s okay.”

Oh yeah, it was okay. It was always okay.

I speed-cleaned the kitchen for forty-five seconds, throwing our dishes into the sink and wiping off the table, stuffing the newspapers and junk mail into the recycling bin, straightening the rag rug. I opened the door at the top of the stairs so Declan wouldn’t wake Henry by knocking and raced into my bedroom to pull a sweater over my black T-shirt, which had gotten wrecked with bleach. Dec was pulling out a kitchen chair when I came back into the kitchen.

“Howdy,” he said.

“Hi. You working?”

“Just got off.”

“You want a beer?”

He pondered this for a moment. “Ah, why not?” he said.

I always keep his favorite—Smithwick’s—in the fridge, but he hardly ever has one. There are some problems with “the drink” in his extended family, so he’s thoughtful about alcohol. It surprised me that he said yes.

I reached into the fridge, pulled out a beer, opened it, and handed it to him. I poured myself an inch or two of zinfandel and sat down.

“Have you eaten?” I asked.

“I have, thanks.”

“Cheers,” I said, and we clinked bottle and glass.

“So, I paid a visit to your pal Carlotta,” he began. “She’s a piece of work.”

“Aw, she seemed sweet.”

He made a face and shook his head. “She asked if she could call me about some
screenplay
she’s writing. Get ‘the cop stuff’ right, she said,
Jay-sus
, that’s all I need.”

I laughed. “Did you get any more information?”

He shook his head. “Not much. I did blow the bit about the boyfriend, though, and the bike, so you might want to give Sylvia a heads-up.”

“What do you mean?”

Dec had a sip of his beer. “Well, I wouldn’t be asking Carlotta to tell me about Sylvia’s boyfriend, now, would I? I’d be asking Sylvia herself. I told Carlotta straight up that the place had been broken into and that something valuable had been stolen. I just didn’t mention what.”

I nodded.

“There was one interesting bit, though,” he went on. “She told me the lad spoke with an accent. I said, What, like me? She said no, and not British, either, and not Italian or Polish, she would have recognized those on account of her grandparents. Perfect English, it was, though, so I asked her, could the accent have been Dutch?”

“
Dutch?
Where’d you come up with that?”

“Scully.” Dec raised his bottle in a toast and had a sip of beer.

“The guy who agreed to help you?”

Declan nodded. “He’s cooperating. Gotten downright chatty, he has.”

“
Really?”

“Yeah, well, it’s that or a decade or two of Christmas Eves at Cedar Junction.”

“I guess I’d pick Door Number One,” I said.

“There you go. I had some time alone with him before Bowen and Darrah came in to question him. I told him I needed a special favor, just between me and himself. Poor bastard; I like the guy. I told him I was the one who broke the Loughlin case, so I had a very special relationship with Judge Weinstein. You scratch my back, I told him, and I’ll scratch yours. On the QT, though—he wasn’t to breathe a word to Darrah or Bowen, or the deal was off. And I’d deny to the death that we’d ever had the conversation.”

Dec had broken the Loughlin case with a little help from me. It was a horrible murder—a public defender named Rick Loughlin had been gunned down in front of his son and half the boy’s Little League team after Loughlin defended a Cambodian gang member charged with rape and aggravated assault. Loughlin had gotten his client off, and a week or so later, three members of a rival gang came after the lawyer one evening at a local ice cream stand, where he was buying cones for the kids.

I offered to try to help, and it turned out I could. I located the
ghost of Rick Loughlin at one of several locations I tried: the West Concord ball field, watching his son’s team compete for the city championship, in a game that was dedicated to him. Loughlin’s ghost, anxious to see his killer behind bars, told me everything I needed—or rather, Dec needed—to crack the case. In doing so, Dec earned the respect of a powerful judge, Judge Weinstein, who’d been a public defender with Loughlin before being appointed to the bench. When the time came for Scully’s fate to be determined, a whisper from Declan into the good judge’s ear wouldn’t hurt a bit.

“Right off the bat, he had an idea,” Declan went on.

“How would he know?” I asked, incredulous. “He’s been in custody! You sure he’s not just throwing you a dead end?”

“And why would he do that?”

“To get in your good graces. Make it seem like he’s eager to help.”

Declan laughed, a laugh that indicated he was choosing to tolerate good-naturedly my serious underestimation of his shrewdness.

“Well, there
were
some helpful details,” Dec said. “Like what?”

“Bastard picked the lock, for starters. That’s not everybody’s MO, not in this day and age. No question it was a high-end job; fellow was probably paid a tidy sum to go after the one thing, and he went in, found it, and got the hell out. Didn’t even help himself to the emerald earrings, which tells you we’re dealing with a class act. As felons go, I mean. The emeralds would have been a snap to fence. Easy. Or at the very least, a real decent gift for his girlfriend.”

He paused and smiled, and I was suddenly embarrassed. Had I ever been his
girlfriend
? Would he ever have thought to apply that affectionate term to me?

Probably sensing the awkwardness of the moment, he went on. “He’s also got to be smooth enough to handle a complication like Carlotta. Runs into her on the landing with the book in his knapsack and doesn’t so much as break a sweat. Just launches right in, cool as trout on a plate. That takes a certain level of skill.”

“So Scully thought of this guy …”

“Immediately,” Declan said. “Dutch lad, Jannus Van Vleck. Probably involved in that Van Gogh heist. Maybe not the lifter himself, but definitely in the mix. No question. If somebody with money to burn wants to get their hands on a specific painting or something like, say, your manuscript, Van Vleck’s name would be on the short list. And Scully knows for certain that he’s been in the area.”

“No kidding,” I said. “So what do we do? Find the person with money to burn?”

Dec had a sip. “I’m thinking on that. I’ve gotta be really careful. They’ll have me by the—sorry! It’ll be hell to pay if it comes out that I’m cuttin’ deals on the side.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, well, you let me worry about that.”

“Thanks.” I love it when Dec says things like this. He’s such a guy’s guy.

He nodded. “But what I’m asking myself here is much more basic. Who knew about the book? Not that she had it at her flat, I’m not talking about that. Just—who even knew that the book existed?”

“Well, Finny, obviously.”

“Yeah, but he’s dead,” Declan said. “Isn’t he?”

I nodded. “There’s Sam Blake, Sylvia’s old boss, but she really trusts him.”

Declan gave me a sly look.

“I don’t see it,” I said. “I really don’t. I had lunch with him. He’s just not the type.”

“There is no type, darlin’.”

“Plus, I doubt he has any money. I could ask Sylvia, though.”

“Do that.”

“They wrote to some people in the field,” I continued. “Finny and Sylvia did. But these folks are world-renowned curators at huge museums. They wouldn’t hire an art thief because … they wouldn’t have to. If they found out about something they wanted, they’d just buy it. Besides, one of them didn’t even think the book was all that important. Old, rare, beautiful, yeah, but not the discovery of the decade.”

“Hmmm,” Declan said. “Well there’s no gettin’ around the fact that
somebody
knew—or made a lucky guess—that she had it. They found out where she lived—easy enough to do; nowadays you can Google anybody—and they waited till she left and went in. My money’s on this lad Van Vleck.”

“And someone really rich is behind it,” I said. “You’re sure about that.”

“Oh, yeah. Dead sure. Guys like Van Vleck don’t work for the love of it.”

“Well,” I said, a little nervously, “Finny’s son Tad’s got reams of dough. And he’s getting kind of suspicious. So is Sylvia’s boss, Amanda. But at this point they’re just confused. They have a hunch there’s some kind of valuable book floating around but they don’t really know what it is. Or where.”

“How’d
they
get to talking?” Declan asked. “Assuming they are.”

I nodded. “Amanda got a call from a woman named Paola Moretti. At least we
think
it was Paola Moretti who called. Amanda didn’t identify the person by name, but it has to have been her.”

“How did
she
know about it, this Moretti dame?” Declan asked.

“She’s at the Met, the medieval part of it, The Cloisters.”

“I’m familiar with The Cloisters, Anz—”

“Sorry.” I sometimes forget that he went to Northeastern, and lived in a dorm near the Museum of Fine Arts. I forget how he loved walking over there and drifting through the galleries on Monday nights, when admission was free.

“Paola was one of the curators that Sylvia and Finny wrote to, just before Finny died. By the time she wrote back, Finny had passed away, and Tad, being the executor, got the letter. He told her that the whole book collection had gone to the Athenaeum, and that if she wanted more information, she’d have to be in touch with Amanda.”

Declan nodded and finished off his beer. I pointed to the empty bottle.
Another?
He shook his head.

“Amanda went through the list of all the books in the Winslow Collection and didn’t find anything like it.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I said, “Sylvia didn’t log it in. She’d promised Finny that’d she’d keep trying to authenticate it, or at least trace the provenance. She knew he wouldn’t have wanted the book at the Athenaeum.”

Dec shot me a puzzled glance. “No? It’s a library.”

I shrugged. “I guess he had something nobler in mind. Like giving it back to the people it was taken from.”

“Right,” said Dec. “And this Amanda called—what’s his name? Thad?”

“Tad. Who’s a jerk. He’s only gotten interested because he smells money.”

We sat for a couple of moments without speaking. Declan glanced at his watch, and I guessed he might be wondering whether he’d get home in time to see Nell and Delia before they fell asleep. Just then, as though sibling rivalry had registered in his dreams, Henry appeared sleepily in the kitchen doorway.

“Hi, Daddy,” he said, half awake. He padded over and crawled into Declan’s lap.

“Hey, pal,” Declan said, smoothing down a cowlick in Henry’s sandy brown hair. “What are you doing up?”

“I heard you,” Henry said.

“Sorry about that.”

I was touched by the lovely ordinariness of this moment, the kind of intimate scene that happened almost never in our lives. But I wasn’t going to let myself go all mushy.