The Trust (13 page)
Authors: Tom Dolby
O
ver the past few weeks, Lauren had rushed through the prototype and manufacturing of the Scarab of Isis necklace. Now that she was finally walking up the plush black carpeted stairs of the Metropolitan Museum on February 13, the night of the Dendur Ball, she was happy about it. The fourteen girls on the Junior Committee—seven from her class and seven from the class above her—all looked stunning wearing the piece. Crowds gathered around the museum, hoping for a glimpse of the guests, and klieg lights had been set up on Fifth Avenue, swooping through the sky, movie premiere–style. A team of police officers manned the barricades as limousines, taxicabs, and town cars pulled up, one by one, and photographers swarmed anyone notable who hit the much-discussed black carpet, an innovation that the event designer felt was much more chic than red, and more in keeping with the Dendur Balls of years past.
Inside, the girls were photographed next to the actual Scarab of Isis, which was displayed in a glass case to one side of the Temple of Dendur. Everyone marveled at how similar the two versions looked. Lauren felt she couldn’t take any credit for it—it was a copy, nothing more—but still, she was pleased that it had worked out.
She had been so busy lately, she hadn’t even had time to think about finding a date for the ball. Thankfully, Thad had volunteered to take her. She was grateful to him, once again, for coming to her rescue.
A photographer stopped Lauren and Thad and took their picture. He looked handsome in his Ralph Lauren tux, and she wore a dress that Sebastian Giroux had designed for her, a simple sea-foam green strapless gown that was a perfect backdrop to the vivid colors of the scarab pendant.
The museum was breathtaking, with its classical columns lit up and the entire staircase of the Great Hall decorated with candles that made up the shape of an ankh. It frightened Lauren a bit, this symbol that had dominated their lives, but she admitted that its representation in light was beautiful. The central information desk in the Great Hall had been transformed into a bar, with a twelve-foot-tall floral arrangement of birds-of-paradise and other lush foliage. Champagne was poured by waiters in black tie, and hors d’oeuvres were served, all vaguely Egyptian-inspired: pickled cucumbers and smoked salmon on toast points, hummus and black olive tapenade wrapped in phyllo, and
batarekh
, or Egyptian caviar. Dancers worked their way through the crowd, dressed in skintight outfits, their faces painted with hieroglyphics and silver and gold markings, with jewels affixed to their features. Their glittering eyes, eyebrows, and cheekbones made them sparkle like otherworldly creatures.
Lauren and Thad followed the crowds to the right, into the Sackler Wing, where round tables of ten had been set up to seat people for dinner. Some chose to find their tables and sit down, while most milled around the entryway, awed by the stunning transformation of the room. The sandstone temple was lit up with a wash of oranges, blues, and lavenders, and the body of water in front of the temple was surrounded by hundreds of votives, reflecting everything going on around it. Tables were arranged with jewel-toned linens of turquoise, chartreuse, and magenta, classic gold Chiavari ballroom chairs, orchids combined with succulents, and tabletop lanterns lit with votive candles. A platformed DJ booth and a dance floor were set up in front of the temple.
Lauren made her way through the crowd, as she overheard all the praise the renovations to the galleries were garnering. In the galleries surrounding the temple, the lighting had been improved, the carpets had been replaced, and the placards had been updated and enlarged to improve readability. Lauren noticed Parker Bell holding court with his wife, Gigi, at a prime table near the front of the temple.
She and Thad spotted Phoebe and Nick. Phoebe was wearing a 1920s flapper dress that she had found in a vintage shop; it was burgundy with gold beadwork and fit perfectly for the evening, as the Egyptian Revival–style was popular after the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb. The red of Phoebe’s dress and the sea-foam of Lauren’s were beautiful together, and photographers took several more pictures of them. Even though they had been drinking champagne, they were careful to put their glasses to the side for any photographs.
Patch arrived with Lia. She looked adorable in a Marlene Dietrich–style vintage suit made of blue shantung silk, and she had done her hair in a Bettie Page cut, with straight black bangs framing her face. She looked stunning and had the most amazing shimmering burgundy lipstick: it looked like red glitter itself.
“How did you do that?” Phoebe asked.
“It’s a special thing I created,” she said. “It’s eyelash glue, and then you put glitter on it.”
“Can you eat with it? Or kiss anyone?” Phoebe asked.
“It’s a bit impractical,” Lia admitted. “You end up getting a lot of glitter in your food. But it seems to be a hit!” She posed sweetly for another photographer.
“It’s brilliant,” Lauren said. “I love it.” She looked at Patch. “You’re not looking too shabby yourself. New suit?”
“Thanks. Yeah, um, just got it the other day.”
Lauren leaned forward to take a closer look at it, and then she laughed. Sprinkled on his neck and shoulders, like stardust, was a smattering of red glitter.
“Don’t you have to start spinning?” Nick asked, looking toward the front of the temple. There was another DJ, a guy with a goatee, who was spinning.
Patch looked at his watch. “I go on in ten minutes. Can you believe it? I have an opening act! They didn’t want me to start until eight o’clock. I’d better get going.”
“Knock ’em dead,” Nick said.
At that moment Claire Chilton came up to Patch. Lauren immediately recognized Claire’s outfit: it was identical to a fabulous sketch that Sebastian Giroux had kept pinned to the concept board in his office for months, a sketch Lauren had thought would be reserved for next year’s collection. It was a black and gold dress with intricate multicolored beadwork on the bodice, the kind of dress that would have taken three seamstresses several weeks to create. Being familiar with price points, Lauren also knew that it was the kind of dress that cost about ten thousand dollars.
It suddenly made Lauren’s own relatively simple dress seem a bit drab.
Claire’s dress was more Lauren’s style, and she was feeling a bit hurt that Sebastian hadn’t made the gown for her. She knew it was silly, but she had to ask.
“Claire, how did you get that dress?”
“Oh, Sebastian designed it for me,” she said quickly, as if she couldn’t be bothered with such a quotidian matter. “Patch, they need you in the booth, like,
right now
. And here’s a list of music. The first list is ‘Must Play.’ The second list is ‘Do Not Play.’ My mom doesn’t want anything with profanity in it, or you know, implications of sexual activity or stuff like that. You know, keep it clean.”
“Sure, Claire, whatever,” Patch said, rolling his eyes. “This should be fun,” he muttered to Nick, loud enough so his friends could hear.
“Okay, we need you there now,” Claire said. “And the rest of you, I want to see you dancing!”
She clicked off in her heels, which looked uncomfortable.
“I guess I’m a DJ widow,” Lia said.
Phoebe grabbed her hand and motioned to a trio of performers. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. Come on, let’s go check out those fire-eaters.”
N
ick wasn’t particularly enjoying himself at the ball, but he wanted to keep Phoebe and the other girls happy and not be a bore. The key from his grandfather’s house, still hanging on a string around his neck, felt like it was searing a brand in his chest. When would he learn what it actually opened? It had been a week since he and Phoebe were in Southampton, and they still hadn’t gotten anywhere.
Nick’s parents were seated at a prominent table, and his two brothers were at another table with their dates and friends. Nick had wanted to ask his brothers, Benjamin specifically, about Palmer’s challenge, but he didn’t feel like he could without the risk of their father hearing about it.
As he sat down, he felt a headache coming on, though it wasn’t from the champagne. When he had picked up his escort card containing his table assignment, the black stock calligraphed in gold read “Table 1603.” There was no table numbered 1603; there were only about forty tables, designated as One through Forty. He showed it to Phoebe, and found that he was actually seated at Table Fourteen with her.
Still, as he pocketed the card, it left him with an unsettled feeling.
After the salad course had been cleared, Letty Chilton, the chair of the Ball Committee, stood up to make a speech, her husband, Martin, sitting nearby. She was wearing a turquoise dress that made her look like she was dressed in one of the tablecloths. As she welcomed everyone from her position on the dais in front of the temple, the lighting created ghostly shadows on her face. Nick spaced out during most of the speech, as it was all about boring stuff like how proud she was of all the donors, how much work they had all done, and how much the Egyptian wing was a vital part of this city. Nick loved the Egyptian wing—it was a stone’s throw from his bedroom window—but he felt like Mrs. Chilton was using it as her own personal triumph, as if she were responsible for all the hard work that had been done by the curators, the scholars, the archaeologists, and the art historians.
Letty Chilton probably wouldn’t know an Egyptian artifact if she tripped over one in Central Park.
“In closing,” she said, “I’d like to say how grateful we are to our friends in Cairo for loaning us these glorious objects, here now at the Met for all the world to see. You have truly brought Egypt to those who might never experience it. Thank you.”
There was thunderous applause as Mrs. Chilton beamed at the crowd and then carefully stepped off the small platform.
At that moment, the power went out.
Patch had cued up the next song that was to play after Letty Chilton’s speech, as she had informed him that she loathed nothing more than the awkward silence that occurs after applause has died down but before conversation resumes. Patch was to fill this gap by starting up the music immediately—almost, she had implied, under penalty of death. (Letty Chilton had been victim to a terrible incident at the Metropolitan Club the previous year when she had given a toast and then there was no music for a full ninety seconds after it had concluded. The memory, clearly, had stayed with her.)
Now there wasn’t silence, but there wasn’t music, either. As the museum went dark, there was shouting and commotion. With all the candlelight, it wasn’t pitch-black exactly, but startling nonetheless.
Claire Chilton ran up to him, in a near hysterical fit. “Patch! What is going on? Why is all the lighting going out? Did you do something? All these cables! Did you knock something over?”
“Claire, I play the music. The lighting booth is over there,” he said, motioning to the other side of the room.
She scowled and ran across the room, though she was intercepted by her mother, who was equally hysterical.
Just relax, Patch thought. What were they all so crazy about? The lights would come back on when they came on. It was probably just a temporary outage caused by a surge in the power grid. All the extra lighting for the party was taking up an awful lot of juice, not to mention the klieg lights outside, which had been on since six
P.M.
Then Patch heard something else: the sound of smashing glass from the west side of the room, followed by a few loud screams. Patch looked up, trying to determine through the crowd what was going on. The bodies crowded around the artifacts, as people made their way toward the exits. Patch wondered why everyone didn’t stay in their seats. With all the events that had taken place in the last ten years in New York City, even a mere power outage was enough to get people to panic.
As the crowd cleared around the west side of the room, the source of the smashing glass became clear: one of the display cases had been broken into from the side and was now empty. Patch felt a lump rising in his throat.
He had heard the museum’s head of security speaking with his guards earlier that day when he had come in for the sound check.
Because of all the extra power that would be required by the caterers, the lighting, and the sound—and because the museum would be doubly staffed with guards during the party—the museum had made an executive decision, that now, in retrospect, didn’t seem terribly smart.
To save power and try to prevent an outage, they had turned off the security alarms on all the cases.
P
hoebe had stayed with her group of Nick, Lauren, Thad, and Lia at their table near the glass wall that faced Fifth Avenue. It wasn’t a prime table at all—they could probably thank Claire for that—but their champagne glasses were full, they were having a good time, and there didn’t seem any reason to get caught up in the pandemonium around them.
Five minutes later, the lights came up again. It wasn’t the ambient lighting on the temple, though: it was full-on, bright-as-day museum lighting. Everyone looked around in shock, as if the sun had risen and they could now see every blemish and imperfection around them. A few women pulled out their compacts and started frantically checking their makeup.
Phoebe glanced over to Patch, who was still in the DJ booth. He seemed to be waiting for a cue from the powers that be, and wasn’t going to start the music until he got one. He also seemed to be listening in on his headset, which was wired in with the event planner and the head of security.
There was no music, and the lights stayed bright as ever. It was as if the party had been abruptly killed, shot dead, and its corpse now strung up for all to see.
About half a minute later, the sound of crackling radios and heavy footsteps came from the entrance to the museum. Lauren stood up and pointed to the museum’s west wall of display cases.
“Phoebe!” she hissed. “The necklace! It’s gone!”
Phoebe looked as other guests started to notice. While the lights had been out, it was difficult to see that part of the room; for safety reasons, there weren’t any candles near the artifacts, so they had been in darkness after the power went out. Now everyone started whispering in shock and horror. Those who were standing near the case moved away from it, as if mere proximity might implicate them in the crime. More people started shuffling toward the exits.
A row of a dozen policemen formed at the entrance to the Egyptian wing, creating a human wall that blocked anyone from leaving the museum. A team of detectives pushed through the crowds.
“Step away from the case, ladies and gentlemen,” one of them said.
A roll of police tape was unfurled in a twenty-foot perimeter around the case.
“No one touches anything. No one moves anything,” a detective instructed. “We’re sorry to do this, but it’s necessary if we want to find the necklace.”
Letty Chilton came up to them. “Officer, you can’t possibly detain our guests like this. For some of them, this has been a huge shock. . . .”
He brushed her off as if swatting away a fly. “Ma’am, I need you to step aside.”
There was shouting from the north side of the temple. “This girl is wearing the necklace!”
Another officer spoke up. “This one, too!”
“No, no, you must understand!” Mrs. Chilton cried. “Those are reproductions! They’re not the real thing!”
There were gasps, and then nervous laughter from the crowd.
“How close do they look to the real thing?” the detective asked.
“Lauren?” Mrs. Chilton looked around as Lauren stood up. There was silence in the room. Phoebe admired how composed Lauren was, given the situation.
“Well, Mrs. Chilton, you asked me to make them look as real as possible.”
The crowd laughed again, and Phoebe thought she saw Mrs. Chilton blushing underneath all her makeup.
The detective spoke into a bullhorn. “I’m going to need anyone wearing a reproduction of the Scarab of Isis necklace to surrender them to my officers. Line up over there.” He pointed to an officer who had commandeered one of the tables. “They will be tagged and returned to you in due time.”
“Shouldn’t you be looking for the real one?” Mrs. Chilton asked.
“Ma’am, we have no proof that one of these ladies isn’t wearing the real one,” the officer said. “Would be pretty handy, wouldn’t it? How many are there?”
“Fourteen,” Lauren said.
By this time, at least three dozen more officers had entered and started taking statements. A bag check was set up at the exit to the museum, and after each guest had been questioned and their purses and pockets had been checked, they were free to leave.
There was an interminable wait, and the bartenders had been instructed to close down the bars. They, too, were to be questioned before the evening’s end.
Phoebe and her friends sat and nursed their glasses of champagne, now joined by Patch. Bradley Winston came by with a flask, but most of the table declined.
A little after one
A.M
., Phoebe finally got into a cab. As it sped down Fifth Avenue, she felt herself nodding off, drifting into dreams, wondering who could have pulled off the theft of the Scarab of Isis necklace.
Lauren decided that she would walk home from the ball, as it was only a few blocks, and she loved the snow that had started falling. She glanced behind her at the Temple of Dendur, lit brightly behind the glass wall of the Sackler Wing that faced Fifth Avenue. A sense of nostalgia hit her suddenly. It had been such a beautiful night, even with the drama, and she longed to share it with someone. But perhaps she was better off alone with her thoughts.
She heard some footsteps and turned to see Thad running down the steps toward her. Behind him was a handsome guy with olive skin and dark, piercing eyes.
“You’re not going to believe what happened,” Thad whispered. “I think I met someone.”
Did everyone in the world have a date? It had started to seem that way.
“This is Kurt,” Thad said, introducing the cute guy. “His parents are professors at Princeton. He’s just in the city for the night. We’re going to grab a nightcap somewhere. You want to join us?”
Lauren shook her head. “I think I’d better be getting home.”
“Let us walk you home,” Thad said.
“I’m fine,” Lauren said. “I think I just want to enjoy the evening. Being out in the snow reminds me of when I was a little kid.”
Thad nodded. “You sure?”
“You go ahead.”
As Lauren bundled her coat and scarf around her, Claire walked by her. “Lauren, you can’t possibly be going home alone.”
Lauren looked up. “Yes, Claire, I am. Do you have a problem with that?”
“Oh, no,” Claire said as she surreptitiously plucked a cigarette from the pocket of her coat while nervously watching the steps, probably to make sure her parents couldn’t see her. “I just always imagine you surrounded by tons of boys. Like last semester.”
Lauren paused. Claire was so annoying, and so rude, and it stung, hurt like a fall on the icy sidewalk. She knew it shouldn’t affect her, as Claire was everything she didn’t want to be. Lauren composed herself after a moment, cinching the belt on her overcoat and facing in the direction of Park Avenue. She knew she shouldn’t say what she was about to say, but she had taken enough from Claire, and she didn’t care if her mother was their decorator.
“That’s funny, Claire,” she said over her shoulder. “Because I always imagine you rotting and alone.”