Part 3
Jonas stepped between them. “Mr. Haldner, you are finished for the moment.”
Adrian looked toward his father.
Conrad did not defend him.
That frightened him more than the badge had.
The library salon smelled of cedar, dust, and orange peel from a bowl of mulled wine that had been removed in a hurry. Theo sat on a green velvet sofa with his knees together while a hotel medic checked his ankle and found no swelling. Mara remained beside him. She had taken off one black heel because the back of it had cracked when she slid on the marble. The shoe lay beneath a side table, absurdly elegant and temporarily useless.
Theo watched it.
“Did I break your shoe?”
“No.”
“Everything is breaking.”
“That is not your fault.”
He looked toward the closed door. “I did touch the music box.”
“I heard you.”
“I wanted to see the flowers.”
Mara waited.
His face pulled inward the way it did when he expected adults to fill silence with the worst possibility.
“And?”
“And it played a little. Just one note.”
“Before it fell?”
He nodded.
“Did you wind it?”
“No. I put my finger on the lid. It moved.”
“How?”
He demonstrated with one hand, touching an imaginary surface and jerking back.
“It wobbled.”
“Did you push it?”
“No.”
“Did anyone bump you?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a good answer when you don’t know.”
He picked at the velvet seam on his jacket cuff. Mara moved his fingers away before he loosened the stitching. He immediately returned them to the same spot.
“There was a man behind me,” he said.
“Which man?”
“I didn’t see his face.”
“What did you see?”
“A black sleeve.”
Half the room had worn black sleeves.
“Anything else?”
Theo frowned. “Something shiny.”
“A watch?”
“Maybe.”
“Do not work hard to remember. Tell me only what is already there.”
He closed his eyes.
Mara almost stopped him, but his breathing had steadied.
“A square,” he said. “Silver. Here.”
He touched the outside of his wrist.
“A cuff link?”
“Maybe.”
“Good. That is enough.”
“What happens to the box?”
“It becomes evidence.”
“Does evidence get fixed?”
“Sometimes.”
“That means no.”
“It means I don’t know yet.”
He leaned against her side. The movement was cautious, as though he feared he had used up his allowance of comfort in the conservatory.
Mara put her arm around him.
Her sister, Rachel, had once accused her of treating comfort like a controlled substance. That had been in a grocery store parking lot in Queens, six months before Rachel’s car went through a wet intersection and never reached the other side. Mara had spent two years remembering the argument and almost none remembering what groceries they had bought.
Theo’s head rested beneath her chin.
“You said the recorder was authorized,” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“Were you recording the whole party?”
“Only what I was permitted to record.”
“That sounds like a work answer.”
“It is.”
“You said we weren’t working tonight.”
Mara looked toward the dark window. Snow pressed white against the lower panes.
“We weren’t supposed to be.”
Theo said nothing.
That was worse than accusation.
Jonas entered without knocking. He closed the door behind him and waited until Theo looked at him.
“We have secured the conservatory video,” he said. “You will not need to answer questions tonight unless you choose to.”
Theo glanced at Mara.
“Do I choose?”
“You do,” she said.
“I don’t want to.”
“Then you won’t.”
Jonas’s mouth tightened. Their original plan had depended on interviews before guests coordinated accounts. He did not argue in front of Theo.
“The brass plate came from beneath the felt base,” he said. “It detached when the porcelain fractured.”
“MS-17,” Mara said.
Jonas nodded.
The initials belonged to Margaret Sloan, the woman in the silver gown. Seventeen had been the inventory number assigned to a nineteenth-century music box in the private collection of her late daughter, Emily.
According to the auction catalog, the box on the conservatory pedestal had belonged to the Saint-Aubry family of Lyon and had been donated anonymously.
Two histories for one object.
Or two objects sharing one description.
“Where is Mrs. Sloan?” Mara asked.
“Still in the conservatory. She refuses to leave.”
“Has she said why?”
“No.”
Theo lifted his head. “She was crying.”
Mara had not seen that.
“When?”
“When the box broke. Before the mean man talked.”
Jonas glanced toward Mara. “Did you see her touch it?”
Theo shook his head.
“Did you see her speak to anyone near it?”
Another shake.
Jonas accepted the answers and stood. “Mara, outside.”
She stayed seated.
“Say it here.”
His eyes moved toward Theo, then back.
“The auction director claims the displayed object was a decorative replica. The original was secured elsewhere.”
“Then why was a donor inventory plate under the replica?”
“He does not know.”
“And why was the replica placed beneath the lot card for the original?”
“He says staff error.”
“Convenient.”
“Common things are often convenient.”
Theo looked between them. “Are you mad at Aunt Mara?”
Jonas exhaled through his nose. “I am mad at several adults.”
“Because she brought me?”
Mara felt the question in her chest.
Jonas was quiet long enough to answer honestly.
“I think she was promised this would be a safe evening.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Mara touched Theo’s shoulder. “He is allowed to think I made a mistake.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
Jonas looked at her.
She did not look away.
Theo’s chin trembled once, but he pressed his lips together. “Are they going to take me away from you?”
“No.”
“You said you made a guardian mistake.”
“I said I made a work decision that put you somewhere you should not have been.”
“That sounds worse.”
“It feels worse to me.”
He considered this. “But you’re still my guardian?”
“Every day.”
“Even if the box costs a lot?”
“Even if every box in the hotel breaks.”
“That would be a lot of boxes.”
May you like
“It would.”
He leaned against her again, less cautiously.
