Part 4
“Did he strike you?” Ruiz asked.
“No.”
“Did he push you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he touch you?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He grabbed my wrist. Then my upper arm.”
“What happened next?”
“I stepped backward.”
“Did he release you?”
“I remember pulling away.”
“Then?”
“My shoulder hit the bench.”
“Your face?”
“I may have caught it on the edge.”
Ruiz made a note. “May have?”
“I don’t remember the exact order.”
“That’s common after a sudden event.”
Claire disliked the relief those words gave her.
“Did he prevent you from leaving?”
“He stood between me and the rotunda.”
“For how long?”
“Maybe ten seconds.”
“What did he say?”
“He said I was going to destroy my family over paperwork.”
“Anything else?”
Claire paused.
“He said, ‘Your uncle already knows what these people are.’”
Ruiz’s pen stopped. “Which people?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Why not?”
“Because he had the card, and I was trying to get it back.”
When the interview ended, Ruiz told Claire that the decision to pursue charges did not need to be made that night. The museum’s security footage would be reviewed. Witnesses would be interviewed separately. The office and archive logs would be preserved.
“Do not ask anyone to coordinate accounts,” Ruiz said. “Including your uncle.”
“I wouldn’t.”
Ruiz gave her a look that suggested wealthy families said that often.
Claire almost smiled. “You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you intend not to. Intentions get crowded when lawyers arrive.”
By one thirty, Claire had been discharged.
Malcolm wanted her to stay at his Beacon Hill house. Claire refused. She did not want his staff whispering in hallways or his driver pretending not to notice her hospital bracelet.
Her own apartment felt worse.
Adrian had moved into the Commonwealth Avenue townhouse six months earlier, though both of them still called it hers when they argued. His shoes stood beneath the entry bench. His coat hung beside hers. A bottle of the mineral water he preferred sat open on the kitchen counter.
Miriam had arrived before them with two museum security officers. She had packed Adrian’s essential belongings into three garment bags and a suitcase after receiving written permission from Claire. The rest remained untouched.
“He texted you,” Miriam said.
Claire stared at her phone.
Twenty-seven messages waited.
Most were brief.
Please call me.
You are letting Malcolm turn this into a war.
I was protecting you.
You know what happens if those records become public.
The final message had arrived nine minutes earlier.
Ask your uncle what Daniel did in 1998.
Claire locked the screen.
Miriam stood near the kitchen island, still in her dark formal suit. Her hair, which had been arranged neatly at the gala, had loosened above one ear. She looked exhausted but not uncertain.
“Did you know my father was involved?” Claire asked.
“I knew he handled acquisitions.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No. I did not know.”
“Did Uncle Malcolm?”
“You should ask him.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“He chose to believe my father.”
Miriam removed her glasses and cleaned them with the edge of a folded tissue. “That sounds like Malcolm.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“I have worked with him for nineteen years. His loyalty is genuine. So is his ability to place loyalty where judgment ought to be.”
Claire walked into the living room. Two champagne coupes from the previous evening remained on the coffee table. Adrian had left a magazine facedown on the sofa. There was nothing sinister in the room. That offended her too.
“Why was the archive door unsecured?” she asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Could Adrian have opened it with my card?”
“Yes.”
“He took the card after I found him in the office.”
“Then someone else opened the archive, or he had the card earlier and returned it before you noticed.”
Claire looked toward the hallway leading to the bedroom.
Her clutch had been on the dressing table while she showered.
Adrian had fastened the clasp himself when they left.
The memory was small, domestic, almost tender. He had kissed the back of her shoulder and told her the silver gown made her look like moonlight. While she searched for an earring, he held the clutch behind her.
A card could be removed and returned in seconds.
“I need to change the locks,” Claire said.
“The locksmith will be here at eight.”
“You arranged that?”
“Malcolm did.”
Claire bristled, then let the irritation pass. “Of course he did.”
Miriam put on her glasses. “You can cancel him.”
“No. Let him come.”
At three in the morning, Claire sat on the kitchen floor eating dry cereal from a coffee mug because every bowl was in the dishwasher.
She had removed the hospital bracelet but could still feel it around her wrist.
Her phone lay facedown beside her. Adrian had stopped messaging. Malcolm had not.
Miriam slept in the guest room after refusing to leave Claire alone. Before going to bed, she had placed a small brass bell on the nightstand.
Claire had laughed despite herself. “What century is this from?”
“The nineteenth, probably. It belongs to your house.”
“You expect me to summon you like a maid?”
“I expect you to throw it at the wall if you need help.”
Now the bell rested upstairs, useless and somehow reassuring.
Claire opened her laptop.
The foundation’s archive database required a secure connection she no longer trusted. Instead, she searched her personal notes. For three weeks, she had been preparing an exhibition proposal about private collecting networks after the Cold War. The Marlowe correspondence had appeared because the Bellweather Collection was included in a list of gifts made through intermediaries.
The official record was clean.
Twelve sculptures. European modernists. Donated by Everett Marlowe, a shipping investor who died in 2004. Accepted by unanimous committee vote in June 1998.
Claire’s notes contained the contradictions.
May you like
A handwritten inventory dated two months before the donation listed Marlowe as “temporary custodian.”
A letter from a Zurich dealer asked Daniel Whitmore why the foundation was requesting a retroactive transfer.
