Chương 9
Adrian looked up. “I told Anna she wasn’t being dismissed.”
“She isn’t.”
“Then why is the agency asking?”
“Because the legal office described her leave as temporary removal from the property.”
Adrian set down his pen.
“I didn’t authorize that wording.”
“Your counsel may have believed it prudent.”
“Did anyone ask Pilar or you to leave?”
“No, sir.”
“Did anyone ask Celeste?”
Lionel’s expression remained professional. “Ms. Vale does not have a placement.”
Adrian heard Anna’s voice in the answer.
He called the attorney responsible for the agreement. The man explained that separating the employee from the site reduced the risk of retaliatory contact.
“Whose contact?” Adrian asked.
“Any involved party.”
“You removed the employee instead of restricting my sister.”
“We cannot restrict a beneficiary from family property without a formal directive.”
“Then prepare one.”
There was a pause.
“A directive barring Ms. Vale from the estate?”
“Pending the investigation, yes.”
“That could escalate the family dispute.”
“The family dispute is already escalating. We are simply accustomed to pretending it doesn’t count when only staff absorb it.”
By afternoon, Celeste had received notice that she could not enter Vale House without Adrian’s written permission.
She arrived anyway.
Lionel met her at the entrance. Adrian watched from the upper landing as his sister stood outside in a camel coat and sunglasses, though the sky was overcast.
“You’re not locking me out of my childhood home,” she said.
“I’m afraid I am,” Lionel replied.
“You are an employee.”
“Yes.”
“Then open the door.”
“No.”
She removed her sunglasses. “Do you enjoy this?”
“No, Ms. Vale.”
“You look as though you do.”
“I look as I always look.”
That was true. Lionel had worn the same grave expression at weddings, funerals, leaking pipes, and one memorable Christmas when a swan entered the conservatory and refused to leave.
Celeste looked past him and saw Adrian.
“You sent staff to humiliate me.”
Adrian came down the stairs.
“I sent written instructions to prevent contact with Anna and preserve the investigation.”
“She isn’t here.”
“I know.”
“So let me in.”
“No.”
Celeste laughed once. “You want witnesses for this too?”
“Lionel is standing in his workplace.”
“He has known us since we were children.”
“That does not make him furniture.”
Lionel looked toward the driveway, granting them the nearest thing to privacy the open doorway allowed.
Celeste lowered her voice. “The bank froze my credit line.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m sorry you are frightened. I’m not sorry the portrait is being investigated.”
“I need my distribution.”
“The family office will review what can be advanced legally.”
“They said you opposed it.”
“I opposed paying private debt from funds reserved for payroll and taxes.”
“You always make cruelty sound administrative.”
Adrian stepped onto the stone threshold. “Did you call Anna?”
Celeste’s face answered before she did.
“She had no right to record me.”
“She didn’t record you. She answered her phone.”
“She is turning this into something larger.”
“You accused her of theft.”
“I corrected that.”
“To whom?”
Celeste looked away.
“Not to the agency,” Adrian said. “Not to Pilar. Not to Lionel. Not to Anna in any way that mattered.”
“I told her I panicked.”
“You also told her not to exaggerate.”
“She told you?”
“No. She told her attorney. Her attorney told mine after you violated the no-contact instruction.”
Celeste pressed her lips together.
Adrian watched anger cover fear again. It was an old transformation. When they were children, she had broken a porcelain horse in their mother’s bedroom and spent two hours accusing the cleaning staff of moving it. Later, she had climbed into Adrian’s bed and whispered that she thought their mother would stop loving her if she admitted the truth. He had cleaned the fragments from beneath the rug before breakfast.
He had called that loyalty for years.
Now it looked more like training.
“You need to leave,” he said.
“Where do you expect me to go?”
“Home.”
“My apartment is collateral.”
“That doesn’t make this house yours to use against people.”
Her eyes filled again, and this time the tears did not disappear.
“You’re choosing a stranger over me.”
“No,” Adrian said. “I’m refusing to choose you over what happened.”
Celeste flinched as if the distinction were physical.
Then she put on her sunglasses, turned, and walked toward the waiting car. Her heel slipped once on the damp stone. She caught herself before Lionel could help.
The next morning, David Feld arrived at Vale House with a canvas briefcase and his daughter Rachel.
David was seventy-one, a retired dentist from Queens who apologized for being five minutes early. Rachel, an art historian at a small college in Massachusetts, did not apologize for anything. She carried copies of letters, shipping records, and photographs of the portrait hanging in a Vienna apartment before the war.
Miriam Cho attended. So did the family’s outside counsel and an independent provenance researcher named Samuel Kerr, whom everyone called Sam despite the formality of the room.
Celeste participated by video from her attorney’s office.
Anna had not been invited.
Adrian noticed her absence only after the meeting began, which embarrassed him. The entire conversation existed because Anna had refused to look away, yet everyone seated around the long library table possessed credentials, authority, or family connection except her.
David opened his briefcase.
“My mother wrote to your father in 1997,” he said. “Then again in 1998. We received one reply from counsel stating that the work’s identity could not be confirmed.”
Rachel placed two photographs side by side. One showed the Vale portrait. The other, dated 1937, showed the same young woman in green, though the frame was different.
“The dimensions match,” she said. “The painter’s records list a portrait commissioned by Jakob Rosen for his wife, Lea. The work disappeared after the family fled.”
The Vale attorney adjusted his glasses. “Similarity is not proof of ownership.”
May you like
Rachel looked at him. “No. That is why we brought records.”
She produced a dealer inventory bearing a handwritten notation and a wartime transfer document with an official stamp. Sam Kerr examined both through a magnifying lens.
