The Chrysalis

by Heather Terrell

  “I mean, I’ve come to apologize. I’m sorry for second-guessing your decisions and for giving you so much grief. I can’t pretend that I’m gonna jump in and help you—I’m still too protective of our dreams for that—but I can at least make amends.”

  “If it’s forgiveness you’re looking for, I don’t think I can give it just now.”

  “I’m just looking for a chance to reconnect with you. I miss you.”

  Though still hurt by Sophia’s earlier reaction, Mara felt herself soften, particularly if Sophia wasn’t going to try to lure her away from her chosen path. She felt more isolated than ever, and she was eager for contact. “Okay, then.”

  “Can I buy you a cup of coffee at the diner?” Sophia asked.

  Maybe a brisk walk and some fresh air would help settle her spinning thoughts and provide some clarity. “All right, just a quick cup. And only if you promise not to ask me about The Chrysalis.”

  “That’s a promise I’m happy to make.”

  As the women took the elevator to the lobby and then walked down the long city block, Sophia chattered on about the indecisive female partner with whom she was working, a woman who advised heads of major corporations on the most intricate deals with seeming confidence but behind the scenes made Sophia run circles with her indecisiveness. Mara enjoyed the distracting banter, but she held herself in reserve. When they pushed open the door to the empty diner and the hostess, Bev, greeted them with a familiar hello, Mara felt momentarily transported back to safer times, before The Chrysalis and all the wounds she had sustained.

  Mara and Sophia sat at the counter for a moment to place their coffee orders—black for Sophia, lots of milk and sugar for Mara—and chatted while the waiter headed to the kitchen for their drinks. As Sophia divulged office gossip, Mara heard the bell over the diner door clang. She turned and saw Michael.

  Mara sprang up from her seat, warning Sophia, “We need to get out of here. Fast.”

  Sophia reached out for Mara’s arm, pulling her back down on the stool, while Michael took a position blocking the door. “Mara, you have every right to be furious with me, but please listen. I know you find it hard to believe, but I want to help you get back on track. I understand that nothing I can say will stop you from sabotaging yourself in Harlan’s office or in whatever way you might think of next. When Michael called this morning looking for you, well, I thought maybe he could convince you to keep your findings private. It’s in both of your best interests, after all. So I agreed that we’d meet here.”

  Mara froze for a moment, in shock at Sophia’s actions. At her betrayal. “Sophia, how could you do this to me? You have no idea what’s going on”—she gestured to Michael, who still stood in the shadows of the doorway—“no concept what he’s up to…”

  “You’re right, I don’t know any details. But Michael’s told me that he knows you took those documents from his safe and that he’s not angry. He has good reasons for keeping them there. When you hear them, I’m sure you’ll be glad that we stopped you from tossing your career down the drain.” She nodded to Michael. “I’ll leave you two alone to work it out.” Michael stepped to the side to let Sophia pass. The diner door slammed behind her.

  Mara rushed to the door, the only exit in sight. She darted around Michael, lunging for the handle. But he was quick. “You’re not going anywhere without me.” A small smile appeared on his face even as his nails dug into her flesh.

  “Isn’t it enough that you arranged to have The Chrysalis disappear so that the Baum suit would magically vanish?” she asked as she tried to wrest her arm free.

  “How do you know that?” His eyes and fingers bore into her more deeply.

  “Harlan told me.”

  “You lied to Sophia about not being able to see him?” He seemed astonished.

  “Yes, I lied to her. How could you possibly be surprised at that?”

  “What did you tell him? Did you give him the documents?”

  “I gave him nothing, and I told him nothing.” From the fear on Michael’s face, Mara realized that Harlan was not involved in the provenance cover-up. Why else would Michael be scared that Mara might have divulged the dirty family secret to him?

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you like. His announcement of The Chrysalis’s disappearance threw me for a loop. I thought he might be caught up in all of this with you and Philip. So I was hardly going to tout my findings to him.”

  “Well, he’s not involved. Come on, let’s go.” He pulled her toward the door.

  She resisted. “Please, Michael. Why doesn’t the painting’s disappearance put an end to all this?”

  Michael’s curious smirk returned. “Of course The Chrysalis’s disappearance doesn’t put an end to all this, Mara. The ‘theft’ may be a tourniquet on the public bloodletting you had hoped for, but I’m sure you could still wreak havoc with the documents if you set your mind to it. Anyway, there’s much more at stake than just The Chrysalis, and you know that. Surely you haven’t forgotten about all those other paintings? Mara, I want the documents back.”

  Mara’s breath labored shallow and fast. She felt as if she was going to faint. “I can’t do that, Michael.”

  He drew closer to her face, the sneer mutating to something more wicked. “Really? Funny. Lillian said the same thing. But I don’t think you want to go the way of Lillian.”

  Mara’s breathing stopped altogether. “What do you mean?”

  “Have you spoken to her today?”

  “No.”

  Michael pulled out his cell phone and dialed. He spoke in hushed tones, then handed her the phone. “Why don’t you have a word with her?”

  Mara grabbed for the phone. “Lillian? Lillian, are you there?”

  The phone was silent.

  “Lillian!”

  “I’m here.” Her voice was weak.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Well, I’m here with Philip, if that tells you anything.”

  “Have they hurt you?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway. Mara, is Michael asking you for the documents?”

  “Yes.”

  Lillian’s voice quavered. “Remember what you promised? About the paintings?”

  “Yes.” Mara understood Lillian to mean her promise to restitute them.

  “Then, you know what to do. Make sure you—” Mara heard a man’s voice, and the line went dead.

  Mara handed Michael the phone. “You bastard. You better not hurt her.”

  “We won’t, Mara. As long as you get me the documents.”

  “How did you guys get into her apartment?”

  “Oh, that was easy enough. She buzzed us right up when I described what I would do to you if she didn’t.”

  “How could you do this, Michael?” She twisted herself away from his grip and lurched for the door, but the entryway was too small, and he was too fast. Pinning her arms behind her, he backed her into a corner. But he was careful; from a distance, his move looked like an embrace. His hot breath scalded her cheek. “Don’t fight me, Mara. Don’t forget that you broke into my safe. You broke into Beazley’s. You stole our documents. I could easily turn this into a matter of your lawbreaking. Not mine.” He bent her arm into a position she didn’t think possible. “Mara, I don’t want to hurt you. And I know you don’t want me to hurt Lillian or Sophia or your family.”

  “My family?”

  “Don’t you remember all our bedroom confidences? How much you told me about your father’s political dealings, his sordid partners?”

  His words wrapped like a noose around her neck, strangling out any retort.

  “I’ll leave it to your imagination.” His grimace returned. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Mara started to resist, but an image of a weakened Lillian flashed through her mind, and she thought better of her actions. Mara turned back toward the exit, with Michael’s hand pressing down hard on the small of her back.

  Just as they were about to walk out onto
the street, Mara heard Bev call her name. “Mara. Oh, Mara, hon.” For a moment, Mara thought that Bev suspected. Instead, she looked back to see Bev waving a white bag in the air. “You forgot something.”

  It was the coffees. Mara retrieved them with a gracious thanks.

  Michael hailed his waiting limo and pushed her down onto the seat. Inside, behind the darkened windows, he slapped Mara full across the face. She fell to the floor, too shocked even to scream at the pain. She had expected retribution, but not this.

  Pushing her down farther onto the floor with both hands, he snarled into her ear, enunciating each word with terrifying clarity. “Where are we going?”

  Blood streamed from her nose. She tilted her head back to stop its flow but refused to look in his direction. She hesitated, unsure what to tell him. He snapped her neck back by the hair. “I asked you a question, Mara. You’d better answer me.”

  A strategy dawned on her as she thought of her museum visit. “The Met.”

  “The Metropolitan Museum? I thought you put them in a safe-deposit box?”

  “When we reached the city yesterday, the banks were closed. I picked someplace with guarded lockers.”

  “You really expect me to believe that you left them at the museum?”

  She sneered at him. “I left them someplace I thought you’d never look for them.”

  “You’d better not be bullshitting me, Mara. For your sake and for Lillian’s.”

  She picked herself up from the floor and slid back onto the black leather of the seat, in the farthest possible corner from him. Mara stared out the window at Korean delis unfurling their awnings and the investment bankers hustling through throngs of deliverymen. As the city awakened on such a delightful, crisp morning, she sopped up the blood trickling from her nose and felt hopelessness descend upon her.

  But Mara was a fighter, and so despite her bleak prospects, she used the few blocks of travel to plan. As the limo pulled up in front of the long line of cabs outside the Met, Michael shoved her out the door. “Come on. Get out.”

  Mara stumbled from the car into the intense morning sun, made stronger by its reflection off the Met’s granite steps. For a moment, she was blind. When her vision returned, the tourist hordes bombarded her. She thanked God for their presence; they would provide much-needed cover.

  Arm in arm, like any other couple, Michael and Mara strode up the museum’s immense steps. They pushed through the revolving door together, of course, since he would not let her leave his sight or his touch, and entered the Great Hall. Even now, threatened and afraid, Mara was moved by the soaring ceiling and weightless cupola. Somewhere, beyond her nightmare, there was a solid, enduring world.

  The museum teemed with security guards. With Michael at her side, Mara wove through their inspections without incident. She headed toward the long line at the ticket counter. “We have to buy tickets,” she told him.

  Michael saw the enormous coat checks that flanked the entryway to the Great Hall and gripped her arm tighter. “What kind of bullshit are you trying to pull?” he whispered, and pointed. “That’s the storage.”

  She murmured, “The papers you want aren’t there. They’re in the storage facility on the lower level, inside the museum.”

  He looked blank. She explained. “We need tickets to get into the museum, to get to the storage space.”

  He dragged her to the information desk and thrust a museum map in her hand. “I’m not going anywhere until you show me on this map the exact location of this storage.”

  Hands shaking, Mara unfolded the map. She zeroed in on the lower level of the museum. She found the symbol designating storage—through the Greek and Roman galleries—and pointed it out on the map. What the map did not reveal was that, in fact, the museum didn’t have any storeroom that allowed visitors to leave their belongings overnight. Or that this particular storage facility in no way contained the Strasser documents.

  Mollified, Michael moved to the long queue for tickets, his hand on Mara’s wrist. He sweated as he was forced to wait out the line with patience and a pleasant expression, and Mara nearly smiled. But the quarter grin disappeared from her face as soon as the tickets hit their hands. Now she needed unfailing precision and a good measure of luck.

  Michael allowed Mara to lead him into the Greek and Roman galleries. But Michael and Mara did not linger. They passed by the tour groups that encircled their guides like flower petals. A particularly dense pack crowded around the legendary first-century A.D. Roman Statue of an Old Market Woman halted traffic. Mara and Michael navigated their way through the still throng. Despite the crowds, the hall was hushed, and Mara felt scared about her plan.

  Michael’s cell phone rang, shattering the quiet. He checked the number and picked up. As he murmured into the receiver, his expression grew troubled. He slowed their pace, and Mara strained to discern his words. From the snippets she made out, she gathered that he was speaking to Philip and that something serious had happened to Lillian. Michael seemed shocked by the news.

  A security guard approached. “Sir, you cannot use your cell phone in here.”

  Michael ignored the warning.

  The guard got closer. “Sir, I will have to confiscate your cell phone if you do not turn it off right now.”

  Michael waved him away with his free hand, saying, “I’ll only be a minute.” For an instant, he lost his grip on Mara’s arm, and she slid back into the crowds, allowing them to envelop her as Michael and the man exchanged words. Moving within her protective camouflage, Mara darted off to the right, into one of the small galleries off the central hall. She knew that these galleries connected, one to the next, ultimately emptying out into a hallway with a little-used elevator.

  Every muscle in her body longed to sprint down the corridor linking the galleries in the direction of the pulsing red Exit sign. But she knew that speed would draw attention to her. Over and over again, she repeated an old phrase of Nana’s: “Slow and steady wins the race, child.” She almost felt her grandmother’s hand restraining her, steadying her gait.

  Mara spotted the elevator leading down to the parking garage. She pushed the Down button. The door opened, and before she entered, she looked back. She spied Michael turning down the hallway in the opposite direction, toward the coat check she had designated. As he rounded the corner, she saw him in profile, his eyes narrow, his gait fast, like a dog in a foxhunt.

  By the time she reached the garage, tears streamed down her face. She would have loved nothing more than to collapse in a corner and give in to her fear, but it was an emotional indulgence she couldn’t afford. She ran through the garage and exited onto Fifth Avenue and, from there, into Central Park.

  When a lit cab passed by, she jumped in front of it. She grabbed the door handle and slid into the backseat. The cabbie hurled incomprehensible epithets at her, but she pushed several rumpled twenties through the divider. “JFK, please. I have to make a connection. There’s more money for you if you get me there fast.” Mara was worried about Lillian but knew she had to get the documents first for their mutual protection.

  “Okay, miss.” The cab driver’s wrath disappeared, and he sped away.

  When she got to the British Airways terminal at JFK, Mara selected the next flight scheduled to depart and proceeded to the first-class British Airways desk. She needed to get through security and into the boarding gate area fast; the storage area was designed only for short-term use. Oozing a feigned sense of entitlement, she purchased the last remaining first-class seat to Brussels and asked for an escort to expedite her way through security. Once through the line, she parted with the escort and broke into a sprint, this time toward a neglected hall containing the storeroom.

  Instinct, not memory, propelled her toward the storage area, a lingering remnant from the days of leisurely, elegant travel. Full speed ahead, she thanked her lucky stars that an attendant was manning the storage area. The first time around, when she had stashed the documents, she had had to search high and low
for an airport employee to unlock its dusty gates. She could not afford that time today. She slowed down and fumbled in her bag for the ticket stub. She saw the ticket, but her hands shook so violently, she could not grasp it.

  “I have it!” She finally, desperately thrust it toward him. She needed those documents—for the authorities, for the victims, for herself, for Lillian.

  He took the ticket. “Okay, miss. Okay. Hold your horses. Let me see what I can do.” The elderly man put down his New York Post and shuffled off toward the grimy corners of the storage room.

  “Hurry, hurry. Please hurry.”

  “Got a plane to catch, miss?”

  Tears of futility welled up in her eyes as she heard him continue to shamble. “Yes.”

  “Let me see, let me see…This might be it back here. Is it black, with a leather handle?”

  “Yes, yes. That’s it!” He handed her the bag. She tossed down another twenty, much more than the storage fee, and dashed off.

  Up the stairs to the terminal, down the endless corridor, past the gates, down the stairs to the Baggage Claim sign once again, Mara ran. She veered off at the first sign of an exit and blended into the stream of incoming travelers, hoping to find the arrival area and a taxi driver willing to break the no-pickup rules for a price. It took another fistful of bills, but the first cab quickly jumped forward as she shouted, “Just go as fast as you can into Manhattan.”

  With the documents in hand, Mara could refrain no longer from contacting Lillian, so she negotiated for the use of the cabbie’s cell phone with more money. She dialed Lillian’s home phone first, nervous that Philip might pick up but confident that the cabbie’s cell phone rendered her untraceable. No one answered either at Lillian’s home or on her cell, so Mara called information and connected to the concierge in Lillian’s building. After explaining her concerns as innocuously as possible, Mara asked if he’d check on her.

  Mara waited a full fifteen minutes, passing an additional bill to the anxious cabbie, before the concierge came back on the line. “Miss, are you still there?”

  “Yes.” Her heart beat so loudly she was certain he could hear it.