The Book of Illumination

by Mary Ann Winkowski

  “Julian? It’s Anza.”

  “Anza!” he said. “Nice to hear your voice.”

  “The flowers are gorgeous. Thank you so much.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Some of them haven’t even opened yet. They get prettier every day.”

  “I’m glad,” he said. “I’m so glad.” There was an awkward pause, which, as usual, I jumped in to fill.

  “You really didn’t have to. Honestly, there—”

  “Oh, no. I did. I absolutely did. I’m so sorry. I didn’t handle that well at all.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  “Well, it’s just that it really caught me off guard.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have said anything. I mean, you were the one who planned the whole trip out there, and here I am, in the middle of the day—”

  “No, no,” he said. “It was fine, really.”

  There was another awkward lull. I suppose he was waiting for a cue from me; would I suggest that we get together again? Would I pretend that what had happened was like someone’s spilling a glass of wine on me, a clumsy, accidental lapse that had nothing to do with who he really was?

  I felt tongue-tied. He was trying, he really was. But I felt confused. He was nice, and thoughtful, and funny, but he had also been condescending and rude. I knew I could prove to him that ghosts really did exist, that was the easiest thing in the world to do, but why would I? To prove I was right? I didn’t care about being right. I cared about being myself. It was as though I had told him I was a Catholic, or a Jew, or a Republican, or a Democrat, and he had said, Oh! In that case, never mind.

  “You know,” he began. “I really would like to know more.”

  Now I was the one who was caught off guard.

  “More about what?” I asked.

  “About you. About your … your … what it is you … experience.”

  “But I thought you didn’t …” Now I was really confused.

  “I was startled, I’ll admit. It’s just that I’ve never seen a ghost myself and I’ve never known anyone who did.”

  “Or who admitted it.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  I let out a sigh. He’d apologized. He’d sent flowers, for which I, rudely, had not even called to thank him. Maybe, just maybe, I should give it one more try.

  “Look,” I said, “the next few days are kind of crazy. But maybe we can we have a drink sometime—soon.”

  “I’d really like that,” said Julian.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “IT’S ON,” DECLAN said. “The meeting. The handoff on Nantucket.”

  I let out a little shriek, and he said, “Okay, okay, hold your horses there, girl.”

  “Tell me! Tell me!” A moment ago, I’d been sitting in my living room pondering the truly boring question of whether I should have a touch of brandy before bed or a cup of chamomile tea. And now, suddenly, excitement!

  “Scully got confirmation a couple of hours ago.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  “Working on it.”

  “And a time?”

  “That, too.”

  “Can I come?” I pleaded. “I really want to come.”

  Ignoring me, he said, “We got damn lucky in one respect.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Interpol had Van Vleck in its sights. They think he’s been trafficking in what they call ‘cultural property’—statues stolen from a museum in Kabul.”

  “Looted?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So why is that lucky for us?”

  “Well, they want him, and we found him. Two lads are on a plane right now, guys who work out of Europol, in The Hague. They have all the paperwork they need.”

  Maybe I should have had the brandy. My synapses weren’t firing.

  “I’m not following,” I said.

  “They can enter the premises legally, Anza,” Dec went on. “They can arrest him. We couldn’t do either one, since your girlfriend there wouldn’t agree to sign a friggin’ piece of paper.”

  “Oh my God! Dec! That’s fantastic!”

  Amazing. So it would probably happen this weekend. So I could go! Henry would be with Dec and Kelly—no, wait. Dec would be … on Nantucket.

  With me!

  No, I told myself sternly, most definitely not with me! I couldn’t let myself go down that road again.

  But an island.

  I had to stop this right now.

  “But we will get the book back, right?” I asked. After all, that was the whole point—to carry out Finny’s wishes and send the miserable ghosts on their way. I was all for rounding up international art thieves, but not if it meant that our precious manuscript had to disappear down the black hole of an evidence locker in The Hague.

  “You should, if all goes well. Interpol’s only interested in the Afghani statuary, and in apprehending Van Vleck. After they make the arrest, I’ll simply relieve the unlucky bastard of our book. He’ll hardly be in a position to protest.”

  “And what about the person he’s meeting—the person he stole it for? Can you arrest him? Or her?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “You can’t have it both ways, darlin.’ No official report, no arrest.”

  He paused and then, probably anticipating what I was going to come back to next, said, “You really don’t want be getting involved in this, love.”

  “But I do! You have to let me, Dec! Come on! If I hadn’t come to you with this, you never would have leaned on Scully, and you never would have learned about Van Vleck. You’re cracking a case for Interpol! Think of it!”

  “We haven’t cracked anything yet, Sherlock! There’s every chance in the world he’ll get wind of this somehow and slip right though our sweaty little hands.”

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Let’s talk tomorrow morning,” Dec said. “I’ll have more info.”

  “When’s the meeting supposed to happen?”

  “Saturday night. We think.”

  “I’m coming, Dec.”

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “We can talk about it tomorrow, but I’m coming.”

  He laughed.

  He said, “I ought to have my head examined.” What he didn’t say was no.

  I was fixing scrambled eggs for Henry when the phone rang. I glanced at the clock as my heart began to thump. It was 7:05. It had to be Dad or Nona. I took a deep breath and reached for the receiver.

  “Anza!” said Sylvia. “You won’t believe it!”

  I sighed with relief. “Won’t believe what?”

  “You know that guy Dollfus?”

  “The art dealer? The one from Vienna?”

  “He’s flying up on the shuttle.”

  “What?”

  “I know!”

  I dropped a pat of butter into the pan and watched it sizzle across the hot surface. I picked up the pan and swirled it around, but before the surface was evenly coated, the butter had disappeared. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Sam heard back from his friend at The Cloisters,” Sylvia explained. “That Florio person. Florio went to see Dollfus last night. They know each other from working on that exhibit. Dollfus wasn’t anxious to get involved in this, until—”

  Sylvia hung on that word. I had a hunch where this was going. I poured the eggs into the pan, and as they sizzled and popped, I said, “Until—let me guess: he found out that we thought we had the Book of Kildare.”

  “Right,” answered Sylvia. “See? That’s what I was saying about the art world: everybody wants to be the one to break a story. It can make your career, to turn up a painting or a drawing that no one knew existed or that was somehow lost.”

  “At this point,” I responded, “the only thing that matters is getting the book back. Who cares who gets the credit?”

  “I know I don’t,” she said.

  “So what happened?” I put some brea
d in the toaster as Henry padded over to his place at the table. Balancing the phone on my shoulder, I poured him a glass of juice and set it down.

  “Dollfus agreed to call the guy back,” Sylvia explained. “The seller had given his name as Windsor Atlas.”

  “Windsor Atlas? Give me a break. That can’t be real.”

  “Real or not, that’s what he called himself. Dollfus told him that he’d given it some more thought and decided that he’d like to see the plates after all. Atlas offered to bring them right down to New York, but Dollfus told him he that he wasn’t going to be in New York until the end of next week. He said he had to come up to Boston for some meetings. He didn’t, really, but they took a chance, figuring that if Amanda was involved, then maybe—”

  “Don’t tell me: the guy lives here.”

  “Chestnut Hill,” Sylvia replied.

  Chestnut Hill was a bucolic and exclusive section of Brookline. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wealthy Bostonians had built their summer homes in its green, rolling pastures. Nowadays, these homes belonged to players for the Celtics and the Red Sox, and CEOs and hedge-fund managers who summered somewhere else.

  My heart beat rapidly as I buttered Henry’s toast, spooned the scrambled eggs on top, and cut everything into strips and squares, the way Dad had always done. I set the plate down as Sylvia continued.

  “The meeting’s on for six o’clock tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “The Charles Hotel. Can you call Declan?”

  “He’s probably not up yet,” I said. “He worked until midnight. Anyway, what’s Declan going to do?”

  “I don’t know, arrest them?”

  Acting on the information Declan had given me last night, I said, “He can’t arrest anybody. No one’s reported a theft. No one’s pressed charges.”

  I had a sip of my coffee and watched Henry play with his toast and eggs. He wasn’t a big breakfast eater, but then again, neither was I. While I would urge him on at lunch and dinner, I wasn’t about to hector him first thing in the morning. I considered my responsibility fulfilled when I put something vaguely healthy down in front of him.

  “Look,” I finally said. “The point is to recover the plates, right? So we can put them back in the book.”

  “Right. But Sam would like to put Amanda out of business.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll call Declan and see if he or one of the guys can meet you at the hotel.”

  “Me? What about you?”

  I hesitated. She wasn’t going to like this, but there was nothing I could do.

  “I can’t come,” I informed her.

  “Why not?” There was a petulant tone in her voice. I felt like saying, Excuse me, but I do have a life! I decided to let it go.

  “I … I’ve got something I can’t … get out of.” Once again, I debated bringing her in on the truth: tonight was the night I was meeting Tad and his sisters. Tad had confirmed earlier in the week that Esther was coming in from the Berkshires. After I dropped Henry off with Kelly, I was driving into Boston. At seven thirty, we were all coming together at the house on Commonwealth Avenue.

  Once again, I decided not to tell Sylvia.

  Fortunately, I had even bigger news with which to change the subject.

  “Declan thinks he’s found the book!” I announced abruptly. “He called me late last night.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “I don’t have any details,” I lied, “but if all goes well, he thinks we’ll get it back over the weekend.”

  “That’s so fantastic! Oh my God! I can’t believe it. That’s so great.”

  “As for the plates,” I said, “there’s really no point in my being there. You’re the only one who can identify them.”

  “But what’ll I do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe … pretend to be Dollfus’s partner. Do a really close inspection.”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, confront ‘Windsor Atlas’!”

  “Me? I’m not going to confront him! What if he has a gun?”

  “He won’t have a gun. Look, let me get Henry to school and I’ll meet you at the bindery. We can call Dec together and figure this out.”

  There was silence on the other end. Then Sylvia said meekly, “I don’t know about this.”

  “I’ll see you soon,” I said.

  By three o’clock, it was all arranged. Declan was working until midnight, so he couldn’t freelance at the Charles, but he put in a call to a cop friend in Cambridge, a detective named Karl Bryson. To Sylvia’s relief, Bryson took it from there. Dollfus was instructed to reserve a suite at the Charles, one with two bedrooms and a living room.

  When ‘Atlas’ arrived at the hotel suite, Bryson would be waiting in one of the bedrooms. When Dollfus answered the door, he’d introduce Sylvia as his colleague and business partner, and after some book chitchat, and maybe a drink, they’d turn their attention to the plates. Once Sylvia was satisfied that the plates were from our book, she would begin to cough and excuse herself to go into the bedroom—for a cough drop or a glass of water. Once she was safely inside the bedroom, Bryson would step out into the living room and Sylvia would lock herself in. Dollfus would duck into the second bedroom and lock himself in.

  Bryson would then show his badge, identify himself as a Cambridge detective, threaten the seller with immediate arrest, and take possession of the stolen plates.

  “What if he won’t turn them over?” Sylvia had asked.

  Declan had laughed. Bryson was big, Declan said. Actually, what he said was, “Bastard’s built like a brick shithouse.” And besides, if there was any trouble, well, Bryson would be carrying.

  “But I thought you couldn’t arrest somebody if there wasn’t a report,” Sylvia said.

  “Who told you that?” asked Dec.

  “Me,” I admitted. It was more like a guilty little peep.

  “Brilliant,” he muttered.

  “Is this legal?” Sylvia asked.

  There was a slight pause before Dec responded.

  “Legal enough,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “HE’S ALREADY HERE,” I said quietly.

  They couldn’t see him, of course. We were sitting in the living room of Finny’s house: Tad, Esther, Josie, and I. The space felt forlorn—dismantled and strangely hollow—but in a gesture I would never have predicted, Tad had proposed that we light a fire in the fireplace. As Esther and I had assembled chairs, and Josie had made a good faith, though futile, effort to reassemble parts of the boat model she had smashed in her fury, Tad had gone down to the basement and returned with an armful of wood.

  All this time, Johnny was right there with us, his expression eager yet somehow subdued. It was not until the fire was crackling merrily and we had each settled into a chair that the nervous chatter gradually subsided.

  “So,” Tad finally said. “How do we do this?”

  I turned to Johnny. “Why don’t you sit down?” I suggested, motioning to the chair nearest the fire, which we had placed there for him.

  “Woolsie!” said Esther, spinning around, trying to glimpse the shadow she would never be able to see. “Woolsie? Where are you?”

  That’s when I said, “He’s already here. He’s sitting right there in that chair.”

  “We miss you!” Josie cried, glancing in the direction of the chair. “You and Maimie! We all miss you so much! You were like … it was never the same after you …”She was already crying. Her words were coming out in little hiccups. She couldn’t bring herself to utter the word died.

  Tad had grown very pale.

  “Tell her it’s all right,” Johnny said. “Tell her I miss them, too.”

  I relayed his message and Josie dissolved into little sobs.

  “Josie,” Tad said. “Get ahold of yourself.” Esther stood up and went over to her sister. She sat on the arm of Josie’s armchair, but the fragile antique couldn’t bear her weight. It pulled right away from the body of the c
hair and Esther barely saved herself from landing on her somewhat ample bottom.

  Johnny made a wry crack and I relayed it:

  “You always were after more pudding. See where it got you?”

  “I was not!” said Esther, stifling a grin as she inspected the damage to the chair. “Tell him it was only the butterscotch I loved! And only if Maimie had cream!”

  The ghost of the butler was smiling now, and he seemed like a much younger man—or rather, the ghost of a much younger man. I had a sudden vision of what this house must have been like when the wallpaper was fresh and the draperies were bright and sturdy, when the adults now sitting before the fire were half their present size and were sliding down banisters, dressing up the dog, and begging for seconds of Maimie’s desserts.

  Half an hour passed easily as first Esther, then Josie, then Tad slipped into the triangular rhythms of our conversation: they gradually began to address “Woolsie” directly, then he would respond and I would repeat his words to them. They seemed, this evening, like different people. Tad was shy and reserved, Esther dealt with her feelings by making a lot of jokes, which were usually pretty lame, and Josie—well, Josie was basically an emotional mess, though tonight she wasn’t smashing boat models or picture glass. She just cried a lot.

  I noticed as we chatted that they related to Johnny as polite children do to adults. There seemed to be a line they wouldn’t cross, confining their questions and reminiscences to episodes remembered from their own childhoods: the time Esther and Josie decided to paint the fourth-floor bathroom purple; the time Tad cut the hair off Josie’s Chatty Cathy doll. It happens this way sometimes. If a person was a child when the earthbound spirit left their lives, they feel like a child when he or she returns. They can’t or don’t want to make the adjustment for the years that have passed, and I can understand why. I think I would feel the same way if I ever met the ghost of my mother. I would long to be her child again, though I am myself now a mother and her equal in age.

  “We found the deed,” I finally said, hoping to move the evening forward. “And you were right, it was in the book.”

  Tad got up, crossed the room, and reached into a leather bag he had laid on a table. He retrieved the book, brought it over to us, and handed it to me expectantly.