“I haven’t given up,” he said with a reassuring pat. “But it’s strange . . . somehow, eventually, you do come to terms with it.” He smiled, picked up his fork. “This is damn good bacon,” he said, changing the subject.
A half hour later, Rachel watched Dad get into the back-seat of the car he’d ordered up. He rolled down the window and waved. “I love you, baby girl. You remember what I told you now,” he said to her.
Like she could possibly forget this extraordinary Thanksgiving Day. “I love you, too, Dad,” she said, and waited until his car had turned onto Laurel before she wiped the tears from her eyes.
Subject: Thanksgiving
From: Aaron Lear <[email protected]>
To: BonBon <[email protected]>
Hi honey. When are you coming back to New York? I’ve been doing some thinking, and I think you should sell the place in L.A. I know you probably won’t like that idea, but the truth is, I just ache when you are away because I love you so much, BonBon. I know you’re busy with the girls and the folks (glad to hear El hasn’t killed anyone in the RV yet), but I wanted to let you know that the trip to Providence went really well. Our Rachel is a good girl—no, she’s better than that. She’s excellent. I am so proud, and honestly, I don’t know why I’ve been such a dick to her. But seeing her there in Providence and the way all those people love her, well, I haven’t been fair to her. I think everything is fine now, Bonnie. I think I have mended that fence. And I think I’m finally ready for the surgery. Love you. Call me. Better yet, just come home. Aaron.
Chapter Thirty
When Myron showed up for work at the RIHPS curator offices Friday morning, the head curator, Darwin Richter, poked his head out of his office and cheerfully called out to him, asking him to step inside his office.
Myron walked into the office with a smile, which quickly faded when he saw the man sitting in the chair across from Darwin. “Ah, hey. . . what’s up?” he asked Darwin as he eyed Detective Keating, the senior investigator he’d met with the Rhode Island State Police a few weeks ago.
“Myron, you remember Detective Keating, don’t you?” Darwin asked as he eased his two-hundred-fifty-pound frame into his executive chair.
Myron cocked his head to one side, nodded thoughtfully. “Sure, sure . . . the thefts down at Newport. Did you ever find anything out?” he asked, looking very concerned.
“Not a lot,” the detective said, coming halfway out of his seat to extend a hand to Myron. “We’re still nosing around, trying to get a handle on the catalog listing,” he said, waving his hand at some imaginary catalog. “This preservation business is a lot of work! But of course you know that, right?” he asked with a chuckle. “I mean, you’re the one who gave us the catalog listing, remember?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Myron said, nodding eagerly as he came deeper into the room and took the seat that Darwin gestured to. “That was a lot of work going through that list, huh? So do you have any clues?”
Detective Keating smiled. “Not yet. But you’ve been such a great help—we’re going to need a little more of your help, if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure!” Myron said, leaning forward a little. “Anything. Just tell me what you want me to do and I will make it a top priority. By the way, did we get you the names of the people who work in our properties?”
“Yeah, I think you got us all their names, thanks,” Detective Keating said, and leaned over, pulled a file out of his briefcase and put it on his lap, then pulled a pair of reading glasses from his breast pocket and perched them on the end of his nose. He opened the file, looked at it very carefully. “There were a couple of items on here that we weren’t able to locate,” he said thoughtfully, squinting down at the file. “Probably mislabeled, something like that. But I figured, if anyone knows where to find them, it’s Professor Tidwell.” He looked up, smiled at Myron. “You really seem to know your stuff.”
Myron shrugged with a lopsided grin. “What can I say? I’m a history professor, so I ought to know my stuff!” He laughed a little, exchanged a proud smile with Darwin.
“And there are so many properties to keep track of! I could never be that organized,” Detective Keating said with a shake of his head.
“I guess anyone in the history business will tell you that’s a prerequisite. You have to be able to organize a lot of information to make any sense of it. You learn that right off the bat in my field.”
“Right,” the detective said, and smiled, Myron thought, a little smugly. “So anyway, so far, we’ve been unable to locate a few of the items you had listed in the catalog as being present and accounted for. So we’re assuming they are around somewhere since they haven’t been reported stolen or damaged.”
“Probably misplaced,” Myron said.
The detective looked up at him and laughed. “So much for organization, huh?”