“Since when does Mr. Vanders speak Arabic?”
“He speaks Arabic, Farsi, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, and Korean,” says Mrs. Vanders.
“I don’t believe you,” says Kiran.
“Why shouldn’t he?” says Mrs. Vanders with an affronted air. “He’s a very popular therapist.”
Kiran begins to giggle.
“I’m rather offended that you find that funny,” says Mrs. Vanders.
Now Kiran is shrieking with laughter. Tears are streaming down her face. “I don’t,” she says. “I can totally see it. He’s always talking psychobabble and looking at me like he’s diagnosed me with something. It’s just—” She pauses for another gale of laughter. “It’s funny!” she cries. “I’m dying here! Mr. Vanders is a secret spy therapist! Oh, lordy, maybe I’m having a shock reaction.” Taking a deep breath, Kiran wipes her face. “So,” she says, “are you going to explain why Ivy has been packing up the house Rembrandt and the famous missing Brancusi?”
Mrs. Vanders sighs. “You’re not going to like this part.”
“And the rest has been so delightful.”
“It’s about leverage, power, and payment for services rendered,” says Mrs. Vanders.
Kiran’s eyebrows rise to her hairline. Jane knows this part. She doesn’t need to listen. Over at Ivy’s end of the table, Patrick is now engaged in the alarming activity of helping Ivy strap a gun holster over her black dress. Then he helps her into a long black coat. Where is Ivy going?
“You steal the family art!” Kiran says. “Over and over again! Oh, if Ravi only knew!”
“We borrow the family art,” says Mrs. Vanders, but she’s doesn’t sound as if she expects anyone to believe her.
“You’ve lied about your degrees!” Kiran says. “About the cleaning you do and the restoration! I know you told Ravi you needed that Rembrandt so you could clean it. He told me so!”
“I haven’t lied!” Mrs. Vanders says. “I do care about the art, deeply! I do clean it, I do study it. I have never failed to recover a piece! I take its well-being and its authenticity very seriously and I’m committed to cultural restitution!”
“Oh, spare me,” says Kiran. “If you care so much, why did you break the Brancusi in half?”
“Grace did that,” says Patrick proudly.
“Yes,” says Mrs. Vanders. “That child has fought us at every turn. We’ve been moving the family piecemeal, you see, and with the help of different parties. First Victoria, then Giuseppe, then Leo the other night with his doctor. Grace, being a natural snoop, figured out that we needed the Brancusi in order to pay for her transportation. And she’s smart as a whip, and she’s eight, and all she wants in the world is to go home. So she slipped past Cook one night—Cook has been our child-minder, in addition to arranging all four exchanges. The poor dear is exhausted. Grace stole the sculpture, then hid it. Then, when we reacted with a calm, systematic search rather than the panic she was looking for, she popped the fish off the base, buried the fish in the backyard, waited until poor Cook nodded off again, and stuck the base back in the receiving hall. Which certainly accomplished her purpose. I felt like the top of my head was coming off when Ravi showed me that empty base. I dread to think what she would’ve done next if Ravi weren’t such a drama queen.”
“Oh, she would’ve taken a mallet to it,” says Patrick, “and thrown it into the fountain.”
“I’m not so sure,” says Mrs. Vanders, studying him keenly. “I think she has a well-honed sense of where the line is, and, ultimately, she wants to be with her family. She’s just registering her protest.”
“What about the Vermeer?” Jane asks.
“Yes, what are you doing with the priceless family Vermeer?” Kiran says.
“The Vermeer has actually been stolen,” says Mrs. Vanders.
Kiran lets out a short laugh. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish it with all my heart,” says Mrs. Vanders, “but no, someone in this house has stolen that dear picture and replaced it with an excellent forgery.”
“Wow,” says Kiran, still laughing. “And Ravi’s filled the house with FBI agents, Interpol, and police, on the very night you’re trying to get Grace, Christopher, a Rembrandt, and a Brancusi away.”
“Yes,” says Mrs. Vanders, not sounding particularly troubled. “Even Christopher’s given Cook the slip a couple of times, which is quite frightening in a house with a swimming pool. He’s two years old!”
“People were starting to notice the crying fits too,” says Patrick. “‘Is there something wrong with the plumbing in this house? Or the air vents?’”
Kiran is watching them intently. “Is this normal, then?” she asks. “This level of drama?”
Mrs. Vanders purses her mouth and shrugs. “I guess,” she says. “Everyone we deal with is a person of great conviction.”
Patrick has strapped a cord around the Rembrandt crate and is carrying it to the freight elevator. He props the doors open, then returns for the Brancusi crate. Without meaning to, Jane has locked eyes with Ivy.
“I speak Bengali and a little Hindi,” says Kiran. “Also French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, and some Hebrew. And I can pass as several ethnicities.”
“Yes,” says Mrs. Vanders. “We’re well aware of that.”
“This job must give you a stunning comprehensive view of the workings of nations,” says Kiran.
“It does,” says Mrs. Vanders. “And now it’s time for you to return to the gala, Kiran. People will be wondering what’s happened to the lady of the house.”
Patrick is standing at the freight elevator, sending the two crates down somewhere by themselves. Then he walks to the dumbwaiter and turns to Ivy, who’s put on a large backpack. Ivy takes a balaclava out of her coat pocket and pulls it over her head and glasses. It’s like she’s faceless suddenly.
Jane walks to her. “Where are you going?”
“There’s a hidden trapdoor in the cellar,” Ivy says. “It opens to a tunnel that leads to a hidden bay in the ramble at the other end of the island. That’s where the pickup is happening, of the kids and the art. Cook and the kids are waiting for me downstairs. I’m joining them.”
“How far are you going with them?”
“All the way to their parents. Then I’m going to Geneva.”
“Will you be okay?”
She considers the question, then nods. “Will you?”
Jane considers the question too, then shrugs.
Ivy grasps her hands tightly, then lets them go and climbs into the dumbwaiter. Jane forces herself back to Kiran. Her arms and legs are made of wet cement. Mrs. Vanders is staring at her.
“When you were very young,” Mrs. Vanders says to Jane, “your aunt was just exactly what you thought. She took pictures of animals underwater and studied marine ecology. That was all.”
“Her aunt?” says Kiran. “Magnolia? What are you talking about now? Magnolia wasn’t—oh,” Kiran says. “She was, wasn’t she. Jesus.”
“Then, one day, she came upon the wreckage of a sunken submarine,” says Mrs. Vanders, “hidden in a cavern on the floor of the Pacific.”
In Jane’s peripheral vision, Patrick closes the dumbwaiter door and starts pulling on the cables.
Kiran touches Jane’s arm gently, the place where, under her skin, the jellyfish tentacles reach for her elbow.
“It was a North Korean submarine,” says Mrs. Vanders. “The Pentagon, North Korea, and a few other states had their own divers searching for the wreck in various places elsewhere, but they were looking in the wrong area, and in the meantime, Magnolia found it by accident.”