Rhonda’s claims about her own charm were proven when Liesl totally missed the approach of President Garber.
“Professor Washington,” Garber said. “I see you’ve met the acting director of our great library.” He was suddenly between the women, clutching a small container of trail mix that he had presumably brought from home.
“I have,” she said. “Liesl and I were just talking about some of the treasures in the library’s collection.”
“It grows every year,” Garber said. “We have an extremely passionate network of donors.”
“I’m sure they keep you very busy.”
“Indeed. Liesl, Professor Washington has come to the university to hold the chair of the professor of the public understanding of science. You might recognize her from television or know of her books.”
The last chair had been a white-haired Irish Nobel Prize winner who had held the position for thirty years. Rhonda had severely undersold herself. In a room full of men who were acting as though the paper they had once published in an academic journal read by exactly seventeen people made them groundbreaking. The woman was quietly a mathematician, a librarian, and the holder of one of the university’s most important and public research positions.
Liesl had known that she would have very little understanding of Rhonda’s work, but she had never thought that Rhonda would know so much about her own work. Rhonda, smile still big, hand on her hip, talked rapidly to Garber about her plans for her first year. She had a girlish sort of cheerfulness that belied the confidence with which she was dominating the conversation with the most intimidating person in the room. Amid the gray and blue suits, she wore her yellow hair wrap and a blue cotton A-line skirt. She demanded attention. And why shouldn’t she when what she had to say was so interesting. Liesl wasn’t angry at having her time with Garber interrupted. This woman, this mathematician, this important public figure for the university who had never bothered to mention how important or how public she was. Liesl had never stood a chance.
Rhonda placed her hand on Garber’s trail mix–bearing arm, turned to Liesl, and smiled her big smile.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said. “There’s someone else I should introduce myself to.”
“Where is it, Liesl?” Garber whispered once Rhonda had gone.
“You mean you know?” Liesl said.
“Know what?” Garber glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening. “That you seem to be hiding an extremely important donation?”
“You don’t know,” Liesl said.
A man in his thirties wearing a page from the Brooks Brothers catalog was walking toward them. Liesl turned her back to him, making it clear that they weren’t to be interrupted.
“I’ve also been thinking, and it matters less with this younger crop, but I think we should play up the woman thing.”
“The woman thing?”
He took a handful of trail mix in his mouth, and they were silent as he chewed. Trail mix is not a thing one can just swallow. “It’s important that I get enough protein while I’m training,” he said. “With the donors, I mean. Make the best of a bad situation.”
“How’s that?”
“A lot of these men, they have wives. If we play up the woman thing maybe we can appeal to them, get them out to more events, get them spending.”
“So you think I should…”
“Keep reminding them you’re a woman. Now. Where’s the book?”
“We don’t have it,” Liesl said.
Any last trace of Garber’s public-facing smile died. He looked at Liesl like she was a preschooler who had just wet her pants in front of him. “It’s your second week,” he said. “How, in two weeks, have you not managed to even get a safe open?” He picked a bit of sunflower seed out of a space between his teeth with the nail of his little finger.
Liesl took a breath to buy time. She wished this event had been scheduled in the evening so she’d have had access to wine. “I opened it last week. The Plantin wasn’t inside the safe,” she said.
“Where the hell is it if it’s not inside the safe?” Garber shoved the trail mix into the pocket of his suit jacket. It bulged. “Somewhere else in Chris’s office then.”
She shook her head. “We have to contact the police. Today.”
“Let me understand this,” Garber said. “Chris would have put the Plantin in the safe while he waited for the insurance appraisal. You’ve opened the safe, no Plantin. It’s been two weeks, maybe more since it’s been seen. You haven’t actually called the police yet, have you?”
“Well, no.”
Across the room, a man wearing a blazer with suede elbow patches that someone at some point must have told him looked professorial was waving excitedly at Garber. Garber gave a sharp nod in his direction and huddled more closely to Liesl.
“Good, good. That’s very good.” He spoke mostly to himself. “It could be in the library or it could have been stolen, but if it was stolen, then it would have to be by someone in the library. Were you alone in the office when you opened the safe?”
“Pardon me?” Liesl had never considered herself on any list of suspects.
“I take that back. Has anything like this ever happened before?”
“At other libraries. Never here,” Liesl said.
“I wish you had told me this earlier.”
Liesl said nothing. She couldn’t remember how many times she had tried to gain access to Garber in the preceding days, but technology being what it was, she was certain she could have someone take a look at phone records and create a tally.
“Look, Liesl. I know you’ve been trying to get a meeting with me, but there are some instances where you bang down the door. Wouldn’t you agree this is one of those instances?”
Liesl looked up to see that Miriam, cocooned again in that big burgundy sweater, had entered the reading room and was barreling toward them, her face red.
“What’s the matter, Miriam?”
“Can I speak with you?” she said, staring at Liesl as if Garber weren’t even there. “It’s important that I speak with you.”
“Not right now, miss,” Garber said.
Garber went to take Liesl’s arm and pull her to another part of the room to continue their conversation, but Miriam’s features, shaped by their wild indignation, gave Liesl pause.
“Miriam, President Garber needs me for a few minutes. We’ve been trying to connect for days. Can I come find you when we’ve finished?”
It was fading back to pink, Miriam’s face, as her anger faded to embarrassment and then to a kind of sadness that expressed that even when she was demanding of attention, she didn’t warrant it.
“When you’ve finished?” she asked in a little-girl voice.
“You’ll be in the workroom, is that right? I’ll come and find you as soon as I can.”
Garber and Liesl stood in silence while they waited for Miriam to get out of earshot.
“Miriam Peters, isn’t that right?” Garber said. “Didn’t you say that she was the receiver for the Plantin when it arrived here? I don’t think I know much about her. Francis and Max and you, I’ve worked with all of you in the past, but why don’t I remember her?”
Liesl said nothing.
“We have to be honest here, Liesl. If there’s an odor, we have to say it stinks. That woman, that panicked-looking woman who just came to see you as you were reporting the possible theft of the Plantin to me… She did or she did not have physical access to it?”
“She did.”
“She did. So let’s have an honest conversation about that woman. Let’s look into that woman a little further. Let’s think about everyone who might have had access to the Plantin, and let’s create a little plan, and let’s do our due diligence. Then when Chris wakes up he can have a good chuckle at our panic, and he can tell us exactly where the Plantin has been all along, or we can have a good chuckle and tell him how we lost sight of it but only for a moment.”