Mike reached back to the table for a wineglass that had been filled as we sat. “Hold your tongue, Mia.”
“Wait. So she’s this spunky assistant district attorney-”
“I don’t do ‘spunky,’” I said, laughing along with her.
“Well, you can get it on DVD. It’s funny, really. And the Beast-”
“No, thanks,” Mike said.
“He’s very noble, I promise you, and a heartthrob. Played by Ron Perlman. He lives in this world with mystical waterfalls and labyrinth tunnels.”
“In the Park?”
“Yes. In the Park. I think,” Mia said, “that’s where so many people get the idea that there are underground caves here. Urban myth, Mike. We’ll make sure you know about anything that might have resembled a cave.”
I still wasn’t convinced that there weren’t more places to conceal oneself in the Park, and that the psychos like Tanner didn’t know them intimately.
“The police found some interesting objects near the Lake, Mia,” Davis said to her as his wife signaled him to return to his seat. “Can you describe them to her, Mike?”
“I can bring them to your office tomorrow,” he said.
“Fine.”
“I’ve got photos of them on my cell phone,” I said. “It’s in my purse, on the chair.”
I reached for the phone and pulled up the images. The statuette of the angel meant nothing to Mia Schneider, but she practically gasped when she saw the silver-plated reproductions of Belvedere Castle and the Obelisk.
“Where did you get these?”
“I’m not the one who found them,” Mike said. “But a couple of the detectives spotted them underneath some bushes, on the far side of the Bow Bridge. You’ve seen them before?”
“Yes. Yes, I have,” Mia said. She was even more animated, pressing the zoom command to enlarge the images. “The Conservancy mounted an exhibition of the Dalton collection about ten years ago. I’m sure these must be part of that set. I can’t imagine anything else like them.”
“I can show you the pieces tomorrow,” Mike said. “But where’s the Dalton collection and what is it?”
“Do you know who Archer Dalton was?”
“One of the robber barons,” I said. “Made millions. Was it railroads?”
“Exactly.”
“Coop knows the millionaires,” Mike said. “I’m better on perps.”
“Sometimes there’s an overlap, Mike. They weren’t called robber barons for nothing,” Mia said. “Shortly after the Civil War, when he was a very young man, he got into the train business. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, and Archer Dalton all made their fortunes that way. Dalton’s Northern Atlantic Line built a piece of the first transcontinental railroad. He and Vanderbilt were great rivals. The gate you walked through tonight is from Vanderbilt’s mansion on Fifth Avenue at 58th Street, where it stood when the Park was opened.”
“And Dalton?” Mike asked.
“He was an outlier in that crowd. Didn’t want to be part of what became known as the Four Hundred.”
“Four Hundred what?”
“The social elite of New York. The number supposedly referred to the people who could fit inside Mrs. William Astor’s ballroom. That didn’t interest Dalton at all. So when the Dakota opened its doors in 1884, Archer Dalton left his Fifth Avenue digs and all the swells behind him, and was the first tenant to rent apartments there, on Central Park West. He took the entire top residential floor-the eighth-at the time, and when it eventually became a co-op, his granddaughter bought all the apartments on eight that faced the Park.”
Mike whistled. “Pretty piece of change that must have been. What happened to her?”
“She’s still alive, and still in the Dakota,” Mia said.
There was no more famous residence in Manhattan than the Dakota, then or now. It had been home to the rich and prominent from the start, and was the fictional setting for the movie Rosemary’s Baby, the classic novel Time and Again, and a Jack Reacher caper, as well as the tragic backdrop for the murder of John Lennon.
“It was she-Lavinia Dalton-who loaned us the collection for our exhibit.”
Mike looked at me. “Then we can go see her tomorrow.”
“She’s not well, I’m afraid. Lavinia’s close to ninety, and she suffers from dementia. I can call her nurses, and if she’s having one of her better days, I’m sure they’ll allow you to go by. But I wouldn’t expect to get much from the visit.”
“I want to know about these silver pieces,” Mike said. “How they got out of her house or wherever she kept them, and when.”
“Why don’t we sit down?” Mia said. She asked Gordon Davis to go over and join her guests-undoubtedly high rollers all-while she took his seat to give us some of the background. “I can get you started on the story of the silver.
“Lavinia was an only child, and to say that Archer Dalton doted on his granddaughter would be a gross understatement. She was raised in the Dakota, too, of course, which meant that Central Park was her front yard. She adored everything about the Park.”
“Who wouldn’t?” I said.
“As a gift to his son-Lavinia’s father-on his tenth birthday, Archer Dalton had commissioned a set of railroad trains. A train set like any other little boy might receive,” Mia said, holding out her hands, palms up, while she grinned impishly, “except they were all of Papa’s Northern Atlantic models, and they happened to be crafted in silver.”
“By Gorham and Frost,” Mike said.
“You’re good,” Mia said, pointing at him. “So in honor of Lavinia’s birthday-her tenth, too-Dalton commissioned another unique gift from the most celebrated silversmiths of the time. He had them build miniatures-in silver-of all the important landmarks in the Park that existed by then and had an architecture firm reproduce the landscape, to scale, to place them on.”
“That must have cost a fortune,” I said.
“Archer Dalton had a fortune. Several of them. Fortunes, I mean.”
“And where was there space to house this?” Judging from the size of the two pieces I’d seen, the layout must have been enormous.
“There was an entire room in the family apartment devoted to the train set and the Park,” Mia said. “Lavinia has always been one of our most generous donors, so I saw the set the first time I went to court her. You think there are treasures at Versailles or Blenheim Palace? This collection is staggering.”
“So why would anyone have broken it up?” Mike asked.
“I’m shocked to think that happened,” Mia said. “It took me a decade of begging, from the time I first came on the Conservancy board, to convince Lavinia to let us mount the exhibit. You’ve got to go to the apartment and talk to the staff. I’ll have to get her attorneys in, too.”
“Who represents her?” I said.
“The only person she trusted with her affairs was a wonderful lawyer named Justin Feldman. But he died last year.”
“I knew him well.” I thought of my beloved mentor and friend, biting down on my lip to stem the wave of emotion that swept through me. “Lavinia must have been very wise to have had such good counsel.”
“I’ll find out who’s looking out for her now and let you know.”
“How many pieces made up the collection?” Mike was attacking the mixed green salad while he talked.
“If I remember correctly, there were something like fifty-three or so. These two, and of course the Carousel, the Arsenal, the buildings that later became Tavern on the Green.”
“That was a restaurant,” I said, remembering the sprawling banquet space. “What had it been before?”
“It was a series of barns where the sheep were housed,” Mia said. “There was a miniature of the Blockhouse and the original horse stables. Then there were copies of the statues that had been erected up to that time-Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster-”
“Alice in Wonderland?” I asked.
“She came way later. But Beethoven and the Indian Hunter-I remember those. And the monument to the Maine was one of the most spectacular, as it is in real life.”