My stomach dropped. John explained: he’d been working in storage with Rebecca that morning when she noticed a loose placard; when they tried to return it to the item it described—a red perfume bottle, of course—they discovered it missing. Did I remember it? Did I know anything about it? I made a series of noncommittal noises, difficult as it was to think straight, much less be clever. Rebecca’s little smile danced vividly to mind.
“We’re ass-deep in here the rest of the day making sure it’s really missing, not just misplaced.” I offered to help; I could produce the vial from the first box I unpacked and voila! Case closed. But John refused. Staff only for now. “You know,” he said, “to avoid any confusion.”
“Why would you do that?” I said, nearly shouting.
“Why would you creep into my room and steal it?”
I scoffed. “You’re accusing me of stealing!”
We stood facing each other under the magnolias. Rebecca stared off petulantly.
I took a few long breaths. “Do you want to know why ‘Uncle Lou’ doesn’t like me?”
Rebecca’s lips parted as if to speak, but she said nothing. She wanted to see what I’d say first, the crafty girl. I didn’t care at that point, so I told her.
“He thinks I stole a painting.” I laughed. “From a museum, no less.”
“Francis Keeling Valentine Allan,” Rebecca replied. “The portrait by Thomas Sully. Stolen in 2000 from the Valentine Museum. I know.”
I watched her fixedly. By the end of this revelation, her eyes had drifted down the row of magnolias, her gaze light and airy.
She continued: “Poe said she loved him like her own child. It’s a beautiful painting too, not that I’ve seen it in person.”
“Did Lou also happen to tell you he and a squadron of police burst through my door and tore apart my house eight years ago? That if it wasn’t for John choosing to trust me I’d have been blacklisted from working in any museum in this city again?”
Rebecca returned my stare; she looked ready to play rough. “He told me he saw you with a painting—covered by a sheet. He saw it in your hands the night of the burglary. You were trying to get it from your car to your back door. He saw you, Emery.”
I shook my head and laughed. “So, you’re Lou’s little spy? Looking for lost treasure?”
“Lou is a horse’s ass,” she said. “Anyway, would I find it?”
“It was a storm window, for Christ’s sake. Kid put a baseball through the old one a few days before. Once the cops were done demolishing my house, they were kind enough to look into it. Your uncle hates me because he made a fool of himself at the end of his career. He went out a laughingstock.”
Rebecca shrugged. “He thinks you have it. Still.”
“Do you think I have it?”
“You have my perfume,” she said. “And I want it back.”
Rebecca avoided me the next few days, which was fine, as the restrictions placed upon the non-staff made my job difficult enough. Gone was my key to the storage rooms and cases; gone the days I could work without staff watching over my shoulder. Rebecca had sealed her own fate too; she was back sanding walls all day. John hadn’t ruled it theft, but neither did he believe the missing perfume an inventory list blunder. He simply called it “Missing.” I could feel the growing weight in his eyes when he looked at me.
Lou found out about the perfume through his museum connections. That’s what Rebecca told me a week later, when she appeared at my door again. She’d heard Lou speaking of it on the phone, invoking my name more than once to John and others she didn’t know. I listened to her, weighing the veracity of what she said. I doubted Rebecca would tell Lou or John about my having the perfume; she wanted it for herself, and ratting me out wouldn’t accomplish that. No, given the opportunity, she would steal back the perfume. Probably it was the only reason she was here now. I told her as much.
“I won’t have to resort to that,” she said, stepping close. “I think you’ll give it back.”
“Why, because John and your uncle are hot on my heels?” I said, cockily.
She considered it. “Maybe because you like me?”
I watched her eyes for sarcasm, but she closed them and burrowed her face into my neck, running me through with chills.
“And because I like you,” she added.
One thing nagged me: if Lou had spoken with John and learned of the perfume, wasn’t it likely he’d also heard of Rebecca working with me in the storage room? Uncle Lou knew plenty of the staff—hadn’t anyone put his niece with me? We were careful, but there’s only so much one can do. It’s a small city. By Rebecca’s account, though, Lou was clueless about us.
In bed we made love. She pressed herself close and said, “Smell. Not as nice, is it?”
I smelled rose, but it was sugary and cheap. She wanted the real stuff, just a drop—a molecule.
When I took the perfume from my dresser drawer, she said, “Not much of a hiding spot.”
“That’s what I thought of yours.”
Then she grabbed for it. I held tight and we crashed back onto the bed. She was giving me a good fight, biting my ribs, pulling my hair. When exhaustion wore us down, I tipped the vial onto my finger and applied it to her neck. We lay in bed deep into the night, the perfume high upon the dresser. She was in my arms, and I knew I had to hide the vial before I fell asleep. Then I heard her voice, low and hypnotic.
“I’m going to turn you in.”
I roused, tightened my embrace as though it was lovers’ talk.
“You can’t. I didn’t steal it.”
“But you have it.”
“Darling,” I said, “if you turn me in, I’ll tell them the real story. Then John knows you’re a thief, and your kindly uncle knows you’ve been cavorting with the likes of me. You lose both ways—and you don’t get the perfume.”
“If I turn you in, your life becomes a living hell.”
I pinned her, gripped her neck with my hands. “I could kill you now,” I said. “And that would be the end of this nonsense.”
There was a flash of real fear in her eyes, but only a flash—something had come to her. “I’m at Trina’s tonight,” she said. “When I don’t come home, Lou calls Trina.”
“And?”
“And then Trina tells him about you.”
I was suddenly so pleased with her, with her cunning and forethought, her tenacity. I lowered my head to kiss her, all the while feeling that I was losing myself to her, about to give her something she hadn’t even asked for. I snatched the perfume and took her to the basement, where I pulled boxes away from the wall. When I removed a section of the fake wood paneling with a screwdriver, she laughed and said, “So, you’re going to brick me up back there. I should have figured.”
Then she saw the vault. She stood wide-eyed, the sheets in which she’d wrapped herself slinking down her shoulders. The dial spun swiftly under my fingers, right-left, left-right, and then there was the clean, cold click of the lock giving way. The massive door opened noiselessly. I reached into the darkness and drew out what was inside.
“I knew it!” she screamed. “You sneaky bastard!” She hurled a string of delightful profanity at me, then reached out to touch the painting. She held it while I flicked on a series of mounted spotlights that came together on the opposite wall. I hung the portrait in that pool of radiance—it was alive now, the woman who raised Edgar Allan Poe. She was depicted young, and had a small nose and mouth, large dark eyes and roseate cheeks; her black hair was pulled up, and long strands of it curled past the edges of her eyes down to her jaw. There was a ghostly light about her long neck and her gauzy white dress.