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Her Pantheon dome umbrella. Her eggshell umbrella. Her brass-handled, brown-and-copper-rose umbrella. Jane is choking over her own astonishment.
“How horrible,” Kiran says.
Jane looks into Kiran’s face and finds that all of Kiran’s warmth and feeling for her is real and surging.
Then she looks into Colin’s face, which contains the most perfect balance of sorrow, solicitude, and regret. Also something else. The tiniest gleam of something childish. Triumph.
An instinct pricks her.
Turning without a word, Jane passes through the banquet hall into the kitchen, stopping only to hold the door for Jasper. Mr. Vanders and Patrick are huddled together at a table, muttering to each other.
“Who did the mail run yesterday?” Jane asks them.
They barely glance at her. “Cook,” says Mr. Vanders.
“And where’s Cook right now?” Jane asks.
“Down at the dock,” says Mr. Vanders.
“I need to ask him a question.”
Mr. Vanders eyes Jane then, with curiosity. He reaches into a drawer behind him, pulls out a walkie-talkie, presses a button, and says, “Son.”
A moment later, a raspy voice answers. “Dad?”
Mr. Vanders hands the walkie-talkie to Jane. She’s never used one before. She presses the button and says, “Hello?”
“Yeah?”
“Cook?”
“Yeah?”
“Did Colin Mack give you a long, narrow package yesterday for the mail run?”
“Yeah,” says Cook. “Umbrellas.”
“How were they packaged?”
“With about a mile of bubble wrap around them,” he says, “and nailed into a crate. I helped him pack them.”
“Who was it addressed to?”
“Buckley St. George, at his Soho offices. I private-messengered it in Southampton with the guy the family always uses.”
“The family? Which family?”
“The Thrash family!” he says. “What family do you think? Octavian transports art from time to time. We always use this guy.”
“Is he clumsy?” asks Jane. “Does he drop things? Is he a bike messenger who’s always in peril?”
“Of course not! He’s a professional art courier! He drives a specialized truck!”
Jane hands the walkie-talkie back to Mr. Vanders and marches off, Jasper at her heels. “Hello?” says Cook’s voice behind her, somewhat irate. “Who is this? Dad? Is that Magnolia’s niece?”
Jane pushes back through the swinging door, amazed at her own certainty.
This time, when she barges into the billiard room, the surprised faces contain a touch of annoyance. Ivy has gone; the police are talking to Ravi. He brightens a notch at the sight of Jane. Ravi expects entertainment.
“Colin Mack is the accomplice,” Jane says, “or at any rate, he’s a jerk who stole from me. The proof is that you’ll find three umbrellas in the offices of Buckley St. George, who, frankly, I don’t trust either. Maybe St. George is behind the whole thing. Maybe he positioned his daughter and his nephew here so they could steal the art, and Colin, being an arrogant ass, couldn’t resist stealing my art too. Please note,” Jane adds with desperation, determined to tell the whole truth, “that all of this is conjecture, based on a look in Colin’s eyes and possibly also my inability to accept the slaughter of my umbrellas. But I think I’m right,” she finishes.
One of the police officers clears her throat. “We are investigating the theft of two pieces of art, worth, on the underside, over a hundred million dollars,” she says. “You’re talking to us about umbrellas.”
“Colin just told me that the umbrellas were destroyed,” says Jane. “That means that if those umbrellas are in Buckley St. George’s offices, then Colin lied to me so he could steal them. Are you looking for a thief or not?”
* * *
The police are at the house most of the day, despite the fact that it’s gala day. Jane plays some distracted chess with Kiran in the winter garden, and waits.
In late afternoon, the news comes through that the umbrellas have been found. Two are smack in the middle of Buckley St. George’s desk and Buckley himself is discovered walking through Soho with the third, the speckled eggshell, in the rain. According to the police, Buckley is charmed by Jane’s umbrellas. The pale blue with brown speckles matches his bow tie. He’s intended to purchase that one from Jane personally. He’s astonished to learn that Colin’s made up a story about them having been destroyed; he insists Colin never told him. “Damn stupid boy!” he says, and then, when he hears the part about Lucy and the Vermeer, he stops talking.
The police lead Colin away. He tries to look dignified and amused by this turn of events, but his face is bloodless, his eyes frightened. Jane watches him go with Kiran at her side. There is contempt in Kiran’s expression that could freeze a star.
But still there’s no sign of the missing Vermeer.
* * *
Later that day, the police ask Jane to come to New York to identify her umbrellas. Kiran comes too. The police don’t need her, but she wants Jane to have access to the Thrashes’ city apartment while she’s there, and Jane senses that she’d rather be anywhere than at the gala.
The light is falling as they board the boat. The gala is beginning; incoming boats sparkle on the water like stars.
Kiran unfurls a little, like a fern, as the police boat enters Long Island Sound and the Manhattan skyline appears. The city night fills her eyes, makes them clearer. Soon, the New York State Police barracks appear, on a strange, wooded patch of land in the East River called Ward’s Island.
Inside the noisy, yellow-lit building, an officer named Investigator Edwards places the umbrellas on a desk and asks Jane if she recognizes them. He has a voice like a man stranded in a desert and a face like John Wayne. It seems silly to Jane, this emergency nighttime journey to the city to identify umbrellas she could easily have identified by photo or even by description. But, with her umbrellas before her, Jane is relieved she came. He lets her pick them up, touch them, inspect them, even hand them to Kiran, who tells Jane that each one is beautiful. They’re in the same condition they were in when Jane saw them last.
“When can I have them back?”
“When we’re done with the investigation,” Investigator Edwards rasps, then adds, not without sympathy, “They’re evidence. That means we’ll take good care of them.” His eyes, Jane notices, gray and clear, are surrounded by fine laughter lines. Then she notices a slight brown discoloration in one of his gray irises and even though she knows it’s irrational, she trusts him with her umbrellas, implicitly.
“Your positive ID of the umbrellas will justify a search warrant of Buckley St. George’s office,” Investigator Edwards says as Jane hands the umbrellas back to him. “And his correspondence and his financials too. If he’s got other stolen property, we’ll find it.”
Kiran’s eyes slide to the investigator and lock on his face. Buckley St. George, Jane remembers, isn’t just Colin’s uncle and Lucy’s father. He’s Ravi’s boss. Ravi is going to lose his job. “You’re sure Buckley St. George
is involved?” Kiran asks.
“Not sure of anything,” says Investigator Edwards. “We don’t think Buckley St. George knew that Colin Mack intended to steal the umbrellas. But we did find those two perps and the boat, entering the East River from the Sound. They could’ve been on their way to Buckley St. George, intending to deliver the Vermeer.”
“You said you found the guys,” Kiran says, “but you didn’t say if you found the Vermeer.”
His face splits into a grin. “Yeah.”
“That’s funny?” says Kiran.
Reaching down, Investigator Edwards retrieves something from a drawer. “The chief petty officer did find a parcel on board,” he says, “just the right size for the picture. But when he opened it, there was a blank canvas inside, and this.” He lays a flat, transparent plastic bag on the desk before Kiran and Jane. It contains a paper napkin on which someone has written, with a felt pen in block letters, the words BITE ME, YOU DESPOT.
“Huh,” Kiran says. “That is funny.”
“Yeah,” says Investigator Edwards.
“You think Lucy or Colin wrote that?”
“It appears to be Lucy St. George’s handwriting.”
“And you think it’s a note to her father?”
“Possibly.”
“So, what? You think Lucy stole the Vermeer at her father’s instruction, kept the Vermeer for herself, then sent that napkin to her father as a message?”
“It’s a theory.”
“And where’s the Vermeer?”
“No idea. Lucy’s not saying. Neither is Colin, who, by the way, still insists he’s got nothing to do with any of it. Unfortunately for him, we found the prints of his boots in the ramble. Stepped in mud from the recent rain, we assume, while serving as Lucy’s lookout this morning.”
Kiran rolls her eyes dismissively at this mention of Colin. “What about the two guys in the boat?” she asks. “You couldn’t arrest them. It’s not illegal to carry a paper napkin wrapped up to look like a stolen Vermeer.”
