The Address, page 25
Tony nodded, and Melinda, who probably had never read a paper in her life, stared blankly.
“Well, we found the sheath that goes to it. In Theodore’s trunk. As well as what we believe was Theodore Camden’s finger. Or what’s left of it.”
Melinda put her finger down her throat and pretended to gag. “Gross.”
Tony blinked. “What’s the deal with the sheath?”
“They had a photo of the knife in the paper, and we’re certain we have the sheath part of it.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” asked Melinda, suspicious.
“Renzo Duffy.”
“The super? Jesus Christ, Bailey. I told you to avoid him.”
“How can I avoid him? I’m supervising construction in his building.”
“It’s not his building. The tenants, meaning me, own the building. The super is my employee.”
“As a matter of fact, the tenants of a co-op own shares in a building, not the actual building,” said Tony, always the expert.
Bailey held her impatience at bay. “Renzo was there when I opened the trunk and he’s been very helpful.”
“I don’t want him in my business, Bailey. I told you that.”
Tony interrupted again, thankfully. “Enough about the super. That knife is really valuable. Which means the sheath is really valuable.”
Melinda leaned forward. “How valuable?”
Bailey spoke up, relieved that Melinda had been redirected from Renzo. “The paper says the knife is worth half a million dollars. Right now it’s at the Met, being studied and cleaned.”
“They’ll want the sheath, right, to go with it?” Melinda’s voice went up in pitch. “If it was found in my stuff, then it’s mine, right?”
She should have known this was the road the conversation would take. Melinda wanted nothing to do with their possible blood bond. “I thought you’d be interested in the idea that we might be truly related. Don’t you think that’s amazing? That maybe we’re second cousins or something like that.”
Melinda put her hand on Bailey’s. “Your mother desperately wanted you to be part of the Camden family, and after she died, I get why you feel compelled to carry on her wishes. We don’t know if we’re really cousins, and we may never know. But I will always think of you as my sister, no matter what.”
Talk about a brush-off.
“Where’s the sheath now?” Tony finished his drink in one gulp.
“At the Dakota, with Renzo.”
“What? You left it with the super?” Melinda dug her nails into Bailey’s hand.
“Ouch. Yes, it’s fine. He’s trustworthy. He has a safe in his office. That’s where it is.”
Tony tossed his napkin on the table. “Let’s go check it out before he sells it on the underground market.”
Renzo gave Bailey a huge smile when she walked into his office, but it faded fast when he spotted Melinda and Tony behind her.
“Where’s the knife sheath thing?” Melinda spoke to him like he was a servant and she the lady of the manor.
Bailey offered Renzo a halfhearted smile of apology. “I told them about the knife and they’d like to see what we found.”
“Okay.” He blocked the safe from their view as he fiddled with the combination. After he yanked it open, Tony crowded forward, eager.
They were like vultures, he and Melinda. Tony practically licked his lips as Renzo placed the two tissue-wrapped packages on the desk. He unfolded the larger one.
The sheath, a battered remnant of a long-ago era, gleamed in the light.
“It doesn’t look that great,” said Melinda. She pointed to it. “What’s that? Mud?”
Bailey shook her head. “I think it might be blood. Theodore Camden’s blood. There’s a set of plans in the same trunk, covered with splotches that look like blood.”
Melinda pulled back her hand, as if the stain might leap out at her. “Ick.”
Renzo picked up the newspaper on his desk, the same one he’d shown Bailey, and pointed to the photo. “It’s a perfect match.”
“Totally.” Melinda put her hands on her hips. “What do we do now?”
Tony wrapped one arm around Melinda’s shoulders. “Anything you want to do; it’s yours. Finders keepers, right?”
She grinned up at him. “If it was in my storage unit, it belongs to me.”
“Don’t you think it should end up with the knife, at the Met?” Bailey looked over at Renzo for backup, but he stayed silent. “Ultimately, I mean?”
“If they want it, they should pay for it,” answered Tony.
No question that Bailey had seen dollar signs when she’d first realized how much the thing was worth, but Tony and Melinda’s crassness made her think twice. Someone made the weapon with their own hands, before it traveled around the world and ended up in New York City. “Think of the history of this piece of metal. Imagine where it’s been and who’s owned it.”
“Who cares?” Melinda lifted it up with her finger and thumb, avoiding the cracked blood on it. “It’s all rusty and dented and filthy.”
Bailey cringed at her carelessness, holding her breath until Melinda returned it to the tissue. Of course the sheath would be what interested Tony and Melinda, not that Bailey might be a relation.
“There’s a problem, though.” Renzo finally spoke, his voice quiet and deep. “With the sheath.”
“Oh yes, what’s that?” Tony looked bemused, as if Renzo was a stammering idiot.
“It wasn’t found in your storage unit.”
Melinda put one hand on her hip. “It was in my great-grandfather’s trunk; that’s what Bailey said.”
“But the trunk was in the building’s storage area. Not yours.”
Bailey couldn’t believe he was challenging them. The trunks were obviously part of the Camden household. Then again, it was found in the room where people stored things they no longer wanted, that were no longer considered valuable. “He’s right. It wasn’t in the unit.”
“Then who does it belong to, if not to me?” demanded Melinda.
“The co-op, I would assume.”
Melinda looked like she was about to spit in his face. “Show me where you found it.”
Renzo led the way to the room with the trunks. They opened up each one and Melinda tore through them, tossing ball gowns and shoes and leather tubes on the ground.
Bailey rescued the silk purse from being snatched up by Melinda. “Be careful, these are all antiques.”
“Don’t tell me what’s valuable and what’s not. You show me this stuff and now he’s telling me it’s not mine? Give me a break. All this is mine.”
“No. It’s not. I’m sorry, but we’ll have to go through the management company on this.” Renzo held his palms up and shrugged. “That’s the way it works.”
Unexpectedly, Renzo turned on his heels and walked out of the room. Tony sprinted behind him but had a late start. When Bailey got to the office, Renzo was standing in front of the closed safe, no sheath in sight.
“You can’t do that,” Melinda sputtered, thrown by his sudden maneuvering. “You’re holding it hostage!”
“Until we hear from the management company, that’s where it stays.”
At first, Bailey couldn’t figure out where Renzo was coming from. He hated Melinda, so it must have given him some satisfaction to take something away from her. But it was obvious, even to Bailey, that the sheath came from a Camden trunk. Why make such a fuss?
Maybe, like Bailey, he didn’t want to see Melinda separate the knife and the sheath. He was holding it hostage so she wouldn’t. She had to hand it to him, he had nerve, challenging a tenant like Melinda.
Tony studied Renzo with a renewed interest. “You say we have to prove that it’s the Camdens’ knife?”
Renzo shrugged. “You’ll have to ask the co-op about that. Mr. Rogers is the board president. I would assume you should take it up with him.”
“How do we know you won’t make off with it in the meantime?” demanded Melinda.
“Wait a minute.” Tony held a finger to his cleft chin. “What if we could prove beyond a doubt that this was Theodore Camden’s?”
“How are we going to do that?” Melinda turned to Bailey. “Did you find anything that might be proof, a photo of him holding it or anything like that?”
“No. There’s nothing like that.”
“What about in my storage unit?”
“That’s empty.”
“Just my luck.” Melinda stared hard at Renzo. “Then we go to the management company. I’ll fight for this; no one is going to take it away from me.”
“You won’t have to fight for it,” said Tony. “As I was trying to say, we can prove that it is yours.”
“How?”
“My cousin can test the finger bone and blood for DNA and compare it to yours, Melinda.” Tony smiled as though he’d solved the famine crisis in Ethiopia.
“Where do you get my DNA from?”
“Your blood.” Melinda gave a dramatic shiver, but Tony continued on. “It’s called DNA fingerprinting.”
“Will that be considered proof, though?” asked Bailey.
Tony nodded. “You bet. It’s already been used in an immigration case in England to reunite some kid with his mother.”
Everything was moving too fast. Blood, bones, DNA.
But Tony was all business. “I’ll ring my cousin and find out how this all works. Melinda, in the meantime, check with the management company. And your family advisor.”
“Fred?”
“Yes. You’ll want to make sure this is all on the up-and-up.”
This was Bailey’s chance.
“I have a request.”
Melinda looked at Bailey like she was a bother, an irritant. Which wasn’t fair. Bailey had been the one who’d found everything, who set all this in motion. If it weren’t for her curiosity, the trunks would have stood in the corner for another hundred years, untouched.
“What’s that, dear?” The coldness in Melinda’s voice stung.
“I’d like my DNA to be compared as well. That way we’ll know whether or not I’m a Camden.”
Melinda laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. No.”
“Just ‘no’? No discussion?”
Tony moved closer. “This is a very new test, and it’s quite expensive. If you have the money to pay for it, go right ahead, but if I’m paying for it, then I don’t want to add to the expense any more than I need to. You understand, surely?”
“But it’s your cousin who’s doing it. Don’t you get a family discount?”
“My cousin invented the process, but it will be his lab that will be doing the testing. Someone has to pay for all that work.” His voice dripped with condescension.
Bailey had no way of knowing if he was speaking the truth. But it made sense that this kind of scientific process would be expensive.
The possibility of an inheritance appealed to Bailey’s practical side, sure. But that wasn’t the only reason for her brashness. The hunger of discovering the truth about her birthright gnawed at her, in a way that put her other addictions to shame. Although from the outside it probably looked like she was replacing one obsession with another, this wasn’t about sublimating harsh truths with intoxicants. The loss of her mother had put her on a dangerous path, and Bailey was certain that if she figured out who she really was, the future might be less treacherous.
“But if it turns out I am a Camden, I’ll be able to pay you back.” She was practically begging, and hated Renzo to see her this way. She avoided looking at him.
“No, darling,” cooed Melinda. “I can’t do that, you must understand. You have no proof, not really. Other than a letter from God knows who. You’re clutching at straws and I can understand why. You’ve been dealt a tough hand lately. But I know you’ll do fine. You always do.”
She stood no chance, no chance at all.
When she finally glanced over at Renzo, he looked angry.
She’d never wanted a drink more in her life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
New York City, August 1885
The new agent at the Dakota made good on the promise of a year of free rent. Sara had moved into the sixth-floor apartment, still furnished with the yellow velvet French settees and matching club chairs of the Rembrandts. The place offered a glorious view north, and she appreciated the cool shade during the hot August afternoons.
Sara had received a jubilant letter from Natalia a week earlier, saying that she’d been released and was living in Boston with her children, where she’d found work as a housekeeper for a kind widow. For that, Sara gave a silent thanks.
Mrs. Haines and Sara had talked in the office when she’d first arrived, right after Mrs. Haines had dashed around the desk and hugged her. A tear even dropped down Mrs. Haines’s cheek, an unexpected show of emotion after her previously cold visage. They didn’t discuss Daisy at all, or what had happened, but Mrs. Haines had gone out of her way to make sure Sara was well taken care of, sending up a maid with breakfast in bed for her each morning, her plate heaped with hot cross buns and baked eggs. Sara’s hair was thickening as she grew stronger, as was her waist, and her skin began to glow again. Every so often she’d still wake in the middle of the night, terrified and breathless, thinking she was trapped on the island again. But that seemed to be the only lasting vestige of her incarceration.
She enjoyed having a proper job, with her own desk and chair waiting for her each day. Unfortunately, for the past month, the only people to visit Theo’s office came under the ruse of needing an architect but in fact actually wanted to get a look at the woman who’d survived Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum. They never returned.
“Perhaps we should rethink our arrangement.”
Sara had been longing to say the words out loud for the past week now, and when Theo suggested they not go into the office but instead work from his apartment in the Dakota, she decided it was time. Even he couldn’t face the effort of pretending to work anymore. There was absolutely nothing to do. Theo had bills to pay, for the grand apartment and his wife’s medical care. She’d seen a letter to the Old Chatham Sanatorium that he’d inadvertently left out on his desk, asking for more time for the coming month’s fee.
Theo looked up at her and smiled. “Rethink the arrangement, in what way?”
“There’s no use in you having an employee when business is . . .”
She trailed off, reluctant to state the obvious.
“Bad? Disastrous?”
“I’m sorry, Theo.” She sat down across the table from him, where he’d been working on a speech to the West End Association. “But there’s no reason for you to pay me when I don’t do much of anything. I can find another job.”
Theo leaned back. “No one knows me; I’m just a lackey of Hardenbergh’s. I have to find a way to make a name for myself.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Not a thing, I’m afraid.”
She hated feeling so useless and out of step with him. They hadn’t touched since she’d collapsed in his arms upon reuniting. Even when she handed him a paper or letter, she made sure to place it on his desk first, so their fingers wouldn’t accidentally brush.
Theo got up and stood at the window, looking out. “Imagine what it will be like here in one hundred years, what this view will entail.”
“I can’t imagine. Flying bicycles, perhaps?”
“Now, that would be a sight. But the buildings, one after another, lined up block upon block. If we’re not careful, the city will fall into madness. A mishmash of styles, from Florentine Renaissance to Transitional Goth to Hispano-Moorish. What a mess. Here we have an opportunity to plan ahead, to decide the aesthetic fate of the city. Yet no one is leading the charge.”
“Why don’t you?”
He turned around and leaned back on the windowsill. “Who would listen to me? What have I accomplished?”
“Your speech.” She pointed to the half-full piece of paper on his desk. “Why don’t you make it about exactly that? The city of the future.”
“Unfortunately, tonight’s audience doesn’t care much about that. They all want to know how to make the most money snatching up land on the West Side.”
“Then make them care. You speak so passionately about it.” She pulled the paper and inkwell to her. “Go on, you talk and I’ll write.”
“It’s no use.”
She disliked this version of Theo. He seemed determined to fail. In the past, she might have agreed with him, assumed that he knew better on most things. But after Blackwell’s, she no longer accepted another’s authority so easily. “First off, what are today’s architects doing wrong?”
He paced up the room, and back down. His long legs took only ten strides each way, his footsteps sure and even. “The center of the island is currently located at the southern tip. The courts, the post office, the Exchange. Even with elevated railways, the congestion is terrible, everyone struggling south in the morning and back north at the end of the workday. The business district should be moved up to the Forties, near Broadway.”
“Very forward thinking. What else?”
His shoulders straightened and he looked up at the ceiling, lost in thought. “There’s no point in having each plot of land owned by a separate person. Instead, we should continue in the mold of the apartment house and create large buildings, vertical ones, that house dozens of businesses. We need to add an entirely new dimension to our thinking, and that’s upward. Imagine a city of buildings that soar into the sky, with fast elevators that take workers up to their offices.”
Sara scribbled as fast as he was speaking. She loved this side of him, the dashing, daring man with strong opinions. How she wished she could be part of him again. The thought made her feel slightly dizzy. Mrs. Camden would be back soon enough with the children, and they might never be this close again. If this was what life offered her, she wanted to drink it all in, even if there were proprieties to obey. She would respect them but take her fill of her intellectual partnership with Theo while she could. She added her own line, and spoke what she had written out loud, to see if he approved. “We’re on an island, there’s no way north, south, east, or west. Instead, we rise.”
