The Memorist

Chapter 15

Saturday, April 26^th-11:20 a.m.

Inside the Dorotheum auction house Sebastian pointed past the main rooms toward a staircase. “The offices are up here.”

Meer was still distracted by the disturbing daydream she’d had outside when Sebastian offered her his hand. Her father and Malachai would have insisted what had happened was a full-blown memory lurch-a fragment of a past life bubbling up to the surface of her consciousness. What they’d always suggested her storm/chase/forest memories were. But based on her own studies, she’d merely experienced another pseudomemory-episodic rather than solitary this time.

She’d read enough about Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to have conjured this little scene out of her imagination, just the way she’d come to believe her childhood daydreams must have stemmed from a story someone had read to her-a fairy tale that she had morphed into her own nightmare. Inflated imagination, scientists called it. It even made sense that her mind had manufactured this falsity now. She hadn’t slept much on the plane, was overtired…in shock over finding Ruth and worried about her father…

They’d reached a suite of offices where there was already a fair amount of chaos. A dozen people Meer assumed were Dorotheum employees were crowded into a small reception area along with several policemen she recognized from her father’s house.

Sitting at a fortresslike desk, a carefully dressed young woman with pearls around her neck and dark hair in a bun stopped Sebastian and Meer and asked them something in German. After he responded, the woman stood and walked around to Meer. “Please, come in. It’s very confusing right now. The police have just arrived and are asking to see your father.”

“Is he here?”

“Herr Logan always goes to temple on Saturday mornings-but you know that of course. He should still be there…”

Meer didn’t know her father went to temple on Saturdays but it didn’t surprise her.

“Could he have been on his way to temple when he called you?” Meer asked Sebastian.

“No, he only told me it was business related and-”

“Does he usually come here after temple?” Meer asked the receptionist before Sebastian finished.

“On Saturdays before a big auction, like the one we will be having on Wednesday, he would, but I think you should talk to Enid, she’ll know more,” she said and disappeared.

Seconds later, an imperious woman, dressed impeccably in black slacks and a caramel-colored jacket, her hair coiffed into a smooth gold helmet, offered a manicured hand and an introduction.

“I’m Enid Parnell, associate curator of the department. I recognize you from your photo in your father’s office.” She spoke with a clipped British accent.

Before Meer could respond, Inspector Fiske approached, nodded at Meer and Sebastian and asked Enid something in German.

“Sprechen sie Englisch?” Enid asked him.

“Yes, I do.”

“Then if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to speak in English-it will allow Mr. Logan’s daughter to understand what’s going on.”

“Yes, fine. There has been an incident at Mr. Logan’s home and we are looking for him. Can you tell us where he is?”

“An incident?”

“Is he on his way here? No one seems to know.” Fiske wanted to get answers, not give them.

“Yes. We expect him later today.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

She hesitated. “What kind of incident?”

“Miss Parnell, this is very serious. If you know where Mr. Logan is, please tell me. We need to be in touch with him.”

“I can give you his cell phone number.”

“We already have that. Mr. Otto gave it to us at Mr. Logan’s home. He isn’t answering. So we return to where we started. Full circle, I believe is the English expression. Where is Jeremy Logan, Miss Parnell?”

“Is he in danger?”

“Is there a reason to suspect he would be?”

“There is always the chance of it because of the objects he works with-all of us who work here are vulnerable.” She played with her watchband, opening and closing the gold clasp in an uneven rhythm.

“You’re interfering with an investigation.”

The metal snapping accelerated. “He’s in Geneva meeting with Dr. Karl Smettering, a graphologist.”

“Geneva?” Meer turned to Sebastian but he just shrugged.

The inspector asked for all the pertinent information about Dr. Smettering, including his phone number and address, and Enid reeled them off from memory. As she did a junior officer who had been hovering stepped away from the group and opened his cell phone.

Enid turned to Meer. “Why don’t we all wait in your father’s office? It’s this way.” As an afterthought she turned back to Fiske. “It’s all right with you if we wait in there, isn’t it?” Even though it was a question, from Enid’s tone it was clear she was informing, not asking, and he didn’t raise any objection.

Like his home library, Jeremy’s office was filled to capacity with books and catalogs heaped on top of every conceivable surface. Photographs of religious artifacts and maps of Europe were tacked to corkboards covering the three walls. His desk was organized but there was little empty space among stacks of thick files, catalogs, a computer, exotic-looking glass paperweights and a jug of pencils. Sebastian picked up a silver-framed photograph of a woman with dark hair bending over a five-year-old child whose hand was raised to touch her mother’s cheek. The pose was a reversal of the expected-the child was trying to comfort the mother, not the other way around.

He offered it to Meer, who took it and studied the informal portrait, instinctively putting out her hand to touch her mother’s cheek. What the photograph didn’t show was how in the very next moment, Pauline had taken Meer’s little hand off her face, unable to accept the sympathetic gesture even from her own child. Despite the rejection, Meer had never stopped trying to find a way to drive that lonesome look from her mother’s eyes. And when she was finally grown up enough to try a different way, it was too late.

Meer had been eighteen years old, a freshman at Juilliard, the afternoon her father had picked her up from class and took her for a walk in the park. They sat on a bench outside her old playground and as the sun set, he told her about her mother’s illness. Even though her parents had been divorced for six years by then, he’d come back from Vienna to take on this burden, offering his open arms and a fresh handkerchief to his stunned daughter. That Pauline had hidden her leukemia from Meer and then allowed her ex-husband to tell her about it was a bitter disappointment but not really a surprise. And afterward, in those last months, as Pauline continued to expend her energy and attention on the china and glass, the mirrors, rugs, chaises, armoires and étagères in her store, she shunned her daughter’s efforts to expend any energy on her. Pauline never admitted during all the weeks of treatments that anything was wrong or that she was suffering or was afraid, and then, without warning, she slipped into a coma and two weeks later was gone. Too late for mother and daughter ever to have the conversation that might have made a difference.

“You look like her,” Sebastian said. “So much like her.”

“Not really. She was beautiful-”

Sebastian began arguing when Inspector Fiske walked in. “There has been an accident,” Fiske said, looking right at Meer, who held to the picture frame more tightly as she listened to the news.