The Lions of Fifth Avenue: A Novel

CHAPTER FIVE

New York City, 1993

One afternoon when Sadie was a little girl, walking hand in hand with her mother down Fifth Avenue, they passed by the colossal library. “Like Buckingham Palace,” Sadie said, having seen an image of the queen of England’s home on the television the night before.

“I lived there, once,” her mother had said, her mouth in a tight line. “When I was a little girl like you.”

“Buckingham Palace?” Sadie asked, unsure.

“No. The library. In an apartment built deep inside. It was even written up in the newspaper, back when we first moved in.” When pressed, though, she’d refused to provide any other details. At the time, Sadie figured her mother was teasing her. After all, who lived in a library?

Soon after Sadie started working there, she’d met Mr. Babenko, a longtime employee and the building’s de facto historian, and had been surprised to learn that, yes, there had indeed been an apartment included in the architect’s plan, designed specifically for the superintendent and his family. He’d directed her to the mezzanine level, accessible by a private staircase off the first floor. To Sadie’s dismay, the area had been converted into storage, full of boxes and janitors’ supplies. It was hard to imagine a family of four living there.

She’d spent a Saturday going through old newspapers on microfiche and found a short article written in 1911 about the apartment’s inhabitants. A black-and-white photo showed a handsome man with ears that stuck out standing next to a dark-haired woman whose face was blurry. She’d been caught looking down at her children, not at the camera. The children, a boy and a girl, smiled proudly in front of their parents. Sadie recognized her mother by the lightness of her hair and eyes, like she was an angel. The boy, Harry, was Sadie’s uncle, who had died before Sadie was born.

Invigorated, Sadie had stopped by the Rare Book Room and requested any superintendent records from the years the family had lived there. After a ten-minute wait, the librarian lugged over two boxes filled with ledgers, letters, invoices, and other paraphernalia. Sadie’s grandfather’s name, Jack Lyons, was on every one. As she sifted through them, she marveled at how large a job he’d held. It was a bit like running a ship or a small city, keeping the library going. An entire ledger was filled with the monthly payroll, from electricians to porters, all neatly typed out in rows with Name, Position, and Amount, then a handwritten total at the very bottom. To think her grandfather had written those numbers, so long ago, and here she was working at the very same place. Excited, she’d told her mother and brother what she’d discovered. Her mother had responded by turning up the television volume, drowning her out.

Back then, Laura Lyons’s legacy hadn’t yet been resurrected. Only in recent years had Sadie’s and her brother’s checks from the executor of the estate—Laura Lyons’s former secretary in London—gradually increased, as their grandmother’s collections of essays were reissued. Yet even when the Berg Collection acquired Laura Lyons’s walking stick, Sadie hadn’t mentioned her connection, knowing that Marlene would be curious and ask questions she wouldn’t be able to answer.

Today, with Dr. Hooper’s new interest in Laura Lyons, Sadie figured it might be time to acknowledge her family tie as a way to get into his good graces and secure the position of curator permanently. Claude wouldn’t think twice if he was in the same position—she had no doubt about that.

First, though, she had some homework to do.

After her shift was over, she requested the administrative records of the library from 1911, hoping there might be some record of the Lyons family there. A starting point, at least. Inside a dozen boxes, Sadie found the usual—letters, files, a few photos of stiff-looking men standing stiffly—but also several newsletters, which had been written for the library staff at the time. The first began with a letter from the director, a Dr. Edwin H. Anderson, followed by several short articles about upgrades or exhibits. The second edition, though, caused her to let out a squeak of glee. Inside was a column written by Mrs. Jack Lyons. The tone was whimsical and airy, about the travails of raising two children in the library, her favorite books of the month, and what she was reading to her children, Harry and Pearl, before bed.

Her grandmother had started off writing puff pieces, a far cry from the serious, feminist essays she was so well-known for. Essays that delved into what true equality between the sexes entailed, and that stressed the importance of women working outside the home, of having a passion beyond children and housework. The newsletters were terrific artifacts on Laura Lyons’s early domestic life, and Sadie couldn’t wait to share them with Dr. Hooper.

But her excitement was tempered by a letter she found in the last of the boxes, in a file marked CONFIDENTIAL. It contained a letter from a man named Edwin Gaillard, dated May 1914.

Dr. Anderson,

After a thorough investigation, I’m sorry to admit that I’m still stymied. It’s almost as if the thief dropped from the sky, stole the books, and then disappeared. I understand your concern that we will face great difficulty as an institution if this most recent incident becomes known. Mr. and Mrs. Lyons are under watch, and in the meantime, I will do what I can to keep this quiet, per your request.

Her grandparents had been “under watch,” whatever that meant, associated with some kind of book theft. The strange letter curbed Sadie’s desire to share her own lineage with Dr. Hooper. Laura Lyons, hailed as a “new feminist icon” in the New York Review of Books a few years ago, appeared to have had a shady past, one that was probably better left alone.

Sadie called her brother, Lonnie, from her office.

“I’ve got some news,” said Sadie when he picked up. “Marlene has taken another job, and so for the short term, I’m in charge of the Berg Collection.”

She laughed as her brother let out a whoop on the other end of the line. She explained about Marlene’s new position in Boston and how she’d been chosen by Dr. Hooper to take over. Temporarily.

Even though they lived a few blocks from each other in Murray Hill, Sadie had made a point of reaching out to Lonnie at least once a week on the telephone since their mother had moved in with him and his wife, LuAnn, a month ago. The move was temporary—once Pearl recovered from a bout of pneumonia, she’d go back to her place in her senior center—but since Lonnie was a doctor and had more than enough room in the four-story town house they’d grown up in, it made sense to keep Pearl close to home. Still, Sadie felt a stab of guilt at how much her brother was juggling these days, and touching base by phone was the least she could do. So Sadie had written the weekly phone call into her Filofax calendar and, every week, crossed it off when completed. Most of the time their calls consisted of Sadie rattling off the minutiae of her job, but sometimes Lonnie recounted one of the more interesting cases at the hospital, and she’d listen closely and ask lots of questions, encouraging him to open up. Their ten-year age difference meant that they had never really bonded as children. Sadie had been a late-in-life surprise for her mother, and when their father passed away, when Sadie was eight, Lonnie was already off at college.

But when LuAnn had entered the picture, Sadie and Lonnie’s mutual adoration of her had acted as a sort of sibling bypass operation, pulling them closer in spite of their very different personalities and childhoods.

“I’m proud of you, sis,” said Lonnie. “LuAnn will be thrilled. We’ll have to celebrate when she’s back.”

LuAnn traveled extensively for her job as a corporate lawyer. “When does your lovely wife return?”

“Not until Saturday.”

Sadie leaned back in her office chair, happy to have the room to herself. Claude had spent the day in a snit, upset about the sudden turn of events, and when he finally left, it was like a noxious cloud evaporating. “Here’s the thing, though. Dr. Hooper wants me to find something about Laura Lyons to include in the exhibit.”

He listened quietly as she filled him in on the discovery of the newsletters and the disturbing note. “That’s crazy. I wonder what it’s all about.”

“Did Mom ever mention anything about an investigation?”

He laughed. “Mom never mentions anything at all, you know that. That woman’s a closed book.”

“How’s she doing today?”

“Physically better, but mentally still uncertain about things. The hospital stay confused her, and she’s still not quite all there. The day nurse just left. She’s been asking for you. Hold on a second.” His voice became distant. “Valentina, you have to wear a coat, don’t be silly.”

“Where is she going?” asked Sadie.

“She and Robin are going out for ice cream.”

Robin, the new babysitter, had recently taken over looking after Valentina, a role that Sadie had gladly undertaken after she’d been born, right around the time Sadie had divorced Phillip. LuAnn had folded her sister-in-law into her own family, in the hope that caring for the new baby would bring Sadie out of her depression. Indeed, helping to raise Valentina had been Sadie’s absolute privilege and joy, but lately, with the exhibition looming, she’d been unable to devote as much time as before. LuAnn said it was a natural progression and that it made sense for Sadie to open up her life now. Six years was a long time to mourn a husband who really wasn’t worth mourning. And who wasn’t even dead.

“Isn’t it late?” Sadie asked Lonnie. “They’re going out for ice cream now?”

“It’s not that late, and they’re not going far.”

“How’s Robin working out?”

“Robin’s great. We really lucked out. Valentina loves her to death.”

Sadie felt a prick of jealousy. “Maybe I’ll stop by, say hi to Mom before bed.”

“Sure thing.”

She told him she was on her way.

As Sadie turned the corner to Lonnie’s town house, she spotted Valentina’s moss-green coat, the one they’d picked out together in the fall, hurtling down the sidewalk toward her. Valentina ran into her arms as Sadie leaned down to hug her. The girl beamed up at her, her blue eyes bright against the whiteness of her skin and hair, a trace of chocolate ice cream on one cheek, before pulling away and gesturing to the new babysitter.

“Aunt Sadie, this is Robin Larkin.”

“So formal of you, my girl,” said Sadie. “But we’ve already met.”

Sadie and Lonnie had been at the playground in the park a couple of weeks ago when Valentina had fallen from the swings. Robin had been standing nearby, watching over a set of twins, and had gotten to her first. During the comforting and patch-up stages—Robin had had a Band-Aid handy—they’d learned that she was looking for a new position, as the twins were moving out of the city, and Valentina had insisted Robin become her babysitter. Lonnie had called her references and, after checking with LuAnn, had given her the green light.

Even though Sadie knew it was the smart thing to do—her hours were about to get crazy as the new exhibit crystalized—a part of her harbored the tiniest bit of resentment at the idea of being replaced. Now it was Robin, instead of Aunt Sadie, who stayed over in the basement bedroom when Lonnie worked nights and LuAnn was away.

She studied the girl. Robin, who appeared to be in her mid-twenties, was only a head or so taller than Valentina, and wore a plaid shirt and jeans. They looked like a couple of schoolchildren together.

Valentina pulled at Robin’s arm. “Robin said I can buy a shirt like hers, so I can be grungy as well.”

“Grunge,” said Robin, laughing. “We’ll try to avoid getting you grungy.”

“Grunge,” Valentina repeated. “Aunt Sadie loves old clothes, from the olden days.”

“That dress is really pretty,” said Robin.

“Thanks. Valentina’s coat is vintage as well,” said Sadie. “Remember, V? We got it a thrift shop together.”

Robin looked down at her green coat, as if reassessing its value. “Yeah.”

Inside the town house, Sadie said a quick hello to Lonnie in the dining room, where his lanky six-foot-three-inch frame sat hunched over a stack of bills, like a parenthesis wearing reading glasses. Upstairs, in the guest room where their mother had taken up residence, Pearl lay in the four-poster bed, dressed in a rose-colored flannel nightgown. At eighty-seven, and weighing about the same in pounds, Pearl had a habit of smiling weakly, as if she were about to go at any moment, before demanding a vanilla milkshake or a different pillow, in a bellow that rattled the walls.

“How are you feeling, Mom?” asked Sadie.

“Fine, just fine.” Pearl looked behind Sadie. “Where’s the little girl?”

“You mean Valentina, your granddaughter? She’s upstairs with Robin, the new babysitter.”

Her mother waved a hand. “I knew that.”

“Of course you did.” Sadie perched on the side of the bed. “I have good news, I got a promotion at the library today. It’s temporary, but it’s a good sign, I think.”

“Lovely, dear.” Her mother’s fingernails were a bubblegum pink, slightly smudged around the edges, signs that she’d been the recipient of one of Valentina’s enthusiastic manicures.

“Hey, Mom. Do you remember when you were Valentina’s age, and you lived in the library?”

“What?”

“When you lived in the library, when you were a little girl?” she repeated.

“We don’t talk about that.”

Sadie wondered who “we” was. Pearl and her mother?

“I brought you something.” She pulled out a small box of chocolates from her purse, from her mother’s favorite store on Madison Avenue.

Her mother smiled and, with shaky fingers, chose a dark chocolate one. She put it in her mouth and didn’t chew, just let it melt away, her eyes half-closed.

“They’re good, right?” said Sadie. “These are what Phillip would bring me every anniversary.”

Her mother swallowed the chocolate with a grimace. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

“What?”

“Sadie, that was years ago. You must move on, my girl.”

The sudden burst of lucidity from Pearl was like a foghorn splicing through the mist. Sadie knew it was a good sign, that she was recovering from the shock of being in the intensive care unit for three weeks, but her attack still stung.

“I was just saying something nice, that’s all.”

“No. You live in the past. Look at those clothes, you read old books for a living. Move on before it’s too late.”

Pearl had always been something of a benevolent bully, telling everyone how they should live their lives, especially her daughter, but the comment hurt. “That sounds rather ominous.”

“Trust me. When your father died, I moved on. Don’t you remember? I did that for your sake, and for mine. What’s your problem, missy?”

Sadie inhaled sharply and felt an ache deep in her belly. She rose and went to the window, where the sky was erasing itself into darkness.

How easy it had been for Pearl to move on. After Sadie’s father passed away, her mother had dated in a tornado of repressed grief before partnering up with a man named Don who bragged about being as different from Sadie’s father as “an Alfa Romeo is from a Crosley Hotshot,” whatever that meant. His black business suits and shiny briefcase were a stark contrast to her musician father’s short-sleeve shirts and battered instrument cases.

Sadie had listened wordlessly as Don expounded on the route of the Grand Prix in Monaco at the dinner table while Pearl beamed. But when Sadie tried out some of the French she’d learned in school that week, he’d stared at her, uncomprehending, unamused.

He brought Sadie a wrist corsage of white roses for Valentine’s Day, along with a dozen red roses for her mother, which was followed by a quick marriage ceremony at City Hall. After that, any mention that Sadie made about her father in passing was quickly shushed by her mother and shot down with a sharp look from Don.

One Sunday, Don put a record on the stereo that Sadie recognized as a waltz, and held out a hand for her to join in. When she placed her feet on top of his shoes, as she’d always done with her father, Don shoved her away, hard. “What on earth are you doing?” he yelled. “I just polished these.”

She barely managed to stay standing. “It’s how we dance,” she explained. “Danced. Me and my dad.”

Don knelt down, licked his thumb, and rubbed at an invisible scratch in the leather. “Stupid kid.”

She’d retreated to her room, too stunned to cry.

Don had lasted a few years before the marriage fizzled and Pearl went back to her maiden name, Lyons. By the time Sadie left for college in New Jersey, her mother had had a series of long-term boyfriends, some better than others but no one special.

Sadie’s hard stop to her dalliance with Claude had been the right decision. Between her mother’s disastrous choices and Lonnie’s growing family, Sadie didn’t need to take any romantic risks post-divorce. She was loved and loved back, and that was enough.

Valentina burst in, holding a large, flat box in her hand, Robin trailing not far behind. “Let’s play a game, all of us.”

“Sure. Set it up on Grandma’s bed. What game is it?”

“Operation.” Valentina arranged the game on a tray propped over Pearl’s lap. Sadie tucked herself in behind the girl, breathing in the scent of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo from her hair.

“Robin goes first,” ordered Valentina.

Robin deftly retrieved the spare rib from the torso, the easiest one. Valentina cheered when she pulled it clear.

“It’s my turn,” announced Pearl. “Or is it Harry’s?” She’d turned cloudy again, staring off into the corner of the room.

Sadie spoke slowly, loudly. “Harry is your brother, Mom. He’s not here, remember?”

Valentina looked up. “What happened to Harry, again?”

“He died a long time ago.”

As if on cue, Pearl began to cry.

The evening was beginning to crack wide-open. “Mom, it’s your turn,” said Sadie quickly.

“It’s my turn!” Pearl smiled through her tears.

Sadie could barely keep up with Pearl’s mood changes, the waves of confusion followed by moments of clarity. She and Lonnie sometimes joked that their mother was perfectly sane and just enjoyed keeping everyone off-center. That particular brand of dark humor saw them through the early days of her hospitalization, when they weren’t sure whether she’d recover. Once, when Sadie thought they’d taken their joking too far, Lonnie had pointed out they’d learned that particular coping mechanism from Pearl herself, a fact that Sadie couldn’t deny.

The buzzer always went off for their mother, whose hand shook with age, and every time she’d yip with surprise. Sadie braced herself for another round of tears.

This time, though, the buzzer didn’t sound, and Pearl held up the wishbone with a triumphant “Hah!”

“Something’s wrong,” said Sadie, pulling the game toward her.

“No, it’s not, I did it,” said Pearl, an indignant edge in her voice.

Robin patted Pearl’s leg over the blanket. “You were amazing.”

Sadie touched the tweezers to the metal border of the heart cavity. Not a peep. “The battery must be dead.”

“But I didn’t get a turn,” whimpered Valentina.

“I’ll put in new batteries,” said Sadie. “Don’t worry, you’ll get a turn.”

Pearl crossed her arms, sulking, as the tension in the room spiked. “No. I don’t want to play anymore.”

“Me, neither,” said Valentina.

From downstairs, Lonnie called out, “Is everything all right up there?”

By now, Pearl and Valentina were competing for who could complain the loudest.

Sadie lifted the game off her mother’s lap, fed up with the racket. “Game time’s over. I think maybe we’re all a little overtired.”

Valentina looked up at Sadie, indignant.

“Come on, Valentina,” said Robin, giving Sadie a quiet nod of agreement. “Let’s get you ready for bed.”

They disappeared into the hallway as Sadie replaced the cardboard lid, her mother watching her every move.

“Why are you wearing that, Sadie? You look silly.”

The same two sentences had been a common refrain of Pearl’s after Sadie launched into her vintage-dress kick. “Lucky that you don’t have to wear it, then,” snapped Sadie. “But thank you for sharing your opinion.”

Her mother closed her eyes for a moment. Sadie waited, preparing herself for the next volley. Somehow, she was always on her back foot with Pearl. Same as she’d been with Phillip. The day he’d loaded his belongings into her apartment, it had been only temporary, at first. His roommate was moving to Texas, and Phillip couldn’t afford the rent on his own, nor bother to find a new place while the semester was in session. But whenever Sadie got home before he did, she’d unpack a box of his books and integrate them into her shelves, or hang up his winter coats in the closet. He didn’t seem to notice the vanishing tower of cardboard boxes, but it wasn’t until the fall came around and he showed no sign of moving out that she breathed a sigh of relief. He was hers.

The move out, on the other hand, came fast. He took a suitcase with him that Christmas Eve, and by the second week of January, everything else was gone. She’d waited in the diner, reading the American Library Association’s newsletter but absorbing nothing, as Phillip and some movers combed through the apartment for his belongings, leaving behind gaps in the bookshelves and empty hangers in the closets.

“Don’t burn it. Whatever you do, don’t burn it.”

This was a new one. “What are you talking about, Mom?”

“The book!”

Sadie held up the cardboard box. “No, it’s a game. I’m just going to put it away.”

“Don’t do it!”

Sadie ignored her, placing the game on the bookshelf. She’d check for batteries later.

“Mom, you rest. I’ll get you a glass of water, okay?”

In the kitchen, Sadie leaned against the counter. She could have handled this evening better, she knew. She had no excuse for being so short with her family, not when Lonnie was the one who lived with this, day in and day out. Lonnie had always been the golden child, going to med school, having a family. Sadie was the loony librarian who wore weird clothes.

“You okay?”

Robin stood in the doorway.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just hard, seeing my mom like that. I didn’t mean to be short with everyone.”

“Are you kidding? If you hadn’t stopped the game, it would have dissolved into two generations of temper tantrums, I’m pretty sure.”

“Mom is still a force of nature,” said Sadie. “Even lying in bed, she’s busy directing traffic.”

“Valentina’s devoted to her. My own grandmother died before I was born, so I guess V’s lucky to have time with her, even if it’s hard right now.”

“I’m sorry about that. My grandmother died before I was born as well.”

“It’s hard to miss what you never knew, though, right? Like those high pitches that only dogs can hear, and humans can’t.” She bit back a smile. “Besides, apparently my grandma was a witch of a woman.”

Sadie laughed. “Hey, thanks for helping out. I’m glad you’re here.”

“You bet.”

Lonnie entered, chasing a giggling Valentina in her pink whale pajamas, crisis averted.

The next morning, Sadie’s phone rang the minute she sat down at her desk.

“Sadie, it’s Marlene.”

Sadie smiled at the sound of her former boss’s voice, relieved that Claude was in the main room with a patron and she could speak freely. They talked for a good ten minutes, Marlene apologizing for her sudden departure. “They insisted it be a clean break, and I knew it wouldn’t help if I lingered about. I will miss you terribly, though. And I’m thrilled that you’ll be heading up Evergreen. I put in a good word to Dr. Hooper about that, you know.”

Sadie thanked her profusely and they said goodbye, promising to stay in touch. She checked her watch and headed down to the stacks, to the section that was devoted to overflow from the Berg, two aisles encased in chain-link fencing and secured with a lock. She fished the key out and opened the door, closing it tightly behind her. Today, she would be going through Virginia Woolf’s diaries, which were a requisite for inclusion in the exhibit. The diaries consisted of twenty-eight volumes dated from 1915 to 1941, the year Woolf committed suicide. Marlene had wanted to include the last volume, the final entry of which was written four days before Woolf filled her pockets with rocks and walked into the River Ouse. Sadie always wondered what it was Woolf couldn’t bear to write down during those four days.

Sadie put on her white gloves and pulled out the gray box at the bottom of the stack, the one holding the diaries from the year 1941. Opening it up, she took out the stationer’s notebooks that Woolf had filled with her thoughts, both mundane and agonizing.

There should be five in each box. She counted and then recounted. Only four.

The missing one was the one she wanted. She put the box aside and went through the next one on the shelf. Five notebooks, all accounted for. Same with all the other boxes of Woolf’s diaries. By the time she checked the final one, her heart was pounding. She looked around, as if it might be lying out on a shelf somewhere. But no one else had access to this room other than Marlene and Claude. And they would never have done such a thing.

A couple of pages walked by, not even noticing her as she stood frozen.

The final Woolf diary was gone.

“When was the last time you saw the diary?”

Sadie pulled Claude aside to a corner of the Berg and kept her voice low. The rules stated that an employee of the library had to be in the main room at all times when a patron was present, and currently three researchers sat at the tables. Which meant this conversation couldn’t be held in their offices. For all she knew, there was a plausible answer to where the book was, but without Marlene to turn to, she was at a loss for who to ask other than Claude.

Claude rubbed his chin, considering Sadie’s question. “The diary notebook? Marlene and I brought it up here a few weeks ago. Then I returned it to the cage.”

“You’re sure you didn’t leave it out somewhere, or put it in the wrong box?”

“Of course not. I’d never do that.”

The patrons looked over, curious at the fuss.

“You know what we need to do, don’t you?” She couldn’t bear to say the words out loud.

A shelf read, where the librarians worked their way along every shelf of the collection, studying the call numbers one by one to make sure the books were in the right position. More often than not, a missing book had simply been put away in the wrong place. With the diary, it could have been returned to the wrong box. Which meant they also needed to go through each box in the Berg Collection and make sure the contents matched the label. A shelf read was exhausting and boring, but it was the only way to track down a missing book and determine if it was truly missing or simply misplaced.

“I do understand what we have to do.” Claude didn’t say the words out loud, either. “But I have plans tonight. Can it wait until tomorrow?”

She didn’t answer, just waited for him to wise up. If he was the last person who touched it, the onus was on him to find it.

He relented with a loud sigh. “Fine.”

“We’ll start up here while the library is open, and then move to the cage after closing time. It’s going to be a long night.”

She had plans as well, but she called Lonnie to say that she wouldn’t be able to make dinner at his place.

Late at night, the library vibrated with a quiet hum, but the lack of pages’ footsteps and chattering made her uneasy. Claude had taken one aisle and Sadie the other, and by three in the morning the call letters and numbers began swimming before her eyes. One by one, they placed each box on a library cart and checked the contents before putting it back and moving on to the next. As she neared the end of her last shelf, the reality of what had happened began to sink in.

Virginia Woolf’s final notebook, with its last entry dated March 24, 1941, was nowhere to be found. Sadie had first read the Woolf diaries in college, as if they held the answer to her own deep-seated grief at the loss of her father so many years ago. One entry, “I will go down with my colours flying,” was followed by another about what to cook for dinner—haddock and sausage meat.

So heartbreakingly mundane.

The library had been entrusted with the diaries, to keep them safe and in good condition so that future scholars could see the actual pages, the words as they were written, not as a typed copy. The documents were crucial to examining the state of mind of the artist. Nothing else came close.

And the final volume was gone.

She reached the very bottom of the last row. From where Claude stood, he must be close to the end as well.

Sadie had been in charge less than a week, and already there was a crisis brewing. However much she wanted to put it off, she had to tell the director right away.

She and Claude finished up, discouraged. He headed home, while she caught some sleep on the sofa in the back office. She kept a long cardigan in the closet, and she could wear that over her dress today and not be so obvious about not having gone home. She woke, groggy and confused, and hit the deli on Thirty-Ninth Street for coffee. Claude showed up barely looking human at nine on the dot, and together they trudged into the director’s office.

Dr. Hooper arrived a few minutes later, the newspaper tucked under his arm, and stopped cold when he saw them. She could only imagine how unprofessional she looked, with bags under her eyes, her wrinkled skirt and messy hair.

“Who’s watching your room?” he asked.

“I’ve put up a notice that we’ll be back at nine thirty,” replied Sadie. “We have an issue.”

He ushered them in to his office and closed the door. “What is it?”

For a moment, Sadie wished Claude had gotten the curator’s job so he would have to deal with the director’s wrath. “Yesterday, I went to look at one of the items for the exhibit, and it’s gone.”

“Which is it?”

“The last Virginia Woolf diary.”

Dr. Hooper expelled a breath. “Are you sure it’s not misplaced?”

“We did a shelf read overnight. It wasn’t anywhere.”

“When was it last seen?”

Claude spoke up. “I examined it with Marlene a couple of weeks ago. We brought it up from the cage, and I replaced it back a few hours later. I know I put it back in the right box, I’m sure of it.”

“I see.”

The unspoken accusation hung in the air. Marlene, who’d left all of a sudden, had been one of the last people to handle it.

“Shall I reach out to Marlene?” asked Sadie.

“No. I’ll make that call.” Dr. Hooper cleared his throat. “In the meantime, I’ll ask the head librarians to keep an eye out for it. Do not tell anyone else.”

Claude nodded his assent.

Sadie did not. “If we do discover it’s gone, it might be smart to enlist the press. If it is a theft, the more publicity, the better the chance that bookshop owners and other experts will spot it.”

“That’s not a good idea for two reasons,” said Dr. Hooper. “If the thief knows we know, he’s less likely to try to sell it out in the open. Also, the fewer donors who know of the theft, the better—no one wants to invest in an insecure institution. So let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We must find it quietly. In the meantime, I’ll have the lock in the cage changed today. Was there anything else amiss?”

“Not that we could see. Everything else was intact.”

“This is a terrible loss, if it has indeed been stolen.”

At least Sadie had some good news to share. She fanned out the old newsletters on Dr. Hooper’s desk with a flourish. “I do have some good news, though. I found the earliest examples of the work of Laura Lyons, right here under our very noses. It turns out she wrote a column about life in the library for the staff newsletter.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Dr. Hooper never swore, which meant she’d thoroughly impressed him. “This is marvelous. Well done, Sadie.”

“So we can include these in the exhibit?”

“Certainly. But let’s not stop here. I’d still like to see something in her own hand. We are one of the top literary collections in one of the top libraries in the world. If there’s something out there, we should have it. We need this. Especially with the Woolf diary gone missing.”

It wasn’t enough. Of course it wasn’t enough. “I’ll reach out to her estate, and let you know as soon as I hear back.”

“Good, good.”

As she and Claude walked away, they heard Dr. Hooper barking orders to his secretary to get Marlene on the phone. Sadie hoped they’d soon find an answer. The diary had been sent off to a restorer, perhaps, and Marlene had forgotten to mention it. Although that seemed far-fetched.

When she got back to her desk, her phone was ringing.

“Sadie, it’s Lonnie.”

Her desk was piled with papers, and she still had to contact the executor to Laura Lyons’s estate. Now was not a good time for a brother-sister talk.

But before she could reply, he rushed ahead.

“It’s Mom. She’s died. She’s gone.”