The Lions of Fifth Avenue: A Novel

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

New York City, 1993

It must be here somewhere.”

Sadie twirled around, searching for the missing book in the old apartment.

Nick began rifling through the boxes as she checked the dumbwaiter again. Nothing.

“I know I had it in my hand,” she said, “but honestly, once we heard that Valentina had been found, I can’t remember what I did with it. I must’ve put it down somewhere, it has to be here.”

“Unless . . .” Nick turned and made his way along the hallway that led to the old bedrooms, checking each one. At the last one, he turned the doorknob and looked back at Sadie, surprised. “It’s unlocked now. But we never got the key.”

Someone had opened it. They checked the room, but there was no sign of life.

“Do you think Robin was hiding inside here the entire time? Listening to me?” Sadie didn’t wait for a response from Nick. “We basically found the damn book for her. Unbelievable.” She sat down hard on one of the boxes as tears came to her eyes. “What an idiot I’ve been.”

“No. You were worried about Valentina, she came first. Family comes first. Remember, it’s just a book. The fact that Valentina is safe is everything.”

That was exactly right.

They walked out of the apartment together, Sadie lost in thought. “Who is Robin?” she said, half to herself. “And why did she go to such lengths to ruin my life?”

“Well, we know she had some kind of insight into the library’s architecture. We can check to see if she ever requested the floor plans from the library, right? They keep records of that.”

“They do,” said Sadie. “If she was listening to my conversations with Lonnie on the extension whenever I called, I basically fed her the most important items from the exhibit. I couldn’t have made it any easier for her.”

“We recovered the Woolf diary and the Hawthorne. The folio page is safe, if unattached.”

She groaned in frustration. “What bothers me most is that the Tamerlane was here the entire time, safe and sound, until I figured it out and placed it in harm’s way. It wasn’t in Robin’s clutches until I put it there.”

At Dr. Hooper’s office, his secretary informed them that the entire board was meeting in the Trustees Room, and escorted them over when they explained it was urgent. She entered first, and then motioned Sadie and Nick to follow.

Thirty faces turned their way as Dr. Hooper scowled from the head of the table. It couldn’t have been a more daunting setting for Sadie to have to deliver her news. “I understand there’s been some kind of commotion this morning,” he said.

Sadie stood at the farthest end of the table, the arrangement like a very narrow firing squad. Nick stayed beside her and, when she faltered, confused as to how to begin or what to say, took over. She was beyond grateful. Together, they filled the board and Dr. Hooper in on the missing child, the suspected library thief’s identity, the recovery of the folio title page, and the discovery—and disappearance—of the Tamerlane.

“Well, I’m glad the girl is safe,” said Dr. Hooper. “She’s related to you, Sadie?”

“Yes. She’s my niece, and we are quite certain that the thief was her babysitter. A woman named Robin Larkin.”

“The police have it in hand and will be following up,” added Nick. “I’ll be working with them closely, of course.”

Dr. Hooper grunted. “So what you’re saying is you found a rare book that’s been missing since 1914, and then lost it minutes later?”

“Let’s not be so harsh, Humphrey.”

The speaker was one of the trustees she’d given a tour to a couple of months ago. Mr. Jones-Ebbing.

“Why not?” countered Dr. Hooper.

“Because they’ve done a remarkable job figuring out what the hell was going on here.”

Sadie appreciated his support, and noticed a couple of the other board members nodding their heads.

She knew she should let it go and get out of there. She needed to check in on Lonnie, LuAnn, and Valentina, and Nick was probably itching to consult with the police. But she couldn’t help herself. “Sir, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes, Sadie?”

“I would suggest again we put out the news that the Tamerlane is missing, to every bookstore we know that accepts rare books, as well as the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America. The booksellers need to be on the lookout, and those that might be tempted need to know that they won’t be able to resell it easily, without attracting attention. It’s the only way we can possibly get it back.”

“Hold on there.” Mr. Jones-Ebbing spoke up, addressing the board, not Sadie. “We’re due to announce our new capital campaign in two weeks, timed with the opening of the exhibit. I really don’t advise letting word of this get out, as the press would have a field day. Especially with the fact that it’s been stolen not only once, but twice. I strongly suggest we hold off until right after the announcement. That way we can secure the big donors’ commitments before they learn the news.”

The men and women around the table murmured in agreement.

“We’ll discuss this further,” said Dr. Hooper. But by his tone, Sadie knew the alarm would not be sounded. “Thank you for the update.”

She paced in the hallway outside Nick’s temporary office while he made a couple of phone calls, too worked up to sit still. The shortsightedness of the board made her furious. What was the point of being a library if you didn’t put the books first, ahead of the big checks? In three weeks’ time, the Tamerlane would be in Europe or somewhere else far, far away, lost once again and this time for good.

She thought of how dear everything in the Berg Collection had become to her, of how terribly she’d miss it if she was never allowed back. Not only the books, manuscripts, and letters, but the quirkier pieces, like Jack Kerouac’s harmonicas, Vladimir Nabokov’s butterfly drawings, that damn cat-paw letter opener.

Wait.

She remembered one of the last times she’d seen the letter opener, and as she did, something in her mind clicked, like a gear snapping into place on a bicycle.

Nick finished up and together they walked outside.

“Thank you for coming to the rescue,” said Sadie. “I’m glad you were there today.”

“Sure thing.” He looked uneasy. “I’m sorry they didn’t listen to you.”

“Well, no surprise there.” She studied him, trying to figure out how to make her next request. “If I ask you to do something really, really strange, would you? I have an idea. But I need your help.”

“What is it?”

She looked up at the revolving door. “Oh no, hide!” She grabbed Nick by the arm, pulling him around the far side of one of the lions, where she crouched low to the ground.

“What on earth are you doing?” he said.

She slowly stood back up, looking out toward the street before taking hold of his arm yet again and yanking him down the steps.

“Follow me. Now.”

“Where are we going?” asked Nick as Sadie practically shoved him inside a taxi.

“We’re following that cab,” she said to the driver, before turning to Nick. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s in all the old movies.”

“No, I mean, why do you want to follow that particular one?”

“Because Mr. Jones-Ebbing is inside it.”

“What do you want with him?”

“Maybe this is crazy, but the way he acted seemed off to me,” she said. “He’s new to the board, yet jumping in like he’s a top dog about not wanting it to leak to the press.”

“Isn’t that what board members are supposed to do, worry about things like that?”

“When he first joined, I gave him and some others a tour of the library. He reached out and touched everything he could, even when I asked him not to. Like he couldn’t help himself.” She remembered him sliding his finger along the blade of the letter opener, as if he owned it. “My hunch is that he’s involved.”

“His reasoning about keeping the theft a secret was sound, if you consider his point of view.”

“There’s something wrong there, I’m sure of it.” Nick started to respond, but she cut him off. “Trust me, okay?”

The cab pulled up to a brownstone in the East Fifties.

“Must be where he lives,” said Sadie.

“Or maybe it’s where the Stolen-Book Lovers Association is having its annual meeting.”

“Very funny.”

Jones-Ebbing got out of his cab and walked up the steps, opened the front door, and disappeared.

“Now what?” Sadie let out a sigh of frustration. “We can’t just walk in there.”

They got out of the taxi and sat on a stoop on the other side of the street, partially hidden from view by some garbage cans.

Across the street, a woman walked quickly, head down. Long brown hair cascaded from underneath a baseball cap. Even so, Sadie recognized her immediately. “Bingo. It’s Robin.”

“Lonnie said she had short blond hair.”

“It’s a wig. She’s the right size, and come on, who walks around on a cloudy day wearing huge sunglasses and a baseball hat?”

“Celebrities?”

“No. Book thieves. But that doesn’t explain how she got past security with the book still on her. They would have checked her bag. How did she get out?” Sadie held her breath and only let it out when the woman turned up the same stairs that Jones-Ebbing had.

“Double bingo,” said Nick.

The door opened, and Sadie just made out Jones-Ebbing’s profile, ushering Robin inside.

“We have to go in there.” Sadie knew it wasn’t feasible, or even legal, but still. “What do we do now?”

Nick stood. “Finally, they’re on time for once.”

Two police cars glided down the street, no sirens sounding, but moving fast.

“What? Is that our backup?” Sadie turned to Nick. “You had the same idea?”

“Sure. Jones-Ebbing was a dead giveaway back there, sweating and jittery. All the signs of deception. In fact, he had recently become a focus of our inquiry.”

“That’s what you were doing when you made those phone calls?” Sadie didn’t wait for him to answer. “Then why did you play dumb behind the lion?”

“For the look on your face now.” Nick smirked. “Besides, you wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise.”

They met the cops at the foot of the stoop and let them lead the way. Jones-Ebbing opened the door, sputtering with confusion, and tried to protest as they pushed their way in. Down the hallway, Sadie spotted a figure running to the back of the town house. “It’s Robin!”

One of the policemen took off after her, while the other remained nearby.

Jones-Ebbing sat down hard on the couch, staring at the Tamerlane on the coffee table in front of him. Nick picked it up and handed it to Sadie. “Let’s not lose it this time, please.”

She was about to answer as Robin was led out—kicking, screaming, and wigless—to a police car.

This crook, this thief, couldn’t possibly be the same woman who’d sat in Lonnie’s apartment and comforted Sadie after the loss of her mother. Who’d taken such care with Valentina. It seemed impossible.

“Thank God you got her, she’s an absolute criminal for what she’s done.” Jones-Ebbing rose to his feet. “Can I get you a cup of coffee, or anything stronger? I could sure use a drink.”

The gall of this man. “No thanks, I think we have bigger things to discuss,” said Sadie.

“I assure you, I had no idea who she was,” Jones-Ebbing said. “This woman turned up at my door, showed me the book, and asked if I’d like to purchase it from her. I pretended to be interested so I could secure it for the library. Then you turned up. Well done. Great teamwork.”

“Is that how it went down?” asked Nick.

“Of course. I was waiting for her to leave, and my next call was to Dr. Hooper, to give him the good news.”

“You’re on the board of the library. Why would she approach you?” Sadie wanted to keep him talking, see if he could be forced into a corner.

“I’m quite well-known in the rare book world, of course.”

“And what if we go through your own collection?” Nick pointed to the endless bookshelves. “I wonder what else we might find.”

“You’re welcome to examine my shelves.”

“We might also want to show Mr. Jones-Ebbing’s photo to the owner of J&M Books,” suggested Sadie. “I’m sure he’s eager to throw someone else under the bus.”

At that, it was as if the man deflated. He sank back on the couch, head in his hands. “She approached me, I swear.”

Nick motioned for Sadie and the policeman to hang back, let him handle the questioning. “Robin came to you with the idea to steal the books? It makes a difference, you know, if you weren’t the one who initiated the idea.”

He gave a tentative nod.

“Did she tell you what books she was going to take?”

Jones-Ebbing looked at the policeman, then back at Nick. When he finally spoke, the words poured out of him in a childish whine. “I never had any idea what she was going to turn up with. Until last night, when she said she was going to try for the Tamerlane, but I didn’t believe her. I knew it had been missing for decades.”

Something about his confession didn’t ring true to Sadie. He was underplaying his part in the whole scheme, she was certain.

“What about the folio?” asked Nick. “The torn page?”

Jones-Ebbing went pale. “I would never have condoned ripping a page out. Macabre, to have done that.”

“And the others you brought downtown to J&M Books to be sold.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I had to.”

“Had to?”

“Money trouble. Keeping up appearances was becoming difficult.”

The damage he’d done, the stupidity, riled Sadie. All for appearances’ sake.

At the police station, Robin sat on a bench, handcuffed, looking as small and waifish as possible, her eyes huge, but all that changed when she spotted Sadie. She practically spit on the floor as they neared, morphing from Little Orphan Annie to Bonnie Parker in one fell swoop. Remarkable, really.

“Who are you?” asked Sadie.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Nick intervened. “Enough. You can’t talk to her right now.”

Sadie reluctantly turned away.

A week later, Nick got word that the district attorney had decided against going after Robin for kidnapping. Robin had insisted that Valentina had followed her into the library without her knowledge, that she hadn’t held her against her will, which was corroborated by Valentina’s story. However, Robin was charged with endangerment of a minor, and accepted that charge as well as those of the book thefts. Part of her agreement was that she explain how she pulled the thefts off.

Sadie met Nick at his company’s space in the Grace Building overlooking Bryant Park along Forty-Second Street. A receptionist directed her to his private office, which offered a stunning view of the library. “How convenient,” she said, taking the seat he offered. “I’m surprised you didn’t have a telescope set up to watch the goings-on through the windows.”

“Don’t think it didn’t occur to me.”

“Tell me everything she said.”

“Robin’s family history is pretty awful,” he said. “She was abandoned by both parents and put into the foster care system in northwestern Massachusetts. Then she and her sister were separated from each other. As a teenager, she got involved in a program that placed at-risk youths in local businesses, in part-time jobs, and worked in a bookstore for a few years before heading to a community college.”

“And that’s where she got to know about rare books?”

“Looks like it. At some point, though, she was caught razoring maps out of rare atlases at Amherst’s library. She’d said she needed the money to pay for her tuition and, since it was her first offense, was given probation.”

If only Robin had been handed a harsher punishment back then, she might have been thwarted early on.

“How did she meet Jones-Ebbing?”

“Turns out he has a summer home up in western Massachusetts, and it was there that they first connected. Eventually, they began working together, stealing from estate sales and bookstores. It was a low-key racket until Jones-Ebbing was asked to join the board of the library and they hit the mother lode.”

Nick had also learned that Robin had specifically targeted Sadie and Lonnie when they first met, the day that Valentina had fallen in the playground. The young twins she said she was with, it turned out, weren’t even her charges. She’d been following Lonnie and Sadie for some time, hoping to ingratiate herself into their lives.

“I don’t understand the connection, though. Why us?”

“She knew that the Tamerlane had been stolen by your family at some point, but she wouldn’t say how she got that information. She’s protecting someone, I’m sure. In any event, she figured you were the missing link. Once she landed the job as babysitter, she’d listen in on the extension whenever you and Lonnie spoke. That was how she figured what books to take, and what sent her into the old apartment looking for the Tamerlane, hoping to find it before you did.”

“How exactly did she get around the library, not to mention in and out?” asked Sadie.

“She’d hide out in one of the spiral staircase anterooms in the Reading Room until the library closed, then take the dumbwaiter from there to the stacks in the basement level. She’d exit via the fire escape hatch under Bryant Park, which opens out beneath some shrubs. Apparently, even once, a cop walked by, and she just pretended like she was homeless, sleeping under a bush. He didn’t blink an eye.”

Unbelievable. “How did she get into the cage once she was in the stacks? There’s no way in.”

“She’d pull up the bottom and secure it with a bungee cord, then crawl underneath.”

That was the scraping sound Sadie had heard, when she’d almost come face-to-face with the thief. Robin’s tiny frame had worked in her favor, both in the dumbwaiter and in the stacks.

“If they were looking for books to fence, why did she tear out the page from the folio? That doesn’t make any sense, it’s just mutilation.”

“She said that was just for her own private collection. Wouldn’t give a reason.”

There were too many loose ends, in Sadie’s opinion. But the library was mainly interested in knowing how she pulled off the thefts so that they could prevent anything similar from happening again.

However, there was one question left. The most important one. “The dumbwaiters. I get that it’s obvious that the one in the Reading Room led to the stacks. But Robin knew enough about the library to be able to escape through the one in the women’s room on the third floor when I was chasing her, which wasn’t even in service anymore. How did she know about that in the first place? How did she get down it?”

“She said she shinnied down the shaft, even bragged about pulling that particular escape off. But as for how she knew about them in the first place”—Nick shook his head—“she wouldn’t say. Even when we pressed her, she wouldn’t say.”