Brooke’s face flushed, and Victor fought an unexpected urge to take her hand. “I hired Tuney to look at every suspect, and that included you.”
The ghost of a smile played across his face as he massaged his bad hand. “You made your father angry doing that.”
“It wasn’t the first time. Your friendship with my father aside, I had to find proof of who might have caused my wife’s death.”
“But you didn’t, because there wasn’t anything to incriminate me. I loved that museum. Why would I engineer a robbery?”
Because you are an art freak. The chance to own a rare piece thrills you like nothing else on earth. Because, as my father said, you love dead artists far more than any living.
“We’re not here to imply anything.”
“Good, because I had nothing to do with that robbery.”
Victor held up a hand. “And Tuney found nothing to incriminate Donald either. Tuney’s back, by the way. He’s been following Brooke.”
“Really? Who hired him?”
“He wouldn’t say who hired him, but it can’t be another coincidence.”
The dean sighed, a long, mournful exhale that seemed to shrink him several inches. “Victor, I understand your need for closure on this.” His eyes clouded. “I’ve lost people, too, a woman I loved more than anyone else in the world, as a matter of fact, but getting involved in this ridiculous treasure hunt is not going to bring Jennifer back.”
“I know that,” Victor barked, surprising himself with his tone. He continued more softly, “I’ve accepted the loss and dealt with the grief, but the thing I cannot make peace with is that nobody paid for the crime. If this situation is in any way connected to what happened four years ago like Tuney seems to believe, I need to know the truth, all of it.”
Lock smiled and sat back in his chair. “Your father’s nickname for you was right on the money.”
Victor felt his cheeks flush and swiveled his eyes away from Brooke. “So will you allow us to go in? I would take it as a personal favor. Besides, we might just find the treasure of a lifetime.” Victor didn’t want to go over Lock’s head, knowing it would destroy his relationship with his father’s old friend. He didn’t want to, but if Lock proved an obstacle, Victor would circumvent the problem one way or another. He always did.
Dean Lock cocked his head. “All right. Because you are Wyatt’s son and because I try to be a fair-minded man, I’ll take you into the tunnels myself. You’ll see that there’s nothing there but rusted pipes and rats.”
If Lock intended to frighten Brooke with the mention of rodents, it didn’t seem to have any effect. She nodded solemnly. “Thank you, Dean Lock. I know you believe the worst about my father and I’m sorry to have to ask. I appreciate your help.”
Victor sensed her humility. He could hear in the clipped syllables what it cost to speak the words. Situations reversed, he was not sure he would have said them. “When can we see it?”
To Victor’s great surprise, the dean rose stiffly to his feet. “How about right now?”
* * *
While the dean went to retrieve his keys, Brooke paced around the office. “I can’t believe he said yes.”
Victor smiled. “Frankly, I can’t either. I was prepared for more of a fight.”
She laughed. “Thank you,” she said, putting her hand on his arm and feeling the hard strength there that made her fingertips tingle. “I truly appreciate it. You don’t have to go with me. I’ll pay you for your time.”
He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not a matter of money.”
She saw the anger in his eyes, deep down, nestled like a live thing. Could he see the hurt in hers? she wondered. The grief that was kindled when her father was stripped of his job and his dignity? She moved away. “Of course. I understand. This isn’t about the painting for you.” His eyes followed her and she felt suddenly nervous. She began to prowl around, scanning the pictures on the wall. One caught her eye, a photo of a much younger Jeffrey Lock in a tuxedo and tails, smiling in front of a baby grand piano.
“He’s a musician?”
“Used to be,” Lock said from the doorway, startling her. “Before rheumatoid arthritis took that away from me. Can’t even play a scale now. It pains me to even try. I keep that piano around to torture myself with what could have been.” Lock was smiling, but there was a pained look in his eyes. “Your father and I used to joke about how our bodies betrayed us.”
Brooke hadn’t known her father had shared the deeply personal struggle with his own disease, a syndrome called FXTAS, with anyone except immediate family. While she struggled to think of something to say, he handed her a hard hat and another to Victor.
“The access point we’ll be using is in the basement of the women’s dorm. It’s empty right now in preparation for the remodel, so we shouldn’t have any interruptions.”
They followed the dean out into the chilly air, and Victor sent a text as they walked. Brooke was struck again at how lovely the campus was, a series of stately buildings sprinkled over the hills, shrouded in fog that rolled in off the San Francisco Bay. From the highest building, she imagined, a person would have a panoramic view of the entire bay and across the water to the cities of Hayward, Oakland and the infamous hippie town of Berkeley.
“The students have been relocated to our satellite campuses.” Lock gestured to the tall building in the distance. “Really there are only a few professors left here, tidying up, and a security detail to keep people out.”
“When do the renovations begin?” Victor asked.
“Officially in two weeks.” The dean shot a look at the red brick building, rising in a series of peaked gables partially hidden by a cluster of trees. “That’s the girls’—” he shook his head “—sorry, women’s dormitory. Empty now, and next to it is the library.”
She followed him past the graceful columns. The Gage Library. Victor’s family really did live in a different stratosphere. Her skin prickled with goose bumps. It was so empty, so silent. The grassy area that should have been sprinkled with students nursing coffees and cramming for tests was deserted and eerily still. She felt a deep longing for the college life that she’d given up after only one semester. After losing her dance career to a knee injury, she’d tried for years to rehab before finally admitting defeat. It seemed like a lifetime before she’d returned to college, but the decision to leave had been easy. There had been no choice with her father being investigated by the police, the press shadowing his every move.
And Tuney.
The man had broken into her hotel room.
He would not stop until her father was disgraced.
She shot a look at Victor, who would also not let go until the truth was revealed.
He must have felt her gaze on him because he turned to look at her, eyes dark in the gloomy morning. He looked completely calm, handsome, self-assured as if he might be a professor strolling the campus on his way to teach a physics class. Hard to fathom that the day before he’d been wire taut, impassioned as he worked to bring the dark-haired lady back to life.
The memory of her lying there, dying, stabbed at Brooke.
She shivered, and Victor took off his jacket and draped it over her, fingers caressing her shoulders as he did. The gesture startled her.
She started to decline but he did not give her the chance, merely strolled forward to ask the dean a question. The jacket smelled of leather and a subtle musky aftershave. In spite of herself she snuggled deeper into the supple material.
Removing a heavy key ring from his pocket, Lock unlocked the front door and they entered an empty room with windows that looked out on the grassy hill and a small patio. Again she fought a feeling of unease. So empty, as if the building was a mother who had lost all of her children to some terrible accident.
Stop it, Brooke. No time for your ridiculous imagination.
“Sad, really,” Lock said, his voice loud in the hushed space. “This building has stood largely untouched since the thirties.”
The clusters of worn, upholstered chairs were pulled into odd groups and the wooden floor was nicked and scarred by the countless students who had paraded through over the years. A fireplace, blackened inside, crowded one wall.
A few minutes later they were entering a narrow stairwell and descended three flights until they emerged in a cavernous space, dark and smelling of mold. The dean flipped on a light that flickered to life, revealing an empty basement with a set of metal doors at the far end.
He ignored a tiny panel near the door.
“Alarm?” Victor said.
“It’s not activated now so the workmen can have free access, but usually the administration takes great pains to ensure no one has access to the tunnel system. You wouldn’t believe how much trouble college kids can get into,” Lock said.
Victor chuckled. “Yes, I would.”
Lock gave him an amused glance. “Your father was amazed that you made it through medical school. He couldn’t figure out how someone with a genius IQ could get into so many scrapes.”
“My father was kicked out of three colleges before he struck out on his own, so he has little room to talk,” Victor said.
Brooke heard the warmth in Victor’s voice when he spoke of his father, a sharp contrast to his coolness and efficiency. They had that in common anyway. The doors groaned open, exhaling a waft of cold air.
“Pipes here are disconnected?” Victor said.
“Yes. Otherwise we’d be walking into a sauna right now.” Lock put on his hard hat, and Brooke and Victor followed suit.
Brooke tried to give Victor back his jacket, but he refused.
“I’ve got more body mass to keep me warm,” he murmured in her ear, sending tickles up and down her spine as they moved forward.
If it weren’t for the meager light provided by a rickety setup of overhead lightbulbs, the darkness would have swallowed them up completely. The tunnel was damp, the walls clammy with moisture. Along either side of the tunnel were long webs of jointed pipes, heavy with rust. The space was so narrow the three of them had to crowd together, and Victor’s height left a scant few inches between his head and the light fixtures. Grit scraped under their feet as they shuffled along.
“You see what I mean?” Lock said. “This is the last place anyone would come to hide a painting, especially a valuable one. The conditions in here would destroy a piece immediately.”
Brooke felt her heart sink. He was right. Colda would never have risked concealing a Tarkenton in the tunnel. Humidity? Rodents? Water? Any one of them would ruin an oil painting. No one who knew the Tarkenton’s value would risk those dangers. It was inconceivable, like throwing the crown jewels into the ocean.
Victor looked around, keeping his head bent to avoid cracking into the pipes around him. He glanced at Brooke as if trying to read her thoughts. She wondered what was going through his mind. If her search ended, he might lose the chance to find out if there was any connection between the missing painting and his wife’s death. There wasn’t, she was sure, but for some reason having him there was comforting in spite of his distrust of her father.
“Does this tunnel lead to any others?” Victor asked.
The dean pushed on. “You’ll have your answer in a few minutes.”
They pressed on, and the chill seemed to leach out from the pipes into Brooke’s spine. Her hands were cold, skin goose-pimpled. Unless the conditions changed significantly, there was no possibility that the painting was housed in the damp tunnels.
Her hard hat clanked against an elbow of pipe that jutted into the space. The farther they pressed into the chilled darkness, the more on edge she became. “How much farther?” she asked.
Lock stopped. “This is what I wanted you to see.” He pointed a gnarled finger ahead and eased back so Victor and Brooke could move closer.
Brooke found herself staring through an old rusted metal grate. She pressed a hand to the iron mesh. Beyond was a ruinous pile of twisted pipes and jagged blocks of concrete. It was completely impassable. The floor was obscured under several inches of murky water.
“Take a look at the padlock,” the dean said.
Victor fingered the heavy rusted piece. “Hasn’t been opened for a long time.”
“Since five years ago when the tunnel collapsed. Wouldn’t be any point in going in there anyway.”
Brooke suppressed a groan. She’d been so sure that the tunnels held the answers. Proof that the Tarkenton was real, that her father had found a treasure that would obliterate his rocky past and provide a secure future for her brother. In her mind it was a tunnel of light, of hope.
Ahead she saw only ruin.
Victor put a hand on hers, fingers warm against her cold skin. “We should go now.”
She nodded, unable to trust her voice.
Dean Lock squeezed past her. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Ms. Ramsey. It really would be incredible to think there was a buried treasure here, but as you can see it’s just not possible.”
The pity in his tone was worse than the disappointment stabbing through her. “Thank you anyway,” she forced herself to say. Chilled and numb with discouragement, she followed him on the way out.
Victor fell in behind her. “I’m…sorry,” he said.
Sorry that her father wouldn’t get a second chance? Or sorry that Victor had lost the chance to prove her father was a criminal like he’d always suspected? She did not want to find comfort in his large palm pressed to her back, but nonetheless she did. Must be the impenetrable darkness that made her feel so weak.
She willed her legs to move faster, to get out of that dank place so she could think, but she had no time to do so.
There was an audible snap.
Without warning the lights went out.
FIVE
“W
hat…?” Dean Lock began.
The sudden blackout disoriented Victor. “Stay still,” he said. “We don’t want anyone falling.”
“Must be a power failure,” Lock said. “I know the way out. I’ll go get a flashlight.”
“No,” Victor repeated. A fall in these conditions was inevitable. He eased forward and found Brooke, looping his arm around her, ignoring the way she fit nicely against him. She was not trembling, and her voice was steady when she spoke.