Nell gaped. It had been years, but she easily recognized her. “Ms. Pérez Montilla,” she finally managed. The chair of the board of the entire New York Public Library.
“Nell, call me Irene,” she said as she approached. “I can vouch for her. Until yesterday, she hasn’t been back to the library in many years—to our great misfortune.”
“Thank you, Irene,” Nell finally managed, as Lieutenant Cabe noted Irene’s statement in his notepad. Nell wondered if the years had been so long, Irene had forgotten she was the reason for the misfortune—she was the one who had fired Nell, after all. Even if she hadn’t had much of a choice, either.
“I’m very sorry about your father,” Irene was saying to her, as if reading her expression. “He was a great man, his complicated history aside.”
“Yes. Complicated,” Nell agreed.
“Our captain would like a word, when you have a minute,” Lieutenant Cabe said to Irene, and then went to help push back the crowd of reporters at the door.
“Another interview.” Irene sighed. She was still as composed as ever, but Nell could sense a flicker of strain beneath the steely veneer. “With Dr. Young’s passing yesterday, and now the breakin last night, the media has whipped itself into a frenzy. There’s never a right time for tragedy, but this truly is a terrible blow to the library.”
“Swann told me yesterday how much trouble the city’s been causing with the revised budget,” Nell said. “He said it’s worse than ever.”
Irene shook her head. “It is. And now with this, I’m afraid we might be in danger of losing the bumper funding we’d been promised altogether.”
“That’s terrible!” Nell cried. “What would that mean for the library?”
“I don’t want to speculate, and I’m not going to give up.” Irene grimaced. “But without it, I’m not sure we could . . .”
“That can’t happen,” Nell replied. “The NYPL is a cultural institution. The heart of the city.”
“I agree. But this main branch, with all its galleries, right on Fifth Avenue . . .”
“There has to be something,” Nell said.
“I’d hoped,” Irene sighed. She looked haunted. “I actually think your father, rest in peace, was working on some kind of secret project before he passed. He kept requesting funding and wouldn’t disclose the purpose, and was skipping our monthly meetings. I let it go on, because half the board assured me that whenever he got like that, it was because he was on the verge of a huge breakthrough. I thought we were going to see the fruits of it any day. Increased publicity from the press announcing our discovery, increased memberships, a windfall from being able to loan the item out on temporary exhibits—the kind of prestige and buzz that would leave the city no choice but to honor its original budgetary promises. But then . . .” She sighed. “I only wish he’d told someone about what he was working on.”
Nell swallowed hard and tried not to cower. Before, when she’d been an intern, she’d been able to bluff her way through project updates, argue her case to senior researchers, even step in and take a meeting for one of her superiors who was late on a paper to shield them from the chastisement. Now, it was hard to even look Irene in the eye. Had her confidence really been so shaken seven years ago that anything related to maps still turned her into a mouse?
“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I wish I knew. We really didn’t speak again after I left the library.”
“Oh no, it’s me who’s sorry,” Irene replied quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that. I shouldn’t have said anything at all. You just lost your father, and I’m complaining about business. Forgive me.”
Nell tried to smile. In the back of her mind, the gears were already turning. A secret project. She thought of the portfolio, and what she’d found inside.