“Wait,” she said, before he could pick up his phone. “They’ll just take the map into evidence, and we’ll never see it again.”
“Nell,” Swann began.
“This is the last thing my father worked on. The thing that ruined my life, and that he kept for years after, for some inexplicable reason. I can’t just let it go like that, without knowing why.”
The old man hesitated. “I understand, I do. But I really think . . .”
“Just for a little bit,” she begged. “Just give me a little time to see if I can figure out what’s going on. If I can’t, we’ll go right to Lieutenant Cabe. I promise.”
Swann glanced at the phone, then back at her, chewing on his lip.
“Please, Swann,” she said. “I ran into Irene out there. I let slip that I knew about the library’s financial situation, and she told me she thought my father might have been obsessively working on something just before he died. Something she hoped could save the library. Maybe it was this.”
“What?” Swann choked. “I can’t even imagine—”
“It has to be this map,” she insisted. “It all adds up. The big fight, all those years ago. Then the secrecy—he didn’t even tell you he still had it. And the robbery last night. And maybe, even . . .” Suddenly, it was much more real to entertain this theory than it had been before. “What if he didn’t die of natural causes?”
Nell watched Swann try to reject what she’d just said, but she could tell from his expression he was finding the idea hard to dismiss completely.
She pushed on, encouraged. “I just . . . I want to try to make things right. This is my only chance. At the very least, it might help me understand him, since I clearly didn’t before. And if I also could help the library . . .” She hesitated, almost too nervous to say the words out loud. “Maybe Irene would even consider overturning my old file. Wouldn’t that be worth it?”
Swann frowned, but Nell could see the hope flare in his old eyes at the idea. “But even if this map could be what Irene’s after . . .” He paused. “The danger, Nell. I don’t want you to do this on your own.”
She leaned closer, desperate. “I have to. It’s my only chance.”
Swann looked down at his wrinkled knuckles. “What’s the purpose of a map?” he asked softly.
Nell sighed. She knew the question well. Her father used to ask it all the time when she was too caught up in the academic minutiae of a specimen, to the point of accidentally offending other researchers she was supposed to be cooperating with as she forced a project off course to follow her own vision. The answer was “to bring people together,” but the older she’d gotten, she’d found his saying more and more odd, considering that he could never learn his own lesson. After a while, she’d begun to suspect that perhaps it was really her mother’s old saying, and he’d adopted it more as a way to remember her than to actually abide by the words’ advice.
“I know, I know,” Swann said, seeing her exasperated expression. “But he was right, even if he could never put it into practice himself. I just want you to be careful. To do this for the right reason.” He looked at her. “This place isn’t everything.”
Nell managed a smile. He would never understand. “It’s not everything.”
It was more than everything.
Swann stared at her for a long moment. Finally, he sighed, surrendering. “All right. I’ll get started on the job part—if anyone can convince Irene to set aside your record and hire you again, it’s me. You get to work figuring out what on earth your father might have been doing with this map after so long.”
Nell reached over the desk and squeezed his hand gratefully. “Thank you, Swann. You’re the best.”