Homeport

with a San Francisco area code.
    Ryan dialed the West Coast number and was told by a recording the number had been disconnected.
    Well, he thought, a trip to California would give him a chance to see his brother Michael.
     
    “Harrison Mathers.”
    With the most recent plans for the exhibit still crowded in her head, Miranda frowned at Ryan. “Yes?”
    “Harrison Mathers,” he repeated. “Tell me about him.”
    She slipped out of her jacket, hung it in the foyer closet. “Do I know a Harrison Mathers?”
    “He was a student of yours a few years ago.”
    “You’ll have to give me more than a name, Ryan. I’ve had hundreds of students.”
    “You taught him a course on Renaissance bronzes three years ago. He got an Incomplete.”
    “An Incomplete?” She struggled to reorder her thoughts. “Harry.” It came back to her with both pleasure and regret. “Yes, he took that course. He’d been studying at the Institute for several years, I think. He was talented, very bright. He started out with me very well, both in papers and in sketching.”
    She circled her neck as she walked into the parlor. “I remember he started to miss class, or come in looking as if he’d been up all night. He was distracted, his work suffered.”
    “Drugs?”

    “I don’t know. Drugs, family problems, a girl.” She moved her shoulders dismissively. “He was only nineteen or twenty, it could have been a dozen things. I did talk to him, warn him that he needed to concentrate on his work. It improved, but not a great deal. Then he stopped coming in, just before the end of the course. He never turned in his final project.”
    “He had one cast. At the Pine State Foundry the second week in May. A bronze figure.”
    She stared, then lowered herself into a chair. “Are you trying to tell me he’s involved in this?”
    “I’m telling you he had a figure cast, a figure of David with sling. A project he never turned in. He was there while the David was being tested, and he dropped out shortly after. Was he ever in the lab?”
    The sick and uneasy rolling was back in her stomach. She remembered Harry Mathers. Not well, not clearly, but well enough for it to hurt. “The entire class would have been taken through the lab. Any student is taken through the labs, restoration, research. It’s part of the program.”
    “Who’d he hang with?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t get involved in my students’ personal lives. I only remember him as clearly as I do because he had genuine talent and he seemed to waste it at the end.”
    She felt the beginnings of a headache creep in behind her eyes. Oddly enough, for hours that day she’d forgotten everything but the exhibit—the thrill of the planning. “Ryan, he was a boy. He couldn’t have been behind a forgery like this.”
    “When I was twenty I stole a thirteenth-century Madonna mosaic from a private collection in Westchester, then went out and had pizza with Alice Mary Grimaldi.”
    “How can you possibly brag about something like that?”
    “I’m not bragging, Miranda. I’m stating a fact, and pointing out that age has nothing to do with certain types of behavior. Now if I wanted to brag, I’d tell you about the T’ang horse I stole from the Met a few years back. But I won’t,” he added. “Because it upsets you.”

    She only stared at him. “Is that your way of trying to lighten the mood?”
    “Didn’t work, did it?” And because she suddenly looked so tired, he walked over to take the bottle of white wine he’d already opened, and poured her a glass. “Try this instead.”
    Instead of drinking, she passed the glass from hand to hand. “How did you find out about Harry?”
    “Just basic research, a short field trip.” The unhappy look that came into her eyes distracted him. He sat on the arm of the chair and began to rub her neck and shoulders. “I’ve got to go out of town for a few days.”
    “What? Where?”
    “New York. There are some details I have to deal with, several of which involve the transport of the pieces for this exhibit. I also need to go out to San Francisco and find your young Harry.”
    “He’s in San Francisco?”
    “According to his mama, but his phone’s been disconnected.”
    “You found all this out today?”
    “You’ve got your work, I’ve got mine. How’s yours coming?”
    She ran her hands nervously through her hair. Those thief’s fingers were magic and were loosening muscles she hadn’t realized were knotted.