Cordelia “the museum curator”'s Arc

Chapter 9 of 12

Cordelia sat at her office desk with two black frames in front of her. Each frame carried a small plaque etched with the name Frederick Vale. She had pulled them from the basement crates the night before. Now she fit the carousel painting into the first frame and the attic portrait into the second. Two down. A whole list to go. She had promised Isolde an exhibition, and she had no idea where the rest of the paintings were. She leaned back and looked at the list beside her. The paper was soft at the edges from handling. Titles and dates. No owners. No cities. No leads. Her file cabinet in the corner held every provenance record she had ever written, and none of them named Vale. She had spent the morning pulling drawers and finding nothing. Without a first thread, the exhibition was a promise she could not keep. A cold pressed the back of her neck. Cordelia turned. Isolde stood in the doorway, thin as smoke, the stuffed horse clutched to her chest. Her sunken eyes fixed on Cordelia. She did not speak. She drifted back into the hall. Cordelia followed. Isolde led her past the tapestry wing and into the curio room, where bell jars and small cases lined the shelves. Cordelia had walked this room a hundred times. Isolde crossed to a low shelf near the back and stopped at a glass dome she had priced and catalogued years ago: a black onyx carousel horse under an ornate bell jar. Isolde lifted one transparent hand and let it hover against the glass. The dome fogged where her fingers passed. "I already have this one on the books," Cordelia said. "It came in an estate lot." Isolde did not answer. She only kept her hand near the base. Cordelia knelt. She lifted the jar and set it aside. The onyx horse sat on a small wooden plinth. She tilted the plinth toward the light. Etched into the underside, in thin careful script, were two lines. From Robert Kasey. And a date: 1911. Cordelia sat back on her heels. Robert Kasey. The name meant nothing to her. But it was a name, and it was tied to a carousel horse, and it had come from someone who had once owned this piece and cared enough to sign the wood. She carried the plinth back to her office and set it beside the list. She opened the file cabinet and began pulling every estate lot record she had. By midnight she had it: a shipping receipt from an auction house, Kasey estate, forty years ago. An address. A city. A place to write to in the morning. She had her first thread. The exhibition had somewhere to begin.