“Can you scare up some twine or rope?”
Another nod and Calliope opened the junk drawer, nudged aside the broken disposable cell phone and a tape measure, and retrieved a spool of packing twine. Tox secured the two men as the wail of sirens sounded in the distance. After some convincing, Coco released her captive and Tox hogtied him as well. The police announced themselves and Tox waved them in just as the oven timer sounded with a bing.
Once they had explained what had happened and the police had taken their statements and hauled the three intruders away, Calliope went to Tox and wrapped her arms around his waist. Tox returned the embrace. Neither spoke. They simply stood in the middle of her kitchen in the circle of each other’s arms, Tox’s chin on her head, her cheek on his chest. Finally, Calliope spoke.
“How’d you get here so fast?”
“Forgot my wallet.” He nodded to his jacket hanging over a chair.
“Thank God.”
“I didn’t get your nutmeg.” As he intended, Calliope laughed.
“They wanted my old phone, but it got lost when I ran from those jerks the first time. Why would they even want it?” Calliope thought for a moment about her life, her family. Was something more going on here? She dismissed the thought as quickly as she had entertained it.
She set about straightening the mess in her kitchen. She picked up the plastic tube. Just as she was about to finally toss it in the recycle bin, something caught her eye.
“Hey, Tox?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s something in this tube.”
She held up the cylinder, and Tox saw what she meant. The edge of a paper was just peeking out.
“That creep must have jarred it loose when he banged it on the table.”
Tox fought back the rage he felt at the thought of someone threatening Calliope and reached out, running his finger along the edge of the paper.
“Let’s take it in the dining room and see what we’ve got.”
Calliope started to follow him out of the kitchen, but Tox remained where he was.
“Don’t forget our treat.”
Calliope gave him an exasperated eye roll and quickly put the sugar and water in the pan to do their thing. Moments later she added an orange rind and a touch of cinnamon, then poured the syrup over the baked custard. Tox deftly moved around her and grabbed plates and forks, correctly guessing the cabinet and drawer where they were stored.
In the dining room, Calliope set the galaktoboureko on the table, the cylinder next to the pan, and cut a small slice. Tox forked the portion, before she could transfer it to the plate, and ate the entire square. He chewed and swallowed. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, then he cupped her face in his big hands and kissed her. “That tastes like heaven.”
He could have been referring to the dessert or the kiss.
She didn’t reply, but he noticed her blush as she set about cutting him a square the size of his plate, then reaching for the plastic tube. It was a true testament to his curiosity that he forewent another bite to watch her extract the contents.
“It’s attached to the inside.”
Tox took the tube and examined it. “Some sort of temporary adhesive.” He carefully detached the paper. Papers, actually. He unrolled the two pages of very old, very fragile drawing paper, each a little larger than a standard sheet of printer paper. He set them side by side on the dining table and carefully weighted the edges with candlesticks.
“Huh.”
Tox forked and ate bite after bite of their dessert as he examined their discovery. They weren’t “doodles,” per se. Tox thought they looked more like practice. As if an art teacher asked a student to draw an elephant and the kid tried a couple of times on scrap paper before actually turning it in. Strangely, both sketches were almost identical. Each section of the paper had different things drawn: in the lower-left corner, which had been badly damaged on both pages, there were ship masts. Churning smokestacks were drawn in the bottom center. Above the ships, a dancing couple. In the lower right was what looked to be the beginning of an orchestra pit; the top of a harp and the head of a musician peeking out. Tox imagined the artist had been about to paint a scene from a fancy party or a royal visit, and this was what he or she had sketched on. He liked the drawings; he liked their potential: the fact that they were incomplete but hinted at something wonderful. Still, he acknowledged, even if Da Vinci himself had drawn these, they wouldn’t be worth much. The charcoal had smeared, one was torn and the other looked like something had spilled along the bottom.
“What do you make of them?” Tox asked.
“They’re pretty beat up, but so cool. It’s like getting a peek into an artist’s mind. All these scattered thoughts…”
“They have to be important. I mean, someone went to a lot of trouble to conceal them.”
“There was another painting in there, a cheap replica according to Phipps,” Calliope added.