Free The Thanksgiving Day Murder by Lee Harris Page B

the Saturday crowd. The people were nearly as interesting as the paintings. Some kept up a running commentary, some stared in silence, some moved toward and away from a particular painting as though focusing a preset camera lens, waiting for the image to become clear by changing the distance. A woman nursed a baby on a bench, a man with a beard narrowed his eyes and cocked his head, a father directed his daughter how to look at a canvas and what to look for while the wife and mother moved away from them at her own pace. I heard Spanish and French and something that may have been Russian.
    Finally we went back downstairs and found our way to the Egyptian wing.
    “This where they met?” Jack asked.
    “Somewhere around here.”
    “Shall I move away and see if you can re-create history?”
    “No, thank you.”
    “Sometimes I feel guilty that I deprived you of becoming part of the New York singles scene by preempting you.”
    “I’m not sure I would have survived it.”
    “Got something against one-night stands?”
    “Lots.”
    It was a nice place to spend a Sunday afternoon, or a Saturday. I had read about the Egyptian buildings being moved, stone by stone, from their place of origin to be reassembled in this new home. I felt good that these antiquities had found a congenial home where they would be taken care of with the love and appreciation they deserved.
    I moved to the side to watch the people rather than the exhibit. You could almost pick out the hopefuls at firstglance, young women and not so young women in ones and twos, the twos sometimes together, sometimes separating, women dressed almost deliberately casually, their clothes a carefully thought out statement. They touched their hair frequently, moving toward single men with a practiced subtlety they must have been sure passed for chance. I watched one woman initiate a conversation with a bearded man who seemed less than interested. After a perfunctory smile, he moved away and she stayed, her eyes fixed on the Egyptian antiquity, looking for all the world like Natalie Miller. A few minutes later she turned and left the room.
    “Maybe she should take up skiing,” Jack said.
    “Doesn’t anyone do anything for the sake of the thing?”
    “Sure. You and me.”
    “What a way to live.”
    —
    We drove through Central Park to the west side of Manhattan and Jack zigged and zagged his way south so that we were able to enter Sixty-fourth from Broadway. Jack pulled over to the side and double-parked. “Want to look around?”
    “Come with me?”
    “Sure.”
    He put a plastic-covered police marker plate in the window, made sure the cars at the curb could get out, and joined me on the sidewalk. “You think she lived in one of these buildings?”
    “Either that or she lived on Sixty-fourth farther west, toward the river. Why else would we have met her on that corner?” I nodded toward the corner of Central Park West.
    “So you could have the pleasure of seeing the Statue of Liberty.”
    “I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “Any idea how you’re going to move on this?”
    “I think I’ll have to start where my father worked. It wasa place in downtown Manhattan. And I want to look through the stuff my aunt has in our basement.”
    “I’ve been afraid to ask you what’s down there.”
    I wasn’t surprised. The basement was an accumulation of a lifetime or two of acquisitions, my aunt’s and my mother’s. When my mother died and the house was sold, Aunt Meg took whatever was left and put it in her basement, assuming I would want those things at some point. It seemed the point was now.
    “There are probably things my mother couldn’t throw away, and I hope to find some photo albums down there. I promise I’ll throw out everything I can.”
    “I’m not pushing.”
    “But it would be nice to have an emptier basement.”
    We had reached the corner of Central Park West, the Ethical Culture Society on the south corner. I remembered people lining the