Chapter Five: The Museum
The grounds of the Temperance Museum of History spread wide and tidy, walking distance from most of Temperance's tourist hotspots. The Compass jutted regally above the rest of the skyline across the bay, beyond the clusters of sailboats, yachts, and whale watching tours at the docks.
They wouldn't have a formal guest list, but they would have a donors list and that was a good enough lead for Baz.
The trick in walking up to the information desk was the same trick as walking into Rei Collingwood's apartment. He belonged. He had a reason to be there. There was no reason to be suspicious of him. Him? In jeans and a sweater over a collared shirt? Harmless and scholarly.
Hopefully.
He drummed his fingers on the information desk, the woman behind it smiling placidly. Baz glanced quickly to her nametag.
"Hi, Tracy. I know the Museum held a fundraiser last night in conjunction with the University. I'm writing up an article on it for the school paper. Would it be possible to get a list of donors to mention in the piece?"
The woman's smile remained unchanged, a practiced expression that didn't waver under the pressure. Her eyes didn't narrow in unease or disbelief. Baz never got tired of the weird paradox of his life where his friends didn't believe the truth and strangers bought into his lies.
"I'm sorry. We don't have a list yet. All donations not made anonymously will be displayed publicly in about a week after the etching is done," she said.
"Etchings?"
Baz followed the woman's gaze the glass installation in the entranceway, one that he'd walked right by.
"Last year's donors are right there. Many higher-level donations are made annually, if you want to try reaching out to them for a statement," Tracy offered.
"Thanks, I'll try that." Baz flashed her a winning smile. He hoped it was a winning smile and not one that communicated anything along the lines of 'one of those people is probably guilty of a crime there's a very high chance I'll be nailed for.'
He let the next person in line have Tracy's attention and slipped around to the front of the frosted glass. The donors came listed in tiers. The many names listed under bronze were well and good for the museum, but not so good for him. It was the gold, the platinum, the diamond donors that struck his interest. Those were the kind of names he was vaguely familiar with, the ones he heard in passing while preparing for a break-in. Names like Delburne and Simmons that he heard at the party.
Names like Angelo Ferrero. Diamond donor, one name on a very short list of donors who contributed more than $25,000 in a calendar year.
Baz snapped a photo on his phone, but jotted down the names that stuck out to him. If he remembered them, there was probably a good reason. It narrowed down the list into something he could feasibly conduct research on.
Of all the things within the Temperance Museum, the names were one of the few things he hadn't spent much time looking at. It had been a long time since he'd come. Paying admission crossed his mind, grappling with the task he had at hand.
"The police have already checked her office."
Baz glanced up at the deep English accent. It was a museum, a tourist destination. It wasn't necessarily the same English accent spoken by the first person that came to mind, except that it was.
"I wasn't suggesting that they hadn't."
That voice briefly made Baz consider bounding straight out of the museum and front flipping right into the bay.
"Then why come, Gwen?"
Gwen clicked briskly ahead of Cheng Collingwood, leaving the modern and contemporary wing. It shouldn't have surprised Baz that the museum would be the first place other people would come looking, too. He just didn't expect to find himself there at the same time.
"Someone should reap the donor benefits," Gwen said. She found Baz's eyes across the atrium, even while she still addressed Cheng. Too late to run. Too late to pretend he hadn't seen her or heard her.
Somehow, it seemed unlikely Gwen would buy his excuses as easily as Tracy at the information desk had. Baz looked down and furiously jotted down names until Gwen decided she would approach him, not the other way around.
"Your father's benefits," Cheng said.
Baz had only heard him talk on two occasions and he was already forming a clear opinion that Cheng was extraordinary at saying the kinds of things that dug under people's skin. The bigger question was whether or not he did it on purpose.
"Don't you have a company to run or something?" Gwen snapped.
Though not quite as commanding without a tuxedo, Cheng was hardly casual even without a dress code. Slacks and a vest were not popular within the line of regular museumgoers buying their tickets. He probably knew Taekwondo too, but he struck Baz as a person who would avoid using it not on principle, but because he didn't want to scuff his shoes. Cheng stopped to glare after Gwen, rubbing the stubble on his chin. Even that wasn't a sign of distress over his missing sister. It was as intentional as the rest of his glossy appearance.
The clack of Gwen's heels finished that argument, and moved very deliberately towards Baz to start another one.
She tilted her head at him, a gesture almost innocent and inquisitive except that it was clearly not.
"Enjoying the glass?" she asked. The quick dart of her glance back at Cheng spoke volumes. Whatever she really wanted to say, she chose not to say it in front of him.
Baz tapped his notebook. "Work."
"Hmmm," she said and Baz was not convinced that she was interested in whatever work he might be doing in front of the etched donor names, "you look like you could use some air."
She turned, stepping out the front door. It wasn't necessary that she pull him out by the wrist. He followed of his own will, despite how little it felt like he had a choice.
The sea breeze hit in an abrupt salt wave.
On her, a pencil skirt threatened to be as sultry as her slitted evening gown of the fundraiser. Her V-neck plunged dangerously low. Baz had never had an office fantasy, but she made him reconsider.
"Where to begin..." Gwen mused, without looking at him. Baz silently made a deal with the universe, promising to let Diego dig his thumbs into his knotted muscles for an eternity in exchange for surviving the conversation he was about to have.
The pain of running into Gwen Ferrero again could've been easily avoided if Rei hadn't gone missing. Baz cursed his luck.
"You vanished," Gwen said.
She wasn't wrong, but could she fathom the lengths he'd gone to vanish? Probably not.
"I don't do well at parties," Baz said. It wasn't a great excuse, but the only other ones he had lined up were the smoking and asthma ones he deemed unusable before anyone even had the chance to ask him what the hell he was doing.
"I can tell."
It stung more than Baz expected. Usually he didn't duck out unannounced. Usually he liked to think he was at least pleasant company. Did Gwen not think so?
"Vanishing is a pretty strong word for it anyway, considering the circumstances," Baz said and immediately regretted it.
At the very least, Gwen floundered for something to say. "What do you know?"
She softened a little, her face taking on a more earnest expression than the sultry, apathetic look Baz was so used to seeing on posters. Baz shrunk too, any defensiveness turning into sympathy. A missing Rei was a problem for him, but a toll for her.
"Everything I know, I read in the news," Baz said.
Gwen sighed, crossing her arms over her chest like closing off her body canceled out any shred of weariness in her exhale.
"Well..." Baz reconsidered, "they argued. Rei and Cheng. I heard them while I was, ah, straightening up."
Gwen's eyebrows shot up. "About what?"
"Work." Baz shrugged. "Private investors funding Rei's digs. Their company."
She pursed her lips, a manicured hand finding his arm. If Gwen hadn't already proved herself handsy, she was sure doing so now, pulling him gently but firmly farther away across the equally manicured grounds.
"That's all?" she asked. Her tone didn't reflect the tight grip she held, nails pressing deeper and deeper. French tips spoke louder than words.
It was much easier to imagine himself alone, slipping around out of sight to piece together the puzzle. It was safer that way, everything about as dangerous as taking photos of names etched into glass.
Baz was a voyeur. He looked into windows. He lurked in the dark. He quietly observed a world he didn't belong in at all. Even in the midst of the one time he got to invent an identity, come up with an excuse to be at an extravagant party, the best he came up with was 'history friend,' someone from the university doing a write-up on the fundraiser.
Gwen was smack in the middle of it, both the lifestyle and the problem.
"Why? What do you know?" Baz dared ask, throwing away his last chance to slip into anonymity. Goodbye, stealth.
Was there anything more conspicuous than a lingerie model clutching his arm? Maybe he could get Beyoncé to slap him. Or Lady Gaga could dress him up entirely in bubbles and make him a back-up dancer at the Super Bowl.
How did he prove himself not guilty of kidnapping while simultaneously not proving himself guilty of burglary?
"More than the police, evidently," Gwen said, "how did you meet Rei?"
"Europe," Baz said, almost too quickly, "I spent some time in France."
"Digging around?" Gwen asked doubtfully.
"Studying art history. If Rei was an astronaut, I would be more like an astronomer," Baz said. It was Gwen's presence that made his heart beat faster, he attempted to convince himself. It wasn't the invention of another life he could've lived, another version of himself where he'd spend long evenings reading Victor Hugo in his mother's native language and visiting art galleries, where his hands weren't callused and solitude came naturally.
It scared him how easily that alter ego came to him, not so different. Still an outsider. Still uneasy outside his realm of particular expertise.
"Basil..." Gwen began.
"Baz," Baz corrected her before he could cringe. Well, one part of the alter ego did not come so easily. Maybe he should've been grateful that she remembered his name at all, in any form.
"Baz..." Gwen repeated, "I know what the police are going to do. They're going to take the obvious direction. They're going to assume that all anyone wants is Collingwood money. They're going to expect a ransom, maybe wait around for it. I don't have that kind of time. They don't know Rei like I do and they're not going to get any closer to knowing her by asking Cheng. I need your help."
She stopped, her iron grip loosening until her fingers only played gently against his shoulder. The expanse of the museum's courtyard and the wide, unobscured stretch across the bay, it was too open for the touch that made Baz's heart take up residence in his throat. The thin ocean breeze slipped Gwen's hair out of place and the loose locks of it made her more human.
It was much harder to deny her while her green eyes beckoned.
"What makes you think that I'll be useful?" Baz asked when his voice finally found its way.
"Because I have a hard time believing that anyone who met Rei in Europe, where she must have been at her absolute Rei-est, wouldn't want to find her," Gwen said, "and people will say things in front of you that they never would in front of me. I guarantee it."
Baz swallowed hard. What was Rei like at her absolute Rei-est? There would definitely be no opportunity to find out as long as she stayed missing.
He also wouldn't be able to find out if he was charged with kidnapping her.
"What do you need?" Baz asked.
Gwen smiled. "I knew you'd come around."
Baz's insides twisted as she pulled her hand away, reaching into her purse for her phone. What a tumultuous path to tread.
"Number?" she asked, poised to type and Baz gave her his phone number, the same one that Jasper used to call him. The idea of those two worlds colliding in his phone contacts almost rose goosebumps on his skin.
"I'll need you tomorrow night. Dress business casual," Gwen said, slipping her eyes away from her phone and back to him. Her hand once again found his shoulder, then continued to slide to the back of his neck.
Baz was suddenly very aware of how close they were, of the mathematically brilliant curve of her pencil skirt around her hips, and of how flat and populated the museum grounds were. She leaned in and Baz froze. Lips grazed his jawline.
"You still haven't earned my forgiveness for abandoning me at the party," Gwen whispered.
Chills ran up his spine as Gwen stepped easily back and away, phone rising to her ear. She left Baz with the sensation that she'd just undressed him and left him to handle it however he wished.
Worse, she left him with the sensation that he wanted her to.