Acts of Faith by Jessica Starre

Author:Jessica Starre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, suspense
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2012-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art was a three-story structure made of granite and glass. It resembled a parking garage with windows, and Grant made a point of not venturing an aesthetic opinion on it.

He walked into the building with Emma, and paid the entrance fee for both of them. Apparently that was the limit of the assistance he intended to offer, because he let himself get sidetracked on the first floor by some Van Goghs. She hoped his hands-off approach wouldn’t end as badly as it had last time. She was pretty sure if he’d accompanied her up to Linda’s apartment, she wouldn’t have been shot. Although Linda would still be dead.

The brochure the ticket-taker gave her showed a floor plan of the museum. Emma saw that the administrative offices were on the third floor. That seemed a logical place to start. Leaving Grant to his pondering, she found the main staircase, which could easily have been mistaken for one of the freestanding abstract sculptures showcased in the museum, and went up to visit the third floor.

The unique staircase gave onto a tan-carpeted hall that looked like the interior of every institutional building she’d ever been in. A series of closed doors lined the walls on both sides. No one else was in the hallway. She started walking, glancing at the brass plates screwed to the wall by each door, naming the job title of the person who worked there, though not his or her name. Spotting the one marked “Director,” she stopped and knocked.

When there was no answer, she pushed open the unlocked door and peeked her head in. An outer office, obviously a reception area, was empty but beyond the unoccupied desk was another door, presumably the inner sanctum of the director. She stepped over the threshold into the outer office. No one rushed forward to stop her progress. Budget cuts, probably. Before the economy fell to pieces, undoubtedly an efficient, if not officious, aide, would have mediated between the director and the unwashed masses.

Or maybe the efficient aide was at lunch. Emma skirted the empty desk and tapped on the inner door. She heard a sound of frustration from behind the door, followed by a lengthy pause. The director was in there — or someone was — and she wasn’t going to be put off by someone pretending he or she couldn’t hear her.

She knocked again, more firmly this time, communicating her intention of not leaving. After a moment, the door creaked inward. A portly old gentleman glared at her, breathing heavily through his nose, looking as if he should be in charge of a Victorian-era bank in London and not a museum of modern art in LA. But then looks were deceiving, or so they said. He shifted his glare to the empty reception desk, then brought his glare back to her.

“Do you have an appointment?” he asked, his sparse eyebrows snapping together.

“No,” she said. Years of dealing with temperamental bosses made her add “sir” without thinking.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.