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Now, though, she was looking for something different.

The bracelet couldn’t actually be his , as Colette had suggested.

Colette had placed its worth at hundreds of thousands of dollars, and knowing that he had raised a daughter by himself, she couldn’t imagine he had saved enough to buy it on his museum salary.

So what possibilities did that leave? Could the bracelet belong to someone in Lucas’s family?

She puzzled that over for a moment as she pulled up a LexisNexis search through her law firm’s account.

She found a few articles that seemed to match, including a decades-old paragraph in the Patriot Ledger listing him as the valedictorian of his graduating class at Pembroke South High School, and noting that he was the grandson of a well-known South Shore contractor.

Could the construction business have been lucrative enough that Lucas’s grandfather had been the one to purchase the bracelet, maybe for his wife, years ago?

Could it have been passed along to Lucas when his grandparents had passed away?

Or perhaps Aviva was looking at the wrong branch of his family.

Marty had mentioned that Lucas was widowed; could it be that his defensiveness over the bracelet wasn’t because he was hiding something, but because it was connected to his deceased wife’s family?

Certainly that would make a person feel guarded, wouldn’t it?

She searched for Lucas’s name in the Globe ’s wedding announcements and felt a bit guilty when she found him. He had married a woman named Vanessa Verdier twenty years before in a ceremony at the Peabody Country Club.

Verdier. It was a French name. Could his wife’s family have come from France, bringing the bracelet with them? Aviva leaned forward, her gut telling her she was on the right track.

Another search found an obituary for Vanessa Verdier O’Mara, who had died four years earlier of ovarian cancer, leaving behind her husband, Lucas, and their daughter, Millie.

Aviva felt a surge of sadness as she recalled how it had felt to lose her own mother; she wasn’t sure how old Millie had been when Vanessa died, but losing one’s mother was devastating at any age.

The obituary said that Vanessa had been predeceased by her parents, Jean-Paul and Carole Verdier, and her grandmother, Odile Verdier, but that her grandfather, Hubert Verdier, was still alive.

A quick search found an article about Hubert Verdier from just two months ago in the Patriot Ledger , a fluff piece about South Shore centenarians.

Verdier, it seemed, was residing in an assisted-living home in Braintree and had just turned 102—and in the article, the writer called him “an immigrant from Paris who arrived in the Boston area just after the Second World War.”

Aviva stared at the screen. Was this her answer? Could Hubert Verdier—the grandfather of Lucas O’Mara’s dead wife—have brought the bracelet from France to the United States? And if so, had he also been involved in taking it, along with Colette’s sister?

Before she could stop herself, she picked up her phone and dialed Lucas’s number. “Hi, it’s Aviva from the Boston Center for Holocaust Education,” she said when he answered, her words falling out in a tumble.

“Hello, Aviva from the Boston Center for Holocaust Education.” Lucas’s deep voice sounded amused. “Have you called with more hard-hitting questions about blood diamonds?”

She cleared her throat. “Actually, I’m hoping that the question I have will be easy for you. It’s just that, well, I’m afraid I might be crossing a line.”

“Is that so?” He sounded guarded now.

“Look, I’m going to be honest with you,” she said. “I have a personal interest in the bracelet—the one we talked about in your exhibit—because I have reason to believe it was stolen during the Holocaust.”

“What?” His tone sounded both defensive and confused. “But that can’t be true.”

“I’m afraid it is.” When he said no more, she took a deep breath and blurted out, “It belongs to your wife’s grandfather, doesn’t it? Hubert Verdier?”

He didn’t speak for so long that she was afraid he’d hung up.

“Lucas?” she prompted.

“You looked up my family?” He sounded angry.

She felt a surge of guilt. “I just did a search of old newspaper articles—and I found the one about South Shore centenarians. It said that your wife’s grandfather had come from Paris, and that he’s one hundred and two years old now, which would have made him twenty-six years old the summer the bracelet was stolen. ”

“You’re not accusing Hubert of stealing the bracelet, are you?” he asked finally, his tone defensive. “He’s had it for as long as I’ve known him. I’m sure he didn’t take it from anyone. He’s not that kind of man.”

“Of course,” Aviva said instantly, her heart suddenly racing. “But if he bought it from someone before he left France, perhaps he can give us a lead that will help track its provenance…”

“As you so astutely pointed out, Aviva, he’s one hundred and two. I doubt very much that he’s going to be able to remember where he purchased a bracelet seventy years ago.”

“Anything would help. Please. It’s vital we find out.”

She could hear him breathing.

“Lucas, you work with jewels,” she said when the quiet had gone on too long.

“You understand how much they can mean to people. The bracelet in your exhibit once belonged to a Jewish family in Paris. It was taken from them by the German who sent them away to their deaths—and then it disappeared.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it would do.

“I’m just trying to find some answers.” She held her breath.

“Please, I’d really like to speak with him. ”

“Look, Aviva, the story you’re telling is tragic, and I’m very sorry to hear it—I really am.

My own grandparents lived through the Second World War, too, and I know how painful those memories are.

But Hubert has had two heart attacks in the last year.

I understand that it’s important to you to get some answers, but I can’t agree to that at the risk of his health. ”

“Please. This is just a chat to see what he knows. It’s very important to Colette.”

“The woman you brought to the opening?”

“The people the bracelet was stolen from were friends of her family.” She bit her lip. Again, it wasn’t the full story, but it wasn’t as if she could casually tell him that she suspected Hubert Verdier of murder.

Lucas went silent again. “Just a conversation?” he said finally.

“Just a conversation.”

“Fine, but only if I go with you.”

“You don’t need to do that. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”

“Aviva, you seem like a nice person, but Hubert isn’t in the best of health, and I’m concerned about him getting agitated. I think he’ll be more relaxed if I’m there. In any case, it’s the only way I’ll agree to this.”

“Right, of course.” Though it might be harder to ask Verdier tough questions in front of Lucas, perhaps it would also make the older man comfortable enough to be honest.

Lucas exhaled. “Look, if the bracelet was stolen, and Hubert knows something, I agree that you and your friend Colette deserve to know. Just go easy on him, okay?”

“I promise. Thank you.” But as Aviva hung up after arranging to meet Lucas in a few hours at Verdier’s assisted-living home, she wondered if that promise would be impossible to keep.

If Hubert Verdier was somehow involved in the death of Colette’s sister, he had given up his right to be left in peace a long time ago.