Out of the Picture

by Tracy Gardner

  The sisters were quiet as he worked, glancing at each other. Why would it matter if Caroline was on aspirin?

  “She takes a baby aspirin every day.” He looked up from his tablet at Savanna, then at Skylar and Sydney. “That’s another small yellow pill. Whoever tried to kill Caroline could have easily quadrupled her cardiac med dose over just a couple of days, replacing both those pills with a high-dose digitalis. Who sets up Caroline’s pills? Does she do it herself? Or does Lauren?”

  “I’m not sure,” Savanna said.

  “We need the pill box,” Aidan said. “Better yet, Detective Jordan needs the pill box; I just need a photo of the open pill compartments so I can see what’s in there.”

  Savanna stood. “We’ll go get it right now.”

  They were heading toward the door when Aidan called to Savanna, catching up with them. “Be careful. So many people have the lock code. The pill box could be gone. It might be too late. Oh, here.” He pulled a set of purple latex gloves from his pocket. “Don’t touch it. Use these.”

  “It’s not too late,” Sydney said, taking them. “At least, I hope it isn’t. Our dad changed the lock code yesterday, right after Savanna sent Caroline to the hospital. No one has access now except for Lauren.”

  “And,” Savanna added, “we may be narrowing things down to just a few people. This has something to do with the forgeries, I know it.”

  “Alleged forgeries,” Skylar said.

  “We’ll know soon enough.” Savanna looked up at Aidan. “I’ll send you pictures of the pill box, and we’ll get it to Detective Jordan before we head to Lansing.”

  “Call me later and let me know what you learn at the museum,” Aidan told Savanna.

  Outside in the parking lot, Sydney told them firmly, “You guys need to go. We need to know what’s going on with her artwork, to either factor that in or figure this out another way. I’ll take Skylar’s car and get the pill box.”

  Skylar put a hand on Sydney’s arm. “The only way we’re letting you do that is if you call us from the driveway before you go into the house. I want to hear your voice the whole time you’re there, until you get to the police station.”

  “Wait,” Sydney said, “what about Nolan? When does Travis have to be at his meeting?”

  “He’s got time. I’ll call him now and tell him you’ll still be a bit.”

  Savanna and Skylar hit the expressway after a quick stop to grab the two hard-sided cases from the office.

  Sydney’s call came over the Bluetooth system in Savanna’s car; she and Skylar listened as Syd executed every step of the plan. “I’m on the porch… I’m unlocking the door… I’m walking to the parlor… Hello, are there any dangerous bad guys in here?”

  “Not funny!” Savanna and Skylar both shouted at once.

  “No sense of humor,” Sydney muttered. “Okay… putting the gloves on. Oh boy, I feel like a doctor now. Got the pillbox… Walking out the door… Locking the door… Getting in the car. I’m hanging up now. I’ll take photos from the Carson Village police station parking lot and send them—oh wait, I don’t have Dr. Gallager’s phone number with me. It’s in his file at Fancy Tails. Only Savanna has it.” Syd made Savanna’s name into three drawn out sing-song syllables.

  Savanna rolled her eyes, glancing at Skylar. “Hold on, Skylar will look it up in my phone and send it to you.”

  “That’s a pain,” Sydney said. “Besides, he wants to hear from you. I’ll send them to you.”

  Savanna opened her mouth to argue, but her sister had already hung up. “I always thought she’d get less annoying when she grew up,” she said.

  “Yeah, I always thought you would too.” Skylar grinned at Savanna.

  Savanna pulled up to the security guard booth at the Lansing Museum of Fine Art. She’d bypassed regular visitor parking in favor of the small employee parking lot closest to the side entrance. “I’m a guest of Britt Nash. I think you have my name? Savanna Shepherd,” she told the pretty security officer.

  The woman consulted the screen in front of her and hit a button, speaking to Savanna and Skylar. “All set. Ring the bell at that door”—she pointed—“and a guard will answer. Have a nice day.”

  The yellow-and-white striped parking arm rose up, allowing Savanna’s car through.

  Skylar cocked an eyebrow at her sister. “Ms. Fancy Pants, huh? How do you rate front-row parking? Do they know you here?”

  Savanna laughed. “Their authenticator and I sometimes crossed paths in Chicago at events. When I told him what I was bringing in, he thought it best to put us in the employee lot. Guards and surveillance.” She pointed overhead to one of four cameras mounted on light posts throughout the lot as she pulled into a space.

  “Ah,” Skylar said. “I thought you were a little over the top last night, bringing the paintings to my office to be locked up, but I was wrong. I think I’m seeing what a big deal this could be.”

  Savanna nodded. “Museums like this don’t take any chances—one stupid, petty theft or mugging in an unguarded parking structure could mean the loss of millions. Kenilworth has a secure system too, for any artwork coming in or out of the building.” She handed Skylar one of the cases and rang the bell at the side door.

  A man in the same uniform the guard booth officer was wearing opened the door. “I.D. please.”

  “Oh!” Savanna handed the other case to her sister and fished around in her purse, pulling out her wallet and handing the guard her driver’s license. “Sorry, here you go. We’re here to see Britt Nash.”

  The guard ushered Savanna and Skylar to the visitor’s desk, and less than a minute later, Nash rounded the corner.

  “Savanna!” Tall and lanky, he approached with open arms, and Savanna matched his quick, friendly hug. Britt’s bowtie matched his red-and-black wingtips, lending a bit of fun to his otherwise conservative black suit. Those shoes never would have flown at Kenilworth, Savanna thought. Good for him.

  He caught her looking and grinned. “I just got them. They’re fabulous, aren’t they?”

  Savanna laughed. “They really are! It’s been way too long, Britt. Thank you so much for helping me out. This is my sister, Skylar. Skylar, Britt Nash.”

  “Don’t believe a word she’s said about me,” he warned Skylar, shaking her hand. “Shall we?”

  Five minutes later, Savanna and Skylar were standing in a state-of-the-art diagnostics lab, housed on the third floor of the museum. Nash, Lansing’s authenticator, had escorted them to the lab and left them alone to work after eliciting a promise of a lunch date soon from Savanna.

  Skylar turned around in a circle. “Amazing. I never thought about the scientific side of the art world.”

  The Lansing museum’s lab was large, clean, and rather dimly lit, due to the special lighting required when handling and authenticating sometimes centuries-old pieces. A track ran across the ceiling, holding the bulky, heavy radiograph equipment for X-ray. It was confined to one end of the room, with an L-shaped partition around it. A long countertop ran the length of one wall, with optical microscopes, cameras, a mass spectrometer, and long wavelength UVA lamps among the work spaces. Two large, square desks took up the center of the room, and on one was a disassembled frame being restored.

  Savanna set to work. Skylar maintained a respectful distance, asking questions as Savanna set up the X-ray and handled the imaging. She then took both the Rothman and the Minkov to the UV lamp, jotting notes on a pad and snapping photos as she went.

  “Very high-tech, Savanna. This is what you did at Kenilworth?”

  “A lot of the time, yes.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  Savanna looked sideways at Skylar, from her position peering through a lens at the Rothman. “I miss parts of it.”

  Skylar nodded, quiet.

  “I was right.” Savanna straightened up suddenly. “I was right!”
She clapped her hands, looking at Skylar, and then her heart sank. Despite being fairly certain after checking the painting with her Firefly, this wasn’t something she wanted to find. “Oh, no, I was right. Look at this.”

  Skylar looked through the microscope. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to see?”

  “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. This is what really proves it, with the Minkov.” She moved back to the light screen where her radiographs were displayed. “See this?” She pointed at the X-ray film on the left. “This is a pentimento. A painting under another painting.”

  “It is?” Skylar leaned forward, trying to see. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that this isn’t the original artwork on the canvas.”

  “So it is a fake!”

  “Well, not always; a pentimento doesn’t automatically mean forgery. Often, artists painted over their own work, because of money or short supply. So, we compare the underlying work with the visible one, looking for stylistic differences, techniques specific to the artist.”

  “And if they match, then the artist just painted over his own work, so it could still be authentic,” Skylar guessed.

  “Yes, or, if the underlying image is obviously not from the artist, as in this one—it’s definitely not a Minkov underneath—then we look for clues to when that image was made, where, using what medium—paint types.”

  Skylar took a deep breath, frowning. “Okay, spell this out for me, Savvy, so I understand it. What do you see?”

  “The underlying image in this supposed Minkov is much more recent, likely from the last fifty years. Minkov died in 1917. There’s no chance at all that this is a genuine Minkov. It’s a pretty good fake.”

  Skylar stared wide-eyed at Savanna as she continued, moving back over to the UV lamp.

  “The Rothman is also a forged piece. The luminescence in sections of the work doesn’t match; it’s newer, and a different type of paint than portions of the underlying paint. I wondered if maybe it had just been touched up, but even the brushstrokes in the original sections don’t match Julian Rothman’s signature style. Brush stroke technique can give away a forgery more often than almost anything else.”

  “What the heck,” Skylar breathed.

  Savanna moved to the center of the room and sat abruptly in a chair at one of the square desks. What the heck was right. Skylar joined her, quiet, both sisters thinking.

  Savanna’s phone buzzed. She turned the screen toward Skylar. “Syd’s the best. She took one photo of the med box with the little doors open, so you can see the fine print on each tablet. Then she took a picture of her purple, latex-sheathed finger, flipping over a pill in one of the compartments. And then the last picture—” Savanna looked again at the phone, “—is the same compartments and pills, but showing the opposite side of each pill, to capture any additional imprints on each tablet and capsule.”

  Skylar took the phone from Savanna. “That’s a great idea. Caroline isn’t even on much; Travis’ mother takes more than this. There are only five pills per compartment. Ah, and she just texted that she delivered the pill box directly into Jordan’s hands an hour ago.” She handed the phone back.

  Savanna saved each photo and forwarded them all to Aidan.

  “I think I was wrong,” she told Skylar. “I think it was crazy to believe that the Happy Family delivery lady would try to hurt Caroline. And, as much as I really, really don’t like Maggie Lyle, I doubt she or Bill would have the nerve, or even the…resources…to tamper with Caroline’s meds.”

  “I agree,” Skylar said. “So you’re thinking it’s the art dealer’s assistant who came to pick up the most recent painting? The counterpart to that one.” She pointed at the Rothman. “But why?”

  Savanna shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it is him. I’d hate to think it’s Thiebold’s assistant…or even Felix himself; he’s been friends with Caroline and Mr. Carson for years. And I still haven’t told you about Jack.”

  “No. What about him?”

  “I think he’s having money problems. Sydney and I picked up on it when he stopped by Fancy Tails to get some treats for the poodles. And he has honestly been acting very strange this week.”

  “Strange, how?”

  “He was gone Wednesday. Everyone takes sick days now and then, so I didn’t think much of it. But Thursday, he came into school over an hour late, and he was all frazzled. Plus he had to leave early,” Savanna recalled. “I had to cover the pick-up lane.”

  Skylar looked skeptical. “I don’t know. I’ve had days like that. We all have.”

  “Okay. You’re right. But yesterday he stopped by Caroline’s house early, way before school, and he forgot his phone there. I found it after I’d sent her to the hospital. When I went to take it back to him at school, a text message came through and I read it. I didn’t mean to!”

  Skylar’s skeptical expression hadn’t softened at all.

  “Listen. The phone was in my hand, and I was carrying it into the library for him. You know how part of the message will show up on the lock screen? That’s what I read. I couldn’t not read it. It was right there in front of me. It said, ‘if you don’t get the money, we lose everything,’ or something like that.”

  Skylar was staring at her now. “Whoa.”

  “I know! See what I mean?”

  “All right. This is what we do. You need to use your lightning bug microscope thingy to look at all the rest of Caroline’s artwork. And we need to go through those provenances. The only way we’re going to find out who made an attempt on Caroline’s life yesterday is to figure out who has the most to gain. I think.”

  Savanna stood, nodding. “That makes sense. But I can’t go over there while Caroline’s gone. I can’t see Detective Jordan thinking that would be a good idea. I’ll have to wait until she’s home, and then level with her. Everything in her house should for now be safe, right? Since Dad changed the locks?”

  “I’d hope so.” Skylar helped pack up the paintings and they walked out to the elevators. “I’m tied up tonight, taking Nolan on a play date at Bounce World. Can you meet me at Mom and Dad’s tomorrow before dinner, and we’ll go through the certificate paperwork? Syd can help.”

  Savanna shook her head. “We’re doing brunch tomorrow, remember? Mom has that trip to Seattle, so we changed the time. I’m cooking—don’t worry, I already know what I’m making and it’s amazing. Let’s set aside some time afterward to check out the papers. I’m going to do some research of my own tonight on our two confirmed forgeries. Maybe we’ll have some answers before Caroline gets out of the hospital.”

  “Let’s hope she’s better and home quick,” Skylar said. “Lauren will probably have to postpone her party.”

  “That is not going to sit well with Caroline,” Savanna said.

  She and Skylar walked through the museum lobby and adjacent hallway, greeting the guard once again at the employee exit.

  He held the door for them. “You’ll need your I.D. for Wanda to let you out.” He motioned to the guard shack.

  “I’m impressed,” Skylar said as they loaded the large cases into the back of Savanna’s car. “You’ve got some serious skills, little sister.”

  Savanna shut the hatch and turned to look at Skylar. The parking lot had emptied out since they’d arrived, and only a few cars remained. She glanced over her shoulder—she had the oddest, prickly sensation.

  Skylar frowned. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know.” She took one more look around as she and Skylar got in the car.

  “Are you okay?” Her sister put her seatbelt on, frowning at her.

  Savanna shrugged. “Yeah. It’s nothing. For a second I just had the weirdest feeling of being watched.”

  Skylar looked out her side window and then back at Savanna. “Well…we are. Guards and cameras everywhere.”

 
Savanna laughed. “That’s not what I meant. But yeah, I’m sure that’s all it is.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Halfway through their hour-long drive back to Carson, Savanna began to think she hadn’t been imagining things. The outskirts of Lansing gave way to farm land, with miles and miles of open fields and rolling hills. Four lanes eventually narrowed to just two in each direction, and traffic was sparse, making the posted seventy-mile-an-hour speed limit feel like nothing.

  “I think this guy is following us.” Savanna checked the rearview mirror for what felt like the hundredth time in the last few miles.

  Skylar turned around in her seat to look out the back window. “Really?”

  “He’s been behind us for I don’t know how long.” Savanna turned off the radio and adjusted her side mirror, getting a better view.

  “Are you serious?” Skylar stayed in position, watching the large, black SUV several car lengths behind them.

  “Let me try something.” She signaled and moved over into the right lane. Besides her car and the one the behind them, there were only a few others in her line of sight.

  The SUV changed lanes and stayed behind them.

  Savanna slowed down and watched the vehicle maintain its distance, matching her speed. She looked at Skylar, beginning to feel tendrils of panic creeping up her spine.

  “Okay, maybe you’re right,” Skylar whispered. “Why am I whispering? What do we do? Should I call the police?”

  “I don’t know. And tell them what?”

  “Um, I don’t know, that we have evidence of forged priceless paintings in our car and some freak is following us? How long has he been back there?”

  “I’m not sure. I didn’t notice him until we got out of the city.”

  Skylar checked the back window again. “Well…I mean, maybe it’s just coincidence. He isn’t trying to do anything. Maybe it’s just someone heading the same way we are.”

  Savanna accelerated back up to the speed limit, and then past it—seventy-five, seventy-eight, eighty-two, eighty-four. Her little car rattled as she pushed toward ninety, and she saw Skylar reach for the hand grip above the passenger door.