Faux Reel (Imogene Museum Mystery #5)

by Jones, Jerusha

  The Imogene’s seen her share of parties. I wondered if the next day always carried this sense of abandonment even when the mansion served as the Hagg family’s vacation home.

  “Don’t worry about the mess.” Frankie breezed in behind me. “I arranged for a double cleaning crew today.”

  I sighed and turned to her.

  Frankie stopped in her tracks, her dimple disappearing. “What happened to you?”

  Where to start? I explained about Sheriff Marge’s collision.

  Frankie’s hand fluttered to her mouth.

  “She’ll be okay, eventually.” I rubbed my forehead. “But there’s something else. You know Cosmo Hagg’s still life of a salmon and fishing gear on the third floor?”

  Frankie’s face puckered in distaste. “Yes?”

  “When was the last time you saw it?”

  “Oh. Gosh, I don’t know. It’s just there.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Frankie clutched the pendant on her necklace, frowning. “What do you mean?”

  “It was stolen sometime in the past few days, cut from the frame.”

  Frankie yanked on the hem of her emerald green jacket and bit her lips. Her face flushed. A giggle escaped. Then peals of laughter. Her brown helmet hair vibrated.

  I scowled. Were Sheriff Marge and I the only ones taking the theft seriously? Then I remembered that Sheriff Marge hadn’t seen the painting. Everyone who knew the painting was exhibiting extreme glee at its disappearance — except me.

  “Oh dear,” Frankie wheezed. “I suppose that’s bad?”

  “I need to inventory the rest of our exhibits and undocumented items today to see if anything else was stolen.”

  “Oh.” Frankie’s brows arched, and her smile went slack. “What can I do to help?”

  “For one, let’s keep this confidential. I don’t want our lack of security advertised. And I’ll finish sooner if I’m not interrupted.”

  Frankie nodded. “I’ll hold your calls, sign for any deliveries and keep visitors out of your way.”

  I expelled a big breath. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be grouchy. I suppose there’s a chance the painting’s been stashed somewhere in the building. It’s probably been rolled into a tube, 54” long. Did you see any of our guests with something that size last night?”

  “No. But I’ll check every inch of the main floor today.” Frankie patted my arm, worry wrinkles creasing her forehead. “Maybe it’s just a prank.”

  oOo

  I started in the basement and chided myself for not having taken pictures of the piles of boxes and crates — to have at least some kind of record of what’s down there. Better late than never, I flipped on every light switch and snapped a series of frames with our digital camera for a panorama view of the Imogene’s storage area.

  Then I grabbed our heavy-duty emergency flashlight and walked slowly down the center aisle using the extra illumination to scan the front edges and between each stack of boxes checking for disturbance in the dust on the concrete floor.

  Nothing appeared to have been rearranged or removed. I closed my eyes and mentally reviewed the topography of the room, then opened my eyes to see if what was in front of me matched what I remembered. It did — all of it.

  I checked the basement door — locked.

  I scowled, fists on hips, and exhaled. Like everyone else, I would have given away Cosmo’s painting if I could have. But what bothered me was the intrusion, the stealth of the act, and the violation of my bucolic world. The Imogene is my museum — as much as it can be for anyone not named Hagg, anyway. And the theft was just — I struggled for words — mean. Some joke — unless it was used to mask a greater theft. The thought made my stomach plunge.

  I trudged upstairs to my office, pulled up the museum’s collection database and printed it. Starting on the third floor, I worked from room to room and floor to floor, glad to be on my feet. I had to keep moving, or my brain would shut down from lack of sleep.

  Fortunately, I have counts per collection. So if the printout said we had 19 Klickitat beaded pouches, and 19 beaded items were in the display case, I checked the whole collection off. I’d go into a detailed, item-by-item review if one of the collections turned up short.

  But none did.

  So either the thief had not stolen anything other than the painting, or he had swapped counterfeit items for real artifacts. But that level of preparation and deception didn’t pair well with hacking canvas out of a frame. What did Sheriff Marge call it — MO? Modus operandi.

  I plunked cross-legged on the floor in the petroglyph room and reviewed the checklist.

  “Meredith?” Frankie’s voice echoed in the hallway.

  “In here,” I hollered.

  Frankie’s head appeared in the doorway. “You okay?”

  I stretched my legs out and dropped the printout between them. “Just taking a break.” I pressed my hands behind my neck and arched my back to stretch out the kinks.

  “I know I said I’d hold your calls.” Frankie moved into the room. She was clutching the gift shop’s cordless phone against her thigh, her palm over the speaker holes. “But it’s your mother. She sounds upset. She said she’s been trying your cell phone all day, and you haven’t been answering. So she called the museum number.”

  My jaw dropped. My mother never calls me — and I am not exaggerating. I call her on her birthday and Mother’s Day. For my birthday, I get a card in the mail with a couple folded twenties. She signs her name but never adds to the sappy sentiments that are preprinted in the card.

  “Meredith?” Frankie squeaked, her brows pinched together. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah.” I scrabbled to my feet. “Um, thanks.” I reached for the phone and pressed it to my ear, turning away from Frankie.

  “Hello?”

  “Meredith? Where have you been?” Mom’s voice had that edge to it — the one that makes me rapidly scan my recent history to figure out what I’ve been doing wrong.

  I frowned. “Working.”

  “Well, I’m twenty minutes away, if this GPS thing can be trusted. I’m in no condition to see your museum today. I’ll wait at your—” she sniffed “—your modular home.” She hung up.

  I thrust the phone to arm’s length and stared at it like it was an alien life form.

  “Meredith?” Frankie piped up behind me. She gingerly took the phone from my grasp. “I’m being nosy, but you and your mother don’t really speak, do you? Are you okay, hon?” She reached up and squeezed my shoulder.

  I gazed into Frankie’s warm brown eyes and opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  Frankie nodded encouragingly, her earrings glinting.

  “Where am I going to put her?” I croaked. “What time is it? She’d never deign to actually sleep in my trailer.” I groaned and covered my eyes.

  “It’s almost 6:00,” Frankie said. “I take it your mother’s coming to visit?”

  “Why?” I stared at Frankie again. “She makes reservations weeks in advance for lunch at her favorite restaurant. But with me she just shows up?”

  “She did say she’d been trying to call you all day.”

  I blew out a big, shuddering breath.

  “There, there.” Frankie wrapped an arm around my waist and propelled me out of the room. “Is this the first time she’s visited you here?”

  I nodded. “She thinks I’m crazy. This lifestyle—” I waved my hands. “When I could have had so much more — more money and things, I mean — if I’d stayed in Vancouver with my job in Portland. She doesn’t understand, doesn’t appreciate — freedom.”

  “Most don’t,” Frankie said with a side hug. “Until they’ve experienced it for themselves. I’ll lock up. You’d better go.” She gave me a little shove toward the grand staircase.

  When I reached the bottom step, she called out, “Oh, uh, is anything else missing, besides the painting?”

  I curled the checklist into a tube and tapped it against my palm. “No, not
hing obvious.”

  Frankie nodded. “I’ll still keep my eyes open.”

  CHAPTER 4

  I pulled into the Riverside RV Ranch and wound around the loops to my fifth-wheel trailer. Tuppence scrambled to greet me, but didn’t have time to run her cold nose over my shins as I flung open the trailer door and dashed up the steps.

  I do not live in the manner to which my mother is accustomed, nor in a manner to which she would like to become accustomed. She’s acutely aware of distinctions, as most social climbers are. In my move to the boonies and taking a job at a decrepit non-profit cultural institution, I’ve opened up new realms of distinctions that my mother can’t even fathom.

  Once, straight out of high school, she stepped out of her family’s designated path to prominence and married my father. Alex, the man her family wished she’d married first, swooped in to rescue us when I was four, shortly after my father was found deceased under questionable circumstances — that’s the family’s polite way of saying drug overdose — in a third-world country. He’d been missing for a while. Alex is a lawyer, and he made some of the ugliness of that situation disappear quietly.

  However, I am the living reminder of my mother’s earlier indiscretion, and that makes things pretty awkward for the three of us. As a stepfather, Alex is gracious in a stiff, unforgiving sort of way, but he provided generously when I was growing up. He probably still would, if I asked, but I’ve been way beyond asking for a long time now.

  I keep things tidy. It’s a necessity when you live in such a cramped space, so there wasn’t much I could do to spruce up the place. I plumped couch cushions and tucked a few stray papers and books back onto the shelves. I dumped the leftover coffee from this morning and washed the pot. I kept tripping over Tuppence who was obviously confused by my flurry.

  “Sorry, old girl. I guess we’ll be bunk mates for a while.” I tousled her ears. Tuppence snores like the dickens, which is why she usually sleeps in the living room while I keep the bedroom to myself.

  The purr of a large, sophisticated motor pulled up outside and went quiet. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. A car door opened and thudded closed. High heels clacked on the asphalt driveway.

  I pushed open the trailer door and stuck my head out. “Mom.”

  “Meredith.” Mom wobbled a bit on her heels and fluttered an unconvincing smile. Her hazel eyes were red-rimmed, the lashes stuck together with clumped mascara.

  “What’s wrong?” I slowly descended the steps.

  Mom shrugged and glanced away. “Oh — I decided to take a drive.” She flicked a wrist toward the Columbia River which runs behind my campsite, her French manicure glinting. “It’s a beautiful day.”

  I might have forgotten to mention that my mother is gorgeous, even when in distress. Which she clearly was, although I might be the only person who’d recognize the cracks in the veneer. She wore a peach silk blouse tucked into slim white jeans. Her shoulder-length auburn hair was pulled back in an attractively messy chignon. She’d been driving with the Mercedes’s windows down. Most of her makeup had been wiped off along with her tears, revealing her smooth skin. Always put on a good face, even for your closest relatives — it was mantra the entire family lived by, so deeply ingrained as to be impenetrable.

  I sighed. “Right. You hungry? I’m just fixing dinner.”

  Mom smiled again, a little stronger this time. “I’ll keep you company.”

  I led Mom into the trailer and pointed to the chairs crowded around the dining table. “Have a seat.” I ducked behind the kitchen island and pulled out a loaf of sourdough, a hunk of Muenster and dried cranberries.

  But Mom paced to the fireplace at the end of the trailer and gazed out of the big picture window above it. Tuppence trailed after her and inspected the white jeans from the knees down.

  Mom trilled a little laugh and cupped the hound’s head in her hands. “You must be Tuppence.”

  Tuppence thumped her tail on the floor in agreement.

  I flopped two cheese sandwiches on the grill and scowled.

  “So you really live here — year-round?”

  I gulped a breath. Another ritual — asking questions she already knows the answers to — safe territory. “Yes.”

  “You’re comfortable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even in winter?”

  “Yes.”

  Mom sighed. “It’s lovely.”

  I almost dropped the spatula. She approved? I glanced at her, but she was staring out the window.

  I decided to try a different tactic. “How’s Alex?”

  Mom didn’t turn, but her hands clenched at her sides. “Working.”

  Alex is always working. It’s his greatest trait. “Did you have a fight?”

  Mom spun around, her face about to crumble, but she pulled it into a tight smile at the last moment. “Just a difference of opinion. I needed a few days away.”

  I nodded slowly, trying to see behind the flat look in her eyes. “I have some stuff going on at the museum, so I won’t be able to take time off.”

  “No need,” Mom said quickly. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

  I carried our plates outside to the picnic table. The RV was still a little stuffy from being closed up all day. We sat side by side on the north side of the table in order to enjoy the view of the river and the hazy Oregon bank opposite.

  Mom gingerly picked up the warm, oozy slab and bit into the sandwich. “Mmmm.”

  I bit in too.

  Mom wiped a cheese string from her chin. “You always were a good cook, even as a child. I’d turn you loose with the Betty Crocker cookbook. Remember?”

  “I remember melting a Tupperware container all over the electric burner.”

  Mom laughed and popped an errant cranberry in her mouth.

  Something was going on. Mom and Alex fought regularly all through my childhood, but never, to my knowledge, had either of them left. She wasn’t going to tell me — not now, maybe not ever. What could I do?

  “I have a problem at the museum,” I blurted.

  Mom’s perfectly sculpted brows arched.

  “A theft. We’re trying to keep it from becoming public knowledge until we figure out who and why.” I shook my head. “It’s unusual. Maybe — based on your experience as an art therapist — maybe you’d have some insight?”

  Mom set down her sandwich, a little spark lightening her eyes. “Yes. Of course. I mean — I don’t know what I could do — but I’ll try.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief — it was the perfect distraction, a way to keep her busy. “I forgot to email the image to law enforcement earlier today. So how about we go to the Imogene as soon as we’re finished eating? I’ll fill you in there.”

  oOo

  I pushed open the door to my office and flipped the lights on. The doorknob, desk and bookshelf surfaces were still smeary from Dale’s fingerprint dust.

  “Careful what you touch,” I said, eyeing Mom’s white jeans. “It’s a little dirty in here.”

  I fired up the laptop and shoved some papers out of the way.

  Mom sidestepped around piles on the floor and moved to the big picture window. “All these views,” she breathed.

  The late summer sun was just setting at the unseen mouth of the Columbia, making the river look like liquid gold between flanking hills gradating from green to cobalt to violet-tinged black.

  “Are sunsets here always this breathtaking?” She asked over her shoulder.

  I grinned. “All the time. Take a look at this.” I turned the laptop so she could see the screen.

  Mom gasped.

  “Yeah.” I dropped into my chair. “And someone stole it.”

  Mom hinged at the waist and leaned forward, peering at the image of the still life. She traced the major elements in the image with her finger. “It’s terrible.”

  “That’s the consensus,” I said.

  Mom cocked her head, still intent on the screen. “Even small children have a
n innate sense of balance and symmetry. Maybe not proportion, but they’ll fill a whole page with motifs. This—” she shook her head. “This was done by an adult trying way too hard. Trying to make a statement.”

  I sat up straight. “What kind of statement?”

  Mom shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d have to watch the person over a series of sessions, see how he interacts with the medium, read his body language. Is the artist—”

  “Dead,” I said. “About forty years ago.”

  Mom squinted and leaned closer. “Is it three-dimensional?”

  “I’m not sure if it was an artistic technique or a series of accidents — you know, the ‘I don’t like how that turned out, so I’ll just add a little bit more’ method over and over — the opposite of the way bad haircuts happen. So yes — very thick acrylics, decoupage and some real items, like fishing line, glued on top.”

  Mom wrinkled her nose. “When was it painted?”

  I clicked open the painting’s description. “It’s not dated, but it was donated to the museum in 1973 along with $85,000. Here it is — Cosmopolitan Humphrey Hagg, born 1922 in Orange County, CA, died April 13, 1974 in Astoria, OR in a boating accident. I’m not sure how he was related to Rupert. Here’s a scan of his obituary with a picture.”

  A black and white headshot of a bald, jowly man with thick glasses and hooded eyes gazed stoically from the screen.

  “A real firecracker.” Mom giggled. “Who names their son Cosmopolitan?”

  “Eccentricity runs in the family.” I attached the painting image and description to an email. I addressed the note to Sheriff Marge and Dale since I wasn’t sure who’d be handling the case with Sheriff Marge laid up. I also fired off a copy with a slightly different note to a forensic art investigator I know by reputation.

  I checked my watch. “I’d like to visit a friend in the hospital. Do you want to settle in at the trailer? I’ll drop you off.”