“You’re sure? Because once this toothpaste’s out of the tube, there’s no putting it back.”
“Positive. Let’s get started—I don’t want to spend the whole day out here, and I promised Kick I’d get her back to town by noon. Bring me up to date.” He turned to me and tapped his finger on the table. “Kick, no notes.”
I laid down my pen.
Gil didn’t look completely sure, and he didn’t look happy. Our eyes met, and I could tell he didn’t like me and was struggling with whether or not to trust me.
“If you’re wondering whether or not I can keep a secret, I assure you, I can.”
“This is a whopper.”
“Gil,” Owen said, “get on with it. We’ve got to move forward and we’ve got no choice but to bring her in. You know how much you love this plant? How much you love these cars? Well, Kick loves Ballantine’s that much, times ten. This is survival for all of us. We are literally up against the wall, and the firing squad is loading the guns.”
“I know.” Gil turned in my direction and leaned across the table toward me. His discomfort and aggression were obvious. “I want you to know, Kick, that once you see what we’re doing . . . ,” he began, but Owen interrupted him.
“Incidentally, I moved the date forward—it’s in ninety days.”
Gil’s head jerked up. “You’ve got to be kidding.” He frowned. “We can’t possibly get everything done and meet that deadline.”
“We’ll have to go with whatever we’ve got by then, because, again, we’ve got no choice. Credit Suisse agreed to one more ninety-day extension, but then they’re going to come in, and they mean it.” Owen glanced at his watch. “I’m just going to take her out to the shed—it’ll be easier to show her than tell her.” Owen got to his feet and slipped into his jacket. “Come on, Kick.”
T H I R T Y - T W O
“What is it?” I asked. “Project Caruso.” I fastened my seat belt. The morning had clouded up, gotten cold, and I pulled my shawl close around my neck.
Owen smiled. “You aren’t even going to believe it.”
When V-12s leave the factory for public sale, they have their top speed limited to 165 miles per hour, but Owen’s had no such governor. He was as revved as his engine, and at one point we were screaming down the track at almost 180. Shortly, we turned onto a narrow road that was marked with a sign that read, “KEEP OUT. PAINT TESTING FACILITY. DANGER.”
Farther on was an empty guardhouse with a closed gate and another warning sign: “EXPLOSIVE FUMES. ALL VISITORS MUST HAVE PROTECTIVE GEAR. HIGHLY TOXIC COMBUSTIBLES IN USE. DANGER.” The sign was painted in red and had a skull and crossbones to emphasize its point. Owen pushed a remote button on the sun visor, and the gate swung open. We entered a walled compound.
I knew something big was about to happen. Life was about to change. I bit the inside of my lip to keep from speaking, to keep from saying, Let’s go back. Let’s not go here. I want everything to remain the same. Leave your secret project a secret.
A gray, one-story, cement-block structure that looked as though it had been built to withstand a nuclear explosion hunkered at the end of the drive. Lights burned in the small square windows, and four or five various cars and trucks, nothing fancy, were parked in the lot.
Owen rolled to a stop in front of a steel sliding door and put the convertible top up before he turned off the engine.
“Don’t you think we should put on masks or something?” I asked. He looked at me blankly.
“Exploding fumes and so forth?” I said. “Paint testing facility.” “Oh.” He laughed. “That. No, that’s just to keep everyone away.
Come on, let’s go. It’s getting cold out here. I think it’s going to rain.” He rolled the heavy shed door open just enough to squeeze through and stood aside for me to pass, but our bodies brushed and our eyes met.
“Sorry,” I said self-consciously as I entered a dusty, noisy maelstrom.
The room blazed with fluorescent lights suspended from the ceiling, so bright it was almost blinding. Wooden worktables ran down either side, and resting along the tops of the tables, leaning against the walls, were life-sized photographs of pieces of furniture. Blowups of Lady Melody Carstairs’s pieces of furniture to be specific. Four craftsmen, their blue overalls caked white with dust from sanding, stopped working when we entered. Two of them pulled off headsets.
“Morning, gentlemen,” Owen said.
“Morning, Mr. Brace,” they answered in unison, their English heavily accented.
“Just a quick announcement. The timetable has been advanced. We need to be ready to go in eleven weeks—the auction is in twelve.”
“Sir, we can’t . . . ,” the man closest to us spoke. He was French.
Owen held up his hand for him to be quiet. “I understand what we’re expecting of you, and I’m aware that you won’t be able to complete the full number of pieces. I want you to keep working as you have been—my criteria haven’t changed, I still expect perfect, undetectable work. If we end up with fewer items, well, that’s the way it goes. We cannot, repeat, cannot compromise quality for quantity— you know as well as I do what’s at stake. You just needed to know that the deadline has changed. Any questions?”
The same man spoke, his tone perturbed. “Then I’ll have to discuss the pieces. Somebody must prioritize them for us.”
The other three nodded, their dark eyes grave.
Owen turned to me. “This is Miss Keswick, my senior executive assistant. She’ll be out on Monday and meet with each of you.”
Really. There was no way I was going to get involved with this scheme.
“More questions? No? Okay, thanks, gentlemen. We won’t take any more of your time.”
After a moment or two of Gallic harrumphing, they turned back to their projects. The pieces they were producing were picture-perfect. Working from photos of the front, back, top, bottom, and either side, their reproductions mirrored the authentic counterparts. In spite of my reluctance I was fascinated. I couldn’t help myself. It was outrageous.
Owen stepped over to the fellow who’d spoken first and laid his hand on his shoulder. “Just keep working, Jean. I don’t want to interrupt you, I just want to point a couple of things out to Miss Keswick. Look at this.” He indicated one of the photographs that rested on the worktable. “Recognize it?”
“Yes, I do. It was in Lady Melody’s library.”
“Right. It’s Louis XV, made by Adrien Delorme in 1766.” The marble-topped, two-drawer chest was decorated with marquetry so intricate, I could almost smell the flowers—and flamboyant ormolu so well constructed, the gilded-brass laurel leaves, furbelows, shields, and scrolls were completely three-dimensional. “Jean, here, is one of the top cabinetmakers in the world,” Owen explained. “As a matter of fact, each of these guys is. Three Frenchmen and one Italian. Each one of them is a master now, but they all started as apprentices to Jean.”
Jean smiled up at me. “Mademoiselle,” he said, and went back to work. He had drawn the design of the floral marquetry onto the smooth oak front of the chest and was using tweezers to select tiny slivers of wood, already cut into petal, stem, and leaf shapes, from three different trays, each with a different kind of wood: amaranth, tulipwood, pear, or maybe apple. I watched, fascinated, as he picked up a sliver, dabbed the back of it using a small paintbrush with a minute drop of what I assumed was authentic eighteenth-century glue. What would that be? Flour-and-water paste? I didn’t want to interrupt to ask. And pressed it gently into place. The sides of the piece were finished except for the varnish and ormolu, and, to my eye, which—as I never seem to tire of saying—is better trained than most, they were indistinguishable from the original.
“It’s beautiful, Jean,” I said. “I could watch you work all day.”
“Merci, mademoiselle.” He kept his eyes on his task.
“Bertram has valued this piece at a million and a half. Come on. I want to show you the ormolu studio.”
“Wait a minut
e. Do you mean Bertram knows about this?” I could not picture Ballantine’s by-the-rules president and chief auctioneer approving of such a scheme, he was too up-and-up a gentleman. Besides, Bertram was single-handedly beginning to turn our ship, and I felt that Ballantine & Company, in general, and my personal 15 percent stake in it, in particular, were in good hands for the first time since Sir Cramner died.
“Absolutely not. And he’s not going to, either.”
“I wouldn’t think he’d be too crazy about it.”
“That’s an understatement. He’s such an old maid.”
We passed a number of pieces in varying degrees of completion and out through a side door to a separate shed, where a man in a fireproof suit, thick, quilted mittens, and a hooded mask stood in front of a smelter. He had just pulled the crucible from the fire and was pouring molten brass into an iron form of curved and swooping curlicues. We watched him through the window.
“As the pieces have arrived at the company warehouse from the estate, Wilhelm comes in and makes molds of the ormolu—ostensibly for any future restoration the piece may require—and then reproduces it perfectly. He’s even devised a way to fire-gild the brass using mercury and gold leaf—same way they did it in the eighteenth century—without killing himself or anybody else. In those days, fire-gilding was a career with virtually no future. Come on, I want to show you the art studio.”
Owen was transformed. He was animated, juvenile, half-baked. This was all a huge game to him. And that concerned me. It could lead him to make mistakes. I assumed he was planning to sell the originals at auction and then switch them in the delivery, that’s how it’s usually done, anyway. But he was about to play in a supersophisticated arena. He had no idea.
T H I R T Y - T H R E E
The scale of the venture was audacious. If it worked, it would be a miracle. If it didn’t? Owen would be in a world of hurt for a long, long time because his customers were people of means. They’d screw him to the wall. Big-time. I’m talking hard jail time, something in which I have no interest. At least with my little enterprise, once the settings are melted, they’re gone, and the stones are easily disposed of or hidden, and almost impossible to identify. Paintings and furniture were another matter.
We went from the ormolu studio back into the main building and through a room stacked with paintings, some of which looked pretty good.
“These are just a bunch of old pieces,” Owen said authoritatively. “Eighteenth-, nineteenth-, twentieth-century filler stuff. You know, hotel art.” He didn’t exactly kick them, but his voice got across the message of his lack of regard for their artistic value. As though he could tell a Wyeth from a Warhol. “None very good. Our artists just scrape off the pictures and use the canvases for the replicas. Their frames are being retooled to match the originals.”
He held a door for me to pass ahead. The art studio was warm and well lit, classical music played, and two middle-aged-looking artists, one man, one woman, sat at easels and worked on their forgeries. The man’s face was lost behind a set of ultramagnification glasses, the sort worn by doctors to perform delicate surgeries, repairing nerves and so forth. His brush looked as though it had only a single bristle.
We then went to the frame shop, the varnishing shop, and the storeroom, where six completed pieces of furniture sat under padded quilts. And two paintings leaned against the walls—one of them the Gainesborough from Lady Melody’s bedroom.
“Did you happen to see this when they brought it into Ballantine’s? Would you believe someone had painted a mustache on it? I thought Bertram was going to have a stroke.”
“I heard about it. Was there any serious damage?”
“Nah. The restorers got her all cleaned up. No problem.”
“Owen, when did this start? How did you get it all set up?”
“Everything, including all the crew, was actually ready a couple of weeks before I went to meet with Lady Melody to ask her to consider giving us a chance to bid on the project.” He gently redraped a Chippendale highboy. “I secretly took some snapshots that day, and we went to work that night. Then when our experts were out there assessing the goods for our bid, Bertram gave me photographs every afternoon, and I sent them to Gil.”
“What if you hadn’t gotten Lady Melody’s estate?”
“If we hadn’t gotten her estate, it would have been someone else’s. We had so many proposals and solicitations out, it was just a matter of time and odds. It was a complete stroke of luck that she dropped dead. I mean, the business just fell into our lap—literally.” He laughed. “Manna from heaven. Luck of the Irish, as my mama said. Come on, let’s go.”
“You know, Owen, and don’t take this the wrong way, but when you stop to think about it, two bodies in one day to solve most of the problems in your life is pretty lucky—I mean it was propitious, wasn’t it.”
He stopped in his tracks and turned those hard eyes on me. “What exactly do you mean?”
“Nothing.” I tried to laugh it off. “It was just something to say.”
“Well knock it the hell off. It’s unwarranted. And it’s the kind of flip remark that causes trouble.”
“Sorry.”
“You should be.” He walked out ahead of me, letting the door slam in my face.
By the time I got to the car, he was busy checking messages and ignored me. His anger sat there, filling up the tight cabin like a suffocating black cloud, and he drove too fast and too recklessly back to the main gate, doing everything he could to try to scare me.
I was upset that I’d made him upset. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was joking.”
He didn’t answer. We were back on the public road before he spoke. He checked his watch. “I’ve made you late for your lunch date, there’s no way we can get back to the city by noon.”
“It’s all right.” I lit a cigarette. “I don’t think I could go through with a luncheon at the moment, I’m so . . . I don’t know what. Astonished by your project, I guess. It’s absolutely . . . great.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do,” I lied. I didn’t think it was great. I thought it was insane. But I did admire his nerve.
His eyes met mine, and for the quickest second, I could see that I’d hurt him.
“Well,” he said, “I’m sure you’re going to say no, make up some excuse, but would you consider having lunch with me instead? I’m sure I won’t be as scintillating as whoever you’re planning to attend the opera with, what opera is that anyway?”
“Otello.” First thing that came to my mind. “Rossini or Verdi?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I answered. “I was invited as a guest.”
“They’re both complete downers anyway. What a depressing way to spend your Saturday—sorry to make you miss it. Okay, it’s up to you. I can get you back in time for the curtain, or, if you’re hungry we’ll stop on the way and grab a bite.”
I considered his luncheon invitation. It was a quarter past twelve, and I was starting to get hungry. I had a lot of questions I’d like to ask him, and face it, my empty afternoon loomed like a black hole. I should have accepted Thomas Curtis’s invitation after all. “Like where? I don’t want to go to some kind of coffee shop and have a ham sandwich with chowchow piccalilli.”
“Have you always been this high-maintenance? What are you? Some kind of goddamn princess?”
“Let’s just go back to town.”
“All right, all right, calm down. Let’s see. Cliveden’s not too far.”
“Whatever.”
“You could show a little more enthusiasm, Kick. Cliveden’s not exactly Wimpy Burgers.”
“Just put the top down,” I said. “I don’t feel like talking.”
“In view of the fact that it’s raining, I won’t be putting the top down. But you don’t have to say a word. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Whatever.”
“And stop saying ‘whatever.’ It’s rude.”
I checked my mes
sages. One. Commander Curtis again calling to say he’d gotten Sunday off as well and would I like to go see the Rafael cartoons at the Victoria and Albert, have a late lunch at the museum, and hear their Sunday jazz concert. I’d call him from the ladies’ room. I loved Sunday afternoons at the V & A and the lively jazz in their café. Plus, who could ever get enough of Raphael’s colored chalk drawings for Pope Leo X’s tapestries? Not I.
T H I R T Y - F O U R
Although, to my knowledge, Owen hadn’t called for a reservation, it seemed slightly suspicious to see two of Cliveden’s uniformed staff members waiting to greet us at the front door.
“Seems we’re expected,” I commented.
“This is what they do for everyone. When your car passes through the little laser at the far end of the drive, a bell goes off on the front desk, and everyone rushes out.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I’m telling you the truth. What do you think? That I had this planned all along? Take you and show you a project that could land me in jail for the rest of my natural life, then bring you to Cliveden’s and get you drunk and seduce you?” Owen’s breath was fogging up the windows while the two staff members shivered outside waiting for our “discussion” to end. “Goddamn it, Kick. You are the most unfriendly, suspicious, independent goddamn woman I’ve ever met. First you cast some sort of weird aspersion about Lady Melody and Tina—I won Lady Melody’s estate fair and square, and I won’t have you implying anything to the contrary—and now you’re bristling up because a couple of doormen are waiting by the goddamn door, which, just incidentally, in case you’re interested, happens to be their job. Why can’t you just lighten up for just a minute?”
“All right. All right,” I said. “Calm down. It just seemed a little curious, that’s all.”
“Well, it’s not. It’s goddamn lunch. And if you shrug one more time, it’ll be pow! Right in the kisser!” He smacked his fist into his palm and got me laughing hysterically.
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