Cat in a Bag

by Angela M. Sanders

  “I don’t understand what you were doing in the locker room, anyway,” Mary Rose said. “It’s not like the painting would be in there.”

  Gilda wasn’t going to try to explain it. She adored Mary Rose. Truly, she did. It was just that the woman’s mind worked in such a linear way. If it wasn’t about ground meat, she wasn’t much for creativity. “Bottom line, we can’t lift the other seven. Too risky,” Gilda said.

  “We promised Larry the Fence,” Father Vincent said. “He’s arranging the relicensing.”

  “How much do you want to bet he didn’t know what his niece wanted us to do?” Bobby said.

  The others, including Gilda, nodded in agreement. Larry had been vague. Likely, he hadn’t come to grips with the fact that his niece lived with a death sentence. He simply wanted her to be happy, so he hadn’t asked a lot of questions.

  “There’s no way he’d expect us to hook eight valuable works of art,” Mort said. “He’s not nuts.”

  “We might have done it, back in the day,” Red said.

  “Even then it would have been a major operation. Months of planning.” Gilda eyed the others. “We don’t have time. Remember Adele’s aneurysm. No saying how long she’s good for.”

  “Good point,” Father Vincent said.

  “Plus we’d need teams set up across the nation,” Gilda said. Heists like that took more than skill and planning. They took money. She looked at the hodgepodge of chairs—some spindle-backed, some from the fire sale when the Rumpus Room closed—and the gallery of artwork left by deceased residents. They were comfortable. She couldn’t complain about that. But no one would confuse the Villa’s cafeteria with the Ritz’s lobby.

  “Maybe there’s something else we can do. Like, write letters to the owners and tell them their paintings are fakes,” Mort said.

  Gilda drummed her fingers on the table. “I don’t see how we can do more. But Adele won’t be satisfied. She wants them out of circulation. All of them.”

  Bobby cast a glance at the women. “Tell me when you’ve made up your mind. Care if I turn on the TV?”

  “Can you use the television room, instead?” Gilda said. “Grady’s soaps are over.”

  “Fine, fine.” He took the ever-present deck of cards from his shirt pocket as he left.

  “Today was a warning,” Gilda said. “We’ve got the smarts, but it’s been a while since we’ve carried out this kind of heist.”

  “I just don’t get it,” Mort said. “Those paintings aren’t hurting anyone. People are enjoying them. Why rock the boat?”

  “I know what Adele would say. Remember? She’d say it’s not right. A master’s work shouldn’t be aped and passed off as the real thing. We’ve been over this,” Gilda said.

  “I still don’t get it. No one’s hurt. What’s done is done.”

  “I agree. I don’t get it, either. But we’re not the one with the dying wish,” Gilda said.

  “If we go after those other paintings, we might be,” Mort said.

  The faint sound of gunfire and shrieking tires drifted in from across the hall. Father Vincent rested his elbows on the table and leaned in. “I like Mort’s idea, Gilda. Are you sure we couldn’t just send them anonymous letters saying their paintings are fakes?”

  “From looking at the first one, they’re good copies,” Gilda said. “If the owners figure out the originals were stolen, they’d at least get insurance money for them.” She sighed. “I guess we could run it by Larry, see if it satisfies him.”

  Mort shook his head. “Too bad Claudine isn’t still in the business.”

  Gilda turned to him. “What did you say?”

  With a bit of planning and a good team, Claudine could have lifted the paintings as easily as Cook flipped a tarte tatin. But now Claudine was a detective for an insurance company. They paid her well to track down stolen diamonds and antique furniture, and she’d left the criminal life behind.

  “I said, it’s too bad Claudine isn’t—”

  Gilda sat up straight. “I heard you the first time.” A smile spread over her face. “Here’s the thing. Claudine is still in the business. I think we’ve got Adele covered after all.”

  “How can you promise that?” Mary Rose said.

  “We’ve got Claudine. Just not the way you think.”

  * * *

  Adele stood uneasily across the desk from Warren. Between them was Adele’s forged Italian landscape. With triumph, Gilda had handed her the painting and said, “Here you go.” She’d turned around and headed for the elevator, presumably to fill in the rest of the Villa’s residents on their victory.

  Adele had barely looked at the painting. She was too embarrassed she might catch a hint of what was hidden in it. She’d wrapped it in a bathrobe and taken it downstairs. Warren would know how to get rid of it.

  “Am I interrupting you?” she asked. “I hoped you could help me.”

  “You want to destroy it?” Warren said.

  Adele studied his expression. Was he upset? She couldn’t tell. “Definitely.”

  He tilted the painting toward him. “Are you sure?”

  It had been more than five years since Adele had seen the painting. The one thing about her type of work was that you did the job and let it go. You didn’t have the luxury of examining your work over the years, appreciating the skill or the eye or simply its loveliness. But here was the landscape again. It was a small painting, showing summer-leaved trees lining a blue river with a castello in the distance. In the foreground, a milkmaid in her apron but with no barn in sight played with a calf.

  With each copied silken brushstroke, she’d felt closer to the original’s creator. She’d imagined him sketching in a meadow, then working in a cold room with a thick ceramic bowl of coffee on the table next to his easel. He had scruffy black hair, she was sure. Dirt caked his fingernails. Taking a break, he might have walked past the academy with its students in fresh white shirts and new brushes paying homage to the master by copying him. In a way, that’s what she had done.

  “It’s nice,” Warren said.

  Adele looked at him in surprise. Nice? “You like it?”

  “It’s Italy, isn’t it? I can tell by the architecture.” He pointed to the castello and flipped the painting over. “Can’t people tell it’s a fake by the canvas?”

  “They could if I’d used a new one. I didn’t. This was painted over a damaged painting that I scraped. It’s as old as it should be—or nearly, anyway.”

  “What about the paints? Can they tell by that?”

  Who knew he’d be so interested in art? “Some colors weren’t used until later. Pure white and Prussian blue, for example. As long as I avoid those, I’m fine.” The longer she looked at the painting, the deeper the ache grew in her chest. She wanted to paint again. She needed to paint. There had to be a way.

  Warren lowered his head a few inches closer to the canvas. “So, you’re saying forgery is easy to get away with.”

  “Yes and no. The best way to tell a forgery is to know the style of the work’s artist. But the truth is that most dealers—and a lot of collectors—don’t want to know. A dealer who gets a good deal on a rare painting doesn’t want to question its origins too closely.”

  “These things come with papers, though, don’t they?”

  “Papers can be forged, too,” she said. But it’s the painting that’s important, she longed to say. She clenched her fingers to her palms so tightly that her fingernails, short as they were, dug into her palms. Those fingers should be holding brushes. She had to at least paint again before she died.

  “Hmm.”

  They looked at the painting. It had cost two weeks of study, another week of work, and, after the string of forgeries that followed, a prison sentence. A dealer had sold it for five thousand dollars and collected his twenty percent. Not even forty-eight hours had gone by before he was back in touch with the fence to ask if he had “discovered” any other paintings.

  “Did the dealer do time?” Warren
asked.

  “He’s still in business. Doing well enough to buy full-page ads in Art News.”

  “That hardly seems right. He’s just as guilty as the rest of you.”

  “He’d claim he had no idea the painting was a forgery.”

  “Yeah, right.” Warren snorted. He lifted the painting to eye level. “The milkmaid looks almost ready to jump out of the picture, doesn’t she?”

  Adele had to admit that the landscape was nice work. Nice enough to have set her on a path of eighteenth-century forgeries. The milkmaid’s skin glowed the pink of a baby’s buttocks, and the next few frames of the life the painting portrayed almost unrolled before their eyes. The milkmaid would laugh, she’d tease the calf, they’d run to the river.

  A milkmaid and the Tuscan countryside weren’t all the canvas showed. So far, no one had caught on, and Adele meant for it to stay that way.

  “Do you have a pocketknife?” she asked him.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Without waiting for the reply, he slipped a knife from his pants pocket. For the first time, she read kindness in his face.

  She took it from him and turned the still-warm knife in her hands. She pulled at one of its blades. It stuck.

  “Try the other one,” he said. “I never use the small blade.”

  The larger blade opened easily. “Thank you.” Her breath caught in her throat. She swallowed hard. “Here goes.”

  Aiming for the castello, she plunged the blade through the canvas and drew it straight toward the milkmaid. The canvas fought her every inch, but at last a gash as long as her hand rent the painting. There. She’d expected relief, but instead a vague sadness crept in.

  Adele handed the knife to Warren. “Will you do the rest?”

  10

  Ellie stood. At last, it was safe to leave the attic. The children and school staff had gone, and the janitor wouldn’t be in until morning.

  Her first trip was to the restroom. Feeling her way in the dark, she descended to the second floor and found the door marked “girls.” She cursed at how low the toilets were to the ground, and she crouched to wash her hands.

  That important business taken care of, she went in search of food. The cafeteria had to be on the ground floor. She clicked on a penlight to guide her down the dark halls. She’d always been a good student. She’d won the spelling bee every year, performed an immaculate version of “Für Elise” on the piano at the holiday recital, and even won a gold medal at the regional badminton tournament. She’d walked the school’s halls with her chin up.

  But for some reason, kids hadn’t liked her. Most teachers seemed a little put out with her, too. Her mother said it was because she was a better class of girl. The others were jealous. Jealous of her intelligence and her shined patent leather Mary Janes. Once Ellie had asked her mother for tennis shoes like the other kids wore, but the frozen stare she’d earned in reply had shut her up.

  At last Ellie found the cafeteria. She wove through the small tables and chairs to the kitchen. The door was locked. She pulled and rattled its knob, but it didn’t give. After a moment’s thought, Ellie hiked up the rolling cover shutting the window that the lunch ladies used for passing trays of food to the students. The stainless steel counter was cool under her rear as she slid across it.

  Once in the kitchen, she flipped on the bank of lights. It was safe here—no windows. The walk-in refrigerator had a seemingly endless supply of tiny milk cartons. But on the right was a large bowl with a dishtowel draped over its top. Ellie lifted the towel and dipped in a spoon. Sloppy Joes. Poor kids. Poor her. This was dinner.

  She took the bowl to the counter, found a hamburger bun, and microwaved the combination.

  As she stood at the counter and chewed, she reviewed her options. Should she leave the school? Now that she’d been busted by that kid, she wasn’t safe. But where else could she go? The school had the best view of the Villa. Besides, the kid hadn’t turned her in. He’d even left her a telescope, the poor sucker.

  She’d stay. Tomorrow was Saturday. The school would be empty over the weekend, giving her plenty of time to carry out her plan. She’d have to risk it one more day in the attic.

  Her next task was to scope out the school. She cleaned up the kitchen so that no one would know she’d been there and left the way she came. Down the hall was the administrative office. The office was dark behind its half-glassed door. She tried the handle, and it opened. The receptionist’s desk didn’t have much to interest her. She found a russet lipstick in an upper drawer and rouged her lips, rubbing them together with a satisfied smack. Behind the desk was a box marked “Lost and Found.” She took two coats to help even out the attic’s lumpy sofa.

  A brass plaque marked the principal’s office. Ellie tried this door, and it, too, opened. They locked up the kitchen but kept the principal’s office open to the world? She surveyed the office with satisfaction. It was tidy, not a paper out of place, just as she preferred her own office. The temperature was even a bit on the cool side. Perfect. Ellie tried the desk drawers and found a fifth of bourbon and a cut crystal tumbler. She took a swig straight from the bottle. Urban camping at its finest. She recapped the bottle and tucked it under her arm to take upstairs. What was the principal going to do? Complain? On second thought, she grabbed the tumbler, too.

  Now, fed and vaguely tipsy, Ellie nosed into a classroom but soon backed out. Even in the dark, she was too easy to spot through the bank of windows. Besides, there were so damned many toys in there, she could fall and break her neck.

  Swinging the coats with one hand, she passed further down the hall. The teachers’ lounge had to be here somewhere. That’s where the good stuff would be. She tried a few doors—one was the custodian’s closet, another the nurse’s office—until she found it.

  She flopped onto the couch. The window here was high up, so she allowed herself to turn on a table lamp. Coffee pot, cupboards, sink, small round table with chairs. Framed inspirational poster with seagulls and a saying she forgot even as she read it. Tissues. Old issues of Rolling Stone magazine.

  She stood. Her office at the Shangri-La had been more interesting than this, and all it had was a bunch of nitwit cosmeticians staffing it. Even her business office downtown with its bland cubicles and CPAs was livelier. But that was her old life.

  She yanked a lamp’s cord out of the wall and took the lamp, along with the coats and booze, back up to the attic. The teachers could fight with each other about who’d stolen it. She made a second trip down to borrow a broom and some cleaning supplies from the custodian’s closet.

  The big round clock above the drinking fountain read nine o’clock. Before she made the attic habitable, she’d take another look at the Villa. With the light on in there, she should have a decent view.

  She adjusted the toy telescope. A mash-up of old furniture filled the cafeteria, from the handful of recliners toward the end with the television and fireplace to the tables and chairs that made up the dining area. She couldn’t see deeply enough into the room to examine the art on the far walls, but it had to be dreadful, too.

  The residents didn’t seem to mind the heinous decor. One man whittled. A couple others were watching TV. She wondered if the news was out about her disappearance from the Bedlamton Arms. Probably not. The Arms would keep that sort of information quiet. When Marcia Atkinson went berserk and chased after Dr. Loyly with an electric pencil sharpener and had to be taken upstate, not a peep had gotten out about it. For a second, she remembered the prisoner John the orderly had said escaped. Ellie wondered if she’d found somewhere to hide, too.

  Now the old redhead with the walker was draping a shawl over a leopard print dress. Ellie remembered her from the fiasco with the firehouse. She had a phony Hollywood type of name. Yes, Gilda, it was. Out front, a man in a floor-length skirt walked toward a sedan.

  She tilted the telescope. A light was on in one of the bedrooms, but its curtains were closed.

  What was that movement? She pointed
the telescope toward the street. Someone had parked down the block and was walking up with a large, flat parcel under his arm and a shopping bag heavy enough to cause him to stop and stretch his fingers. He paused where he would have turned to go into the Villa’s front entrance, but he continued on. Yet, he clearly wanted in the Villa. Ellie could tell by the way he’d stopped and looked. Yes, there he was. He was going around back. He was dropping something off and didn’t want the Villa’s residents to know. Interesting.

  Yes, interesting, but unimportant. It didn’t have to do with her plan. Ellie set down the telescope and reached for the whiskey bottle. She’d be using that back door soon, too.

  Tomorrow was phase one. She glanced toward her duffel bag with her materials. Just one more night to rest, watch the Villa, and gather her strength.

  * * *

  Armed with a list of paintings in Adele’s precise hand, Gilda let Father Vincent help her into the car.

  “You’re sure it can’t wait? I was having my Bible study,” Father Vincent said. “Besides, she’s probably asleep.”

  “The sooner we go, the better. It’s barely nine o’clock now. The shank of the evening.”

  They pulled up to the perfume boutique that Hank, Claudine’s father, kept as a front and that Claudine managed now. It occupied the ground floor of an old house bordering the commercial district. Claudine lived upstairs.

  “You’re going to have to tell her to come down,” Gilda said.

  “I can help you.”

  “No. There’s no way I can make it up those stairs and then down again.” Back in the old days, when she and Hank were getting to know each other, she took the stairs two at a time, even in heels. Now Hank was gone.

  Father Vincent unbuckled the seatbelt and disappeared up the building’s side entrance. A few minutes later, the rear of the Perfume Shoppe glowed yellow with light, and Claudine appeared at the side door. Father Vincent was at the car again, helping Gilda to her feet.