False Impressions

by Laura Caldwell

  55

  After Madeline went outside, I stood in the gallery, wearing only the robe, pulled closed now over the paint. Perhaps I didn’t want the artwork to end. Perhaps I knew, as Axel Tredstone had described it, that this was the death of a particular experience.

  But I could not get myself to the same point as Axel when he’d said, “At this point in time. That is all.” It was harder to get my head around the thought that it was not something momentous.

  For maybe five minutes, I watched Madeline and Jacqueline. I stood like a statue, as if I really were an art installation. I didn’t move but I watched Madeline for SOS signals. She gave none.

  She was, in fact, doing a lot of talking. Which, as a lawyer, made me nervous.

  I ran into the back and threw on my clothes. When I returned, Madeline and Jacqueline were in the same positions, like two actors on the stage. Jacqueline occasionally shook her head.

  I put on my coat and boots and went outside.

  When I reached the two of them, they looked at me.

  As if I’d been in the conversation all along, Madeline said, “Jacqueline admits that she’s been…spending some time—” Madeline seemed to be choosing her words carefully “—outside of the gallery. My gallery. Watching us.”

  I glanced at Jacqueline.

  Something like pain crossed her face.

  I felt bad for her, felt empathy for whatever was causing that pain. And then, as if I’d moved to the next part of the installation, I suddenly knew something else about Jacqueline Stoddard.

  “You wrote the comments,” I said.

  She kept shaking her head.

  “The comments on Madeline’s website.”

  She stopped shaking her head. She looked at me. Her eyes searched mine. They seemed to say, Please understand.

  I nodded. I’ll try.

  56

  Jacqueline Stoddard’s gallery was open on Sundays. It was much more traditional than Madeline’s, with lots of gold-leaf frames. The woman behind the front desk, however, was dressed in a striking, contemporary red dress. She nearly tripped trying to get around the desk to shake Madeline’s hand, making comments of praise that showed she clearly thought of Madeline Saga as someone very big in the Chicago art world.

  Madeline was cordial but not effusive. She greeted the receptionist, then waved her hand toward the back. “Just stopping in to see Jacqueline.”

  As I followed Madeline through the gallery, I tried to catch my breath from all the activity of the past hour.

  Jacqueline’s office was also traditional—molded ceilings and bookshelves, maroon couches.

  She gestured at the couches.

  We sat together. Madeline and Jacqueline stared at each other while I looked back and forth, noticing that Jacqueline’s stare went from fearful to stern and back again.

  “Okay, ladies,” I said, breaking up the staring contest. “Jacqueline, from what I heard outside, you wrote the Dudlin comments. The ones implying they were fakes.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Jacqueline Stoddard’s voice was soft but the words flew from her mouth. Then she admitted that she’d started writing the comments because of hatred toward Madeline Saga, a hatred born of intense envy.

  “I just wanted to keep an eye on her when she moved to Michigan Avenue,” Jacqueline said, addressing me. “At first, I truly wanted to see how I could help.”

  “And did you help me,” Madeline said, “with your insinuations of forgeries from my gallery?”

  Another steely stare. “Insinuations that turned out to be true.”

  “Why do you say that, Jacqueline?” I asked. In other words, What do you know? I didn’t want Madeline inadvertently telling Jacqueline more than she needed to.

  Jacqueline’s face took on a cast of sadness. “I hate someone other than you,” she said. She pointed at herself. “This hatred is turned inward. Because I betrayed someone.”

  I assumed she’d meant she betrayed Madeline, and was about to launch into an apology, but then Jacqueline said, “Jeremy.”

  Jacqueline put her face in her hand, as if she couldn’t bear to take in our gazes.

  “What?” Madeline said, sounding unsure she’d heard correctly. “Jeremy told me he had spoken to no one about the forgeries.”

  “He told one other person,” Jacqueline said, raising her face. “Me. I’ve known Jeremy since he was first in the city. And we’d become friends over the years.”

  “As did I,” Madeline said.

  Jacqueline nodded. “He and I were different. I’ve sold him and his wife a lot of art, as you have. And over those years, he and I became friends who confided in each other.”

  “Did you have an affair?” Oops. That was out of my mouth before I could stop it. The blond part of my personality just kept popping up every so often.

  Jacqueline brusquely shook her head. “Just wonderful friends. And technically I was true to my word—I never really broke his confidences. I was anonymous in those comments, never gave any specific facts, very vague…”

  “What about the email?” Madeline asked, incredulous. “Was that vague?”

  “What email are you referring to?” Jacqueline said.

  “The one where you threatened to have me ‘cut and stretched’?”

  “Excuse me.” Jacqueline’s voice was disgusted. “I did not write you any such email. The only email I’ve sent you in the last few months was about that Bobby Branch opening next week.”

  She had been forthcoming with her confessions, but she vociferously denied sending Madeline any threatening emails. And the more she talked, the more I believed her. Maybe the author wasn’t Jacqueline.

  “What about the wording in the comment?” I asked, returning to territory we could all agree on. “The one you put on the website when you said, ‘she obliterates’?” I asked.

  “That’s how I feel,” she said, her voice small, her eyes darting to Madeline and then back to her desk. “That’s how you make me feel.”

  “What have I obliterated?” Madeline asked, her voice getting loud.

  “Me. In a way.”

  “What way?”

  “It’s hard to describe.”

  “Please, try!” Madeline’s voice was beseeching.

  A silent few seconds passed. The energy, thankfully, went down a notch.

  “Have you seen the movie F is for Fake?” Madeline asked.

  I had not.

  “Of course,” Jacqueline said.

  “‘Our works in stone, in paint, in print are spared,’” Madeline quoted. “‘Some of them for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war.’”

  Jacqueline joined in. “‘Or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash.’”

  “‘The triumphs and the frauds,’” Madeline said.

  “‘The treasures and…’”

  The moment stretched, as if we were in a permanent installation.

  But then, something seemed to crystallize for Jacqueline. Her eyes went wider, she cocked her head a bit and some clarity came into her expression. “The treasures…and the fakes,” she said. The moment seemed to allow her to see something clearly. She pulled back her head a bit.

  “Madeline,” she said. “You don’t think I’m responsible for the forgeries, somehow?” Her voice was incredulous.

  I tried to dial back the conversation, but then Jacqueline Stoddard stood. “It appears I should get myself an attorney.” She gestured at the door. “If you’ll leave now.”

  “Jacqueline,” I said. “I—”

  “Leave,” she said intensely. “Now.”

  The confession was clearly over.

  Madeline and I left under the gaze of Jacqueline’s assistant and a few others who had materialized outside the office.

  But they didn’t bother me. I couldn’t help but feel pleased, because we knew Jacqueline had played a part in all this. We finally caught something in the net we’d cast. Now we needed to understand whether or not someone else
was working with her.

  Outside, the sun had gone down and the city was dead again, one of those Sundays when everyone stays in, no fight left after dealing with the snow.

  I pulled my scarf tighter around me. Madeline pulled up the fur collar of her coat.

  “Izzy, you’re amazing,” Madeline said to me. The Tribune Tower was behind her, and it lit her black hair with a blue glow. She looked, right then, like an angel.

  “Congratulations,” I said. “We’re figuring this thing out.”

  “We are.”

  I’d never been on a team in school. Even when I was a litigator at a big firm, I was sort of a lone wolf. But now, standing in the snow with Madeline Saga, I felt like I was on a team.

  Where to go from here?

  “I’ll talk to Mayburn tonight,” I said. “I’ll let you know what he says.”

  She nodded. She smiled, her eyes luminous. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I repeated.

  Madeline leaned forward and kissed me on my cheek, so softly if felt like an angel’s touch.

  “Tomorrow,” she said again, giving me another smile before she turned away.

  57

  Jacqueline. It was Jacqueline.

  Madeline Saga felt terrible for her. To have made Jacqueline feel so badly was awful.

  In bed that night, sleep nowhere to be found, Madeline thought of how Jacqueline called her “Lina.” She saw now that the name was Jacqueline’s way of trying to get close to her. And she’d been unimpressed with the nickname, dismissive even.

  Across the bedroom, she heard a tiny beep from her phone.

  She stood and crossed the room to a tall nautical chest she used for her lingerie. On top was her cellphone. She was relieved when saw a text from Izzy, saying she’d spoken to Mayburn. He wanted them to pull all the shipping records again tomorrow morning, the ones dealing with moving from the old gallery to the new, so that Izzy could review them.

  Madeline wondered what else John had told Izzy when he’d heard about Jacqueline. She thought of calling Izzy or John, but decided instead she’d go to the gallery now and get those records ready. She wanted to contribute to the solution. She didn’t want anyone to hurt anymore.

  Madeline looked at her watch. Eleven o’clock. She’d take a cab, then make sure she had all the records Izzy needed and leave them out in case Izzy was in earlier. Then, maybe, she’d be able to sleep.

  She found a taxi. It reached the corner a block away from her gallery and stopped at a red light. Madeline was impatient, so she gave the driver a twenty and jumped out, heading toward the Wrigley Building.

  Someone was coming out of the gallery, someone familiar.

  They stopped when they saw each other.

  And that was when Madeline Saga’s world stopped.

  Wasn’t she was always telling people— If you just look, life happens like art. Perspectives shift, new planes appear?

  She had never before understood those concepts the way she did then.

  And she knew there was no going back to the place she was in before—the perspectives or the planes. They would all shift now. For good.

  58

  I felt as if I’d gone to bed during one, long, dark, magical January night…and awoken, hours and hours later, to the same evening.

  I looked at my bedside clock. Six-thirty in the morning. I opened my window shade. In the light of the streetlamps, I saw white orbs of snow dotting the trees, as if hundreds of kids had stood under them and thrown snowballs heavenward.

  I went up to my roof deck, the easiest way to check the temperature. I opened the door and squinted as the sun just began to coat the city.

  I saw a dog and his owner step out of an apartment building on Eugenie, and wham!—both of them fell. The dog’s paws sprawled on the ice, shooting out four different ways. The owner went down on his back. They promptly went back inside.

  The temperatures had apparently risen just a little, enough to turn the snow into black ice. It covered the sidewalks like glazed shellac, like the gloss over Madeline’s Dudlin piece.

  Madeline.

  Truly, I didn’t know how to feel about my… What to call it? My interactions with her? I only knew that I felt different. I felt magical because of what Madeline had involved me in—the art world and the installations and, well, some of her.

  I started to shiver in the orange robe that Axel had given me. It was time, I knew, to wash off the paint. And not just because the weekend was over, but because what had occurred to me during the painting process was true, I realized—this piece of art could not be lost. I was part of the art, not just because I’d been painted, not just because Axel had listened to me, tried to learn about me, but also by engaging in it, by spending time with Madeline yesterday, by clearing some of the mysteries about her case. Some of the mysteries. Unfortunately, not all; the complete picture was growing more and more hazy the more I thought about it.

  Jacqueline Stoddard had worked with both Jeremy and the Fex. She’d sold many artworks to them, and she had become friends with them. Particularly Jeremy. Had she helped him—or Corinne—forge and then replace the paintings? She could easily have sold them on the black market, from the research my dad had done.

  But Jacqueline had seemed genuinely shocked as she realized we were suspicious of her for more than writing a few web comments.

  Mayburn had grunted when I told him that, not wanting to concede one way or the other whether Jacqueline could be responsible for more. He was, I knew, telling me to keep my mind open.

  I had learned that well enough. And my open mind had led to those “interactions” with Madeline.

  But if I kept my mind open…could Madeline and Jacqueline had been working together? Yet, if that was true, why bring John Mayburn in to investigate? I thought about something Madeline had said one of the first nights we were out—something to the effect that she hadn’t asked Mayburn to work for her, he’d insisted.

  I shook my head to twist away any mental cobwebs. Despite the still-rising sun, my mind continued to swirl.

  I closed the door to the roof deck and went back into my apartment. I drew a bath of the hottest, most foamy water, mixing a number of bath salts and Axel’s soap. When I got in, the tub felt like a happy water haven, heavenly scented, a place to slide into, to give in to. To just be, as Madeline would say.

  So that’s what I did.

  59

  Madeline did nothing that morning to quell my suspicions. She was certainly acting different. Again.

  She seemed nervous, sometimes confused, sometimes surprised. What she was surprised about, I didn’t know. She was distracted when I came in. Barely said hello. Where was the team? I wondered.

  “So,” I said, following her into her office and leaning on the door as she sat at her black lacquer desk. “I spoke with Mayburn again before I came in. He thinks it’s time to bring in the police.”

  He hadn’t actually insisted or anything, just mused that maybe some official art authorities—if there were any—should be consulted eventually. But I wanted to see what Madeline’s reaction would be.

  Madeline looked at me, blinking, then at something on her desk—an invite from another gallery, it appeared.

  “In fact,” I said, trying to catch her attention. “He thinks it should be soon. Jacqueline Stoddard must know more about the forgeries than she’s telling us. After all, she has a lot of contacts in the art world. And you know that detective who arrested me? Vaughn. We could use him. I actually believe he can be discreet.” I thought about being in the back of that car during the blizzard, the plastic seat. “And I figure he owes me.”

  Madeline had appeared mildly amused the last time I mentioned Vaughn, but now she looked fearful. She looked at me directly. “No.”

  “No?” I stood a little straighter.

  “Not yet. No.”

  I tucked a lock of hair behind my ears. “Then when?”

  “I’m not sure.” She ret
urned her eyes back to the invitation, but she didn’t seem to be truly reading it. She cocked her head a little.

  My thoughts turned to where Madeline was—the Madeline of yesterday, the one who had kissed me. Were we even going to deal with that? Truthfully, I was okay with a little avoidance on that issue, but what was going on here?

  Was it possible that the whole kissing thing was just a ploy? A way to play me, and draw any suspicions from her?

  Madeline picked up her phone. “Izzy, I have to talk to someone,” she said. “I printed out the shipping manifests. Could you review those at home?”

  “I could…” I said, hesitantly. “Why?”

  “I’ve got a designer coming in. He’ll be in the back room here, and I don’t want him to see them and start asking questions.”

  Sounded reasonable enough.

  Madeline looked at the door. And her meaning was clear. Time for you to go.

  I left. Not because she wanted me to, but because I had to talk to someone, as well.

  60

  The Belmont Police Station had to be one of the ugliest stations in the country—brown and squat, it sat beneath a highway underpass, as if the city found its presence distasteful and had dumped it there to keep it out of sight.

  The station was near the secret club that Madeline had taken me to, the one haunted by the art crowd. As I’d seen Maggie do before, I pulled into a parking space marked Police. Apparently (ironically) such spots were known as the few places in the city from which they never towed.

  Plus, I was there to see the police. That visit to the station was the first time I noticed a sculpture, big, colorful and rounded, that had been installed in front of the station. I’d never given it much notice before, but now I stopped and tried to take it in and appreciate it.

  But I kept thinking of Madeline and her strange behavior that morning.

  I took a breath, tried to open my eyes and really see the sculpture, its curves.

  Still, Madeline—suspicions, questions and a growing feeling of distrust. I thought about Syd. Did he have anything to do with Madeline’s change of heart? Had she seen him last night after we’d spoken to Jacqueline? According to a plaque, the name of the sculpture was…