Chasing Vermeer

by Blue Balliett

  While living on Harper Avenue, Glitts heard about his reclusive neighbor Louise Sharpe, and soon found out she was Leland Sharpe’s widow. She, like Ms. Hussey, had passionate feelings about Vermeer’s work. It was almost too good to be true.

  And then Glitts met Vincent Watch at Powell’s. They chatted, and Mr. Watch mentioned that his two great loves were art books and mysteries, and that he hoped one day to write an art mystery that focused on real issues in the art world. He had never gotten around to writing such a book, but had dreamed about it for years. Glitts had nodded sympathetically.

  According to a journal found by the FBI in Glitts’s bank vault, he came up with the idea of the three letters in order to confuse the authorities and to create three suspects. Then he had fun writing the letters that were published by newspapers, and watching the public’s reaction. His theft had become a one-of-a-kind world event, and he was a hero to thousands of people. He was only sorry that no one would ever know he was responsible.

  After writing the letter in which he threatened to burn the painting, and in which he said he was “old and would not live long” — hoping, obviously, to sound like Mrs. Sharpe — Glitts had planned to remove A Lady Writing from the secret compartment, deliver it for his sixty million dollars, and allow the world to believe it had been burned. He was quite sure that no museum would meet the demands in his last letter.

  The FBI speculated that on the night he returned to Delia Dell Hall to get the painting, he had just parked his car when he heard the building alarm go off, and then saw Calder and Petra running. That was where things started to go wrong.

  In their investigations, the FBI found that Mrs. Sharpe had a great deal of money and that she had made a very generous gift to the National Gallery after the theft had taken place. She explained in a steely tone that she had wanted to remain anonymous, disliking publicity after the circumstances of her husband’s death. She had intended the money to pay for gatherings of Vermeer scholars to work on attribution and on the crime. When the money was used to pay for The Vermeer Dilemma, she was surprised but could hardly complain, given her request.

  Ms. Hussey was horrified when she heard from Mrs. Sharpe about everything Calder and Petra had done to protect her. Never having lived in a big city, she had been lonely and homesick that fall. She had received a strange letter. When the painting was stolen and she realized that her ideas about Vermeer’s work sounded like the thief’s, she had been frightened. Trying to figure out what to do with the thief’s letter had been the final straw. She had no one to talk to in Chicago — no one, that is, but her sixth-grade class.

  Zelda Segovia was horrified that she’d been charmed into marrying a professional criminal. She knew nothing about Xavier Glitts or his shady business. When Tommy found out that his stepfather’s real nickname was Glitter Man, he snorted. “More like Twitter Man. I never heard so much gabbing in my life. The way he promised stuff and then figured out how to take it away — what a sneak.”

  Frank Andalee felt terrible about having frightened Petra that day in Delia Dell Hall. He had been delivering an old print from one of the science labs to the guy with the big eyebrows, who was a publicity man working for the university. Petra’s dad changed departments that winter and was much happier with his new job.

  Vincent Watch had carried the letter around with him for weeks, getting a secret thrill from knowing it was in his pocket. He didn’t want to contact the police before he was sure the thief wasn’t going to contact him with an interesting proposal that he could then use in a book. The letter would be a good way to begin an art mystery. When the news came out about Mrs. Sharpe and Ms. Hussey being the other two recipients, he decided to confide in Mrs. Sharpe. He knew she wouldn’t talk and would give him sound advice about whether to call the police.

  After Calder’s last delivery to Mrs. Sharpe, Mr. Watch stopped by her house on the way home from work. When he reached into his pocket to show Mrs. Sharpe the letter, it was gone. He never understood how this had happened. He must have missed his pocket the last time he slid the letter back in, and it must have fallen out on his walk down Harper Avenue. He was extremely upset, but Mrs. Sharpe was sympathetic and practical. They agreed that it no longer made sense for him to tell the authorities about the third letter. Since he had no proof of having gotten it, he’d just look silly.

  This, strangely, was the second time he’d lost the letter. He’d made a copy weeks earlier, in case he lost the original, and it had somehow gotten away from him between the copy store and Powell’s. It was almost eerie.

  This was the letter Petra saw blowing around, but as Mr. Watch hadn’t told Mrs. Sharpe about it, Petra never knew where it came from. She told Mrs. Sharpe about finding the third letter tucked neatly into the bushes. They agreed it was a chain of events that would have intrigued Charles Fort.

  As soon as the FBI had finished their questioning, Mrs. Sharpe, Calder, and Petra got together again for tea in Mrs. Sharpe’s kitchen. This time, the tulips were yellow.

  Mrs. Sharpe congratulated the children on their extraordinary bravery and intelligence. Coming from her, this was quite a compliment. After tea, Calder filled in Mrs. Sharpe on all the patterns of twelve he had identified. He told her about his pentominoes seeming to give him messages. He explained that he was quite sure there were more twelves involved.

  Mrs. Sharpe’s eyes became slits, as they had in the hospital when Petra had talked about her dream. The old woman was very quiet. They told her about the “monkey panel vines flute finds” moment on the stairs in Delia Dell. They asked her if she had done that on purpose.

  “I wish,” she said, giving them a smile that was almost wistful.

  She thanked them both for sharing such fabulous secrets and promised she would never tell those secrets to another soul — not without their permission. Somehow, Calder and Petra knew they could trust her.

  Then she offered a secret of her own, and asked them to keep it until after her death. Both agreed immediately, and Petra reached out to pat Mrs. Sharpe’s bony hand.

  Mrs. Sharpe went over some of what Calder and Petra had already heard about her past. She said that just before her husband, Leland, had been murdered, she had received a letter from him saying he had made a stunning discovery about Vermeer’s paintings, a discovery that would shake art historians all over the world. He couldn’t wait to tell her about it, but wanted to save the news until he was “safe and sound in Hyde Park.” And then, on the day he was due to fly back to Chicago, his body was found outside the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He had been killed by a blow to the head. His date book had been in his suitcase, which was in the hotel lobby. When Mrs. Sharpe looked in the date book weeks later, she saw 1212 scribbled hurriedly, in his handwriting, on the day of his death. She pointed this out to the police, but no one knew what to make of it. Did it mean twelve minutes past noon, or past midnight? Did it represent the number 1,212? She wasn’t able to figure it out, either. The police never brought anyone to trial, and the mystery had faded over time.

  After telling the children this story, Mrs. Sharpe sat quietly for a moment, looking down at the table. Then she blinked rapidly, sat up straight, and blew her nose.

  She continued in her familiar businesslike tone. “I became determined to pick up where Leland had left off, but I never could figure out exactly what it was he had uncovered or realized. In the years since, I’ve studied everything I could about Vermeer. I vowed that I would support any new research on his life or his paintings. And then, last fall, something very odd began to happen to me. And this is the part I want you to keep a secret.”

  Mrs. Sharpe said she had been “told” by the woman in A Lady Writing to clear the name of Vermeer, to make sure that the world knew that a number of his works had been done by followers. She had received pages and pages of messages, words she said she had merely written down. Calder and Petra looked at each other as Mrs. Sharpe disappeared to get a sheet of paper from the pile next to her computer. She settled
back down at the kitchen table. This is what she read:

  My lie is that I am only canvas and pigment. My truth is that I am alive. Some might call this your imagination, but it’s not. Art, as you know, is about ideas. I am as real as your blue china or the boy with the box or the girl who dreamed about me. I am very much here.

  Seeing how sober the children’s faces had become, Mrs. Sharpe stopped to reassure them. “I am sharing this with you just to show you what I am beginning to see: Something much more powerful than any one of us has pulled us all together. Although Xavier Glitts thought he was in control, he was just a piece of the picture, if you’ll pardon the pun. Something managed to communicate with each of us, including the thief, each in a way that we were willing to hear or see.”

  With the flicker of a smile, Mrs. Sharpe reached across the wooden table to straighten a tulip. Catching the afternoon sun, the petals filled with color, a clean cup of lemon in the winter light. Suddenly Petra remembered picking up a leaf on Harper Avenue that fall, and being struck by the thought that yellow was the color of surprise.

  Calder did discover more twelves. First he made a list:

  Petra Andalee

  Frank Andalee

  Norma Andalee

  Calder Pillay

  Walter Pillay

  Yvette Pillay

  Isabel Hussey

  Louise Sharpe

  Tommy Segovia

  Zelda Segovia

  Vincent Watch

  Xavier Glitts (also known as Fred Steadman)

  There were twelve names, and twelve letters in each name. Mrs. Sharpe got all pink-cheeked and pleased when Calder showed her the list, and after thinking for a moment, she said slowly, “Yes, how curious … the message ‘1212’ also has twelve letters if you spell it out, and so does the name of the painting, A Lady Writing, at least in English.” She reminded Calder and Petra that Charles Fort didn’t believe in coincidence. He felt things were often connected in ways that no one could yet explain in scientific terms. But if none of this was coincidence, what was it?

  Calder and Petra were more than a little spooked by it all. They were very glad that they had Mrs. Sharpe to talk to. They thought it was pretty extraordinary that she had, in the hospital, said just about the same thing as Picasso about art, lies, and the truth. Maybe the greatest ideas were quite simple. Or maybe certain experiences in life were made to fit together like pentominoes. Maybe the passage of time, even centuries, didn’t matter when something really important needed to be said.

  If there were twelve names involved, and if each name was a piece in a very big puzzle, did any of those twelve fit together in other ways? Over many cups of tea, Calder, Petra, and Mrs. Sharpe found a number of odd connections.

  The most startling one was that the first letter of the first name of each person on Calder’s list was a pentomino. “The U is my C,” Calder explained. “It’s just a matter of a simple turn, not even a flip. I never liked the U being a U, anyway.”

  Calder then realized that if you thought about those twelve people as pentominoes, you could see that certain ones fit into rectangles more easily than others. The X (Xavier), for instance, is the hardest pentomino to work with. The U or C (Calder) and the P (Petra), however, work easily into many solutions. The L (Louise) can fit easily with the I (Isabel), and the W (Walter) with the Y (Yvette), or the F (Frank) with the N (Norma)…. Calder’s thoughts were running wild. Then he and Petra remembered Ms. Hussey saying The letter is dead at the beginning of the school year. Well, one letter certainly was, they thought grimly: the X.

  Although Leland Sharpe was not on the list, Calder noticed that the first letter of his first name began with the twelfth letter in the alphabet. Petra added that L was a very useful pentomino and worked easily into most rectangles. “Yes, he always did manage to fit into every new situation.” Mrs. Sharpe sniffed and looked pleased. “He loved puzzles and codes, you know. He would have appreciated pentominoes.”

  Isabel Hussey and Louise Sharpe both turned out to be descendants of a member of the Coffin family on Nantucket Island. Both had lived there. Mrs. Sharpe had written the letter she’d told Calder and Petra about.

  After the mystery was solved, Ms. Hussey and Mrs. Sharpe were often seen having dinner together in Hyde Park. They had lots to talk about and enjoyed each other’s thinking. As the school year went on, Ms. Hussey became as much a friend as a teacher to Petra and Calder. The three often went to Fargo Hall after school for hot chocolate.

  Petra did show Ms. Hussey her copy of Lo! The sixth-grade class tried to add to Charles Fort’s accounts and studied the idea of coincidence. Was it, as a number of interested scientists believed, just the human fascination with patterns? Or was it something more?

  Frank and Norma Andalee and Walter and Yvette Pillay all turned out to be forty-three years old. They had all been twelve in the year of Leland Sharpe’s death, which had been thirty-one years earlier. Mrs. Sharpe and the children wondered if there was any connection with the 1931 publication date of Lo! They also realized, with a shudder, that Vermeer had been forty-three when he died.

  Petra’s dad told Petra something else stunning: A part of his family had lived for centuries in the Netherlands, in an area not far from Delft. Family records were sketchy, but it was entirely possible that Petra was related to a member of Vermeer’s family. Petra walked on air for days.

  Calder, in his research, found that Johannes Vermeer had collapsed, quite suddenly, in December 1675. He had been buried in the Oude Kerk, in Delft, on December 16. It was thought that he died several days earlier, which would have made December 12 perhaps the last full day of his life. In addition to being Petra’s and Calder’s birthday, it had also been the last conscious day of Xavier Glitts’s life.

  And then there was Frog. Once Petra remembered Fort’s sentence We shall pick up an existence by its frogs, she pointed out to Calder that perhaps it had been some kind of strange clue. Maybe they should have picked up Glitter Man’s existence from Frog.

  Within weeks of the Lady’s return to the National Gallery, the wall labels on a number of Vermeer paintings around the world were quietly changed to: ATTRIBUTED TO JOHANNES VERMEER. In celebration, Calder and Petra went to the Drake Hotel with Mrs. Sharpe for tea, and she told them both about deliveries that were soon to be made at each of their houses. She gave Calder an antique globe and a real Oriental carpet that looked just like the Geographer’s. She gave her writing desk, an elegant seventeenth-century beauty, to Petra. She also gave her a string of real Dutch pearls.

  Calder and Petra, in their interviews with the press, didn’t share the entire story. They never mentioned Petra’s dream, Calder’s problem-solving, Charles Fort, the twelves, or the blue ones. They didn’t know if the world was ready for it. And they still weren’t entirely sure what had been real and what had not.

  A missing father. A lost home. A dangerous mystery.

  And a hidden pattern to it all. Don’t miss a beat in the sneak peek that follows.

  Ice: the third week of January 2011

  It was the bitterest, meanest, darkest, coldest winter in anyone’s memory, even in one of the forgotten neighborhoods of Chicago. Light and warmth seemed gone for good; mountains of gray snow and sheets of ice destroyed the geometry of sidewalk and street. Neighbors fell silent, listening beyond the clang-scrape-chunk of their own shovels for the snowplows that never arrived. The wind blew for so many weeks that people forgot what it felt like to walk in a straight, easy line. Life hunched over. Death whispered and whistled from around each corner. Those with homes hated to leave them, and those without wondered why they’d ever been born.

  On this particular January afternoon, gusts battered the city and a temperature of zero nipped at flesh and stone alike. Suddenly: a squeal of brakes, a shout, and a thud; wheels spinning through the dusk; a blue bicycle crushed beneath a truck; a shopping bag spewing green peas, tomatoes, and oranges across snow.

  At 1:11, a man was having lunch when told to
notice the time. At 2:22, he was placing books on shelves and rolling a cart through math-straight channels of words. He glanced at his watch, nodded, and smiled. By 3:33, he was shrugging into his jacket, noted the line of threes, nodded again. Pulling a black sock hat over his ears, he paused inside the lobby to write for several minutes in a small notebook. “What’s the rhythm, Langston?” he murmured to himself as he left the building. “What’s the rhythm?”

  At 4:44, the police received a 911 call from a phone booth in the South Side neighborhood of Woodlawn. A muffled voice reported an accident involving a bicyclist and an unmarked delivery truck. When a squad car arrived at the scene minutes later, the street was deserted. There were no witnesses to be found. No one could remember seeing the young man that afternoon, but there were his bike, his groceries, and his pocket notebook, which was discovered beneath a nearby car. He had vanished three blocks from home.

  The truck was also gone, leaving only the slash-print of tires in snow.

  Packed ice allowed no footprints. Nor was there blood.

  Gone. Four miserable letters. What does the word mean? Does 4:44, a measurement made of fours but shown by three, mean a family of four is still four, even when one is gone? Can a soul hide in a three that belongs to four?

  Click, uncertain origin

  Noun: a brief, sharp sound sometimes traced to a

  mechanical device, as with a camera or computer;

  a part of some African languages.

  Verb: to select; to become a success; to fit seamlessly

  together.