by Sara Rosett
“Apparently the roommate rarely went upstairs. He didn’t even know they were there.”
As Zoe closed the empty pizza box, Jack said, “So we’re not using Julia Lessing as a listing agent if we decide to sell our house.”
“I doubt she’d take us on as clients. She was a tad upset with me when I insisted on calling the police.” Zoe had felt bad about deceiving the real estate agent, but the blast of Julia’s rage directed at her when she’d insisted on calling the police had cleared away a good portion of Zoe’s remorse.
Jack leaned back and lifted his beer. “Well, congratulations. You found them. Good job not giving up.” The skin crinkled around his silver-blue eyes as he smiled.
“Thanks.” Zoe clicked her glass against his bottle.
Jack tilted his head. “You don’t seem thrilled.”
Zoe pushed the pizza box away. “I thought I’d be ecstatic like Ruby. But honestly, it’s a bit of a letdown.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well—I know this sounds a bit silly—but Bobby Greer was so stupid.” The pace of her words quickened as she worked out what was bothering her. “He picked the paintings on a whim. He had no plan—no way to sell them. And then he hid them in his house, practically in plain sight.”
“Not all criminals can be masterminds. Some are just—well, dumb.”
“I suppose so.”
“And whether the thief was an imbecile or not, the fact remains that neither of those paintings would have been found if you hadn’t followed Greer to his house, figured out a way to get in there, and searched the place. You, Zoe Hunter Andrews, saw to it that two beautiful pieces of art will be back in a museum. That’s something to be proud of.” He kissed her quickly on the mouth and picked up the pizza box. “Allow me to do the dishes. Then I suggest we call it a night. I have a breakfast meeting tomorrow.”
Zoe caught his tie and drew him toward her. “Then we’d better get you to bed right away.”
His phone rang. “Let me check . . .” He slipped his phone out of his pocket. The corner of his mouth quirked down. “I better take this. It’s a new client.”
Zoe’s nose wrinkled. “The Bauer account?”
“Yeah.”
Zoe sighed and released his tie. “You have to take it.” Zoe reached for the pizza box.
“I’ll try to keep it short.”
“Good luck with that,” Zoe muttered to herself. The last few times Bauer Enterprises had called, Jack had been on the phone for hours.
Jack’s voice faded as he climbed the stairs two at time. “Let me take a look. Yes, I understand why you’d be worried . . . of course I’ll check . . .”
Zoe dumped the box in the recycling bin. “And that’s why we need a vacation.”
The doorbell rang. Nicolas dropped the toy car, scrambled to his feet, and ran down the hall, his chunky legs pumping.
Zoe followed him and opened the front door for Helen, who swept Nicolas up in her arms. “How’s my little man?”
Nicolas buried his face in her shoulder for a moment, then wiggled. “Down. Cars.”
Helen set him on his feet, and he zipped back to the living room. “How was he? Was he good?”
“Perfect, as always.”
“Always perfect is overstating it, I think. He’s only perfect for Aunt Zoe.”
“That’s one of the perks of being the babysitter, not the mom. How was the appointment? You look fantastic.”
“Thanks. It’s amazing what a few hours at the salon can do.” They’d been walking down the hall, but Helen stopped short as they entered the living room. “Oh my.” Toy cars, blocks, and all the pillows in the house were strewn across the floor.
Nicolas crawled out from between two propped-up couch cushions that had a sheet draped over them. “Fort, Mommy.”
“I see that.”
“Don’t worry. It’s not that bad,” Zoe said. “It’ll only take a few minutes to put the cushions and pillows back. Do you have time for a glass of ice tea before you have to go?”
“Sure.” Helen followed Zoe to the kitchen, where she pulled out a barstool and nodded at a stack of Smart Travel guidebooks. “What’s this? Are you copyediting for Smart Travel again?”
“Hardly. Jack’s making plans.” Zoe poured two glasses of tea and handed one to Helen.
“Oh, that’s right. Your trip.” Helen tapped her forehead through her freshly highlighted bangs. “Mommy brain.”
“Jack’s got a huge itinerary planned for Amsterdam—all sorts of stuff from tulips to museums.”
“Laid out in a timetable?” Helen asked with a smile.
“Close, but not quite.” Zoe ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “Jack hasn’t been able to go on many vacations. His family was a little strapped for cash when he was young.”
“But back when he was—um—working for the State Department, didn’t he see all sorts of amazing places in Europe?”
“Yes, but he was working. That’s not the same as being a tourist.”
“I guess so.”
“It’s not. He never had time to do much sightseeing when he was working. He wants to do all the touristy things.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow.”
“And you said you’d babysit for me today? Shouldn’t you be packing?”
Zoe waved off Helen’s concern with her glass of tea. “It’s practically done. I just have to throw a few more things in the suitcase and find my passport.”
Helen pressed a hand to her chest. “That makes me anxious for you. If I didn’t know where my passport was and I was leaving in”—she looked at her watch—“less than twenty-four hours, I’d be in a panic.”
“It’s somewhere in the bedroom. I’ll find it.”
Helen shook her head. “I’m sure you will.” She tilted her head toward the guidebooks. “So, where are you going?’
“Amsterdam first for a few days, then . . .” Zoe shrugged. “We’ll see.”
Helen blinked. “What?”
“We’re going to play it by ear. Barcelona, Athens, Prague, and Vienna are all on the short list. It depends on where the weather is the nicest and who has the best ticket prices.”
“That’s a lengthy short list.”
“I don’t want to box us in. Jack’s planning the first leg of the trip—the Amsterdam portion—and then it’s my turn for the second leg.”
“And you have no idea where you’ll go during your part of the trip?”
“Nope.”
“That’s a very Zoe plan.” Helen smiled. “I can picture your itinerary.” She waved her hand as if she were reading a line of text off a sign. “Itinerary: get lost in Europe.”
“That’s about it.”
“It would drive me crazy, but a package tour wouldn’t be your thing. You’ve always liked to do things the unconventional way. I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time. Oh! I have something for you.” She twisted around and retrieved her enormous designer purse that she’d hooked on the back of the barstool. “Here you are.” She pulled out a flat square package.
“Oh, fun.” Zoe ripped the paper away. Helen had clipped that morning’s newspaper article with the headline Stolen Art Recovered and framed it. “This is so nice. And you highlighted my name in the story,” Zoe said with a laugh.
“It’s quite a coup,” Helen said. “You need to celebrate that accomplishment.”
“Thank you. I love it.” Zoe ran her hand along the sleek frame. “I’ll find the perfect place to hang it when we get back from Europe.” Seeing the newspaper article in that morning’s paper had gone a long way toward easing the sense of letdown Zoe had felt the day before.
Helen cocked her head and listened for a moment. “You hear that?”
“No.”
“Exactly. It’s too quiet.” Helen downed the rest of her tea. “I’d better see what Nicolas is doing, then I do have to go. It’s nearly nap time.”
Nicolas had rearranged the pillows into a
mound and was running his toy cars down it. Helen said it was time to go, and after several protests from Nicolas, they returned the living room to its normal state. As Helen gathered up the diaper bag and her purse, Nicolas gave Zoe a goodbye hug, wrapping his plump arms around her neck. He smelled of a mixture of baby powder and sticky little boy. Zoe squeezed him tight. “Next time you come over, we’ll make sugar cookies.”
He drew back, his face serious. “Sprinkles?”
“Of course, with sprinkles. Lots and lots of sprinkles.”
As Helen and Nicolas crossed the porch, Helen said to Nicolas, “Look, Aunt Zoe has a package. Do you want to get it for her?”
Nicolas pounced on the thick envelope like it was Christmas morning. He toddled back to Zoe.
“Thank you, Nicolas. What a big helper you are. Oh, good. It’s from Harrington—the nineteen twenties job.”
4
Zoe put the empty ice tea glasses in the sink and moved the Smart Travel guides out of the way before she opened the envelope from Harrington, which contained a thick file. She spread the contents of it across the island—stacks of photographs, a family tree, legal paperwork, printouts from the blog that mentioned the painting, and photocopies of what must have been several fragile tissue-like pages, because the color copies showed the pages were yellowed with age.
Harrington had sent her an email with a summary of the case, so she knew the basics and had done a little poking around online that morning while Nicolas had played with his toy cars. She’d skimmed several articles about the artist, Tamara de Lempicka. Zoe had also read up on the original purchaser, photographer and art collector Sebastian Blakely. After skimming through a few of the internet search results, she’d realized why the name Blakely had sounded familiar when Harrington had mentioned it. Sebastian Blakely was a celebrity photographer. She’d run across a special about him online. He’d begun his career photographing his sister and other members of high society in the nineteen twenties, then he’d gone on to photograph the royal family, presidents, and Hollywood stars.
Zoe started with the high-resolution photographs of the painting she’d be researching, Woman in a White Fur. It depicted a woman in a purple evening dress with a white fur stole draped around her shoulders. A glimpse of a handrail and banister in the background showed the woman was moving down a staircase, the rich fabric of her dress seeming to swish with her steps. Although it was painted early in Tamara de Lempicka’s career, it had her signature glamorous style and polished luminescence. The bright jewel tone of the dress contrasted with the paleness of the woman’s skin and the fur. Zoe liked the combination of glamour and confidence that de Lempicka’s women radiated. The woman in the purple dress was making an entrance. Every eye was on her—and that’s the way she liked it.
Tamara de Lempicka’s paintings didn’t often come up for auction because they were usually snapped up through private sales, which was the case with Woman in a White Fur. The owner wanted to sell it and had put it on display in a London gallery. A buyer wanted it, but they had one stipulation. The process would move forward only if the painting had a complete provenance.
The thick stack of photos of the painting included images of the back of the canvas as well as a close-up of the artist’s signature. The only marking on the back of the painting was a small metal tab affixed to the upper right-hand corner of the frame with “TDL-14-Paris,” which was probably the artist’s initials, year of purchase, and location of purchase. Zoe would need to check to see if the other paintings in Blakely’s collection had been categorized with the same notations. The lack of other markings on the back of the canvas seemed to indicate a single owner.
Zoe skimmed the details about the painting. An oil on canvas, it was on the small side, thirteen and three-quarters inches by ten and a half. It was inscribed in the bottom right-hand corner with “de Lempicka.” The current owner was Rosalind Kingwood. Zoe shuffled papers until she found Harrington’s notes about the provenance.
Woman in a White Fur was painted in nineteen fourteen. Sebastian Blakely purchased it directly from Tamara de Lempicka. Harrington noted that the family owned two de Lempicka paintings and was selling Woman in a White Fur to fund repairs to one of their estates, Archly Manor.
Zoe turned to a printout from the troublesome blog Harrington had mentioned. Harrington’s capable assistant Ava had added a sticky note with the information that the entire website had been deleted, but she’d accessed the post through a digital internet archive site. She flicked through the pages. Some of the posts were about Amsterdam—cycling around the city, restaurants to visit, which museums visitors should tour.
Ava had flagged one post about the Rijksmuseum. It listed the most famous pieces and reviewed the museum restaurant. Near the end, the author, Mallory Tredmont, wrote:
I’ve always felt at home in museums—probably because I was fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by art. Beautiful paintings and stunning photographs are part of my heritage. I’ve been working on a project related to that legacy, and I’ll soon have exciting news to share with you about my upcoming book, Secrets and Privilege: Sebastian Blakely’s Untold Story.
Everyone knows Blakely as a world-famous photographer, but he had another interest. He was also an art collector. I’ve discovered something truly shocking about one of his pieces of art, a painting that’s now owned by one of Blakely’s descendants. Even though I’m dying to tell you more, I can’t say too much about it yet. Just know that no one will ever look at the painting Woman in a White Fur the same way again.
My news will set the art world buzzing. It’s a story of a gorgeous painting, a swindler of the first order, and the mysterious disappearance of a priceless canvas from the Blakely collection in nineteen twenty-three. I can’t say too much now, but there’s more—much more—to come.
Ava’s neat handwriting filled the bottom margin of the page. Unfortunately, there’s nothing else in the internet archive site about Blakely. The blogger didn’t write any more posts about him. The site shut down a month after this blog post went up.
“Well, that’s not good,” Zoe murmured. She could certainly understand why the post could put the brakes on a potential deal. The blogger had all but said the painting had been stolen, not to mention the coy reference to a swindler, which could mean she had info that the painting was a fake. That news—no matter how unreliable the source—combined with the detail about Blakely buying the painting directly from the artist would make most savvy buyers pause.
The art world had been rocked several times by con artists who’d “discovered” paintings from private family collections. With each scam, the con artists needed a story to sell the paintings to art dealers, a reason why the paintings didn’t have paper trails of ownership, so they created fictional histories for their paintings. It was usually the story of an avid collector—a canny person who saw the value in Impressionist or Abstract art when everyone else turned up their nose. The astute and long-sighted art lover bought pieces directly from the artists and kept them in his or her private collection. In reality, the paintings were as fake as their made-up provenance.
The notion that a painting might have been in a private collection for generations wasn’t unheard of, but many art brokers, gallery owners, and collectors had been swept up in the excitement of snagging a rare painting before the competition heard about it, and they overlooked the lack of provenance. That wasn’t the case with the potential buyer for Woman in a White Fur. Harrington’s notes indicated that if provenance could be established, the interested party would move on to scientific tests on the painting and the accompanying provenance paperwork to determine authenticity, which meant the buyer was a cautious person, not one to be duped or hurried along in the heat of the moment. Zoe shuffled papers, looking for the buyer’s name, but it wasn’t listed, which meant he or she wanted to remain anonymous. Of course Harrington knew who it was, but he hadn’t mentioned the buyer’s name in his notes.
Zoe read through Harring
ton’s notes on the bill of sale. The Blakely estate had no paper record of the original purchase. The invoice had been destroyed when Blakely’s London office had caught fire after one of the Zeppelin air raids during World War I.
Next, she turned to an envelope containing several black and white photographs along with a few articles cut from newspapers and magazines. Zoe studied a photo of Sebastian Blakely. It wasn’t a small snapshot, but a full eight-by-ten that showed a slim man dressed in a double-breasted suit leaning against a wall with his arms crossed. His hair was slicked back from his bony face, which was in profile as he looked at Woman in a White Fur. The cavernous room where the painting hung had ornate wood trim and huge Oriental rugs spaced along the floor. A handwritten note on the back of the photograph read, “Self-portrait. 9 June, 1924.”
Zoe leafed through the rest of the photos, which were a mix of casual snapshots and posed images. A parade of different people appeared in the photos, but one thing stayed the same—the painting Woman in a White Fur. It provided an unchanging background for the Blakely family and guests. Most of the photos had the date written on the back, but even if they didn’t, it would have been easy to discern the passage of time as the hemlines rose through the twenties. Then in the thirties, the skirts lengthened and frivolous ruffles and beads disappeared. Zoe lined up the photos in order of the dates written on the back. She began with the earliest dated image, the self-portrait of Blakely. When she was finished, she had a photographic timeline of not only the changes in fashion, but also chronological evidence that the painting had hung in Hawthorne House from nineteen twenty-four through the thirties.
Zoe flipped back to the page that listed Harrington’s notes on the ownership of the painting. The family stated Sebastian Blakely had acquired Woman in a White Fur in nineteen fourteen and hung it at a country manor in Warwickshire called Hawthorne House, one of the homes his family owned. In nineteen forty-five, Blakely had gifted it to his niece, Rose, on the occasion of her marriage. Zoe paged through the stack to the family tree and traced the painting’s transfer from one generation to another. Rose’s daughter had married in nineteen eighty and received Woman in a White Fur on her wedding day. The chain of gifting the painting to the newly wed had continued. The painting had been passed on to Rose’s granddaughter, Rosalind, the current owner, when she married.