by Sara Rosett
The video shifted to footage of the Janus Gallery as a reporter said, “Mr. Vokos’ statements call into question the ownership of the famous painting. The Blakely estate maintains they own the original Tamara de Lempicka. Mr. Vokos says his family wasn’t aware of another painting of Woman in a White Fur until recent reports of its theft from a gallery in London.”
Vokos appeared on the screen again. “This painting that was stolen in England—where has it been all these years? In a vault, they say! Well, mine has been on display in my home for decades for any visitor to see.”
Zoe closed the video, and they made their way down from the high plateau, taking a path that branched off the main walkway to a dirt trail that rounded the south side of the hill and cut between tall grass and wildflowers. “Interesting that Vokos would go to the media,” Zoe said as they paced along. The sharp drop of the cliffside hid the Parthenon from their view.
“Vokos is setting the narrative. He wants to control the story.”
“He’s certainly managed to raise questions about the Blakely family’s painting. I hope Rolf comes through with the rest of Olive’s reports. Right now, it seems it’s the only thing that can tell us what really happened with Woman in a White Fur. Oh, now this is interesting.”
They’d woven their way through ropes set up to direct foot traffic around the theater and emerged behind the stage. Rows of marble blocks rose above them in a half circle. “Not so different from stadium seating today,” Zoe said. Two children were dodging in and out of the rows, their giggles echoing around the amphitheater. Their parents climbed more slowly behind them.
“Unless you’re in one of the special seats.” Jack nodded to a grouping of marble seats with curved backs. Some had scroll-like details carved into their edges.
“I bet those were pricey.”
“Or reserved for government leaders,” Jack said with a smile as they walked up through the rows of “cheap seats” to a higher point.
Zoe’s phone rang, and she paused to fish it out of her pocket again. “It’s Harrington.”
“Busy morning in art recovery,” Jack said and moved off to explore more of the theater on his own while she took the call.
“Zoe, good morning. I spoke to Mr. Best.”
“So soon? I didn’t expect to hear anything until later today.”
“He’s traveling—in Hong Kong, in fact. I left him a message last night after I heard from you. He picked it up a few hours ago, which was morning for him. He admitted he’d hired a private detective to look for details about the provenance of the painting. He’s one to cover his bets.”
“He is thinking of investing a lot of money in the painting.”
“Very true. But he’s received nothing regarding the provenance of the painting. The private detective returned empty-handed.”
“Then Rolf may actually have the rest of Olive’s report.”
“Rolf?”
Zoe summarized how she’d reached out to Mallory, but that it was Rolf who’d contacted her with the claim of finding the last pages. “I’ll let you know what happens in Amsterdam.”
“Excellent. You’ll be reimbursed for the expense of the flight, of course.”
“Thanks. How are things where you are?”
“I think we’ll wrap up here today.”
“Good luck with it, then,” Zoe said, and they said goodbye.
She glanced around for Jack. He was making his way toward her. “It must be time for us to head for the airport if you’re folding the Acropolis map.”
“Yes, we’d better go. We can take this path here down to the Dionysiou Arepagitou—that’s a pedestrian zone. We take that to the Acropolis Museum. We can catch a taxi near there and go back to our hotel. Ready?”
Zoe surveyed the ruin of the theater, the sheer cliff face, and the small corner of the Parthenon that showed white against the clear blue sky. “Not really. There’s so much of Athens we haven’t experienced, but I need to see what Rolf has found.” Zoe turned away from the incredible view. “On to the airport.”
29
It was drizzling when Zoe and Jack landed in Amsterdam. Raindrops tracked down the windows of the taxi as their driver navigated through congested streets. Zoe had booked a room for them at the same hotel they’d checked out of a few days before.
Jack looked at his watch as they drew up to the familiar awning over the hotel’s entrance. “Plenty of time to check in and drop our bags before we leave to meet Rolf.”
“Good.” Chilly air enveloped Zoe when she opened the car door, and she pulled her coat collar closer around her throat. She grabbed her bag from the trunk and darted through the rain to the awning, where she waited for Jack as he paid the driver. The thick layer of dark clouds imbued the day with the feeling of twilight, even though it was still afternoon. It was hard to believe they’d been in sunny, blustery Athens only a few hours earlier.
Jack ducked under the awning. “Quite a change,” he said as the doorman held the door.
“I was just thinking that. Let’s get another taxi after we drop off our bags. We’ll be drenched if we don’t, even though it’s not far—” Zoe broke off as a woman flew across the lobby toward them.
“Finally! I’ve been waiting and waiting.”
It took Zoe a second to recognize her. “Farina!” Zoe bit back the words you look terrible. “What’s happened?” The change in Farina’s appearance was startling. She wore faded leggings and a wrinkled rain jacket that had a stain on the collar. Her swath of pale white hair, limp and oily at the roots, hung over her face.
Farina shoved her sagging hair behind her ear, showing her nearly makeup-free face. She only had on a bit of lipstick that had worn away except for around the edges of her lips. Without mascara, her pale lashes were barely distinguishable, and her eyes looked smaller. “They wouldn’t tell me anything at the reception desk, so I’ve been waiting here, hoping to catch you.”
Jack motioned that he’d be at the reception desk. Zoe nodded in agreement. They didn’t have much time, and Farina was distraught. They couldn’t just walk away from her, but they couldn’t miss their meeting with Rolf either. Zoe drew Farina to a bench in a quiet corner of the lobby. “We left Amsterdam for a few days. Why didn’t you call me?”
“I had to speak to you in person. I thought you’d gone on an overnight trip to see Haarlem or Delft. Lots of tourists take short trips like that. I’ve been in and out of the lobby, hoping to catch you. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t leave a message with a little secretary—not about this.”
Zoe knew Ava wouldn’t like the designation of a little secretary. “Ava is Mr. Harrington’s direct assistant. She’s very discreet. You can trust her with any—”
“No! I can’t—not with this.” Farina leaned forward, her voice lowered. “I know who—” She broke off as Jack joined them.
“We’re checked in. They’ll see to our luggage.” Jack steered Zoe’s rolling suitcase toward a bellboy who’d followed him.
Jack took in Farina’s distraught expression and sent Zoe a questioning glance. Zoe lifted a shoulder to indicate she didn’t know what was going on and turned back to Farina. “Jack and I have an appointment that we can’t miss, but I do want to hear what you have to say. Let’s meet in a few hours. Can you do that?”
Farina’s bare face went splotchy with anger. “No! You don’t understand. This is important. I know who has the paintings—all of them. We can get them back—well, you can.”
“You know or you suspect you know?” Zoe asked, thinking of Farina’s insistence the last time they met that Pieter had the paintings.
Farina looked away for a moment as she dragged her fingers through her droopy bangs, then she focused on Zoe. “Look, I wasn’t completely honest with you before. Pieter has the paintings, mine and the Tamara de Lempicka. I know he does. I’m sure of it.”
Jack sent Zoe a glance full of doubt, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was—that Farina was a little obses
sed. “Farina, I can tell you’re very concerned about this, but there’s been a new development regarding the paintings. Another person has come forward—”
Farina grabbed Zoe’s arm and said in a fierce whisper, “I know Pieter has them because I hired him to steal them.”
“Oh.” Zoe exchanged a glance with Jack, who looked at his watch and said, “We have about ten minutes.”
Zoe turned back to Farina. “We don’t have long, but we do want to hear what you have to say.” Jack pulled over a chair and sat down with them.
“It won’t take long.”
“You hired Pieter to steal the paintings?” Zoe repeated the words just to make sure she’d heard Farina correctly.
Farina blew out a deep breath. “Yes, and it’s such a relief to tell someone.” Her shoulders relaxed. “It was a crazy idea. I knew that, but I thought it might just be the thing to help me break out.”
Jack leaned forward. “Break out?”
Farina made little circles with one hand. “You know, get some publicity. You only need a couple of social media posts from someone influential. Or if you catch the eye of a prominent collector, your career can take off. It can make all the difference in the world. It’s extremely difficult to break through all the noise. I asked Pieter to help me. I thought I could trust him.” Her expression darkened. “Turns out I was wrong.”
“What happened?” Zoe asked.
Farina shifted on the bench, recrossing her legs and rearranging the folds of her coat. “It was all supposed to be very simple. I knew the security at the Janus Gallery wasn’t . . . impenetrable, shall we say. I knew there was a weakness, the back window in the women’s restroom. I’d stopped by the gallery one afternoon to look around and went to a little café nearby for a coffee afterward. I was in line behind two of the employees, who were talking about the sticky window that they couldn’t get to fasten completely closed and how the owner would have ‘a cow’ if he knew they had left it unlocked so they could take a smoke break without going outside.”
Farina caught Jack’s disapproving gaze. “Very lax, I know.”
“So you decided to take advantage of it,” Jack said.
“Not me. Pieter. He was supposed to get in, take my paintings along with Woman in a White Fur, and disappear—but only for one day.” Her hand tightened into a fist, and she banged it on her knee as she said each word. “The next day everything was supposed to turn up.” She swooshed her hand through the air like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. “It would be just enough time to cause a . . . well . . .”
“A media sensation?” Zoe supplied.
“Yes.” Farina crossed her arms tight across her chest. “Pieter was to leave England immediately and come back here. He was supposed to leave all the paintings in a bin bag in a warehouse and anonymously notify the police. But the next day nothing happened.” She closed her eyes and sighed again, a long breathy exhale. “There was a media sensation, all right. And Pieter had seen the reports. Once he saw what Woman in a White Fur was valued at, he decided he’d keep it along with my paintings.”
“So the story about him being a relative of your friend . . .?”
Farina’s shock of bangs fell forward over one eye as she ducked her head. “I did make that up. But Pieter is—or was—a longtime friend. I needed a reason to explain why I hadn’t gone to the police.”
She flicked her head to the side, tossing her hair out of her eyes as she scooted closer to Zoe. “Pieter won’t speak to me, but you can convince him to give up the paintings. By now he’s got to have realized his plan is hopeless.”
“I don’t know about that.” Farina’s expression was so hopeful that Zoe felt she had to tamp down Farina’s confidence in her. “If he’s blinded by the thought of making a lot of cash from them, he may not be interested in giving them up.”
“Please, will you at least try? He won’t take my calls, and when I tried to talk to him face-to-face, he wouldn’t listen to a word I said. He just walked away. But he has to answer the phone at work.” Farina had taken her phone from her pocket and was pulling up her contact list. “I know he’s there now. He works Friday afternoons. You’ll try, won’t you? It’s what you do, right? Recover paintings?”
Zoe blew out a breath as questions swirled in her mind. Was Farina telling the truth now? That didn’t even take into account all the questions about Vokos and how he’d come to have a painting so similar to the one in the Blakely collection. Farina widened her eyes, and her face transformed into a pleading expression.
Zoe checked the time. “I suppose it can’t hurt. We still have a few minutes before we have to leave.” She couldn’t imagine that it would take more than a few seconds for Pieter to either ignore the call or hang up on her. Zoe glanced at Jack.
He said, “I’ll get us a taxi while you do that.”
Zoe dialed as Farina read out Pieter’s number. When a masculine voice came on the line after two rings, it startled her. “Pieter?”
“Ja, who’s this?”
She ignored his question. “I have it on good authority you have some—um . . .” She had to pick her words carefully so she didn’t spook him. “Some valuable items, let’s say. Artistic things that you’re interested in, um, transferring to someone else.”
His voice was cautious. “That might be the case, but only for the right price.”
“Excellent.” Zoe sat up straight and inched away from Farina, who’d scooted over to the end of the bench and was trying to hear the conversation through the phone.
“Who is this again?” Pieter asked, “And how did you get this number?”
“A friend gave it to me. I want to help you.”
“Help me?”
“Yes. We both know what you have is valuable. In fact, it’s so valuable that it’s practically worthless.”
Anger flicked through in his tone. “That’s sh—”
Zoe talked over him. “What you have is recognizable. With all the news coverage of the—um, your little indiscretion—no one will touch what you have. No reputable dealer, that is. And how will you find a disreputable dealer? Anyone you talk to about selling your merchandise, if they’re law-abiding citizens—and most people draw the line at accepting stolen goods worth millions of dollars—the first thing they’ll do is call the police. You don’t want that, do you?”
Silence stretched out on the line, and Zoe clamped her lips together, letting her words sink in a moment. Farina made a circular motion with her hand, a get on with it motion, but Zoe waited a few more beats. Jack came back from speaking with the doorman.
Zoe nodded at him, then said, “Let me tell you about a man I met recently. He’d—um, relocated two items—very famous items—from a museum to his house. He thought he could sell them. He couldn’t. He didn’t have connections. So they sat in his house for months until I tracked them down. Now he’s in jail.”
“Who are you?”
“Zoe Andrews. The man’s name is Bobby Greer. Look him up. It’s all online. You’ve got two choices. Either destroy the paintings”—Farina shook her head in a jerky motion as she reached for the phone. Zoe leaned away, out of range of her hand—“or you get rid of them. Now I think you’re a person of taste and refinement. You don’t want to destroy a famous painting. You’d be better off giving it up. A whole lot less of a headache for you.”
“And you can help me with that.” Sarcasm layered Pieter’s words.
“Yes. I can. This is the sort of thing I do. We can arrange for me to take the items off your hands.”
“And you’ll just take them and not tell the police?”
“Of course, I’ll have to share details about my suspicions, but I have no proof you have anything, only ideas. The police don’t get too excited about ideas—believe me, I know. And if you don’t have the items in your possession, then there’s nothing to tie you to them.” Zoe glossed over the fact that there might be evidence at the gallery that would link him to the crime. If he were smart, there wouldn’t
be, but she wasn’t about to point out a possible flaw in her argument. And she knew the police wouldn’t be as concerned about art theft as other crimes like homicide, but she didn’t mention that either. More likely, the police would be happy to do a cursory investigation and close the file, but she wasn’t about to mention that to Pieter.
“Let’s set up a place to meet,” Zoe said.
His breath, huffy and short-winded, came down the line. “No. You just want them for yourself.”
Zoe laughed. “Hardly. You really should do an internet search for the name Bobby Greer. You’ll see I’m telling the truth.”
“Don’t call me again.” His voice was sharp.
“Don’t be hasty.” Zoe made her tone as smooth and calm as she could. “Think it over. Wouldn’t it be nice to get rid of them? No worry weighing you down? No looking over your shoulder? No—” The dial tone buzzed in her ear. She slipped her phone into her messenger bag. “He hung up on me.”
Farina reached for her phone. “I’ll call him. He’s always been stubborn—idiotically stubborn.”
Zoe put her hand on Farina’s wrist. “Don’t. That’s the worst thing you could do. Give him a little time. Let him stew a bit.”
“But what if he destroys them?”
“Do you think he will?”
Farina let out a sigh and closed her eyes. “No, not really.”
“Good. Then promise me you won’t contact him. I’ll call him in the morning. I’ll get in touch with you and tell you how it went. It’s not unusual for these things to take time—days, even. So just back off for a bit. I know it’s hard. I don’t like to wait either, but it’s the best thing to do now.”
Farina studied Zoe’s face for a moment, then put her phone away.
“You promise you won’t call him?” Zoe asked.
She gave a jerky nod. “Yes, okay.”
A few moments later, Zoe and Jack climbed into the taxi as Farina jogged across the street to the nearby tram stop. Jack slammed the car door. “Do you think she’ll keep her promise?”