Another Day, Another Dali

by Sandra Orchard

  Oh no. I had a bad feeling about this. This sounded like the kind of crazy scheme Aunt Martha might dream up. “Are you sure Gladys wants me to investigate the theft?”

  “What kind of question is that? Of course she does.” The scolding tone I’d thankfully developed a bit of a thick skin to over the years rattled through the line. “Now, we go to the MAC for lunch on Fridays, so I thought perhaps you could happen to pass by as we arrive. Then I would, of course, invite you to join us.”

  Of course. The Missouri Athletic Club—or the MAC, as everyone called it—was founded in 1903 as a traditional gentleman’s club, a place where the movers and shakers of society congregated to discuss business and enjoy recreational pursuits. As my grandmother liked to say, “Everybody who was anybody was a member.” Although it wasn’t until 1988 that the female half of that equation was welcome.

  “Then we can steer the conversation toward art and figure out a way to finagle you an invitation to her house.”

  I definitely didn’t like the sound of this. “You know, I’ve met Mrs. Hoffemeier’s son. He seems like a pretty levelheaded cop. Why is she so concerned about him finding out about the burglary?”

  “Can you be at the MAC or not?” she snapped.

  I muffled a sigh. “What time do you want me there?”

  “Eleven forty-five.”

  “Okay, I’ll do my best. I’ll call your cell phone if an emergency comes up.”

  “Another one?” The tone of her voice underlined how inconvenient that would be.

  “Impossible to predict,” I said blithely. “Official cases have to come first.”

  Nana hung up with a huff, and I probably enjoyed the moment of satisfaction more than I should, but it was easier on the nerves than fretting over why everything I did seemed to irk her.

  I showered and dressed, then plunked a couple of pieces of toast into the toaster for breakfast. But when I swung open the fridge door to grab the jam jar, my stomach revolted. A plate of frog legs my aunt must’ve snuck in last night sat on the top shelf. I clamped my hand over my mouth and tried not to lose what little supper I’d eaten.

  Harold chose that moment to plop between me and the open fridge and meow his isn’t-there-anything-better-than-kibbles-to-eat-around-here rant.

  I grabbed the plate of frog legs and set it on the floor in front of him. “Today is your lucky day.” I cringed as he trotted off with a leg in his mouth, doggie-bone style. But then . . . “Oh no, wait!” I raced after him and caught the frog’s leg by its foot. “Let go. You might choke on the bone.”

  Harold swung his head like a dog in a tug-of-war and refused to yield.

  “I’ll give it back. I promise. But you can’t eat the bone.” I wrestled it out of his mouth and raced back to the kitchen to scoop the plate off the floor before he could grab another one.

  He swiped at my leg.

  “Don’t you start with me.” I looked at the mangled frog leg in my hand and staunched the urge to upchuck. “Be grateful I’m not dumping the whole thing down the garbage chute.” Holding my breath, I quickly tore the meat off the tiny bones and into his bowl, then tossed the bones in a plastic bag. “There,” I said, washing my hands. “They almost look edible now.” I plopped the bowl back on the floor. “Happy?”

  He sniffed at the meat, then sat back on his haunches and looked up at me.

  “It’s the same meat!” I snatched up my bare toast and my coat and bag. “I want that bowl empty by the time I come home,” I called to Harold. “And I don’t want to find any coughed-up frog feet later, either.” Oh man, I was starting to sound like my mother.

  The phone rang. Mom.

  “Oh good, you are home. Did Nana get hold of you?” she asked before I could spit out a hello. “She called here in a tizzy because you weren’t answering your phone.”

  “Yes, we talked.”

  “What did she want? Aunt Martha figures it must be something big for how fired up she was.”

  I could just imagine the wheels spinning in Aunt Martha’s brain, and I was pretty sure I could hear her breathing on the extension, so I hedged. “Nana wanted my opinion on a piece of art but needed to change our appointment.” I didn’t like to mislead them, but give Aunt Martha a potential mystery to solve and there was no holding her back. And Nana wouldn’t appreciate her help. The pair could scarcely say three civil words to each other.

  “Oh, well, I’m glad she got hold of you,” Mom went on. “Aunt Martha mentioned you were watching a movie with Nate last night?” Her voice upticked in that can-I-order-the-wedding-invitations-and-start-knitting-booties way of hers.

  “I’m afraid I need to go now, Mom, or I’ll be late for work.” Discussing the men in my life with my mother was not for the faint of heart—and definitely not something to undertake on an empty stomach.

  By the time I’d made the fifteen-minute drive across town to FBI headquarters, I’d come up with a plan that would justify my happening to be in the neighborhood of the MAC around lunchtime and, better yet, a plan that gave me a reason to happen to have what I hoped would prove to be Gladys’s missing Degas on me. An art restorer and acquaintance, Nicki Phelps, had a studio two blocks away and had a nifty piece of equipment that could quickly test the paint to tell me if it was even the right vintage for a genuine Degas.

  But first I needed to backstop my alter ego’s identity in case Nate’s brother or his forger friend decided to look into my background.

  My supervisor, Maxwell Benton, motioned me into his office the moment I reached the second-floor bullpen where my cubicle was one among dozens, flanked on one side by windows and the other by a long row of filing cabinets.

  “What’s up?” I asked him.

  In his late forties and completely gray, Benton always reminded me of the actor Richard Gere, except he rarely sported the actor’s easy smile. Today was no exception. He handed me a folder the instant I stepped into his office.

  “What’s this?”

  “A copy of the list of financial records recovered from the drug dealer’s safe. It includes several payments made in paintings instead of cash. I need you to track down where they came from and if they were real.”

  I scanned the list. The artists to whom the paintings were attributed were new to me, with the exception of one. “Will do.” I filled him in on last night’s escapade at the bar. “With a bit of luck, we might connect with a forger who can give us a lead.”

  “Sounds good. Okay, get to work.”

  Tanner intercepted me as I reached my cubicle. “Everything okay?”

  “Sure.” I filled him in on Benton’s request, then turned to my desk but sensed Tanner’s gaze was still zeroed in on me. Peeling off my coat, I glanced his way once more. “Was there something else?”

  He searched my eyes, apparently hesitant to say whatever was on his mind.

  A sanity check after yesterday’s bomb scare? Something about the case? An inquisition about Nate? My stomach somersaulted. Oh man, with the way it was tumbling around lately, maybe I should’ve taken my uncle up on that offer of free antacid samples from the Tums factory.

  Tanner just said, “No, that was all,” and returned to his own cubicle.

  I let out a breath. My heart was actually racing. Ridiculous. I shook it off and turned my attention to the file Benton had given me. In most art-crime investigations, tracking down leads was as fruitless as searching for something recognizable in the paint spatters of a Jackson Pollock. In this case, the paintings listed in the log were all of moderate value. Nothing worth more than twenty-five thousand dollars. Nothing that would be too difficult to fence. And nothing that would attract a lot of media attention if stolen.

  After a morning of computer searches and phone calls, I concluded none of the paintings had been reported stolen, which meant I didn’t have anything on which to build a case against the drug dealer.

  I headed downtown to get the Degas tested before my appointment with Nana. The weather was sunny, so I parked my car in th
e lot next to the athletic club, a ten-story, century-old building on Washington Avenue near Eads Bridge, and then walked the two blocks to Nicki’s studio with the Degas safely tucked in a tote bag under my arm.

  The studio was housed in a loft apartment in a converted garment factory building with a brick exterior that still had the tiny lion heads whose open mouths had at one time spewed steam from the clothes presses. I loved the nostalgic feel of the place, a perfect backdrop for Nicki’s work.

  She ushered me into a sunny room and pointed to an empty easel. “Set the piece here.”

  As I carefully unwrapped the alleged Degas, Nicki retrieved an electronic gadget I called her “art gun.”

  “The ballerinas certainly exude the spirit of Degas.” She examined the back of the painting. “The mahogany base was a common one for him. Did you find the image in the catalogue raisonné?” Nicki asked, referring to the official catalog of Degas’s work.

  “Yes. According to the write up, it was sold to a dealer in France in 1887. A colleague in France is seeing if he can trace what happened to it after that.”

  Nicki sighed. “If the painting’s owner were Jewish, it was likely confiscated by the Nazis. The vast number of paintings lost during the war made for a perfect breeding ground for forgers in the decades that followed.” She fiddled with the controls on her art gun and pointed it at the painting.

  The electronic device could identify chemicals in oil paint, which would enable Nicki to deduce the pigments used.

  “There’s lots of mercury in it,” Nicki said. “That was common in vermillion, a popular pigment used by Impressionist painters to create the brilliant scarlet.”

  “Is there any titanium white?” Since the pigment wasn’t available before the 1900s, I knew that would be a certain giveaway. It was the discovery of that particular pigment in one of the master forger Beltrachi’s pieces that led to his downfall. Of course, smart forgers, Beltrachi included, knew to avoid it, but that hadn’t stopped him from unwittingly using a pigment containing it.

  Nicki studied the readout of chemicals appearing on the gun’s small screen. “No titanium white, but there isn’t any arsenic either.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Arsenic and copper were the main components of emerald green. But arsenic was banned in the 1960s.”

  “So if you’re not seeing any trace of it, the pigment unlikely predates the ’60s.”

  “Exactly.” She shifted the gun’s aim to another section of the painting. “The concentrations of a couple of other chemicals are not typical to pre-1900s art either.” She turned off the gun. “I’d say you’re looking at a forgery.”

  My heart sank. I’d suspected as much, but if it turned out to be Gladys’s missing painting, she wouldn’t be happy to learn it was a fake. Or that Nana had lassoed me into the investigation. And I didn’t even want to contemplate how Nana might react. Probably fume that I had no business questioning its authenticity. No one wanted to find out their prized painting was worthless.

  Thanking Nicki, I wrapped the painting and hooked the tote over my shoulder a lot less carefully than I had for the walk over. The wind had picked up and tunneled down the street. I pressed the crosswalk button to escape the shadow of the buildings. Raised voices drew my attention to a couple emerging from a Ford Bronco half a block down the other side of the street. The man fed a coin into the parking meter, ranting all the while, then opened the passenger door, rooted around inside for a second, and returned to the meter as the woman stormed off.

  The crosswalk signal turned to WALK and some guy in a dark hoodie charged past me, sending me tumbling into the street.

  5

  “Hey, watch where you’re going!” I shouted after the guy who’d knocked me to my knees. As I pushed to my feet, I glanced down at my suddenly lighter bag and back up in time to see Hoodie Guy hit the opposite sidewalk at a sprint, my painting under his arm.

  “Stop, thief!” I shouted, racing after him.

  He veered toward the Bronco. Or more precisely, the set of keys dangling from the passenger door’s lock. He grabbed them and raced around to the driver’s side.

  “You picked the wrong person to pickpocket today, buddy.” I vaulted off the bumper, over the hood, and dove onto his back, knocking the painting out of his hand.

  “Are you crazy?” He swung around like a wild man, trying to shake me loose.

  Tires screeched. The guy jumped back, slamming my back into the side of the Bronco, driving the breath from my lungs.

  My grip loosened, and the guy took off on foot. I snatched up the painting before someone ran over it.

  A white-haired lady jumped from a vehicle three cars back and pointed to an alley between two buildings. “He went that way!”

  I took off to the sound of St. Louis PD cruisers squealing up from every direction. Wow, everyone and their grandmother must’ve called 911 the second I shouted “thief.”

  “Serena Jones, stop this instant!”

  Nana? Since there was still no sign of my suspect, I skidded to a stop and returned to the street. Nana glowered at me from beside the white-haired lady who’d tipped me off.

  I forced a smile. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “This wasn’t in the plan,” Nana fumed for my ears only.

  “I appreciate the invitation,” I said cheerily, since the plan had been that we bump into each other and she invites me to join them for lunch. “I’ll join you as soon as I can get away.”

  Gladys beamed at me. “That would be wonderful. You were wonderful out there. I’m glad you’re okay. You are wonder—”

  “Okay, okay,” Nana shushed, fluttering her hand toward an approaching officer. “Let her finish her job so we can park.”

  I winked at Gladys, happy that at least Nana’s friend had been impressed by the takedown, even if my would-be mugger did get away.

  An old schoolmate, Matt Speers, sauntered up to me in his spotless police uniform and dark shades, shaking his head. Amusement teased the corners of his lips as he pulled off his sunglasses. “Mind telling me what you were doing taking down a car thief in the middle of the street? He’s not in your jurisdiction until he crosses the Mississippi.”

  I folded my arms and feigned indignation. “You could show a little gratitude. I saved you guys a lot of hassle.”

  “For your information, stunt woman wannabe, you grabbed him too soon. We can’t charge him with stealing a car when he didn’t even get the door open.”

  I laughed. “Are you telling me that was a bait car?” It explained how all the cruisers had gotten here so quickly.

  “Uh, yeah. Nice swan dive off the bumper, by the way,” he added with a smirk.

  Oh great. “Don’t even think of submitting that to funniest cop videos,” I said mock-sternly. With a bait car, the cops would leave a vehicle unlocked with the keys “accidentally” dropped on the seat, or outside the door, or in this case, in the door lock. Then wait and watch. Since the car was equipped with cameras and the technology to remotely disable and lock it, a thief would soon find himself in custody. Or if the cops were having a really good day, the thief might first lead them to a chop shop, and a whole lot of people would find themselves in custody. “If it makes you feel better, if you catch him you can still charge him with theft. He stole a painting from my tote bag before he tried to steal the car.”

  Matt pulled out a notebook and pen. “That helps. What’s it worth?”

  “Not much. Listen, could we finish the interview later? I’m late for an appointment.”

  “Not much as in, under five thousand?”

  I chuckled. “As in, less than fifty.”

  He dropped his hand holding the notebook and shot me an exasperated look. “And you figured that was worth pulling the I-can-fly stunt, why?”

  “The painting is evidence in an investigation.”

  “Did he know that?”

  Did he? I stared at Matt for a full three seconds, probably looking as whacked out as t
he women in Picasso’s portraits who have two eyes gongoozling out one side of their faces. If I hadn’t been sidetracked by Nana’s appearance, it would’ve been one of the first questions I’d have asked myself. Except . . .

  I shook my head. The Degas was a fake. The drug dealer had to know that and wouldn’t go to the trouble of hiring a punk to get it back. Not to mention, no one knew I was bringing it to Nicki’s.

  The clock tower struck twelve, wailing you’re late, you’re late, you’re late with each gong.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve got to run. But please let me know if you get any leads on the mugger.”

  “Fine, go!”

  I jogged back to the Missouri Athletic Club and found Nana and Gladys waiting for me in the luxurious sitting area to the left of the main entrance. The club’s interior always made me think of old money with its richly paneled walls, ornate fixtures, and numerous paintings. Or maybe it was just the lingering smell from the cigar parlor.

  “Serena, we’re so glad you could join us,” Nana crooned in the sweetest voice I’d ever heard her use with me.

  The club boasted four restaurants, a ballroom, a barbershop, numerous private meeting rooms, a reading room, a billiard parlor, a rooftop deck, and eighty guest rooms, in addition to the full-service athletic facilities. I’d visited many times, as my grandmother’s guest, to attend events in the ballroom or to eat. Yet somehow the place always made me feel as if I were walking on glass, as if one wrong step or word would result in a serious faux pas. Or maybe that was just the Nana-effect.

  Gladys pressed her clasped hands to her chest with an eager “Yes, I can’t wait to hear more about your work.”

  Nana’s expression soured.

  It would’ve been funny if it didn’t remind me how many times she’d reiterated her opinion that my job was far too unladylike. Kind of ironic that she wanted to exploit it now.

  And to get to eat at the MAC was a nice bonus. The food was fantastic. The club members—from company CEOs and bankers and lawyers to politicians and sports figures—wouldn’t tolerate anything less.