Devious: Book Five in the On The Run series

by Sara Rosett

  Jack swiveled the laptop toward her. “Got it.”

  “It looks the same…no, wait.” Zoe got up from the chair so she could see the screen better. The composition was the same, but it was definitely a different painting. “It’s darker, gloomier.” The sky was gray with thick fog wreathing the Scott Monument. The whole thing had a somber feel. The paintings were so much alike…a thought tugged at Zoe’s mind. She paced to the window then suddenly turned around and opened the flap of her messenger bag. “The riddle. It makes sense now. Poppy’s dad was right. The painting was the key.”

  Jack looked up from the screen. “What riddle?”

  Zoe pulled her notebook out and flipped the pages. “Poppy told me about a supposed family treasure that some Foley ancestor had brought back from one of their grand tours. The only clue was a riddle. Her dad thought the key to the riddle was the painting. This is the riddle,” Zoe read, ‘The rosy-fingered vista of the empress will guide you to the sister.’” Zoe took the photos of the other painting from the folder and looked from them to the image on the laptop. “I get it. Rosy-fingered is talking about the light, about dawn. You had to read Homer in school, right?”

  “Sure. I don’t remember much from it.”

  “I don’t either, but those phrases that were used over and over again stuck in my head, like ‘rosy-fingered dawn’ and ‘wine-dark sea.’ They’re catchy, you know, like music lyrics. I guess that was the point of them since the poems were recited. Anyway, Poppy’s dad figured out the riddle. It describes this painting.” Zoe pointed to the photo of the missing painting. “See how the light angles across the city? It’s hitting the monument to Sir Walter Scott exactly the way it did when I saw it in the early morning, lighting up the side that faces The Mound.”

  “Okay, I get the part about the dawn, but the rest of it…something about an empress? There are no people in that painting. It’s a landscape.”

  “Which makes sense. ‘Vista’ is another word for view, so it’s a landscape painting, but ‘Empress’ isn’t a person. It’s a place, Edinburgh, the Empress of the North. Agatha calls it that in her diary. I skipped right over it when I was reading it, but it makes sense when you put it all together.” Zoe tapped the photo. “This painting, A View of Edinburgh, will lead you to,” Zoe pointed to the image on the laptop of the city wreathed in fog, “that painting, the pair, or sister painting, of A View of Edinburgh. What does the link say about the foggy painting? Where is it?”

  Jack scrolled down to the text below the image of the painting. “It’s called Evening Fog.” He leaned closer to read the fine print. It says it was a gift from the artist, Annabel Foley, to her cousin, Eleanor Rolf. Donated in 1909.”

  “Donated? Where to?”

  “To the Salzburg Historic Association for the Preservation of Culture.”

  Zoe stared at Jack. “Here? In Salzburg? You’re kidding.”

  “That’s what it says.” Jack clicked over to the main page of the website, and a welcome page for the association came up.

  Zoe paced around the end of the bed and looked out the window, speaking as she walked. “Poppy did say something about a relative of the Foley sisters living in Salzburg, that they visited her during their travels. So I suppose it’s not so strange that the other painting is here. Is it open, the culture association place?”

  “Yes. It’s in Old Town.” Jack entered the address into his phone.

  Zoe picked up her messenger bag. “Let’s go.”

  The Salzburg Association for the Preservation of Culture was located in a tall pale blue building tucked up against the steep cliff that hemmed in one side of the town. It was one of a string of similar buildings, all of them connected, so that the street was a long row of buildings. They paid their entrance fee, consulted the map that came with their ticket stubs, and made their way up a wide staircase with creaky steps, passing displays about folk costumes and marionettes before reaching the third floor and the art exhibit. Victorian paintings were in a spacious room with two windows that overlooked the busy street. A couple of people were already in the room, a few tourists meandering along, stopping in front of each painting, and a man in a dark blue blazer. Since he stood in one corner of the room and kept his gaze on the people, not the paintings, Zoe figured he was a guide or docent.

  “It’s over in the corner by the window,” Jack said and promptly turned in the opposite direction and began to study paintings.

  “What are you doing?” Zoe whispered. “Let’s go look at it.”

  Jack caught her hand and pulled her to his side. “Let’s browse a bit. See if the guard moves on.”

  “Why? We’re not planning to steal it,” Zoe whispered back.

  “It’s never a good idea to tip your hand, to show what you’re interested in.”

  Zoe didn’t agree, but the guy in the blazer was eyeing them, so she smiled at him and turned to study a painting at least twelve feet tall of a man in a military uniform on a horse. Jack’s habit of always being on his guard chaffed at her, but he was smart and his caution had paid off in the past. She realized she did have a tendency to barrel ahead without thinking things through. Jack took it slower and, as much as she didn’t like it, it was sometimes the better way to go.

  They were about half away around the room when Mr. Blue Blazer moved. Zoe kept her gaze focused on a still life of an arrangement of flowers. “Is he gone?”

  “Nope,” Jack said as they moseyed to the corner by the window. “He only moved to the other corner.”

  They stopped in front of the Foley painting. Zoe stepped back. “It really does look the same. She captured the change in the light and weather, but it’s the same style and size. Even I can tell both paintings are by the same artist.” Zoe stepped forward and peered at the signature. “Yep, It’s signed A. Foley, just like the other one. I wish we could get Felix to analyze this one.” Zoe tapped the museum map against her leg. “I wonder if Poppy has any pull with this place? If she could get them to let us look at it?”

  “Has she called you back?” Jack asked shifting slightly so he could look over his shoulder.

  “No, she hasn’t.” Zoe pulled out her phone and checked it, just to make sure. “No missed calls and no voicemails. I’m surprised…and a little worried.” Zoe had left a message when they were on the way back to the hotel, telling Poppy that the painting had been stolen again and that the police would be contacting her along with the news that they thought they had a lead on another possibility. “I can’t imagine her ignoring that message. Mr. Blue Blazer Guy still there?”

  “Yep. We better move on, though, or he’ll start to wonder, but first…” Jack pulled his hand out of his pocket and the ticket stubs fluttered to the floor. He reached down and scooped them up. “No pressure plates or extra security that I can see. Not even any cameras. Of course, it’s a regional museum, so their budget probably doesn’t run to full-blown state-of-the-art monitoring.”

  Zoe sent him a questioning look, but they had already paused in front of the last painting then moved through the doorway beside the guard, so Zoe didn’t say anything until they were in the next room, which displayed several Impressionist paintings. Zoe loved the Impressionists, the way that the paintings, at first glance, seemed to have been painted with an almost sloppy abandon, but she didn’t even glance at the paintings. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, we need a closer look at that painting, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you suggest we get it?” Jack asked.

  “I thought we’d ask Poppy to contact the association.”

  “But she’s not calling you back.”

  “Or I could ask Masard if he could possibly pull some strings. He might know someone…”

  “All right, you pursue that. I’m going to check out something.”

  Zoe moved to a bench positioned in the center of the room. She called Poppy and got her voicemail again. Next, she dialed Masard, asking if he had any contacts at the Historical A
ssociation.

  “I am afraid not. Is it important?”

  “Yes, it is.” Zoe scanned the room, spotted another person in a blue blazer, and dropped her voice. “We have found the mate to the painting. It’s here in Salzburg.”

  “The historical association has it,” Masard said, instantly understanding.

  “Yes. I’d like you and Felix to have a look at it, but I need your help to convince them to let to release it to us.”

  Masard was silent for a moment, then said. “Let me make a few calls.”

  Zoe felt a presence beside her and startled before she realized it was Jack. He asked, “Do you still have that map?”

  “Yes.” She put her phone away and handed him the map.

  He unfolded it and bent over it. “Any luck with your calls?”

  “No. Masard didn’t know anyone off the top of his head, but he said he would do some checking. Poppy didn’t answer, which is seriously worrying me. Do you think I should call Inspector Homes?”

  “Let’s wait a few minutes.”

  “Why?”

  Jack checked his watch then folded the map. “Because we’re going to have a look at that painting.”

  “What?” Zoe whispered.

  Jack linked his hand through hers, pulling up. He moved in the direction of the Victorian paintings. “We have ten minutes,” Jack said as he stepped around a red velvet rope barrier that was now across the entrance to the empty room.

  18

  “JACK, DID YOU BRIBE THAT guard?”

  “Yes,” Jack said simply.

  “Really? How much does it cost to have a close-up look at a painting?”

  “Twenty euro up front and twenty when we leave.”

  “Cheaper than I thought, but, Jack, I’m shocked.” He wasn’t someone who liked to go outside the lines. “A little impressed, too.”

  As they hurried across the room, Jack pulled his winter gloves from his coat pocket and slipped them on, sending her a quick smile. “You know, whatever it takes. Besides, we’re only looking and then carefully returning it exactly as it is. This will at least get us a preliminary look. You can take pictures for Felix to analyze. Your phone has a pretty good camera. And then if we can’t get a closer look at it through legitimate channels…well, we have Emil,” he said with a tilt of his head toward the empty door.

  “What do you mean?”

  Jack stretched out his arms, positioning them a few inches from each side of the frame. “He’s taken a bribe, not something he’d want is manager to know about. If we have to get another, better look, we can pressure him to help us.”

  “And to think, at one time I thought you were stodgy and dull.”

  “Just keeping up my cover. Okay, here we go.”

  Zoe shot a quick glance over her shoulder as Jack gripped the frame. The room was still empty. Jack lifted the painting off the wall, pausing for a second with it in mid-air. No alarm rang.

  Zoe opened the camera on her phone. “Turn it so that the light from the window is hitting it full-on.” Zoe stepped out of the path of the light and replicated Felix’s technique of photographing the whole painting, then zooming in on each quadrant of it. A rush of adrenaline had her fingers trembling slightly, but she tried to hold the phone as steady as possible. “I got it all. Now tilt it so that the light rakes across the surface.” Felix had photographed the other painting that way, so she wanted to do the same thing with this one. She snapped several close-ups of the painting while Jack held it at an angle. “Okay. Anything interesting about the frame?” Zoe asked.

  Jack propped the frame up on the window ledge and ran his hands lightly along it. “Not that I can see or feel.”

  “Then let’s check the back and get out of here.” A movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. “The man in the blue blazer…Emil, you said…is removing the velvet rope, but he’s making sure not to look in here.”

  “Then our time is almost up.” Jack flipped the painting over.

  “Look, there’s the cataloging mark.” The tiny piece of paper had fared better than the one attached to A View of Edinburgh. “It’s just what we thought—painting number fifty-eight, number two.” Zoe’s heartbeat fluttered when she saw several faint lines of old-fashioned spidery writing that filled one corner on the back of the canvas. “Look, there’s quite a bit of writing.”

  The sound of a man clearing his throat came from outside the room.

  “That’s the signal.” Jack lifted the painting off the ledge. “We’re done.”

  “Wait. I can’t read it. Let me get a picture.”

  Jack paused, holding the back of the painting up, and Zoe snapped two quick pictures then Jack returned it to the wall.

  They were on the other side of the room when a family with a toddler entered. “I think the painting is crooked,” Zoe said.

  “Emil will take care of it.”

  They moved toward the door, where Emil was now hovering. Jack pulled out the map of the museum. Zoe noticed that he wasn’t wearing his winter gloves anymore. Jack asked a question about one of the exhibits. Emil held the edge of the map as he pointed to it. Jack passed a folded bill to him under the map then Emil said, “Very popular room today. Extremely crowded, especially in that corner.”

  “How so?” Zoe asked.

  Emil still held a corner of the map. It quivered.

  Jack looked at Zoe. “I’m tapped out.”

  “What? Oh.” Zoe had some bills in her pocket from when they bought coffee earlier in the morning. She knew there was at least one ten euro note in it. She dug it out of her pocket and moved in closer to lean over the map while sliding the folded cash under it to Emil. He deftly removed the money then folded the map and handed it back to Jack while tucking the money into the pocket of his blazer. “Two men were interested. One tall, fair-haired, the other shorter, thinner, and dark hair.”

  “Did they have a look at it, too?” Jack asked.

  He patted the pocket of his blazer. “It’s been a very good afternoon.”

  “The man who took our painting beat us here?” Zoe asked as they paced away from the Salzburg Association for the Preservation of Culture. “You think it was him, too, right? The description sounded like him.”

  “It was on the general side, but the pool of people interested in Annabel Foley’s paintings is probably small to begin with, so I think we’re safe in assuming that there is only one man with dark hair and a light build in that group of people.”

  “Then how could he do that? How could he even know about the riddle and the other painting? How could he make the connection so quickly?”

  “He must have some sort of prior knowledge of it.”

  “We only figured out the link between the paintings less than an hour ago. And, why would he take our painting, but not that one?” Zoe asked, tilting her head back toward the building where the Evening Fog painting hung.

  “A bit harder to get Evening Fog out of that building with the guards.”

  “Jack, please. You could have put that painting under your coat—it’s small enough that a bulky coat would hide it reasonably well—and strong-armed Emil.”

  “You think I could take him?” Jack said with a grin.

  “I have no doubt. You could have been out of there in under a minute.”

  Jack said, “Thanks for the compliment, but I can’t help but notice it sounds like you were casing the building.”

  Zoe sighed. “I’m not going to do anything rash. I wish I could, but the sad thing is, I don’t know what I’d do. If Evening Fog is the valuable painting, then it does answer the question about why everyone was so interested in the other painting. They went after the wrong painting, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the answer that Poppy is hoping for.”

  “She was secretly hoping for the painted-over Rembrandt?” Jack asked.

  “Something like that.” They entered a square and Zoe spotted a cafe that was doing a brisk business. “Let’s stop here and look at the photos. A
t least I can send them to Felix and have him look at them.” They snagged an outdoor table under the green- and white-striped awning. Zoe suddenly realized she was starving and ordered an apple strudel. She pulled up the photos she’d taken of Evening Fog. She was most interested in the handwriting on the back. She didn’t have any expertise when it came to the close-ups of the paint and brushstrokes, so she sent those photos to Masard then called him to ask if he could have Felix take a look at them.

  “The photos sound interesting,” Masard said after Zoe explained what she’d sent him. “And I will not ask how you obtained them. I will tell you that I do not need them to tell you about Evening Fog.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I called a friend who works at the university here. They have a nice curation program, which has an agreement with the historic preservation association. Each year, the association sends several pieces of artwork to the university, which uses them in their curation and documentation courses. Evening Fog was sent three years ago.”

  Zoe had leaned over so that Jack could hear Masard’s voice as well. Her gaze locked with Jack’s as she asked, “You’re saying they ran tests on the painting? Like the ones Felix did today?”

  “Yes. My friend was kind enough to send me the report. They did even more rigorous tests than we were able to do on the other painting, pigment analysis and tests on the stretcher’s wood.”

  “What did they find?”

  Masard let out a sigh. “I can hear in your voice that you expect amazing news, but I must disappoint you. It is a painting much like A View of Edinburgh, a Victorian landscape. Paint and craquelure were consistent as expected for a painting of that age. No underpainting or drawing. Nor was there anything noteworthy about the frame.”

  Zoe leaned back in her chair. “So what would you value the painting at?”

  Masard made a humming noise, but finally said, “Between three and four hundred euros.”