by Betsy Draine
“Okay, let’s work on that assumption,” said Dan. “It may explain the crime scene. Nothing else does. But as I said before, I still don’t think the murder was premeditated. First of all, the Russian didn’t find what he was after. Second, it wasn’t a smart place to kill someone. Maybe Charlie bolted, maybe he grabbed for the knife—we can’t know—but there was a struggle and the Russian stabbed him. Then he panicked.”
“That’s when he saw the rowboat tied up nearby and decided to take Charlie out to the sailboat,” Toby added.
“That’s how I see it. Then Mikovitch searches Charlie’s apartment, the gallery, and then your house, but each time he comes up empty. So he puts you under surveillance, follows you, and you know the rest. End of story.”
“So it’s over,” I said.
“It looks that way. We’re still investigating. My chief question is whether the Russian was working alone. Now fill me in on how you discovered the icon.”
Toby walked Dan through the process.
“Hold on a minute,” Dan said. “You’re saying that Tom Keogh demanded the table back? Is there any chance he could have known that Charlie hid the icon in the leaf tray?”
“No way that I can think of,” Toby said after a pause. That idea hadn’t occurred to us.
“Besides, I thought you told us you had the killer,” I added. “I hope you still don’t think Tom was involved.”
“Just asking. I’ll talk to Keogh again, anyhow. You were saying that your professor thinks this icon could be worth a bundle?”
“Potentially. I’m planning to take it out of town to have it examined,” I explained. “I guess I should have cleared that with you first. Would that be okay?”
“For you to take it out of town? I don’t see why not. It never was stolen property in the first place, since Charlie hid it, and now it seems it belongs to you. I think Toby said he had the bill of sale.”
“That’s right,” said Toby.
“Well, good luck then. Let me know how you make out.”
We chatted with Dan for a little while longer, then said goodbye. We sat quietly for a few moments. Toby let out a deep sigh.
“What’s wrong? Isn’t that good news? Dan says the guy who was chasing us was the killer, and now he’s dead.”
Toby looked dejected, not relieved. “I thought I’d feel closure when the case was solved. I don’t.”
“You were even there.”
“You mean the crash? That’s not how I pictured it would end. I wanted justice, not revenge. I wanted a confession or at least a trial and sentencing. It may be over, but it doesn’t feel like it.”
“I think you need some serious cheering up.”
“I guess I do. What have you got in mind?”
Now that Dan thought the murder solved, I felt a weight lifting. I felt freer, even playful. In fact, I felt more relaxed than I’d been since the day Charlie’s body was found. Though Toby’s better than I am at the impression game, I decided to give it a shot. I rolled my eyes, patted my hair, and stuck out my hip in a saucy Mae West flounce. “Why don’t you come up and see me some time?” I purred.
That perked Toby up. He rallied and returned my invitation in his best W. C. Fields drawl. “I shall be there in a trice, my little pigeon. My little chickadee.”
I laughed and started down the hall. He followed.
“What’s that?” Toby asked a few minutes later as we settled under the covers.
“Oh, that. It’s a crystal Angie gave me. You point it at your head at night. It’s supposed to heighten your spiritual sensitivity.”
“Is that so?” said Toby. “And what happens if you point it at—”
He never finished the sentence because I bashed him with a pillow.
11
MARCH IN MADISON can still be the middle of winter. That was clear from the airplane window: carpets of snow and two frozen lakes framing the isthmus with its gleaming Capitol. But the sky was the bright blue of summer at the sea.
Deceptive. I almost fainted from cold as I waited outside the terminal for my taxi. California-style layers were definitely not adequate for Wisconsin-style cold. But I kept up good spirits, excited to be bringing the icon for expert analysis. It didn’t take me long to get the precious cargo to the Campus Inn. My appointment with George Greeley was set for the next morning at his home on the east side of town. That gave me an afternoon and evening for myself. Resisting the temptation to spend the afternoon in my toasty room, I gently placed the briefcase in the closet and proceeded on foot to the university art museum, the Chazen.
The plowed streets and the Library Mall, piled with snow, were thick with students marching swiftly by. The scene reminded me of Berkeley, in spite of the weather. There the kids would be in cut-offs and flip-flops; here they were muffled under hoods and parkas, long scarves trailing behind them. Still, the two schools were about the same size. By contrast, Sonoma College, where I teach, is small and quiet. I wondered briefly what my career would have been like if I’d landed a job at a big university like this one. A higher salary? A lighter teaching load, with more time for research? Perhaps. But I like teaching small classes where I can get to know my students, and I like the feeling of community that comes along with a small campus. Besides, Toby hates winter. “It’s all right for the Eskimos,” he says, “but then, they don’t mind eating blubber, either.” Nothing could induce him to leave California, and I guess by now I feel the same way.
A museum like the Chazen would be a nice teaching aid, though. It’s surprisingly complete for a campus collection. Two linked modern buildings house a sampling of sculptures, paintings, and prints from the ancient Greeks to the present. I played my usual game of “What would you take home?” and couldn’t decide between two paintings in my own field. The first was a glowing moonlight coastal scene by the Norwegian artist Johan Christian Dahl. The other was a sweet little landscape by a minor American painter named Henry Pember Smith, whose work has always appealed to me. It would be great to walk students over here fresh from class to stand in front of delightful works like these.
A special exhibition of Russian icons was, however, my destination. The university owns a small collection, and it isn’t often on view. In a space for temporary exhibitions off the main gallery, I found twenty or so icons in typical shapes and subjects, but almost all painted in the nineteenth century to mimic an earlier style. Several older examples were impressive, but more than a few, at least to me, lacked life. Then I came upon a bright little triptych picturing various scenes from the life of a lesser-known saint, and it had the charm of a naïve painting. It was beautiful in its own way but nothing rivaling the delicacy of Rublev’s work. According to Al Miller, a great icon radiates spiritual energy. And you don’t get that just by layering on the gold paint. I left the room eager to know whether underneath our Michael icon was a work of uncommon power.
A visit to the museum shop was a must, even though closing time was approaching. In a whirlwind, I picked up my swag: earrings for Angie with Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait on them, a reproduction of a Roman glass necklace for our mom’s upcoming birthday, and for my desk a miniature Russian icon triptych, just over an inch tall. Something faux but appealing for each of the Barnes women. The security guard showed me out into the crystal cold.
With ice crackling underfoot, I joined the parade of students heading out to the bars of State Street. If I had forgotten that it was St. Patrick’s Day, the signs advertising green beer and St. Paddy’s specials would have set me straight. The cold hustled me into the first appealing restaurant, the Brat House. There I enacted every Wisconsin culinary cliché, devouring a German-style bratwurst slathered in mustard and sauerkraut and washing it down with a locally brewed pilsner. I sampled, but could not finish, the block of caraway-muenster cheese that arrived as an accompaniment to the brat. In Wisconsin, you eat hearty.
By the time I left the Brat House, it was almost dark and the restaurant had become a packed bar scene. I decided to
go back to the hotel and check on the booty in Al’s briefcase. Though the hotel was only a few minutes’ walk away, I found myself anxious by the time I got to the room. I wanted to make sure that the briefcase was still locked and that it contained our icon. All was as it should be.
A phone call to Toby calmed my nerves. He had just reached home after a long day at the shop. I described my visit to the Chazen, and he told me about his day. “No customers. Just as well. I had an idea this morning. Since Charlie hid the icon in one of his pieces of furniture, my guess is that he hid the storyboards as well. I think they’re still in the shop. So I spent the afternoon knocking for hollow spots in his other pieces and looking at the backs of things and underneath, all over. Nothing so far, but I’ll keep at it. I’ve got a feeling they must be here. Speaking of which, Tom Keogh called again. He’s awfully eager to get his hands on Charlie’s stuff. I told him I was thinking about it just to put him off a bit longer while I keep searching.”
“Do you know if Dan talked to him about the table?”
“He did. So Tom knows about the icon.”
“Do you think he knew about it before?”
“He denied it. But of course, he would, wouldn’t he? I just don’t know. It’s hard to say.”
“Well, keep looking for those storyboards. They could be important. I’m seeing George Greeley tomorrow, so maybe by evening we’ll have news for each other.” After some racy patter about missing me and the power of crystals, I asked him if Angie was there to say hello.
“Hi, Nora. I wanted to tell you Sophie had another insight today while we were calling on the angel Michael to help you on your trip. Sophie says she feels strongly that there are other angels involved with you, and you need to be alert for them.”
“Okay, I’m on high alert. But I thought these sessions were about your future, not mine.”
“Too proud to accept advice from your little sister?”
“Nope. I promise to keep all channels open.”
And so I did. After a little reading, giving time for the beer and brats to settle, I slowly drifted off to sleep with images of painted angels floating before my eyes.
Rutledge Street, just a mile east of the Capitol and downtown Madison, reminded me of my grandparents’ working-class neighborhood in Gloucester. The antiquated wooden houses were not quite Victorian, not quite bungalow, but a slapdash mix invented in the 1920s to house workers from the nearby Oscar Mayer meatpacking plant. This I learned from the loquacious taxi driver, who was half-proud and half-sheepish about being in his eighth year of a doctoral program in urban history. Madison, I’ve been told, has the highest concentration of postgraduate taxi drivers of any city on the planet.
George Greeley’s was the tallest home on the block and therefore easy to spot. Greeley himself opened the door before I reached the top snow-covered step of his wooden porch. The packed snow crunched underfoot. Immediately, he reached out with both hands to cushion the progress of my briefcase over the threshold. Here was an expert totally focused on his professional task. He barely looked at me as he took the weight of the case and transferred it to a cushioned chair. Then he turned to greet me.
“You can call me George,” he said, offering a hand to shake. The gesture, like his whole body, was firm and graceful. Greeley was as lean as a dancer, or, more likely here, a runner or biker. Perhaps because of that, he looked much younger than his friend Al. Gray hair cut close to the skull contributed to the lithe look. “Let’s get to work right away,” he suggested. “We’ll have to go upstairs.” He picked up the briefcase from its bottom and led me briskly up a narrow staircase to the second floor.
“I have my studio up here,” he explained. “The light is best on the second floor, and there’s running water in my workroom.” He led me down a hall into a small room with windows on two sides, a double sink, and deep cabinets above and below spacious counters. “During World War II, the house was converted into a duplex, and this was used as the kitchen for the upstairs apartment. I’m lucky the owner never took out the plumbing.” He placed the icon on a high workbench, positioned where the stove must have been in years past. We sat down on two kitchen stools.
“So you can do all your consulting and restoration work from home?”
“Yes, this is my studio. After my wife left, I turned her study, across the hall, into my library and office. So I’m all set.” That could have been a neutral statement, but he gritted his teeth when he mentioned his wife, and he sounded less than happy.
“We should talk about your fee before we start, don’t you think? Al said you’d be reasonable, but I really don’t know what that means.”
“Sure. It will be six hundred dollars for today’s consultation, if it takes as long as I think it will, that is, the rest of the day. After that, the cost of restoration will depend on what we find. If we’re only cleaning the current painting, the total could run you under a thousand, even if I have to do some reconstruction and repainting in the corner. Al tells me that it’s got some damage.”
“Yes. But what if what we suspect is true? What if there’s an older painting underneath and your job is to uncover and restore that?”
Greeley’s smile was condescending. “If we find what Al told me could be under here, you won’t be worried about the fee, my dear. Let’s cross that bridge if we come to it.” Suddenly I felt the barrier of decades of professional experience that separated us. I wasn’t only Greeley’s customer. I was his student, too, as I was Al’s. I let the “my dear” pass without challenge.
“Did you bring the key? The briefcase is locked.”
I quickly produced the key and moved to insert it, but Greeley put out his hand. “Allow me, please. I was the one who taught Al how to wrap a painting, and I want to do him the courtesy of unwrapping it properly.”
Seeing that I was taken aback, he explained, “Everyone’s careful when doing the wrapping. Most damage to artwork is done at the unwrapping stage. People get careless because of excitement, greed. Just like at Christmas. It’s human nature.” He gently lifted the wrapped icon from the case and placed it on a soft towel on his workbench. “Did you have any trouble with it on the plane?”
“No. I went through security without a hitch and kept the briefcase under the seat in front of me.”
“Better than in the overhead bin. When did you get in?”
“Yesterday. I had time to visit the Chazen, and I saw their icon exhibit. I’ve been wondering how a collection like that ended up at a university museum. It seems unusual.”
“That’s the Davies collection. He was a university alumnus and the U.S. ambassador to Russia just before World War II. Later wrote a book about his time there called Mission to Moscow. Ever hear of it?”
I had but hadn’t read it.
“It turns out Davies had a mission of his own, which was to buy up all the Russian treasures he could lay his hands on. His pal Stalin arranged some sweetheart deals for him. This was during the time of the purges, which, by the way, he never protested. Maybe that was just a coincidence, but I don’t think so. Anyhow, Davies made quite a haul. Later he donated the icons to the university because he was buddies with the governor and with some other bigwig donors. You know how these things work; each one scratches the other’s back.”
I was unsettled by Greeley’s resentful tone. All the while, his slender, delicate fingers flew over the package on his workbench, efficiently unwrapping its protective layers until the icon was exposed. He took a quick, dismissive glimpse at the angel Michael, then flipped the panel over, as Al had done. He studied it. “Al was right,” he said. “This panel is much older than the painting on it.” He turned the icon face up again and examined the damaged corner, probing the gouged wood with a fingertip.
“Can it be repaired?”
“That won’t be a problem. In this case I can rebuild the surface and retouch to match the gilding, if that’s what you want. But we’re after bigger game than that, aren’t we?”
“I
hope so. That’s what Al thinks.”
“Right. I’ll start with some photos. That way you’ll have a complete photographic record of the process.” He picked up the icon and placed it on an easel facing the window. “Natural light is best.” Then he brought over a digital camera on a tripod and positioned it between the window and the easel. He took a few shots, checked the display on the back of the camera, and made a satisfied sound.
He returned the icon to his workbench and began laying out his tools and materials. “The first thing we’re going to do,” he said as he repositioned an extension lamp clamped to the bench, “is remove the darkened drying oil and the top layer of pigment. And while I’m doing that, you’re going to tell me the story of the panel, everything you know, just as if Al hadn’t briefed me.”
Greeley had already prepared his solutions. While he set about the preliminary cleaning, I gave him the broad outline of what I knew so far, beginning with Charlie’s murder, my interviews with the auctioneer at Morgan’s and with Rose Cassini, our pursuit by a Russian gangster, our discovery of the icon hidden in a table, how we damaged it, and finally Al’s account of the legend of the Rublev triptych.
“That’s quite a tale,” said Greeley. “And what about the other two panels? Do you have any idea where they are?”
“Not really,” I had to admit. “But I’m following a lead.”
“Then I wish you luck.”
He said nothing more but concentrated on his work. Greeley followed the basic procedure Al had demonstrated to us in Berkeley, but he was quicker and more adept at his tasks. He began with balls of sterile cotton on toothpicks (homemade Q-tips), dipped in a light-colored organic oil, which he swabbed across the surface of the icon using circular motions that quickly brought up black gook. Then came the process of paint removal, using a small swatch of absorbent cloth soaked in a darker solvent. The swatch was positioned with tweezers, pressed under a weight, and lifted after a few minutes, followed by additional swipes with clean cotton, until a circle of previously unexposed color stood out from its surroundings like an area lit by a spotlight on a dark stage. He had chosen a small section of Michael’s cloak to begin with. What had been dull reddish pigment now was rich ocher.