by Betsy Draine
At Toby’s name, the man at the table in front of us twisted around to look. Until then I hadn’t paid the least attention to any of the other patrons in the café. I did now. The man whose back I had been facing was Arnold Kohler, the gambler. Dan had said Charlie owed him money. Kohler quickly turned back to his soup and his companion. I recognized the other man as one of the two pals who had taken care of Tom Keogh when Tom was drunk at the River’s End. Sonoma County is a very small world. How much had they overheard?
“We should leave,” I said, lowering my voice.
13
THE HOUSE PHONE was ringing as we walked in the door. It was Al Miller.
“Hi, Al.”
“Hi, Nora. I was just talking to George on Skype. He’s finished the cleaning. It looks magnificent. Have you seen it yet? He’s been trying to reach you.”
“Not yet. I’ve been out. I just this minute got home.”
“Well, wait till you see what it looks like now. I’m sure it’s Rublev. I feel it in my bones.”
“Oh, Al, that’s fantastic. And something else just happened, something amazing. I think I may have located the other wing of the triptych.”
“No!”
“Believe it or not, it’s at the Graton Bakery.” It sounded unreal, even to me.
Al was beside himself at this news.
“But I have a dilemma.” I didn’t give him all the details, but enough to explain my concerns.
“Nora, if you’re right, this is a major discovery for the art world. You can’t just let it drop. It’s too important.”
“I know it is, but things are happening so fast. I’m not sure what to do.”
“Then you’d better slow down. You’ll talk it over with Toby, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
As if on cue, my cell phone rang. Caller ID said Toby. I told Al I had to ring off; he understood.
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Toby, wait till you hear what just happened.”
“You can tell me in a minute. Federenco was in again just now, with his son. He wanted to introduce me to him, like he thought I’d be happy to sell them the icon if I had it, just because I met another member of the family. It made me very uncomfortable.”
“Oh? What’s he like, the son?”
“A bruiser. Didn’t say much, just stood around looking sulky. I felt threatened. They just left a minute ago. I can tell you, I was glad to see the back of them. Okay, so what just happened that you wanted to tell me about?”
“Oh, nothing much, I guess, compared with your news.” I played him on my hook. “It’s just that I found a second panel of the triptych.”
There was silence on the line. “You did?” Toby finally managed to blurt out. “How? Where?”
I reeled him in. “At the angel reader’s. It’s hanging in one of Sophie Redmond’s bedrooms, although she doesn’t realize what she has. It’s the left wing of the triptych, same style and size as ours, with an image of the angel Gabriel on it. Peter Federenco gave it to her around the same time he gave the other one to Rose Cassini. He was sleeping with both of them. How do you like that?”
“I can hardly believe it.”
“It’s true, though.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing. At least not yet. Angie is desperate to keep Sophie from finding out about Rose. She’s worried that Sophie will be devastated when she learns that Peter was unfaithful to her, and she wants us to keep it all a secret.”
“We can’t do that,” said Toby. “We have to tell her. In fact, it wouldn’t be fair to Sophie not to tell her. First of all, she may own an extremely valuable work of art. It’s in her interest to be aware of that, even if it means finding out about her boyfriend.”
I hadn’t considered that. I’d been too locked in to the emotional matrix of the love triangle to give money any thought.
“And by the way,” Toby went on, “what about Rose? Does she know about Sophie?”
“I don’t think so. She certainly doesn’t know about the other icon, or she would have mentioned it.”
“Right. So Rose doesn’t know. Well, she’ll have to find out about it, too.”
“I’m afraid so. But Angie will have a fit.”
“That can’t be helped.”
I told Toby about the two men in the café who could have been eavesdropping on my conversation with Angie, and then we continued talking about Sophie. Finally, Toby said, “Let’s finish this conversation over dinner. Maybe I can bring Angie around.”
But Angie was adamant about keeping our discovery a secret, and the discussion during dinner was heated. I made a roasted chicken, served with fresh asparagus and polenta, with ice cream for dessert. I let Toby do most of the talking since Angie already knew my position. Still, she stuck to her guns.
“I guess I’ll just have to let you two work this out,” said Toby when the meal was over, rising from his chair and clearing his place. “I’ve said my piece. If you’ll excuse me, there’s something I need to look up on the Internet.” He went into the other room. I knew what he was up to. Yesterday I’d caught him checking out the website for Mercedes-Benz. Tonight it might be BMW or Lexus. Toby was counting his eggs and hatching luxury cars.
Angie remained at the table with her arms folded, looking cross. “Okay, truce,” I said to her. “I think we’ve talked enough about Sophie for one day.”
“Promise you won’t say anything to her until we’ve talked some more?”
I sighed. “All right, but it’s not a promise forever. I’ll make some tea.” I put the kettle on and laid out cups and honey. “Now, do you mind if I change the subject?”
“Let me guess,” she huffed. “The convent, right?”
“Um-hmm. May I be blunt?”
Angie unwound her arms and tapped her spoon on her saucer. “Go right ahead.”
“Men. Are you sure you want to give that up?”
“Am I sure? Well, no,” she admitted, and even cracked a smile. “But isn’t that what a trial is for? Anyhow, look at my track record. It’s nothing to write home about.”
“Maybe so, but you could fill up quite a few pages.” I grinned.
That brought a giggle. “Don’t rub it in.”
“Seriously, I can’t see you being celibate for the rest of your life.”
“I don’t know. Sophie and I discussed it. She’s managed quite well herself all these years without a husband.”
“She’s not you. Plus she has a son, and it sounds like they have a close relationship. By the way, where does he live? Do you know?”
“He’s been in London for the last couple of years. He’s an architect. She’s very proud of him.”
“Think about it. If you take vows, you’d be giving up the chance to have a son like that. Don’t you even promise to give up your parents and siblings and make the other nuns your new family?”
“Not at Grace Quarry. Remember, they’ve broken away from the church hierarchy. They’re part of a new movement. They say they want to reclaim the church for the people.”
“I don’t quite get what being a nun means in those circumstances.”
“That’s what the sisters are defining right now. I’ll have a chance to be part of their experiment.”
“But what would you be promising? And what would you be doing every day? And how does it work financially?”
“The sisters and I will talk about all those things. When we work it all out, we’ll write up a plan, a kind of contract, and I’ll have time to think about it.”
“Will you let other people see it before you sign it? Like me?”
“I’m not hiding anything, and neither are the sisters. It’s just that I’m only at the beginning of thinking about this.” I could hear the unspoken plea to cut her some slack. And, a bit late, I remembered my intention to let Angie lead her own life.
“I’m sorry, Angie. I’m sure you’ve thought through these questions, and more. I’m still just getting used to the ide
a.”
“Does that mean you’re not completely against it?”
“I’m not. As you say, a trial is a trial. At the end of it, you’ll know.”
Angie narrowed her eyelids. “You think I’ll give up on the idea after I’ve tried it for a year, don’t you?”
“We’ll see, won’t we? You know, Oscar Wilde once said that the best way to get rid of a temptation is to give in to it. He was talking about vice. You’re talking about virtue, but it’s the same principle.”
“So, you’ll help me talk to Mom and Dad?”
“If that’s what you really want.” The tea was ready. I poured.
The next morning, I slept in. Angie kept to her room. After lunch, she put on her walking shoes and said she was going out for a long walk. “I’ve got a lot to think about.”
“I know you do.” I waved goodbye. A long, meditative walk would do her good.
At about one-thirty, Toby called from the gallery, almost breathless. This time he was the one who had big news, and he didn’t tease me about it. “Guess what? I found them. I finally found the storyboards!”
“What? Honey, that’s wonderful. Tell me!” Immediately, I was as excited as he was. We’d been waiting for this break since first talking with Rose.
“They were hidden in two secret compartments behind the half-column pilasters of Charlie’s desk.”
“Say again?”
Toby was eager to share the details, but it was difficult for me to picture what he was describing until he slowed down and patiently explained how he had made the discovery.
“Okay. Picture the big oak desk from the front. There are two carved columns, one on each side of the opening where you put your feet. They look like pedestals, but they’re hollow.”
“Yes, I remember them.”
“Behind each one is a vertical compartment, each almost as tall as the desk is high. And they’re deep, too, as deep as the space extending to the back.”
“How did you find them?”
“Well, 50 percent stubbornness and 50 percent luck. It turns out there are tiny release catches behind the back of the front drawer. I just kept looking over every inch of that damned desk because I knew it had to be Charlie’s hiding place—had to be, by the process of elimination. I’d looked everywhere else. It just took me a while to figure it out.”
“Toby, you’re amazing.”
“I don’t know about that. I should have worked it out sooner. I’ve seen plenty of desks with hidden compartments but never one like this. Anyhow, I’ve got the storyboards, all three of them, and all in good shape. Now maybe we can figure out what Charlie saw in them. I’m closing the shop and coming home.”
Twenty minutes later, Toby rushed into the house with the storyboards under his arm and went straight to the dining room, where he laid them out on the table. I felt we were closing in on the Rublev triptych. We now had located two of the panels. Could Peter’s sketches provide the last piece of the puzzle and lead us to the third?
The drawings were done in black watercolor and ink on heavy illustration boards, each about 12" × 20". They were simple in composition. They depicted the exterior of the farmhouse in the Hitchcock film, shown from different angles, partially hidden by trees. Time and again I had looked at the tiny illustration of one of the drawings that had been reproduced in the auction catalog, but with no clue as to its import. Surely, I’d thought, if we could find the actual storyboards, the result would be different; then I could penetrate their meaning. But now, with the originals in front of me, I was no closer to an answer than before. I stared and stared. There had to be more, something about them that had led Charlie to return for the second day of the auction, when he bought the icon. For that was the sequence of events, Toby reminded me. The sale receipts were clearly dated. Charlie bought the storyboards on day 1 of the auction and the icon on day 2. It wasn’t by chance that he went back for the icon. But nothing I could see here suggested the connection.
One of the drawings showed the Brenner farmhouse from the front, surrounded by trees and set back behind a split-rail fence. Another showed part of the house from a different angle, closer up, next to the corrugated trunks of some trees. The third showed a side of the house sheltered by an arbor, with a group of trees off to the right. In the film, the children’s birthday party takes place under that arbor and spills out onto the lawn. But the drawing looked a little different from the way I remembered the scene. In fact, something seemed to be slightly amiss in all of them. I looked at the drawings close up. I stepped back from the table and looked at them from a distance. I looked at them from the side. Something was definitely odd, but I couldn’t say what.
We must have spent hours at it. Finally, Toby said, “We’re not getting anywhere. We need a break. Then maybe we can look again with fresh eyes.”
“Agreed.”
Toby went to the fridge and popped open a can of soda, which he brought back to the couch. “Tell me about Sophie again. Peter was seeing her and Rose Cassini at the same time.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. He gave each one a side panel of the triptych. And did what with the central panel?”
“My guess is that he kept it himself. When he dismantled the triptych, he split up his holdings, so to speak. Of the three, the central panel was the most important, so my bet is that he hid it where he thought no one else could find it, somewhere in or around the Brenner house. That was the message he was trying to give Rose when he died. And I was hoping the storyboards could tell us where.”
“That makes sense to me. When the coast was clear, he was planning to retrieve the central panel and collect the sides from his two girlfriends, who didn’t know about each other.”
“Yes.”
“I wonder. Do you think he ever had any intention of marrying Sophie?”
“Maybe he didn’t know himself. Maybe he wanted to marry Rose. But he didn’t live long enough to make a choice.”
“But Sophie thinks he would have married her.”
“Of course she does, and that’s why Angie doesn’t want us to say anything to her about the icon.”
Toby sighed. “Oh, jeez. And now you tell me Angie wants to go into a convent?”
“Uh-huh.” By now Toby knew all about the other bombshell resulting from our visit to the angel reader.
“If you ask me, she has way too much spirit to be a nun, not to mention flesh and blood.” He scratched the back of his neck. “My stomach’s rumbling. I’ll find a snack. Too late in the afternoon for lunch.”
While Toby went back into the kitchen and rummaged in the cupboards, I considered our next move. Toby was thinking about money, but my professional curiosity was engaged. I wanted to see the triptych restored and to participate in its recovery. That meant I needed to level with Sophie, despite Angie’s reservations. I reasoned that Sophie would be more likely to let her own panel be cleaned if the triptych could be restored in its entirety, so my priority was to find the central panel. I stood in the kitchen door and explained my thinking to Toby as he wolfed squares of Sonoma cheddar on Wheat Thins. He nodded and munched.
I kept talking. “The storyboards must hold the key. So far we’ve missed the clue. We’re going to have to try something else.”
“I’m with you,” said Toby.
“Let’s watch The Birds one more time now that we have the storyboards and see if we can match any of them with the film. Maybe we can find a shot or an angle that can direct us to the exact site where the house stood.”
“It’s worth another try.” Toby got up and went for his coat.
“I’m coming too. While you rent the DVD, I’ll pick up dinner fixings. Give me a second to leave a note for Angie.” We were soon out the door.
Angie still wasn’t home when we returned. We’d had our eye out for her as we drove to the stores and back. I decided not to worry. Either she was on a very long walk, or she’d stopped for coffee at the surfers’ café or the fishermen’s café, or the golfers’ c
afé. You don’t lack for cafés around here.
This time we didn’t watch The Birds from start to finish. Instead, over and over, we stop-started the scenes that gave us a view of the Brenner house and the surrounding trees. With every replay, we became more frustrated. As far as I could see, no single shot in the film precisely matched any of the storyboard views. In a moment of pique, I said, “Hitchcock seems to have ignored these storyboards.” I felt like throwing them on the floor.
Toby admonished me. “It doesn’t matter whether Hitchcock used the storyboards for the film. It only matters whether Peter used the storyboards to encode a message.”
Of course, he was right.
As I was absorbing this point, the phone rang. It was George Greeley. He had tried to reach me earlier to let me know he had sent a prompt to set up our Skype connection. Would this be a good time to connect, he asked? It meant an interruption, but I assured him it would be fine. Toby was right here with me, I said. Of course, we’d be thrilled to see the uncovered Rublev. “George, just give me a minute to boot up my computer, and I’ll see you online.”
In a few moments, Greeley was on screen, looking proud and ready to display his handiwork. On our side Toby stuck his head into the picture, and I made the necessary introductions.
“Here’s what it looks like,” said Greeley. “Don’t mind the damaged corner; I haven’t started on that yet. But I’ve removed all the gesso and finished the cleaning.” He brought the icon up to the camera and positioned it until it filled the screen.
The result took my breath away. Toby whistled. “It’s gorgeous. It’s much more impressive than I imagined,” he said. “You’ve done a fantastic job.”
The deep, rich blue of the angel’s robe looked even more intense on her full, extended arm compared to the partial section I’d seen exposed in Madison. A thinner robe of sienna brown with yellow highlights was draped atop the blue. It fell from the angel’s right shoulder, crossed under her left arm, and billowed down to her ankles. The plumes of the angel’s heart-shaped wings were visible behind her shoulders—details that hadn’t been clear before the cleaning. One hand rested placidly on her knee; the other was poised above her lap. She was seated facing left but slightly turned toward the viewer, giving us a three-quarters frontal view. Her shape was gracefully elongated, but what held the eye was her sweet, delicate face, with its solemn expression and downcast eyes.