by Betsy Draine
“Too bad, Toby. It was a great idea.”
“It still is,” he said. “Let’s try a variation on the theme.” This time he marched over to the big, gnarled Monterey cypress that was the storyboards’ most prominent landmark. It stood at the apex of the imaginary triangle that connected the three trees. Toby leaned his back against it, facing the harbor and the two smaller trees that stood at the triangle’s remaining corners. With ceremony, he paced off three steps and started to dig. At two feet, with a thwack, his shovel struck something solid.
“Could be a root,” I said.
“O ye of little faith!” Toby shouted, grinning. “Come over here and give me a hand.”
Kneeling over the hole, I poked with the spade and felt a thump that seemed promising. Moving around, I poked again, this time feeling just the same thump at the right depth. “Feels like you’ve hit a box,” I said triumphantly.
“Then we need to be careful not to punch the shovel through it.”
Working carefully, we finally dislodged the box from the surrounding earth. It was covered in plastic, so it was somewhat slippery, though the dirt on it, as well as the effects of long-term burial, gave it just enough texture to allow for a grip. We knelt facing each other. We dug our knees and toes into the ground, dropping our heads and arms down into the hole. I got a purchase on my two corners, and we gave it a heave-ho. Up it came, and we moved over to place it on the ground. The box wasn’t heavy, but my shoulders, arms, legs, and back were going to ache tomorrow.
We had before us a rectangular shape, maybe 24" × 14". It was still thick with dirt, but a little scraping showed that the outer surface was a black plastic bag, tightly wrapped over the box. I had been working in gardening gloves, but I took them off to untangle the wire closure. Sometimes a woman’s fingernails come in handy. Toby was watching expectantly, and as soon as I had the tie undone, he began pulling at the bag from the bottom. All this revealed was another layer of plastic bagging, also tightly tied. But once we had struggled to get both bags off, we were looking at an extraordinarily well-preserved box, really a small trunk.
Top, bottom, and edges were strapped with metal, while the body of the trunk was painted wood. All surfaces of the rust-red paint were stenciled in white and blue with bands of flowers, vines, and fruit. The front of the box bore a keyhole and, above it, a small ring for lifting the top. It was probably a foolish thing to do, but I gave a tug on the ring. Nothing budged, which was just as well, since we should get the box into a safe environment before we looked for the treasure we hoped would be inside.
Intent on our task, we paid no attention to a car driving by until it slowed to a crawl and left us with the uneasy impression that we were being spied on. By the time I looked up, it had passed us, heading in the direction of town. All I could see of the driver was the back of his head. I had a glimpse of gray hair. The car sped up and disappeared around a bend.
“Who was that?” asked Toby.
“I think it was Andrew Federenco.”
“Uh-oh,” said Toby.
But I couldn’t be sure.
We stayed on the site until it was nearly dark. First we wrapped the box in our tarpaulin and set it in the front seat so that I could carry it in my lap. Then, as promised, we were dutiful about filling in the dirt holes and restoring the area to something like its previous state. It was certainly easier moving the earth back into the holes than it had been getting it out, but still it took some time to do it right. Finally, we called Joe and thanked him again for allowing us to search, and yes, we told him, we had found what we were looking for.
Back at our house, we tried to brush off the creepy feeling of being under surveillance. Really, I couldn’t tell who’d been in that car. It could have been Federenco, but it could also have been a curious passerby. Instead of worrying about it, we bent our efforts toward breaking open the box, at the same time taking care not to break its contents. We were mindful of the damage we’d caused in extricating Charlie’s icon from its hiding place. Toby worked for a while with a hammer and chisel on the lock. When that approach failed, he tried using the chisel to pry the lock away from its wooden support. Eventually the wood creaked and splintered, and with a little more force, the base of the lock came away from the trunk. Toby opened the lid and we peered inside.
The object in the box had been wrapped carefully in a soft cloth and cushioned by fistfuls of balled up newspaper. Toby flattened out a page and read the story’s date: April 20, 1962. Gingerly, he reached inside the box again and lifted the small bundle from its resting place. He carefully unwrapped it.
Immediately I knew it was the central panel by its shape and by the side hinges, to which the wings had been attached. This panel was slightly larger than the other two. It bore a rather commonplace painting of the Virgin and Child, in a style similar to that of the angel Michael we had removed from Charlie’s panel. And it matched the description in Andreyev Federenco’s memoir. That’s how the triptych had been disguised: the Mother of God occupied the central panel, the angel Gabriel on her left, and the angel Michael on her right. The iconography was conventional. But I knew that underneath its surface appearance, the hidden work was highly unconventional. Layers beneath this image, waiting to be revealed, was a work of genius that some might call heretical.
I was so lost in thought that for a time I didn’t realize the house phone was ringing. When I picked it up, I froze. The voice on the other end was guttural and spoke haltingly in heavily accented syllables.
“We have your sister. Is pretty girl. You do what I say or I cut off ear. With no ear, not so pretty.”
Angie!
Toby, alarmed at the twisted look on my face, sprang to the phone and punched the speaker button. “Who is this?”
“We have your sister,” the man repeated. “Is pretty girl.”
“What do you want?” Toby demanded.
The voice continued with calm menace. “What you have.”
“If you mean the icon,” said Toby, “we don’t have it.” He was thinking quickly. “We sent it out of town for restoration.”
“Is other one. You found today.”
So it wasn’t just our imagination that we’d been under surveillance. The voice said “we.” Whoever these people were, they knew where Charlie’s icon was, and they knew about the one we had in front of us.
“Bring it tonight. Come alone. No police. If you call police, I feel sorry for sister.”
I was terrified. I let Toby take over the conversation, while I wrote down the directions. We were to bring the panel to a cabin on the outskirts of Monte Rio, a small village on the Russian River. We were to come at nine o’clock, and no police—or else. If we followed the instructions, Angie would be safe and we could bring her back home with us. The man hung up, leaving us fraught.
“What should we do?” I asked Toby. “Should we call Dan?”
“No. For Angie’s sake, we better do just what he said.”
“My God! If anything happens to Angie …”
“I know. We’ll get her out of this, I promise. But we can’t call Dan, not yet.”
What I could do was to try to call Angie. Maybe the threat was a bluff. Maybe she was safe. But she didn’t pick up. “She could still be at the hospital. You’re supposed to turn off your cell phone inside.”
“It’s almost seven o’clock already,” said Toby. “We would have heard from her by now if she wasn’t coming home for dinner.” That was true. “But I need something to eat, myself. I’m feeling weak with hunger from all that exertion. Then we’ll go.”
I had no appetite at all, but Toby was right. We both needed food, something fast and easy. I threw some fish sticks in the oven and microwaved a bag of frozen peas. It made for a grim meal.
I could see that in spite of the adrenaline rush, Toby was still dog-tired from the day’s digging, so I offered to drive. It would give me something to concentrate on besides Angie’s danger. But I was surprised that he agreed. That meant h
e must really be exhausted, and we’d need all our strength and wits once we got there.
We started out before eight. Monte Rio is a few miles inland from Duncans Mills and Toby’s shop. We knew the road but wanted extra time to find the cabin and to allow for driving conditions. The night was wet and black. There would be no starlight or moonlight to aid our drive.
As we made the turn onto Highway 1, I remembered with regret that there isn’t a single street lamp on the winding coast road. I prayed that my generally good night vision would help me hold to the center line, avoiding deep ditches on the right where the road has no shoulders. I was relieved when the lights of an occasional house set close to the road offered a moment of clarity. I felt safe enough on those stretches where moors on the left led to cliffs down to the sea, but when there was nothing on my left but a steep drop to the ocean, I just gritted my teeth. Thankfully, we encountered few cars, so I drove with the brights on most of the way. But I was keenly aware of potential crash sites.
“A little slower on the curves,” Toby advised. He takes this drive daily, so I wasn’t about to doubt his judgment. I braked down to a safer pace.
In the deep dark, with nothing illuminated but the immediate road ahead, it was hard to gauge how fast we were covering ground. I asked Toby the time—I didn’t want to take my eyes off the road to look at the dashboard clock. The landmarks familiar to me were invisible in the dark.
Finally we approached the lighted windows of the Indian restaurant that guards the bridge over the Russian River, just before Jenner. Once over the bridge, we turned in from the coast, to follow the river to Duncans Mills and Monte Rio. We had hardly spoken on the coast road, but now we began talking again. Who would be waiting for us in Monte Rio? Russian gangsters? Arnold Kohler? Or maybe Andrew Federenco and his bruiser son? How were we going to handle this?
As we reached the wide lanes and bright lights of Duncans Mills, we developed our strategy. Of course we would turn over the central panel in exchange for Angie. We could promise to give them Charlie’s icon as well, as soon as we had it back from the restorer. What else could we do? What if they had no intention of letting us go? One step at a time. Right now the focus was on saving Angie.
The road narrowed at the bridge over Austin Creek, and after that the huge redwoods that bordered the road threw us into even darker obscurity. I concentrated on my driving. Soon enough we were at the Monte Rio crossroads. We took a hairpin turn to the right, followed the sign toward the center of the village, and crossed the metal bridge that spans the Russian River.
The caller’s directions were to take a left just after the bridge, onto River Boulevard. That seemed a grandiose name for the narrow lane, which was posted with a sign reading “No Outlet.” But it must have been a thoroughfare in the old days when Monte Rio was a popular summer residence for San Franciscans. On either side, the road was jammed with vacation cottages, most of them weather-beaten. However, only a few of the buildings we passed had lights on. After a good half-mile drive, we reached the final block, where we had been instructed to seek the last house on the left.
There it was: a log cabin, tucked back farther from the street than any of the other houses. The cabin presented its side to the road, with the one window lit but curtained. The door would be to the right of the house, down the driveway. We didn’t pull in there, though. We decided to turn around at the cul-de-sac and park our car on the road, facing out, headed toward home. We might want a quick escape.
“Are you ready?” I asked, glancing over at Toby, who sat with the icon cradled in his lap. It was wrapped in the cloth that had covered it in the box, which we’d left at home.
“Let’s go,” he replied. “They’ve seen our headlights. They already know we’re here.”
We closed our car door without locking it. We walked up the driveway and stood for a second in front of the doorstep. We could see a car parked on the grass behind the house. We mounted the wooden steps and knocked.
“Good. Right on time,” a voice that I recognized said as the door opened.
“You!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, me,” said George Greeley. He was holding a gun.
I stammered, “But I just talked to you. In Madison.”
“We talked on Skype. From here. I had a hunch you’d lead me to the other panels, and I was right. I just didn’t know it would happen so soon.” He stepped aside to let us in. I stood there, not moving, dumbfounded, until he waved us inside with his gun. I entered first, then Toby, with our treasure in his hands.
“Where’s Angie?” I demanded. I scanned the large living/dining room but didn’t see her.
“Don’t worry. She’s all right.” He went toward the back of the room and unlocked the door that led into the single bedroom. “They’re here,” he said. “You can come out.”
Angie staggered into the main room of the cabin, calling my name. I rushed over to comfort her, then realized when she didn’t return my hug but stood with her arms squeezed together that her hands were taped tightly at the wrists.
“Over there,” Greeley commanded, pointing to where he wanted her to sit, at the table. “And you two over there.” He gestured toward a wicker couch. “Sit.” We obeyed.
“So you were lying. You never got any suspicious phone call,” Toby said accusingly. “The business about a second Russian gangster was a ruse.”
“Da,” said Greeley, imitating the voice I’d heard on the phone. “Is pretty girl, your sister. Too bad I cut off ear.” He laughed at his own impersonation.
The pieces fell into place. “You’re the one who attacked Sophie,” I said. I remembered Greeley’s delicate hands. I checked out his feet: small for a man’s, like the shoe prints left in the flour.
He shrugged. “When Al Miller told me on Monday about the icon you discovered at the Graton Bakery, I couldn’t pass up the chance. I took the red-eye and flew in yesterday.”
“You monster!” shouted Angie. “You nearly killed her.”
“That was regrettable. I’m afraid I hit her harder than I meant to. But now I have both panels. And you are about to give me the third. Hand it over, please. Slowly.” Toby had it balanced on his knees. He started to stand up. “No. Stay as you are. Just hold it out to me.” Toby did as he was told. Greeley took the package with one hand and shook the cloth aside. His other hand held the gun, pointing at Toby. He looked at the icon, front, back, and sides, careful not to takes his eyes off us for more than a second at a time. He walked back a few steps and placed the icon on top of a cabinet.
Toby said, “And let me guess. You were the one who drove by today while we were digging up the box.”
Greeley smirked. “I’ve been following you since this morning. I couldn’t believe my luck.”
Angie, who had been fretting throughout this interchange, burst out, “It’s my fault, Nora, I couldn’t help it. He grabbed me as I was coming out of the hospital. I tried to get away but he had a gun.”
“It’s not your fault, sweetie.”
Greeley was talking freely, so I pressed him. “How did you know where to find my sister?”
“I already told you. I was watching your house. I overheard you talking with her as she was getting in her car to go to the hospital. I figured taking her would give me the leverage I needed, and I was right.” Greeley laughed once more. “I improvised. All right, I’ve answered enough of your questions. Now you’re going to do exactly as I say. I don’t like violence, but you know I’ll use it if I have to.”
“It won’t do any good to steal the triptych,” I argued. “You’ll never be able to sell it. It’ll be too well known. No one will touch it.”
“You don’t know Russia,” said Greeley. “There are new billionaires who won’t care whether anyone else ever sees it again as long as it’s theirs. As long as they have it all to themselves or to show off to friends in their private hideaway. Not to mention the real Russian mafia, which would pay a fortune to lock it in a safe as collateral for future drug dea
ls. It won’t be in any museum or well-known collection or ever be seen at auction. As far as the world is concerned, it will disappear again just as it disappeared five hundred years ago. But someone will own it. And I’ll be a rich man.”
“It’s not too late to stop before you make things worse,” said Toby.
“Isn’t it? Armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping—I don’t think they’ll let me off with a warning, do you?”
“You’ll regret this,” said Toby, playing a weak card.
“Oh, please. I’ll tell you what I’d regret—I’d regret spending what’s left of my pathetic life in Wisconsin, where everyone I know is a professor and I’m still an instructor. I’d regret having a crummy old age trying to live on a pittance from Social Security and whatever’s left of my lousy pension after that beady-eyed bugger of a governor gets through wrecking the system, that’s what I’d regret. And guess what? I won’t regret for a minute living in a fancy villa on the Black Sea, sipping vodka and eating caviar for the rest of my days.”
“Fine,” said Angie defiantly. “Go live in Russia and see how you like it. It stinks over there. But you’ve got what you want. Now let us go.”
“Ah,” said Greeley. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Not just yet. You see, someone might tattle before I can get clear of here.”
That sounded ominous. “Then what are you planning to do with us?” Toby demanded. “You said if we brought you the icon, no one would get hurt.”
“And no one will, unless you try something foolish.” He went to the refrigerator and brought out a bottle of white wine, already uncorked. “This won’t be too unpleasant. You’re all going to enjoy a nice glass of wine and then take a nap. And while you’re snoozing, I’ll quietly take my leave.” I now noticed three wine glasses on the table. Greeley poured the wine and dropped a small, white tablet into each glass.
“What are you putting in there?” I asked.
“A harmless drug called Rohypnol. You’ll sleep until tomorrow and maybe feel a little woozy when you wake up. But otherwise, you’ll be fine. You might not remember everything about tonight, which is a plus. And even if you do, I’ll be long gone.”