by M. J. Rose
“Did he look in?”
“No.”
“Could you see his face?”
“He was moving too fast.” She stopped to think, to try to picture the scene. “No, there was a woman blocking my view.”
“Do you remember any details at all? Color of his hair?” Lucian had taken out his Moleskine notebook and had a pencil ready. “No.”
“What was he wearing?”
“He had a baseball cap on. Dark. Blue or black.” She seemed surprised to have remembered.
“Was he tall? Short?”
“I don’t know. Tall. This is crazy. Could anyone really think that even if I was…reincarnated…that I would…that Solange would remember?” She sounded contrite, as if she were blaming herself. “Some man was coincidentally walking in the same direction I was. That’s all. I’m overreacting.”
While she was talking she’d started running her finger up and down on the fluted edge of her chair. Lucian wanted to reach out and still her hand. She was scared, and he didn’t blame her. It didn’t matter if reincarnation were possible or not, only that some lunatic out there believed it was. All these years he’d wanted nothing more than a chance to find out who had stolen the Matisse and murdered Solange. Was that possibility finally presenting itself? Was there a way to scare the perp and smoke him out? Was Emeline brave enough to help them if it came down to that?
“It’s probably nothing. Those e-mails would make anyone nervous. But I’m going to ask Broderick to give you a security detail for a few days, anyway.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I think it is. Where do you live?”
“I have an apartment on the west side, but I’ve been living here for the past four weeks, since Dad got home from his last trip to Mount Sinai.”
“Is your apartment in a doorman building?”
“No, in a brownstone.”
“Don’t go back there until we get to the bottom of this.”
“I wouldn’t anyway—Dad’s not ready for me to leave yet.” She paused, then asked, “Will you do me a favor?”
“If I can.”
“Ever cautious.” She managed a smile.
“Okay, I will. What is it?”
“Don’t tell my father about this. He doesn’t need anything else to worry about.”
“I won’t.”
She looked away from him then and out the window as if there were a message somewhere beyond this place and this moment. She was as still as one of the marble sculptures across the street in the Greek and Roman galleries, and her expression was just as indecipherable. So why did he feel as if he knew what she was thinking?
“You believe your job is to protect him the way he’s always protected you, but it’s not.”
She jerked her head around. “You don’t know me well enough to know what I believe my job is.”
“You’re right,” he said apologetically.
“He’s sick. He’s so sick. And his drinking makes it worse, but he doesn’t seem to care. He usually holds back during the day, but as soon as the sun starts to set, it’s as if it pulls his resolve down with it.”
Telling him that much seemed to have broken the seal of secrecy on her life with Andre Jacobs, and now that she’d gone this far, she shrugged her shoulders as if she didn’t care how much further she went. In a long river of words, she told Lucian what had happened to her as a girl after her accident, out of her coma but still recovering.
“I overheard my aunt and uncle talking to the social worker about me when they thought I was sleeping. The hospital had assumed Andre and Martha were going to take me home with them when I was released, but they were saying they didn’t think they could. I pretended to stay asleep and listened to the whole conversation. They said they were still grieving for their daughter, that they didn’t think they could cope. It was too soon, Andre said.
“My mother and father and my brother had died. I was all alone except for my aunt and uncle. I didn’t understand everything that had happened, but I knew there was no one else. I had to make them take me home with them. But how?
“When the doctors had taken my bandages off and my aunt had seen the scar on my forehead, she’d started to cry because Solange had had a scar a lot like it in almost the same place. Martha couldn’t look at it at first. Andre had to take her out of the room.
“I don’t know now how I came up with my pathetic little plan, but after the social worker left, I pretended to wake up and I told my aunt and uncle I’d had a dream that Solange had come to visit me and told me the scar on my head was a mark to show everyone that she was part of me now. It was all make-believe—inspired fiction from a scared kid with an overactive imagination. But it worked. I lied, and my lie worked. Too well. It’s what started the whole craziness with them thinking I was reincarnated.”
“You can’t blame—”
Emeline interrupted him. “I can. Martha believed me without reservation. I don’t think Andre did, but he wanted to. He tried to. It was too much for him, though. Too strange. Too incomprehensible. I think that’s when his drinking became a problem. He’d come home from the framing store drunk, and he and my aunt would argue. They didn’t scream when they fought. Their voices got really low. I’d hide in the hallway and listen to them, but I was always on the other side of the door. I should have told them the truth once they took me to the Phoenix Foundation. I should have. But it was too late. It had grown into something much bigger than me. And I was still afraid they’d send me away.”
“I’m so sorry. You must have been very lonely,” Lucian said.
Emeline started to respond, then twisted around and looked toward the bedroom. “I think he’s up. Let me go check.”
Lucian waited at the table where he’d sat so often with Solange the summer they’d lived in this apartment. There was a spot on the cordovan, oblong and irregular, where the leather had bleached out. He hadn’t noticed it before but now he remembered a night when Solange had been joking around, using a French accent and mimicking a waiter pouring wine, and had overfilled his glass so that the liquid had spilled all over the tabletop.
“If you want to come in for a few minutes, my father’s awake.”
Lucian turned in the direction of the voice. She was bathed in a dusty glow from the setting sun. Emeline was light to Solange’s dark—cool to her warm, closed to her open, but for a moment he’d seen Solange standing there so vividly he had to catch his breath and focus on what he knew instead of what he imagined.
“What is it?” Her voice was low and urgent.
“The light—this is the kind of light painters kill for.” He hadn’t expected to say anything, least of all this.
Back in the bedroom, where the thick ivory damask drapes were drawn against the sunset, Lucian found Andre Jacobs propped up against the pillows, wearing a navy silk bathrobe and looking very frail. Emeline lowered herself into a big armchair in the shadows on the other side of the bed, and Lucian remained standing. “I’m glad you’re all right, Mr. Jacobs.”
“No thanks to you.”
Lucian bowed his head slightly, accepting all blame. “There wasn’t anyone else who would know about the mark on the back of the canvas. You’re integral to helping us in this case.”
Jacobs let his left hand rise and fall, like a dried leaf buffeted by the wind. “So the old man is all you have left. I’m not the best, but I’m the last. Is the painting still here?”
“No. It’s back at the museum.”
Jacobs nodded.
“You do believe it was the Matisse that was stolen from your framing gallery? You recognized the mark?”
“It’s been twenty years. That’s a long time to remember the painting so exactly.”
“Yes. It has been a long time.”
“A lifetime ago. A ruined lifetime ago,” Jacobs said, and turned to Emeline. “I’m sorry. I’m not thinking clearly. That was a cruel thing to say.”
“No,” Emeline said, reaching out and taking h
er father’s hand.
“Let me talk to the agent alone, Emeline.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded and then watched her leave the room. Only then did he glance back at Lucian with faded green eyes that once had been the same vibrant jade as Solange’s.
“I’m all the family she has. So pathetically little for someone who lost so much.”
“You both lost so much.”
Jacobs didn’t respond except to close his eyes and lean back even farther on the pillows. He didn’t say anything at all for a moment and then, with his eyes still shut, he started talking, as if he were telling a story.
“The Matisse only had one owner. Aaron Flaxman bought it from the artist and kept it. Cherished it. Got it out of Paris before Hitler arrived. Flaxman was one of the lucky ones who heard the rumors, believed them and arranged to have his collection shipped out of France before that monster looted the city. He paid an American businessman half his fortune to do it. Thousands who tried the same thing weren’t as lucky.
“The mark is on most of the paintings he smuggled out. Like a brand. Usually it’s hidden on a part of the canvas that wraps around the stretcher. He put them there in case they were lost and he needed to prove they were his. I don’t think he told many people about it…not sure he would have told me either…but on the Matisse it was slightly more obvious. He never needed to rely on the marks, though. His courier was honest and didn’t disappear with the collection when he reached the States.
“The Flaxman family made it to America, too. That cost Aaron the other half of his fortune, but as far as he was concerned he had all that really mattered—the people and the paintings he loved. And with those things my friend rebuilt his life in New York, becoming a dealer once again, this time buying and selling paintings on Madison Avenue and Sixty-Sixth Street instead of the rue de la Boétie. The ten paintings he’d smuggled out of France, the ones he left in his will to the Metropolitan Museum, were the cornerstone of his collection and the only ones he never traded or upgraded. The survivors, he called them—more special for what had happened to them, more beautiful after the war than before, as if what they had gone through had imbued them with something magical. He donated them restored and framed. I’m guessing the Met never took them apart and found the marks. But they’re there.” Jacobs sighed and closed his eyes. For a moment Lucian thought he might have fallen asleep, but then, with his eyes still shut, he continued talking about his old friend and customer.
“He was a romantic. Hitler’s army had decimated the German side of his family, he’d seen the worst things man could do to man, and yet he believed that his paintings had grown more beautiful for their ordeal. That Matisse survived the Gestapo and the gas chambers and a fate that felled six million Jews, and then because of me…”
The confirmation was complete. Lucian knew what he needed to know from the one man who could tell him. He stood to go and had started for the door when the thin voice reached out and stopped him. Jacobs, it appeared, wasn’t finished.
“You know what I’ve never forgotten? He never blamed me. Never said one word to me in recrimination. He came to Solange’s funeral and sat shiva with me every day and night of that week. Sitting shiva for his painting, I think now. He cried with me and offered me solace even though there was no comforting me. I’d left her there that day. I…left…her…there…I did! Can you imagine living with that?”
I can, Lucian wanted to say.
Jacobs opened his eyes and looked at him, his expression changing to one of surprise. “You almost died, too, that day, didn’t you?” He said it as if he was just now remembering that part of the story.
Lucian nodded.
“I wish you had. I wish you had died instead of my daughter.”
Lucian turned, walked the last few steps, opened the door and walked out. Sometimes, probably too many times, he’d wished the same thing.
“Would you like some wine?” Emeline was sitting at the table in front of the windows. She held out a glass to him as if it held something much more precious that wine. Like her, caught in the sunset, it glowed.
“It’s way past five o’clock,” she said, as if reading his mind. “You’ve put in a full day. And there are some things I’d like to ask you. About my father. About Solange. About who she was. No one else would ever tell me. It’s been like living in the shadow of a ghost. Please, Lucian?”
“I wish I could, but I have to go back to the office. This is an ongoing investigation,” he said. Then he added, perhaps more curtly than necessary, “I can let myself out.”
Chapter
TWENTY-SEVEN
Nina Keyes sat beside her granddaughter on one of the wooden benches in the lobby of the Metropolitan Museum. The little girl was rocking back and forth, her arms wrapped around her chest, tracks of tears on her cheeks.
Malachai Samuels sat on Veronica’s other side, whispering to her softly, telling her over and over again that she was safe, that she wasn’t alone, and that she didn’t need to be frightened anymore.
Even though it was Saturday, he’d been in his office when the call had come through and he heard Nina Keyes’s hysterical voice asking him to come to the Met right away. Her granddaughter needed help. He’d been here for at least ten minutes, but nothing he said was having an effect on her. Veronica was deep in her own drama and couldn’t seem to hear him.
“We should move her away from all these people,” Nina said in a frantic voice.
“Not while she’s having a spontaneous regression.”
“You need to stop it.”
“That’s not wise. This could be a breakthrough for her.”
“But she’s in pain.”
“Yes, but she can’t get hurt. I promise you that. We’re here with her.” He returned his focus to Veronica. “Tell me what’s wrong. What are you seeing?”
The little girl didn’t seem to be able to hear him.
“Veronica, you’re safe. Your grandmother is safe. I want you to know that. Nothing can hurt you. Nothing.”
Veronica’s tears continued to fall, and she emitted small moans, cries of mental or physical distress; there was no way to tell.
“We were walking over to the main stairs when Veronica reached out for my hand and just started crying,” Nina said. “She kept saying it was dark and that she didn’t want me to go. Nothing I said calmed her down.”
“Did you notice anything that could have triggered this attack?”
Nina shook her head and then looked around the great, grand space. Malachai followed her gaze and took in the oversize flower arrangements, the crowds of people, the museum guards dressed in navy blue, and the four flags flying over the entranceway, one for each of the special exhibitions: Vuillard Interiors, Egyptian Jewels, Illusion in Contemporary Photography and Persian Tile Treasures.
“Nothing that I can think of, I’m sorry. Can’t you help her?”
“You’re safe now, Veronica. You’re here in New York with your grandmother. No one is going to let anything happen to you.”
“It’s not me,” she whispered in a tremulous voice. “It’s Hosh.”
“Who is Hosh?”
“It’s not me. It’s Hosh. I have to save Hosh.”
Chapter
TWENTY-EIGHT
Shush, Persia, 1885
Bibi watched her husband pull his knife from his sheath. His hand shook—not with fear, she knew, but with age. The lamplight played on the edge of the blade like the devil dancing on the edge of hell, and the woman who was not a witch and had never had a premonition before in her life suddenly felt as if the very air she was breathing tasted of death.
Inching closer to her husband, she grabbed his wrist, digging into his paper-thin skin with her sharp nails. “They are just things…useless coins, pots. Who cares about them? We don’t pray to idols, and yet you are willing to risk your life to protect one?”
“They’ve belonged to my family for centuries.” He tried to pry her fingers away. �
�Let go of me.”
“Not until you agree not to go down into the cellar until help comes.”
“This is not your decision, woman,” he said so harshly she let go and stepped back and away from him as if he had become a stranger.
She waved her hand at the area to the right of the hearth. “Fine. Go. Protect your legacy.” Her voice was tough and weathered, but her dark eyes were glassy with tears.
“This is the one thing I have to leave our sons, and they to theirs,” Hosh said as he reached up and brushed her hair with his fingertips. He was old and sickly, spoiling from the inside out, but he smiled at her the same way he had when she was new to marriage and worried every time he’d left the house to go to the temple or to trade in the market. “Go back to bed, Bibi. No one is dying tonight. I promise you.”
Lifting the lantern off the hook on the wall, he turned and limped across the room, his elongated shadow following him. Bibi stepped on it, thinking for one crazy second that she could hold him back by keeping his shadow there with her.
Hosh walked past the warped wooden shelves where foodstuffs were stored and stopped at the edge of a small, tattered rug that had been woven with threads of deep red and royal blue but now was a memory of that glory. Faded or not, it still did the job of hiding what lay beneath it. After rolling it up, Hosh pushed it aside and exposed the trapdoor.
“Please,” Bibi whispered, reaching out again to hold him back, unable to stop herself.
Ignoring his wife, Hosh opened the door and shone his lantern on the staircase rough-hewn out of rock and dirt. Bibi shrank back. She hated everything about the cavern. Pitch-black and smelling of rotten eggs, it went so deep into the earth it was supposed to reach the sea, but no one was sure because at its farthest end was a thick wall of boulders.
She’d heard the legend about that wall four times because Hosh had told it to each of her sons on the day of his bar mitzvah, and he always began it the same way: This story has been retold by every father to every son in our family for the past three centuries.