Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5)

by T'Gracie Reese

  And then Alanna, her eyes darting upward to watch for angels that might have been attracted by her enthusiasm, saw the paintings.

  There was silence in the room while she studied them, her head swiveling.

  “Oh my God,” she finally whispered.

  Nina spoke, but nothing came out.

  She felt like the proprietor of a horrible prison camp, upon opening its doors to the victorious army.

  “They’re all the same painting!” gasped Alanna.

  “Well, actually they’re from my class. We…”

  “We have to take them down.”

  “Margot and I were just talking about that. I thought…”

  “We have to take them down! Margot, I’m so sorry that you had to see this. In your shop.”

  Margot nodded, weakly:

  “If I could have been warned…”

  Alanna embraced her again, and the two women seemed to weep on each other’s breasts for a time.

  “None of us knew. None of us knew.”

  The embrace lasted an interminable amount of time.

  Then finally, the three of them—Nina, Margot, and Alanna––took the two small ladders that the shop possessed, and, much like Roman soldiers standing before the cross, took down what they saw before them.

  The process of taking down the identical seascapes, wrapping them carefully, and preparing them for the safe return to the Monets and Pisarros who’d painted them by numbers—and then rehanging the actual paintings that had preceded them on the walls of Elementals—took almost an hour.

  That made it lunchtime.

  Sergio’s by the Sea.

  Where they found themselves seated beside a large plate glass window that would have overlooked the Gulf of Mexico if Sergio’s had actually been located by the sea, but, since this was not the case, actually overlooked the parking lot of a supermarket that happened to be next door.

  No matter.

  The shrimp cocktail was supreme as usual, and the remoulade sauce went far toward healing Nina’s hurt feelings.

  “Nina darling,” said Alanna, sipping some of the cold iced tea that accompanied the shrimp, “I did not intend to imply that your painting, and those of your fellow students, were insipid or uninspired.”

  “But that’s what you think, isn’t it?”

  Alanna nodded, so that her purple turban came dangerously close to the flame of a candle that burned uselessly in the center of the table.

  “Of course, I think that the paintings are insipid and uninspired. What I meant to say was, it was callous of me to imply that. I should simply have said nothing at all. After all, what are true friends for, if not to ignore the peccadillos of other friends.”

  “Here, here,” said Margot, taking a twist of lime from her gin and tonic—all right it was early, but it had been a traumatic morning—and laying it carefully on a small dish that the waiter had provided for just such a purpose. “My thoughts exactly.”

  “You both,” asked Nina, “think I have peccadillos?”

  “Not many peccadillos,” said Alanna, consolingly. “And frequently what in others might have seemed peccadiloish has proven in your case to be good solid instinctual reasoning. Hence the fact that you have basically saved Bay St. Lucy and the rest of the coast twice in the past year or so.”

  “Here, here,” said Margot, who apparently had decided to pay a majority of her attention to her gin and a smaller part to the creative responses expected in scintillating conversation.

  Nina continued doggedly though.

  “You don’t think in this case my painting is truly…”

  “No,” said Alanna.

  And that stopped the conversation for a time.

  It remained motionless until Margot, having half-finished the drink by now, said quietly:

  “I was, on the other hand, Nina, thinking about something you said when we were talking about the paintings.”

  “Something intelligent?”

  “No, something stupid.”

  “Damn.”

  “But perhaps useful.”

  Another pause.

  A pair of porpoises played and sparkled and leapt in the frothing ocean two miles to the east of where they would like to have been seated, and a tan Volvo pulled out of the parking lot fifty yards to the west of where they actually were seated.

  “You were talking about the Impressionist paintings in the Jeu de Palme.”

  “Yes, I thought that since we had all of our seascapes around on the walls…”

  “Hush.”

  “Sorry.”

  “But, listen, both of you. Alanna, do you have openings for cultural events to be held at the Auberge this summer?”

  “Yes, darling. We have a number of concerts and theatrical events, but…”

  “What about painting?”

  Alanna shook her head:

  “Nothing.”

  “Then I have an idea.”

  “Tell it, by all means.”

  “All right. It has to do with a young docent I hired just before leaving The Chicago Art Museum last year.”

  “A docent?” asked Nina.

  “Yes, all museums, or nearly all of them, hire docents. These people are a bit like graduate students. Their main job is to conduct tours showing the paintings to museum patrons, and explaining various facts about the works and the painters. At any rate, this particular docent was named Carol Walker. She was completely unimpressive during her initial interview, and, in fact, I was advised against hiring her. Something about her though…”

  Margot shook her head.

  “Something about her piqued my interest. It was almost completely intangible, but it was there, nevertheless. An ardent love of painting, and everything about it. Well, at any rate, I hired her. Within a few weeks, she had developed a method of lecturing about paintings that was—well, completely revolutionary. She connected a series of computers which she set up in the middle of a particular gallery with lights that she had somehow secreted around the room—and she was able to create a kind of holograph. A new visual world that engulfed the patrons as they stood there. I only saw a few of her presentations before I left to come to Bay St. Lucy. But I was completely overwhelmed by what I saw. At any rate, Ms. Walker apparently remained hated by some of the museum’s higher ups—unimaginative administrative types—but her following increased. I got word a month or so ago from various people that the museum had received a very large grant to help them explore the possibilities of multi-media presentations within the museum.”

  “It sounds fascinating,” said Alanna. “But how…”

  “Why don’t we invite Carol Walker to come here and give one of her presentations, say, in July? We can surely afford the multi-media apparatus. And the woman owes me her job. Surely she would come.”

  And thus the idea was hatched.

  Carol Walker would come to Bay St. Lucy.

  And the old Robinson mansion, erstwhile hangout of gangsters and thieves, would now become the home of Monet’s Water lillies.

  CHAPTER TWO: BOXES

  At approximately the same moment on a Friday afternoon that a plot was being hatched to invite Carol Walker to Bay St. Lucy, the young woman herself was preparing for a meeting with Rebecca Simpson, a museum administrator who’d never liked her.

  The office she was to report to was near the entrance to the Modern Wing.

  Carol entered a door that led off the main corridor and was engulfed in a series of smaller corridors, by a stream of men in white jackets pushing wheelbarrows in front of them. The men all had on blue caps. There was no writing on their uniforms. But she did note that the men walking toward Rebecca Simpson’s office were pushing empty wheelbarrows, and the men coming away from her office each had a large brown cardboard box, identical, approximately two cubic feet in dimensions.

  “Carol! Come in! Sit down!”

  It was the first time she’d been in Rebecca Simpson’s office.

  It was, at least today, not so much an o
ffice at all, but a meeting place of corridors, a kind of wheelbarrow traffic circle around which boxes circled endlessly, coming from somewhere Carol could not discern, and clattering noisily down a staircase she did not know existed.

  “OVER THERE! “

  “NO! GET THAT ONE! LEAVE THOSE TWO!”

  Somehow in the midst of this chaos, was a desk, gray topped, with what seemed innumerable tiny half moon curves imprinted in it, as though the same hand had studiously pressed a thumbnail a thousand times, at random locations, into its ugly, ever-so-slightly malleable surface.

  “NO! LEAVE THAT ONE!”

  “YES! LEAVE IT…IT DOESN’T GO WITH THE OTHERS!”

  The men, she could see, were unable to negotiate the steep stairway with the ponderously loaded wheelbarrows, and were forced to carry the barrows by hand, one man grunting with each end.

  “Please, sit down, Carol.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes. Right there––it’s all right.”

  “What––what are they doing?”

  “Who?”

  “These men.”

  “With the wheelbarrows?”

  “Yes. What are they doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  That was the last that was said during the interview about the wheelbarrows, although the circulation of barrow-boxes continued with what seemed to be innumerable men involved in the parade

  “Carol, don’t you check your email?”

  “No, I––it’s been––a busy weekend.”

  “Have you gotten any of the messages I’ve sent to the docents?”

  “I just found them. A few minutes ago.”

  “Well––Carol, I hardly know where to begin––so much has happened. You really do need to check your email”

  “I know. I will in the future.”

  Rebecca Simpson was dressed in brown and looked, Carol realized, like one of the boxes. She had a square face—a bit more flushed than the boxes but otherwise identical—a square torso, square nose, square eyes, and an enigmatic interior.

  “Well, I must tell you then, that Educational Services has received an anonymous grant.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s quite large.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Yes, we’re very excited. You did not receive any of the emails concerning this?”

  “No.”

  “I sent the first ones out on Friday morning, around nine o’clock. Did you not receive that email?”

  “Probably. I’m sure I got it, but––I really haven’t been checking emails this weekend the way I should.”

  “Then I sent another group of emails around three o’clock that afternoon. Did you receive that email?”

  “I’m sure I did.”

  “There was a request for a reply.”

  “I just really didn’t check any of my emails this weekend.”

  “Then…”

  Each of the words was identical: a two foot cubic pasteboard word, crossing the gray desk in a wheelbarrow, and heading toward stairs leading downward, downward…

  “Then I sent another email on Saturday evening. Did you not receive that email?”

  “No, ma’am. I mean––I’m sure I did, but I really haven’t been checking.”

  “And finally, I sent another set of rather lengthy emails yesterday evening. There were two emails, plus several attachments. Did you receive those emails, and those attachments?”

  “I’m sure that, when I check, I’ll find them.”

  “PUT DOWN THAT WHEELBARROW! NO! NOT THAT ONE! THE OTHER ONE!”

  “So you received none of them?”

  “No. That is, I probably got them. I’m sure they came through. I just haven’t gotten to read them.”

  “I see.”

  “BE CAREFUL WITH THAT ONE! THERE ARE SPRINGS IN IT!”

  “Well. I guess I must assume that you don’t know what was in any of the emails.”

  “That’s true.”

  Rebecca Simpson sighed heavily, the clear scotch tape holding her flaps together, straining as she did so.

  “Then first, Carol, I have to thank you; and thank you with great sincerity.”

  Finally, Carol thought.

  Why?

  Although she already knew why, it was appropriate to ask.

  “This grant has to do with multi-media presentations.”

  With my multi media presentations, she thought, but said nothing.

  “A great part of the grant earmarks funding for multi-media, in-museum, instruction. I’m sure you’re aware—as I pointed out in my emails, and in the attachments—that there is a great potential in using computer technology to bring out aspects of color, form—to create, actually, a new paradigm. Have you read anything by Ronald Marskin?”

  “No.”

  “But…”

  Then a shake of the head.

  “I had suggested you read some materials by Marskin. Did you not receive that email either?”

  “I guess not.”

  “My God. My God. Why do I send these things?”

  Nothing to be said to that.

  The wheelbarrows continued to clatter. Whatever the boxes contained, there had to have been an endless supply of it.

  “Marskin’s book deals with the use of computer technology in Visual Arts Instruction. I think it would have helped you, especially given what seems your area of interest. But there isn’t much to be done now.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “At any rate, Carol, I just wanted to thank you for the presentations you’ve given here in the past months. Whatever have been their deficiencies, they certainly have not lacked in enthusiasm. You have a true love for what you’re doing and I’m sure that’s going to hold you in good stead in the future, as you gain in the professionalism needed to go with it.”

  Carol realized for the first time:

  She’s firing me.

  My God, she’s firing me.

  “Are you firing me?” barely able to recognize her own voice.

  Silence for time. Then:

  “This has, of course, not been an easy decision. I’ve reviewed many of your presentations––almost all of them, actually––and, Carol, there are just too many problems. I barely know where to begin.”

  Neither did Carol, who, dumbstruck, could only stammer:

  “I’m fired?”

  “I think it’s best that we go––in different directions.”

  “But––I mean––what kind of problems?”

  Rebecca Simpson shook her head, looked up at the ceiling as though appealing to God for patience, and then took from her desk a yellow notebook filled with black scrawl-marks that looked like so many tarantulas frozen in motion over a field of ripe grain.

  “I…”

  More shakes of the head.

  “Morris and Company established in 1873. Eighteen seventy three, Carol? That’s just not the kind of mistake you can make here. At a smaller museum, for a less sophisticated audience…Carol, I’ve gotten protests! Some people have used the word “appalled.”

  “Which people?”

  “Well, of course, I can’t go into that.”

  “I keep getting requests, bookings.”

  “Yes, and we keep hoping these…these truly unforgivable gaffes will lessen. But they don’t; they just keep getting worse.”

  “WATCH THE STAIRS! IT’S WET ON THE SECOND STAIR!”

  “And, Carol––you’ve missed two meetings. I announce these docent meetings very clearly via email. But––it’s as though you don’t even check your email.”

  “I guess I just…I thought things were going well. The people seemed to like what I did.”

  “They like the theatrics of it. But we’re not an entertainment business, Carol. We’re not a troupe of trained monkeys. This is scholarship. Serious scholarship. I don’t think we were able to make you realize the gravity of that.”

  “I’m sorry. I––I just can’t believe that you’re firing me.”r />
  “These things are never easy. And I can promise you, this is a decision arrived at by all of us in the division, after very difficult thought. All I can tell you is that, after that thought, and a great deal of agonizing, we feel that, at least at this point in time, the museum and you should go in different directions.”

  Like what? Carol wondered. East?

  “I did want to give you this, though.”

  She handed Carol a plastic-covered card.

  “This is a special “Friends of the Museum” card. If you present it at the entrance, you will be allowed in free at any time during the coming year. We do want you to come back to the collections. Often. You have made some very good friends here, Carol. Please––do not be a stranger.”

  “I won’t,” she said, taking the card.

  “Now, if there’s nothing else…”

  “No. No, thank you for telling me.”

  “That’s quite all right. Can you find your way out?”

  “Sure.”

  And she did.

  In the basement of the Art Institute of Chicago is a miniaturist exhibit of furniture. It is a series of shadowboxes, each a cubic foot or two in size, and constructed with exquisite care to reproduce rooms from various cultures and time periods. There is a sitting room from a plantation house in Virginia, circa 1765; a kitchen from a Tudor mansion during the reign of Henry VI; the drawing room of a Biedermeier dwelling in Berlin, 1868. The rooms are lighted with great care, and various scenes—people mowing hay or sitting on a lawn—can be seen through the window.

  Carol had always loved this part of the museum. It quieted her when she needed quieting, inspired and energized her when things in her mind were too quiet to begin with.

  She had pulled a chair before the farthest of the boxes, one labeled “Carpathian Landowner’s Villa, circa 1923, and had lost herself in it.

  “They’ve put the chair,” said Carol, to herself, “in the wrong place.”

  No one wanted her.

  “How funny. The chair is in the wrong place. It destroys the order of the room. The stupid museum. They’ve put the chair in the wrong place. And they’ve fired me. What will I do now? Where will I go?”

  Her cell phone rang.

  She took it out of her purse and flipped it open.