“Of course.”
“I think Carol will always be a farm girl.”
“From Georgia.”
He smiled and nodded:
‘Ah, yes, you have come to know her well, I see. At any rate, I think her ultimate plans require her to return home and be with what is left of her family, live on the land.”
“Those were not your plans, Mr…”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Michael. You may simply call me Michael. The last name is—well, it’s complicated.”
“Very well, Michael.”
“At any rate, our engagement broke off.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“As I say, such things happen. The main point is that Carol has many friends in Chicago.”
“I’m sure she does.”
“We were all shocked to learn of her dismissal.”
“She was, too.”
“Of course, she was. She must have been. And the woman who fired her is such a––well, I can’t say what she is. I must ask, though: how is Carol doing?”
“Very well. You probably heard in town, that she’s staying with me.”
“I did.”
He finished his coffee and asked:
“May I?”
“By all means,” said Nina, pouring another cup.
“This is excellent.”
“We southerners enjoy our coffee.”
“I can see.”
“So, Carol’s not expecting you?”
He shook his head:
“I must admit, no. And it’s shameful of me not to have called her. But––I have gifts in the car from several of her friends, all of whom miss her, and miss her very much. We all feel that we were perhaps not ‘there’ for her when she needed us. She’s a very quiet girl, as I’m sure you know.”
“She can be, yes.”
“And I think—we all think—that she may have felt more alone than she really was. So, a phone call…”
“Just wouldn’t have been enough?”
“Exactly.”
“And your mission is…”
“As you may have guessed. I’m here on behalf of the ‘friends of Carol,’ all of whom wish to talk her into returning to Chicago.”
It was Nina’s turn to shake her head:
“Well, I wish you luck. We’ve all come to be very close to Carol. Nobody in town wants to see her leave.”
“I can understand that. But a small town such as this…”
“Sure. Ultimately, it’s going to get boring for her.”
“Or perhaps not. I don’t know. At any rate, the last thing I wish to do is drive her into a corner. If she wishes to stay, so be it. But it’s very important for me to see her, and simply tell her how many people wish her well. And, of course, to give her the cards, and the stuffed dogs—and a picture of the woman who fired her with obscene words written across it!”
More mutual laughter.
“If you don’t mind my asking you…” began Nina.
“No, not at all!”
“I couldn’t help noticing your accent.”
“I’m Swiss. I grew up in Geneva, but my family moved here when I was eight years old. To New York. I went to business school at Columbia University.”
“My.”
“Yes, it’s a very good school. And, I must say, I do miss New York. Someday I shall probably return there.”
“But without Carol.”
“Alas, it seems so.”
“The farm girl.”
“True, the farm girl. But I do not wish to trouble you further. Is Carol at present…”
“She’s at my place. There’s a map of Bay St. Lucy over there on the wall; I’ll point it out to you. You can’t miss it.”
“You’re very kind.”
“Not at all. And I’m sure Carol will be thrilled to see you.”
“I hope. I hope.”
And so Nina showed Michael the directions to her shack.
And so she said good bye to him and watched him drive off in a rental car.
And so she had herself another cup of coffee.
He was a nice young man, and would have made a fitting husband for Carol Walker, she told herself.
Perhaps he yet would be.
The drive down, all the way from Chicago…
…yes, perhaps he yet would be.
Then she got up and began to putter around the shop, bathing in warm expectations that someday she and Margot might attend a wedding in Chicago.
She prided herself on an instinctual grasp of human nature.
And seldom had she felt such a closeness, such a positive sympathy for another person.
So she kept on puttering, having no idea that everything ‘Michael’ had told her had been a complete and utter lie.
Carol loved walking along the beach.
A pure child of the mountains, she’d never had the chance to experience the ocean before. There had been Europe, true, but her time there had been spent mostly in major cities such as Vienna, Rome, or Madrid.
But now she had time on her hands—a relatively new experience for her—and the sea beside her, the blue green ever surging, imminently alive and immortally evolving sea, which she found herself remarkably sympathetic to. She felt at home beside it. And in the same way she could not stop walking when she was in Paris—one quarter sucking her out from another and into its own personality, until the soles of her feet were blistered—in just that way, she could not turn around and go back home, go back to Nina’s shack, go back to the few errands she’d been placed in charge of, go back to Bay St. Lucy, and to Elementals for her afternoon’s work.
On this particular day, she knew she would be late.
Not that Nina would mind, of course. Not that the big smile would be any smaller, or the enthusiasm upon seeing her any less.
How lucky she’d been to find this place!
She relived the days since her firing as she trudged back along the hard-packed and foam-traced sand, the shack itself now looming before her some half mile distant.
The boxes, the boxes…
Rebecca Simpson.
The chicken.
Her presentation at The Auberge des Arts, extraordinary place that it was.
Then the need for money.
And her first trip to Graz.
Carol the mule.
How easy it had been!
There would be more trips now, she knew. Michael had made that clear. Perhaps one per month, perhaps one every two weeks. But she was to expect no more problems than she’d encountered on the first trip. And she would be receiving another impossibly large cashier’s check with each venture.
Danger?
No. Michael had made that clear.
Who would want to hurt her?
And as for the paintings themselves, she had not stolen them. Nor had Michael, for that matter. They were simply out there in the universe, a strange cosmos of stolen art, drifting with the gravity of rich people’s wealth from one secluded mansion to another. This phenomenon would not change, whether she had anything to do with it or not. What would change was her bank account.
And the day when she could go back to Georgia.
She reached the foot of the stairs leading up to the bungalow.
It was a bungalow, wasn’t it?
No. With gray wood peeling, and screen door half torn, it was still a shack.
And thinking with amusement how much she loved it despite its dilapidation, she made her way up the creaking stairs, watching a pelican perched precariously on a pole sticking out of the shallow tide some fifty yards up the beach, and listing as a low cloud of gulls scudded over the incoming surf.
She opened the door.
The tidy living room welcomed her, as did Furl, who padded noiselessly across the hardwood floor and rubbed inquiringly against her ankle.
Are you still the same person you were yesterday evening?
I mark you as my property.
Coffee.
She needed coffee.
And so, single-minded, not even looking out on the deck or at the ocean beyond, the storms possibly coming up in the eastern sky, the oil rig close to shore—she attacked the coffee maker, opened the refrigerator, got milk, made the first cup quite strong, drizzled white liquid into it, set it on a cup, breathed deeply, took a first delicious sip, and turned to go out on the deck.
Where, at the table on the deck’s center, Michael was sitting.
“Hello.”
She stood as though paralyzed in the doorway.
What was he doing here?
The pelican on the pole in the ocean had as much right to be here, on Nina’s deck, on her own deck, as did Michael.
Michael was Chicago.
Actually, Michael was indeterminate cities and indeterminate nationality and indeterminate vocation and indeterminate future or past––a shadow and nothing more.
But now the shadow was impinging on the clear blue watery light of her own private world.
“The door was open. I hope you did not mind.”
She simply stared at him, chastising herself for her own inability to speak.
“Actually, Carol, you should probably be more careful. It’s a dangerous world we live in, you know.”
She found herself, an automated figure, moving on slow creaking gears and tank treads across the floor of the deck, until she was standing before him, looking down at him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m not unwelcome, I hope.”
She knew nothing to say to that.
Of course, he was unwelcome.
What if Nina learned of his existence?
But that would never happen, of course.
Michael was too smart to let that happen.
“I have just met your friend, Nina.”
Oh God.
What was going on here?
She watched, as the automaton she’d become seated itself and continued to stare open-mouthed across the table.
Nothing, she said.
And nothing was what came out of her cave-opened mouth.
So Michael was forced to continue:
“She’s a charming lady. You’re lucky to have found a home here. And I must tell you—this may work out for the best, for all of us. Now. May I have a cup of coffee?”
She nodded, still uncertain of what might come out if she tried to speak.
Then she went back into the kitchen to find another cup and pour it.
Then she returned it to Michael, faintly aware as she did so that she was still physically attracted to him.
Why in heaven’s name was that?
No knowing about such matters, of course. But his smile, his strawblond hair, his casual white shirt open at the neck, and the dark green scarf he wore that set him off, made him a denizen of another continent—no, she was attracted to him, no doubt about it.
He took the coffee and gestured around the deck.
“These paintings? They’re not yours, I hope.”
She shook her head.
“No, they’re Nina’s. She and several other ladies of Bay St. Lucy are taking art lessons.”
“They’re dreadful.”
“They’re not so…”
“They’re dreadful.”
“All right. They’re dreadful. But doing them gives her great pleasure.”
“And me.”
She looked at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“I think we might use them.”
“Use them? How? And by the way, Michael, what the hell are you doing in Bay St. Lucy? Did you bring a painting? Do I have another trip to make?”
He shook his head:
“No, not now.”
“Why not?”
“That’s part of the reason I came down. We need to talk.”
“About what?”
“About your trips to Graz.”
“Have I done anything wrong?”
“No. But they shall have to stop for a time.”
“Why?”
“It’s getting dangerous.”
She took a deep breath and sipped the coffee.
Of course.
It was too good to be true.
Just like the docent job at the museum was too good to be true.
Something always came up.
“How dangerous, Michael? What’s going on?”
He looked beyond the deck, as though whatever danger was approaching might be topping the horizon at any moment, like an armada. Then he shook his head again and said, quietly:
“Let’s walk on the beach.”
She felt the approach of a half-smile, tried to suppress it, failed, and said through it:
“You think Nina’s shack is bugged?”
“I don’t know. But I’m absolutely certain that the ocean is not. Come on.”
And so, within a moment’s time they were back on the beach.
The tide, she found herself thinking, must have been coming in. Her footsteps from half an hour ago had been erased and were now under a film of ebbing and surging seawater.
“What is this thing that’s ‘come up’?”
“The Red Claw has come up.”
She looked at him.
Was he joking?
The what?
And even as she wondered about these things, she fought back an urge to take his hand and act as though the two of them were lovers.
They had, in fact, made love, had they not? That bizarre night in Pilsen, with a dog howling beneath the window and the mournful sound of Mexican guitar music pulsing down the street—
––or had she merely dreamed that?
“The Red Claw,” he continued.
“What are you talking about?”
“The paintings that I’m attempting to move, Carol. There’s a group of Jewish—well, I suppose one could call them vigilantes, for want of a better word. They know that the paintings are out there. They also know that the paintings were originally stolen, by the Nazis, from several Jewish families who lived in the Caucasian Mountains. They’re attempting to get these paintings back. They will not stop at anything to do so, and they don’t choose to work with conventional police organizations. They use other methods.”
“What other methods?”
“They kidnap couriers. The couriers are then never heard from again. I told you this before, I’m sure you remember.”
“Yes, but, I thought, since I was not known…”
Michael shook his head:
“I thought you’d be safe. But now things seemed to have changed. This group is apparently headed by a man named Lorca Reklaw, the son or grandson or God knows what son of one of the original Jewish families.”
“Reklaw. The Red Claw?”
“Yes. It’s become his symbol.”
“What would he do to me?”
“I don’t know. I do know that, somehow, the ante may have been raised. And I came down here––originally––to give you a chance to back out.”
“To stop transporting the paintings entirely?”
“Yes. I’m very fond of you, Carol.”
“Good. Most people who go to bed with me don’t like me at all.”
“I apologize for that evening.”
“Why? I thought it was pretty nice myself.”
“It was unprofessional.”
She shook her head:
“I never claimed to be a professional. I just struggle along.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Almost never.”
“But now you must. Carol, if you want out…”
She did not even need to think about this.
“I can’t get out. I need money. The last check was wonderful. But I’m going to need at least five more like that to give to my family. They need me; they depend on me. Now, if moving the paintings is no longer possible…”
“It is possible.”
“But you said…”
‘I said it has become more dangerous. I did not sa
y it had become impossible. And the fact is that…”
“That what?”
“That you may have stumbled unbeknownst on a way to make things much safer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about…no, just let me think it through for a time.”
And so they walked, the buildings of Hatteras to the West coming dimly into view, through a late morning mist that had settled over the dunes.
Finally he said:
“Yes, it could work. Carol, you were a docent for a year?”
She nodded:
“Just over a year. Before…”
“Yes, yes, I know. I also know about your fabulous presentations. Indeed, that is how I became aware of you. But now, I must ask: as a docent did you learn to do restorative work?”
“Of course. That’s one of a docent’s main jobs.”
“Can you do a frame change?”
“Sure. Again, that’s one of the things museums do. There are great works that are four, five hundred years old. Frames need changing. Besides, the frame isn’t a work of art; it’s what’s inside it.”
“Indeed. All right. Then I’m going to ask you to do several frame changes, my dear Carol. We shall thwart this Red Claw. It only requires the skill of two people. The first is you.”
“And the second?”
“The second is an artist who is about to become quite popular—about to be ‘discovered,’ really.”
“Who?”
“Why your friend, roommate, and student: Nina Bannister.”
CHAPTER EIGHT: ART FOR SALE
Thursday.
A delicious morning, cool, clear, the waves aquiline and translucent.
Carol Walker wanted to paint.
That was not her job, of course.
Her job was simply to wait.
It was ten o’clock; Nina was in town at Elementals.
There was little for Carol to do. Some cleaning. Another load of laundry for the two of them.
She was debating whether to read or…well, when one thought about it, there was nothing else to do.
Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) Page 8