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

by T'Gracie Reese

  The following afternoon (Friday), at precisely 2:15, it sold to an unnamed collector who happened to be passing through Bay St. Lucy and who had a faint French accent, for $350.

  The money was within an hour then placed in the new checking account that had been created a week earlier by the artist, and which now had a total balance of $697 (three dollars having to be subtracted for service fees).

  During the next week, a roughly similar process occurred.

  On Tuesday morning, November 10, another Van Gogh arrived, this one the View of the Sea at Schweiningen. The same Carol Walker unwrapped it with her usual sense of exultation, looked at it for a time, and remembered: Schweiningen was a beach resort near The Hague. Van Gogh, working outside on the dunes, had struggled with a strong wind which sent grains of sand into his thickly applied paint. It was always said of the painting—

  ––she ran her finger over it—

  ––yes.

  Yes!

  There were still grains of sand that made the lustrous surface rough.

  She was touching them now, sand granules that had perhaps been blown into, and then out of, the beard of Vincent van Gogh.

  Another Nina Bannister painting (Vase of Red Roses) was duly stretched and placed over it.

  Vase of Red Roses had no sand in its acrylic base, but did have, if Carol said so herself, the brightest and most intense red that the artist had yet been able to manage.

  The following day: painting hung.

  The following day after that: painting sold.

  Checking account now slightly more than one thousand dollars.

  And on and on.

  The View of Auverse sur Oise, Paul Cezanne, not signed by the artist, who felt it unfinished.

  Covered by Old Yellow Mill Wheel, completed (and signed, because it definitely was finished), November, 2013.

  Sold the following day.

  Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, by Caravaggio (magnificent use of the technique that had come to be known as ‘chiaroscuro’ referring to its innovative use of shadowing).

  Replaced by Two Porpoises Swimming in the Ocean, a Hundred Yards or So From Shore, finished the last day of November.

  Sold the following day.

  Carol Walker’s feelings during this process were ambivalent. She was ecstatic each week with the thought of actually getting to touch some of the world’s greatest paintings, stolen though they were. She was also appreciative of the cashier’s checks that accompanied each paining, checks that totaled considerably more than $350 apiece.

  These checks she simply kept.

  It was not time to go home yet; but that time was coming.

  She thought often about the mountains, and the sound of wild dogs howling in the distance. The food she’d eaten as a girl and that she would undoubtedly eat again upon returning.

  She thought of the relatives who’d passed on, and the ones who still lived there: people who had not seen London, or Paris, or Chicago. How would she tell these people everything that had happened to her?

  But no more of that.

  It was not time yet.

  A few things had to be accomplished first.

  And so, those things she thought about as she walked up and down the beach and helped prepare and hang the paintings.

  But she also thought about Nina Bannister.

  She loved the glow of pure joy in Nina’s face when, each week with clockwork precision, she came home and announced:

  “I sold another painting!”

  And she loved the pure process of helping Nina paint, seeing her mix the colors, aiding her in basic techniques of design and perspective.

  Her own mother had passed away so many years ago.

  It was almost as if…

  …doing the day to day chores together, chatting about nothing at all…

  …it was almost as if…

  But no more of that, because, in point of fact, it was (no ‘almost’ to it!) that she was lying to Nina Bannister.

  Using her.

  Nina Bannister was a retired teacher and principal from the village of Bay St. Lucy. She was not Vincent van Gogh, nor Paul Cezanne, nor Caravaggio, nor Rembrandt.

  Of course, that was probably a good thing when one actually considered it.

  Nina Bannister would almost certainly not commit suicide, even if the unthinkable were to happen and the discovery were to be made that the paintings being purchased in Elementals were disguised stolen masterpieces and not original ‘Nina’s’.

  She would probably not even cut off an ear.

  At most, she might cut off one of Furl’s ears.

  But probably not even that.

  No, at most she would have a small laugh at her own expense, and realize that she was—Nina would have probably put it this way, English teacher that she was—‘not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.’

  She would not be bitter.

  But still it was wrong. It was wrong to deceive her like this.

  Nina had taken in the recently fired and completely unemployable Carol Walker.

  Bay St. Lucy had taken her in, for that matter.

  And now she was tricking them all.

  But, she then told herself, what choice did she have?

  She was on a quest, a mission.

  The people at home needed her, depended on her.

  And how much harm could really be done? This process would go on for another two months, possibly three. Then she would announce that it was necessary for her to move home, to care for her aging father. A few tears would be shed.

  Bay St. Lucy would cease to be a modern version of Casablanca, with no more Humphrey Bogarts or Ingrid Bergmanns or high class art smugglers or Van Goghs or Rembrandts.

  True, Nina’s sales would probably stop.

  But with the money that had accumulated in the meantime…

  She could give Nina the trip of a lifetime.

  And this, she resolved, no matter what else happened…

  …this she would certainly do!

  Although she still felt guilty.

  As for Nina, her life changed in a completely unexpected way.

  Or, for anyone who’d ever lived in a small town such as Bay St. Lucy, perhaps not so unexpectedly after all.

  Word got out.

  Word always gets out in villages, and so, this being a village, it got out.

  It got around town that Nina Bannister was selling paintings.

  Very few people in town actually sold paintings, or at least not to the general public. Ramoula Peters did, and, occasionally, Emily Thompson did. But most of the paintings that left the shops and art stores of Bay St. Lucy had been painted by people in New Orleans or Vicksburg or such places and sent to the little sea coast town to be moved on consignment. If the actual painterly inhabitants of the town sold many paintings at all, the sales were to each other, or to relatives—sales made to buck one up and say, in a manner of speaking, “See! You are a good painter!”

  Nina was selling her paintings to complete strangers. And she was making $1400 per month. With social security (another $1400 per month) and teacher retirement (another $1400 per month), she was practically getting rich.

  So word got out.

  After the sale of the first paintings, little of any consequence occurred, except the ‘professional’ painters of the town found their way more frequently into Elementals and stood for a long time beneath Little Red Barn or Little Red Mill or Horse or whatever—and just shook their heads.

  Why are these paintings selling, and mine are not?

  All of the people in Nina’s painting class heard about the sales, and all of them came in (most having had some success in getting their works hung in The Stink Shoppe or various places, after being evicted by Margot and Alanna), and all of them wondered:

  “Why are these paintings selling, and mine are not?”

  But, finally, as the sales continued, it became obvious.

  The intensity of colors was greater in Nina’s wo
rks.

  Her works did have true viscosity.

  There was a shimmering, even ethereal, quality about her use of acrylics.

  Even Alanna, having stopped in one day toward the end of November for a glass of tea, shook her head as she gazed across the room at Fish in Wave, and said:

  “Nina, you have come so far since you began painting. The town is so proud of you!”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m doing that much different.”

  “Oh don’t say that! The difference between these newer works and the ones I saw a month ago—well, it’s simply night and day. You’ve found your voice, your mode of expression. There’s a depth of feeling in your works that none of the others here in town can match. They are simply recording visual images, dear Nina; you are creating art!”

  Well, okay then, thought Nina.

  At least Alanna wasn’t going to take her paintings down.

  And at least Margot didn’t know anything about what was going on.

  And one day, Emily Peterson—the teacher of Nina’s class—came in and said the thing that had to be said ultimately, that was to follow SALES as the night the day:

  “All of us in the class, the ladies taking the class and I as teacher, are so proud of what you’ve accomplished!”

  “Thank you, Emily. Of course, I couldn’t have done any of it without your help.”

  “No. I may have made a few suggestions. But I can see now, looking at the painting of the fish there in the waves—what is it called?”

  “Fish in Wave.”

  “Yes, that’s a splendid title! I can see a kind of buoyancy in it that so few beginners could ever be able to master. But listen to me: we can hardly call you a beginner any more, can we?”

  “Oh, I don’t know…”

  “The bottom line, Nina, is something that several of the members have asked me. Actually, they have asked me to ask you.”

  “Ask me what?”

  “Well…would you take over teaching the class?”

  “Would I…”

  “Not the entire class, of course. But perhaps one or two classes a month? I’d pay you, of course. We have so much to learn from you!”

  And so Nina moved her easel to the center of Emily Peterson’s classroom.

  And everyone watched as she painted.

  And everyone nodded in approval.

  And the money rolled in.

  Which it did, for everyone concerned, including Michael.

  As it happened, the second Tuesday in December (it was very cold in Chicago, and a fine snow was beginning to fall), he was making his way up the stairs to the apartment in Pilsen he’d come more frequently to use, for the purpose of doing two things: one, to accept a painting from an operative (Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Rabbi), and two, to have sex with this operative.

  He reached the third floor landing, aware simultaneously of the soft murmur of guitar music from a bar down below on the street, and of the howling of the north wind off the lake outside.

  The door, he knew, would not be locked.

  It was not. He pushed it open.

  The room stared back at him.

  On its far side, extending into the dormer window space, was the well-made bed.

  On the bed, lay a pair of zebra-striped pants.

  He crossed the room and picked up a note that had been pinned to the bed cover.

  He read:

  “Thank you for the English lady. Sorry she will not be joining you for the evening. And thank you also for the painting. We want the rest of them.”

  The note had been signed:

  “Lorca Reklaw.”

  Beneath the signature was the brightly colored (perhaps done with acrylics?) picture of a red claw.

  END OF PART TWO

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: A DICKENS FABLE

  Two days later, Michael Gellert was in another part of Chicago, summoned there by a phone call from Beckmeier.

  “Come. Come now. We must talk.”

  “Come where?”

  Upon asking which, he’d been given an address.

  This was strange. He did not know where Beckmeier actually lived, had never been invited into the life of the man.

  Something was clearly happening.

  He took public transportation—the Brown Line—to the Montrose stop, exited, looked around to see if he was being followed—knowing that anyone following him would probably be very good at the job, and not be noticeable—but looked around anyway, saw no one, and started walking toward the address he’d been given.

  He felt as though he was in London.

  The weather may have had something to do with that. It was postcard weather. Weather out of Dickens’ London, in one of the ‘good’ chapters, where people were not starving and did not yet have tuberculosis. This was ‘Evening of Christmas Turkey’ London, the city at its gaslit best. A benevolent snow had begun to fall (the sky had been somber all day), each flake the precise size and texture of a pillow feather (no gloppiness), and able to descend of its own accord, pulled to the streets by gravity alone, wafting a bit this way and that, untouched by wind (of which, remarkably, there was none), and so beautifully backlit by streetlamps as to resemble a tiny part of the setting of an operatic Act Four, an instant before the first notes had been played.

  All of the houses were the same. They were not “houses,” in the sense that most Americans thought of “houses.” They did not have carports. They were not made of red brick, nor painted white. They were identical, slate-granite gray buildings, set the same distance back from the quiet, broad sidewalks, precisely three stories high, with two windows in each floor, through the curtains of which could be seen shadowbox illustrations. If the setting was Dickens, the casting was Henry James.

  Behind the curtains of every window, illuminated by a glowing yellow lamp, was some fragment…a flower, the corner of a painting, several glasses sitting on the dinner table—of exquisiteness.

  The neighborhood was so quiet that he could hear, or thought he could hear, each individual snowflake falling on the sidewalk, and making the same sound a cornflake would make falling on a carpet.

  Cars lined the streets as paintings lined the walls of museums—meant to be seen and not actually “used”—except the cars were snow-covered.

  They did not move.

  People did not attempt to drive them; not on these silent, shrouded streets.

  They simply sat there, as symbols of wealth and ownership, bothering no one, and parked too close together to be extricated, even should the necessity have arisen.

  He located the correct address and began climbing the stone steps leading to the doorway. Normally, he would have grasped the black metal handrail beside him, to keep from slipping.

  But this was not the kind of snow one could slip on. It was a higher grade of snow—dry, quiet, and supportive—than was found elsewhere in the city.

  He rang the bell.

  There might have been a sound somewhere deep in the bowels of the great animal of a building looming before him; but it might also have been nothing more than the near-silent shifting of the earth’s crust.

  After a few seconds, a butler opened the door.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  “I’m Gellert.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I think Herr Beckmeier is expecting me.”

  “Come in, sir. Let me take your coat.”

  He did so, then walked inside.

  All around him were the soft colors of money and time.

  Save for the butler, who, having carefully hung the overcoat was moving soundlessly away, he found himself alone.

  He walked through the hallway, into the living room, along another corridor, into another living room (how many living rooms were there? How far back, and up, did this mansion extend?)––but his mind became fixed on things other than the physical dimensions of the house.

  There…on the wall opposite what seemed a massive end table––hung Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Girl
.

  No one, as far as he knew, even knew of the location of the painting, which was, he knew, generally referred to only as The Portrait.

  It was like walking through a forest, unaware of the existence of silent eyes, motionless animals in hiding. Until something about the light, something about an adjustment in vision…something changed, and there were the shining-dime eyes of a rabbit in the brush.

  No brush here, though.

  Clear, straight, and unobstructed on the walls:

  In the dining room:

  Parable of the Vine, by Domenico Fretti

  In the small library:

  The Nativity, by Correggio’s pupil, DiCredi.

  And on the opposite wall:

  A Correggio.

  No copy, no offshoot, partially finished, somewhat damaged:

  No, an actual Correggio.

  The Adoration of Christ.

  Who was this man, this employer of his, this Beckmeier?

  He continued to wander through the mansion.

  Finally, he found himself in a room even more intimate, and also darker, than any he’d seen before. A suit of armor stood at attention near the fireplace––all of the rooms had fireplaces––and a crystal chandelier hung heavily above, revolving slowly and inexplicably in a complete lack of breeze. He could see three paintings, one on each of the walls before and on either side of him: two deep green and red portraits he recognized at Chirico’s, and a third which was unmistakably Caravaggio’s Nativity.

  His eyes adjusted themselves to the half-light, the quarter light, the almost complete absence of light…and in the glow of coals and the faint flicker of dying flames, he saw that dotted around the room, on various pieces of furniture, were thirteenth and fourteenth century metal chalices: Sansovino’s terracotta Madonna col Bambino, and a small bust by Nanni di Banco.

  “They’re very fine pieces, are they not?”

  For the first time, he recognized that his employer was in the room with him.

  “Please––sit down. Something to drink? Brandy?”

  “No, thank you,” he said, allowing himself to be engulfed by a massive green leather chair. “I’m fine.”