by Leona Fox
“Has anyone ever not bought a painting because of what Sam said?” Sadie asked.
“Not as far as I know,” Mary said, “and I think I’d know if he had, but he has sold a painting or two that way. It annoys me to no end.”
“I can see why,” Betty said. “He annoyed me, and I don’t have to see him every day.”
“Actually,” Mary said, “it bothers the mouse that he badmouths Roger. The truth of the matter is, he tried to copy Roger’s work, but he wasn’t good enough. His work was a poor imitation. So he turned to abstract, where it didn’t matter if things looked like what they were, and began saying he changed because Roger was copying him.”
“Didn’t Roger defend himself?” Lucy asked.
“No. He felt sorry for Sam. And if anybody else said anything, Roger would hush them up. At least until Sam started accusing him of forgery and Roger felt he had to leave. That’s one of the reasons I keep selling his work because he really still should be here. And still would be here if he wasn’t being investigated for wrongdoing. He won’t stand up for himself.” Mary threw her hands in the air and walked away from them.
Out on the street the three women joined each other. Sadie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“What a total slime bag,” Lucy said.
“Trying to get people to buy his work because they feel sorry for him. Ugh. I’m glad you didn’t fall for it, Sadie.”
“Me, too,” Sadie said. “I did almost feel sorry for him, but there was no way I was going to buy one of those muddy paintings.”
“Hey look,” Betty said. “Isn’t that old Cyrus dumbbell across the street?”
4
It was indeed Cyrus. He was with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter or maybe even great-granddaughter, Sadie thought. She dodged cars to get across the street, Lucy and Betty in her wake, but not before looking to see that she and Mr. Bradshaw weren’t going to get run over. It would be a pity to ruin her new painting, after all.
“Cyrus. Cyrus Dumville,” she called out.
The young woman turned around. She was very pretty, in a Snow White kind of way, all pale skin, and dark hair.
“Hello,” Sadie said. “We just want to talk to your grandfather.”
“Oh, he’s not my grandfather,” the young woman said. “I’m his caregiver.”
Cyrus turned around, and his face blossomed into a smile. Mr. Bradshaw trotted right up to him and put his paws on Cy’s knees. The old man reached down to pat the dog’s little head, and Mr. B licked his hand.
“Hello, again,” he said and turned to the young woman.
“This is the woman who had my painting,” he said, and the young woman’s face went blank.
Sadie glanced at the other women to see if they had noticed. The tilt of Betty’s eyebrows and the furrow between Lucy’s told her they had.
Sadie stuck out her hand. "Sadie Barnett," she said, waiting for the young woman to catch on and take her hand.
"Marnie MacAdams," she said, taking Sadie's hand slowly and letting it go quickly before turning to shake Lucy and Betty's hands briefly.
Sadie felt, rather than heard, Mr. Bradshaw’s low growl against her leg, where he had retreated after saying hello to Cyrus.
"How long have you worked for Mr. Dumville?" Betty asked as Marnie dropped her hand.
"About a year," Marnie looked at Mr. Dumville.
"Cy, I think it's time for us to head home, I don't want you to get too tired out."
"Won't you come back with us?" Cyrus asked Sadie, “we could have tea. Or coffee. Young people these days prefer coffee, don't they?" He looked to Marnie for confirmation.
"Mostly," she said. "But I think you should probably rest. Entertaining probably will tire you out, and your headache will come back."
"Don't be obstructionist, Marnie," he said.
"I'm inviting these young ladies to coffee. Today at 4 p.m. Will you come?" He held his hand out to Sadie, and she couldn't refuse.
Actually, she was pleased by the invitation. She'd like to spend some time checking out Old Cy's environs. She had a hunch that painting was in his house somewhere. She wouldn't have refused that invitation for good money.
"Of course," she said.
"Can you ladies come with me?" She turned to Betty and Lucy with her eyebrows raised to her hairline.
They nodded in assent and Sadie, Betty and Lucy parted ways with Marnie and Old Cy. Sadie had the distinct impression that Marnie was not pleased, she walked with her back very straight and rigid.
“What do you make of that?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t know what to make of any of this,” Sadie said. “None of it makes one bit of sense to me, and the more I find out, the less the pieces fit together.”
“It’s like there are pieces from different puzzles,” Betty said, “and they all got mixed up together.”
“One thing’s for sure,” Lucy said, “that woman is not happy about us coming to have coffee with old Cy. Wonder what that’s about?”
“Maybe she knows she has too much of a good thing, and she doesn’t want us telling Cy that,” Sadie said.
“Or maybe she’s got him under her thumb and is angling for some kind of inheritance,” Lucy said.
“Anyway you look at it I wouldn’t miss this coffee date for 100 bucks. Something is going on in that house. It may not have anything to do with the missing painting, but something definitely is going on.”
Back at the shop, Sadie let Mr. Bradshaw off his leash and hung it by the door. Then she carried the painting to the door of the stairway up to her apartment.
“Want to help me hang this?” she asked Lucy and Betty.
Betty shook her head. “I have work to do before we go to tea,” she said. “Maybe Lucy can help?”
“Sure,” Lucy said.
“I think it should go in the living room on the wall across from the couch. Then you could put that big picture with the cow on it down here and hope somebody buys it.”
They started up the stairs.
“I like the cow picture,” Sadie said. “I’m not going to sell it. Anyway, this picture probably would be better in my bedroom.”
“You may be right about that,” Sadie said thinking the only time people were in her room was when she had social gatherings in the winter and they dropped their coats on her bed.
They went to stand in her living room, and Sadie unwrapped the painting and propped it against the coffee table.
“The colors are good in here,” she said. “The problem is the wall space is all taken.”
Lucy pointed to the grouping of brightly colored Kuna Molas behind the couch. “You could break up this set, and put some above the table over there,” she pointed to a small stretch of wall above Sadie’s sideboard near the dining room table.
“Put three in a row right there. The other three, wait, no. Put four above the sideboard, hang the new painting above the couch, with one Mola on either side. That would make for a nice balanced wall, and the colors are not dissimilar.”
“But the Molas are more intense, and I’m afraid they would overshadow Roger Orwin’s painting. But look at this,” Sadie walked to the wall facing out over the street in the park beyond.
There were two large windows with a curtain covering the space between them. Sometimes, on a cold night, she drew the curtains to cover the windows, but mostly she left it just as it was at the moment.
She yanked the curtains aside, revealing the bare wall in between. “If I take these down...” She lifted the painting away from the coffee table and set it against the wall between the windows.
“See?” She said. “It’s like they were made for each other.”
Lucy looked at the space critically. “But if you take down the curtain,” she said, “what will you do when you want privacy?”
“I don’t know,” Sadie said plopping down in her new favorite armchair.
“But what if I hung Roman shades above the windows? Up high so the door to th
e balcony wouldn’t be blocked? I could drop them when it gets cold.”
“Or when you want privacy,” Lucy said.
“It’s not like people spend their time sitting in the park looking up on my windows after dark,” Sadie said. “I’m not practicing fan dancing in here, I mostly just sit and read or watch TV.”
“Whatever,” Lucy said, “do you want help taking these curtains down?” she asked.
“Oh that’s easy,” Sadie said, “they just lift right out of the bracket.”
She dragged her dining room chair over to the wall and climbed up on it. “You probably can reach the other side, not being as vertically challenged as I am. Just lift it out of the bracket and we will lay it on the floor.”
Lucy helped Sadie take the curtain off the wall, and Sadie slid it off the curtain rod and folded it up. “I can use the curtain as the material for the Roman shades,” Sadie said as she set the fabric on the dining room table.
“I got that fabric from the trip to India.” She smiled at the curtains. “I got so sick on that trip I thought I was going to die.”
“And yet you want to keep the material you bought there,” Lucy said.
“You never cease to amaze me, Sadie Barnett. I would’ve put everything I got on that trip into the shop to be sold.”
“A lot of good things happened on that trip, too,” Sadie said, “I rode on the fabric merchant’s elephant with a monkey on my shoulder. That doesn’t happen every day.”
She walked around the corner to her linen closet where she kept tools and bits of hardware on the bottom shelf. She grabbed a hammer and the picture hanger and brought them back to the living room.
“Are you still banging holes in your walls?” Lucy asked. “You know they have these adhesive Velcro strips now.”
“I don’t trust those things,” Sadie said. “Too many things can go wrong.”
“Are you afraid the Velcro won’t hold? Because they use the really heavy duty stuff,” Lucy said.
“That’s in the adhesive,” Sadie said. “What if the adhesive gives way? I’d hate to come home and find my new painting on the floor. Here, hold the painting so I can figure out where to put the hook.”
Lucy obliged, and before long the Roger Orwin painting was hanging in its place of honor between the two windows.
“Perfect,” Sadie said, “now let’s go see what Betty’s up to.”
“Don’t you want to look at it and see if you can find any hidden animals?” Lucy said, looking surprised.
“Nope,” Sadie said, “I’m saving it for Zack. This way we’re equally in the dark about what’s there before we start looking.”
“Fair enough,” Lucy said and followed Sadie down the stairs.
Betty was deep into the books and waved Sadie away when she asked if there was anything she could do to help. Lucy said she’d be back at a quarter to four and went home to make some calls. Sadie considered going to see Zack again, but decided he probably would like to get some work done. So she dug out a legal pad from her desk drawer and took into the work room with a pen so she wouldn’t disturb Betty’s work in the office. Then, feeling the need for a caffeine boost, she ran next door to The Bakery.
“Where have you been, Trouble?” John Baker asked. “You didn’t come in for your morning coffee today.”
“You will not believe the crazy that has visited me, John,” She said ordering coffee and a cake donut. “I don’t know what to make of it.”
“I’ve got a minute,” John said, looking around the nearly empty room.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“Okay,” Sadie said. “Talking is better than taking notes any day.”
She wondered if that were true. Or would the act of putting words on paper trigger something in her subconscious that would bring about a solution?
“What are you thinking about?” John asked, taking a chair and swinging it around to sit on it backward.
“It looks like it’s giving you pain.”
“I was just wondering if writing things down triggers a different part of the brain than talking? You know, sparking some synapse that wouldn’t get triggered by talking?” Sadie said. “Not that it matters, I always can take notes after we talk.”
“So tell me,” John said.
“Well here’s the thing,” she said.
“It’s kind of confusing. A painting that I didn’t buy arrived in one of my crates from Italy. Old man Cyrus, that’s Cyrus Dumville, came into my shop and claimed it. He couldn’t really explain how it came to be in my crate.” She paused and took a sip of coffee.
“And this is where it starts to get really bizarre. He came back the next day asking for the painting again. Someone had bashed him on the back of the head, and I assume taken the painting, but he didn’t remember that. Meanwhile, I find similar paintings, from the same artist, at the Artist Co-op. Apparently, that artist, Roger Orwin, was run out of town by another artist, named Sam Cone, who was accusing Roger of copying his work and possibly being a forger.”
“I went to look at Sam’s work, and it is nothing at all like Roger’s. If I had been Roger, I would have laughed in Sam’s face and stayed. The fact that he left makes me think there was a grain of truth in the forgery accusation.”
“Is that all?” John asked, “not that it isn’t enough but I want to make sure I have all the details.”
“As a matter fact, no,” Sadie said.
“Old Cy has it in his head that the original painting, the one that showed up in my crate, somehow has the whereabouts of a Holocaust money horde buried here in Seagrove. I understand from my history professor friend that that’s highly unlikely. That’s all the details. Got any insights?”
“Wow. That’s a puzzle. Are you sure all the details are related?” He asked.
“Not in the least,” Sadie said. “For all I know there are three or four puzzles here. It’s all mixed up, and all the pieces are the same color.”
“See what you mean,” John said. “Your encounter with Sam Cone could’ve been entirely coincidental.”
“Or he could’ve been the catalyst who started the whole thing,” Sadie said. “Only I don’t have enough details to figure it out.”
“You’re just going to have to get more details,” John said. “Does old Cy have anything to say? Who told him the painting was a clue to treasure?”
“He’s not saying,” Sadie said, “at least not yet. And he’s got this strange girl as a caregiver. At best she’s overprotective, at worst she knows more than she saying. I don’t know what to think, but we’re going over there, we being Lucy, Betty and me, for coffee this afternoon.”
“There being old man Cy’s place? Be careful, we wouldn’t want you to end up with your head bashed in.” He frowned at her.
“Are you taking Mr. B with you?”
“I’m not sure it’s polite to show up to coffee with your dog,” Sadie said. “I’d like to take him with me, but I don’t want to get turned away at the door. So probably not.”
“Wish you would,” John said. “I’d be a lot more comfortable if I knew Mr. B had your back.”
“He only weighs ten pounds, John, I’m not sure how much my back he can cover. My calves maybe.” She grinned at him.
“You know what I mean, Sadie Barnett. He’ll growl or bark or bite somebody in the butt, and you’ll be aware of the danger.”
“I will have Lucy and Betty with me. I’m pretty sure they would be willing to bite somebody in the butt if they thought it would help,” Sadie said.
John laughed. “I’m going to tell her you said that,” he said.
“Go right ahead,” she said. “It’s nothing I wouldn’t say to her face.”
“That’s true enough,” John said, and opened his mouth to say something else, but just then a customer came in, and he had to get up to serve them.
Sadie drank her coffee and wished she had brought her legal pad and pen with her. She felt the need to draw VENN diagrams of overlapping c
ircles, and charts with lines connecting boxes. She pulled a pen from her purse and grabbed an unused napkin. On it, she wrote mystery painting and then drew a circle around it. Outside of the circle she wrote old man Cy and drew a box around it. Then she wrote Roger Orwin and Sam Cone and put each of them in their own box.
She sat and looked at that for a minute or two, but none of it sparked anything in her brain. So she wrote Sadie’s Crate below the original circle and put a box around that. Then she added Seagrove Harbor, Marnie MacAdam, Art Co-op, Forger, and Italy, and put boxes around each of those. Then she drew a line from the central circle that said Mystery Painting to each of the boxes surrounding it.
“That looks like a giant water strider that’s named each of its feet,” John said from behind her.
“It’s useless,” Sadie said and crumpled the napkin.
“Wait,” John said, occupying his previous seat, gently pulling the napkin from her hand and smoothing it out.
“Let me look at it.” After a minute, he said, “can you connect any of the outer boxes?”
Sadie connected Italy with Sadie’s Crate and Mystery Painting. Then she connected Art Co-Op with Roger Orwin and Sam Cone. By the time she had finished connecting the appropriate boxes the diagram was a spider web of lines overlapping everywhere.
“I think this might be the wrong kind of diagram for what you are trying to do,” John said. “Maybe an organizational chart, or a chronological order?”
Sadie glanced at the clock above the pastry counter. “Later,” she said.
“It’s time to go to coffee,” she looked at her cup. “Again.”
Sadie left Mr. Bradshaw lying in his bed under her desk, chewing on a bone. You just didn’t take your dog to coffee without an invitation. Anyway, he was happy. Sadie didn’t know what they infused those nylon bones with, but Mr. B loved them.
The three women walked. The neighborhood where Cyrus lived wasn’t that far from Main Street. The afternoon was warm, and a faint smell of the ocean wafted inland on a slight breeze. It really was a lovely day.