The Masterpiecers (Masterful #1)

by Olivia Wildenstein

  “I see what I can get.”

  Gill’s still patting my hand. It’s weird now, so I yank it out of her reach. “Thanks.”

  “The name’s Miss Chacha. ’Cause I’m hot like Sriracha.”

  Hot as in spicy, because she’s definitely not pretty. “Thanks, Miss Chacha.”

  “Just Chacha.” Still rubbing her neck, she settles back in the couch and turns her attention to the TV.

  The show. Shit! Maxine’s on stage now. The banner on the bottom of the screen shows she’s on her last lot, the spider web podium. Maxine walks around it, mic in hand, puking out detail after detail on the refined metal design and intricate netting and the polishing technique. She took Dominic way too literally on his factual poetry. Finally, she begins the auction.

  As the price goes up, I ask, “How did Herrick do?” I’m hoping someone was paying attention.

  “He got $405,000 in total. Apparently all the lots are valued at $500,000, so I think that’s pretty good.” It’s a girl leaning against the back wall who answers me. She’s so pale she’s virtually translucent.

  I turn back to the screen just as Maxine pounds her gavel. Her cheeks are all rosy and she’s smiling. As she skips off the stage that is being readied for my sister, the commentators launch into a detailed discussion of her performance. “She reached the price on four pieces—the Donaski podium and the gelatin print—but had some trouble with the…”

  I let their voices trail off as I read her score: $435,000. Despite my mixed feelings for Ivy, I hope she’ll do better than Maxine. I see her walk up on stage. She looks so beautiful in her black satin dress. And her hair is fabulous. I can’t help but run my fingers through mine that is clumpy and dry like hay. Instead of chocolate, I should have asked for conditioner, but I’m reminded that I have no one to look nice for here. Might as well eat chocolate to forget.

  “She your older sister?” Chacha asks me.

  “She’s my twin.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t look alike.”

  I’m tempted to press down on those red spots she’s still nursing, but I refrain because I don’t want to end up on a “diet.”

  “Like real real twins?” she asks.

  “Yeah, Chacha, like real twins,” Gill says. She’s turned to gaze at me. The intensity in her eyes is really disconcerting. “I see it.”

  “I don’t,” Chacha says, squinting to make out my features.

  Even though she discusses my resemblance with some other inmates, I zone out. Ivy’s on the screen, gavel in hand. She isn’t smiling, which makes me anxious. And then I understand why when the first piece she has to auction off is brought up on stage.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ivy

  “This piece is very dear to me, because, as some of you might know, it’s one of mine. What you don’t know, because it’s not written anywhere except in here”—I tap two fingers against my heart—“is that I created it for someone I loved right before they passed away.”

  I pivot toward the quilt that’s twice my height and strung up to an invisible clothing line hooked between two wooden beams. It resembles The Kiss from Klimt—at least that was my intention when I made it. The patches of gleaming gold, burgundy velvets, emerald silks, and Indian mirror work are shaped into the interlocked bodies of lovers.

  “I gave it to her in the morning, and that evening, she was gone. She didn’t have long with it—just a few hours, but at least she got to see it, to touch it…” I let my voice trail off and stare into the camera poised on my face, hoping that Josh is on the other side, listening in. “It’s listed as ‘Untitled’ but it does have a name: ‘Love.’”

  I stroke the fabric and my nail snags on a thread. I peer at the spot more closely and realize there’s a tear in the seam. Did it get damaged in the mail?

  Dominic clears his throat, so I return to the podium. “I will start the auction at fifteen hundred dollars.”

  From fifteen hundred to thirty-five, it’s a breeze. People are bidding one after the other. Thirty-five hundred to fifty-five takes longer. And then I hit a standstill at seventy-five hundred. I try to drag out the auction a little, but no one bids. “Seventy-five hundred.” I wait. Still no one raises a gold paddle. The room is oppressively silent. Even though it’s a lot more money than I got for it the first time around, I’m nowhere near the price Josephine fixed. “Seventy-five hundred going once, going twice, sold.” I slam the gavel against the podium. I think of the commission I just earned—three hundred and seventy-five dollars—to avoid thinking of how I undersold it.

  Before it’s carried off the stage, I turn back toward it, toward the gaping seam that sticks out like an ink stain on a blank page. It hits me that, if it had been damaged in transit, the tear would probably not have been along the seam where the binding is sturdiest.

  The wooden beams are grabbed and lifted away. As the quilt fades through one of the arches, I still can’t make sense of the tear. Dominic clears his throat again. The next piece I must auction off has already been set. I gape at the copper statue. It takes me a second to remember anything about it.

  Focus, Ivy. I press the image of my quilt as far away from my mind as possible and begin. Zara Mach’s work goes for $260,000. I don’t feel much pride at having exceeded the set price. If anything, it brings me further down. By the last lot, my voice has become robotic and I don’t even try to enchant the audience. Someone buys the Gauguin for $120,000—a bargain. I undersold it, I undersold the bowls, and I undersold my quilt.

  I slam the gavel for the last time, unwrap my fingers from the wooden handle, and slowly descend the stairs. On my way to my seat, I pass Chase who I know will crush this test. His confidence vibrates off of his skin, as dense as his sickening, grassy scent. I don’t look at him as he begins, don’t observe how comfortable he is behind the podium. Maxine and Herrick keep praising his demeanor, his poise. It drives me insane.

  “Five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars,” Herrick whispers loudly. “He got more than what he was supposed to.”

  “I heard,” I hiss.

  “What’s eating you?” he asks.

  “I’m tired. And I have to give a freaking press conference in a few hours. I need to get out of here.” I stand up, approach Dominic who’s sitting at the end of our row, and tell him that my head is spinning.

  The room has gone quiet around me as everyone’s desperately trying to listen in.

  “Let me signal your assistant,” Dominic says. “She can help—”

  I shake my head. “It’s a short walk. I’ll be okay.”

  “Assistants have to accompany contestants everywhere. Show rules, sweetheart.”

  People stare as I stride down the aisle. I bet the cameras are getting a lens full of my inelegant escape. Chase is probably snickering, reasoning that his success vexed me. I don’t care though. The only thing I care about is finding out how the hell my quilt got on the show. Even though I don’t want to be disqualified, returning to Kokomo to unravel this mess would do me a lot of good.

  As Cara escorts me back to the third floor, I reminisce on my one and only encounter with Troy Mann the morning he rang my doorbell not long after Aster left for her day job at the ad agency. At first, I hadn’t been too keen on letting him in. I’d left the chain on the door as I spoke to him. But then he told me how he’d seen my work on TV, in that feature the Masterpiecers had run on its contestants, and I’d let him in, flattered that he’d even taken an interest in me. Little did I know he was a wanted criminal, embroiled with the mob. Had I known, I wouldn’t have let him in. I wouldn’t have sold him a single thing. I wouldn’t have accepted his roll of hundred dollar bills that was surely tainted and illegal.

  The night Troy died, I phoned Josh and asked him to retrieve the quilt before the police could. I didn’t want to get in trouble for having sold something to a mobster. Unfortunately, Josh hadn’t found it; fortunately, neither had the police. But an anony
mous tip came in on their hotline about my sister having a blanket on her lap. Could it have been my quilt? If it was, then that would mean she sent it to the show. But why? So that I would get in trouble? So that I would get locked up right alongside her? Could my sister be crazy enough to do such a thing?

  I shiver. Yes, she could.

  The second I step inside my room, I kick off my heels, drop my clothes on the floor, and turn the shower on. I make it hot and slip in, sidling along the mosaic wall until I’m sitting with my knees tucked underneath my chin.

  Time goes by—a lot of time—and I’m still underneath the shower. I’m convinced it’s Aster now, and my confusion and shock has turned to anger. Suddenly, the water stops and a towel is thrown on top of me.

  “Get out,” Leila snaps. “The press conference starts in an hour and you look like a drowned rat.”

  I glare up at her, but stand. Slowly, still sizzling, I settle on the bench by my bed next to a pair of beige pants and a white silk shirt—probably my press conference outfit. As she works on me, everything becomes blurry outside like everything is blurry inside.

  “What’s going on with you?” she asks, which is weird because Leila isn’t the concerned type.

  “Nothing that concerns you,” I tell her.

  She stops what she’s doing and let her hands fall against the black apron in which she stores all of her brushes. She has a ring on each finger. On her middle finger, she has two—a simple band at the base and a more ornate piece on her knuckle.

  “If I didn’t value my job, I would quit on you,” she says, plucking the pins out of my waterlogged hair.

  “Thank goodness you’re such a dedicated worker then.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to be kind, you know,” she says.

  I let out a dark laugh. She has no idea what she’s talking about. Kindness doesn’t breed sympathy. I was kind to my sister, and how does she repay me? She set me up.

  She played me!

  Chapter Seventeen

  Aster

  “Inmate Redd, you got a visitor,” Giraffe-neck tells me.

  “Not now.” I’m still trying to get over the shock that the recipient of the quilt was someone on the Masterpiecers. Either Ivy isn’t safe or she’s involved.

  “Let me reschedule.” Giraffe-neck’s poised next to me like some root vegetable. Her lower body doesn’t shift but her lengthy neck curves and tips as she pretends to push on the walkie-talkie strapped to her shoulder.

  I sigh and look up. “Who is it?”

  “A police officer.”

  I hop off the couch. It must be Josh. Robyn kept her word.

  “Never seen an outlaw so excited to meet up with a police officer,” she remarks.

  I don’t bother explaining my relationship with Josh to Giraffe-neck. It’s none of her business.

  When we get to the visitation area, I realize it’s pouring outside. There are no windows in the dayroom, but here there are three. The light is dull gray and the glass is sprinkled with raindrops. That’s probably why they let the entire prison population stay indoors today.

  When the door clicks, I go straight toward the table he’s sitting at. “I need you to check my sister’s bank account,” I say, dropping into the chair opposite him.

  “Hello to you too, Aster.”

  Josh’s black hair is matted with rain and his short-sleeved, navy shirt sticks to his skin. Serves him right for not wearing a coat. He says it’s because coats are cut too narrow, but I know it’s because he loves to put his muscular forearms on display.

  “I think Ivy was paying Mom’s bills.”

  “That’s swell. Means you don’t have to pay them.”

  “That’s not swell! She lied to me, Josh.”

  “How?”

  “She never told me about the money.”

  “Why are you so worked up about it?”

  “Because—” Ivy might be entangled with the mob. Even though I’ve known Josh forever, I can’t confess my terrible intuition.

  “Aster, I came to talk to you about something really important.”

  God, if she is, then my present will give her quite a shock.

  “How did Ivy’s quilt end up on the show?” Josh asks.

  I startle. “Ivy’s quilt? I have no idea.”

  “Want to know what I think? I think you have an idea…a very good one. I believe you found it next to Troy’s body and sent it there. I believe it’s the one you used as a blanket.”

  The blood drains from my face.

  He jolts so far forward I can see all the different shades of green around his black pupil. “You’re not denying this,” he whispers loudly.

  I drop my gaze to my nails and the thin white crescents that are reappearing at the tips. “No. It was a blanket.”

  “Aster,” he growls. “You’re lying. Just like you lied about the pizza. Troy Mann was a vegetarian. He wouldn’t order pepperoni! I have a freakishly detailed file on him. Did he even come to the pizzeria, or did you just follow him from your house?”

  “I…he…maybe it wasn’t pepperoni. I don’t remember.”

  “Sure.” He snorts.

  “Okay fine. He didn’t stop by the pizzeria. I saw him at our house. I saw him go inside, and then I followed him back to the motel.”

  “Finally! The truth comes out,” he says, slapping the desk. “Why are you always lying to me, Aster?”

  I look up. “Always lying?”

  “You know what I’m referring to,” he says.

  “The baby?”

  He nods.

  “I never lied about the baby,” I say.

  “Your doctor told me everything.”

  “My doctor told you what I asked her to tell you. I was trying to protect you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  I shake my head. “I didn’t make it up. I felt it move. I saw it move. I was throwing up every morning.”

  Josh’s fingers crawl over my shaky forearm like a spider. “It was all in your head.”

  I swipe them off. “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Aster…”

  I can’t stop shaking as the memory of the blood pouring out of me the morning I lost the baby. “It was real,” I croak.

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  I push my chair back and jerk up. “I need to go.”

  He sighs. “Don’t be like that.”

  “Be like what?” I say, sniffling.

  “Just stay.”

  “And be interrogated and mocked? No, thank you. I’d rather go hang out with people who don’t think I’m crazy.”

  “I never said you were crazy.”

  “You didn’t have to say it.” I keep my gaze leveled on his. “Don’t bother coming back here anymore.”

  “I’m going to come back. I’m in charge of the case.”

  It would have been too much to hope that he come back for me. Slowly, his face fragments, and I’m left with the one of the dead man. Every night, I see it. Every day, I think of it. The chin-length dark hair muddied with sweat, the crooked nose, the olive skin tinted red with blood. I blink and he’s gone, and Josh is back, still looking contrite. He claps his hand around my wrist. I let his touch warm me for a second, and then I don’t.

  “Before you go, can you tell the warden to inform the guards that I am allowed to watch the show whenever I want?”

  “The warden would never listen to me.”

  “He did the first time around.”

  “What are you talking about? What first time?”

  “Ivy told me you got me that privilege.”

  “The warden? I’ve never even met the man.”

  “If you didn’t talk to him, then who did?”

  “Are you sure someone did? Are you sure you didn’t convince yourself that—”

  I give him such a glacial stare that he shuts up, and then I plant both my palms on the table and lean across it. “I’m not crazy.” I don’t scream this, but I do make sure each word rings out loud and clear. �
��Got it?”

  His eyes have gone wide. I whirl around and make my way back to the secure door. I expect him to call me back, maybe even apologize, but he doesn’t.

  “I want to see the commander,” I tell the guard.

  “Did you request it on your digital box?”

  “No.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Seriously? “No, ma’am.”

  “What is the nature of your request?”

  “A complaint, ma’am.”

  “Against the police officer?”

  “No.” After a beat, I remember to add, “Ma’am.”

  “We can stop by his office, but if he’s busy—”

  “If he’s busy, I’ll make an appointment.”

  She leads me down a new corridor, her long, thick braid swinging across her podgy back. I haven’t met the warden yet. I didn’t think I would need to, what with my stay in this prison being transitory. I’m not sure what sort of man I’m expecting, but definitely not one who’s half my size and watering a plant.

  “What may I do for you?” he asks when he spots me in the doorway.

  I snap my gaze to another part of the room until I think I’ve got my gawking under control. Then I look back at him. “It’s about my sister, Ivy.”

  Something flashes across his face, as though the name is familiar to him. Then again, everyone in America is familiar with my sister’s name now.

  “You may leave,” he says.

  I think he’s dismissing me and I’m about to lose it, because I’ve reached my breaking point, but then the guard steps out and closes the door.

  “Take a seat.” He gestures to the free chair in front of his desk.

  Stunned, I sit.

  “What about your sister?” he asks, setting down his watering can next to a framed picture of a little girl with a big dog posing against a colorful background. I suppose it’s his daughter. I check his left hand and, sure enough, find a ring.

  “She’s on a show, but you must know that.”

  “I do.”

  “Ivy told me that Officer Cooper spoke to you about letting me watch it whenever it was on, but he swears he never spoke to you.”

  “Officer Cooper didn’t ask me.” His skin tone has lightened. “Your sister did.”