He freezes and turns sideways. “I-I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Please. Everybody hates me around here. Everybody thinks I’m crazy, and that I’m a liar. The only thing keeping my head above water is watching my sister.” I take a breath. “In some ways, it feels like I’m watching myself, like I’m getting a chance to live again, and be someone…someone people respect and admire. I’ve never had that.”
Landry rubs the back of his neck.
“Do you know what it feels like when your future contains no pigment, no sparkle? Because that’s what mine looks like. I have nothing…no one besides my sister.”
I think he’s about to say yes when the radio strapped to his shoulder buzzes. “Yobwoc, you copy?”
“Copy,” Landry says.
“What’s the status on Inmate Redd? Is she stable?”
Landry’s round face colors.
“Yobwoc?” Driscoll barks again when Landry remains quiet for too long. I don’t like what his silence implies.
“She’s okay, sir,” he finally says.
“Well, she got a caller in visitation room two. Escort her there, will ya?”
“On it, sir.”
As we walk down the string of hallways toward the visitation area, I take mental bets as to whether it’s Josh or Dean. I’m hoping for the first, because I need to know why he didn’t defend me back in the dayroom.
Unfortunately, it’s Dean.
“Inmate Redd’s just been released from the pink tank,” Landry tells him.
Dean doesn’t ask what it is. He must know. “What happened to your arms?”
I flop down in the chair across the table from him.
“Were you attacked?” he asks.
“She scratched her arms.”
“Because I had a rash,” I add.
Dean raises an eyebrow, but drops the topic. “I can take it from here, Officer Landry.”
As soon as the young guard shuts the glass door, I say, “Thanks for sending Josh over.”
The gray in his eyes looks silver in the bright concrete room, like the reflective tape on running shoes. “Officer Cooper stopped by to see you?”
“Yes. This morning. He left quickly though.”
“Where did he go?” Dean’s frowning.
“New York.”
“He left for New York?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“That’s odd.”
“Why?”
“I met with his chief the other day who told me that your boyfriend was never authorized to investigate your case because of your relationship. Last I heard, he was on probation for disregarding direct orders.”
“You must have heard wrong, because the chief okayed it. Josh told me so.”
“I’m going to have to report him then.”
My eyes widen. “No!” I shake my head. The dreads whip my collarbone. “You can’t report him! He needs to save Ivy.”
“Save Ivy? From what?”
“From Brook.”
“Excuse me.”
“Brook’s name was on the package. The one that was addressed to the show with my sister’s quilt in it. I remembered it when I was watching the show.”
He drums his fingers against the metal table. My gaze sticks to his pinky, the one with the heavy gold ring. I’ve seen it before, on someone else’s hand…I’m certain of it. But whose? The person had long fingers with buffed nails, feminine fingers. Was it a woman? Dean stops tapping the table. Instead, he flattens both his palms on the table and stands up. And that’s when it hits me. Where I’ve seen it before. I jump away from him, knocking over my chair that crashes against the cement floor. As I cower against the wall, Landry races into the room.
“What? What’s going on?” he yells, hand on his Taser gun.
“He knew Troy Mann! He knew Troy,” I exclaim, pointing to Dean. “They have the same ring!”
Landry’s face swings between me and Dean.
“You have to arrest him. He’s in on it,” I yelp.
“On what?” Landry asks, head still swinging back and forth. “What is she talking about?”
“I think she needs to return to the pink tank. She’s obviously not stable yet,” Dean says.
“The hell I’m not stable!”
More voices buzz around me. “What the fuck is the matter in here?” Giraffe-neck asks, her long neck flushed. She must have run.
“Your prisoner is making baseless accusations,” Dean says with a snort. He’s so calm—too calm.
“They’re not baseless. They have the same ring. Take his ring. Compare it to Troy Mann’s! They’re the same!”
“A lot of men have rings.” He snorts again.
“I know what I saw,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “You have to believe me.”
For a second, I think she does, but then her mouth contorts into a smirk when someone behind her says, “Just like you saw Officer Cooper this morning?” Gill is leaning against the glass wall of the room, arms folded.
“What’s she doing here?” I ask, eyeing the gauze wrapped around her wrist.
“You told me I should interview her for a character witness,” Dean says, stroking the gold bar hooked into his yellow tie.
“No,” I yell. “She’s not my friend anymore.”
“You don’t have any more friends around here, Aster,” Gill says. “But that’s your own fault.”
“I’m sorry, Mister Kane. We shouldn’t have been so hasty to release her from the tank.” There is no more smile on Giraffe-neck’s face. “Landry, cuff her.”
“What?” I roar. “No! No! I’m telling the truth—”
“Shut it, Redd,” she snaps. “Or we’ll have to Taser you.”
“No! Don’t let him get away! Don’t—” Two copper wires latch on to the skin below my collarbone, delivering a jolt of electricity so great it sets my organs on fire, paralyzes my muscles, and darkens my mind.
Chapter Fifty
Ivy
“Authenticity!” Dominic’s voice booms out of his microphone. “You will be shown to a gallery in which we have arranged six of the Met’s most celebrated treasures. Amidst those six, one is fake. Ivy, Chase, to win, not only must you uncover the fake, but you have to explain how you’ve arrived at this conclusion, because, although luck exists in the art business, expertise is still key.”
The screens around the Temple room switch to visuals of the nominated pieces. The first one is a Monet representing a bridge overhanging a pastel water lily pond. The second is a swirly Van Gogh landscape with a tall cypress tree and a tumultuous summer sky. A bronze Degas statue of a fourteen-year-old ballerina is object three. Then an epic-looking painting of Washington crossing the Delaware River is number four. The fifth piece is a terracotta-hued bust of a man by Pablo Picasso. And the last is a marble statue of a mythological hero holding Medusa’s severed head.
The slideshow of works dissolves back to the Masterpiecers’ logo.
“Contestants, you will be given all the tools afforded to professional appraisers and you will be shown how to use them. As always, have fun, and good luck.”
Bodies parallel but not touching, Chase and I descend the stairs and ford across the standing audience. I don’t glance at him, afraid to spot the confidence I’m lacking…and afraid that my glance will give away my growing feelings for him. His pinkie grazes the side of my hand and I shiver. I stare into the cameras that are being wheeled in front of us, then over my shoulder at the audience marching like a disciplined army behind us.
This is it. The last day. The last contest. The last chance to win a hundred thousand dollars and an entry into the school.
Too soon, we’re in the herringbone-planked gallery with the masterpieces. Dominic is standing before us and the cameras are circling us, while the audience presses up against the velvet ropes erected at each entrance. Only Josephine and the orchestra are missing.
“And now, I’d like you to meet our wonderful experts,” Dominic says, gesturing to
two women. Both wear simple black pantsuits. The younger one sports a pair of glasses with thick purple frames and has her hair up in a bun, while the other wears it down to her shoulders. “Chase and Ivy, meet Genevieve and Larissa. Both have trained at the Masterpiecers and still consult for us. However, Genevieve now works for the Metropolitan as their art specialist and Larissa is the woman the auction houses call upon in case of doubt.”
Both women nod. Neither smiles.
“They will be assisting you today with each tool. They will, however, not be answering any questions. It will be up to you to figure out the results.” Dominic pauses to make the moment more dramatic. “Finalists, it is time to begin. Ready…set…go!”
Chase pounces toward the woman who works at the Metropolitan. Smart. As I watch him move to the table covered in appraisal tools, the other woman comes up to me and sticks out a manicured hand.
“Hi, Ivy,” she says as I shake it. “Shall we get started?”
When I release her hand, my fingers fall back against my thighs, cold and stiff. I nod.
“Let’s go to this side of the room.” She indicates the Washington painting since Chase is studying the Monet.
I walk on autopilot alongside her and stop in front of the monstrous oil painting. I read the small plaque on the wall, take in the year and the dimensions. The painting has been presented without its frame.
“Is there a measuring tape?” I ask.
Larissa smiles, which convinces me that my approach is smart. “I will get one right away.”
She returns with a coiled ruler, which she holds in place while I pull it the length of the canvas, then the width. All the dimensions check out, to the fraction of an inch. I decide it must be real.
“Let’s go to the next,” I say, clutching the measuring tape.
Her wide, bright red lips curve up. Does she smile because I’m right? Or is it mocking? Chase is still studying the Monet, using some tool that resembles a supermarket scanner. Maybe my assessment was too rushed.
“Can I touch the paintings?” I ask.
She nods. “Lightly, though.”
So I run the tips of my fingers over the subtle, sloping oil reliefs and close my eyes. If only paint could talk, tell me who brushed it atop the canvas.
“Is there another tool you’d like to use?” she asks me.
My lids snap up, and I find Chase handing back the scanner. “That,” I say, pointing to it.
“Let me get it.”
She crosses the room and takes it from Genevieve. Chase’s gaze lifts to mine, all at once intense and gentle, and my brain becomes fuzzy. I shake my head. I need to concentrate.
Larissa’s on her way back. “Here’s the Proscope,” she says, handing it to me.
“How…um…does it work?”
“You hold it up to the signature and it acts as a microscope. It’ll show you each pixel with a clarity the human eye cannot discern. Let me just plug it into this tablet for a visual.”
She holds the screen up to me as I take the small apparatus and hover it over the signature. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I move it over the word Leutze slowly. There’s a feathery quality to the second letter and a sort of break in the t that makes me study the letter more closely. I look up from the tablet screen. As Larissa said, I don’t spot any discrepancy with my naked eye. But I didn’t imagine it. On the screen, it’s there, unmistakable.
“Can I get a pen and paper?”
She frowns, but obliges.
I hand her the tablet and handheld microscope and take the pen and paper. I sign my name, and then take the device and run it over my autograph. I watch the screen, satisfied. There isn’t a single crack in my writing, which leads me to believe that whoever ratified the Delaware River painting is not Leutze.
Excitement bubbles through me, but I squelch it down as I walk over to the table laid out with all the tools. There’s some handheld electric torch that dispenses black light.
“What’s that used for?” I ask Larissa.
“Detecting lead in pigments.”
I can’t see the use of analyzing lead content.
“There was more lead in paints before the turn of the twentieth century,” she explains.
I seize the tool and bring it over to the Monet. I shine the black light inches away from the pretty paint smudges. I don’t see any variations and am about to let the torch fall to my side when the light touches a smear of white. The white turns blue and gray.
“Does that mean a high lead concentration?” I ask Larissa.
Her lips press together. “Yes.”
So it must be real. Dominic mentioned spotting the fake. The Leutze is fake. On second thought, maybe it’s just hard to sign in paint. “Can you still buy lead-heavy paint today?” I find myself wondering out loud.
Her bottom lip drops in surprise. “Yes.”
So lead content isn’t going to help me age the painting. I check the dimensions on the plaque and pull out the measuring tape to size up the water lily canvas. They match. I’m racking my mind for other ways of telling if something is old. On humans, wrinkles or gray hair are a good sign. Billboards fade and book pages turn yellow. “Can we pull it off the wall?”
“We can’t,” Larissa says, and my hope plummets. “But they can.” She points to the guards stationed on either side of the wall. “We need help here,” she calls out.
As I turn, my forehead knocks into the large camera that’s been filming my every move since the day I arrived at the Metropolitan. Improbably, it’s become part of my landscape, and I usually don’t even notice it anymore, but I also usually don’t collide into it.
“Sorry,” the woman filming says. She gets a stern look from Jeb who’s handling the camera aimed on Chase.
The guards flip the canvas over. I look for a yellowing of the fibers. There is none. “Can canvas be bleached without it affecting the paint?” I ask Larissa.
She tips her head to the side and her shiny black hair brushes the sharp shoulders of her suit. “No.”
I catch Chase’s eyes, but too briefly to read anything. He shifts back to the ballerina, leaving me to ponder the Monet. Why in the world would someone spend time cleaning the back of a painting anyway?
Could the Leutze be real and the Monet be fake? I move on to the Van Gogh. I shine the black light on the swirly clouds. Like on the pale water lily pads, the white takes on hues of blue and gray indicating that the paint is from Van Gogh’s era.
I switch off the torch. “What other tools are available?”
“The Oculus Aperture. They’re x-ray binoculars that reveal the different layers of paint so you can see if the artist intended to put a mouse in the corner of his creation or if he changed the angle of a limb.”
That’s exactly what I need. I walk to the table in the middle of the room, where Chase is perusing what’s available. As I reach out for the pair of silver binoculars, our hands collide. I snap my fingers back to my side, while his continue their trajectory. He seizes the binoculars and I think I’ll have to wait, but he says, “Ladies first.”
Startled, I don’t take them from him, so he grasps my hand and unbolts my fingers, then places the instrument in my palm and presses my fingers closed.
“Bring them back to me when you’re done.”
I stare up at him, forgetting there’s anyone else in the room. As the deep brown of his irises eddy around his pupils, his hand slowly releases mine. I should swim against the tide sweeping me toward Chase. It’s too strong and too quick, flooding me with too many emotions.
I will drown if I’m not careful.
Chapter Fifty-One
Aster
Ivy is so beautiful in her red dress and sleek hairdo, whereas I’m so ugly. I long to yank out the dreads, but they’re as resilient as the rope Ivy and I tied to a tree branch one summer, to attach a castoff tire. How we would swing on that old piece of rubber!
The memory tugs on my fraying heartstrings. Ivy and me. There should have been
a song written about us, one with a sweet, plucky melody. Two stick-thin girls with bushy curls swinging on a craggy tire, making forts out of branches and blue Ikea bags, and rolling in tall, tickling grass until their bellies hurt from laughing. But no one will ever write a song about us. They might compose one about Ivy, though, now that she’s a celebrity.
I’m propelled into the dayroom, staring at myself pulling on my ratty tresses. From inside the TV, Ivy sees me too. Her eyes are wide and expectant and scared. She needs me, but I can’t help her, I can’t leap through the screen. The dyed fibers of her dress tremble as her heart beats quicker. My pulse hastens in turn, making the stiff gray shroud that ensconces me vibrate too.
“Aster,” she whispers. “Aster…”
“I’m here, Ivy! Right here.” My voice sounds foreign to my ears, yet it’s my voice. It vibrates in my chest, making it ache. “Ouch,” I murmur as I shift. Paper crackles. I try to lift my wrists, but I can’t. “I can’t get to you. I can’t move.”
“No shit. You’re attached to a gurney, you fucking bitch.”
My lids snap up and light bounces into my eyes. Too much light and too much red. So much red, I squeeze them shut again. I pretend that I’m unconscious.
“Wakey, wakey,” Gill says, digging something into my palm.
I scream out in pain, but she stifles my scream with her hand.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Ivy
Larissa plucks the Oculus Aperture from my hand like a child reaching into a bucket of popcorn for their first handful. “It’s brand new technology,” she explains. “Before, you had to take x-rays like in the dentist’s office. But now, we have these! They’re amazing, aren’t they?” Her dark eyes glitter with excitement as she finally hands them back.
There are a few straps that go around the top of the head to stabilize them. Once they’re in place, all I have to do is press a button and the binoculars flood to life and self-adjust to my vision. I focus them on the Van Gogh.
After a long surveillance, I say, “I don’t see anything.”
“What do you mean?” Larissa asks. “Did you turn them on?”
The Masterpiecers (Masterful #1) Page 28