Forger of Light

by Nupur Tustin

  She watched, barely registering the world outside. Twisting her mouth, chewing at her lip.

  The SketchCop program had developed an exceptional likeness to the woman they’d seen coming down the stairs in Reynolds’ apartment building. Had someone at Cambridge PD recognized it?

  Had Celine telepathically picked up on that?

  But Julia’s explanation of why she’d put the two names together made more sense. So why hadn’t Celine immediately linked the name Wozniak to the woman they’d seen hurrying down?

  “I heard the two names together,” she said cautiously, “when the sketch we approved was being shown to Soldi, the ADA, and those other officers.”

  “Heard them?” Julia pressed. “You didn’t put it together. You actually heard the name—as though someone in the room had thought it aloud?”

  Celine nodded hesitantly. “I think so. But I still don’t understand why I didn’t instantly think Wozniak when I saw her.”

  “You didn’t sense her first name either,” Blake reminded her.

  “True,” Celine admitted, staring out the window. “I guess I didn’t.”

  Some psychic. Reynolds’ words echoed in her mind. She was losing her touch. Barely four months after accepting her talent, she was losing it.

  You can only listen to one radio station at a time, Celine. Sister Mary Catherine startled her with the non-sequitur.

  “I can only listen to one station at a time?” Celine repeated aloud. “What does that even mean?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Blake was gaping at her as though she’d lost her marbles.

  “Sorry, just something my guardian angel said. She speaks in riddles sometimes.”

  She’d meant it as a playful jab. But an audibly exasperated sigh filled her ears.

  It means, Celine, the nun said, sounding as though she were speaking through clenched teeth, that you can only tune into one source of information at a time. You were attuned to Reynolds’ energy. Nothing else could penetrate.

  Okay, so what exactly was I attuned to at the police station? The thoughts of one of the people present or did Sofia Wozniak’s name come from some other source?

  Does it matter, when you know her name?

  Chapter Forty

  “You think whatever it is might be in Tony’s warehouse?” Penny Hoskins, a slim, elegantly dressed woman in her fifties, anxiously surveyed her visitors. Hope flickered and wavered in her blue eyes, warring with tense apprehension.

  It wasn’t the easiest question to answer. Celine was glad it hadn’t been directed at her.

  The Director of the Gardner had been eagerly awaiting their arrival. That had been evident in the way they were whisked up to her office when they entered the museum lobby.

  “I’m so glad you could come.” Penny had hugged Celine and asked after Annabelle. “I can’t believe we almost lost her!” She shuddered.

  Then, the business of exchanging greetings over, she turned expectantly to Blake and Julia, silently agitating to know the latest.

  By tacit consent, Blake had done most of the talking, bringing Penny up to speed.

  But now he was naturally balking at offering any sureties. Psychically, Celine had received no indication that the item was in Reynolds’ warehouse. Logically, though, it made sense to search any property the sculptor had owned.

  Celine caught Blake’s gray eyes sliding over to Julia’s, mutely seeking her help in navigating a potential minefield.

  “We don’t know that for a fact.” The former fed chose her words carefully. “But it’s worth a shot. Reynolds’ apartment was thoroughly ransacked.”

  “Not once, but twice,” Blake added. “A strong indication that the killer didn’t find what he was looking for. But the key to the warehouse is missing. It wasn’t on Reynolds’ person. Cambridge PD didn’t find it. There must have been some reason for taking it.”

  “But Cambridge PD can take a look?” Penny clasped her hands together as though praying for a miracle. “They can get a search warrant, figure out a way to get in?”

  “They were planning on doing it even before I suggested it,” Blake informed her.

  “And they’ll let us—let you—know if they find anything?”

  “They will,” Blake assured her.

  “But we don’t know what exactly Reynolds had information about?” Penny’s inquiring blue eyes moved toward Celine.

  “All I can pick up,” Celine replied with a rueful smile, “is that there’s a clue hidden in his exhibit at the Gardner. If we could see it . . .”

  “Oh yes, of course, you can.” Penny smiled, nervous anxiety fading away at the prospect of enticing a viewer into enjoying one of the museum’s many treasures on display. “In fact, I was hoping you’d want to. It’s simply amazing!”

  Her head pivoted, including Julia and Blake in the conversation. “I’m thinking of keeping the works displayed for an additional week. It could be a memorial of sorts.”

  “Sounds like a wonderful idea.” Julia smiled back. “You might want to promote it.”

  Celine knew what the former fed was thinking. A memorial service could attract people from the sculptor’s past as well as present-day associates and clients.

  She hadn’t got the impression that Reynolds had been particularly close to anyone in recent years. She could still hear the loneliness in his voice when he’d commented on the close friendship she and Julia shared.

  The gold-framed paintings stacked against the wall and the image she’d seen in the restaurant washroom at lunch returned to her mind. A wisp of an idea occurred to her.

  “It’s called Lines of Authenticity, isn’t it?” Celine met Penny’s eyes. “Tony Reynolds’ installation, I mean.”

  “Yes.” Penny nodded. “He was going to explain what it meant, but . . .” She made a wry face as she spread her hands wide. “I’m afraid it wasn’t meant to be.”

  She shuffled a stack of papers around on her desk, then looked up.

  “Why, is there some significance to that title? It is pretty telling, I suppose.”

  “I’m wondering if . . .”

  The idea, too tenuous to be captured, dissipated, like a bubble fizzling out of existence. Celine shook her head.

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll know more when we see it.”

  “Well, what do you think?” Penny finally burst out.

  Celine had been aware of her gaze boring into her back while she circled around the vast Hostetter Gallery where Tony Reynolds’ sculptures were on display.

  The Museum Director had cleared the gallery, closing it off to outsiders, before taking her visitors in. “I’d like some privacy,” she’d explained, “in case you discover any important clues.”

  The only problem was, Celine hadn’t found a thing. Nothing that related to the heist or the stolen works at any event.

  “I’m not sure what to think,” she replied.

  Sunlight from the wall of north-facing windows hit Celine’s eyes as she turned to face Penny, making her squint. She gave the exhibit a sweeping glance over her shoulder. The works were more abstract than she’d come to expect of Reynolds’ usual style.

  But what they symbolized, she had absolutely no idea.

  “Well, he’s talking about artists, clearly.” Penny indicated the white-cloth-covered table at one end of the semi-circular display. Large brushes protruded from glass jars and metal tools were neatly arranged beside it.

  “And sculptors, I guess.” Julia fingered one of the tools on display—a long shaft extending from a wooden doorknob-type handle. A set of similarly shaped tools lay nearby, some with bent shafts.

  Sculptors’ chisels, perhaps, Celine thought. A wooden pencil-holder held a thin needle—a representation of the kind of mechanical pencil some watercolor artists preferred? Or something else? She didn’t know.

  “I’m a little disappointed, to tell you the truth.” She’d made the decision to dispense with tact. “This”—she gestured at the first table—“is such an unim
aginative way of representing anyone who creates art. All he’s done is display a collection of art supplies easily available at any art supply store. It’s lazy.”

  “Lazy!” Penny’s penciled eyebrows arched up so high, they looked like inverted u’s. “I disagree. I think it’s very contemporary. Very now.”

  “Could be what he was going for.” Blake was leaning near the window, arms folded. He hadn’t shown a whit of interest in the works—not that Celine could blame him—leaving her and Julia to examine them. “Who doesn’t want to be hip and trendy, right?”

  Blake wasn’t aware of it, but the Lady—Belle Gardner—was standing next to him. Her presence hadn’t bothered Celine. Belle was simply admiring the meandering paths that curved around what had once been her private garden.

  Still called the Monk’s Garden, the area where Belle had walked her dogs in life had been completely redesigned six years ago. It was altogether different and yet managed to encapsulate the original contemplative spirit of Belle’s museum. In a word, it was beautiful.

  Not something you could say of the pieces exhibited in the room, unfortunately.

  Now Belle turned around and gave Celine a sympathetic grimace as she took in Reynolds’ works.

  “It seems uncharacteristically unsubtle,” Celine said, Belle’s reaction buoying her confidence.

  She didn’t think Reynolds was the kind of person to just assemble a motley collection of tools and call it a sculpture. Some sculptors might think nothing of doing something as cheesy as that. Not Reynolds—unless she’d completely misread him.

  She said as much.

  “Oh, Celine”—Penny was regarding her as though she were a philistine—“that’s just one piece! Look at the next work. He fashioned that.”

  So he had. Reynolds had created three plaster of Paris globes, given them a smooth finish, and then stacked them to form a triangle. A miniature version of the same thing balanced atop a metal cross was the third piece.

  “He might be talking about artists who create abstract pieces,” Julia suggested. “That piece is about as abstract as it gets.”

  “Or it could suggest the many possibilities inherent in the raw material of paper, plaster, and clay,” Penny said with a grateful smile at Julia. “If you look closely, you can see triangular indentations in the surface of those plaster of Paris globes. Very reminiscent of jack-o’-lanterns.”

  “Nice! He’s suggesting we’re all sculptors.”

  Celine knew Blake was being sarcastic, but Penny gushed over his remark as though he were the art critic of the century. “Exactly. Whether you’re carving a jack-o’-lantern or marble, it’s the same creative process that’s involved.”

  “But none of this has anything to do with the theft,” Celine pointed out.

  In fact, nothing about the installation made sense. None of the pieces connected up with the images she’d seen earlier. She scanned the works again, her eye catching on one particular piece.

  The profile view of a head with its long nose, seven-pointed jester’s cap, and five-pointed collar with beads.

  Does it remind you of anything? Sister Mary Catherine asked.

  It took Celine a few minutes to remember, and it was only when the nun began to direct her to put on her thinking cap that it came to Celine.

  “It’s Feste,” Celine exclaimed as she recalled the costume the nuns at Notre Dame had designed for a student production of Twelfth Night.

  “What!” Julia and Blake erupted in unison.

  “Yes, it’s a fool—a seventeenth-century figure,” Penny said, head oscillating between Julia and Blake. “Quite well done, I think. But why is it important? Artists comment on society just as jesters did—subverting norms and expectations.”

  “Or conning their audiences,” Blake muttered, although Penny fortunately showed no sign of having heard him.

  Celine wished they’d stop talking. Something Penny had said had triggered an association, but it was gone now. She tried to pursue the thought, then gave up.

  “I’m still not sure what this has to do with the painting Reynolds has been showing me since we first met,” Celine said.

  “He’s been showing you paintings?” Julia demanded. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Because what I’m seeing isn’t one of the works stolen. I don’t understand why he keeps showing it to me.”

  “What exactly are you seeing?” Blake asked.

  “A portrait within a gold frame,” she said as the image filled her mind again. “A three-quarter view of a young man—face partially in shadow—in a greenish cape. He’s wearing a gauzy scarf and a black hat with a long, curling plume in it.”

  “Oh my goodness!” Penny gasped, hand rising to cover her mouth.

  “You know what this means?” Julia’s head snapped sharply toward the Museum Director.

  “Yes!” Penny’s head bobbed in stunned excitement. “It’s a work from the seventeenth century. A self-portrait. I think I know where Reynolds was going with this.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  “There it is!” With a dramatic flourish, Penny pointed to the portrait Celine had been seeing in her mind’s eye. “The painting that started the Gardner Museum.”

  She turned toward Celine, giving her a quick smile. “And the one Reynolds wanted you to see.”

  They were on the second floor of the historic building. In the gallery that had received the worst of the thieves’ attention.

  The large empty frames on the Dutch Room’s south wall were hard to miss. They stared you in the face like ghostly carcasses the moment you stepped in. Penny, Celine had noticed, had been unable to conceal her grimace as they walked in, pivoting swiftly to the left and coming to a stop before the portrait.

  It hung above a Flemish oak cabinet built in seventeenth-century Dutch style.

  “Rembrandt.” Celine breathed the name. So that’s what Reynolds had wanted her to know. He had information about one of the Rembrandts stolen from the Gardner. If only he’d come right out and said so.

  She gazed at the painting, into the young Rembrandt’s lustrous eyes, studying his earnest, hopeful features. She ought to have recognized him.

  The Dutch master had created countless self-portraits throughout his life. He looked just a little bit different in each one, but the wiry curls of his hair—scratched into the paint with his brush handle—and something about the nose were so characteristic of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn as to be unmistakable.

  “Painted when he was twenty-three.” Penny stood before the self-portrait, hands clasped to her chest in a reverent attitude. “He was still in Leiden at the time, sharing a studio with Jan Lievens.”

  “If I’m not mistaken, this was Mrs. Gardner’s first important find.” Julia stared at the green-brown RHL inscribed on the lower right of the portrait.

  “It was,” Penny confirmed with a nod. “Bernard Berenson, the man who acted as the agent for most of Mrs. Gardner’s acquisitions, wrote to her about the self-portrait when it came up for sale in 1896. It would be hanging in the National Gallery in London now if Mrs. Gardner hadn’t bought it. It was even then an extremely valuable treasure.”

  “Strange the thieves didn’t take it,” Blake remarked.

  “They thought about it.” Glimpses of the night of the theft flashed into Celine’s brain. George Reissfelder hefting the Rembrandt self-portrait down with a grunt, stumbling back under its awkward weight, and then forward to stand it against the Flemish cabinet.

  He stood up peeved. “You coulda helped, Lenny. No need to let a fella do all the work himself.”

  DiMuzio shone his flashlight over the painting. “You sure that’s the one?”

  “Sure I’m sure. It’s a portrait, ain’t it?” Reissfelder jabbed at the air around him. “Hangin’ just where we were informed, by the door.”

  DiMuzio coldly appraised the painting. “Too big,” he finally said. “Won’t fit in the hatchback.”

  “Hey, we can’t just—”

&nb
sp; “Shut the f— up, George. If I say it’s too big, it’s too big, okay? We’ll take something else.” DiMuzio turned toward Celine, eyes flashing dangerously behind his spectacles. “Alright, kid, where’s the rest of the stuff?”

  Grayson Pike had been in the Dutch Room with the thieves. The thought blazed through Celine’s brain just as her consciousness retreated from the scene. He’d shown DiMuzio and Reissfelder where the artworks were. They must have come with a list.

  “DiMuzio said it was too big,” she told the rest of the group. Her eyes felt wide as though someone were pulling at the skin around them. “That’s probably why they left it.”

  “Too big!” Penny’s voice rose, assuming its characteristic shrill tone when her emotions were aroused. “It’s quite a bit smaller than the Rembrandts they did steal. The size of those didn’t deter them.”

  “Well, they had a moving truck for those,” Celine began to explain. But Penny wasn’t listening.

  She spun around, flinging her arm out at the two empty frames on the south wall.

  “I can’t believe those two incredible works are gone,” she moaned as Blake shook his head. He’d probably heard her reproaches a thousand times. “Still gone. All these years later. Do you know Mrs. Gardner deliberately positioned the self-portrait directly across from those works—a double portrait of a couple and one of Rembrandt’s most arresting narrative paintings.”

  “Yes,” Celine said softly. She knew why Belle had positioned the paintings the way she had. “She wanted the young Rembrandt to look out onto his future greatness, the things he’d achieve in a few short years in Amsterdam.”

  The Rembrandts were clustered around the entrance, the self-portrait to the left as you entered, the other two diagonally across, because they’d been the most important of Belle’s collection—the foundation of the museum she would institute.

  After she bought that painting, Belle realized she could only pursue first-rate works of art for her collection, Sister Mary Catherine told her.

  “But the good news”—the forced brightness of Julia’s voice brought Celine back to the living—“is that now we know what Reynolds wanted to discuss with you. He’d obviously located one—maybe both—of those works. So, now in addition to the Vermeer we brought back in March, you’ll get your Rembrandts back.”