Strand parked in front of Mrs. Reinhardt’s address and got out of the car. He followed a pathway of dun bricks through a tiny garden of ordinary shrubs, nandina and boxwood and wax ligustrum. The midmorning sun penetrated the thick overstory in broken amber streams and fell onto the crown of a small dogwood near the front door, the soft light illuminating the pale pink blossoms as if it were a theatrical spotlight.
He rang the doorbell and waited. All around him the dense woods dampened every sound to quietude, the constant rumble of city traffic seemed distant, and even a contentious blue jay sounded more disgruntled than raucous.
Strand was not a man who was often caught flat-footed, slapped in the face by surprise, but when the door opened and he found himself staring squarely into the unsuspecting eyes of Mara Song, he was caught off guard.
“I’m Harry Strand,” he managed to say with deceptive equanimity. He wasn’t sure his face was playing along.
“Mara Reinhardt,” she said, smiling, a little wearily he thought. Her handshake was light, and he could feel her warmth and the slenderness of her body in the shape of her hand. He had to will his eyes to relax, not to gaze on her. “I appreciate your coming,” she said, backing away from the door and letting him in.
She didn’t have a trace of a foreign accent; she was one hundred percent American bred and born. Her eyes were just below level with his, which meant that she was a tall woman, certainly tall for an Asian. The mouth that he had seen with such effect through the moonstone water he now saw had a slight dimple to one side that gave her smile a suggestion of irony. Her dark hair was again pulled to one side and fell over the front of her shoulder. She was wearing a long saffron shirtwaist dress with short sleeves.
“I have the drawings in another room,” she said, getting right to the point. “I’ve been working in here, and it’s cluttered. Anyway, the light’s bad.”
She led Strand through a modest living room with an abundance of art books scattered about in rambling stacks. The furniture was pedestrian and told him nothing about her. He guessed that it had been included with the town house lease. As they passed through the room he glimpsed some uncommon touches here and there, a small draped table with a collection of softly burnished black pottery and three white lilies lolling in one of the lean amphorae, a rich throw glinting with gold threads tossed over the corner of the dreary sofa, an expensive and beautiful Anatolian medallion rug with predominant colors of scarlet and pollen yellow. These, he imagined, were Mara Song.
In just a few steps they had crossed a hallway and entered a bright sunroom with tall windows looking out into a small enclosed courtyard filled with potted plants. The stones in the courtyard were still wet from the morning watering. There was another sofa here and several comfortable rattan armchairs. The drawings were mounted in archival folders and were arranged in an approximate semicircle on these pieces of furniture, propped up against the backs of the cushions.
“Here they are,” she said. “They’re in alphabetical order. Balthus . . . Delvaux . . . Ingres . . .” She stepped slowly past them in review, her right hand, wrist up, indicating each artist by flicking a long index finger at each drawing. “Klimt . . . and Maillol.”
Then she stopped and turned around.
“Five men. Seven naked women,” she said matter-of-factly.
There were indeed seven drawings, and Strand was delighted to see that they were very fine examples of the artists’ work. In fact, the collection was superior, and as they talked about each drawing, he realized that even though she was not a “collector” she had an educated and discerning eye and that her appreciation for these drawings went far beyond their financial value. She had a genuine affection for them.
As he stood before the pictures, Strand’s mind was divided between the images and the woman who owned them. He remembered Truscott saying that he thought the sale of the art was being prompted by a “divorce thing,” and he assumed that also accounted for the discrepancy between her two names. The drawings were going to bring a handsome price; he guessed that a handsome price had been paid to acquire them. Since Mara Song was having to sell them, Strand surmised that she had not come out well in her divorce.
After they had talked for a while about the drawings, she took a step back, folded her arms, and looked at him.
“They’re jewels, aren’t they?” she said.
He noted the distance from her waist to the hem of her skirt, and he remembered the long legs slipping through the bright water.
“Have you owned these awhile?” he asked.
“Most of them about four years.”
Strand scanned the drawings again, his hands in his pockets as he stepped back away from them, too, beside her, surveying the group of images.
“I’m guessing that you already know I won’t have any trouble selling these,” he said. “You seem to know very well what you’re doing here. I’ll be glad to go ahead and work up appraisals and all of that whenever you’re ready.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and Strand turned his head slightly to observe her. She was thoughtful, but her expression was uncommunicative.
“You don’t want to sell them,” he said.
“I teach art,” she said. “I know how . . . wonderful these things are.” She turned to him. “Before five years ago I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would ever own art like this myself. Then, for a while, a small window of time, I could afford them.” She shook her head. “I’m afraid if I get rid of them, I’ll never ever be able to afford anything like them again.”
Strand said nothing.
“I’m going through a divorce,” she said. “I don’t need the money, but the fact is, I’m not going to be in the same financial comfort zone that I was in while I was married. I just thought I ought to, sort of, take stock.”
“These aren’t easy choices,” Strand said. “I’ve been a dealer and collector all my life, and I have to face these choices all the time. Can’t keep them all, no matter how much you love them. I tell myself that the pleasure of just having them for a while is a value every bit as real as the profit I’ll get when I sell them. It’s a mind game. It’s really the truth, too.”
When he turned back to her she was looking at him, the beginning of a smile on her mouth. But it never quite developed. They looked at each other, and for a fleeting moment he thought he sensed in her expression a vague notion of having seen him before.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked. “I made a fresh pot about an hour ago.”
“No, I’m fine. Thanks, though.”
The filtered sun was gilding the plants in the garden behind her, outlining her gray silhouette with a thin seam of gold. She would not have been universally considered beautiful, for her features, when taken individually, could not have been described as classical. Her nose was a little more prominent than Asian features usually allowed, and there was a small rise in the bridge. She had high cheekbones, and her eyes were as much Caucasian as Eastern. But regarded as a whole, these attributes conspired to make Mara Song a striking woman. She sure as hell lived up to his memory of her from the swimming pool. She was still looking at him, her arms crossed again as before. Then with her middle fingers she lightly touched her full lower lip.
“How long have you been married?” she asked abruptly.
He frowned at her, and she tilted her left hand back and touched her ring finger with her thumb.
“Oh. It would have been four years . . . well, in July.”
She didn’t move her eyes or speak.
“She died in an automobile accident. Almost a year ago.”
Her face fell. “I’m sorry.” She was embarrassed.
“No, that’s all right.”
There was a pause. She was visibly uneasy.
“This divorce,” she said. “I find myself wondering how long people have been married.” She shrugged. “That’s pretty strange, I think. But that’s what I do.” Her eyes fixed on him. “I am sorry abo
ut your wife. My first husband died suddenly also, an odd heart condition. So I know . . .”
“It happens to people all the time,” Strand said, not wanting to talk about it anymore.
The sun had found an opening in the overstory now and was flooding the courtyard behind her in brightness. He could see the shadowy silhouettes of her long legs backlighted through the saffron summer dress, and again, in his mind, he saw her long body stretched out, in the opalescent water.
She obviously did not recognize him from those mornings at the pool a month earlier, and Strand decided to see how she would react to being reminded.
“You know,” he said, “I think we’ve almost met before.”
The phrasing was unnecessarily cryptic, and the instant he spoke he wished he had said it differently. Her reaction confirmed his mistake. She turned to him, a look of suspicion playing nervously at the corners of her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I swim every morning at the River Oaks Swimming Club. Five or six weeks ago I think you came there every morning for a couple of weeks and swam laps at the same time I was there. There were only the two of us.”
She studied him, still tentative, her mind searching back for the connection, her eyes raking his features for a hint of recognition. For a moment Strand thought he had made a terrible mistake. She almost had the look of a woman who was slowly realizing that the man she was talking to had been stalking her.
“I remember that,” she said in dismay. Then happy, relieved, she added, “Yeah, I do remember that. We swam together for about two weeks and never spoke a word.”
Strand smiled.
She laughed, now even more relieved. “That was you?”
“Odd, isn’t it?”
“Well, it is odd. Did you know who I was when you came here today?”
“Not until you opened the door. You used a different name.”
Slightly suspicious again. “You knew the name I used at the swim club?”
“When you stopped coming, I asked about you.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to know who you were.”
There was a moment when her face registered the unpleasant possibilities that must have suddenly sprung into her mind. Then in an instant she realized the innocence of it all, and she began to laugh.
He grinned. “Why did you stop coming?”
“Oh, long story.” She was still smiling.
• • •
They sat at her kitchen table next to the sunroom and talked, the seven drawings still propped on the cushions of the chairs and sofa, the reflected brightness of the sunny courtyard cheering the uncheerful sobriety of the tired town house. With only a few gentle questions from Strand, she pliantly, though not eagerly, talked a little more about herself.
She told him of her first marriage. She and her husband both had been art teachers at the Farnese Academy in Rome, and after his death she had stayed on there. In a few years she had met and married Mitchell Reinhardt, and for four years she had endured a marriage that from its consummation never found its balance, wobbling on unsteadily until it had become so shaky that no ballast could steady it, and she had filed for divorce.
“It was a sorry end,” she said, reaching over to a vase of geraniums sitting to one side of the table. She picked an orange red flower and toyed with its petals. The strong fragrance of geranium spilled into the room when she broke the stem.
“I’ve tried to sort it out for four years,” she added. “I take some responsibility. He deserves some. It was so wrong it could never have been right, and I do blame myself for not realizing that sooner.” She shrugged. “I quit wailing and throwing sand and ashes in the air a long time ago. Self-indulgence really isn’t of major interest to me.”
She stopped, looking at the flower, thinking of something. He watched her fingers as they felt the velvety petals and then plucked one and placed it alone on the tablecloth.
“Then you’re living here now?” Strand asked.
She looked up. “Oh, no, I’m just here for a few months. Mitchell’s lawyer—well, the one handling the divorce, anyway—is here. It’s easier if I am, too. The papers are complicated.”
“Where will you go, after it’s all over?”
“Back to Rome.”
“To teach.”
“That’s right.” She hesitated. “The thing is, I got a good deal in the divorce. Mitchell’s been wealthy all his life, and he’s used to defending his net worth. I knew he was prepared for a battle. I didn’t want a battle, and I didn’t want his money, certainly not bad enough to make a career out of getting it. I just wanted it to be over. He did have one thing I wanted, a home in Sallustiano in Rome. I told him I’d walk away from the usual financial fracas if he’d give me the seven drawings and the Sallustiano house with enough money in a trust for its upkeep and to pay the taxes on it for the rest of my life. He could be free of me with just a couple of straight, flat-out transactions. No strings.”
She sat back and looked at Strand. “He agreed.”
Strand studied her. She was turned aside from the table, her legs crossed at the knees under the saffron skirt, leaning slightly forward, her arms crossed on her long thigh, hands dangling limp. Her expression was open, frank.
She leveled her dark eyes on him. “I still have the teaching job. I was getting along just fine financially before he came along, and I was paying rent.” She smiled a little. “I sure as hell wasn’t living in a villa.”
Then she straightened her back, a gesture that said she had had enough of talking about herself.
“As for the drawings”—she looked over at them—“well, they just suddenly seem like such an extravagance now that I’m no longer in that league. I don’t know.” She puckered her mouth to one side as she looked at the drawings.
“My part of it will take some time,” Strand said. “I don’t know what kind of timetable you’re expecting, but I’ll need a few weeks at the very least to work up an appraisal. And then some more time to contact potential buyers. I expect they’ll sell fairly quickly.”
“I should be in Houston for another month or two,” Mara said. Her hands were folded in her lap now, and she was looking into the courtyard, presenting her profile to Strand.
“And you want the drawings sold by the time you go back to Rome.”
“I think so.”
“Okay, then,” Strand said, taking one of his cards out of his pocket and handing it to her. “Whenever you’re ready. I’d like to have the drawings while I’m working up the appraisals. I have very good security. They’ll be safe.”
She swung her leg a few times, looking at his card as she touched her bottom lip with her middle fingers, thinking. She made no move to end their conversation, no subtle gesture to indicate they were through. She idly flicked the bottom corner of his card with the fingernail of her little finger.
She looked up. “When could you begin working on the appraisals?”
“Whenever you want.”
She dropped her hand to her lap and laid the card on her long thigh, looking at it.
She looked up. “What about tomorrow?”
“Okay.”
“I have some letters, bills of sale, other items of provenance on some of them. They’re still in the bank. I’ll pick them up and bring everything to you in the morning. What would be a good time?”
“Same as today? Ten o’clock?”
“Sure. That’s perfect.”
“Good, I’ll look forward to it,” he said, standing.
“This has been kind of you,” she said. “I appreciate it very much.”
“My pleasure.” He smiled. “It’s good to be reunited with a misplaced mirage.”
CHAPTER 5
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Dennis Clymer had been in Brussels forty-eight hours. It was his third trip to the city in as many weeks, and it was his last stop before returning home. In the past month he had spent time in most of the capitals of Europe, carrying his bl
ack Hermés briefcase to meetings in glass office towers in London, to elegant old-world restaurants in Prague, to the shady terrace of a pale ocher villa overlooking Monaco and the hazy Mediterranean, to a stolid dacha deep in a forest outside St. Petersburg that smelled of woodsmoke and shchi and was filled with objets d’art.
Clymer was at home in all of these places. Unlike the stereotypical American, he was eminently adaptable. He was fluent in German and French, but he conducted business only in English. Four times a year he made these hectic trips, usually a two- or three-week period during which he shuttled from one European country to the next, crisscrossing his own path, doubling back, retracing routes he had traveled two days or ten days before. Though he routinely stayed in small, exclusive hotels, he rarely stayed in the same hotel in succession in any city in Europe, and only recently when he was in Brussels did he ever make a predictable diversion from a schedule that was otherwise fast paced and seemingly random.
Dennis Clymer was forty-three years old, had a master’s in economics from Stanford University and a law degree from UCLA. He lived in the tony Brentwood section of Los Angeles. He and his second wife had two children, daughters from her first marriage. Clymer had a son by his first wife who lived with his mother in the San Fernando Valley. He had visiting rights with the boy but often had to cancel his visitations because of his busy schedule. He paid little attention to his family. His business took up most of his time.
As Clymer walked out of the Métropole Hotel in the center of Brussels, he had come to the end of a hammering schedule. Mentally he suddenly shifted gears. He had two nights in Brussels before he returned to Los Angeles, and he planned to spend both of them in the same place.
The Color of Night Page 3