Not in Time

by Shawna Seed

  She hurried to check the display. It was Christine, her mother’s college roommate, calling from Chicago.

  Genevieve hit the answer button. Christine never could keep time zones straight.

  Christine launched into what seemed suspiciously like rehearsed remarks. She’d received Genevieve’s thank-you note, the card was so beautiful, who was the artist, she was so glad Genevieve liked the earrings. She seemed to be working up to something.

  Genevieve, who desperately wanted coffee, wished Christine would get to the point.

  “I chatted with your dad a couple weeks ago, and he told me the museum had to cut back,” Christine said, finally getting there. “I was surprised your card didn’t mention your job.”

  Jack McKenna and Christine Jensen had been comparing notes? This was news to Genevieve. She wondered whether her thank-you had arrived just as Christine was fishing for an excuse to call her.

  “I didn’t know you’d heard about that. I’m doing OK,” Genevieve said, eager to reassure Christine. “A lawyer hired me to research a looted art claim for his family.”

  She told Christine about Study for Tristan and Iseult, the fate of the Lazare family, and how the drawing resurfaced at the Hilliard.

  She guessed she must have gone on a bit, because Christine had fallen silent.

  “Sorry, Christine. Probably more than you wanted to know.”

  “No, it’s just odd. I guess these people must be pretty famous, but...”

  “Well, really they aren’t,” Genevieve said. “Why do you say that?”

  “Oh, just that you and your mother would both be interested in them, so I guess they must be a big deal, but I’ve never heard of them otherwise. I don’t think they have any Lazare paintings at the Art Institute,” Christine said.

  “My mother was interested in Théodore Lazare?”

  “More the gallery, I think,” Christine said. “And then, when she started getting sick, she got sort of fixated on the brother who disappeared during the war.”

  Genevieve had been pacing her kitchen, debating opening a Diet Dr Pepper for the infusion of caffeine, but now she sat down at the bar.

  “What? All anybody ever told me was that she had a breakdown.”

  “Hang on.”

  Genevieve heard a click, a sharp intake of breath, and then a relaxed exhale. Christine had gone for her cigarettes.

  “Well, your mom’s parents didn’t want her to go so far away to school,” Christine began. “They wanted her to go to some Texas school that cranked out ministers’ wives and old-maid librarians. She never did fit in with her family.”

  “Because she was adopted,” Genevieve said.

  “It wasn’t just that she was adopted,” Christine said. “The way they talked about her, Genevieve! They wanted a redhead because their daughter who died had red hair, and they went to an orphanage in Louisiana to get your mom. They shopped for her, like you would curtains to match your sofa. She hated that.

  “I think she was always struggling to find herself,” Christine said. “But she loved college. We’d walk to the cafe in town for coffee, and we’d meet all these oddball characters. Everybody loved your mother. One of the regulars was always telling her that she looked like something from a painting.”

  “It sounds like she was happy,” Genevieve said. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know how it started,” Christine said. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and she wouldn’t be in her bed. It wasn’t like when you were in school. We had curfews. She wouldn’t tell me where she went. And it wasn’t a boyfriend, either.

  “She carried around these notebooks and was always scribbling in them, and she started talking about this David Lazare all the time. I mean, all the time.”

  Genevieve cradled her head in her hand. Where was this going? “How did she know about him?”

  “I have no idea,” Christine said. “Honestly, until you brought him up, I always thought maybe he wasn’t real.”

  Another click, another sharp intake of breath. Another cigarette.

  “One night I came back from the library and found her in our room, well, frantic is the best word I can think of. She kept saying that David was in danger, why wouldn’t he listen, and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t really understand. It was frightening.

  “I got her calmed down and asleep, somehow. And then I snuck out early the next morning and called her parents in Wichita Falls.”

  She sighed. “I never told anybody that before, that I was the one who called her parents. She thought it was the school, and I let her think that. They sent her to that hospital. The doctors said she had delusions. And then it was in and out of hospitals, until, well, you know the rest.”

  I don’t know anything, Genevieve thought.

  “What was in those notebooks? Did you ever look?”

  “No! That would be like reading someone’s diary, wouldn’t it?”

  Genevieve heard a clinking noise. Was Christine pouring herself a drink? What time was it in Chicago, anyway?

  “Your dad may still have some of her things,” Christine said. “You won’t remember this, but after she died, I sorted through her belongings. Your dad couldn’t face it. I saw some of her college books. They were in that cedar chest.”

  Genevieve could picture the cedar chest, although she’d never once lifted the lid. She didn’t go into her father’s room. “Were the notebooks there?”

  “I’m not sure. You should ask your dad.”

  “We don’t really talk about her.”

  “I know that. But maybe you should. Listen, I have to go open a window before Hal gets home from golf, or I’m going to catch hell for smoking in the house.”

  Genevieve sat in her PJs awhile, trying to think of a plausible reason that both she and her mother would become interested in the same art gallery in Occupied Paris and someone would send her a catalog from that gallery.

  Nothing came to her.

  She checked just to make sure she hadn’t imagined the whole exchange with Christine, but no, there it was in her phone log – a 37-minute conversation with a number in suburban Chicago.

  She took a shower and got dressed, hoping that would help fire her synapses.

  Maybe Galerie de l’Étoile was more famous than she realized and these connections weren’t such a big deal, like the way she always seemed to meet someone from Texas any time she ran errands in her Cowboys T-shirt.

  She opened her laptop, intending to see how many search-engine hits she could find for Galerie de l’Étoile, but her inbox was open, and an email caught her eye. The sender this time was ISEULTDIEDTOO.

  The email read:

  WARNED U. WONT U BE SUPRISED WHEN U GO OUTSIDE. SOUND SLEEPER?

  Ignoring the impulse to correct the spelling, Genevieve sprinted out her front door. In her tiny courtyard, she did a slow 360, trying to spot anything amiss.

  She opened the courtyard gate and scanned the driveway to her left and parking pad to her right. Then she noticed the broken glass.

  “Damn!”

  She was barefoot; she’d need shoes to investigate further.

  She’d just shoved her feet into her flip-flops when her phone began to ring. She grabbed it as she headed out the door and checked the display. Jay in LA.

  She really needed to edit that.

  “Hello?”

  Cautiously Genevieve edged closer to the shattered driver’s window of her Camry. How had she managed to sleep through that?

  “Hey, I just had breakfast with Henry,” Julien began.

  “Great.”

  “Jeez, you haven’t even heard what he said yet,” Julien said, clearly annoyed.

  “Sorry. I just discovered somebody broke my car window last night.”

  “Oh, that sucks. Did they get your stereo?”

  Genevieve took a step closer and poked her head into the jagged hole where the window had been. She recoiled and let out a shriek.

  “Genevieve? Are you OK?”


  She turned just in time to see Mona, who had slipped out the front door, jump onto the low wall surrounding the courtyard.

  “Mona! Get back inside! Get! In! The! House!”

  “Genevieve? What’s happening?”

  “He left a dead fish in my car, and now my cat is outside,” Genevieve said. She lunged at Mona, who scampered along the wall, clearly under the impression this was a game.

  “Why would someone stealing your stereo leave a dead fish?”

  “He didn’t steal my stereo,” Genevieve said, swiping at the cat. “I’m pretty sure the fish was the whole point. He did say he warned me. Mona!”

  Genevieve hung up and reached for the cat just as she leapt off the wall and into the brush behind it.

  Once she made it into the brush, Mona decided the game was more terrifying than fun. The territory between the rear of the apartment and the retaining wall at the back of the lot had remained undiscovered for a reason.

  Genevieve was worried she might lose the cat for good if she let her out of her sight, so she plunged into the no-man’s-land after her. But the farther she followed Mona, the more the frightened cat retreated.

  Eventually, Genevieve decided a different strategy was in order. She sat with her back against the wall and waited, then waited some more, hoping the cat would relax and come to her.

  That was exactly what she was doing when she heard a car speed up her driveway, a parking brake jerk and a door slam.

  “Genevieve! Genevieve?”

  “Behind the house,” Genevieve called in a voice she hoped was loud enough to be heard but not so loud it would further alarm Mona. “And please don’t yell.”

  Julien rounded the corner and pulled up short. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to coax my cat into the house. What are you doing here?”

  “Well, let’s see, I called you, got something about a broken window, then a shriek, something about a dead fish, then you said ‘he warned me’ and hung up. Sounded ominous.”

  He took a knee at the edge of the building despite the fact, Genevieve noticed, that he was wearing a very nice pair of pants. “What’s the deal with the cat? She got herself out here, right? Can’t she get herself back in?”

  “You don’t know anything about this, so just shut up!” Genevieve snapped.

  Julien’s eyes widened.

  “I’m sorry,” Genevieve said. “It’s just a really, really, really bad morning.”

  “Tell me how to help,” Julien said.

  “Could you go in my laundry room – you have to go through the closet in my bedroom – and get her bowl and a can of food? Salmon is her favorite.”

  Julien stood and brushed off his knee. “Be right back.”

  Genevieve leaned her head against the wall. Was snapping at Julien a worrisome symptom? She never talked that way to anyone. Her grandmother had a rule: “We don’t say ‘shut up’ at our house,” and Genevieve had always thought it was a good one.

  And then there was the fact that just a few days ago she thought Julien Brooks might have planted a gold pendant in her apartment to make her think she was crazy; now she was giving him the run of the place.

  Julien returned with Mona’s bowl and a can of salmon cat food.

  “Thanks,” Genevieve said. “Could you maybe go around the corner where she can’t see you? Men make her jumpy sometimes.”

  “Lot of that going around,” he said, disappearing around the side of the building.

  Mona’s ears pricked up when Genevieve opened the can, but she remained stubbornly out of reach. Dumping the food in the bowl, Genevieve put it down and retreated to sit and wait.

  Julien sat, too, his back at a 90-degree angle to Genevieve’s.

  “Want to walk me through what went on this morning?”

  “Thank you for coming,” Genevieve said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Actually, I did,” Julien said. “You scared the hell out of me. You said someone had warned you? Who warned you? About what?”

  Genevieve sighed. She had hoped to keep this information to herself, but in her panic, she had tipped her hand. She told him about the two threatening emails.

  Julien listened to her retelling without interrupting, even though she knew it was a little disjointed, leaving out, as she did, the strange dream-like experiences, the heart-shaped pendant and the conversation with her mother’s college roommate.

  “So that’s everything?” he asked when she was finished.

  “Yes,” Genevieve lied.

  “And let me get this straight – the first message came when?”

  “It was... well, I’d have to look to see when it was sent. I saw it the day after you came by and we had Thai food.”

  “Which was last week.”

  Genevieve could see where this was going. “Right.”

  “And you didn’t think to pick up the phone, or forward the email, or tell me about it during the six or so hours we were together yesterday?”

  “I know it seems strange.”

  “Well, that wasn’t the word I was going to pick, but yeah,” Julien said. “Henry’s really not going to like this. What were you thinking?”

  Mona advanced a few paces toward the food, her nose twitching.

  “Good kitty, Mona,” Genevieve said. “Mmmm. You know you want some.”

  “Genevieve?”

  She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. This was a very bad time to be without coffee.

  “I wasn’t sure whether to take it seriously. There really wasn’t any threat. It just said ‘stop.’ Obviously I didn’t know he’d follow up with another email and the dead fish. I wasn’t sure it was worth mentioning.”

  “Like you weren’t sure that gallery catalog was worth mentioning.”

  Genevieve had no idea how to respond to that.

  “Look, I get that you worked for the Hilliard for a long time,” Julien began, his voice soothing. “Even though your boss was a jerk, you probably still have friends there and you might feel conflicted, and I respect that, but...”

  Genevieve cut him off. “My loyalties aren’t divided. And who says this is someone at the museum? This doesn’t really strike me as the kind of thing an art historian would do.”

  “Well, good,” Julien said crisply. “That’s good to know. Is the cat eating yet?”

  Mona had just taken her first tentative bite.

  “In fact, she is.”

  “Excellent. Grab her, and let’s go inside.” Julien stood, dusting off his pants. “You can call Henry and explain this, because frankly I’m at a loss here.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mona did not appreciate being grabbed by the scruff of the neck and hauled roughly away from her food.

  First she growled, and when that display of displeasure did not result in her immediate release, Mona let loose a stream of urine that soaked Genevieve’s T-shirt and capris as she carried the cat around the corner of the building.

  Genevieve firmly deposited Mona inside the apartment and slammed the door.

  She told herself that someday this would make a funny story: There was a guy she really wanted to impress, but then she decided she didn’t trust him and withheld important information, and it all ended with her humiliated and reeking of cat pee.

  Julien wrinkled his nose. “That smells really nasty.”

  Genevieve sighed. “Cat pee is the worst. I have to take a shower and wash these clothes. Or maybe burn them. I picked a bad morning to be without coffee.”

  “I need to run some errands,” Julien said. “I’ll wait in your courtyard when I get back.”

  Genevieve locked the front door behind him.

  She stripped out of her dirty clothes, dumped them in the washer and turned the dial to the hottest setting.

  She took a shower, washing her hair for the second time in a couple hours. She changed into a clean T-shirt and jeans and put her wet hair up in a clip. She’d never felt less attractive in her life.

  Th
en she hustled to her living room, grabbed her laptop off the bar and hurried back to her bedroom. Julien was going to want to see the threatening emails, and she had to make sure there wasn’t anything in the inbox from D, whose subject lines often appeared to be taken straight from the cover of Cosmo.

  Mercifully, there was nothing embarrassing in her inbox. Genevieve checked her trash and sent mail just to be sure and cleared her cache just to be safe.

  Her computer housekeeping complete, she opened her front door. Julien was leaning against her courtyard wall, texting. Next to him on the wall was a coffee.

  “I’m no longer disgusting,” she said. “It’s safe to come in.”

  He smiled, then handed her the coffee. “Non-fat latte.”

  “Wow,” Genevieve said, touched by the gesture. “That’s very nice. And a really good guess.”

  “You left your Starbucks cup in my car the other day,” he said.

  “Ah. Sorry about that.”

  He spotted her laptop on the bar. “Do you mind showing me these emails?”

  “Not at all,” Genevieve said.

  Julien strode across the room. “Henry’s sending a guy, he called him a security consultant, but I think he’s basically a private detective who works divorce cases for him. We’re not supposed to touch anything on the car until he gets here.”

  “You called Henry?”

  “I know what I said,” Julien said. “But I couldn’t make you do it after the morning you’ve had. That would just be mean.”

  Julien looked at both emails, opening the headers and doing something Genevieve didn’t understand. He forwarded copies to himself. She sat at the bar next to him, drinking her coffee and offering no opinions.

  “This isn’t the same email address I have for you,” he said.

  “No, you have the one I use for business, Lost Art Investigations.”

  “So we have to figure out how this person got your personal email address,” Julien said.

  Just then, an instant message popped up.

  D: Watched Troy on demand last nite

  D: You were right re Brad Pitt in skirt :-)

  “Oh, that’s going to be really distracting,” Genevieve said, reaching for the computer. “D gets on between appointments and it’s stream of consciousness. You can’t just close the chat window; she’ll keep opening new ones. I have to answer her.”