Not in Time

by Shawna Seed

  “I don’t understand why you’re so angry with me all of the sudden,” Julien said.

  “I’m not angry.” Genevieve took a deep breath. “Well, maybe I am angry. But at the situation, not at you.”

  “The situation?”

  “Yes, the situation. Sometimes it feels like this is, I don’t know, a joke the universe played on me. Like it made me think we’re supposed to be together, but we’re really not. And that’s why you feel the way you do. Because maybe it really is a bad idea and you just see it more clearly than I do. Does that make sense?”

  “Genevieve...”

  “Anyway, that’s why I have to go home. I can’t keep spending all this time with you. It’s too hard.”

  She dragged Mona’s cat carrier into the middle of the room.

  “I’m really sorry about everything bad that happened because of me,” she said. “Especially your car. I know you really liked it, and now it’s totaled.”

  “Side impact is one of the worst kind of crashes you can have,” Julien said.

  Genevieve rattled a package of cat treats. “Mona? Here kit-kit-kitty!”

  “The front and rear have crumple zones to displace the energy from the crash,” Julien said. “The sides, not so much. I know this, because I’m one of those geeks who reads the safety reports when I shop for cars. I might still buy the sporty one, but I do the homework.”

  Genevieve rattled the cat treats again. Why wouldn’t Mona just come to her? She really didn’t need cat drama on top of everything else.

  “Statistically speaking, I made a stupid decision,” Julien said. “I was thinking about that this morning, when I was out on my run. Why did I do that?”

  Realizing that Julien wasn’t just making conversation about his car, Genevieve stopped trying to lure the cat into her carrier and focused her attention on him.

  “I know what you did,” she said. “It was really brave. I appreciate it. I really do.”

  Julien took a step toward her and reached for her hand. “I realized, when it comes to you, I need to follow my instincts. And my instincts keep saying one thing: Swerve.”

  Genevieve was awakened by a persistent buzzing. She buried her head in the pillow and willed it to stop.

  When it didn’t, she pulled the pillow over her head. That seemed to do the trick. She started to drift back to sleep.

  “That was Henry,” Julien said from somewhere.

  Genevieve turned her face toward the voice. “Henry? What time is it?”

  “It’s 1:38.”

  “Why is Henry calling you in the middle of the night?”

  The pillow was lifted off her head. “Open your eyes.”

  “I’m sleeping.”

  “Clearly you’re not, if you’re talking to me.”

  Genevieve blinked. Sunlight was slanting through the shutters.

  Julien, propped on one elbow next to her, grinned. “Yep, 1:38 in the afternoon.”

  Genevieve groaned and threw her arm over her eyes..

  “I’m starving,” Julien said. He leaned over to plant a kiss on Genevieve and climbed out of bed. “Any requests?”

  “Coffee.” Genevieve started to throw off the covers, then pulled them back up. “And clothes?”

  Laughing, Julien dropped his shirt from the previous day on the bed. “There you go,” he said. “Meet me in the kitchen.”

  Genevieve shrugged into Julien’s shirt and petted Mona, who was basking in a sunbeam on the floor. She stopped in the guest room to unearth her toothbrush from her suitcase.

  Then, carefully, the way one might handle a live grenade, she peeked at her phone.

  Dead battery. She dug out her charger, plugged the phone in and hurried out of the room before it could power up.

  She found Julien in the kitchen, mulling the contents of the refrigerator.

  “There she is,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist and reeling her in for a kiss. “I’m thinking a frittata.”

  “Sounds great,” Genevieve said. “Can I do anything? Maybe deal with the dishes from last night?”

  The remnants of their 11 p.m. pasta were stacked in the sink. They never did get around to the chicken Milanese.

  “Leave it,” Julien said. “We’ll do all the dishes at once.” He pulled down two mugs and handed them to Genevieve. “Just pour us coffee and stand there looking gorgeous. Maybe I’ll let you make toast.”

  Genevieve leaned against the counter with her coffee and watched as Julien worked, not quite believing her luck.

  His phone began to buzz again. “Look at that for me, will you?” Julien said as he chopped a red pepper.

  “Henry,” Genevieve said, checking the display.

  Julien motioned her over with his chef’s knife. “Hit speaker. I guess he’s going to call until I pick up.”

  “Hey, Henry,” he called.

  “I don’t know how you can run a successful business if your clients can’t reach you during normal working hours,” Henry said.

  “And yet I do,” Julien said. “What’s up?”

  “What do I tell these people when they call about the drawing? Do you want it?”

  “Do you?”

  “I was in this thing to make a point and maybe have a payday,” Henry said. “You’re the one who cares about the picture.”

  Julien locked eyes with Genevieve for several seconds.

  “I think the museum can keep it,” he said.

  Genevieve mouthed her surprise. “Really?”

  “You sure about that?” Henry asked.

  “But they need to turn it into an education thing about looted art,” Julien said.

  Genevieve wrapped her arms around Julien, and he returned the hug with his free hand.

  “In other words, you’re going to let them sell this as a service to humanity,” Henry said.

  “I’m not saying just give it to them,” Julien said. “But this is a chance to tell our story to a lot of people, make people understand what happened. That probably does more to honor my mom than hanging the drawing in my living room.”

  “You’re a good kid, Julien,” Henry said. “I’ll see how much I can talk them out of. Once I have the number, I’m thinking about a bonus for Genevieve.”

  “Great idea,” Julien said.

  “I’m thinking you might have a conflict of interest there.”

  Julien laughed. “You might be right.”

  “I’ve got some names for her,” Henry said. “She needs a lawyer. But she hasn’t answered her phone today, either.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “You talk to her, tell her to check her messages,” Henry said. With that, he hung up.

  Julien smiled down at her. “Henry says check your messages.”

  Genevieve unwound herself from Julien with a sigh. “OK.”

  Twelve missed messages. Two from Henry, three from Thomas, seven from D.

  “I called you a million times!” D said when Genevieve got back to her.

  “I know, I’m sorry, I...”

  “You stayed there last night, I know,” D said. “You had dinner, it was late, and you stayed in the guest room. And you think I’m going to yell at you. Which I’m not. I mean, who knows? Maybe your way is better. And maybe there’s a frickin’ business opportunity out there for salons specializing in slow bikini waxes that draw out the pain. I mean, I never thought that Brazilian thing of waxing your whole hoohaw would catch on either, but I see girls at the gym who...”

  “D?”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t stay in the guest room.”

  “Well, if you went home, why didn’t you call... oh! OH! Hang on!”

  “D, what are you doing?”

  “Pulling over! So you can tell me everything!”

  “I’m not telling you anything. In fact, I have to hang up. Julien’s making me breakfast. I just didn’t want you to think I’d fallen off the face of the earth.”

  “Breakfast? What time is it out there?”

/>   “Two in the afternoon,” Genevieve said.

  “Dang, girl.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “Sorry it’s such a mess,” Genevieve said as she unlocked her apartment door. “If I’d known we were coming here, I would have straightened up.”

  In the two months she and Julien had been a couple, Genevieve’s housekeeping standards – never high – had plummeted. They spent so much time at his place that anything more than minimal cleaning seemed like wasted effort.

  By nearly every measure, though, it had been the best two months of Genevieve’s life. The panic attacks and insomnia had disappeared, prompting D to observe that “Gettin’ it regular is good for you. Nobody tells you that in Sunday School.”

  All of Genevieve’s symptoms – including the ones she never mentioned to D – had disappeared. No more flashbacks to the studio in Paris. No more visions of David Lazare.

  Encouraged by Thomas, she was working on an article about the drawing’s circuitous path from Paris to the Hilliard. Stimson Miller granted her an interview before his death, recounting for the record how he’d stolen Study for Tristan and Iseult after the war.

  The museum’s board agreed to an infrared examination of the drawing, which revealed it had once been marked with a swastika and an alphanumeric code that included the letters LZ. A similar code was found on the back of the painting in Henry’s library – strong circumstantial evidence to support Genevieve’s theory that both had been looted from the Lazare family.

  Still, she wished she had a contemporary eyewitness who could place the drawing in David Lazare’s Paris apartment. Thomas told her not to let the perfect become the enemy of the good, whatever that meant.

  Thomas had his hands full at the museum helping to unravel Malcolm’s schemes. Among other things, he’d diverted money from the security budget, necessitating the hiring of temp guards. Then he’d taken advantage of the situation to spirit relics out of storage and sold them on the black market to help finance his real-estate speculation.

  “Turns out the security is ridiculously lax,” Thomas told Genevieve over lunch, with a completely straight face.

  She wasn’t really interested in Hilliard gossip or even in Malcolm Stewart’s criminal case. Genevieve was focused on finishing her article, which she hoped would help bring in clients for Lost Art Investigations.

  Genevieve and Julien had spent the afternoon in Pasadena with Henry’s first ex-wife going through old Lazare family photos for her article, then got stuck in traffic on the 110. They were at her apartment because they saw no hope of making it back to Julien’s house before the Lakers playoff game started.

  “As long as you paid the cable bill, it’s all good,” Julien said. He shooed Mona from the prime viewing spot on the sofa, kicked off his flip-flops and put his feet on the coffee table. Genevieve unearthed the remote from a pile of mail and handed it to him before heading to the kitchen. Mona jumped into Julien’s lap and curled up.

  “Do you want to get takeout during the game or go out after?” Genevieve opened the refrigerator, which – as usual – held almost nothing. “There’s one beer. Want it?”

  “Whatever you want,” Julien said. “I’ll take the beer. Unless you want it?”

  Genevieve walked back to the living room and handed Julien the bottle. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down for a kiss. “Thanks, Gen.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  Surveying the mess on her coffee table, Genevieve settled next to Julien on the sofa. “I might as well go through this junk while you watch the game.”

  By halftime, Genevieve had cleared off the top of the coffee table. She sat on the floor to tackle the lower shelf.

  “I don’t want to say it’s been a long time since I cleaned, but I just found a Christmas card,” Genevieve said. She leaned her head against Julien’s thigh. “It’s weird to find stuff from when I didn’t even know you. I feel like I’ve always known you.”

  Julien put his hand on her head and stroked her hair.

  “I’m sorry, I should only talk during the commercials, right?”

  “Talk whenever you want,” Julien said.

  Genevieve spied a book under a pile of holiday catalogs and pulled it out. “Oh wow,” she said. “I wondered what happened to this.”

  “What’s that,” Julien said absently. “C’mon, Kobe, make the pass!”

  “My mom’s roommate sent it to me. It’s a book from their college’s anniversary. There’s supposed to be pictures of my mom in here.”

  “Oh, don’t let him have that shot!”

  Genevieve began to leaf through the book, wondering why she hadn’t done so sooner. For a lover of vintage fashion, what could be better than historical photos from a women’s college?

  Finally, she found one of the photos Christine must have wanted her to see. It was a black-and-white shot of a museum outing to Philadelphia, according to the caption. Genevieve studied her mother’s face, so young and untroubled, turned slightly toward the teacher.

  “Oh! Julien! Oh!”

  Genevieve shoved the book toward him and dashed to the bar, where her laptop was charging.

  Julien dropped his feet from the coffee table with a thud. “Gen? What’s wrong?”

  “Look at that photo!”

  He glanced at the open book in his lap. “Which photo? It’s a double-page spread of photos.” Julien grabbed the remote and hit the mute button. “Are you OK?”

  “I’m sorry,” Genevieve said. “I know the game’s important, but...” She sat next to him on the couch and began scrolling through photos on her computer.

  “Look at that photo,” she said, pointing. “That’s my mom.”

  “You look exactly like her,” Julien said. “She’s really pretty.”

  “Read the caption,” Genevieve said.

  “On an outing to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, eager acolytes gather round...” Julien paused. “Who wrote this stuff?”

  “Keep reading,” Genevieve said.

  “Eager acolytes gather round professor Vivian Chalifoux as she...”

  Genevieve found the photo she wanted and turned the screen toward Julien.

  “Vivian Chalifoux, that professor? Look. She’s the woman in this photo in front of the gallery with David.”

  “What?” Julien took the laptop from her and enlarged the photo, handing her the book so they could look at the two pictures side by side.

  She had changed, obviously, in the 30 years between that sidewalk in Paris and the museum in Philadelphia, but it was unmistakably the same woman.

  “Weird,” Julien said.

  “That would explain how my mom knew about your family,” Genevieve said. She flipped to the front of the book, read for a moment, then flipped to the back.

  “What are you doing?” Julien asked.

  “The table of contents says there’s a directory.”

  “She’s probably dead, don’t you think? She’d be really old,” Julien said.

  Genevieve ran her finger down the listings for C. “Oh my God.”

  “What?”

  “Vivian Chalifoux’s address is a post office box in Wiscasset, Maine. Remember the postmark on the envelope the gallery catalog came in?”

  Julien picked up the remote and turned off the game.

  The post office box was the only point of contact they could find for Vivian Chalifoux. Julien tried several databases, and Christine called the college for them, but every attempt to turn up a phone number ran into a brick wall.

  “I think you’re going to have to write her,” Julien said, finally.

  “And say what? If I say something about the gallery catalog, and it wasn’t her, I’m going to sound like a crazy person.”

  But she managed to come up with something, introducing herself as the daughter of a former student and mentioning her role assisting heirs of the Lazare family of Paris in their bid to recover artwork looted during the war. Would Ms. Chalifoux be willing to discuss her m
emories of Genevieve’s mother, Grace Knapp? Genevieve included all of her contact information, mailed the note, and waited.

  The response came more quickly than she anticipated.

  In a spidery hand on very good stationery, Vivian Chalifoux wrote that she would be delighted to meet Genevieve and “hear all about your adventures regarding the Lazare family.”

  She was home most days, she wrote, and 2 p.m. was the best time for her to receive visitors. Genevieve should choose a day and write ahead. She included directions to her house.

  Genevieve read the note aloud to Julien, incredulous. “She expects me to go all the way across the country and just show up on her doorstep?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Is this like a horror movie, like she’s trying to lure us there?”

  Julien laughed. “Gen, this woman’s got to be 90-something years old. I think we can handle her.”

  And so Genevieve and Julien flew to Boston, spent the night, then got up in the morning and drove to Maine.

  Vivian Chalifoux, as it turned out, did not live in Wiscasset proper. Julien had printed out a map, but they still had to stop twice for directions.

  Her road, when they finally found it, was not a road at all, but a set of well-worn tracks that bumped along in a sparse grove of trees. Through the breaks in the trees, they could see a small bay. There was not another house in sight.

  The tracks petered out 100 yards from a two-story saltbox house. A narrow wooden-plank sidewalk was carved out of the scrubby, native grass.

  Julien put the car in park. “Are you sure this is it?”

  Genevieve pointed to a nearby outbuilding. “The guy at the convenience store said to look for the shed with the red door.” The door, weatherbeaten and peeling, had definitely been red at some point.

  They picked their way up the plank sidewalk, which was slick with moisture. Fog was in the process of burning off – remnants still floated over the bay.

  “Look, she has a satellite dish.” Julien grinned at Genevieve. “You pictured this hermit, and I bet she has a blog where she advises other retirees about day-trading in the Asian markets.”

  As they neared the door, Julien’s foot slid off the path, landing in soft mud. He found a stick and bent over to clean his shoe as Genevieve knocked on the door.