by Nora Roberts
worked desperately hard on this piece. It’s taken all my energies. Almost my life, if you can understand.” His eyes began to shine as she studied it.
“She’s great. Really great. You oughta be selling these drawings, kid. Seriously.”
“I make a little money doing portraits,” he mumbled. “It’s not what I want to do. It’s just to eat.”
“I bet you’re going to be a big success.”
“Thanks.” Delighted with her, he let tears swim into his eyes. “It’s been such a long haul already, so many disappointments. There are times you could just give up, just surrender, but somehow . . .”
He held up a hand as if overcome. Sympathetically, she popped a tissue out of a box and handed it to him.
“Thank you. I’m so sorry.” He dabbed delicately under his tinted lenses. “But I know I can do this. I have to do this. And for this bronze, I need the best you’ve got. I’ve saved enough money to pay whatever you charge, extra if I have to.”
“Don’t worry about extra.” She patted his hand, then turned to her computer terminal. “Three years back. Let’s see what we can find out. Odds are it was Whitesmith. He gets a lot of the work from students.”
She began to click and clack with inch-long red nails, and shot him a wink. “Let’s see if we can get you an A.”
“I appreciate this so much. When I was driving up here, I just knew this was going to be a special day for me. By the way, I just love your nails. That color is fabulous against your skin.”
It took less than ten minutes.
“I bet this is the one. Pete Whitesmith, just like I figured. He’s top of the line around here, and most anywhere else if you ask me. Did a job for this kid—I remember this kid. Harrison Mathers. He was pretty good too. Not as good as you,” she added, sending Ryan a maternal smile.
“Did he get a lot of work done here? Harrison, I mean.”
“Yeah, several pieces. Always hung around over Pete’s shoulder. Nervous kid. Here it shows a small bronze nude of David with sling. That’s the one.”
“That’s great. Amazing. Whitesmith. He still works here?”
“Sure, he’s a cornerstone. You go on over to the foundry. Tell Pete Babs said to treat you right.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“How much would you charge to do a drawing of my kids?”
“For you, absolutely free.” He shined a smile at her.
“Sure I remember it.” Whitesmith mopped at his face under the bill of a stained blue cap. He had a face that should have been carved in granite, all blocky square and deep grooves. He was built like a bullet, broad at the base, narrow at the shoulders. His voice rose over the roar of furnaces, the hard clangs of metal.
“This was the piece?”
Whitesmith stared at the sketch Ryan showed him. “Yep. Harry was mighty particular about this one. Had the formula for the bronze written out—wanted me to add some lead so it’d cure faster, but otherwise it was an old formula. I’m coming up on break, let’s take this outside.”
Grateful, Ryan followed him out of the heat and noise.
“I’ve been casting for twenty-five years,” Whitesmith said, lighting his break Camel and blowing the smoke into the lightly chilled air. “I gotta say, that piece was a little gem. Ayah. One of my favorites.”
“You did others for him too?”
“Harry, sure. Four, maybe five in a couple-year period. This was the best of the lot, though. Knew we had something special when he brought in the mold and wax copy. Now that I think on it . . .” And he did, taking a long deep drag, blowing it out. “That was the last piece I did for him.”
“Was it?”
“Ayah. I don’t recollect seeing young Harry after that. Students at the Institute . . .” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “They come and they go.”
“Did he work with anybody else?”
“No, far as I know, I did all Harry’s casting. He was interested in the process. Not all the students give a hot damn about this end of it. Just what they think of as art.” He sneered a little. “Lemme tell you, pal, what I do is goddamn art. A good foundryman is an artist.”
“I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I was so desperate to find you—the artist who worked on this wonderful little David.”
“Yeah, well.” Obviously pleased, Whitesmith sucked in smoke. “Some of those artist types are snots, pure and simple sons of bitches. Figure a guy like me’s just a tool. I gotta be an artist and a scientist. You get a prize winning sculpture outta here, you got me to thank for it. Most don’t bother, though.”
“I knew a foundryman in Toledo.” Ryan sighed lustily. “I considered him a god. I hope Harrison was properly appreciative of your work.”
“He was okay.”
“I guess he used a flexible mold for the David.”
“Yeah, silicon. You gotta be careful there.” Whitesmith jabbed with his cigarette for emphasis, then nipped it between his thumb and forefingers and flicked it away in a long, high arch. “You can get distortions, shrinkage. But the kid knew his stuff. He went with the lost-wax method for the model. Me, I can work with all of them, wax, sand, plaster investment. Do the finishing and tool work if the client wants. And I stick with my work, all the way. Don’t like being rushed, either.”
“Oh, did Harry rush you?”
“On that last piece he was a pain in the ass sideways.” Whitesmith snorted through his nose. “You’da thought he was Leonardo da fucking Vinci on deadline.” Then he shrugged. “Kid was okay. Had talent.”
Though it was a long shot, Ryan took out the sketch of The Dark Lady. “What do you think of her?”
Whitesmith pursed his lips. “Well now, that’s a sexy broad. Wouldn’t mind casting her. What are you using for her?”
A little knowledge, Ryan thought, could be a dangerous thing. Or it could be just enough. “Wax with a plaster investment.”
“Good. We can work fine with that. Fire the plaster right here too. You don’t want air bubbles in that wax, ace.”
“No indeed.” Ryan slipped the sketch away again. The man was too solid, he thought, too cooperative to be involved. “So did Harry ever come around with anyone?”
“Not that I recollect.” Whitesmith’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Oh, I just wondered if the friend who told me about the piece, and you, ever came by with him. He spoke so highly of your work.”
“Ayah, and who’d that be?”
“James Crispin,” Ryan improvised. “He’s a painter, so he wouldn’t have come around unless he was hanging with Harry. I’ve researched the formula,” he added. “If I bring it in along with the wax cast and mold, you’ll do the work?”
“That’s what we’re here for.”
“I appreciate it.” Ryan held out a hand. “And I’ll be in touch.”
“I like the look of your lady there,” Whitesmith added, with a nod toward Ryan’s portfolio as he turned back to the foundry door. “Don’t get the chance to work on anything that classy often. I’ll treat her right.”
“Thanks.” Whistling lightly, Ryan walked back toward the car. He was congratulating himself on an easy and successful morning’s work when another car pulled into the lot.
Cook got out, stretched his back, gave Ryan a mild stare.
“Morning.”
Ryan nodded, adjusted his pretty rose-colored glasses and slid behind the wheel of his rented car while Cook walked to the offices.
Close, very close, Ryan thought. But there’d been no flicker of recognition in those cop eyes. For now, he was still one short step ahead.
Once he was back in the house by the cliffs, he removed the moustache, took off the wig, gratefully blinked out the contacts. The precaution had been necessary after all, he thought as he happily removed the ridiculous shirt.
Apparently Cook had forgery on the brain.
That was fine. When the job was over, having Cook’s investigation slanted toward most of the truth would be an adv
antage.
Now it was only mildly unnerving.
He removed the makeup from his face, throat, and hands, brewed a pot of coffee, and settled down to work.
There were eight students who’d used the foundry in those critical two weeks. He’d already eliminated three off the top, as their projects had been too large.
Now thanks to good old Babs and Pete, he had the one he wanted. It didn’t take much time to go back into the records he’d already accessed from the Institute. And there he found Harry’s class during that final semester. Renaissance Bronzes, The Human Form.
And Miranda had taught the course.
He hadn’t figured that, he realized. He’d wanted to see another name. Carter’s, Andrew’s, anyone he could concentrate on uncovering. Then he realized he should have expected it. The David had been hers, The Dark Lady had been hers. She was the key, the core, and he was beginning to believe she was the reason.
One of her students had cast a bronze David. The bronze David, Ryan had no doubt.
He skimmed further, calling up final grades. She was tough, he thought with a smile. Miranda didn’t hand out A’s like candy. Only four out of her twenty students had rated one, with the edge slanted heavily toward B’s, a scatter of C’s.
And one Incomplete.
Harrison K. Mathers. Incomplete, no final project. Class dropped.
Now why would you do that, Harrison K., Ryan wondered, when you went to the trouble to have a bronze figure cast ten days before the due date, unless you’d never intended to worry about the grade?
He looked up Mathers’s records, noted that he’d attended twelve classes at the Institute over a two-year period. His grades were admirable . . . until the last semester, when they took a sharp nosedive.
Taking out his cell phone, he dialed the number listed under Harrison’s personal information.
“Hello?”
“Yes, this is Dennis Seaworth in student records from the New England Institute. I’m trying to reach Harrison Mathers.”
“This is Mrs. Mathers, his mother. Harry doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Oh, I see. We’re doing an update on our students, trying to gather input for next year’s classes. I wonder if you could put me in touch with him.”
“He moved out to California.” She sounded weary. “He never finished his classes at the Institute.”
“Yes, we have those records. We’re hoping to discover if and why any of our former students were dissatisfied with the program here.”
“If you find out, tell me. He was doing so well there. He loved it.”
“That’s good to know. If I could talk to him?”
“Sure.” She recited a number with a San Francisco area code.
Ryan dialed the West Coast number and was told by a recording the number had been disconnected.
Well, he thought, a trip to California would give him a chance to see his brother Michael.
“Harrison Mathers.”
With the most recent plans for the exhibit still crowded in her head, Miranda frowned at Ryan. “Yes?”
“Harrison Mathers,” he repeated. “Tell me about him.”
She slipped out of her jacket, hung it in the foyer closet. “Do I know a Harrison Mathers?”
“He was a student of yours a few years ago.”
“You’ll have to give me more than a name, Ryan. I’ve had hundreds of students.”
“You taught him a course on Renaissance bronzes three years ago. He got an Incomplete.”
“An Incomplete?” She struggled to reorder her thoughts. “Harry.” It came back to her with both pleasure and regret. “Yes, he took that course. He’d been studying at the Institute for several years, I think. He was talented, very bright. He started out with me very well, both in papers and in sketching.”
She circled her neck as she walked into the parlor. “I remember he started to miss class, or come in looking as if he’d been up all night. He was distracted, his work suffered.”
“Drugs?”
“I don’t know. Drugs, family problems, a girl.” She moved her shoulders dismissively. “He was only nineteen or twenty, it could have been a dozen things. I did talk to him, warn him that he needed to concentrate on his work. It improved, but not a great deal. Then he stopped coming in, just before the end of the course. He never turned in his final project.”
“He had one cast. At the Pine State Foundry the second week in May. A bronze figure.”
She stared, then lowered herself into a chair. “Are you trying to tell me he’s involved in this?”
“I’m telling you he had a figure cast, a figure of David with sling. A project he never turned in. He was there while the David was being tested, and he dropped out shortly after. Was he ever in the lab?”
The sick and uneasy rolling was back in her stomach. She remembered Harry Mathers. Not well, not clearly, but well enough for it to hurt. “The entire class would have been taken through the lab. Any student is taken through the labs, restoration, research. It’s part of the program.”
“Who’d he hang with?”
“I don’t know. I don’t get involved in my students’ personal lives. I only remember him as clearly as I do because he had genuine talent and he seemed to waste it at the end.”
She felt the beginnings of a headache creep in behind her eyes. Oddly enough, for hours that day she’d forgotten everything but the exhibit—the thrill of the planning. “Ryan, he was a boy. He couldn’t have been behind a forgery like this.”
“When I was twenty I stole a thirteenth-century Madonna mosaic from a private collection in Westchester, then went out and had pizza with Alice Mary Grimaldi.”
“How can you possibly brag about something like that?”
“I’m not bragging, Miranda. I’m stating a fact, and pointing out that age has nothing to do with certain types of behavior. Now if I wanted to brag, I’d tell you about the T’ang horse I stole from the Met a few years back. But I won’t,” he added. “Because it upsets you.”
She only stared at him. “Is that your way of trying to lighten the mood?”
“Didn’t work, did it?” And because she suddenly looked so tired, he walked over to take the bottle of white wine he’d already opened, and poured her a glass. “Try this instead.”
Instead of drinking, she passed the glass from hand to hand. “How did you find out about Harry?”
“Just basic research, a short field trip.” The unhappy look that came into her eyes distracted him. He sat on the arm of the chair and began to rub her neck and shoulders. “I’ve got to go out of town for a few days.”
“What? Where?”
“New York. There are some details I have to deal with, several of which involve the transport of the pieces for this exhibit. I also need to go out to San Francisco and find your young Harry.”
“He’s in San Francisco?”
“According to his mama, but his phone’s been disconnected.”
“You found all this out today?”
“You’ve got your work, I’ve got mine. How’s yours coming?”
She ran her hands nervously through her hair. Those thief’s fingers were magic and were loosening muscles she hadn’t realized were knotted. “I—I chose some fabric for drapings, and worked with the carpenter on some platforms. The invitations came in today. I approved them.”
“Good, we’re on schedule.”
“When are you leaving?”
“First thing in the morning. I’ll be back in a week or so. And I’ll keep in touch.” Because he could feel her begin to relax, he played with her hair. “You might want to see if Andrew will move back in so you’re not alone.”
“I don’t mind being alone.”
“I mind.” He picked her up, slid into the chair, and settled