Dark Picasso

by Rick Homan

  “No. I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Alright. Thank you for calling. We’ll be sure to look into this.”

  “I know you’ve arrested someone. I just thought you should know someone else may have had a motive.”

  “Of course. We’re always glad to get information from the public. As I said, we’ll look into this. Thanks for calling.”

  We hung up, and I took a moment to rest my eyes on the hillside below my office window. I was fairly sure Murphy’s notes would go into a file and be forgotten, if not into a waste basket. I wished I could have made my story more convincing, but it was all I had. I’d done what I could. Maybe others would call in with information that would widen the investigation.

  I shook off my doubts and returned to the mystery that most occupied my mind. My conversations with Sandra and Abbie the day before had sharpened my sense of where the hazards lay in pursuing the authenticity of the Picassos, but had not changed my predicament. As a historian I needed to know. Also, I didn’t feel good about helping John Ghent sell his Picasso to a “greater fool.” And if there were still any chance of developing the Milmans as donors, I had to decide whether I could bring up the problem without making enemies of them.

  As I knew from every research paper I ever wrote, when every thought brings you back to a question you can’t answer, it’s time to ask a different question. I had asked Sandra: How do we find out if the Picassos are fake? What if instead I asked myself how I could find out if they are real?

  This reminded me of an idea I’d had when I left John Ghent’s house: Call the dealer and ask a few questions about both Picassos, specifically about their provenance. Maybe they were from the same owner. The heirs of that friend might have offered both paintings for sale at the Redburn Gallery.

  If that were true, I would know they were probably real Picassos—not very good ones, but real. That would satisfy my scholarly curiosity and relieve me of ethical concerns about helping John Ghent sell the painting Anne bought. Tiffany would still have the problem of owning a painting that was mildly pornographic, but she could solve that by selling it if she wanted to.

  I wrote, “Call Redburn Gallery,” at the top of my to-do list for the afternoon.

  My Modern Art class went well. Most of the students had become familiar with the artists, and all of them could recognize their influences in pop culture, advertising, decoration, and design. This made them more eager to know about the artists and their art. This got me to thinking we should teach art history by starting with the present and working our way back in time. Of course, I couldn’t think of a single art history book that was organized that way.

  At the end of class I waited by the table at the front of the room to speak to Elaine Wiltman about her paper. Since my conversation with Pat on Friday evening, I had resigned myself to accepting her paper so long as she added an acknowledgement of the article that was its source. I didn’t like the idea, but, as Pat had explained, I had no way around it at this point.

  When she followed the others to the door, I called out, “Elaine?”

  She appeared not to hear me and followed the others through the doorway.

  I stepped into the corridor and called out, “Elaine?”

  Her friend, walking next to her, put a hand on Elaine’s shoulder and said something to her. Elaine shook her head and walked faster.

  I couldn’t see why she would want to go on avoiding the issue. She’d had the weekend to get over her panic at finding out her paper was based on a published article, and she had my permission to add a note about the source.

  From here on it was up to her. She could either amend her paper and hand it in or ignore it and get no credit for the assignment.

  When I got back to my office, I found out why she had ignored me. I had an email from Vera Krupnik, dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, asking me to meet in her office with the dean of the School of Business on Friday at 11:15 a.m. to discuss Elaine Wiltman’s paper. There was no further explanation.

  I could not recall an instance in which deans got involved in grading a student’s paper. There was a grade appeal process in which the student wrote to the faculty member and the chair, who might forward the appeal to an Academic Policy Committee. But that did not involve deans, let alone the deans of two different schools.

  I left my office, walked down the three flights of stairs to the ground floor, and then trotted back up to the third floor just to wake up my brain. There’s nothing like an infusion of oxygen to help you think straight.

  When I came out of the stairwell, I kept going down the corridor, past my office, and peeked into the office of the chair of the Art Department, my chair, Frank Rossi. He was dressed in a purple blazer with a deep green shirt and an aqua-blue tie—being a landscape painter, the colors were both arresting and complementary. He wore the clothes well on his trim, fifty-ish frame and kept his salt-and-pepper hair trimmed short.

  Since he was alone and seemed to be scanning his computer screen and clicking on things, I assumed he was involved in nothing more serious than web-surfing and knocked.

  He waved me in. “Nicole. Good. Sit. What’s up?”

  “Thank you, Frank. I just got an email from Vera Krupnik asking me to meet with her and the business-school dean on Friday to discuss the grade for a term paper from a student in my Modern Art class.”

  Frank frowned for a moment. “Grade?”

  “When I handed papers back to the class on Friday, I told her she had to acknowledge her source before I could give her a grade. The paper is obviously a paraphrase of an article in Art Journal. She said she didn’t know what I was talking about and refused to acknowledge the source. I thought by this morning she would have changed her mind, but she refused to talk to me. Then I got this email.”

  Frank grimaced and shook his head as if he had just smelled something disgusting. “Two deans?”

  “I don’t understand it either, Frank.”

  He reached for his desk phone. “Talk to Vera. See what this is about.”

  “Is that really a good idea?”

  He paused.

  “What if this wasn’t her idea?” I asked. “What if she’s accommodating a request from the other dean?”

  Frank leaned back to think about that. “Possibly.”

  “I really just wanted to find out if you knew what this was about or if you had ever heard of such a thing before.”

  Frank shook his head. “No clue.”

  “Alright then, I guess I’ll go to the meeting and see what they want. The situation is pretty straightforward. I can’t imagine what they want to talk about.”

  Frank nodded. “Keep me posted.”

  Conversation with Frank was always an exercise in filling in the blanks, yet I always came away feeling that everything that needed to be said had been said. He had stuck by me last year when I accidentally ran afoul of the other painter in the Art Department, Irving Zorn, so I considered myself lucky to have him as my chair. Being in uncharted territory wasn’t especially comfortable, but I felt reassured by the idea that there were no expectations for a professor in my situation.

  Chapter 14

  After my meeting with Frank, I returned to my office and woke up my computer so I could look up contact information for the Redburn Gallery in New York. I made the mistake of glancing at my inbox and found an email from Mira Robillard, the artist to whom I had sent a contract for showing her work in the college’s gallery in the fall. The news was not good. Her mother had fallen ill, diagnosed with cancer, and would soon be undergoing chemotherapy. Mira had to put everything on hold and go to Texas for at least six months to care for her. She apologized and hoped she could exhibit with us next year.

  I felt awful for Mira. I couldn’t imagine how I would feel if one of my parents fell deathly ill, and I didn’t want to think about it. I wrote back with condolences, cautious encouragement, and a promise to keep in touch. After that I wrote to the Gallery Advisory Committee, telling
them of Mira’s situation, and saying I would write to the next artist on our list, with an offer to exhibit in the fall.

  Getting back to the item at the top of my to-do list, I went to the website for the Redburn Gallery. It showed them to be dealers in miscellaneous modern and contemporary art. They were located in Chelsea, a neighborhood on the lower west side of Manhattan. Judging by a search for “Chelsea art galleries,” so were dozens of others. From their page for staff, I copied the name of the sales director, Lester Jappling.

  Before I could call the gallery, a new email appeared in my inbox. Greta Oswald had written, not just to me, but to all members of the Gallery Advisory Committee calling for a meeting to discuss offering an exhibit to the next artist on our list. True to form, she had proposed a meeting time, noon on Wednesday, which would ruin my chance to get a bite to eat and catch my breath before my one o’clock class.

  I was not surprised that Greta had ignored my message, in which I said I would write to the next artist on our list. Working with Greta on the committee last year, I had learned her need to meet was powerful, driven by the desire to have some sort of social life. I knew that if I refused, it would cost me a lot of energy. With everything else going on, I didn’t have energy to spare. I wrote back to her, Bert, and Shirley, saying I would be happy to meet.

  Hoping for better luck than I’d had all morning, I dialed the number of the Redburn Gallery and asked for Lester Jappling. Fortune smiled, and I was put on hold.

  Jappling turned out to be one of those people who answered the phone by saying his name but making it sound like a question. “Lester Jappling?” Thus, he confirmed his identity and asked why you wanted to speak with him in only two words.

  “Good morning, Mr. Jappling,” I replied. “I’m Dr. Nicole Tang Noonan at Cardinal University in Ohio.”

  “Excuse me, what university?”

  “Cardinal. Like the bird.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  I felt like asking him if he’d heard of Heidelberg, Wilberforce, College of Wooster, or any of the dozens of other small colleges in Ohio, but I restrained myself.

  “You’re not one of those for-profit schools are you?” he asked.

  “No. We have a long history, but recently changed our name.”

  “And why are you calling me?”

  I decided then that Mr. Jappling and I were going to get along just fine, whether he liked it or not. Adopting my pleasant phone voice, I said, “I am assisting Mr. John Ghent in the sale of paintings purchased by his late wife.”

  “Ghent? Anne Ghent? Anne is dead?”

  I wondered if he was on a first-name basis with all his clients. “I am sorry to bring you that news, Mr. Jappling. One of her paintings . . .”

  “How did she die?”

  “I don’t know the full story. According to news reports, she was shot when someone tried to rob her.”

  “Oh, my god!”

  “If you would prefer, I could call back another time.”

  “No. What is it you want?”

  “The provenance of a painting she bought from you.”

  That brought him up short. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what painting you’re referring to.”

  Yet he remembered her first name, and, according to the file John had given me, which I had open on my desk, she had bought only one painting from him. “In the fall of last year, she purchased a painting by Picasso, approximately sixty by seventy-six centimeters . . .”

  “Of course. What is it you want?”

  So, he did remember it. “The provenance.”

  “The provenance wasn’t an issue when she bought it.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t. Mr. Ghent would like to make sure it’s not an issue when he sells it.”

  “He shouldn’t be concerned.”

  “He wouldn’t be concerned if he had the necessary information. From whom did you buy the painting.”

  “That’s confidential.”

  “You must have informed Anne Ghent when she purchased it.”

  “The painting came to The Redburn under very special circumstances. A family needed to liquidate certain assets and needed to keep the transaction confidential.”

  “I understand. People aren’t eager to advertise that they’re selling off their paintings, but surely to establish ownership they would have had to . . .”

  “It wasn’t simply a matter of financial need. The family was . . . uh . . . under some duress. I can tell you they received the painting directly from the artist toward the end of his life.”

  “That’s good to know. Do you have letters or any other documentation relating to their transaction?”

  “Yes, but I cannot share those with you or Mr. Ghent. As I said, I agreed to keep our business confidential.”

  “Mr. Jappling, you leave Mr. Ghent in a difficult position.”

  “I don’t agree. It’s a marvelous painting. You have only to look at it.”

  Of course, I had looked at it, and it didn’t look very good, but there was no point telling him that. I tried another strategy. “If there is something wrong with the provenance . . .”

  “You’ve no right to say that. If you make that sort of unfounded accusation, there could be legal consequences.”

  “Then can you tell me if you have sold any other Picassos for this same family?”

  “I am happy to reassure you about the provenance of the Ghents’ Picasso, and certainly I am sorry for Mr. Ghent’s loss, but I am not here to open our sales records to you, certainly not over the phone.”

  I decided to appeal to his sense of greed. “Perhaps you could tell me if any similar paintings by Picasso are likely to be available in the near future.”

  “I thought you said Mr. Ghent wanted to sell his painting. Why would he want to know if any others are for sale?”

  “I’m consulting with several clients.” The lie rolled so easily off my tongue.

  “Then tell one of them to buy Ghent’s painting.”

  “That is a possibility, but I want to give my clients as complete a picture of the market as I can.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t help you any further. Good day, professor.”

  We hung up.

  I had to admit I’d had a little fun pushing the guy and hearing him get flustered. I don’t usually enjoy upsetting people, but his tone suggested his lofty perch in the New York art world made him unaccountable to a lowly professor at a university whose name he’d never heard. Also, it became obvious he was covering up something when he remembered Anne but pretended he didn’t remember selling her a painting.

  By saying the seller’s family had received the painting directly from Picasso, he hinted at a good reason for thinking the painting was real, but so long as he withheld the identity of the family, he wasn’t really saying anything. Likewise, by refusing to say whether he had sold other paintings owned by the same family, he wasn’t helping me to understand how two, inferior, late-period Picassos turned up in the same gallery at the same time. If they weren’t being sold by the same family, forgery seemed the next most likely explanation.

  I decided to take another stab at convincing myself they were real. After my one-o’clock class, Art Appreciation, I went to the library and used their databases to search for scholarly articles on Picasso published in the past thirty years.

  When I had a list of five authors who had published frequently over that period, I scanned their titles to find the ones who had addressed Picasso’s development as an artist, in particular his stylistic innovations. I chose Dr. Sidney Rosenberg because he had written about Picasso’s late work.

  My plan was to send him photos of Tiffany’s Picasso and Anne Ghent’s Picasso, and ask if he agreed that these two paintings were likely done in the last years of the artist’s life.

  But first I needed a photo of Tiffany’s Picasso.

  Chapter 15

  The secretary at Fairhaven seated me in the reception room instead of showing me into the drawing room. Th
at spoiled my plan. Last Tuesday I had maybe five minutes alone with the paintings before Tiffany joined me, ample time for snapping a picture of the Picasso. I would have to switch to plan B, as soon as I figured out what it was.

  I occupied myself by looking out the French windows to the garden, which was blooming nicely, and by getting reacquainted with the paintings Tiffany had bought when she was buying to please herself: two scenes of the same pond, one at sunrise, the other by moonlight. They probably weren’t good investments, though they would hold their value and give pleasure as long as she lived.

  After fifteen minutes I heard footsteps coming along the corridor, not from the direction of the dining room and drawing room, but from the opposite end of the house. When Tiffany came around the corner and walked to me with both hands held in front of her, I was startled by her weak smile and washed-out appearance. Perhaps she had slept poorly or caught a virus, but I suspected the shock of her friend’s death had shaken her. She wore sneakers, sweatpants, a t-shirt, and hoodie. The fabrics and the tailoring told me her sweats probably cost more than my best clothes, but still it seemed almost humorous to see the lady of such a grand house dressing down.

  “Nicole, so good of you to drop by.”

  As we shared a social hug, I said, “Happy to. Thanks for agreeing to give me another look at your collection.”

  “Of course,” she said. “What good are they if nobody looks at them? Come on.”

  As we stepped back, and I looked at her up close, fatigue and grief showed equally on her face.

  “I was so sorry to hear about Anne Ghent,” I said. “I know you were friends.”

  She reacted as if seized by cramps. I felt her hands squeezing my shoulders as she struggled to maintain her balance. She sobbed a bit and wiped tears from beneath her eyes. She nodded rather than saying anything.

  When she had stabilized, she put an arm around my shoulders and we walked down the corridor to the door of the drawing room. “Thanks for sending me that list of books.”

  I had to think before recalling the list of titles I had sent after last Tuesday’s visit. “Oh, those. Were they helpful?”