by Rick Homan
I pulled the box in front of me and lowered the picture into it as he walked toward me.
“Need some help?” he asked.
“Nope. It fits just fine.”
“You hold it, and I’ll tape it.”
“That’s okay,” I said, taking the roll of tape from him. “I can manage.”
With a few deft moves, I had the box sealed. I set the roll of tape on a chair and leaned the box toward him. “Why don’t you carry this out to my car?”
While he picked up the box, I grabbed the remainder of the bubble-wrap and slipped the handles of my tote bag onto my shoulder, being careful to keep it closed so he couldn’t see the roll of duct tape I’d brought with me.
I preceded him down the corridor and out the front door. I had my car open by the time he got there. “Slide it right in there,” I said, pointing to the floor in front of the rear seat.
Once he had it stowed, I stepped toward the driver’s seat and pulled the door toward me. “I should be back between one and two. I’ll call if I get held up anywhere.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks for doing all this. It means a lot to me. I can’t wait to talk to you about . . .”
I didn’t hear the rest of whatever he had to say. I shut my door and concentrated on backing out of his driveway without hitting his mailbox. As I drove through the neighborhood, I kept one eye on the speedometer so I wouldn’t put the pedal to the metal, which was what I felt like doing.
By the time I reached the highway I was quivering with rage. I was doing this guy a favor and he was hitting on me. I thought about trying to stop somewhere, get out of the car, and burn off some of my energy, but I was afraid I would hurt myself if I started kicking a tree.
I considered going into a shop for a nice long cup of coffee and hoping the painting was gone when I came back out. “I’m sorry, John,” I imagined myself saying to him. “I only ran in for a minute to use the restroom. Too bad about your painting.”
I also considered driving my car off a cliff—if I could find a cliff in this part of Ohio—so I could say to him. “Everything went up in flames. It’s a shame about the painting. By the way you owe me a new car.”
So, what would I really do? I was having this painting examined partly to satisfy myself and partly to get some information that might be valuable to Tiffany. Since Sandra was standing by at Greenbrae to help me, I resolved to carry through with the plan, return the painting, and give Ghent a brief report. Beyond that I would deal with him by email.
Chapter 21
The parking lot alongside the Greenbrae Art Museum was nearly full when I arrived, so I drove past the front of the building, hoping Sandra might recognize my car. Sure enough, she came out the front door wearing a lemon-yellow sweater with dressy slacks and shoes and walked down the steps to meet me.
“Good morning,” she said, and pointed back to the way I had come. “Go through the lot and take that gravel drive around to the back of the building. I’ll meet you there.” She went back in the front door.
The drive ended in a patch of gravel big enough for a few cars. I got out and looked at the house, recalling which windows belonged to the offices on the second floor and which belonged to the kitchen on the first floor.
As I stood there, the cover on the bulkhead opened and Sandra came up the stairs from the cellar. “Let’s bring it in this way,” she said.
I slid the big, flat box out of the car and carried it down the stairs.
The cellar was roomy and well lit, apparently having been designed as a working space for the staff of the big house. Sandra led me to a work table in the middle of a large room. The wall nearby had hand tools on a pegboard with storage bins lined up beneath.
After pulling the painting from the box and taking her time unwrapping it, Sandra set it on a table-top easel. I sat in a swivel chair off to one side.
“I put some questions out on a registrar’s forum,” she said. “I wanted to see if anyone had seen any late-period Picassos. I thought if anyone had we could exchange pictures and compare notes. So far nothing has come up, but I’ll keep looking.”
“Maybe that’s good news.”
“How so?” she asked.
“If some forger were specializing in late Picassos, it seems like they would turn up more often.”
“Or it could be the forger is targeting private owners, and they haven’t come to the attention of people working at museums yet.”
Thinking about art forgery started to feel like looking down a deep well. “All the same, thanks for checking,” I said.
She opened a drawer in the work table, got a scratch pad and pencil, sat on a high stool, and looked at the painting. Every ten or fifteen seconds she jotted something on the pad and then went back to looking.
After doing this for a few minutes, she set her pad and pencil on the work table.
“Do you see anything interesting?” I asked.
“I was just jotting down my impressions. It’s a way to make the examination more focused.”
Placing her hands on the table, she leaned forward until her nose was less than an inch from the surface of the painting and held it there several seconds.
My curiosity got the better or me. “What are you doing now?”
“Checking to see if the paint is dry.”
I laughed. “Seriously?”
She smiled and nodded. “Paint can be dry to the touch and still give off a scent of thinner for years, depending on what conditions it’s kept in. Forgers learn to heat a painting in an oven for several hours to burn off all the fumes. This one passes that test. If it is a fake, this forger wasn’t a complete beginner.”
After looking at the painting for another minute, she took a pad of sticky notes from the drawer in the table, peeled one off, and stuck it to the edge of the table. Then she lifted the painting off the easel, turned it around so the unpainted surface of the canvas was facing her, and steadied it with one hand. With her other hand, she slipped the sticky note between the canvas and the wooden stretcher on the bottom of the painting, and slid it back and forth.
When she pulled out the sticky note and showed it to me, I said, “Looks like dust and lint.”
She smiled. “That’s what it is. Either this has been hanging on a wall for decades, or the forger was smart enough to put dust and lint under the stretcher so it looks as if it has.”
So far all we knew was the painting either was real or was made to seem real. “So far, so good,” I said.
“I wish there were a single test that could prove a painting either is or isn’t real, but there’s no such thing. We just keep trying more tests to see if it fails one or more of them. If it passes them all, it’s either real, or it’s a very good forgery.”
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“Welcome to my world.”
She asked me to take the easel off the work table, and, when the surface was clear, she laid the painting flat, face-up.
“This part may get boring,” she said. She switched on a lamp with a big magnifying lens on a crane neck and pulled it into position so it hovered over the upper left corner of the painting. She stared through the lens for a few seconds before moving the lamp to the right a few inches and again staring through the lens.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Broken lines. Variations in color. Anything that doesn’t quite line up.”
“And what if you find those things?”
“It could mean the forger struggled in spots to make it look like Picasso, or it could mean the painting was damaged and imperfectly repaired at some point.”
“So, again, not conclusive.”
“That’s true, although If I don’t find any oddities, that’s one less thing to be suspicious about.”
I watched for a while and felt frustrated because I couldn’t look through the magnifying lens with her. When it was clear she would need another ten minutes to complete her inspection, I took a walk around the basement and
saw that Greenbrae still had lots of Horace Oaks’ bric-a-brac in storage. There were bronze statues of Greco-Roman heroes, three-quarters life-size; marble cherubs; gaudy chandeliers; and paintings in bubble-wrap.
I wondered if it were wise to store these things in a basement, but the air did not smell damp, and maybe, since the house was at the top of a hill, there was no danger of flooding in a hard rain. It was also likely they couldn’t afford off-site storage.
When Sharon pulled the work light away from the painting, I went back over to see what she would try next. “Anything look suspicious?”
She shook her head. “Nothing so far.”
She went to the storage bins under the pegboard and got out a hand-held utility light with a long electrical cord attached. After plugging it in, she waved it back and forth over a section of the painting, starting again in the upper-left corner. The hand-held light cast a strange glow over the painting, causing all the colors to change. “Let’s see if the UV light will turn up anything.”
“Are you looking for anything specifically?” I asked.
“Anything that shouldn’t be there,” she replied.
“Maybe we’ll see the ghost of an image that’s been painted over,” I said, knowing artists sometimes do that because they’re too poor to buy new canvases and forgers sometimes do that to reuse materials from the period they are forging.
“Picasso was rich at the end of his life, so I doubt he’d have done that. Also, I’m looking for anything that shouldn’t be there that might have been left behind by somebody working fast. Lots of things fluoresce: fibers, minerals, chemicals. If I see it under UV but not under white light, I’m suspicious.”
I watched as she worked over the canvas but saw nothing. Apparently she didn’t either, because she switched it off and set it aside without saying anything.
After looking at the painting for another minute, Sandra said, “Remind me: What do you know about the provenance?”
“Not much. The sales director at the Redburn Gallery would say only that this Picasso was sold by a family who had received it directly from Picasso in the early 1970s and that he agreed to keep all the other details confidential. The family doesn’t want it known they’re selling the painting.”
Sharon nodded. “That happens. Maybe they need the cash and don’t want to let the world know they’re strapped. On the other hand, that kind of story is very convenient for a forger, because the buyer has only the gallery’s word it.”
“So, we don’t know any more than when we started.”
“We know one thing. If it is a forgery, it was done by an experienced professional.”
I was ready to wrap the painting up, but Sharon was still staring at it.
“Let me check something else,” she said.
She lifted the painting off the work table, turned it so the unpainted surface was once again facing her, and brought her nose to within an inch of the canvas. She sniffed a couple of other spots before turning to me with a peculiar smile on her face. “Smell that,” she said.
I tried a few spots and said, “I don’t smell anything.”
“I don’t either.”
“So, what does that mean?”
“This painting is almost fifty years old. What are the chances it spent those fifty years in a smoke-free environment?”
I shrugged.
“Remember, it belonged to a family. It was probably in a private home. People used to smoke everywhere. It’s possible it belonged to two or three generations of non-smokers, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“So, you think it’s a fake?”
“I wouldn’t say that, but I’m less convinced it’s real.”
“Well, what should I tell John Ghent?”
“I won’t give you an opinion on that because, as Curtis likes to remind me, that’s not our business. But if I were at a museum that displayed modern paintings, and a curator were interested in buying this for the collection, I would advise him to hold off until he had more information.”
I pulled out my phone and pulled up the photo I had of Tiffany’s Picasso. “Here’s some more information. Tiffany also bought her Picasso from the Redburn Gallery shortly after Anne bought hers.”
“Does hers have the same provenance as Anne’s?”
“I asked him and he wouldn’t say.”
Sandra smiled a little wider. “Now I’m suspicious.”
“Why?”
“I would have to examine the other one to see if it’s in the same condition. It’s possible a non-smoking family got two paintings from Picasso and recently decided to sell them both, but it’s also possible that gallery is working with a forger and putting them out one at a time.”
“Which do you think it is?” I asked
“I don’t know, but I would want more info before paying for a Picasso.”
“So, can I tell John Ghent that a potential buyer will probably come to the same conclusion?”
“Sounds reasonable.”
While we were packing up the painting, we heard the door at the top stairs of the open.
Chapter 22
From the kitchen above, we heard Curtis call out, “Sandra?”
She looked at me and winced.
The painting was on the work table, almost ready to go in the box. There was no way to get it out of sight.
Curtis came around the corner, looked at me, looked at Sandra, looked at the painting, and scowled.
“Nicole brought a painting over for me to look at,” said Sandra.
Curtis glared at her.
“It’s John Ghent’s Picasso,” I said. “He doesn’t know I brought it here or that Sandra looked at it. I told him I would have an expert look at it, but that it had to be confidential. He won’t know Greenbrae is involved.”
Curtis gave no sign of having heard me. When he spoke, his voice had a metallic sound, as if he were straining to control himself. “Sandra, apparently we have a misunderstanding, though I have made myself clear on several occasions. Please come to my office when you’re done here.” He turned and walked back upstairs.
His words gave me a chill.
“He must have left his luncheon early,” said Sandra.
“How much trouble are you in?” I asked.
She waved her hand to silence me. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll have a talk. I’ll reassure him. By next week it will be forgotten.”
We finished packing the painting, and she helped me get it in my car.
As I drove back toward Elbridge, I wondered what Curtis had in store for Sandra. I hoped she was right about how he would handle the situation and how she could handle him. The first time I visited the museum, I wondered if he might have murdered Anne Ghent. Now I wondered whether he would turn violent toward Sandra because she went against his wishes. That seemed crazy, but no one ever said murderers are sane.
I thought about calling Detective Brian Murphy and reporting this latest show of hostility by Curtis. But if my fear was justified, if Curtis lost control with Sandra, a call to Detective Murphy would be too little, too late. I pulled over to the curb, fished my phone out of my purse, and called her.
“Hi, Nicole. Did you forget something?”
I relaxed and exhaled. “I thought I might have left my sunglasses on your work table.”
“I can run downstairs and look.”
“Don’t bother. Next time you’re down there, if you see them, set them aside for me.”
“Will do.”
“Did you talk to Curtis/”
“Yes. He apologized. Once he thought about what you said, he saw the museum wasn’t compromised.”
“Well, that’s good. Thanks again for helping me with John’s painting.”
We hung up and I drove into town.
On one side of the courthouse square I found Bella’s kitchen, offering coffee, sandwiches, desserts, and Wi-Fi—everything I needed at that moment. I parked across the street and took the boxed painting with me into the cafe.
Th
e interior of Bella’s continued the lavender and yellow theme on her hand-painted outdoor sign. She must have hired a local painter to decorate the window frames with flowering vines. The tables and chairs were mismatched, old-fashioned wooden pieces, painted to match the decor. I hoped the food was prepared with similar care. I ordered vegetable soup and a lemonade, got the Wi-Fi password, and took a table by the window.
As I sipped the lemonade and let my eyes wander over the street scene, I dreaded having to spend time with John Ghent at his house. The best solution I could think of involved my guy, Pat Gillespie. I decided to call in a batch of IOUs. I phoned him, thinking I would leave a voicemail and hope he called me back before I finished my lunch, but I got lucky. He answered.
“How would you feel about dropping whatever you’re doing and meeting me in Elbridge?” I asked. “It’s over toward Dayton, along I-71.”
“Hmmm.” He sounded intrigued. “What’s in it for me?”
Using my low, sexy, phone voice, I said, “I can’t discuss that right now, but, trust me: You’ll like it.”
“Is this a lunch date?”
“Lunch can be eaten at Bella’s Kitchen on Main street, but there’s a little more to it than that.”
“How long will this take?”
“We’ll be back to your place in time for dinner and our night. And, don’t worry, I’ll make it worth your while.”
“You’d better. I’m skipping my workout for this. I’m on my way.”
Knowing Pat would be with me soon made me feel better. I took some time to enjoy my vegetable soup before thinking about what I wanted to tell John Ghent.
The soup was quite good, a little too peppery, but it had a nice mix of vegetables, and they were fresh. When I finished it, I got some coffee, opened my laptop, and set to work planning the next phase of my campaign to prove the Picassos were real.
I’d found most of what I needed when I saw Pat’s green jeep roll down the street, slow down as it came to my little yellow car, and go on to a parking space near the corner.
Within a minute, he was striding up the street, eyes scanning store fronts until he found Bella’s. In his khaki windbreaker, jeans, and sneakers, he was a good-looking man. He smiled when he saw me sitting by the window. I never got tired of looking at those green eyes.