Circles of Confusion (12 page)

The granite stairs, trimmed in shining oak, weren't steep at all, but still Claire could feel the pulse in her throat as she reached the top. Across a long pale distance of flat carpeting stood the front counter. It was shaped like a cube, with the corner of the room forming two sides and a chevron of highly polished wood making up the other. The fortyish woman who sat behind the desk kept herself busy with paperwork even after Claire was standing in front of her. She wore a suit in soft gray wool flannel. There was nothing about the suit that drew attention to itself—no trim, no extra-wide collar, no gilt buttons—but Claire knew immediately that it had cost at least a thousand dollars.

In addition to calculating the worth of the receptionist's suit, the wait gave Claire plenty of time to study the thick, glossy auction catalogues displayed on the desk—English antiques, Impressionist paintings, jewelry. It reminded her of a very upscale clothing store she had wandered into accidentally once in downtown Portland. The whole atmosphere was designed to weed out the kind of people who didn't belong.

Finally the woman looked up and gave Claire a cool, professional smile. "May I help you?" Her accent was British.

"Um, yes, well, I have a painting and I was wondering if I could have someone evaluate it." Claire felt both underdressed and stupid.

"Do you have an appointment?"

She was getting used to this. "No." With an effort, she erased the quiver from her voice. "The security man downstairs said I didn't have to have one." The scent of the flowers that filled a huge vase on the edge of the counter was making her dizzy. Had it been only two days since she sat in her gray burlap cubicle and approved a florist's vanity plate—BO-K? What was she doing here?

"I could see if one of our painting experts is available to take a look at it. You would have to wait."

There was no invitation in her flat voice, but Claire decided she hadn't come three thousand miles for nothing. "I don't mind."

"What type of painting is it? We have specialists in every area: Old Masters, Impressionists, American, modern, contemporary, Latin American."

Claire thought about slipping her backpack from her shoulder to show the woman, but the woman's long narrow upper lip would probably curl at this proof of her commonness. "I really don't know much about it. It's a little painting of a woman with a letter. Someone I showed it to thought it was at least a hundred years old."

This fact did not impress the woman behind the counter. She probably dealt with paintings every day that were centuries old. "One of our generalists will need to examine it and make an aesthetic determination. Please have a seat."

Claire sat down on one end of a blue-striped sectional sofa that ran along two sides of the room. Behind her, a large French-paned window revealed the brightening day and the tall white building opposite. Her stomach felt in free fall. She slipped off her backpack and put it on her lap.

The room was a hub of subdued activity. People bustled in and out with books and brown-paper-wrapped packages. Two young women, both wearing pearls and black velvet headbands, walked carefully through the lobby carrying a large painting of a man on a horse. The elevator doors opened to reveal an elderly woman with diamonds in her ears and on her fingers, accompanied by a dapper Continental-looking man. She requested an armful of catalogs for upcoming sales, but Claire noticed it was the man who paid.

"I understand you have a painting." The voice was unhurried and deep.

Claire turned. The speaker was a man in his mid-thirties, dressed in a black single-breasted suit cut close to his body. His shirt was midnight blue, and his tie was the color of eggplant. The cut and unusual colors all said "money" in an understated way. Above a triangular-shaped face, his dark blond hair was cropped close, and his eyes were the green of cat's-eye marbles. Claire got to her feet.

"I'm Troy Nowell." His palm was cool and dry as they shook hands, and she worried that hers was not.

"Claire. Claire Montrose. I appreciate your seeing me without an appointment. Here, um, let me get the painting..." She began to unzip her backpack under the receptionist's fish-eye gaze. With the tap of a finger on the back of her hand, Troy stilled her.

"No, no, let's wait until we're in the viewing room."

The words viewing room were an incongruous reminder of her grandmother's funeral. As she followed Troy down a narrow hall, Claire remembered how the funeral home had displayed her in an open casket in what it had also called a viewing room. Grandma Montrose, kept thin and ultimately killed off by her three-pack-a- day habit, had been buried in her old Hormel Girl uniform. In the pink and white satin she had looked like a shriveled drum majorette.

As Troy strode ahead of Claire, she noted his height—a few inches over six feet—and the way he walked from the pelvis, padding down the hall in expensive-looking ebony loafers. The hallway was lined with a series of doors set close together, and he opened the last door on the left, revealing a small, utilitarian room far removed from the thick carpet and polished mahogany of the lobby. It held two plain wooden chairs and a small table. The acoustic tile ceiling was low enough to seem oppressive. The room looked more suited to a police interrogation than appraising fine art.

Troy pulled a chair out for her, then sat down in his own. They were so close their knees grazed until Claire inched back her chair. In such tight quarters she was aware of everything, of the dampness at the small of her back, of a curl that was hanging right in front of her eyes, of the green gaze appraising her. She ran her tongue over her teeth, hoping that the peppermint flavor of her toothpaste was still holding out.

"So you've been transporting a painting in a backpack?"

. Claire pushed the curl of hair back impatiently. "It is wrapped in bubble wrap." She was getting tired of feeling stupid. "You sound like the receptionist looked."

"Did Maggie get to you?" He gave her a conspiratorial smile.

"She's a snob and terribly inefficient, but they consider her a treasure. It's that British accent. And her father's money. Her father is Lord Cornaby-Jones. He's one of the landed gentry, which allows her to dress in the way they desire all Avery's employees to dress, in a manner reflecting our passage through finishing schools, riding academies and debutante balls."

Claire detected an edge of bitterness. "And did you?"

"Pardon?"

"Did you pass through riding academies and debutante balls?"

His voice lost some of its crisp precision. "Not hardly. My father was a garbage man in Jersey. Of course, I don't say anything about that here. If pressed, I'll admit he was in the waste management business." He sat back in his chair, resuming his businesslike demeanor. "So, has this painting been in your family long?"

Claire imagined a line of semi-royals, one passing it down to another. She tried to match Troy's precise, expensive-sounding way of speaking. "Since the war, I believe. When my great-aunt died she left me her estate, which included this painting."

"And this was—where?"

"In White City, Oregon. But I live in Portland."

"Oregon, hmm?" he echoed, mispronouncing Oregon so that it ended in gone instead of gun. "Well, let's have a look." From his jacket pocket he produced a pair of white cotton gloves and pulled them on, smoothing them over his long fingers.

Claire unzipped the backpack and pulled out the painting. With her fingernail, she caught an edge of tape, peeled it back from the bubble wrap, and finally unfolded it. She looked up as she bared the painting.

Troy's face went as still as a mask. Following his gaze, she looked down at the painting, at the woman who stared back at her, revealing nothing in her gaze except that she had her own secrets. Claire rotated the painting to face him. Viewing it upside down freed her to see the care with which it had been painted. What appeared to be a single color, like the woman's yellow jacket, was instead created from minutely different tones, tiny overlapping lozenges of paint that reflected the influence of light and shadow. Even the white wall showed each subtle change of light intensity and tone through almost innumerable variations of colors.

Troy was so quiet she could hear his breathing. Finally he stretched out his white-gloved hands and picked up the painting with just his fingertips. He tilted it to the overhead light, and then away. His breathing was not any faster, but on some level she was aware that it was deeper. The silence and his closeness gave the moment an intimacy that heightened every one of Claire's senses.

Still without speaking, he switched on a lamp that had a round magnifying glass attached to it. It was as if he were alone with the woman in the painting, talking to her without words, asking her what mysteries she held close.

While Troy methodically examined every centimeter of the painting, Claire focused for the first time on the fine white cracks that ran through the paint, an effect that softened and blurred the image at close range, but that at a distance of more than three feet was nearly invisible. Along the white wall, the cracks showed black where untold years of dust had collected. What had the man at the antique store called them? Craquelure?

Except for his breathing, Troy continued to be absolutely silent, his concentration so intense that Claire was free to study him. No wedding ring, she noted. And even though every inch looked well- cared for, there was nothing effeminate about him. The first, catlike impression she had had of him was heightened by his complete stillness and self-absorption, as watchful as a cat observing something he desired.

Troy flicked off the switch of the magnifying lamp, then turned on another, smaller lamp. Still without speaking, he reached back and clicked oft the overhead lights. The room went dark except for an odd purple glow emanating from the lamp. Claire realized it was a black light, like one she remembered from grade school, the mysterious glow that lit up a friend's older brother's room filled with specially designed psychedelic posters. When she turned her eyes from the light to the painting, she inhaled in surprise. Part of her painting, in the right hand corner next to the painted window, was glowing faintly purple!

"What does that mean?" Influenced by the intimacy of the darkened room, her voice came out in a whisper.

"It's an addition made after the original painting was finished. Sometimes if a painting becomes damaged, a restorer will try to touch it up." Troy finally tore his gaze from the painting and looked at her, a half-ghost, the hollows under his cheekbones glowing purple in the light. "You said you showed this to someone in Portland? Who was that?"

"A man who owned a store that sold antiques. He didn't know much about paintings, though."

"And have you shown it to anyone else in New York?"

"I was also thinking about bringing it to Sotheby's or maybe Christie's." Claire felt disloyal mentioning Avery's greatest rivals. "Mostly because I like the way Sotheby's sounds when you say it. It sounds so rich and refined and British."

Troy snorted. "Sotheby was just a book salesman who decided to use an auction to force people to stop dawdling and buy in a few hours. He was one step up from a tinker."

He reached out, his arm brushing past Claire's, and flicked off the switch for the black light. For a half-second they sat in complete darkness. The warmth of his breath crossed her face as he reached back for the light switch. Something inside of her felt as if it were coming undone, but when the overhead light went on Troy's face was impassive as ever.

"Tell me more about how your great-aunt acquired this paint- ing."

"She was in a woman's branch of the Army, stationed in Europe as a clerk right after the war. I think she may have gotten the painting from a man who was also in the Army."

"And when was this?"

"She was there until the end of 1945."

"And stationed—where?"

"Munich."

Troy was quiet for a long time. "There are a number of striking things about this painting. Its small size. The light coming from a window on the left. A solitary woman with broad-spaced eyes. An ermine trimmed yellow jacket. Then there are the lion's-head finials on the chair, and the crumpled Turkish carpet on the table."

"Do you know what it is?"

He picked up the painting again, tilting it toward him and then away. "Have you ever heard of a seventeenth-century Dutch painter, Vermeer, Jan Vermeer?"

"Didn't they have a big show of his paintings in the National Gallery a couple of years ago?" Claire remembered reading about the curator, the years of effort spent assembling a show only to have it closed first by a government shutdown and then by the fiercest snowstorm in a century. A thrill went through her. "Is this one of his paintings?"

An expression she couldn't name flickered across Troy's face. "There are many parallels with his general style, yes." His voice was careful.

"But?" Claire prompted.

"But I'm afraid what you have here is known as a pastiche."

"A pastiche?"

"A forgery. A forgery in the manner ofVermeer, combining all the elements he is known for—northern light, yellow satin jacket, even a woman reading a letter. It's a compilation of every Vermeer cliche, all simmered together to make a single painting." He turned the painting back so that again the woman looked Claire in the eye, her gaze steady and enigmatic. "I'm sorry. I know you've come a very long way."