Circles of Confusion (30 page)

"Which probably makes him the one who searched your house."

"But what about Charlie?" Claire pressed her fingertips against her closed eyes. "She's eighty-three years old! She only weighs about ninety pounds. I don't even hug her hard. This guy's so much bigger—he could hurt her without even meaning to." Her fingers pressed harder. Bursts of red and orange light exploded behind her eyelids. She dropped her hands to the table, and Dante reached out and covered one briefly with his own.

"But you didn't see any sign that she'd been hurt, did you? Maybe she's hiding just like you are. She came home, saw what had happened and took off. With her history she probably doesn't trust police too much. And even if this guy Karl did kidnap her, I think he'd keep her safe. He knows she's the one sure way to get to you."

Claire felt a little better. "I'm just afraid he killed her. I couldn't stand it if she were dead."

"I don't mean to be blunt, but if she were dead, wouldn't he have left her body there? After all, he didn't mind attracting a lot of attention when he killed your neighbor."

"So you think Karl's the one who did that?"

"He seems a pretty likely suspect. Or maybe that guy Paul who told you he was a cop." Dante had asked if they should call in the local police, but Claire was too frightened, and he didn't push it. She remembered Paul Roberts's engraved badge and the police light on the dash of his car. What if he really were a cop, bought off by someone who knew about the painting? Claire took a deep breath and explained where she had hidden the painting. Dante's next suggestion was that they retrieve the painting and fly back to New York, where there were international art experts as well as a police force more experienced in dealing with art crimes.

"There's one thing I don't understand about what happened to my neighbor," Claire said. "To Sonia. If they thought she was me, why weren't they worried about blowing up the painting, too?"

"I'll have to admit I don't understand that either." Dante tilted his head back to drain the last of the wine. His white shirt was open at the neck, and Claire watched the muscles move in the column of his throat. A tuft of wiry hair was just visible at the base. She tried to ignore the wave of heat that ran from her breasts to her belly.

"What do you think we should do next?

Claire liked the way he said "we." It made her feel less alone. "I wish I knew if the painting were real or not. If it were a fake, I might just be tempted to burn it."

Dante set his glass down hard. "Burn it! Why?"

In quick succession, Claire saw Charlie's face, the hotel maid's frightened eyes, Soma's hand raised in greeting. "So much evil is being done to try to get it."

"But if it is real, you can't destroy it. And I think it is very real. Remember those photos I took? I've carried them with me ever since." He reached for his satchel and took out a manila envelope.

Inside were the color photographs he had shown her earlier. He ran the tip of his index finger over the curve of the woman's cheek. "There were dozens of Dutch genre painters, but a woman in a Vermeer painting is something extraordinary. Cool, remote and absolutely beautiful."

"Like a still life. That's what you said when we first met."

"You remember that?" He gave her a surprised look that lengthened into a smile. "And it's more than just a feeling. I told you that a Vermeer matching this description was sold at the famous Dissius auction three hundred years ago. There are stories that it turned up later with a French king's mistress, that a Hapsburg duke lost it at a gaming table. But there's a few more things I'd like to check on." His next question surprised her. "Does your office building have any other tenants besides the state of Oregon?"

"The state doesn't own it. We just rent space there."

"What do the other tenants do?"

"There's a law firm and a temp agency and a building contractor—"

Dante interrupted her list. "Any kind of doctor?"

"There's a clinic on sixteen. They have about five or six doctors, but I'm not sure what they specialize in. I was only up there once when I closed my finger in a filing cabinet and I thought it might be broken. They X-rayed it and said—"

He interrupted her again. "Would that magic card of yours get us in there?"

"The one that really belongs to the security guard? I don't know. It might. Why?"

"I've been thinking about another way we could tell if what you have is a Vermeer. But to do it, I need an X-ray machine."

KPASAMD

For dessert, the waiter brought her a slice of chocolate-peanut butter pie with a single candle flickering in it. She realized she had told Dante it was her birthday when she talked about what had happened that morning. His dark eyes reflecting the flame of the candle, Dante told her to make a wish. There were so many things to wish for. Claire tried to cover all the bases by closing her eyes and wishing simply that everything would turn out all right.

They dawdled over dessert and then several cups of coffee until the waiter simply left them alone, having given up all hope of turning their table. While Dante paid the bill, Claire called her mom from the pay phone to let her know that she was all right, Jean reported that she had hung up on an Oregonian reporter and turned another away at the door. When Jean began to worry about whether Claire would be safe, she finally reassured her that she was going to her own building, which Jean knew was accessible only by card key.

Claire and Dante got to the building's parking lot at 7:30 P.M., just as the last car was leaving, and walked down the parking garage stairs to the basement entrance. After hours, the basement door opened only to card key holders, so it was a good way to test—without witnesses—whether the twice-stolen card still worked. It did. They took the elevator straight from the basement to the thirteenth floor, bypassing the front desk entirely. The pillow was still strapped across Claire's belly and Dante pushed the stroller. She figured that if they were challenged, the props might provide a precious moment or two of confusion.

Their luck held on Claire's floor. Her cubicle was still half- decorated for the birthday party that had never happened. A single jelly-filled donut had even survived Frank's assault on the Winchells box, and Claire ate it while Dante retrieved the painting.

When he climbed down to stand beside her, the bubble-wrapped painting in his hands, she noticed how his breathing had quickened more than could be expected from a climb on and off a desktop.

Dante's fingers hovered over the tape. "Mind if I take another look?" he asked. Claire nodded. Standing so close, she noticed he smelled like cinnamon. He slid the painting out. For a long moment, they both stared at the woman, caught in a moment in time, with her wide eyes and slightly parted lips. In turn, she regarded them without surprise.

"Whoever painted this knew the secret of light, didn't he?" said Dante, breaking the silence. "Look at how the light flows into this room and creates a dozen different shades of every color it touches. Even the shadows are rich with colors."

"Did you notice she doesn't have a shadow? Charlie pointed that out to me."

"She's got a good eye. The best painters make you think you're looking at reality by showing you something completely different."

"Are you one of the best painters? Someday I'd like to see your work."

An expression she couldn't translate crossed Dante's face. "I'm afraid you'd probably be disappointed." He turned away from her and delicately slid the painting back into the bubble wrap.

Claire's stolen key card again worked its magic on the clinic's door. They took a quick walk around the office, which was laid out for maximum efficiency. A central nursing station was surrounded by four exam rooms, each barely big enough for an examining table, a stool, and a countertop with sink. Behind the receptionist's desk were a couple of physician's offices, each with two desks. A third room held the X-ray machine, which was mounted on a movable arm attached to the ceiling. Dante raised and lowered it, a thoughtful expression on his face. Then he went back into the reception area and retrieved his satchel from underneath the stroller.

He began to lay out a series of tools in a neat row on the receptionist's desk. There was a black headpiece with magnifying lenses, a roll of white cotton wrapped in paper, some orange sticks, a sheaf of white heavy paper, a stoppered bottle of red-tinged fluid, and what Claire guessed was a scalpel. "I brought some things with me that might help me figure out what we're looking at."

"You mean whether it's real or not?"

"It may not be that simple. In real life, there are a lot more shades of gray than there are blacks and whites. Say this really is a Vermeer, or at least it began life that way. Any three-hundred-and- fifty-year-old painting will have changed since it left the artist's easel. The question is—how much repainting has to take place before it is no longer a Vermeer?" From the satchel, he took a black case not much bigger than his palm. "So this could be a Vermeer. Or it could be a Vermeer that has been so heavily repainted that it really isn't much of a Vermeer at all anymore. Or it could be a painting by someone else who was painting at the same time as Vermeer. Or it could be an out-and-out forgery painted last week."

Dante opened the carrying case, revealing a small portable light. "In some ways, we have it easy. If this were a possible Rembrandt, it would be even more complicated. Rembrandt ran a painting school, and as part of their training, his students used to copy his paintings, or paint their own works in his style. That means there are literally hundreds of paintings floating around that are the right age, done on the right kind of canvas with the right paints in the right style. They're just not Rembrandts. And to make it even more complicated, Rembrandt used to make corrections directly on his students' work, showing them how he would do it. So some paintings might be ninety percent student and ten percent Rembrandt. And if a student's painting was really good, Rembrandt might just sign it himself."

"So how can anyone even tell if a painting is a Rembrandt or not?"

"Sometimes even the experts don't know. Still, everyone agrees there are hundreds of real Rembrandts. But there are only thirty- two undisputed Vermeers, with maybe another dozen arguables. Some of those may have something in common with Rembrandt's work. After he died, people forged his signature on paintings that weren't his but might have been. Not only is it a lot easier to fake a signature than a whole painting, it's also a hell of a lot harder to detect."

Claire remembered how closely both Troy and Dante had examined the painting. "But there isn't a signature."

"That's one thing that makes me think this may really be a Vermeer. If you had created a forged Vermeer, you'd want the whole world to realize it."

Dante plugged in his portable lamp and turned off the overhead light. They were left with a single narrow focused beam of light. He propped the painting on a thick copy of Physicians' Desk Reference, and then dropped to his knees and began to inspect it from below, holding the light nearly parallel to the surface.

"What is that?" Claire knew there was no need to whisper, but it seemed natural in the darkness.

"It's called a raking light."

Some parts of the painting stood out in high relief, while others fell in dark shadows. The fine cracks that glazed the painting now appeared as deep canyons. It reminded Claire of photographs of the moon, with their revelations of mountains, ridges and craters. "What are you looking for?"

"With a raking light, you see not only the damage, but you can also spot any overpainting."

"You mean things the artist changed?"

"Sometimes. Or a new owner might decide to change something to suit him. Three hundred years ago a painting was just part of the household furnishings. They weren't treated as valuable museum pieces. People might cut one up to fit a new frame or have someone repaint a face to match their daughter's. The raking light helps you see stuff the original painter didn't do. And that guy from Avery's was right, the upper right-hand corner has been repainted. I also see some other raised areas. Not too many, though. Probably just touchups where there was a little rubbing over the years. And I think some of the highlights have been redone. But on the whole the paint layer is in very good condition."

"But there are so many cracks," Claire protested. "Are there supposed to be that many?"

"If you were three hundred and fifty years old, you'd have a lot of cracks, too. And luckily the suitcase under your great-aunt's bed must not have been near a heating vent. Fifty years in a more or less climate-controlled environment. It's the pattern of the cracks that I'm interested in."

"The pattern?" Claire echoed.

"I did some research into your Troy's theory that this is a fake by Van Meegeren."

Claire wanted to protest that he wasn't "her" Troy, but she let Dante continue.

"He faked his cracks by baking his paintings in a two-hundred- degree oven. Then to crack them even more, he wrapped them around a cylinder and pressed on them with his thumb. The only problem is that this resulted in very regular cracks, more like a grid."

Claire took a closer look, not at the cracks themselves, but at the pattern they made. If anything, they were like spiderwebs. "So this isn't one of Van Meegeren's forgeries, then?"