Circles of Confusion (34 page)

Claire looked over at Charlie. She had expected to find her slumped agamst her bonds in exhaustion or residual terror, but instead Charlie's face was intent as her shoulders twisted back and forth. "Try and get behind me. If you can put your foot on this one part of the rope, I think I can get loose."

In a painful progress of tiny hops and drags that left her fingers numb, Claire was halfway to Charlie when a hand fell on her shoulder. She cried out.

But it wasn't Rudy having second thoughts. Instead, Dante stood swaying beside her. He looked terrible. One side of his head was matted with blood, and his left hand cradled his ribs.

"How are you?" Claire asked. For that moment, she was willing to forgive him anything, because he was alive.

"I'm surviving." He gave them both a smile, and Claire knew he was consciously echoing Charlie's earlier words. "Let me see if I can find something to get you loose." He rummaged through the cabinets and reappeared with a scalpel. Although he had to stop several times to rest, Dante finally sawed Charlie free. When it was her turn, Claire was alarmed to hear his ragged breathing, louder than the dying wind. He finished cutting her loose about the same time that Charlie came back from her own raid on the doctors' supplies, her arms full of bandages and tape. She had him sit down in the chair Claire had just vacated, and then ran her fingers lightly over first his ribs and then his head.

"Three or four cracked ribs and a good-sized cut on your head. But it's not fractured. You must have a very thick skull."

"Ask Claire about that." Dante sucked in his breath as Claire put a generous dab of antibiotic cream on his cut.

They gathered up their things and then descended the darkened stairwell, guided by the flashlight Claire had retrieved from her backpack. When they reached the shelter of the building's entrance, they found Troy, looking out at Karl's body. Now covered by a sheet, it lay in the middle of Broadway Boulevard, bracketed on one side by an ambulance and on the other by a police car. The sirens were silent and both drivers were behind the wheel talking into handheld radios. Otherwise, the street was deserted. Through the litter of thousands of leaves and small branches, the wind—now a brisk breeze—scudded an occasional orange traffic cone or empty box.

Troy barely glanced at them. "Hello, Claire." His eyes were pulled back to the sheet-covered body. The fact that she had acquired two well-worn companions and bandages around her wrists seemed not to impact him at all.

"Troy." It took her a minute to remember what he was guilty of. When compared to Rudy and Karl, not very much. Just trying to steal the painting from her in New York.

"The painting's destroyed, you know. I went out to try to help this guy and here he is, holding your painting. Most of the middle is just... gone."

"What were you planning on doing with the Vermeer?"

He spoke absently, still mesmerized by destruction. "It wasn't a Vermeer, of course. But the beautiful thing about it was that it so easily could have been. All it needed was a signature. And that little detail could have been remedied. Ten minutes' work from John and I could have sold it for three million easy."

"John? Your chauffeur?"

An expression that under other circumstances might have been a smile crossed Troy's face. "John works for me, yes. Usually, he just adds or subtracts."

"What do you mean?"

"People bring paintings to Avery's that have been in the family for generations, but they still are completely undistinguished. A few years ago, I realized how little it would take to make them salable. It was easy enough to find an artist willing to finally make some money. You see, with just a bit of paint, old women can become young girls, unknown sitters famous generals, landscapes acquire a dog or a horse in the foreground—just the kind of revisions that make a painting worth several thousand instead of several hundred."

"You'd risk your entire career for a few thousand dollars?"

"Oh, but if you make three or four thousand every week, yes. Avery's isn't a place for poor people. Their pay scale is predicated on the idea that you're already living off Daddy's trust fund. Every day I see what money can buy. Do you know how hard that is when you don't have any yourself? And then you came in with that clever little pastiche. All it needed was a signature, which would be no trouble for John. There are a lot of gullible collectors out there who would be willing to spend three million or so for a painting by the great Dutch master Vermeer."

Dante spoke up. "I'll have to remember that next time we have dealings with Avery's."

Troy tore his gaze from the sheet that covered the remains of the painting. He looked at Dante, who had a bandage looped around his head. "I know you, don't I?"

Claire wasn't surprised by this. After all, thieves probably ran in the same circles.

"Dante Bonner."

"That's right, from the Met. Don't worry, I only work my magic for my private sales. Well-heeled Upper West Side matrons. The Fifis, if you know what I mean."

Now it was Claire's turn to stare, first at Dante, then at Troy. "He doesn't work at the Met. He's a painter. Only he had the same plan as you did—to steal the painting."

Dante pushed the hair out of his eyes and gave her his full attention. "What are you talking about?"

"I saw the photo of you and your wife!" Claire felt Charlie's arm slip around her waist. "And I found this." Claire reached into the neckline of her maternity top and pulled out the note. "You were making notes on who you could get to buy it."

"I was making notes on whether the Met would buy it, given its lack of provenance." Dante's dark eyes shot sparks. "And more important, if you're talking about the photo—which you must have found snooping through my wallet—that was from my sister's wedding! Did you really think I would make love to you under such false pretenses?"

"Don't give me that. Don't tell me that some blue-eyed blond is your sister!"

They had finally caught Troy's attention. He was swiveling his head back and forth as if he were at a tennis match, and Claire found herself wishing he would just go away.

"Remember—my last name is Bonner. My sister is a throwback to the German part of our family. And the only reason she's blond is that her hair has a little help." Dante shook his head, his jaw set with anger. "I can't believe how little you trusted me. And how stupid you thought I was. Did you really think I wouldn't notice something was wrong last night?"

A renewed flame of anger blazed up in Claire. "You're the one who lied to me! You said you were a painter."

"You asked me if I was and I told you the truth. It's just not how I make my living. I didn't want to tell you where I really worked' because I didn't want to scare you off. When you first showed me the painting, I thought you were like that guy from Kansas whose family had a whole trove of stolen art. It might have disappeared again if I scared you off. But after I figured out the truth, I couldn't think of a way to tell you who I was without making you mad." He turned around and started to walk away, then stopped for a second. "Did you really think the only thing that attracted me to you was that damn painting?"

For the sixth time, Jean Montrose leaned forward to squint at her new VCR, making sure it was set to Record. It was. And after the tap-dancing bottle of toilet cleanser disappeared, there she was, Elizabeth—or Liz, as she had graciously told Jean to call her—with her riveting turquoise eyes. She sat behind a Lucite desk that revealed a pair of slim, tanned thighs draped in the tiniest of skirts. Jean had already pasted the article from this week's TV Guide in her scrapbook, the one that compared Stop the Presses to America's Most Wanted. Like AMW, it mixed interviews with re-creations—only with a focus on starlets, sex scandals and high society, with only the occasional murder thrown in for spice.

Liz straightened her shoulders and launched into the top story. "Good evening and welcome to the premiere of Stop the Presses. Tonight we bring you the story of a brave young appraiser at Avery's, the world-famous auction house." A photo of Troy Nowell appeared over her left shoulder, looking solemn, jaw set. "When a young woman came to him with an unlikely tale about where she had gotten a beautiful painting, he felt compelled to investigate. And what he found will surprise you. It's a story that's still being unraveled—a story of Nazi loot, secret deals for stolen art, and murder."

Jean leaned forward, enthralled. She had liked Troy from the moment she had first seen him through her chain lock, on the night of the big windstorm. At first he'd been all mixed up, thinking Jean was Claire's sister. "You're not her mother, surely?" he'd asked in that rich way he had of speaking. Then he explained about how he had met Claire in New York City and fallen head over heels in love. Intent on protecting her from some complicated-sounding but clearly urgent danger, he had followed her back to Oregon. It wasn't long before Jean had taken the chain off the door and invited Troy inside for a cup of coffee. And over a second cup, accompanied by some Ho-Hos she just happened to have, Jean had let slip where Troy might find Claire. She hadn't realized she was sending him in harm's way, but luckily everything had turned out all right.

She still didn't understand how Claire could have let Troy get away—although once he was interviewed by Liz any battle she might have fought was lost. Their whirlwind engagement was written up in People. Even Claire said Troy and Liz were meant to be together, although she muttered it in a way that made Jean wonder if her daughter really had had a crush on him. At the same time, Liz was shopping the story and her "exclusive access and footage" around to every TV magazine from American Journal to Hard Copy, looking for whoever would give her the best deal. The others had offered her cash, but it was Stop the Presses that had given her what she really wanted—an offer to be one of their on-air hosts.

Even with the worldwide publicity (Long-Lost Vermeer FoundQ, there was still no clue to who had owned the painting before it found its way to the Army collecting depot. For a while a great- grand niece of Goring's had made noises that the painting should be hers by inheritance, but when no one listened to her, she had faded away. Jean watched as an actress portraying Claire—her daughter!— appeared on the screen, kneeling by a narrow bed as she reached underneath to pull out a dust-covered suitcase. Her wig wasn't quite right—it was too red and too curly—but still, Jean was thrilled. While what followed wasn't exactly the story Claire had told her, it was much more exciting.

Jean munched her way through a bag of reduced-fat Doritos as the story unfolded, complete with black-and-white footage of windows being shattered on Kristallnacht, sad-eyed Jews being herded onto a train, and a torchlit Hitler speaking to a crowd of thousands. There was color video of Karl's body covered with a sheet, the camera panning up to show the shattered sixteenth-floor window. And, of course, film of Troy—the real Troy this time, no actor—bringing down the gavel as he made auction history by selling the long-lost Vermeer for a record $27 million.

Claire had told Jean one tidbit that was glossed over in the TV version—how when she was in the doctor's bathroom, she had replaced the painting with one of the full-size photos Dante had taken. The original—carefully laid between two sheets of acid-free paper—had gone into Claire's backpack, cushioned by an empty binder she had found on a shelf behind the receptionist's desk. Claire had thought her switch might buy her some time when she tried to slip away from Dante, but instead it had worked to fool Rudy. Viewed through the bubble wrap, the photo had looked like the real thing.

In a bit of poetic license, Stop the Presses had Troy rescuing a tied-up Claire and Dante (Charlie didn't even exist in this version of the story) while simultaneously fighting off Rudy and Karl.

Jean shed a few tears when the segment ended with shots of Liz and Troy's wedding, a celebrity-studded ceremony that had taken place just a few weeks before. Claire scoffed that the whole thing must be a publicity stunt worked up by their respective agents, but Jean told her that she might think about taking a page from their book.

Her daughter and Dante Bonner weren't even engaged, although Jean dropped enough hints. Some of the money from the painting could have gone to a truly beautiful wedding, but instead Claire had given most of it to the World Jewish Restitution Organization. Even though she was disappointed that Claire hadn't kept much of the money from the painting, Jean had to admit her daughter hadn't forgotten her family. Susie now had herself a station at Curl Up and Dye, and there was college money set aside for Eric when the time came. And of course there was the very home theater system that Jean was now watching the last few commercials on—a forty-eight- inch Goldstar with separate speakers.

Claire herself hadn't wanted anything for herself, and it was only at Charlie's insistence that she had set aside a little. It had been enough, however, to free her forever from the Custom Plate Division.

Finally, the credits began to roll. Jean saw what she had been waiting for all evening, the words that in the weeks and months to come would cause her to hit the pause button on her VCR dozens of times, just so that she could flush again with pleasure. "Special thanks to ..." and there was her own name, Jean Montrose, right in the middle of the list.

Claire reached for the remote and clicked off the TV.

"I think I like the real you better." Dante rolled over on his side to face Claire. He dropped a kiss on her right shoulder.