Feint of Art: (14 page)

Good going, Annie,
I jeered as I locked the door and returned to the portrait. Maybe I was in the wrong line of work. I should give up on painting and launch a new literary craze: the self-defeatist book.
How to Alienate and Lose All Influence with People within Mere Days of Making Their Acquaintance,
by Annie Kincaid.

 

I got home at two in the morning and woke up at nine, groggy but eager to pursue my new lead on Anton. Fortified with a steaming cup of Peet’s coffee, I sat at my kitchen table and called Directory Assistance in Yountville for the number of the antiques store the Stranger had told me about last night. When I dialed the Dusty Attic’s number, an answering machine picked up. The recorded voice of the shop’s owner, one Joanne Nash, thanked me effusively for calling, told me the Dusty Attic would open at 10:00 A.M.—sharp!—and insisted that she just couldn’t
wait
to meet me.

Joanne Nash, eh? Was she by any chance the Joanne I saw at Anton’s studio yesterday? I started to leave a message, but changed my mind. For what I wanted to know I needed the face-to-face advantage. A trip to Yountville would be today’s first order of business.

The stutter dial tone on my phone informed me that I had six new messages in my voice mailbox. Well, wasn’t I the popular gal? Three were from my new buddies at the SFPD, Inspectors Crawford and Wilson, who wanted to talk to me at my earliest convenience, blah blah blah. Anthony Brazil had called, asking in his oh-so-refined way if I had made any progress on the drawings.
I’ll be gettin’ back to ya, Tony,
I thought as I erased the message. A gallery owner from London had called to urge me to “use my influence” to put a halt to the writing of Georges’ memoirs. Fat chance. Grandfather had not called, surprise surprise. There was also a message from Mary saying she was taking off for a concert in Mendocino. Rats. I had hoped to drag her with me to Napa, since at the moment I was feeling frustrated and needed a dose of her cheery derring-do. Mary’s call did remind me, though, that I still had to finish the sample boards and deliver them to my clients. I was supposed to be running a business, after all.

Having the new landlord breathing down my neck wasn’t helping my mood. Since my campaign to win DeBenton over to my way of thinking wasn’t going too well, it looked like I had a month to come up with some way to persuade him not to raise the rent. Or to figure out how to pay the exorbitant increase. Or to find a new studio. None of which, at the moment, seemed even remotely possible.

I needed that reward money from Anthony Brazil.

Picking up the phone again, I dialed the SFPD. Did homicide inspectors work on Saturdays?

“Homicide. Inspector Crawford.”

They did.

“Annie Kincaid returning your call.” I loved it when I sounded professional. It happened so rarely.

“Thank you for calling, Ms. Kincaid,” she said crisply. “My partner and I are meeting with the board of directors of the Brock Museum this morning at eleven thirty. May I assume you will join us?”

According to the rules of grammar, the inspector had just asked me a question. Funny how much it had sounded like a command.

“Um, well, I’ve been awfully busy recently, Inspector,” I replied. “And I’m afraid I’ve already made some plans for later this morning. I’m going to Nap—”

I caught myself at midsentence. I didn’t know how much Inspector Crawford had figured out, but it seemed foolish to risk leading her to Anton.

While I was thinking this through, there was silence on the other end of the line. Then the inspector said, “Perhaps you could take your nap after the meeting, Ms. Kincaid.”

Reluctantly, I agreed to be at the Brock at eleven thirty—I couldn’t think of a way out of it—and hung up. It would take about two hours to drive to Yountville, so even if I left around one o’clock I should have plenty of time to get there before the antiques shop closed.

I considered going to the studio and getting some work done beforehand. After all, it had been all of five minutes since I’d been worrying about my finances. The problem was, by the time I showered, dressed, and drove into the City, I would have only about an hour until I had to leave again, which meant that I wouldn’t be able to get into anything good and messy, like sample boards.

Finally I decided to take a walk to clear my head and shake the nervousness that had been plaguing me lately. If Stan Dupont had been killed because he stumbled across the truth about
The Magi,
and Ernst Pettigrew had disappeared because he knew the painting was a fake, then, as Inspector Crawford suggested yesterday, it stood to reason that anyone else who knew about the forgery was also in danger. Not that I was overly concerned about myself, since no one except Ernst and the SFPD could connect me to
The Magi.

My apartment was only a few blocks from Lake Merritt, a tidal lake connected to the bay that was about three miles in circumference and encircled by a meandering pathway. There were several fountains, a couple of boat-houses, a playground, and scores of squabbling ducks and geese. After half a mile I felt a surge of energy, and the leisurely stroll morphed into a power walk. It felt good to put the excess of adrenaline somewhere, and I vowed to exercise regularly. By the time I returned to my apartment and dragged myself up three flights of stairs I had, predictably enough, reconsidered.

I showered, blew my hair dry, and applied a touch of mascara, eyeliner, and lipstick before heading into the bedroom to dress for the meeting at the Brock. I was unsure what sort of image I wanted to present to this group of art mavens who had so thoroughly trashed my world. I wondered, in particular, whether Dr. Sebastian Pitts would be there.

Years ago, when Pitts had been a curator for Britain’s elite Remington Museum, he had unwittingly trumpeted the authenticity of a number of my teenage forgeries. Art authentication is an inexact science, and all art authenticators make mistakes, but few made as many, and for such appalling reasons, as the oleaginous Pitts. When my grandfather decided to write an exposé of art authenticators for the
London Times
—anonymously, of course—Sebastian Pitts was a target too delicious to ignore, and the ensuing scandal forced Pitts to resign from the Remington.

Unfortunately, he eventually resurfaced in San Francisco, where his academic credentials and snotty British accent made him a darling of the art scene in a city where only a gratifying few had so much as a nodding acquaintance with the
London Times.
I had been working for the Brock for nearly a year, blissfully applying my talents to legitimate restoration work, when Pitts recognized me. One minute I was touching up a tiny Giotto religious panel with egg tempera and twenty-four-karat gold leaf, and the next I was banished from the Brock’s hallowed marble halls. Within a week, no reputable museum or gallery in the City would return my calls.

Perhaps today was a chance for me to redeem myself, if only a little. So: how best to dress for what was likely to be a remarkably awkward meeting? Creative and artsy? No, the line between artsy and tacky was a thin one, and I didn’t trust myself not to cross it. Buttoned-down and businesslike? To the Brocks, success was spelled
d-u-l-l.
Yes, that would work.

I almost never wore pantyhose and heels, which I was convinced some demon had invented with the sole intent of impoverishing and disabling intelligent women. But sometimes one had to stoop to conquer, I reminded myself as I struggled into the pair of sheer black hose that I saved for just such occasions. From the limited offerings in my closet, I selected the conservative black wool A-line skirt and matching waist-length jacket that my mother had given me for my birthday last year. Since it looked vaguely funereal, I decided to wear a red silk shell under it. Red for power! Then I thought that might be pathetically obvious, so I exchanged it for a coral-colored shell that, I told myself hopefully, set off the auburn highlights in my hair.

I slipped on my black leather pumps, the ones with the rubber soles and sensible two-inch block heels that I had bought because an advertisement on TV claimed they were comfortable enough to play basketball in. Which had turned out to be a big fat lie. But as heels went they weren’t too bad, and they were reassuringly proper.

My sole concession to artiness was my jewelry. Around my neck I wore an exquisite hammered-silver chain with lines of garnet beads hanging down in strands beside a small antique key, which my friend Samantha had made me for my thirtieth birthday. She said it symbolized good fortune, and today I needed all the support—real and symbolic—that I could get.

I stood back and looked at myself in the nearly full-length mirror leaning against the wall in a corner of my bedroom. I looked businesslike. Respectable. Boring.

Perfect.

I was nearly out the door when I remembered the afternoon’s itinerary. No way was I going to spend the afternoon in Napa in a wool suit, hose, and heels. Ducking into the bedroom, I grabbed the blue canvas tote I had received during a pledge drive at KQED, and shoved in a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, running shoes, socks, and a dark blue sweater. Now I was ready.

I felt pretty good about everything until I got to my truck and remembered I had yet to repair the broken window. By the time I crossed the Bay Bridge I would be my usual disheveled self. So much for respectability. My mood was not improved when I remembered that there were no casual carpools on Saturdays so I’d have to wait in line at the bridge and fork over the toll. I wondered if I could get the city to reimburse me, since I was on official business. What was Inspector Crawford up to, anyway, and why were we meeting with the board?

I supposed the inspector wanted to go over my meeting with Ernst again, and thought that being at the museum might jog my memory. Or maybe she wanted me to take another look at
The Magi
with museum officials in attendance. I wondered if the board knew I was coming, and whether they now realized that I had been there that night. Perhaps I wasn’t as anonymous as I thought. On top of everything else, I could only assume that Sebastian Pitts and Agnes Brock had wasted no time in informing the police of my checkered past.

Arriving at the museum, I began the perennial search for parking. Round and round I went, the added frustration doing nothing to calm me down. As I finally walked up the broad granite steps to the entrance, ten minutes late, I spied my SFPD escort waiting for me. Ichabod nodded and the African Princess thanked me for coming.

The Brock was, as always, quiet. Too quiet. And not because of the acoustics, either. The marble floor, walls, and vaulted ceilings should have magnified sound, not minimized it. I could only surmise that the Brock family’s money had managed to corrupt even the laws of physics. We passed through a set of heavily carved mahogany double doors into the administration wing and, halfway down the hallway, turned into the Founders’ Conference Room.

Awaiting us was what promised to be the Meeting from Hell. Grouped along one side of the absurdly large and highly polished burled wood conference table was everybody who had ever taken a dislike to me during my brief tenure at the museum, and then some. The first unfriendly face I saw belonged to Sebastian Pitts, who curled his lip. Then came the Brocks: Agnes, the matriarch, who had signed the letter welcoming me into the Brock Arts Internship Program seven years ago and personally ripped it up a year later; next to her was her only son and his wife, the boring Richard and the elegant Phoebe, both of whom I had met for all of twenty seconds at a Brock Employee Holiday Bash. There were also assorted lesser Brocks, each of whom had inherited the family’s distinctive jutting brow ridge and protruding nose. The only non-Brock on the board was the sixty-year-old heiress Camilla Culpepper, a good friend of Mrs. Brock’s. I knew Mrs. Culpepper only by her picture in the administrative lobby, but I remembered hearing that Camilla was so myopic she had once mistaken a Manet for a Monet. Thick, diamond-studded glasses hung unused from a filigree chain around her skeletal neck as she squinted at the attractive young man next to her. At least she was too distracted to glower at me as the rest were doing with what appeared to be varying degrees of ill will.

Never one to put off a confrontation she could enjoy immediately, Agnes Hilary Cuthbert Brock raised her plucked eyebrows, stared down her hawkish nose, and spoke. “My Caravaggio is most certainly
not
a forgery, young woman.”

“Um . . .”

“The suggestion is supremely preposterous.” Mrs. Brock’s exquisite hauteur was marred just a smidgen by the fact that she spat a little getting out the
p
’s. Pitts surreptitiously wiped his glasses with a monogrammed handkerchief.

“The temerity! To challenge the word of Dr. Sebastian Pitts, the world’s foremost expert on Caravaggio!”

I rolled my eyes. Pitts was no greater an authority on Caravaggio than he was on Cézanne, or, for that matter, on global warming. He was, however, a world-class sycophant.

“Um . . .” I tried again.

“I do not care to hear another word from you, young lady,” Mrs. Brock informed me. “
The Magi
is exquisite, the jewel in the crown of the Brock collection. Unless you cease your outrageous slander this instant, I shall sue you for defamation.”

Spit or no spit, Agnes was on a roll.

“Well? What have you to say for yourself?” she demanded, apparently forgetting that she had just ordered me to remain mute.

“Grandmother, for heaven’s sake, let the poor woman speak.”

I turned toward the unexpected source of support and saw a man sitting on my right who I assumed was Edward Brock, Richard and Phoebe’s youngest son. He was about my age, give or take a few years, very tucked-in and preppy, with the look of an up-and-coming attorney or stockbroker.

“Yes, dahling,” Camilla Culpepper said to Agnes. “Your handsome grandson is right. Let the woman speak.”