Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) (11 page)

“Why?”

“It’s getting dangerous.”

She took a deep breath and sipped the coffee.

Of course.

It was too good to be true.

Just like the docent job at the museum was too good to be true.

Something always came up.

“How dangerous, Michael? What’s going on?”

He looked beyond the deck, as though whatever danger was approaching might be topping the horizon at any moment, like an armada. Then he shook his head again and said, quietly:

“Let’s walk on the beach.”

She felt the approach of a half-smile, tried to suppress it, failed, and said through it:

“You think Nina’s shack is bugged?”

“I don’t know. But I’m absolutely certain that the ocean is not. Come on.”

And so, within a moment’s time they were back on the beach.

The tide, she found herself thinking, must have been coming in. Her footsteps from half an hour ago had been erased and were now under a film of ebbing and surging seawater.

“What is this thing that’s ‘come up’?”

“The Red Claw has come up.”

She looked at him.

Was he joking?

The what?

And even as she wondered about these things, she fought back an urge to take his hand and act as though the two of them were lovers.

They had, in fact, made love, had they not? That bizarre night in Pilsen, with a dog howling beneath the window and the mournful sound of Mexican guitar music pulsing down the street—

––or had she merely dreamed that?

“The Red Claw,” he continued.

“What are you talking about?”

“The paintings that I’m attempting to move, Carol. There’s a group of Jewish—well, I suppose one could call them vigilantes, for want of a better word. They know that the paintings are out there. They also know that the paintings were originally stolen, by the Nazis, from several Jewish families who lived in the Caucasian Mountains. They’re attempting to get these paintings back. They will not stop at anything to do so, and they don’t choose to work with conventional police organizations. They use other methods.”

“What other methods?”

“They kidnap couriers. The couriers are then never heard from again. I told you this before, I’m sure you remember.”

“Yes, but, I thought, since I was not known…”

Michael shook his head:

“I thought you’d be safe. But now things seemed to have changed. This group is apparently headed by a man named Lorca Reklaw, the son or grandson or God knows what son of one of the original Jewish families.”

“Reklaw. The Red Claw?”

“Yes. It’s become his symbol.”

“What would he do to me?”

“I don’t know. I do know that, somehow, the ante may have been raised. And I came down here––originally––to give you a chance to back out.”

“To stop transporting the paintings entirely?”

“Yes. I’m very fond of you, Carol.”

“Good. Most people who go to bed with me don’t like me at all.”

“I apologize for that evening.”

“Why? I thought it was pretty nice myself.”

“It was unprofessional.”

She shook her head:

“I never claimed to be a professional. I just struggle along.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Almost never.”

“But now you must. Carol, if you want out…”

She did not even need to think about this.

“I can’t get out. I need money. The last check was wonderful. But I’m going to need at least five more like that to give to my family. They need me; they depend on me. Now, if moving the paintings is no longer possible…”

“It is possible.”

“But you said…”

‘I said it has become more dangerous. I did not say it had become impossible. And the fact is that…”

“That what?”

“That you may have stumbled unbeknownst on a way to make things much safer.”
  

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about…no, just let me think it through for a time.”

And so they walked, the buildings of Hatteras to the West coming dimly into view, through a late morning mist that had settled over the dunes.

Finally he said:

“Yes, it could work. Carol, you were a docent for a year?”
    

She nodded:

“Just over a year. Before…”

“Yes, yes, I know. I also know about your fabulous presentations. Indeed, that is how I became aware of you. But now, I must ask:
 
as a docent did you learn to do restorative work?”

“Of course. That’s one of a docent’s main jobs.”

“Can you do a frame change?”
        

“Sure. Again, that’s one of the things museums do. There are great works that are four, five hundred years old. Frames need changing. Besides, the frame isn’t a work of art; it’s what’s inside it.”

“Indeed. All right. Then I’m going to ask you to do several frame changes, my dear Carol. We shall thwart this Red Claw. It only requires the skill of two people. The first is you.”

“And the second?”

“The second is an artist who is about to become quite popular—about to be ‘discovered,’ really.”

“Who?”

“Why your friend, roommate, and student: Nina Bannister.”

CHAPTER EIGHT:
 
ART FOR SALE

Thursday.

A delicious morning, cool, clear, the waves aquiline and translucent.

Carol Walker wanted to paint.

That was not her job, of course.

Her job was simply to wait.

It was ten o’clock; Nina was in town at Elementals.

There was little for Carol to do. Some cleaning. Another load of laundry for the two of them.

She was debating whether to read or…well, when one thought about it, there was nothing else to do.

So all right then, she would read. But read what? Nina had graciously made a nice little library of paperbacks available to her, but the titles were mostly mysteries, punctuated by high school literature fare, and neither seemed right for this particular moment. Janet Evanovich or Emily Dickenson. What a choice. All right then, she would…

There was a knock on the door.

She crossed the living room floor, opened the door, and found herself looking at a perfectly nondescript man. He was of average height, wore average wire-rimmed glasses, smiled an average smile, stood balancing himself carefully on average light brown shoes, and looked like he had no distinguishing marks at all except for his fingerprints, which, she decided immediately, had probably been burned off.

“Ms. Walker?”

All traces of accent had probably been burned off too.

“Yes?”

“I have a picture for you. It’s a gift from a friend.”

“All right.”

He had propped the painting against the wall. It was carefully wrapped in brown paper, and was approximately two feet square.

He picked it up and handed it to her, saying quietly:

“Your friend wishes you well.”

“Tell him, ‘thank you’.”

“I shall.”

“Do you want to…”

“No, I can’t come in. Other errands to run.”

“All right then.”

“Good luck.”

He turned, descended the stairs, got into what surely must have been a rental car, and started the engine.

By the time the car had reached Breakers Boulevard, Carol was already on the deck.

It had been well prepared for the coming of the painting.

Four of Nina’s pictures leaned against the rail of the deck. There were Old Red Lighthouse #2, Storm at Sea #3, Morning at Sea #5, and Little Red Barn #6 (Nina’s favorite of the four, except that the cow was too large and thus out of proportion.)

The tools Carol would need, and which she had bought yesterday in one of Bay St. Lucy’s surprisingly well-equipped art supply shops (well, Carol found herself realizing, not so surprising really when one realized that this was a town full of painters––amateurs, true professionals, and all shades in between). These tools she had stacked neatly in the living room beside her couch, having warned Nina beforehand that she intended to change some of the frames the painting class had provided.

First was the corrugated board. She wiped it clean with a towel she found in the bathroom, then carried it out to the deck and placed it carefully on the glass topped table, which she also carefully wiped clean.

Then a second trip: screw driver, linen tape, wire, and acrylic cleaner.

She placed them all carefully on the board, lifting her head slightly to watch the porpoises, whose daily passing Nina had warned her about. She greeted them mentally and imagined that they sang back to her, as Homer’s sirens might have done.

Third trip.
 

Foam core backing. Mat board.

The instructions she’d received as a docent some months ago repeated themselves in her mind: “Prepare your acrylic. Peel one side of the protective liner off the side that will be touching the art work. Place that side face down on the art assembly (boards and picture), then peel off the other side. If you have ordered the acrylic with UV or Non–glare properties (she had), the side that should face up will be indicated on the packaging.”

She looked.

It was.

So now…

So now…

She took a deep breath, returned yet again to the living room, lifted the brown paper package as though it were a new born child, and carried it out to the deck.

Carefully, carefully, carefully—she unwrapped it, the light paper falling in shards at her feet, hissing softly as it did so.

The paper shed itself, leaving the painting there before her in her hands.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, trying as hard as she might to stop her hands from trembling.

“Oh, my God.”

St. Sebastian, Tended by Irene and Her Maid.

She had expected one of several paintings Michael had mentioned.

And she had prepared herself for the coming of each individual work, much like a foster mother might prepare for the coming of an adopted—even if only for a short time—child.

So here was her child.

And there were the initials of the child’s real father, the child’s creator, subtly imbued in the dark, shadowy, lower right hand corner.

H.B.

Hendrick Tenbruggen.

She had admonished herself for knowing so little of the man, and for needing to do research.

Which she had, of course, done.

Tenbruggen. Ghent School, late Baroque, this painting finished last 1625.

She’d also done research on St. Sebastian, and the words stuck in her head:

“St. Sebastian. Died circa 288 AD. An early Christian saint and martyr. Killed (it is said) during the Roman emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians. He is commonly depicted in art and literature tied to a post or tree and shot with arrows. This is the most common artistic depiction of Sebastian; however, according to legend, he was rescued and healed by Irene of Rome. Shortly afterwards, he criticized Diocletian in person and as a result was clubbed to death.”

Words, words, words.

“For the depths,” someone had written, “of what use is language?”

What use indeed.

Her hands continued to tremble.

The painting seemed to move in her grip, like a living thing.

Which it was, of course.

The figures, muscular and full bodies, circled the center of the canvas in the typical Baroque manner, but the face of Irene, staid and immensely calm, held the entire creation in quiet repose, as though nothing, not the emotions nor the pain nor the immensity nor the enormity, of the things depicted, were going anywhere without her say-so.

“Edle Einfalt,” she found herself whispering, “Und stille Grosse.”

Lessing’s great description of the statue of Laokoon, a Trojan who tried to warn his countrymen about the Trojan Horse.

Noble simplicity and quiet grandeur.

And the arrows.

The arrows.

“Oh, you poor man,” she found herself whispering, idiotically, since the poor man could not hear her.

Or…?

The arrows were small, seemingly no more than a foot or so in length.

But one, sticking in Sebastian’s upper leg; and another, directly in his chest; and a third in his shoulder…

…no blood at all.

Sebastian’s shadowed face, turned down toward the ground…

…and the stretching, almost writhing, body of the white-rag turbaned maid, as she attempted to untie him from the gnarled tree limb to which he’d been tied.

And all of it illuminated magically by light of a sun that had already set, and was glowing enough to radiate off distant crosses where other martyrs hung, watching night come, as they died.

“My God,” she whispered again.

She was sobbing now.

And she was praying.

So were the figures in the painting.

Three hours later—she had worked quite efficiently, and the job had gone better than she could’ve hoped for; she walked into Elementals, carrying Old Red Lighthouse #6.

“Nina!”

“Hey, Carol, how’s the morning been?”

“Great!”

“What have you got there?”

“Your lighthouse picture! I changed the frame on it. I think it looks really good now. You need to hang it!”

Nina walked toward her, shaking her head:

“Carol, I tried one time hanging my paintings and Margot…”

“I know all about Margot. But Margot isn’t here. She won’t see the painting.”

“Alanna might.”

“She won’t either. And if she does, I’ll talk to her.”

“And say what?”

“That I know a few things about this business, too. Nina, this painting is really good. There’s a kind of vibrancy about the colors…”

“Isn’t the dog too big?”

“Don’t worry about the dog.”

“But, I…”

“Price it at $350.”

Silence for a time.

“What?”

“Three hundred and fifty dollars.”

“But no one will pay that much for one of my paintings!”

“Trust me.”

“But…”

“Trust me.”

And Nina did.

So the painting was hung, just above a display of clay pots from Lucille Davis (who also sold her pottery in Vicksburg and New Orleans).

And in this way, Tennbruggen’s
St. Sebastian Tended by Irene and Her Maid,
disguised as Bannister’s
Little Red Lighthouse #6 With the Slightly Too Big Dog,
was offered for sale, at the price of $350, in Bay St. Lucy, Mississippi.
   

Four days later,
at eight fifteen on the evening of October 25, Nina and Carol had finished their dinner, cleaned the dishes, and were deeply involved in a game of gin rummy. It was one of those strange games where no one could seem to win. The pile grew more and more slender, and, though Nina needed only a five, a seven, or a king—and God only knew how little it would take for Carol to win—no such card was forthcoming.

Rain pounded on the roof of the shack—a cool front had blown into Bay St. Lucy at five PM and soft rain had started soon thereafter. Turning to harder rain, then turning to this.

And so there was no possibility of walking on the beach, or strolling out on the stone jetty, or ogling the fall fishermen on the long pier as they attempted to hook hammerhead sharks or whitefish. No, there were only two things possible to do on such an evening: reading (which would come later) or card playing (which might extend until later, indeed for all eternity if these particular cards never showed up).