Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) (16 page)

The stars had moved and shifted their positions inexorably.

Nina had finished her third glass of wine.

They said good night. Carol lay down on the couch. Nina crawled into her bed.

She felt like a ten year old on the night before Christmas.

What was there coming up for her to see?

A new life?

What was coming up…for her to see?

She was, of course, to find out all too soon.

CHAPTER TEN:
 
BAY ST. LUCY—DEN OF THIEVES!

During an unusually cool, dark, and shadowy month of November, the equally shadowy world of international art theft shifted its center from New York, Istanbul, Cairo, and Paris, to the deck behind Nina Bannister’s shack.

At that shack arrived, on Tuesday morning November 3, Vincent van Gogh’s
Poppy Flowers
. The work had been painted in 1887, three years before the artist’s suicide. It depicted a small vase of red and yellow poppies. Van Gogh had, reportedly, painted it as a tribute to Adolph Monticelli, whose work he’d come across in Paris in 1888.

It was said to be worth fifty million dollars.

It was reframed on that Thursday morning by Carol Walker (who used a dark oak wooden frame) and covered by the painting
Little Red Fishing Boat #4
, which is still thought to be the first work by N. Bannister that was not a depiction of a light house.

The following afternoon (Friday), at precisely 2:15, it sold to an unnamed collector who
 
happened to be passing through Bay St. Lucy and who had a faint French accent, for $350.

The money was within an hour then placed in the new checking account that had been created a week earlier by the artist, and which now had a total balance of $697 (three dollars having to be subtracted for service fees).

During the next week, a roughly similar process occurred.

On Tuesday morning, November 10, another Van Gogh arrived, this one the
View of the Sea at Schweiningen
. The same Carol Walker unwrapped it with her usual sense of exultation, looked at it for a time, and remembered: Schweiningen was a beach resort near The Hague. Van Gogh, working outside on the dunes, had struggled with a strong wind which sent grains of sand into his thickly applied paint. It was always said of the painting—

––she ran her finger over it—

––yes.

Yes!

There were still grains of sand that made the lustrous surface rough.

She was touching them now, sand granules that had perhaps been blown into, and then out of, the beard of Vincent van Gogh.

Another Nina Bannister painting (
Vase of Red Roses
) was duly stretched and placed over it.

Vase of Red Roses
had no sand in its acrylic base, but did have, if Carol said so herself, the brightest and most intense red that the artist had yet been able to manage.

The following day:
 
painting hung.

The following day after that:
 
painting sold.

Checking account now slightly more than one thousand dollars.

And on and on.

The View of Auverse sur Oise
, Paul Cezanne, not signed by the artist, who felt it unfinished.

Covered by
Old Yellow Mill Wheel
, completed (and signed, because it definitely
was
finished), November, 2013.

Sold the following day.

Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence
, by Caravaggio (magnificent use of the technique that had come to be known as ‘chiaroscuro’ referring to its innovative use of shadowing).

Replaced by
Two Porpoises Swimming in the Ocean, a Hundred Yards or So From Shore
, finished the last day of November.

Sold the following day.

Carol Walker’s feelings during this process were ambivalent. She was ecstatic each week with the thought of actually getting to touch some of the world’s greatest paintings, stolen though they were. She was also appreciative of the cashier’s checks that accompanied each paining, checks that totaled considerably more than $350 apiece.

These checks she simply kept.

It was not time to go home yet; but that time was coming.

She thought often about the mountains, and the sound of wild dogs howling in the distance. The food she’d eaten as a girl and that she would undoubtedly eat again upon returning.

She thought of the relatives who’d passed on, and the ones who still lived there:
 
people who had not seen London, or Paris, or Chicago. How would she tell these people everything that had happened to her?

But no more of that.

It was not time yet.

A few things had to be accomplished first.

And so, those things she thought about as she walked up and down the beach and helped prepare and hang the paintings.

But she also thought about Nina Bannister.

She loved the glow of pure joy in Nina’s face when, each week with clockwork precision, she came home and announced:

“I sold another painting!”

And she loved the pure process of helping Nina paint, seeing her mix the colors, aiding her in basic techniques of design and perspective.

Her own mother had passed away so many years ago.

It was almost as if…

…doing the day to day chores together, chatting about nothing at all…

…it was almost as if…

But no more of that, because, in point of fact, it
was
(no ‘almost’ to it!) that she was lying to Nina Bannister.

Using her.

Nina Bannister was a retired teacher and principal from the village of Bay St. Lucy. She was not Vincent van Gogh, nor Paul Cezanne, nor Caravaggio, nor Rembrandt.

Of course, that was probably a good thing when one actually considered it.

Nina Bannister would almost certainly not commit suicide, even if the unthinkable were to happen and the discovery were to be made that the paintings being purchased in Elementals were disguised stolen masterpieces and not original ‘Nina’s’.

She would probably not even cut off an ear.

At most, she might cut off one of Furl’s ears.

But probably not even that.

No, at most she would have a small laugh at her own expense, and realize that she was—Nina would have probably put it this way, English teacher that she was—‘not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.’

She would not be bitter.

But still it was wrong. It was wrong to deceive her like this.

Nina had taken in the recently fired and completely unemployable Carol Walker.

Bay St. Lucy had taken her in, for that matter.

And now she was tricking them all.

But, she then told herself, what choice did she have?

She was on a quest, a mission.

The people at home needed her, depended on her.

And how much harm could really be done? This process would go on for another two months, possibly three. Then she would announce that it was necessary for her to move home, to care for her aging father. A few tears would be shed.

Bay St. Lucy would cease to be a modern version of Casablanca, with no more Humphrey Bogarts or Ingrid Bergmanns or high class art smugglers or Van Goghs or Rembrandts.

True, Nina’s sales would probably stop.

But with the money that had accumulated in the meantime…

She could give Nina the trip of a lifetime.

And this, she resolved, no matter what else happened…

…this she would certainly do!

Although she still felt guilty.

As for Nina, her life changed in a completely unexpected way.

Or, for anyone who’d ever lived in a small town such as Bay St. Lucy, perhaps not so unexpectedly after all.

Word got out.

Word always gets out in villages, and so, this being a village, it got out.

It got around town that Nina Bannister was selling paintings.

Very few people in town actually
sold
paintings, or at least not to the general public. Ramoula Peters did, and, occasionally, Emily Thompson did. But most of the paintings that left the shops and art stores of Bay St. Lucy had been painted by people in New Orleans or Vicksburg or such places and sent to the little sea coast town to be moved on consignment. If the actual painterly inhabitants of the town sold many paintings at all, the sales were to each other, or to relatives—sales made to buck one up and say, in a manner of speaking, “See! You
are
a good painter!”

Nina was selling her paintings to complete strangers. And she was making $1400 per month. With social security (another $1400 per month) and teacher retirement (another $1400 per month), she was practically getting rich.

So word got out.

After the sale of the first paintings, little of any consequence occurred, except the ‘professional’ painters of the town found their way more frequently into Elementals and stood for a long time beneath
Little Red Barn
or
Little Red Mill
or
Horse
or whatever—and just shook their heads.

Why are
these
paintings selling, and mine are not?

All of the people in Nina’s painting class heard about the sales, and all of
them
came in (most having had some success in getting their works hung in The Stink Shoppe or various places, after being evicted by Margot and Alanna), and all of
them
wondered:

“Why are
these
paintings selling, and mine are not?”

But, finally, as the sales continued, it became obvious.

The intensity of colors was greater in Nina’s works.

Her works
did
have true viscosity.

There was a shimmering, even ethereal, quality about her use of acrylics.

Even Alanna, having stopped in one day toward the end of November for a glass of tea, shook her head as she gazed across the room at
Fish in Wave
, and said:

“Nina, you have come so far since you began painting. The town is so proud of you!”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m doing that much different.”

“Oh don’t
say
that! The difference between these newer works and the ones I saw a month ago—well, it’s simply night and day. You’ve found your voice, your mode of expression. There’s a depth of feeling in your works that none of the others here in town can match. They are simply recording visual images, dear Nina; you are creating art!”

Well, okay then
, thought Nina.

At least Alanna wasn’t going to take her paintings down.

And at least Margot didn’t know anything about what was going on.

And one day, Emily Peterson—the teacher of Nina’s class—came in and said the thing that had to be said ultimately, that was to follow SALES as the night the day:

“All of us in the class, the ladies taking the class and I as teacher, are so proud of what you’ve accomplished!”

“Thank you, Emily. Of course, I couldn’t have done any of it without your help.”