No Hope In New Hope (Samantha Jamison Mystery Book 7) (12 page)

Chapter 45

Wow & More

Anne sniffed. “I figured your blonde-hair-thing was a contradiction. You’re smarter than you look. I get the same thing because of my looks too. It drives me crazy.”

Did she just dis me or compliment me?

“I try to use it to my advantage,” I replied, then smiled.

Anne half-smiled, dabbed her eyes and blew her nose.

“I guess you have some questions, right?”

I nodded. “A slew of them. I hope you’ll be honest.”

If she answered one truthfully, I’d be lucky.

“Coffee?” she asked.

I nodded again. She called Abby, who brought me a mug of coffee, then arched her brow at me in a ‘what’s going on’ question-mark.

I shrugged an ‘I don’t know’ gesture, thanked her for the coffee, and she reluctantly left, looking annoyed.

After Abby shut the door, I asked, “So?”

“I’m not volunteering.
You
were asking, remember?”

She wasn’t making this easy. I expected as much.

Where to start?
The obvious.
“Tell me about your ex.”

“Not much to tell, actually. It was a romp in the hay that didn’t work out.”

“So that’s your only regret?”

“What, that he wasn’t sharp or that great in bed?”

I almost spilled my coffee. She was serious.

I kept up the banter. “Well, that says it all right there.”

She smiled sadly. “Been there yourself, right?”

“A time or two. Did your ex do many deliveries here?”

Anne’s eyes fixed on me. “Pretty regularly.”

“Then you saw him quite a bit.”

She frowned. “Harassment personified.”

“What do you mean?”

She let out a sigh. “I’m so tired of carrying these secrets around. He gambled, owed big time. He started harassing me to copy a painting for him to sell to repay his debts.”

“But you’d be ruining your reputation in the art field.”

“Exactly! So I refused. Then he threatened me…”

“What could he possibly threaten you with?”

She paused briefly. “He knew I’d done it before.”

Anne was gifted and could restore and copy anything.

“You mean you forged a painting?”

“Ages ago. I wanted to see if I could actually pull it off. I did it just for fun. If anyone ever found out…”

Just then Abby burst in, “The police are here!”

Anne leaped to her feet. “What?”

A stern-faced mid-forties man in a somewhat rumpled suit, holding an ID and badge said, “Anne Wythe?”

Anne went rigid and paled. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“Mind if I have a few words with you?”

Anne looked at me then sank to her chair. “Okay.”

He glared Abby and I. “In private, if you don’t mind.”

I got up and we both walked out.

Abby grabbed my arm the minute Anne’s office door shut behind us, whispering, “What does he want with her?”

She’d find out soon enough
.

“Mr. UPS was Anne’s ex.”

Abby glanced back toward Anne’s office. “Wow! So her ex was Mr. Brown.”

I stopped cold, now grabbing
her
arm, whispering back, “…What did you just say?”

Chapter 46

What Do You Mean?

Abby turned to me. “What do you mean?”

“Just now! That name you just said!”

“You mean, brown?”

It hit. They referred to UPS as brown: Its truck’s color!

The text Clay got from Alicia was just one word:
brown
.

Like I said, a password, code…?

Or was it a warning?

I had to tell the others. “I’ve got to make a call, Abby.”

“Sure. Let me know what happens to Miss Princess.”

As I went upstairs to the loft, I glanced back.
Abby was smiling.
Was the worm turning, now that her nemesis, Anne, was taken down several notches?

I tried, but couldn’t get through to any of my crew, Clay included. All I got was voicemail. It was frustrating. What good was voicemail? This was information I didn’t feel comfortable leaving a message about. So I told them to call.

You never know who is listening, do you?

With nothing else keeping me at the gallery, I picked myself up and walked across the bridge over the Delaware River to Lambertville to visit the gallery owner, Jeffrey Price. Ten minutes later I was staring up at his sign: Price Gallery.

I stepped inside, hearing the identical ringing of a bell triggered by the door. I looked up. It was exactly like the one at Worth Gallery. At first I thought it was quaint, but now I was thinking maybe it really was a warning signal to whoever was in the back doing
whatever
.

I glanced around the gallery, impressed by the beautiful art objects and paintings: very similar to Worth Gallery. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he had copied Alicia and Chris’ style of presentation. Which then made me wonder who had opened their doors first? Which then made me consider all the history behind those rumors concerning the Worths’ gallery and the paintings they sold at a discount.

I leisurely sauntered among the art, taking my time, leaning this way and that, marveling at the frames too. Then I spotted motion sensors and a couple of cameras.

Did they have an alarm system like the Worth Gallery?

I was tempted to whip out my iPhone for its flashlight to find out by looking behind a few frames, but that would be pushing the obvious. I decided to lean in to get a real good look at the paintings themselves and the signatures at the bottom of each one.

Were these originals?

Who could tell what was a forgery or not? Even the best auction houses, like Sotheby’s and Christie’s, had been blindsided in past years with excellent forgeries. Art restorers like Anne and expert art appraisers working for insurance companies were taken in. I was learning the art world was a slippery slope to travel around in and quite dangerous.

I heard a mild cough behind me and turned.

Chapter 47

What the… & More

“Can I help you?” said Lenny, enjoying my reaction.

I had not expected to see Helen/Lenny at
this
gallery. Her transition from an incensed client confronting Clay and I, to art appraiser, and now finding her at a competing gallery was unsettling.

Still trying to make the leap, I said, “You work here?”

“No, I own it.” she said.

“But who’s Jeffrey Price? Doesn’t he own the gallery?”

“I’m Mrs. Price.”

“Then who was one of
my
associates talking to here?”

“One of
my
associates,” said Lenny

My trio read it all wrong
.

“What happened to Jeffrey?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about him.”

Was he dead?
It sounded like it.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be. I’m not.”

That threw me. I remembered my initial reaction to her:
lean and mean
, back at the Logan Inn when she interrupted Clay and me having lunch, demanding we help her. Then it hit me. “Hey, you told us your name was Helen Costner.”

“That’s my maiden name.”

A ruse that sucked Clay and me in. “Clever.”

Lenny gave a knowing smile. “I thought so.”

“So what was the purpose of the deception?” I asked.

“You might call it educating the uninitiated.”

“The uninitiated?”

“You two are obviously novices to the art world.”

I gave her a half-smile. “That obvious, huh?”

“We wanted you to start asking the right questions and stop what was going on if you could. We needed help.”

“We?”

“A few gallery owners, myself included.”

“Exactly what did you think was going on?”

She looked around to see if anyone was within earshot of us then leaned in close. “Discounts and cosmetic art surgery.”

I nodded.
If she meant forgeries,
w
hy not just say it?

I could play vague too. “So others were aware what was going on and were reluctant to take on who was involved.”

I thought back.
They approached us
:
UPS, Lenny and Tony.
Clay and I should have picked up on that, but we were caught up and distracted by art information overload.

I now knew Lenny’s objective, but the others? UPS was dead. And Tony was feeling more and more like deception. And there were too many loose ends that needed tying up.

Were Lenny’s true intentions what she claimed?

“Can you give me a name?” I asked.

Lenny’s tone changed. “This artist’s name is Anderson.”

I looked at her odd segue.
What artist?
“What?”

“He’s a local artist. Quite good, don’t you think?”

From behind us came, “Ah, Jeffrey Price to the rescue.”

The words spilled out when I turned “You’re alive?”

He wrapped his arm around Lenny, “and kicking!”

“Sorry I couldn’t help you, Miss,” said Lenny stiffly.

Chapter 48

The Art Of Deception

I left Price Gallery more confused than when I got there. What was going on with Lenny and her husband? Why did she change the subject so abruptly? Was she afraid to speak in front of her husband? This cat and mouse behavior had trouble written all over it.

It was time for backup: Martha, Hazel and Betty.

When they called me back, I explained to my crew what we needed: find out what was going on over at Price Gallery.
Improvise.

I also arranged a time to meet for drinks with Clay and the ladies later on. We had something to discuss:
forgeries.

I returned to Worth Gallery and headed up to the loft. I needed to learn more about art forgeries. Whose money was involved? I opened my laptop and began searching.

The most notorious forger was Wolfgang Beltracchi. It said he could paint with the best and lie even better. For decades, experts were completely fooled by his elaborate art scam, making him, his wife, Helene, and his two partners millions. To date, Beltracchi was the most prosperous art forger in history. He was an extremely talented individual.

By the age of 14, he could copy Picasso perfectly. Later on, he began painting artists such as Max Ernst, Raoul Duffy, Fernand Lager and George Braque among other 20
^th
century artists of the Impressionist and Surrealist genre.

What made Beltracchi different was he’d paint in the exact style of a famous artist (
what he thought they would paint
if they had other paintings out there)
. They were originals by Beltracchi, but painted with that artist’s name.

He copied the artist’s brush technique perfectly, using canvases from that time period. He even created artwork from paintings that existed but had been missing for years.

Signatures and provenances were documented with tea-stained labels and aged markings on the frames. Well-worn and old-looking black and white photos showed his wife, Helene, posing as her own grandmother with Beltracchi’s forged paintings hanging on the walls in the background.

Beltracchi’s wife claimed she received these paintings from her grandfather,
Werner Jägers
, who hid them before WWII in a country home near Cologne. She inherited them upon his death. This explained why the public never saw them before.

Art experts were fooled. Beltracchi’s paintings ended up on museum walls like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Sotheby and Christie sold them at auction and they were also listed in many art catalogs. Various experts worldwide vouched for provenances of these works of art. The multi-talented Beltracchi fooled everyone with his counterfeits, which made him millions
.

Were we dealing with real stolen paintings or forgeries?