To Catch a Leaf (17 page)

“What's a cataclysm?” Virginia asked.

“Those priceless paintings,” he cried. “They're . . . they're . . .” He shook his head, unable to finish.

“They're what?” Virginia demanded, her fingers tightening on his suit.

“They're
fakes
!” he squeaked.

Virginia's face drained of color; then she collapsed onto the floor in a dead faint.

As Marco and I jumped up to help, Ventury backed away like a frightened puppy, his eyes as round as Frisbees, muttering, “Oh my, oh my, did I do that?”

Mrs. Dunbar was still on the phone, now describing the developing situation to the dispatch operator, and Marco was trying to find Virginia's pulse, so I ran to the sink to get a wet cloth and place it across her forehead.

“She's got a steady beat,” Marco said, as the housekeeper hung up the phone.

“I'll fetch the smelling salts,” Mrs. Dunbar said. “I always keep them on hand for her.”

While she scurried out of the room, Marco left Virginia in my care so he could corner the panic-stricken appraiser, who was now circling the kitchen table. “Mr. Ventury, why don't you show me the art collection? I'm a private investigator. I'd like to help.”

“Oh, thank you, sir,” the man said, as though he was only too happy to have the burden of his discovery lifted off his shoulders. “Follow me.”

Just as Virginia came around, Mrs. Dunbar ran into the kitchen and knelt at the woman's side. She abandoned the smelling salts and took the cold cloth from me to stroke across Virginia's forehead, crooning to her as though she were a baby. “Mrs. D. is here, dearie. Mrs. D. is here.”

With Virginia in capable hands, I jumped up and hurried through the nearest door in pursuit of my fiancé. It was one way to get a house tour.

Outside the kitchen, I found myself in a dining room of magnificent proportions. It reminded me of pictures I'd seen of castle dining halls, with a long, polished mahogany table running down the middle and—I stopped to count them—twenty chairs! In the center of the table, on a white lace runner, was an elaborate silver candelabra. I wondered if that was one of Mrs. Dunbar's pieces now.

A massive Victorian breakfront was set against one wall, and an eight-foot-long antique sidebar on the opposite wall. On the sidebar sat the most exquisite silver tea set I'd ever seen. I wondered if Grace had seen it on her visits here. A beautiful Oriental carpet in black, tan, beige, and rose covered the center of the black marble floor, with silk wallpaper in a deep rose color on the walls. But the dining room wasn't where I wanted to be. I'd chosen the wrong door.

I exited the dining room through a wide arched opening onto a center hallway that stretched up through the house to a huge foyer, where I could see a massive wooden door all the way at the far end. Along the walls of the hallway were large oil paintings, each lit by a spotlight above the frame. As I walked up the hallway admiring the paintings, I noticed that half of them were paintings of young Victorian women in virtuous poses—reading a book under a tree, in prayer beside a bed, knitting in a chair, penning a letter—and the other half of the paintings were of flower arrangements.

I heard Marco's voice and followed it around a corner into a grand hall that connected the east and west sides of the house. I saw an open door and peered into a large room filled with framed canvases leaning in stacks against three of the walls. Marco and the harried appraiser were standing in front of a painting where Ventury, a magnifying glass in his hand, was showing Marco something in the lower right corner.

“Do you see this?” Ventury asked. “To someone less experienced, it would go unnoticed, but I caught it immediately. Immediately!”

“What am I looking at?” Marco asked, as I peered around him for a peek.

“See the tail of the Y in the artist's signature? The curlicue is facing in the wrong direction. That tells me it's not authentic. Not authentic at all. Otherwise, it's a perfect reproduction. I've only seen three people in the course of my career who have the skills to produce a forgery this good, and one of them is elderly and quite ill. Quite ill! Besides, he always operated on the East Coast. Never in the Midwest.”

“Who are the others?” Marco asked, as I dug the notebook out of my purse.

“Eamon MacShane and John J. Cole,” Ventury said. “They've been in prison several times, but I believe both are out on parole now. They were big in the Chicago area at one time. Very big. Very big, indeed. Oh my.” He clucked his tongue as he glanced around at all the artwork. “This is a calamity.”

“Are all of the paintings in here forgeries?” I asked.

“So far, just two series,” Ventury said. “I started with that stack behind the door. They're part of a Victorian art collection called the Love series.”

“The Love series?” Marco glanced at me. “And I thought Victorians were prudes.”

Ventury paused, as though thrown off track. “These are quite respectable, Mr. Salvare. Victorian women were always depicted in idealized form. Here, let me show you.”

He pushed the door shut and picked up the first framed painting. “This one is entitled
Declaration of Love
. As you can see, this young woman appears quite virginal. Note the upswept hairdo and Romanesque profile, typical of this style of art.”

He leaned the painting against his legs so we could see the one behind it. “This one is called
Eternal Love
. Notice the similarity in themes. Next we have
Young Love
, then
Everlasting Love,
and finally
Maternal Love.
”

The paintings of angelic-looking young women in Victorian dress were completely new to me, yet for some reason the titles rang a bell. Where had I heard of them? My experience with fine art was limited to one semester of art history in college.

“Now, this is the Beauty series,” Ventury explained, moving down, “a collection based on another popular Victorian subject—nature, and in this case, flowers. First we have
Splendid Beauty
, portraying a single red amaryllis, then
Magnificent Beauty
portraying—”

“A white calla,” I said. At Ventury's quizzical look I said, “I'm a florist.”

“Yes,” he said politely, then cleared his throat. “Next we have
Lasting Beauty
.” Ventury glanced at me, waiting. Marco's mouth quirked up at the corners. He was trying not to laugh.

“Statice,” I said, “which fits perfectly with the title
Lasting Beauty
. Statice lasts a long time. Callas are magnificent. So the names of the paintings match the flowers.”

“This is odd,” Ventury said, rummaging through the row of paintings. “
Delicate Beauty
is missing. I can't imagine that Mrs. Newport wouldn't have it in her collection. How very odd.”

“Are all the paintings in here forgeries?” Marco asked again.

“So far just the oils in these two rows are. Heaven only knows to whom the thief sold the originals. It could be a buyer in Venezuela or an art museum in Switzerland. There's just no way of knowing what has happened to them. No way. Oh my, what a tragedy.”

“They're just flower paintings,” Marco pointed out astutely.

“Not
just
, Mr. Salvare,” Ventury said, warming up to his subject. “These are very special flower paintings done in a style similar to Raphael's, who as I'm sure you know, was a famed artist of the Italian Renaissance. You've heard of John William Waterhouse, haven't you? One of the most prominent pre-Raphaelite artists?”

“Not too familiar with him,” Marco said.

Ventury went on. “Do you see how colorful and detailed each blossom is? One could say it's almost photographic. And typical of this style, the painter sought to transform Realism with typological symbolism.”

Marco stood with one finger pressed against his lip, as though seriously contemplating Ventury's lecture. I was seriously contemplating a spot on my cuff until I realized Ventury had stopped. I inquired, “Are there more in the collection?”

“Just four paintings,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“There's a painting down the hallway that looks like
Splendid Beauty
,” I said.

Ventury waved my words away with a flutter of his hand. “Impossible.”

“Well, okay,” I said, “but the red amaryllis in that painting looks just like this one.”

“You must be mistaken,” Ventury said, growing agitated. “It wouldn't happen. This is the forged copy, so an identical one would have to be the original, and a skilled art thief such as the one we're dealing with wouldn't leave the original behind.”

“If you say so,” I said with a shrug. “But isn't it strange that both red amaryllises are sitting in a tulip-shaped clear glass vase on a round table covered by a blue tablecloth?”

Ventury gazed at me for several moments, as though having trouble processing the information. “You'd better show me.”

I led him back to the central hall and stopped before the canvas in question.

Ventury gasped. “I can't believe it. I simply can't! Yet here it is right in front of my eyes.”

Shaking his head in disbelief
,
he examined the frame, then pulled out his magnifier and leaned close to study the canvas. Then he stepped back as though the flower had bit him. “How is it possible?”

“How is what possible?” Marco asked. I could tell he was growing weary of the man's mutterings.

“This one's a forgery, too!”

The appraiser took off up the hallway and rounded the corner, vanishing from our sight, so Marco and I started after him. Back inside the storage room, we found Ventury dragging
Splendid Beauty
closer to the light. He laid it on the floor, then got down on his hands and knees to examine it.

“I've never seen anything like it. Two forgeries of the same painting? Extremely unlikely. Forgers with this level of skill are usually so careful. But this! Oh my.”

“Even if they weren't both forgeries,” I said, “shouldn't Constance Newport have noticed she had two identical paintings?”

“That would depend on many factors,” he said. “Did she know her inventory? Did she personally rotate the artwork? Did she know how to check for forgeries? Would she even suspect there were any?”

“The bigger question,” Marco said to me quietly, letting the appraiser continue his work, “is how the thief got so many paintings out and the copies in without setting off the alarm and being discovered.”

“Do they have an alarm system?”

“There's a keypad by the door in the kitchen,” Marco replied.

How he managed to notice small details like that mystified me. All I'd noticed were the awesome granite countertops and pot of rosemary on the kitchen windowsill. “Someone would have had to give the thief the code.”

“Or let him in. Either way it has to be an inside job. A thief, even an exceptionally clever one, wouldn't be able to move about the house carrying large framed canvases, bringing them in and out the back door time after time without ever being caught. And he couldn't have gotten them all out at once. It'll be tricky to find the inside man because I'm sure everyone in the house knows the alarm code, but we'll need to ask anyway. It's the logical place to start.”

“
We'll
need to ask? We're going to investigate this, too?”

“We have to operate under the assumption that it ties in with the murder. It's too coincidental to think otherwise.”

That was going to make our job a lot more complicated.

Hearing soft footsteps, I turned to see Virginia enter the room. Her face was the color of putty and she seemed drained of energy, but that didn't prevent her from giving us a disdainful glance as she walked over to the appraiser. “The police have arrived, Mr. Ventury. They'd like to talk to you.”

He straightened with a groan, rubbing his lower back. “And I would like to talk to them, too. Indeed I would. This situation gets odder and odder.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Not only do you have forgeries of these valuable art pieces, Ms. Newport-Lynch,” he replied, growing more agitated as he spoke, “but this particular thief had the effrontery to make identical copies of the
same
original. The very same one! I've never seen anything like it. Never, never, never.”

“Do calm yourself, Mr. Ventury,” Virginia said, putting her arm through his. She turned him so their backs were to us, then dropped her voice to a whisper so we couldn't hear. Lucky for us, Ventury didn't understand the need for discretion.

“Am I positive about the forgeries?” the little man exclaimed, puffing up his chest. “My dear lady, I would stake my reputation on it. Yes, indeed, I would. Now, lead the way, please. I still have much work to do here.”

When Virginia turned, her face was no longer pale. Her cheeks now had spots of color in them, no doubt from embarrassment. That didn't prevent her from putting her nose in the air as she passed us.

“Ms. Lynch,” Marco said, “excuse me, but would you mind telling me who sets the alarm system at night?”

“My mother always saw to it,” she said. “And it's
Newport
-Lynch.”

“Pardon me. Was the alarm set every night?” he asked.

Virginia heaved an annoyed sigh, as though Marco were taking up her valuable time. “I can't imagine why it wouldn't be.”

“Who sets it now?” he asked.

“I would assume my brother does because he's usually the last one to get home in the evenings.”