Chapter Twenty-Four
MINA
Stepping into the library, we traded the breezy, bustling reception rooms for a quiet, stuffy space. I glanced around nervously. Other than a narrow rear hallway leading to a toilet and an office, there was nowhere to run. Not even a window, at least not in this room.
Not here to run, I reminded myself. It’s time to find that painting.
First, though, I had to check that our intel was correct — right down to the dumbwaiter in the corner of the adjoining office. A peek down the connecting hallway told me, Bingo.
I looked away quickly.
Dobrov made a sweeping gesture. “Apologies. I’ve only unpacked the smaller pieces so far…”
I stared. Was that an Olmec mask? And that jade carving…
“Qing dynasty,” Dobrov said as one of his prospective buyers inspected it.
“Lovely,” the man murmured, while another reached into a crate and pulled out a long, thin object.
“Now, be careful, Rodrigo,” Dobrov joked as the man carefully unwrapped it.
The man whistled. “Is this what I think it is?”
Dobrov nodded smugly. “Sixteenth-century Ottoman scimitar with jeweled scabbard.”
It was amazing and probably worth a fortune if it was the real deal. Hell, even a modern replica would cost a pretty penny.
Henrik turned back to the door. “Not what I’m looking for.”
Maybe not, but I sure was mesmerized.
Dobrov darted in front of Henrik and motioned to the left. “Allow me to direct you this way. Might a Monet be of interest?”
I nearly gave myself whiplash. Monet?
Henrik followed him reluctantly, like a man too polite to turn down an invitation to a friend’s kid’s third-grade musical recital. Except Henrik wasn’t polite, and he didn’t have friends. Not from what I’d witnessed anyway.
“Closer to your taste?” Dobrov asked.
Henrik cocked his head, not too inspired. “Perhaps.”
My eyes just about popped out of my head. The painting propped against the wall on a table there looked a hell of a lot like Thaw, one of the artworks on my father’s list of lost masterpieces.
“And the provenance?” Henrik asked, barely looking at the painting.
I was all ears. Without provenance — proof of an artwork’s origin and legitimate transfer from owner to owner over the years — an artwork couldn’t be considered genuine.
Like that Monet, I quickly decided. The signature looked good, but it was over in the left corner instead of Monet’s preferred right, and the brushstrokes were a little too blurred to have stemmed from Monet’s hand. Probably a forgery — to my eye, at least.
Dobrov pointed to the signature, then pulled an envelope from behind the frame. “You’ll find a full record here.”
I masked my skepticism, because records could be forged too.
The other paintings propped on the table were a hideous still life by Kirchner and a bleak landscape that screamed Edvard Munch had a bad day.
Henrik beelined straight to that one.
“I see love, hope, and possibility,” I murmured, testing him.
He sighed happily. “I see darkness, death, and despair.”
Aha. Just the theme for his apartment in Paris, then — if he actually had one.
I caught myself wondering. If Henrik were actually shopping for art with his own money, would I tell him that overly bright red pigment in the Munch made me peg it as another forgery?
Nah. Which only proved how far my morals were sliding.
I motioned to the crate beside the table, where more paintings were stacked sideways like framed posters at Walmart. Downright sacrilegious — if they were real. Another reason to doubt them?
“May I?” I asked Dobrov.
The art dealer turned to me, though his eyes went to my cleavage, not my face. “Go ahead, sweetheart. Especially if you convince your date to buy one.”
I gritted my teeth. God, I hated being eye candy.
Placing my purse on the table, I started flipping through the paintings.
“Lukas? I’d like to hear more about this piece, please,” one of the other guests called.
Dobrov scurried away, and Henrik sidestepped, blocking their view of me.
“Anything?” he whispered.
Everything might have been the best answer, given the works in that crate. A Canaletto. A colorful, abstract Paul Klee. A glowing, sixteenth-century portrait by Caravaggio, if the label was to be believed.
By my amateur estimation, about half the works appeared genuine, although their provenance or owners were probably shady.
Why else would the work of a great master be traded in a backroom deal like this?
A very posh back room, but still. Either the paintings had been purchased with dirty money, or they’d been carted off by one or another army in World War II and written off as collateral damage, when they’d actually landed in private collections.
Briefly, I thought of Clement. What would he think of my being here? And, shit. Hadn’t he worked for a task force that brought down crime syndicates in Marseilles? Had my host, Ronald Baumann, or Dobrov come up in any of his cases? Had Gordon?
Dammit. I ordered myself to focus on the paintings. Concentrate.
The other half of the works in the crate appeared to be forgeries, like the Monet.
Very good forgeries, but still. Some were so good, I almost preferred them to the real thing — like the delightful unicorn I came across “by Franz Marc.” My favorite artist had painted lots of horses in all colors of the rainbow, but never, ever a unicorn. A damn shame.
That painting was big enough to jut above the others. The next was smaller. I turned to it and inhaled sharply.
Henrik coughed into his hand. Watch it.
Easier said than done, especially when stumbling across a long-lost Van Gogh.
I blew out my cheeks. What my father would have given to be in my position now.
“You’re here to assess, not admire,” Henrik hissed.
Right. Assess. Was that The Painter on the Road to Tarascon the real thing?
Veteran art critics assessed paintings by the details, but also by intuition, often on the basis of an initial, split-second impression.
I wasn’t a veteran, but damn if my intuition wasn’t screaming, This is the real thing!
I leaned in, trying to be scientific. Brushstrokes…
paint…the canvas… All matched other works by Van Gogh.
The composition also matched the original, as captured in a 1930s photograph.
My sister and I used to argue about two leaves on the left side of the image.
Were they falling or just not clearly connected to the tree?
Either way, the leaves in this painting were exactly as I remembered them, right down to the way they’d been dabbed onto the canvas.
Then I turned to the back, and there it was — the final piece of evidence. A stamp in Gothic script that said Kaiser-Friedrich Museum.
My heart skipped several beats. Museum stamps could be forged too, but everything pointed to this being the real thing.
Beside me, Henrik went perfectly still. So, huh. Maybe the vampire did have a heart after all. At least for great artworks.
But when I glanced up at him, he was staring across the room — to the extent that vampires stared at anything that wasn’t warm-blooded. His breaths were short, like mine, and his eyes flickered red in a moment of shock and discovery.
I followed his gaze. What was so interesting about that cigar-shaped box over to one side?
When I elbowed him, he jerked around, looking downright guilty.
Which he surely was — guilty of a hundred heinous crimes, or so I assumed. But I wouldn’t have put noticing an innocuous box among them.
Unless that box wasn’t so innocuous.
“What?” he growled, flushing a little.
And a little was a lot on a vampire. I’d only ever seen him look that lively at the prospect of fresh blood. I glanced at the box again. What was in there? And, yikes. Did I want to know?
Pandora’s box, my imagination said. Open it, and the world will be inundated with strife, disease, and greed.
I sighed, thinking of recent headlines. Make that even more strife, disease, and greed.
Then again, hope had also come fluttering out of Pandora’s box. But I doubted that was what excited Henrik.
“It’s real,” I whispered, trying to draw his focus back to the Van Gogh. “I’m ninety-nine percent certain.”
He rubbed his cheek to cover the furtive looks he shot at the box.
“Good. Fine.” He straightened his already-perfect tie, then checked his watch. “Seven minutes to go.”
We spent the next five minutes at a second crate of abstract painters — Rothko, Mondrian, Klein, to name a jaw-dropping few. Then we wandered over to the other guests, who were still admiring the jeweled sword. I checked my watch, counting down the seconds.
“Find anything?” Dobrov asked.
Henrik shrugged. “Possibly.”
Definitely, I thought, glancing at the box he was so interested in. Now that we were closer, I could see the lid was inlaid with ivory and exotic wood.
The lights flickered.
“Oh!” I yelped, grabbing Dobrov’s arm. “What was that?”
Actually, I knew exactly what that was — Roux cutting the power.
The lights cut entirely, plunging us into utter darkness. I screamed for good measure.
The lights flicked on again, but everyone looked spooked — everyone but Henrik, who squinted uncomfortably in the sudden burst of light.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we need to ask you to vacate. Just for a few minutes,” one of the security guards said. The other had already opened the door and was heading out, one hand pressed to his earpiece.
“Of course.” Dobrov ushered us out, taking up the rear. I dawdled, staying half a step ahead of him as the chitter-chatter and cries of a nervous crowd grew at the far end of the hallway.
The lights flickered again, and I drew a mental map of the room. Then the lights died a second time, plunging the entire villa into utter darkness.
More cries and screams broke out, but mine wasn’t among them. I was too busy sidestepping Dobrov and navigating my way back to the crate with the Van Gogh.