Chapter 8 Falling Down a Rabbit Hole
Falling Down a Rabbit Hole
Penelope spent her Sunday cleaning, lost in thought, and greatly disturbing Fuller the moment she turned on the vacuum cleaner. The cat bolted under the couch, tail puffed like a bottlebrush.
Distance.
She had planned to distance herself from Lucia, to see her only as a person of interest, bound to the world that had sent her father to prison.
She’d wanted to trap her, catch her in a lie, in some sort of scheming.
That was why she’d agreed to their second coffee “date,” why she indulged in their flirtatious banter.
Only for it to blow up in her face. Every mantra crumbled in the face of Lucia’s openness, her raw vulnerability, and her sincere interest in Penelope.
Maybe her father was right, and she was in over her head.
Monday arrived all too soon, and with it, she found herself back at the Meridian, sorting through files and requests when her computer beeped.
She’d set an alert for updates on the Alessi and Bellini pieces. Penelope opened the email, scanning the text before settling to read it word by word. Then again. And again.
“Damn it,” she muttered, closing the message and leaning back in her chair.
As she’d figured, their lab deemed the Alessi painting a forgery but assessed the Bellini as the real deal, despite a slight inconsistency in the pigment layering, attributed to either later restoration or natural degradation over time that did not impact the overall result.
The office was quiet except for the soft hum of the HVAC and the occasional creak of her chair. Her head throbbed with a low, dull pulse.
Penelope rubbed her eyes. She wished she knew how to make tech see what she did.
She had no more time to fret over this as an alarm went off, reminding her of the scheduled planning session for the Luminary Ball.
When she entered the conference room, almost all seats were filled. She nodded at the assembled crowd and sat down.
The air inside was faintly perfumed with catering coffee and cologne—stale and corporate.
A minute later, Montgomery entered and moved to the head of the table, her gaze roaming over the gathered team.
“Good afternoon. Thank you all for joining our meeting. Let’s first discuss the theme. We want this year’s Luminary Ball to stand out. It’s not just about art—it’s about drawing in new donors,” Montgomery said. “Mr. Halcyon, go ahead.”
A red-faced bald man with thick horn-rimmed glasses cleared his throat before launching into the need for grandeur and tradition. Because art alone was never enough.
Penelope struggled to prevent herself from tuning him out. Her fingertips drummed lightly against her notepad. She didn’t bother writing anything down.
“Dr. Blackwell, what do you think?” Montgomery asked.
“I think a ‘Southern Elegance’ theme with antebellum elements might be a tad tone-deaf currently.”
Maxwell Halcyon bristled. “We need this precisely because we’re facing movements to erase our Southern culture. Something like this will appeal to the city’s donor class. Most skew conservative and are quite attached to the old South.”
“No one is trying to erase Southern culture, but maybe we shouldn’t be celebrating a movement that tried to tear this country apart over their need to—”
“Yes, yes, Dr. Blackwell. Your point is well-taken,” Montgomery said. “I’d prefer to avoid any type of controversy. What about adding a masquerade element? The board has listed that as a potential avenue, too, Mr. Halcyon, no?”
He grumbled, still glaring at Penelope.
“What about a Southern-themed masquerade ball?” he asked.
Penelope opened her mouth but stopped herself before asking what kind of Southern masks he had in mind—white robes and pointy hoods included.
“Let’s shelve this for a moment and discuss some program choices instead.
Now that we have confirmed the authenticity of the new Bellini painting, it should play a central role along with the Madonna in Red.
Our event coordinator also suggested running an exclusive donor preview beforehand.
We’ve already sent out messages, including one to Russell Deveraux,” Montgomery said.
Penelope’s spine straightened. “The gentleman who loaned the Bellini?”
“Yes,” Montgomery said. “His team reached out to confirm he’ll be attending the ball.”
Penelope nodded, though her mind whirred. She’d seen the name on the paperwork; a wealthy collector with barely any online presence and no past loans of this caliber.
Her heartbeat quickened, shallow and arrhythmic.
A ghost of a donor, if ever there was one.
“We’ll need to finalize placement soon,” the event coordinator chimed in. “If the Madonna and the Bellini are shown together, that puts us near capacity in the east wing.”
“Do it,” Montgomery said. “That’s where the media will be, and the Bellini’s confirmation is good press.”
Penelope said nothing. Press. Donors. Exposure. All tightening around her like a net. Heat spiked, like she couldn’t quite draw a full breath.
“Dr. Blackwell, do you think you could…extend your contact with Ms. Rossi? Who knows, if her clientele includes more people like Mr. Deveraux, it could benefit the Meridian in the long run.”
Penelope gritted her teeth. “Of course.”
~ ~ ~
At home, a restless Penelope could not get her mind to stop spinning.
As always in such cases, she turned to research. First, she accessed the museum loan database, once more turning to Russell Deveraux and again coming up empty before poring over archived internal flags.
Nothing.
Then she typed in Lucia Rossi, and after a second of hesitation, she pressed enter, unsure if she was hoping for a blank or populated result page.
The cursor symbol flickered into a spinning ring.
“Naturally,” Penelope murmured, tapping her fingers on the desk.
One result.
She hovered the cursor over the listing, then snapped her finger down and clicked.
“Lucia Rossi…Petra Flack… Let’s see… Oh. Another donated piece, this one to the Tremaine Gallery in Charleston. All right. What’ve you got there?”
Digging deeper, she found the painting this Petra Flack had donated: a medium-sized piece attributed to Lorenzo Santini. A beautiful rendering of a woman visible from behind, strolling along a beach at sunset.
The image wasn’t clear enough for her to get a good impression, but her stomach twisted. Anticipation?
She logged into the INTERMUSE database—a collaborative platform used by major institutions to house digital scans and provenance records—hoping she’d find the Santini there as well.
That day, luck was on her side.
Penelope cast the image to her big screen, a color-calibrated display that let her examine the painting in magnified, high-resolution detail.
The screen’s pale blue light filled her vision as she leaned closer.
She picked up her reading glasses, gliding her fingers near the edge of the screen, as if touching it would make it clearer.
Penelope took a step back and exhaled slowly. She closed her eyes, then opened them and allowed her mind, her vision, to float.
“Damn it,” she whispered after a short moment, her fingernails digging into her palms. “Who is painting all these pieces?” More importantly, what was their connection to Lucia? The more she looked, the more she wished she hadn’t. Everything pointed toward a conclusion she wasn’t ready to face.
Penelope shook her head and pivoted to check older communications and intake documents from the Flack donation, looking for a signature, a name, anything out of place.
She paused after a while to stretch and get a glass of water. Too often she forgot everything when buried in research, only to pay later with dizziness and a raging headache.
The cold tile floor stung her bare feet as she crossed the kitchen.
When she returned, she clicked into the intake form. “G. Emerson. Intake listed under Petra Flack. Huh. How are you connected to this?” Another one of Lucia’s clients? Another donor? Maybe the forger? No. They’d not be out there like this. Or would they?
Maybe she needed to cast her net wider, after all, this could tie it all together.
Penelope searched for G. Emerson, art, painting, and Atlanta, only to stumble over a middle school art competition won by one Grace Emerson.
No pictures, just text.
Penelope groaned, rubbing her burning eyes. Her shoulders ached from hours hunched forward.
She adjusted the search terms to Grace Emerson, Atlanta, Georgia, and pressed enter.
A handful of results appeared, most useless: a real estate listing, a wedding registry, even an obituary for an elderly woman in Savannah. She cursed under her breath.
She clicked the registry anyway, scanning the page though she knew instantly it wasn’t her. Wrong age, wrong everything.
Why am I even doing this?
A saner person would have shut the laptop by now, told themselves it was coincidence.
But Penelope wasn’t sane, not where this was concerned. Once she got her teeth into a puzzle, she’d work on it until all its secrets lay bare in front of her. Even if it made her bleed. The fact that it—somehow—involved Lucia made her even more relentless.
She fine-tuned the search terms, adding missing person, because why not? This time, something pinged, her lips parted as she stared at the image on the screen.
Those dimples. She was a child, maybe thirteen or fourteen, but no doubt—it was Lucia. A missing child. Vanished, alone.
Grace Emerson.
Her heart pounded against her ribs, too fast, too loud. Her mouth went dry. Penelope’s head spun.
Back to searching for art again, this time under both Lucia Rossi and Grace Emerson.
More results.
A twenty-year-old PDF from a defunct school district website. Grace Emerson, first place, middle school division. The winning piece?
A woman alone at sea, so hauntingly familiar in its brush strokes, she could almost taste it.
Penelope’s stomach twisted. This couldn’t be true.
Next, she found a brief write-up in a local paper. A mention in a grant proposal from a foster youth foundation. A name change petition archived in a legal database, tied to a Lucia Grace Rossi.
Penelope’s knuckles paled as she gripped the armrest, dizzy.
This isn’t just a forgery. It’s a career.
Nausea pricked at her throat. Her vision shimmered at the edges.
How did Lucia get involved in all of this? Worst of all, she ached—a pit in her stomach, like she lost something precious she never even had.
~ ~ ~
Penelope spent the next few days in denial, unsure what to do. Maybe she was grasping. Wanting to see a pattern that couldn’t be proven. Not yet. The painting by Grace—Lucia—wasn’t similar enough to tie it to the Santini piece. A lone woman walking on the beach.
And sadly, her own skill led to nothing, except giving her heart palpitations as she paced her living room, Fuller shooting her a baleful glare.
“Oh hush. Your life is so hard, I know.”
Fuller turned her back toward Penelope and continued sleeping.
Montgomery’s suggestion to keep in contact with Lucia popped into her head regularly, and a part of Penelope wanted to confront her, but she knew she couldn’t.
She had no proof. A name change wasn’t illegal, and saying, “Hey, isn’t your real name Grace Emerson?” sounded borderline stalkerish. No.
She could let it go. Ghost her. But that wasn’t her style, and the thought landed like a brick in her stomach. Worse—this wasn’t just a fragile friendship. There was a plan. Lucia and whoever she was working with were up to something. Penelope recalled her mental mapping of the museum.
Then all this business with the Madonna and Valentina.
At first, she told herself it was about her father, and it was, at the heart of it. But the longer she stared at the threads leading back to Valentina, the more she had to admit: She wanted payback. It might not clear his name, but making Valentina pay, God, it would feel like justice.
But to pull it off, she’d need to keep her mask intact. And Penelope had never been good at pretending. She could be guarded, yes. Withdrawn. But not false.
She’d tried once when she took on the lead in a school play only because no one else knew the lines. It had been a disaster.
Penelope was too anchored in herself to fake it. And anything too different now would stand out to Lucia. Still, she was angry. Disappointed. Even though she kept reminding herself that she kept secrets, too. It wasn’t as if Lucia could’ve said, “I forge paintings and launder them through museums.”
Am I the target? Or am I the stepping stone?
Her stomach dropped.
She couldn’t let this go. But she could shift the tide—meet Lucia on her terms. Personal attachment couldn’t be the weak link. After mentally wringing her hands long enough, Penelope grabbed her phone and typed a single line, stared at it—
Then hit send.
Might as well go all out.