Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
All night and into the morning, snow fell across Nederland and the Rocky Mountains, trapping Oriana and Reese inside.
Mercifully, their hot tub remained out of the way, which allowed them to sit in the bubbles and watch the white pile up.
No surprise that Monica couldn’t make it out of Denver that day.
It meant that Oriana and Reese would extend their trip a little while.
It meant that they would wait till Monica could make it in.
It meant more steak dinners and movies in bed, more pretending like the rest of the world could go on without them.
Oriana felt she’d never been more in love with Reese, nor more afraid that by the end of the year she would lose him.
When the snow clouds cleared and the plows rolled through the mountain roads, Monica called to say she was heading up.
By then, Oriana had secured Larry’s brand-new paintings in an airtight warehouse that would protect them from the elements.
As Oriana and Reese waited for Monica, they had breakfast at the hotel and went for a walk through the sparkling snow of downtown.
They happened to pass by Gwen and a little fluffy black dog, which popped up to lick Oriana’s hand and say hello.
“Have I missed anything on the news yet?” Gwen asked Oriana knowingly.
Oriana winced. She knew that people like Gwen wanted Henrietta’s case to be solved as soon as possible. But there was still so little she understood. She couldn’t very well bring what she had to the cops yet, either. It was thinner than ice after the first freeze.
“These things take a little time,” Oriana offered finally.
“Sometimes they take more than fifty years,” Gwen said. Her face was morose.
When they parted ways, Reese slung his arm around Oriana and nestled her close. “You’re doing everything in your power to figure this out,” he assured her. “It’s going to be all right.”
Three hours later, Oriana met Monica in the parking lot outside the warehouse.
Reese was back at the hotel resting, which gave Oriana and Monica plenty of time to dig into the topic they loved most: the art world and all its strange variables and characters.
Oriana threw her arms around Monica. “It’s so incredible to see you! You look amazing as always.”
Monica laughed outright and squeezed her back hard. “What’s it been? Ten years? Fifteen?”
“Too long,” Oriana agreed. “Thank goodness you were close by. You’re the master when it comes to this.”
Monica wagged her eyebrows. “Another forgery?”
“I don’t know,” Oriana said. “I’m hoping you can tell me that.”
Oriana used her key to unlock the warehouse and haul the sealed door up and out.
Turning on the light, she explained the strange dynamic she had with Larry and how much she was reminded of Chris Spellman’s story from 2002.
“Something about Larry’s arrogance makes me feel gross.
And that’s coming from someone who’s dealt with incredibly arrogant artists over the years.
Manhattan artists. London artists. You name it, I’ve heard it.
Till now,” she confessed, cupping her elbows.
“And I’m sure you’ve heard about his wife’s disappearance? ”
“Nobody around here knows what happened to her?” Monica asked, setting a pair of spectacles on the bridge of her nose.
Oriana shook her head. “Not that I know of. And it feels like gossip like that would have gotten out. If someone had helped her escape? Someone would have said something by now. Right?”
“I agree.” Monica put on a pair of plastic gloves and bent down to unwrap the linen from the first of Larry’s new paintings. “I hate the idea of him getting away with something, even so many years after the fact.”
Oriana remained silent as Monica peeled the linen wrappings from the paintings and set them out in a line before them.
“I spent all day yesterday studying Larry’s famous paintings,” Monica explained quietly. “I studied the brushwork. I studied the color palettes. I studied the tone.” She unfurled printouts of the paintings that Oriana had already sold, including that first one of the girl on the mountaintop.
“Something about these new ones confuses me,” Oriana admitted. “Something about them feels off.”
“I know what you mean,” Monica breathed, crouching down in front of the first in the series.
Oriana thought of her other favorite artists across centuries: men and women who’d gone through many eras of their own artistry, who’d experimented with color and line and tone, who’d fought to find “truth” within themselves throughout their careers.
It was certainly possible that Larry Calvin Johannes’s newest paintings were just brand-new takes on style and experimentation.
It was possible that Monica would take one look at these, shrug, and say that Larry himself did them.
Monica was quiet for a long time. Oriana knew better than to interrupt her train of thought. She needed Monica to be sure about this.
If Monica said they were Larry’s paintings, Oriana wasn’t sure what she’d do. Perhaps she’d give up Larry as a client and pass this mess on to someone else. She didn’t need this tainted money so badly. She didn’t need all this chaos.
Monica turned to look up at Oriana, still crouched. Her eyes were fiery.
“These paintings were not done by the same hand,” she said firmly.
Oriana felt her heart explode with questions and fears. “You’re sure?”
Monica straightened up and put her hands on her hips.
“Any art expert would say the same. Everything about the two sets of paintings is different. I mean, they’re from two very different artistic sensibilities.
The paintings you’ve already sold are the works of a genius, I believe.
And the paintings we see before us now? They were made by an amateur. ”
Oriana felt as though she couldn’t breathe. “You’re saying the works I’ve already sold were done by someone else? Someone who isn’t Larry Calvin?”
Monica raised her shoulders. “Yes,” she said finally. “Larry Calvin Johannes is a fraud. You heard it here first from me.”
That evening, Monica, Oriana, and Reese had dinner together in the hotel room, where they could talk freely about Larry without being overheard.
They ordered nearly everything off the room service menu, and Oriana and Monica poured champagne freely and excitedly.
They couldn’t believe they’d caught another art fraud!
Now, they had to plan what they’d do next.
“You have to be delicate with this story,” Monica warned Oriana. “You don’t want what happened to Chris to happen to you. You have to be open and honest about what you knew and what you didn’t.”
Oriana bowed her head. “A part of me wishes I’d never seen that painting.”
“Somebody else would have bought it and brought Larry to fame,” Monica promised.
“But it had to be you, because you’re the only one who’s going to bring the enormity of this story to light.
I mean, come on! His wife was pregnant and went missing?
He forged a number of paintings decades later.
This all points to the same conclusion, doesn’t it? ”
Oriana had been thinking the same, but had been too terrified to say it aloud.
“You think Henrietta painted the works Oriana has already sold,” Reese said.
Monica snapped her fingers. “It must be that, right? Think about it. Larry had his big-time art show in Boulder during the summer of 1975—right when Henrietta learned she was pregnant. Maybe she used his art show as an excuse to get away from him. Maybe she fled.”
“But why would she let her husband take her paintings and pretend that they’re his?” Reese asked.
“Plenty of men have gotten away with so much worse through the years,” Monica said, counting out the stories on her fingers.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald stole his wife Zelda’s writing.
Edward Hopper stole from his wife. It was the same old story, over and over again.
My guess is that Henrietta didn’t know how to stop Larry from hurting her, or using her, or manipulating her.
But she couldn’t stand to let him parent her child. ”
Oriana’s chest felt heavy with the immensity of this story. “I hope you’re right,” she said. “I hope she really did get away.”
Reese stared down at his half-eaten burger. Oriana willed him to eat the rest of it but knew better than to ask him to. If he didn’t feel well enough to eat it, he wouldn’t.
“I wonder if she’s out there, watching all this transpire,” Reese said.
“It must be surreal to see your paintings on the news,” Monica agreed. “But then again, if she painted them, she painted them fifty years ago. Maybe anything you do fifty years ago doesn’t feel like it belongs to your life any longer. I was a kid fifty years ago. I can’t fathom that.”
Oriana was quiet, contemplative. Outside, it had begun to snow again, and it felt as though they would never be free of Colorado, as though they’d never escape the mountains.
An ominous feeling came over her. What if Larry was on to them and knew what they knew?
What if he was lurking outside, waiting, ready to strike?
But then she remembered that Larry was an eighty-year-old man. He probably struggled to get out of bed every morning, let alone do much else.
Did she really want to destroy the reputation of an eighty-year-old man? Did she really want to haul all this darkness out of the past? She wasn’t sure. Everything felt unsteady.
Then again, the truth didn’t have a “right time” to surface. The truth was the truth, no matter what era, no matter who was involved. The truth was a necessity.
That night, long after Monica had gone to her hotel room for the night, Oriana broached the subject to Reese.
Moonlight played across his features. He remained quiet with thought for a long time.
“The truth always has a time and a place,” he said, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“It’s up to us to help it come to the surface. I genuinely believe that.”