Chapter Twelve #2
Jayla shook her head. “Yeah, me neither!” The Chicago State University grad had been hired after her fall internship, and Rose had been relieved to hand off the email marketing to her.
Today, Jayla was wearing her braids piled up on top of her head, and a small gold cross pendant glinted at her throat.
Lisa sighed. “ ‘Latest Art Crime Raises Questions About Chicago Museum’s Security.’ They brought up the knight sculpture and raised the question of whether the same people might be involved with both.”
They were, Rose thought. It was their curator and his shady friends, bringing hinky art into the museum in the first place.
She asked Lisa, “Is it still on display?” She was dying to see it. But if it was, it would become a new star attraction, and she could expect the museum to be tagged in a bunch of new videos and posts.
Lisa shook her head. “It’s in Paintings Conservation, where they can take a closer look at it.
” Good—Rose could stop by, say hello to Daniela, and get a closer look herself.
Lisa went on to say, “PR has drafted a statement. It mentions how we have fewer art crimes than several other prominent museums our size.”
“Yeah, we just have the weird ones,” said Holly, their blond senior designer, who always wore a white button-down shirt and jeans and who hated almost all fonts.
“I’ll get the statement up on the press release page,” Doug said. He was a heavyset man with glasses who had been in charge of the website for decades.
Rose nodded. “I can share it as a post.”
Lisa shook her head. “Actually, we’d like to talk about this as little as possible. It’s the second scandal in two years…It’s embarrassing for the museum. We’d like to schedule extra content, especially short videos, to distract from it.”
“I can do that.” It wasn’t the best week to take on more work, of course, what with the upcoming shenanigans at a rich guy’s mansion, and the whole trying to reverse time travel thing, but that couldn’t be helped.
After the meeting, she brainstormed ideas as she walked over to the conservators’ offices.
Although she always tried to highlight a variety of works from a range of eras and cultures, she got the most clicks on the famous paintings in the collection.
But was there anything new she could say about the dour father and daughter of American Gothic, the late-night loiterers of Nighthawks, or the bustling citizens of Paris Street; Rainy Day?
She walked past Seurat’s cordoned-off masterpiece, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.
Two kids were standing as close as the rope barrier would allow, staring at all the tiny dots that made up the painting.
Was there something Rose could say about the similarity between pointillism and modern-day pixels?
On her phone, she searched the name of the painting and the word technology…
and found a fantastic idea for a short video.
By that time, she’d reached Paintings Conservation, and she swiped her badge and went inside.
The lab had a wall of windows and track lights above.
One conservator dabbed at the surface of a seascape with a long cotton swab; another mixed paint on a large palette with dozens of hues.
Several paintings from various eras, with wildly varying subjects and styles, were propped up along the row of supply cabinets, forming an impromptu, eccentric exhibition.
Rose only recognized one of the pieces: a Degas, showing ballet dancers on the stage.
She took a few steps closer to study that one.
Many of Degas’s paintings of dancers showed them backstage or in rehearsal, adjusting their costumes, rubbing their sore muscles, and just being generally awkward and real.
These dancers, though, were smiling, light and lovely, with flowers in their hair.
When Rose had been in the fourth grade, she’d convinced her mom to enroll her in ballet lessons.
The studio hadn’t looked as glamorous as Rose had expected, sitting next to an Ace Hardware with a grain elevator looming behind it.
She’d kept losing her balance whenever she had to be on one foot, and she’d overheard the teacher describing her to her teenage assistant as the husky one.
Husky was a word for boys. It was as though, by being a little chubby, she’d become less of a girl.
Quitting the class hadn’t been an option; her parents had already paid for it. She stuck it out, dancing with her class at the winter recital, and had never looked at the photos.
Henry’s wife had probably been graceful and willowy, she thought. All the ladies of his time probably had, gliding around in their delicate gowns, like porcelain figurines of themselves.
“Rose!” Daniela’s voice called out. Rose looked over to see her sitting in front of the now-obliterated portrait on a wooden easel, removed from its frame, along with the back of Daniela’s dark-haired head.
As Rose approached, she had to ask herself again if she’d seen the painting in a book somewhere.
Even though Henry was now a gray blob, the backdrop still looked so familiar.
“Hey, Daniela,” she said lightly as she reached her.
“I guess it’s going to be a bigger job than you thought.
” Her gaze fell on the museum label lying on a side cabinet.
She read the first line and it was as though her vision tunneled…
as though she could see nothing but that line, glowing with light.
Henry Leighton-Lyons, the Duke of Beresford (1782–1818), amateur astronomer…
“Daniela?” she asked. Her voice shook a little. “This guy died young?”
Daniela blinked and looked over at the label. “Yeah, I guess so. That’s sad, isn’t it? I guess a lot of people died young in those days.”
“But…” Rose felt like she was going crazy. “Didn’t we talk about him living a long time? Right after the wedding ceremony?”
Daniela squinted as though trying to remember. “I don’t think so?”
“Rose. I’m glad you’re here.”
Rose startled and whirled around at the sound of Aaron Coleman’s voice.
“Hi.” Ugh. She should’ve realized that he might be there. He wore a white button-down shirt, a navy striped tie, and navy pants, and he would’ve looked even more handsome if he hadn’t looked so serious. She gestured at the canvas. “This is so weird, right?”
“It is,” he said, unsmiling. “I’m talking to as many people in the wedding party as I can about this incident. Got a few minutes?” He was using his Special Agent Voice now, not his Sort-Of-Ex-Boyfriend Voice.
“Um, yeah,” she said automatically. Wait—should she say no?
Emily, following the lead of one of her coworkers, had flat out refused to talk to law enforcement about the missing sculpture.
Rose had even said that was smart. But unlike Emily, Rose could hardly be a prime suspect.
Over sixty people had attended Emily’s wedding, for one thing.
“But I can’t stay long,” she backtracked. “I was going to ask Daniela how the restoration was going.”
Daniela looked pained. “Like I told Aaron, I don’t know if there’s anything to restore.
” She pointed, her finger hovering above the canvas.
“It looks to me like the brushstrokes of the library and window are on top of the gray. There are a couple of outline marks, here and here”—she pointed at faint lines Rose had missed.
“Like they were going to put the duke in there later.”
“Wow, that’s crazy,” Rose said. Her face warmed. She’d never been a great liar.
“It’s got to be a forgery.” Daniela pointed to the right border of the painting next. “Remember when I showed you the wear marks, because another painting was leaning up against it? They’re gone. This is in pristine condition.”
“We need the infrared images before anything else,” Aaron said. He looked to Rose. “Let’s take a walk.”
She felt a bit shaky, and as she walked with Aaron back out into the hall, she reminded herself that she hadn’t done anything wrong. “Where are we walking to?”
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Let’s go sit by the Chagall windows.”
As they walked toward the staircase, he said, “On Friday night, after we talked, you said you had to ask your brother something. Then you walked back to join him and Daniela in front of that portrait. What did you have to ask him?”
His tone sounded casual—pleasant, even—but the question made her bristle. “I didn’t have to ask him anything. I just said that to get away from you.”
He said nothing, looking at her expectantly, as they went down the stairs and walked toward the cobalt windows.
She took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry I was so mad when I found out you weren’t really dating me. But I wouldn’t have gotten so angry if I hadn’t liked you so much.”
Aaron looked away as she took a seat on the bench, and then he sat down himself, leaving more space than necessary between them.
Rose added, “I know you were just doing your job.”
“We do good work sometimes.” He seemed to regain his bland professional demeanor. “At the beginning of the year, we recovered this collection of hundreds of stolen Native American artifacts, and we, uh, had a ceremony in Albuquerque to return them to the Hopi and Zuni tribes.”
“That’s amazing.” She gave a wry smile. “Are you telling me that to make me feel worse?”
“No. I just never got to brag to you.” He met her eyes. “I wish I’d met you a different way.”
“So I take it I’m not a suspect this time?”
He sighed. “Everyone’s a suspect. I do have to ask you some questions.”
“Fine.” She couldn’t imagine any way that she might incriminate herself.
He held up his phone. “Okay if I record this?” She didn’t love the idea, but nodded anyway.
He pulled up an app, hit the red button, and asked, “Do you know what happened to the portrait of the duke, painted by Walter Wilke?”