Chapter 13 #2
When Charlie got up, they showered and dressed for a pre-drink dinner.
At a luxurious hotel that overlooked the entire city, they ordered cocktails, ate olives, and watched the sun drop lower in the sky.
The veranda was full and crowded with people who all seemed to be celebrating something: engagements, marriages, or maybe even recent divorces; everyone was eager to take their next steps forward.
But when the server returned to Julia and Charlie’s table to ask them if they had any additional needs, Julia took the opportunity to ask him what he thought about CAT.
The server didn’t skip a beat, probably because he was used to answering questions about the elusive artist. “It was ironic when she first began,” he said, “because her first mural hated tourism so much and brought attention to the problems we have with excess tourism, but it seemed to attract even more tourists! Funny how that happens, no?” He smiled handsomely and wagged his eyebrows.
It felt like a challenge, as if he wanted to hear Julia's thoughts on the matter.
But Julia had already thought about that. Plenty. “I thought it was brave that she called attention to it, regardless of what happened next,” she said.
“Ah! So you’re a CAT lover,” the server said.
“Isn’t everyone?”
The server chuckled. “Not everyone loves Lucia Colombo. That’s for sure.”
Julia’s heart seized. “So you think Lucia is definitely CAT?”
“I don’t know if it matters,” the server said. “She’s out there saying that she’s CAT, and nobody else has come forward. Actually, my friend says he thinks there are many different CATs, all working together. Maybe Lucia is the face of them.”
“If that theory is correct, do you think all of those CATs are from Positano?” she asked.
“I don’t care!” the server said. “The tourists come, they see the murals, they take photographs, and they buy cocktails at this hotel. It’s the circle of life.
You go to Pompeii, and you see the old murals there, and then you buy food at the restaurant next door.
We’re still profiting from the art of our ancestors, dating back two thousand years!
Maybe my great-great-great-granddaughter will know about CAT, but only because of what CAT can do for the people of Positano. ”
Julia felt the man’s anger and pessimism, and it made her cocktail sour in her mouth.
Julia tried again. “When CAT first painted her mural, did people think it was Lucia Colombo who did it?”
“Lucia? No.” The server shook his head. “Well, something so brash and bold, we Italians always think a man does it. But that’s our culture.”
He said it so openly that it surprised Julia.
“But after that? When did people think CAT was a woman? What did people think then?”
“I did not think it was Lucia.” He shrugged. “She’d told me she was done with art. There was no money in it, and she was always into fancy things. Back when we were teenagers…” He grinned sheepishly. “I should not be saying this to you. You are a stranger.”
Julia’s heart lurched. “Tell me!” Was she finally going to learn something of value about Lucia Colombo, something she could actually use?
The server bent lower so that he could whisper what he knew.
“When we were teenagers, she used to steal from tourists. She took pocketbooks from purses that hung from chairs. She conned tourist men into taking her for drives, and she’d tell them she was going to tell their wives they did more if they didn’t pay her.
She always had a new scheme up her sleeve. ”
Julia pressed her hand to her chest. Now this was what she’d come to Italy to learn. This fit the description of the Lucia Colombo she’d met back in Nantucket, the Lucia who’d spewed such arrogance on stage to Julia’s paying customers.
This version of Lucia felt like one who might have pretended to be someone else, if only to reap the rewards of CAT’s incredible career.
Although Julia had about a thousand more questions, it was clear that the server needed to run off and tend to other tables. Julia thanked him and left him an enormous tip. After that, she and Charlie hurried down the road, holding hands and laughing excitedly.
“I got the sense that he was proud of Lucia for stealing from tourists,” Julia said, bugging her eyes out as they waited for a table at the night’s chosen restaurant.
“Me too,” Charlie admitted.
“Growing up on Nantucket, did you ever consider taking advantage of the tourists?” she asked.
“Never,” he said. “Maybe we were too naive for that.”
“We weren’t forward-thinking enough,” Julia agreed.
As they sat down at their table covered with white linen and decorated with flickering candles, Julia remembered that Nantucket played its own game of taking advantage of tourists, with extra-expensive groceries, watermelon that cost ten dollars a pop, and burgers at fifty dollars plus.
The prices dropped immediately after the tourist season cratered.
But mostly during the summer months, the Copperfields knew not to dine out.
If they did, they were usually given local prices, proof that there were two worlds in Nantucket, just as there were here.
After the bottle of wine arrived and they toasted their newfound information, Julia’s phone lit up with a message. It was from Gregor. Julia turned the phone around to show Charlie.
GREGOR: The styles are incredibly different, as you said.
But honestly? I don’t see any similarities between CAT and the artist who painted these coastlines.
Usually, you can find echoes of things. Like, if you see an early sketch of Van Gogh’s, you can chart a course to his later and more magnetic stuff.
But there is no course between these coastlines and CAT. They were painted by different people.
Julia clapped her hands excitedly and drew back up her photographs of Lucia Colombo’s coastline paintings, all of which were signed: Lucia Colombo with the year they were painted directly beside. She wondered if this was enough proof that Lucia wasn’t who she said she was.
“It’s strange,” Charlie said then, interrupting Julia’s reverie. “I can’t help but feel that everyone in Positano knows more about CAT than they’re willing to say.”
Julia’s ears rang. “Why do you think that?”
“It’s just a feeling,” Charlie said. “It’s like how we usually know what’s going on in Nantucket. I think, after years of mural making, we would know exactly who had done it, even if they were trying to keep it a secret. Things like that slip through the cracks.”
Julia sniffed, realizing he was right. “And that server was pretty clear on the fact that Lucia was not CAT.”
“Which makes me think he probably knows who the real one is,” Charlie agreed.
Julia took a sip of wine. “Do you think that means we should stay in Positano longer? Pester everyone until they tell us who the real CAT is?”
Charlie sighed. “I know we’re both eager to get home.”
Julia knew he was talking about her grandchild, how ready she was to return to Anna, to hold her baby, to tend to the greater Copperfield family. But she had to save her publishing house, too.
Charlie continued, “We haven’t been abroad that long yet. I think we owe it to ourselves to keep digging. We could even go to London, maybe, where Lucia first studied art. Perhaps we’ll get a clue there?”
Julia shook her head, suddenly feeling a sense of sorrow.
“Lucia went to school there more than ten years before the first CAT mural was ever made. And if she definitely isn’t CAT, I don’t see what good that would do.
” Unless, perhaps, the real CAT had also attended school in London? But what were the chances of that?
Charlie nodded. They held the silence for a moment. Julia realized they hadn’t decided what they were going to order for food, and the server was giving them annoyed glances, wanting to clean the table as quickly as possible to make way for more tourists, more customers.
Just when Julia started to suggest a salad to share, her phone rang. It was a Nantucket number. Shivery with anxiety, she answered it on the first ring.
“Julia Copperfield? This is Officer Jeff Magnum. We spoke the night Lucia Colombo went missing,” he said. His voice had that familiar Nantucket East Coast accent, and it filled Julia’s heart. It was strange to be so homesick so soon.
“Yes? I remember,” Julia said.
Across the table, Charlie folded his hands.
“I wanted to let you know that we picked up one of the guys she was with,” Officer Magnum continued. “Are you in Nantucket to come in and identify him?”
Julia was on her feet. “I’m not,” she said. “But my son, Henry Crawford, will be back on the island tomorrow evening. He was with me. He can identify him.”
Julia asked the officer to keep her updated.
With a shaking hand, she ended the call and pressed her palms to the table.
“They picked up one of the guys,” she explained to Charlie, finally.
It was impossible to imagine what he would say.
Here in the beautiful daydream of Positano, it was impossible to imagine how one of those men had ever crossed paths with Lucia Colombo.
As always, there were more questions than answers.