“No stranger than anyone else, I suppose,” Ryan said after a moment of consideration. “I only met him the one time. Since then my son, Thad, has been making the regular weekly deliveries to the Mason property.”
Connie asked nothing more and for a moment the room was silent. Connie felt her eyes once again drawn to the mystery of the wrapped bundle.
She trapped her bottom lip between her teeth and gestured. “May I see the paintings now?”
Ryan sat up straight and nodded apologetically. “Of course,” he said. “I hope they are of interest to you.”
He pushed himself out of the chair and stooped over the desk, adjusting the lamp so the bright pool of light fell upon the bundle. Then, slowly, as though the contents were priceless relics, he unwrapped the cloth so that Connie could see the first painting. Ryan stood back and Connie came slowly to her feet like a worshipper approaching a sacred altar.
Her face was white, the blood drained from under her tan, and her eyes were enormous pools of glittering wonder. Her mouth fell open and a little gasp of utter astonishment gushed from between her lips.
The first painting was another oil on an unframed canvas that had been drawn over heavy wooden stretcher bars. It was only ten inches square – a painting of two gulls on a barren beach, overshadowed by an outcrop of grey craggy rock.
It was stunning – rendered with such perfection that it seemed to transcend the canvas it was contained within and breathe its own life. Here was the magnificence of art, a painting so vividly made that it seemed to capture the wind and the sounds of the ebbing surf as though it had been crafted not with mere paint, but with some impossible dimension of nature’s elements.
Connie felt her eyes glisten and blur. There was a sob of choked emotion in her throat. She touched her fingers to her cheek and was only vaguely aware that she was crying.
She pored over the painting, although she knew instantly the same hand made it, the same man. It was all there to see in his style, the effortless blending of color and the remarkable way the oil had seemed to melt into the canvas.
She looked up into Ryan’s face. He was standing back from the desk, watching her from the shadows.
“It’s beautiful,” her voice husked with raw emotion. “Simply beautiful.”
Ryan nodded. He had his hands clasped in front of him, his expression somber, as though he was somehow intruding on a private moment. Without a word, he carefully set the painting aside to reveal the second, larger painting.
Connie saw the seascape and clamped her hands over her mouth in speechless wonder. She blinked her eyes and realized she was visibly shaking. Slowly, she reached out tentative fingers and brushed them over the canvas, expecting them to come away wet, or perhaps covered in sand.
The second painting was another unframed oil on canvas, this one twice as long as the first. It was another seascape, similar to the one she had seen in the gallery. It depicted a lonely beach with a small boat drawn up on the sand. Beside the boat was the same beautiful young woman she had already seen, her back once again enigmatically to the artist, one hand extended as if reaching out towards the surly ocean that boiled in the mid-ground, slate grey beneath a thunderous sky.
“Are they good enough?” Ryan asked softly.
Connie nodded her head, not trusting her voice, not willing to sully this moment with any words. She gazed down at the two paintings and she knew instinctively that she had re-discovered greatness.
She snatched for the lamp and studied each painting minutely, examining the edges for signatures. There were none, yet still she was certain. She turned each canvas over with infinite care and saw no identification.
At last she nudged the light from the lamp aside and lifted her eyes to Warren Ryan. “How old is Mr. Mason?” she asked.
The storeowner shrugged. “Forty,” I guess. “Maybe a little younger.”
Connie nodded. It fit with what little she knew. A prickle of excitement tingled the hair at the nape of her neck.
“And you say he lives around here somewhere?” she kept her voice low, lest the excitement simmering in her blood became obvious.
“Sure,” Ryan shrugged. “About an hour’s drive out of town. He has a property on the beach.”
“And you say he has lived there for the past five years?”
Ryan started to nod and then stopped himself. “We’ve been delivering groceries to him for the last five years,” he said precisely. “I don’t know about before then. I only moved here to take on this business seven years ago.”
Connie fell back into her chair. She felt emotionally drained. There was a tremble in her thigh as though she had run a long way, and her arms had a heaviness that felt like the weary strain of exhaustion. She was numb with wonder, and yet overcome with the rare excitement of one who gazes upon lost treasure.
“I have a thousand dollars,” Connie offered. She opened her purse and laid the money on the table. “Is that enough?”
Ryan narrowed his eyes shrewdly. He was stretched out on the financial rack, yet he sensed there was more to be made here. He had seen the woman’s reactions to the paintings, seen the glittering need to have them in the way she lovingly gazed upon them. He shook his head and his expression became grim.
“Three thousand for both paintings,” he countered. That would be enough to get the bank off his back and carry him through the next winter. “And it would have to be cash.”
Connie looked down at the paintings on the desk and felt a surge of pure elation. They were hers. She would have them both.
She set her handbag down on the floor and pressed her knees together, straightened her back. “Mr. Ryan, can I borrow your phone?”
3.
Duncan Cartwright set his scotch carefully down and then casually reached between the pretty blonde’s spread legs and teased her with the practiced touch of his fingers. The girl squirmed dutifully. Her eyes were wide, her head thrown back so that she stared at the ornate ceiling. Her jaw hung slack, and she was panting with feigned pleasure.
“Do you like that?” Duncan taunted the girl. She nodded her head, not trusting the betrayal in her voice. Her legs and arms were trembling from the strain of being propped on the antique desk, supporting her weight while the man amused himself.
She was young – no more than nineteen – with dirty blonde hair and a pretty face. She closed her eyes as he leaned forward to kiss her and she could taste the alcohol fumes and acrid stench of cigar smoke on his lips.
“I have great plans for your career,” Duncan crooned. “It’s all mapped out. First we’ll exhibit you out of state – California perhaps… and then, maybe in another couple of years, we will do your first New York show right here in the gallery – if you’re a good girl for me.” He drew his hands possessively across her breasts. They were small, barely enough to fill his cupped palm, the nipples like perfect jewels of pink coral. The girl on the desk gave a soft moan.
Duncan watched the young woman’s face carefully with a predatory fascination as his fingers played across her body in an arrogant attempt to arouse her, then he strode across to the chair where she had folded her clothes and snatched up her panties.
With the heavy drapes drawn, the wood-paneled office was almost dark, even though outside the New York skyline was bathed in the warm light of a sultry summer afternoon. The air in the room was a thick blue haze of smoke. Duncan came back to the desk and leered at the girl.
“Open your mouth,” he said softly. “I don’t want your screams of pleasure to disturb the gallery clients.”
The girl opened her mouth with a wince of hesitation. Duncan pressed the silk of her panties between the girl’s lips, then stood back and shrugged off his jacket.
The sudden sound of a phone ringing startled him. He scowled at the interruption and his mouth drew into a thin line of disapproval. He snatched the phone up and pressed it to his ear.
“I told you – no interruptions.”
He listened for a moment and t
hen a small frown formed deep lines at the bridge of his nose between the dark brooding eyes. He clamped a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and turned on the naked girl. “Get your clothes and get out,” he snapped. “Now.”
The young woman scurried off the desk. He waited until she had fled from the room and then took a deep calming breath. “Put her through,” he demanded.
He heard a click on the line and then a brief hiss of static. “This is Duncan, darling,” he said urbanely.
“Thank God,” Connie’s voice down the long-distance connection sounded breathless with relief. “I wasn’t sure you would be working today.”
Duncan narrowed his eyes warily. “Wait a second,” he said. “I’m putting you on speaker phone.”
He stabbed buttons and then set the receiver down in the cradle. There was a brief crackle of sound and then Connie’s voice again, amplified. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Duncan said. He lit a cigar and then clamped it between his teeth while he smoothed the fingers of both his hands through his hair. He saw the girl’s panties. They had fallen on the floor at his feet. He picked them up, inhaled the musky scent of them, and then tucked the wisp of fabric into his coat pocket as a keepsake. “I was worried about you,” Duncan went on smoothly. He stepped across the office to the window and raised his voice to cover the distance. “I messaged you several times last night. You didn’t reply.” There was an implied edge of menace in his words, even though his voice carried the tone of a concerned lover. He waited through a hesitation of guilty silence.
“My phone was stolen, Duncan,” Connie lied. “I lost it last night. I stopped at a diner and my phone and handbag were taken.”
“Where are you calling me from?”
“A shop in the town,” Connie explained. “But I will replace my cell phone as soon as I leave here and message the number to you.”
She waited through another moment of precarious, telling silence, and then asked softly, “Duncan, are you alone?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I need your help.”
Duncan’s mouth curled into a reptilian smile. “More money?”
“No.”
“But wasn’t your handbag stolen at the diner?”
Connie had to think quickly. “Yes… yes, it was – but it was stolen from my table while I went to pay for my meal. I have my wallet and money still.”
More silence. Duncan drew back the drapes and a shaft of bright sunshine spilled into the office, casting light across the paintings of his private collection that adorned the walls. He blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling. “So what is it you want?”
“Advice – information.”
“About…?”
Connie took a deep breath and held it for a moment. “About Blake McGrath.”
Duncan’s expression became a curious scowl. He strode back to the desk and fell into the big leather chair. “What exactly would you like to know?”
“Everything you can tell me.”
“Can’t you find this out on your laptop?”
“Yes, but it’s back in the house where I am staying, and I need to know right now. Please…”
Duncan gave an amused, indulgent sigh. He sat back in the chair and the expensive leather creaked. He studied the glowing tip of his cigar for a moment.
“Blake McGrath is… or was… America’s most famous contemporary artist,” he began. “They called him America’s Rembrandt. He won acclaim from gallery curators around the world and held special exhibitions at the Louvre and the National Gallery in London. Enough?”
“What happened to him?” Connie asked. “Why did he stop painting?”
Duncan drummed his fingers on the desktop. “Every exhibition the man held sold out,” he said. “His last major showing was in New York about six or seven years ago. It was announced at the time that he was going away to create new works… but he was never heard of again.”
“He just disappeared?”
“Off the face of the earth, so it seems,” Duncan said. He had once owned a small McGrath seascape, and had hung it here in this very office as the pride of his collection, until a Saudi cartel had offered him a prince’s ransom for the painting. As a reflex action, his eyes drifted across to the blank space that still remained on the wall.
“Can you remember the prices his work fetched – the ones from his last exhibition?”
“Of course,” Duncan sounded almost offended. Art was his life, and more than the artists themselves, Duncan knew their values.
“He was the most renowned seascape artist in the world. His last exhibition contained twenty-four pieces. The largest sold for 1.6 million, and the smallest – a little study of some shells and rocks – fetched several hundred thousand.”
There was a very long moment of silence, and Duncan thought perhaps the connection had been broken. His mind drifted back to the young girl he had sent from his office and he wondered if she still might be downstairs in the gallery… He plucked her panties from his pocket and ran the lace between his fingers.
Finally Connie’s voice came back, lowered to a whisper. “If any new paintings of his were discovered, would they still fetch the same prices?”
Duncan paused and considered the question from an academic angle. The last Blake McGrath to come onto the open market had been a small seascape just twelve months earlier. It had been auctioned by Sotheby’s for almost half a million pounds.
“More,” he said with confidence, and then went on with a weary rush of impatience. “Connie, finding undiscovered works by America’s Rembrandt would be like finding missing songs by The Beatles, or a new masterpiece by Picasso.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Now, darling,” he clenched his teeth as he muttered the endearment, “why are you asking me all these questions? I’m very busy here.”
“I think I’ve found him,” Connie said in a sudden gasp of breath. “I think I’ve found Blake McGrath.”
Duncan straightened in his chair. In an instant the pretty girl had been forgotten. He dropped the panties, and his face became grave and stern as he leaned over the speaker of the phone.
“Explain,” he barked the command.
Connie flinched, shocked by the sudden intensity of Duncan’s voice. She gnawed at her lip and then went carefully through a veiled explanation.
“I’m in a little town on the coast of Maine…”
“You’re not in Bar Harbor? You told me that would be where you are staying.”
“No,” she said. “I stopped overnight because I was tired,” the deception did not come easily to Connie. She was, at heart, an honest woman, but there was so much at stake, and Duncan was not a man she owed her loyalty to. “I plan on driving the rest of the way up to Bar Harbor tomorrow morning.”
“Go on,” Duncan encouraged. He had a growing sense of unease and the cunning instincts of a fox. He knew he was being deceived. He could hear it in Connie’s voice.
“Well I’m in this little town and I went to a local gallery here, just on a whim. Duncan, they have a painting by a man using the name Bill Mason – but I swear it’s a genuine Blake McGrath. I think he’s using the Mason name to hide. I think Blake McGrath is living somewhere here in Maine.”
Duncan arched his eyebrows and his expression became incredulous. “And you’re basing this assumption on a painting? Is it even signed?”
“No.”
“Then what makes you think it’s a genuine McGrath?”
“The style, Duncan! It’s beautiful – utterly magnificent. And the name… Bill Mason, Blake McGrath. It all fits.”
Duncan’s expression soured. His impatience began to bubble over into the sharper tone of his voice.
“Do you have the painting?”
“No, but I have taken photos.”
“Is there just one painting?”
Connie hesitated. “Yes.”
“It’s probably a forgery, or a coincidence. I mean every artist in the world has tried to
paint like Blake McGrath. Isn’t it more likely that you have just stumbled upon a talented amateur?”
Connie sighed. Her voice became very soft. “I suppose it is possible,” she conceded, although she knew in her heart she was right. She knew with every fiber of her being that this was the work of America’s master.
Duncan sat back in his chair and his voice became condescending, as though he were indulging a child. “Darling, you’re not the first person to be fooled by a clever forgery, or to get caught up in a myth. The art world is famous for such deceptions.” He paused for a moment. “Can I put you on hold, sweetheart? I have something important to take care of that simply can’t wait?”
“Sure.”
He clicked off the line and got through to his secretary. “That blonde girl who left here a few minutes ago,” he growled. “I want her back. If she’s not still in the gallery, go and look for her – and if you can’t find her, start typing up your resume.”
He took a deep breath and snatched up the line to Connie again. His voice changed in an instant, once again smooth and suave. “Maybe you’ve just stumbled upon another Han van Meegeren…” he offered reasonably.
Connie fell silent.
Van Meegeren was a Dutch artist during the 1930s who failed in his own career and then set about replicating the work of famous masters in the art world’s most sensational case of fraud. So successful had the man been, that several of the world’s foremost art critics had hailed one of his creations as the finest original painting by the 17th century master, Johannes Vermeer, that they had ever seen.
“Maybe…” Connie’s voice stayed small.
Duncan sighed theatrically. “Look,” he said. “Email me the photos and I’ll take a look at them when I get a moment. And might I suggest you get yourself to Bar Harbor and watch some sunsets instead of chasing rainbows.” He forced a smile into his voice, and then looked up suddenly to the sound of a reluctant knock on his door. The smile became genuine – and wolfish.
Duncan came out of his chair and leaned over the speaker. “Connie, I have to go,” his words became clipped. “I’m sorry, darling, but I have an important meeting and I’m going to be busy for the rest of the afternoon.” He hung up without waiting for her response and glided across the office. The blonde girl was waiting for him.