I nodded. “Sounds good. I’m going to run up to my office for a sec, then I’ll be around and about. Have you eaten?”
“Yeah. Sasha and I traded off lunch breaks.”
“Order me a pizza, will you? I’m starved.”
“Anything else?”
“Not now. Thanks.”
Upstairs, I dialed the combination of my floor safe and saw that everything was intact. I sat at my desk for a moment to call in to Chief Alverez, as promised. I got Cathy, the big blonde, who noted my message without apparent interest. I could picture her writing on a pink While You Were Out pad.
I opened a bottle of water from the case I kept in my office and leaned back with my eyes closed, my determination to take charge allowing me to relax in spite of the ever-present fear.
“Oh, jeez,” I said, sitting up with a start, realizing that I could begin my independent research right away, “I never checked.”
As I turned toward my computer, Gretchen called to tell me that the pizza had arrived. Hunger overpowered curiosity, and I headed downstairs to eat.
Entering the front office, I was so intent on my own thoughts, I was only vaguely aware of Gretchen. It had just occurred to me that previously I’d searched an Interpol site to see if the Renoir had been listed on the official law enforcement site as stolen. But I’d never searched for information about the painting itself. I brought up a browser and entered the painting’s title and the artist’s name.
“Can I help you with anything?” Gretchen asked.
I considered telling her. Gretchen was plenty loyal, but she was young and social. She told me once, just after she started working for me, that she loved gossip. She laughed when she said it, as if it was a rather charming quality, girlie and cute.
She didn’t exaggerate. Gossip was more than a hobby. It was almost an obsession. She spent every lunch hour at her desk, nibbling on a salad, surfing celebrity gossip Web sites, except once a week, when the trashy tabloid newspapers hit the stores. On that day, she’d dash out to pick up copies and read them, too.
About a year after she started, she pointed to a photograph on the front page of one of the tabloids. A baby, apparently a movie star’s newborn, appeared to weigh almost twenty pounds.
“Isn’t that awful?” she asked.
I looked at the trick photo. It was awful.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “How do you think they did it?”
“Oh, you mean the photo? No, no. It’s real. The baby’s size is a deformity, a rare side effect of a medication his wife took while she was pregnant. Isn’t it horrible?”
I looked at her, gauging her level of credulity, and concluded that it was high. She thought the oversized baby was real. If I asked her why no other media mentioned the abnormality, probably she’d whisper that it was a conspiracy funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
I didn’t want to get roped in, so I smiled vaguely, and said, “You never know, do you? I’m off to the Finklesteins’. I should be back by two.” And I left before she could tell me anything else she’d discovered in the gossip columns.
I didn’t understand her enthusiasm at all, but knew enough not to judge. My mother had been a closet tabloid reader, lingering at grocery store checkout racks to sneak quick reads. It wasn’t something we discussed openly, but my father and I would often exchange knowing looks as we pretended to be occupied in another part of the store to give my mother time to finish a story.
Toward the end, when my mother became bedridden, my father bought a copy of every gossip newspaper, true-confession magazine, and scandal sheet he could get his hands on, and their pictures and stories helped ease my mother’s pain.
Still, Gretchen’s love of gossip didn’t inspire confidence that she knew the value of discretion, so I decided to keep my own counsel. If nothing else, she was young, and discretion generally wasn’t a virtue of youth.
“No, I’m fine,” I answered.
“Sure?”
“Thanks. I’m okay.”
“Then I’m going to go see if I can do anything for Eric, all right?”
“Good,” I answered absent-mindedly.
I clicked the Search Now button, and in seconds got eighty-nine hits, mostly art museums, poster shops, and reference sites, like encyclopedias and university art history departments. But one site was unique. Hardly able to believe my eyes, I clicked on a link to a site claiming to track art stolen by the Nazis before and during World War II.
While I read, I ate two pieces of pizza without tasting either one. According to the Switzerland-based organization whose Web site I was on, Three Girls and a Cat was one of seven paintings that had been stripped from the walls of the Brander family home in Salzburg in 1939 in return for a promise of exit visas for the family. According to the meticulously kept Nazi records recovered after the war, the paintings had been stored in a barn pending determination of their final destination. But mysteriously, only one daughter, Helga, then twenty-one, had been granted an exit visa. Apparently, neither the rest of her family, nor the seven paintings, had ever been seen again. Until now.
The phone rang, and I was so intent on what I was reading, I nearly missed the call. “Prescott’s,” I said, “May I help you?”
“You run tag sales, right?” a stranger asked, wanting driving directions.
Hanging up the phone, I read on. After the war, in 1957, Helga Brander Mason, married and living in London, had petitioned the Austrian government to locate and return the pillaged works. They’d promised to try, but whether they’d done anything more than register her request was anybody’s guess. Almost fifty years later, her son, Mortimer Mason, had picked up the search. He was listed as the contact for information regarding the seven missing paintings.
Reeling from my discovery, I stared into space, stunned and disbelieving.
“Things are looking great out there!” Gretchen said as she walked into the office. She looked at me and stopped, tilting her head. “Are you all right?”
“What?” I asked, distracted, having trouble switching my attention to her.
“Are you okay? You look, I don’t know, funny.”
“Yeah. I’m okay,” I answered. I bookmarked the URL and closed the browser. “How’s Eric doing?”
“Fine. He says he doesn’t need help.”
I nodded. “Good.”
“Any calls?” Gretchen asked.
“Just one. A woman wanting directions.”
Gretchen sat at her desk, and soon I heard tapping as she typed something. The phone rang and I heard her answer it.
It was inconceivable to me that Mr. Grant had owned a Renoir that had been stolen by the Nazis. Maybe, I thought, the purchase was innocent. Perhaps he hadn’t known the painting’s sordid history. I shook my head in disbelief. Mr. Grant was a sharp businessman, way too savvy to buy a multimillion-dollar painting without first verifying its authenticity. Since he hadn’t mentioned the painting when we’d talked about the sale, it was more likely, I thought, that he’d purchased it knowing full well that it was stolen. Or that he’d stolen it himself during or after the war.
I was beyond speechless. I was in shock.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wiping my hands on one of the small napkins the pizza parlor had included, I thanked Gretchen for ordering the food, and added, “Hand out the rest to anyone who wants it, okay?”
I knew that I needed to pull myself out of what, increasingly, felt like a quagmire, but I was uncertain how to proceed. I considered calling Mortimer Mason, the alleged lawful owner of the Renoir, but I thought better of that idea almost immediately. Since his painting was safe, and I didn’t know what to say to him, or even what questions I should ask, and since I had no clue what I should say in response to whatever he might ask me, I decided to delay making the call. Maybe, instead of calling, I thought with an unexpected thrill of excitement, I’d go to London and knock on his door.