I WOKE UP to a dull, throbbing pain in my neck and a cold, damp sensation on my face. I opened my eyes … and realized I was blind. And on the floor.
After a little struggling to withdraw my phone from my pocket, I realized I wasn’t really blind, just in complete darkness. My phone was a little blurry, and the brightness of the screen left harsh ghost images on my retinas. It took a little while to adjust to the light, the double vision, and the vertigo.
I struggled to my feet, using the shelves as support and my phone as a flashlight. I rubbed the back of my neck. There was no blood, but a painful bump the size of a golfball. And pain like I hadn’t felt since I was hit in the head with a golfball some years ago.
I made my way back upstairs, realizing it was well past closing. The entire building was dark. I looked at my blurry phone and decided the best bet was to call Lacroix. He’d probably have the authority to break in here and let me out without worrying about the alarm.
“What are you doing at the gallery?” he asked. “Isn’t it closed?”
“Yes, it is. I got left behind, and I don’t want to set the alarm off, at least, not without a police officer handy.”
“You’re lucky I’m still uptown, Virtue. I’ll be right over.”
I worked my way to the front door and looked at the panel for the alarm system. Luckily, they didn’t have any motion sensors in the basement or on the main floor. Just glass breakage sensors and magnetic sensors on the doors. At least I had a little time to read the various advertising brochures on the stand near the door. There was an outdated art walk flyer from the previous year, so I looked at it for a while.
After fifteen minutes, Lacroix called me back, saying he was outside. And that the door handle was broken. And could I just force the door open from the inside? That I could do.
The alarm went off, as expected, and Lacroix had a city employee with him to disarm the system.
I told him about the assault, and he seemed a little surprised. I also showed him the door handle on the main desk. But the door handle wasn’t there. I think the person who hit me might have left it downstairs in the archives.
After a quick trip to the hospital for some stitches and a quick check for a concussion, Lacroix drove me home with some takeaway food from a Chinese place near my house. They did these amazing spring rolls, so I celebrated the fact that I wasn’t dead by eating a half dozen of them with some chop suey and those chicken balls with the fluorescent red sauce.
I figured I’d stay out of trouble and do the rest of my investigation online. At least the part about identifying the paintings on the USB drive. There were some excellent resources available to me, especially since museums and galleries had started digitizing their inventories and making them available online.
Since I was a fan of Thomson’s style, all the paintings looked familiar to me. About half of them looked quite familiar, as though I’d seen them before, so those were the ones I focused on.
I found a few matches right away, one each at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and the National Gallery of Canada. A couple of reverse image searches later, and I was making some progress.
After I’d finished my food and downed two of cups of coffee, I remembered the Grand Trunk Factory had a painting up for auction, and it was listed on their website. The site looked like it could use some optimization; there was no search feature, and their menu had no reference to News or Events. I hoped their auction software was a little more advanced.
I found the painting after about 10 clicks. It was a nice one, but not one I recognized. It was on the USB drive as well.
A little stretching and a coffee refill later, I’d finished cleaning up and putting the leftovers away in the fridge. This was a fun exercise, but I was no closer to figuring out what all this art had to do with Neumann’s death, or why he dumped it in my hands before asking for help and getting killed.
I might have to talk to an actual expert.