Thirty minutes later, Zelda was stepping back into Rita’s childhood garden, this time through the kitchen door. According to the neighbors, Eva and her family were on vacation in a faraway land, blissfully unaware of what was taking place in their backyard. With the sun shining, the birds chirping and no one pointing a gun at her, the garden seemed a lot less sinister now than it had a few short hours ago. Her feeling of security was most certainly enhanced by the hordes of uniformed police officers spread around the small patch of grass, guarding the crime scene and its valuable contents.
Zelda hesitated slightly as she approached the shed’s open door. Fresh memories of the gun shot ringing in her ears, blood seeping into Friedrich’s shirt and Konrad Heider’s mashed up face, flashed through her brain. She shuddered thinking about how easily it could have all gone wrong. Yet here she stood, tired but unscathed, about to see the treasure trove Arjan van Heemsvliet and Philip Verbeet managed to hide from Oswald Drechsler seventy-three years ago.
Sucking up her courage, Zelda stepped around the piles of concrete tiles she’d stacked up earlier that morning and quickly crossed to the opening in the middle of the floor. As she climbed down the small metal ladder, she felt as if she was traveling back in time, her own steps mirroring those taken by Philip and Arjan all those years ago.
The ceiling was high enough she could stand upright. A wide path had been left clear in the middle, allowing her to walk unhindered from one end of the room to the other. Portable floodlights placed along the pathway illuminated the space. It seemed even larger than the shed above and was completely filled with wooden crates stacked up on top of each other. Most of the towers touched the ceiling. A number had been stenciled onto the side of each crate with black paint.
Close to the ladder, three crates had been pulled down onto the floor and opened, their lids still ajar. Zelda knew that one of the first officers to arrive at the scene had pried their tops off. She didn’t blame the police for not believing her when she’d told them the root cellar was filled with priceless artwork. Who would have expected to find any of this tucked away beneath Rita’s old shed? Especially when a hysterical foreigner, screaming for an ambulance, was the one telling them about it.
Figuring it was alright to touch everything now that the police had released the scene, she lifted the lid off the crate closest to her and peered inside. A mustached man in a clown suit stared back at her, guitar in hand. She crouched down to get a better look at the canvas. As her eyes adjusted to the low light, her heart skipped a beat. “Oh my God,” Zelda whispered aloud, instantly recognizing the artist’s distinctively cubist style. How could she not? He was one of the world’s most famous modern painters and prominently featured in every art history book known to man.
Sure her eyes were deceiving her, she pulled the yellowing sheet of paper sticking up from behind the painting, out of the box. Written at the top in Arjan’s unmistakably neat handwriting was ‘Pablo Picasso, Harlequin Study Number Three’. She laughed aloud, lightly stroking the painting’s surface while she absorbed every detail, figuring that in her lifetime this would be her one and only chance to actually touch such an important and expensive piece of art.
After studying the painting awhile, she finally tore her eyes away and looked again at the paper included in the crate. All of its owners were listed, starting with the person who bought it directly from Picasso in 1904 and ending with the man who’d purchased it from a Dutch art gallery in 1927. She squinted a little to better read the final name listed: Frans Keizer. She recognized it from Arjan’s inventory book; the Keizer collection filled five pages. Thanks to this slip of paper, it would be a cinch for the museum’s staff to return the painting to its rightful owner. Zelda felt tears welling up as she realized that Frans Keizer’s relatives, and all of the other families Arjan van Heemsvliet had helped would soon be reunited with pieces of their past, objects intertwined with their own histories, as Irises was to the Verbeet family.
The clanking of high heels against the metal rungs of the root cellar’s ladder interrupted her thoughts and sent her stomach spinning. She wiped the tears from her cheeks and tried to compose herself, unsure of how Bernice Dijkstra and Huub Konijn would react to her presence. She hadn’t spoken to either of them since their last disastrous meeting two days ago, at the end of which she’d been kicked out of the Amsterdam Museum and told not to come back. Detectives Merks and Oosterbaan had assured her both museum professionals knew what had taken place this morning in the shed above. Zelda hoped this major find would wipe away any residual hard feelings generated by her own bull-headed behavior.
She turned towards the ladder to see the project manager standing with her feet on the floor but her hands still clutching a metal rung. Bernice was mumbling to herself in Dutch as she took in the root cellar’s contents, clearly mesmerized by what she saw. Just above her was Huub Konijn, tilting his head sideways to get a better look. Only after the curator cleared this throat for the third time did Bernice release the ladder and move aside. Huub acknowledged Zelda’s presence with a nod before turning his attention to the crates filling the room.
“How did you figure out the artwork was hidden here under this shed, Zelda?” the project manager finally asked, still gazing reverently around the room.
Zelda chuckled. “I’ll tell you all about it after I’ve had a good night sleep. Right now my story would come out a jumble,” she answered slowly in Dutch. She felt embarrassed to still be dressed in the white jumpsuit usually worn by the police’s forensics unit when on-site, given to her by the detectives after they’d asked to keep her blood-stained clothes as evidence. Sure, she could have gone home and changed, but that would have meant passing up on the detectives’ offer to see what was down in the root cellar before the crates were transported to the Amsterdam Museum. There would be plenty of time for a shower and clean clothes later.
As Zelda began to apologize for her outfit, she noticed both Bernice and Huub were too busy studying the open crates and their contents to be curious about her clothing.
“If all three-hundred and twenty-six pieces are here, Bernice, that would make this the single largest discovery of missing artwork in the Netherlands,” Huub cried out, shaking his head in disbelief. “How wonderful to be able to see and study all of these works again.”
“And how fantastic that so many will soon have their family’s long-lost artwork returned to them,” Bernice added, almost as if to remind the curator that the paintings wouldn’t be staying in the museum’s depot for long.
The project manager’s words brought Rita Brouwer to the forefront of Zelda’s mind. “Philip Verbeet’s collection must be down here, too,” she exclaimed. “Rita and her sisters will get their father’s paintings back after all.”
“Rita will be so pleased,” Bernice replied sincerely.
Zelda wiped away a tear, happy the project manager agreed so wholeheartedly. There was no more doubt as to who Philip Verbeet’s artwork belonged to. Not only would Zelda get to tell Rita what happened to her father, the Verbeet girls would get his entire collection back. Her sister Iris would get to lay her eyes upon her own self-portrait once again, painted by her first love so long ago.
“It will take us months, possibly years, to reconstruct the provenance of all of these pieces,” Huub muttered, irritation creeping into his voice, his joy already fading.
“Not months, Huub, weeks at most,” Bernice corrected him, holding up the Picasso’s list of owners for the curator to see. “Arjan van Heemsvliet has done our work for us.”
“We’re going to have to assemble a new project team, one which will be responsible for locating and contacting the owners or their heirs,” Huub said. He was silent a moment, obviously considering something, before he spoke again. “You have definitely earned a place on that team Zelda, if you want it,” he added.
Zelda looked up in astonishment, flabbergasted yet overjoyed. “Mr. Konijn, are you offering me a job?”
Huub’s dove grey eyes stared back at her, a hint of a smile crossing his lips. “I guess I am, Miss Richardson.”