“My fucks dispenser broke, so I had it removed.” – Sophia Collins
The most interesting part of that remarkably interesting statement was that my eyes went immediately to Anna’s face. That she was as pale as a ghost and wouldn’t meet my eyes was less fascinating to me than the fact that I apparently cared more about her reaction than my own.
To be fair, my own reaction was more of course than what?!?!?
“What’s wrong, Anna?” her mother said, sounding worried as she set down the painting and came over to her daughter. I hadn’t seen the resemblance until that moment, but then I saw that they had the same shaped eyes framed by the same thick lashes and arched eyebrows that looked like wings.
Anna looked frantically at me, then back at her mother. “Why was your painting at the Gardner Museum?
Sophia Collins looked startled, as if she were surprised that she’d said what she did. Then her eyes met mine. “I’m sorry, Darius is it?”
Anna met my eyes, and when I didn’t immediately answer the question, said, “Mom, Darius Masoud is an investigator for a security firm in Chicago. He and I have been …” she faltered then, and I finished the sentence before I could think too much about it.
“We’re tracking down the provenance of a painting. Anna received a tip from one of her bail jumpers that led her to the Gardner, and the more we look into things there, the more all roads seem to lead back to the Gardner heist.”
Anna’s expression was unreadable. Then she looked back at her mother. “He actually came here so we could ask you about your time as an intern there.”
Her mother looked back at me, and the concern in her expression faded into a smile. Again I saw her daughter in her face. “Well then, pour yourself a cup of coffee, Darius, and let’s talk on the beach.”
Anna gave me a rueful smile and pulled a travel-style mug with a K&P Janitorial logo off a shelf and filled it with coffee, while her mother called all the dogs together and headed out to a sunroom. “Bring the bag of tennis balls, Anna,” she called as she stepped outside.
Anna’s worried gaze followed her mother until she was out the door, and then she seemed to visibly relax. “Good,” she said, “she didn’t take a towel.”
“Why is that good?” I asked, though there were a million other questions that were more pressing.
“Because it means she won’t take her usual topless dip in the sea.”
I laughed, and Anna looked sharply at me. “You think I’m joking, but I’m totally serious. My mom believes her daily dip keeps her young. Colette and I just think she’s an exhibitionist who knows she doesn’t look like the fifty-year-old frumpy matrons in town.”
“She doesn’t,” I said, thinking how similar mother and daughter were in build.
“But topless?” her nose wrinkled in distaste. “She’s my mother.”
I shrugged. “My mother always said, ‘look at her mother before you marry her, because that’s the person who taught her how to be a woman.’ It seems as though you had an interesting teacher.”
She sighed. “My lessons were from my dad - I was the son he didn’t get. I pretty much fail at anything remotely female.”
She picked up her coffee and turned to leave the room. I followed her through the sunroom, admiring the view her yoga pants revealed as she walked. “I must disagree,” I said to myself.
The house stood on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and the path down to the beach was a wide, sandy one, anchored by scrubby brush and rocks. It wasn’t a private beach – it stretched out of sight on either side – but it felt remote, and Sophia and her dogs were the only things moving on it that I could see.
We were about halfway down the path when Anna stopped and faced me. “You don’t lie. Why did you tell my mom we’re working together?”
“Are we not?” I asked. “We may not be standing on the same side, but the end goal appears to be the same.”
“I don’t know what the end goal is,” she said, a note of desperation creeping into her tone. “I thought it was simple – get Mom’s painting back for her from the guy who had it.”
“Her painting was the treasure, and Markham Gray is the dragon,” I said quietly. “How do captivity and freedom come into it?”
Anna sighed in what seemed like defeat, and then turned to continue walking. “I’ll show you the letter from my aunt when we get back to Chicago,” she said over her shoulder. I tried not to notice how much I enjoyed the sound of the word ‘we.’
The dogs came racing over to us when we reached the beach, and Anna pulled the sling bag off her shoulder to fish out a couple of tennis balls. She handed one to me, and then hurled hers down the beach with the form of a baseball pitcher. The dogs went off in a mad race for the ball as we walked to where Sophia was picking seaweed off the sand and tossing it up to the rocks.
I took a sip of coffee and watched Anna and her mother navigate the dogs, the ball, and the seaweed without words. They were at ease with each other, and they seemed to know each other’s rhythms as they cleaned the beach and took turns throwing the ball.
“You know, I never thought to look on the box. I assume the painting came from you girls,” Sophia finally said to her daughter.
Anna shot a quick glance at me, and then she nodded. “I found a letter from Alex in my studio. It was written about six months before she died and addressed to me.”
Sophia said nothing as she looked far down the beach at nothing in particular. “What did the letter say?” she finally asked.
“She told me about the painting, that Markham Gray had it, and how she’d tried to get it back for you but couldn’t. She said maybe you’d understand why she did what she did if you got it back.”
“Markham Gray,” Sophia whispered.
“You know him?” Anna asked, though the question held no surprise.
“I …” she smiled nostalgically, “I had a crush on him.” But then the smile fell. “Alex left Boston with him. She knew I liked him, and she went with him anyway. After I met your dad, I realized it would never have been good with Markham, but still …” Her voice faded as memories crowded in, but she found it again when she looked at Anna. “My sister chose a man over me. That’s the part I couldn’t forgive.”
“Did she ever explain why?” Anna asked.
Sophia shook her head. “We never spoke again. I didn’t answer the phone, and she eventually stopped calling.”
Anna’s thoughts seemed far away as she threw the ball for the black lab, so I stepped in to continue the conversation.
“Why was your painting in the annex of the Gardner Museum at the time of the heist?” I asked Sophia.
She looked at me as though she’d forgotten I was there for a moment. Then she smiled quietly. “The annex was where all the restoration and repair work was done. They had the most interesting paints – oils in colors that are no longer made, and brushes the old masters and Impressionists once used. Occasionally, the interns from MassArt would be allowed to work with the restoration artists, and the one in charge at that time liked Alex, so he let us use their supplies to work on our painting. Sometimes we’d come over at night and work on it then.”
Anna’s head whipped around. “Were you there the night the art was stolen?”
Sophia shuddered. “God, no. What a nightmare that would have been. They fired all of us anyway, of course, after the theft – just changed the locks and dumped the contents of our lockers into paper bags, which we couldn’t pick up until we’d spoken to the police. I tried to get into the annex to retrieve our painting, but they wouldn’t let me in. Finally, the restoration artist let Alex in, and when she came out, she told me it was gone.”
“Could it have been thrown away by the museum staff when they fired everyone?” Anna asked her mother.
“That’s what I’d always assumed happened. It may not be an actual Chasseriau, but it’s painted like one, with the paints and brush techniques that were used then, and thieves might not have known the difference. The museum didn’t know we’d been working there, so if it had been stolen, no one would have missed it but us. ”
The sound of the waves filled the silent spaces as Anna continued to throw the ball for the dogs, and the lab continued to drop it at her feet. I wondered if she realized how adoring his gaze was when he looked at her. I wondered if she knew how many men probably looked at her the same way, or if I made the sort of eyes at her that a dog did.
“Mom, was there another canvas on the stretcher behind your painting?” Anna had just stooped to pick up the ball the beagle had dropped for her, so she didn’t see the startled look on Sophia’s face, but I did.
“Yes, there was.”
Anna jerked her head up to look at her mom. “There was?”
Sophia looked as though she would rather say nothing, but she couldn’t evade her daughter’s question, so she nodded. “I’d wanted to try my hand at copying a real Impressionist, so I’d been working on the Manet that was hanging in the Blue Room.”
“Madame Auguste Manet,” Anna said. Sophia looked at Anna in amazement.
“Yes. Exactly. How did you know that?”
Anna darted another look at me, then swallowed. “She was stuck to the back of The Sisters … your painting. I was afraid she was the original. They’re hard to tell apart.”
Sophia’s laughter sounded nervous and relieved. “No, no. I stopped working on her when Rick’s parties became too frequent and I couldn’t sneak down to the Blue Room to paint anymore.”
Anna stared at her mother. “You worked in the Blue Room? Mom! What if they’d caught you?”
Sophia absently rubbed her fingers through the black dog’s fur. “We were young then. We didn’t think anything bad could happen to us.” She smiled wryly. “We were invincible and impossible in that way young people are when they’re convinced they’re the first to feel or do or experience. The theft of the art shook all of us out of our privileged bubble.”
“Your Madame Auguste seemed finished to me,” Anna said quietly, with another look at me, “what was left to do?” I sipped my coffee and nodded at her for asking the question I would have asked.
“I painted what I could from the original that hung in front of me, but I was never brave enough to take her off the wall to see the edges. It’s how you know if the copyist was in the presence of the original, you know? Because the edges of a painting are always hidden by the frame. The edges of my Madame Auguste were unfinished, and since I was never going to be able to finish her, we used the same stretcher for our painting of each other.” Sophia brushed the dog dust off her hands and looked at me.
“What else can I tell you about that time?” Sophia mused. It was clear that it hurt her to remember, and I was inclined to leave Anna’s mother alone with her memories, but I wasn’t sure if I’d have this access again.
“Can you tell us what you know about Markham Gray?” I said, as I threw the ball for her dogs, who yipped happily as they chased it down the beach.
She nodded thoughtfully. “Markham was a couple of years older than me, closer to Alex’s age, and handsome in that way that meant he never had to work too hard for girls.” She looked at me and allowed a small smile. “Something I’m sure you’re familiar with.”
Anna scowled. “Mom!”
I was amused to see her cheeks go pink, and I didn’t bother to contradict her mother with the truth of my experience as a shy boy whose only access to his classmates was through a soccer ball.
“His family had money,” Sophia continued, “but they didn’t support his music, so he was trying to make a go of it without their financial help.”
“His music?” Anna asked her mother.
“He jammed with Rick and his band – he played the saxophone. They were the house band for the after-hours parties.” Sophia scoffed slightly. “When the old director retired and moved out of the fourth floor apartment, Rick’s band came in to practice a couple times a month. Some guys brought beer, and suddenly it was a party.”
“Did you ever date Markham?” Anna asked.
Sophia smiled. “It was 1990. We didn’t really date; we mostly just hung out.”
Anna laughed. “Not much has changed.”
I wondered if that’s what she and I were doing – just hanging out. Investigating a crime that happened thirty years ago, avoiding the one that happened days ago, pretending to ourselves and each other that there wasn’t something … there.
I shook myself out of my contemplation. Up in the house on the kitchen counter sat a stolen painting, and down here on the beach stood the thief.
Sophia looked out at the waves breaking on the shore. “We kissed a few times, and sometimes after a set he’d come find me in the Blue Room and we’d talk while I painted. He was so handsome, and he had a way of looking at me as if I was the only girl in the room, which, truth be told, I usually was. Alex would be drinking or dancing with the guys – it was always so easy for her to be free, to be fully herself – so when Markham would come and find me, I felt … special … seen.”
She inhaled the cold ocean breeze deeply, then turned to find Anna’s eyes. “I used to watch you hide in plain sight around Colette, and I recognized it from my own relationship with Alex. When she left town with the one boy who actually saw me – well, let’s just say I’m glad you developed your own skills and passions. It’s too hard to be seen next to a leading lady.”
Anna shrugged as if it was nothing. “Sometimes it’s just easier not to share the same stage.”
I thought I saw a flash of sadness pass over Sophia’s face, and I wondered if it was for her daughter, or for herself.
“In any case,” Sophia continued, “I thought Markham and I had a bigger connection than we apparently did, end of story. I never saw him again after I left the museum and Alex followed him to Chicago, so I went from having a sister, a job, and a boy to fantasize about one week, to losing all of those things the next.” She spoke directly to Anna. “I was angry and alone for almost a year, and then I met your dad, and suddenly I was the heroine of the story who got to live happily ever after.”
Anna’s mother smiled, and I could see the love in her expression – for her husband, for her children. A wet corgi chose that moment to go barreling into her, covering her with sand and seawater. Sophia just laughed and scooped him up in her arms to cuddle him. “Lucas, my love, you are a very naughty little boy. Now I’m going to have to dip in the sea to get all the sand off.”
She reached for the hem of her shirt and Anna grabbed my hand and turned us toward the path in a panicked motion. “Oh no! Save yourself. The woman has no shame.”
Sophia laughed. “No shame and great tits,” she called to her daughter. “A lethal combination to the easily mortified. Go on and tell your dad to bring a towel down for me when he comes.”
“Does he go for a dip in the sea too?” I asked Anna as we walked up the path. I could hear Sophia playing with the dogs, who swam out to join her in the water.
“God, no. He has way more sense. But he likes to photograph her, and she gives him plenty of opportunities.”
I thought about the photos I’d taken of Anna which burned a hole in the hidden file on my phone, and I realized Anna’s father and I might have a thing or two in common.