Chapter
five
Seattle’s Central Library had reveled in her three lives.
Her first incarnation, a Beaux-Arts design built with funds supplied by Andrew Carnegie, had opened in 1906.
Her second incarnation had come in1960, at a time when it had been en vogue to construct large civic buildings in the style of Ugly Utilitarian Monolith.
For her third incarnation in 2004, she’d made her debut wearing a dazzling garment of glass and steel that jutted upward and outward at shocking angles. Either her Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas, had been drunk when he’d drafted her, or he’d been floating in a sea of creative brilliance. To Britt’s way of thinking, he’d been floating in a sea of creative brilliance.
She loved the newest version of the library. For a woman who was as ceaselessly curious as she was, the library’s more than three hundred thousand square feet offered countless wonders. Though she’d visited at least six times previously, this was the first time she’d attempted to comb through the library’s microfilm collection.
An excellent male librarian, who was wearing a tie and cardigan sweater (as male librarians ought), had gathered film for them containing old issues of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He’d given her and Zander side-by-side projectors and a crash course on how to use them. Then they’d gotten to work.
They’d been at it for two hours already.
On the drive from Merryweather to Seattle in Zander’s rental car, Britt had scrutinized the pages Kurt had given to Carolyn concerning Frank’s early life. They’d talked through everything they knew about Frank’s years as James Ross, including the little bit Zander had gleaned from the family members he’d spoken with on the phone.
Carolyn had told them that Frank had received the wound on his leg shortly before she’d met him in June of 1985, so Britt and Zander suspected Frank had been shot in April or May of 1985. After some debate, they’d decided to add a month before and after to give themselves a wide margin of error. Thus, they were searching for articles about shootings in issues of the Post-Intelligencer that ran between March and June of that year.
“I’m done going through mine,” Zander said.
“I only have a few left.” Britt adjusted the microscope on her projector as she skimmed an article about a wife who’d shot her husband.
“I think we should add one more month to both ends of our timeline, just in case,” Zander said. “What do you think?”
“I sort of feel like we’re trying to sip from a fire hose as it is. There’s just so much information.”
“I know. But what if Frank got shot at the end of February, and we miss it because we don’t look at February papers?”
“I hear you about February, but why look at July? Carolyn met Frank in June.”
“So she says. Her memory isn’t always the best, and she met him a long time ago. It’s possible that they met in July or even August.”
She straightened the legal pad they’d set between them. On it, they’d listed the shootings they’d found so far that might have involved Frank. Most of the articles about shootings mentioned the parties involved by name. All those had been excluded. So far, they’d compiled a record of only six incidents. Below each, they’d jotted the date, the location, and a few details about what had occurred.
“I’ll look through the July papers,” he said. “Are you game to look through February?”
“Anything for you, Zander.” Man, the gun-toting wife in this article had really been mad at her husband, somewhat justifiably. He wasn’t a good person. He also wasn’t Frank. Britt moved on.
Zander vanished in search of their librarian and additional microfilm. When he returned, they threaded new reels into their projectors.
What they didn’t know about Frank seemed as large to Britt as a tidal wave. What they did know seemed as small as a seashell.
They had no way of knowing whether the shooting had occurred near Seattle. It could’ve happened anywhere in the United States or even the world, for that matter. They didn’t know if the shooting would factor into a big news story or no news story or a small news story about something as minor as a disagreement at a bar between two men backing opposing sports teams.
She skimmed another article, then went in search of the next. Nora deserved an extra dark chocolate cashew truffle the next time Britt saw her, because Britt couldn’t understand how her sister did a job this detailed, slow, and painstaking on a daily basis.
Britt sort of wanted to poke her strained eyeballs out with forks.
Half an hour later, Britt’s ears perked up at Zander’s sharp intake of breath. “Did you find something?” she asked.
“Maybe,” he replied slowly.
She swiveled toward him.
“I’m looking at a story about the art that was stolen from the Pascal Museum,” he said.
“When was that?”
“July 5, 1985. Do you know anything about the heist?”
“It definitely rings a bell. Did a shooting happen in conjunction with it? If so, I don’t remember that part at all.”
“One sec.” Tendons bunched and flexed at the hinge of Zander’s jaw. She watched his profile intently as he read the article. He’d found something. She could tell by his posture.
Her heart began to pick up speed.
“At three a.m. on July fifth, three robbers broke into the Pascal.” Zander’s concentration remained on the screen. “They loosened bolts at the rear of the property and removed an entire window from its frame. They succeeded at disabling the security cameras but didn’t disable the alarm because the alarm had a fail-safe they’d been unaware of. The three paintings they took were three of the most valuable the museum possessed. Girl Before a Door by Pablo Picasso, The Pianist by Marc Chagall, and Young Woman at Rest by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Because they took three pieces of art, the heist is often referred to as the Triple Play.”
“Go on.”
“The alarm alerted the security guard on site, but the robbers were so fast that they’d exited the building by the time he was able to locate them. He saw them running down an alleyway behind the museum. He pulled his gun and was able to get off a few shots as they climbed into a dark gray Audi. The license plate on the rear fender of the Audi was covered. The security guard didn’t know whether he’d succeeded in shooting anyone. Nor was he able to give good descriptions of the robbers because they were all dressed in black with ski masks over their faces.”
“Okay, so I’m fascinated by the art heist angle,” Britt said. “However, it’s really unlikely that any of this relates to Frank because we don’t even know whether or not anyone was shot.”
Zander moved his focus to her. In the distance, she heard the gurgle of a quiet conversation, the distant bing of an elevator. “Aunt Carolyn used to work at the Pascal,” he said. “That’s where she and Frank met.”
The tiny hairs along Britt’s arms lifted. She peered at Zander while struggling inwardly to comprehend. “I don’t think I ever knew how they met.” The Pascal Museum was housed in a mansion that had once been the residence of the wealthy Pascal family. In the late seventies, when the matriarch and patriarch died, their children turned the house into a gallery filled with their parents’ art collection and the pieces they themselves had acquired. The Pascal had received a mention in every “Ten Things Not to Miss in Seattle” article Britt had ever read.
“When Carolyn was in her early twenties, she gave tours of the Pascal and worked at their ticket counter and helped behind the scenes with events,” Zander told her.
“What brought Frank to the Pascal?”
“He had a job doing construction in the city at the time.” His forehead quirked. “At least, he told Carolyn he had a job doing construction. He came to the gallery because he loved the art.”
“At least,” Britt said, “he told Carolyn he loved the art. Did he display a lot of admiration for art when you knew him?”
“No, not that I can remember.” He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “Let’s imagine for a minute that Frank didn’t visit the Pascal because he loved the art. Let’s imagine he visited because he was casing the museum in order to plan a heist.”
Britt nodded. “A heist would have given him motivation to move from Chicago to Seattle. Once he moved here he would have needed to spend time, maybe months, planning the robbery.”
“So he visits the Pascal often to study its collection, its security, the entry points, the layout.”
“And in the process, he gets to know the woman who works at the ticket counter,” Britt supplied. “It turns out that she’s extraordinarily pretty and friendly.”
“He and his accomplices proceed to rob the museum. They get away with three paintings, one for each of them. However, the security guard fires at them as they’re getting away, and Frank is hit in the leg.”
Britt rubbed her palms together slowly while she thought. “Where would Frank have gone for medical treatment? I mean, he couldn’t very well show up wearing black at a local hospital with a gunshot wound in his leg. The police would have been all over him.”
“I have no idea where he might have gotten treatment. Maybe from a small-town doctor? Not associated with any hospital?”
“The police would also have been keeping an eye out for a dark gray Audi,” Zander continued. “So the three men must’ve found a safe place where they could get Frank’s leg sewn up and where they could switch out the car.”
In record time, Britt had gone from wanting to poke out her eyeballs to suspecting she may have missed her calling as a detective. “I can’t imagine how we’d be able to find either the doctor or the Audi now.”
“Neither can I.”
They sat without speaking, Britt’s brain assessing the new information from every angle.
“After the heist,” Zander said, “Frank continues to visit the Pascal. Eventually he asks Carolyn out. They date for several months, then get married in the summer of 1986. Shortly after that, they move to Merryweather.”
“And the rest is history.”
“So . . . help me think.” Zander scratched the back of his neck. “Why would someone who’d stolen a painting from a museum return to that museum after the fact?”
“To set his sights on more art? If he was successful there once, he may have developed an appetite for more.”
“Except that another heist never occurred.”
“Could he have returned to the museum because of Carolyn?” As soon as Britt voiced the suggestion, it struck her as absurd. It was too far-fetched to think that a person in possession of a multimillion-dollar masterpiece would return to the scene of his crime for a girl. Doing so was altogether too dangerous. “On second thought, I can’t imagine why any man would be willing to risk so much for a woman.”
Zander’s blue eyes met hers with intense steadiness. “I can.”
In that moment, sitting inside a marvel of a library, Britt’s stomach tightened with a sweet-hot tingle of physical longing.
For her very good friend Zander Ford.
His handsomeness had not, of course, escaped her notice for the past thirteen years. His angular face was both aloof and observant. Young and hard. His body communicated a casual, effortless grace. Proficiency had been woven into the fabric of him.
Everywhere Britt went with Zander, women eyed him with proprietary interest.
His attractiveness wasn’t up for debate.
That didn’t mean, however, that she should allow hormones to hijack her body. Over the years, she’d experienced twinges of jealousy over him and flashes of silly infatuation. There had been times when she’d suspected him of experiencing twinges of jealousy and moments of silly infatuation over her, too.
Whenever a rogue romantic notion for Zander had overtaken her, she’d simply steamrolled it. Fortunately, he’d dealt with whatever rogue romantic notions he may have had for her in the same way. They’d never said anything to each other on the topic, thank God. A conversation about it would have been incredibly awkward, for one thing. It might have hurt their relationship, for another.
She’d handle this current pang the same way she’d handled those that had come before. She’d steamroll it.
“Frank may have returned to the museum after the robbery specifically so that suspicion wouldn’t swing his way,” Zander said.
Britt considered that. “If so, he must have waited a few weeks before returning. Otherwise, wouldn’t he have been limping?”
Zander dipped his chin in agreement. “There are things about the heist that make me doubt that Frank could have been involved.”
“But there are other things that point to his involvement.”
“The main one is that we can put both Frank and Carolyn at the Pascal the summer of the robbery.”
“And let’s not forget that Frank had been convicted of robbery in the past.” Still, it seemed like a stretch to imagine that Zander’s uncle Frank, who’d sat across the table from Britt a month and a half ago at a guest chef night in the village, had once pulled off a world-class art heist.
A monotone voice flowed from the speakers. “The library will be closing in fifteen minutes.”
“Yep.” They’d made a reservation at Place Pigalle, a Pike’s Place Market restaurant within walking distance of the library.
Zander began taking photos of the art heist article. “Over dinner I want to research—”
“I already know what you’re going to say.”
His lips formed a wry smile. “I was going to say that I wanted to research . . .” He made a challenging, finish-my-sentence gesture.
“Whether or not the stolen paintings were ever found.”
As Britt and Zander walked in companionable silence down city streets that slanted sharply toward Pike’s Place, Britt’s attention split between the sidewalk, the distant view of Puget Sound, and the ties that had knotted herself and Zander to food and to each other.
Britt’s love of food had sprouted in elementary school. She could still recall the first time she’d made cookies with her mom. She’d stood on a chair near the counter, and her mom had handed her measuring cups and spoons pre-filled with ingredients. She’d dumped them into a bowl and stirred.
Fifteen minutes later, she’d been mesmerized when the thing they’d made—with ingredients in their pantry that were boring individually—had come out of the oven as warm and gooey chocolate chip cookies. She’d realized that cooking was like a craft project you could eat. From that point on, she’d turned the full force of her creativity in that one direction.
By the time she and Zander entered ninth grade, she was already an accomplished, experienced cook. Fourteen-year-old Zander had known nothing about cooking. He appreciated food as passionately as she did, however, because he was almost always ravenously hungry.
The first time he’d come to Bradfordwood to hang out, they’d baked a lemon cake with lemon glaze. He’d been clueless in the kitchen, but when it had come time to eat the cake, he’d exhibited his prowess by consuming twice as much as she’d been able to.
After that, he’d proven himself a quick study. He’d memorized every recipe they’d worked on together using his photographic memory. To this day, recipes didn’t naturally stick in Britt’s head. She had to make a recipe at least a dozen times before she could remember the exact quantities and ingredients. Not Zander. He looked at a recipe once, and there it was, accessible in his brain forever.
Every weekend through high school, they’d met either at Frank and Carolyn’s house or at Bradfordwood to cook. Instead of a soundtrack, they had a food track from that season. It included thin crust pizza, fried chicken, cinnamon rolls, homemade ice cream, and peanut butter cookies.
After high school Zander accepted a full-ride academic scholarship to University of Washington–Tacoma and Britt had gone on to The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. Each time she’d returned to Bradfordwood from California, Zander had made the trip to Merryweather, too. They’d cooked the sophisticated dishes she’d learned at school. The food track of that season: ricotta omelets, scallops with browned butter, pan-roasted pork chops, berry tarts.
She’d moved home from France the same summer that he’d moved home from Tacoma with his degree. They’d both, suddenly, been members of the work force. Her, as owner of Sweet Art (thanks to the hefty gift of capital her mom and dad had given her when she’d completed her apprenticeship). Him, as a computer engineer with a software design firm.
For the first time they’d had enough income to afford restaurant dinners. They’d explored all the small and large, casual and fancy eateries in the region around Merryweather. Even so, they’d never given up cooking together. The food track of that season: almond-crusted duck, red snapper, steak, soufflés.
Then one night, out of the blue, Zander had announced to a tableful of people that he’d decided to leave Washington and travel. He hadn’t discussed his decision with her privately first, which had confounded her.
In the days leading up to his departure, the prospect of a long separation between them had weighed on Britt, but it hadn’t seemed to weigh on Zander at all. Which had confounded her, too.
Then he’d gone. And she’d missed him. And missing him had stunk. She’d remained behind in their small hometown, watching photos of one glamorous destination after another appear on his private Instagram. He’d flourished without her while she’d struggled without him. If it had occurred to Zander that his absence might have left a black hole in her life, he’d never let on.
And she’d never said anything to undermine his happiness. She’d supported his Grand Tour the way a true friend should, because she’d always believed that he deserved a turn to see the world. There’d been no money for travel during his childhood with his parents or his teenage years with Frank and Carolyn. But even if that hadn’t been the case, she herself had once enjoyed two years overseas. She could hardly begrudge him the same opportunity.
They reached Place Pigalle, a diminutive restaurant perched atop other structures like a hatbox atop a stepladder. Memories of the other times she and Zander had eaten together swirled through Britt’s thoughts as the hostess led them to a linen-covered table positioned beside a window.
Britt paused to compare the merits of the available seats. She always took her time choosing and had been known, when she chose incorrectly, to leave a seat that had bad mojo.
The hostess waited with their menus. Zander, well aware of Britt’s quirks and immune to bad chair mojo, stood patiently.
She lowered into a chair and . . . ? Excellent mojo.
Zander took the remaining seat, and they proceeded to discuss the menu options as if they were about to commit to a deed of sale on a house.
When her French onion soup and his butter leaf salad appeared, he gave her a contented nod. He spoke volumes through that one, wordless nod. It said that he felt nostalgic about this, too. That he remembered all the foods she remembered. That he hadn’t outgrown his affection for eating. That he was just as pleased to be sitting here with her as she was to be sitting here with him.
The browned cheese on top of her soup clung to the bowl as she drew the spoon upward. “I’m really, really curious about the fate of the paintings that were stolen from the Pascal.” She blew on her steaming bite.
“The other diners will think we’re cretins if we hunch over a screen at a fancy restaurant.” He was already reaching for his phone.
“Yep.”
“Which has never stopped us before.”
“Nope.”
He scooted closer to her, set his phone between them on the table, and typed Whatever happened to the paintings stolen from the Pascal? into Google. The first article that arose was titled “Chagall Returned.” They bent their heads over it and read as they ate.
A year and a half ago, the Chagall had come up at a private auction in Singapore. A British art dealer had immediately recognized the painting as the one stolen in the infamous Triple Play. He’d contacted the authorities and the painting was eventually returned to the Pascal’s museum director, Annette Pascal Spencer.
“What about the Renoir? And the Picasso?” Britt asked.
After some searching, Zander found a story detailing the discovery of the Picasso. In 1996, a Colorado antique store owner attended an estate sale following the death of the property’s wealthy owner. Among other things, the antique store owner purchased the painting that had been mounted on the wall above the multimillionaire’s bed.
He’d loaded the items into the back of his truck and transported them to his store. As soon as he put the painting on display, customers began marveling over just how much it resembled an authentic Picasso.
Upon closer examination, the man discovered a few horizontal cracks in the paint, which indicated that the piece may have been rolled. Warbles at the edges of the canvas suggested that it might have been cut from its frame at some point in its history. Thus, he began researching Picasso’s works and stumbled upon a mention of the Picasso stolen during the Triple Play.
“I almost fell out of my chair,” the antique store owner was quoted as saying, “when I found an article about the heist and saw a picture of the missing Picasso. It looked exactly like the one I’d just purchased, so I called the police.”
As with the Chagall, the Pascal Museum brought in experts who’d verified the painting’s provenance.
“When I think about how I piled that painting into the back of my truck, it sends a shiver down my spine,” the antique store owner had stated.
“I’d love to know how the paintings ended up in Singapore and Colorado,” Britt said.
“I’m guessing that the robbers sold them on the black market.”
Britt slid her bowl toward Zander so he could taste her soup. He scooted his salad toward her.
“So if Frank was involved in the Triple Play, and he was the one who sold either the Picasso or the Chagall on the black market, we can assume that he would’ve made a tremendous amount of money on the deal,” Britt said.
“I find it hard to believe that Frank could’ve had that kind of money stashed away.”
“Did he ever show any evidence of a big nest egg? Take you guys on an expensive trip? Buy a boat? Purchase land somewhere?”
“No, never. I’d call him frugal. He was the one who did the grocery shopping for the family, and he always spent time on Sunday nights cutting out coupons. Imagine the kind of discipline it would have taken to spend your life cutting coupons, taking your kids to matinee movies only, and turning out lights to save on electricity if you had hundreds of thousands of dollars in a secret account.”
“Awe-inspiring discipline,” Britt said. “Was Frank a highly disciplined person?”
“About some things. He worked out three times a week. He never missed a Trail Blazers game on TV. He never drank more than one drink. He paid his bills and his taxes on time.”
Zander’s salad tasted of lime and beets and crunchy roasted nuts.
“He was really undisciplined about donuts, though,” Zander continued. “He never could drive past the Edge of the Woods Bakery without stopping and buying an old-fashioned.”
Below their table’s window, boats crisscrossed the water between the mainland and Bainbridge Island.
“What about the Renoir?” Britt asked. “What happened to it?”
Zander ran Internet search after Internet search. No luck.
“If the Renoir was found a year or two after the heist, before the Internet was a thing,” Zander said, “then information about it might be hard to find online.”
“Do you remember the title of the Renoir?”
“Young Woman at Rest,” he answered without a pause. “Let me try that.”
He typed it in and an article from 2015 appeared. “The Mystery of the Missing Renoir Still Unsolved,” its title proclaimed.
“Oh, fiasco,” Britt whispered. She’d adopted the term fiasco because she liked saying it. Fiasco. Its dance of syllables and vowels rolled off the tongue like antipasto or Tabasco.
“The Renoir’s still missing,” Zander said.
“Did your uncle ever show any evidence of having a world-famous masterpiece hidden in your attic?”
“No. If Frank stole the Renoir, he would have stolen it for money, right? So what motive could he have had for keeping something like that all this time?”
“Fear of getting caught selling it?”
Zander returned his focus to his phone’s screen.
He’d pushed the sleeves of his black henley up his forearms, so she could see the sinuous lines of the tattoos that ended at his wrists.
Just like she remembered their shared food, she remembered when and why he’d gotten each of the tattoos that now ran down his arms in a complete tapestry. From the start, he’d known how he’d wanted them to interlock. But he’d gotten them slowly, one by one, over time, as he’d been able to afford them.
The slow pace at which he’d acquired them seemed almost quaint to her now that he’d earned so very much money for his book.
Her study of his forearms, wrists, and capable hands caused the magnetism that had overtaken her in the library to return. Hot and insistent.
She jerked her vision to his face. No help to be found there. A gust of air from the vent riffled his hair, and Britt had a disastrous urge to reach out and run her fingers through the strands.
For heaven’s sake!
For the next minute straight, she stared fixedly at her food.
Seattle Magazine, July 2015:
Thirty years have passed since the “Triple Play,” the most infamous art heist in Washington’s history.
In the early morning hours of July 5, 1985, three masked thieves broke into the Pascal Museum in Seattle and cut three masterworks by Renoir, Picasso, and Chagall from their frames.
No arrests were made in conjunction with the case, and the identities of the thieves are still unknown.
In time, both the Picasso and the Chagall were recovered and restored to the venerated walls of the Pascal. However, the Renoir is still missing, despite the efforts of local law enforcement and the FBI.
French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) painted Young Woman at Rest in 1876 using oil on canvas. The piece depicts the upper body of a woman seated. Renoir captured his subject, Nina Lopez, a professional model, wearing a softly patterned pastel dress and sitting on a sofa. Her hands lay serenely in her lap. A pink flower adorns the light brown hair spilling down to her waist. The piece is rendered in the gentle oranges, reds, greens, and blues typical of Renoir’s work at the time.
The painting was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Claude Pascal, owners of a chain of French department stores, in 1931. Later, when World War II erupted, the couple booked passage to America for themselves and their extended family, with the intention of returning to France as soon as it was safe to regain occupation of their properties and possession of their belongings. Before they departed, they stored their art in numerous locations. Several pieces, including Young Woman at Rest, were placed in the Parisian vault of a friend.
In 1941, the Nazis discovered the vault and took ownership of all the art within. Of the approximately 650,000 art objects appropriated by the Nazis during World War II, 100,000 remain missing.
By the time World War II drew to an end, the Pascals had opted to settle permanently in Seattle and had opened the department store Beau, which has become a local institution.
For years Claude Pascal, his wife, Aline, and their son, Lucien, tirelessly sought to locate Young Woman at Rest. In 1968, twenty-seven years after the painting was stolen, investigators pinpointed its whereabouts. A judge determined the Pascals to be the rightful owners of the masterpiece, and Young Woman at Rest was subsequently returned to them.
“Our entire family gathered to celebrate its homecoming,” recounts current museum director Annette Pascal Spencer. “Young Woman at Rest was my grandmother’s favorite painting. Because of its history with the Nazis and our long search for it, the piece was extraordinarily special to every one of us. We were ecstatic to have it back.”
After the deaths of Claude and Aline, their son and granddaughter, Annette, chose to honor them by turning their mansion into a gallery. In 1979, the doors of the Pascal Museum opened to the public. And in 1985, via the Triple Play, Young Woman at Rest was stolen from the Pascal family for the second time.
“I was promoted to the role of museum director six months before the heist,” said Annette, now eighty-three. “Because of that, I’ve always felt somewhat responsible for the painting’s fate. I’ll never stop working and waiting and hoping for the painting’s recovery. Never. I’ll continue searching until the painting once again hangs on the walls of the Pascal where it belongs.”
The museum has long offered a reward for information leading to the retrieval of Young Woman at Rest. If you have any knowledge concerning the location of the painting, please contact the Seattle Police Department.