Feint of Art: Read online

  After about twenty minutes of sitting there, watching the ebb and flow of the crowd below, I felt someone approach.

  “I understand you are looking for Anton, madam. Yes?”

  He wasn’t a computer bazillionaire, that was for sure. Nor was he handsome. In fact, he looked a lot like he’d been hit in the face with a truck at an impressionable age. And he reeked of cologne.

  “Why, yes. Yes, I am. Would you care to sit down?” I asked politely.

  “Thank you, madam,” the Stranger replied as he settled his considerable girth into the chair across from me.

  “By chance, sir, would you happen to know where Anton might be found?” I didn’t usually talk this way, but I had an odd and generally unconscious talent for mimicry. Plop me down in the middle of a Texas barbecue and within minutes I would be twanging with the best of them.

  “May I inquire as to the nature of your relationship with Anton?” the Stranger asked.

  I was beginning to wonder about those rumors that Anton ran with the Polish Mafia, because this guy certainly looked the part. White hair, a deeply lined face, and a piercing gaze set him apart from the bar’s youthful, hip crowd.

  “He is an old friend of my grandfather’s,” I said. “Perhaps you’ve heard of my grandfather? Georges LeFleur?”

  Among those who knew it, Grandfather’s name elicited strong emotions. Lately I had become so conventional that I had nearly forgotten how much respect it commanded in certain not-so-mainstream circles. The Stranger’s cold blue eyes warmed slightly.

  “LeFleur, you say?” he repeated, his tone verging on the reverential.

  “Just so.” I was getting into this oh-so-Continental way of speaking.

  “I hear he is writing a new book on his . . . profession.” I winced. “Yes. Yes, he is.”

  The Stranger smiled. “May I presume you have visited Anton’s atelier?”

  I assumed he meant Anton’s sagging garage-top studio.

  “Without luck, I’m afraid.”

  “I believe he recently sold some work to a dealer in the Napa Valley,” the Stranger volunteered. “Yountville, to be precise. The Dusty Attic, or some such thing.”

  “Ah?” That didn’t sound like Anton. “What kind of shop might that be?”

  He shrugged eloquently. “An antiques shop, I’ve heard, just off the main highway.”

  “Why would Anton sell something to an antiques shop?”

  He looked at me disdainfully. “My dear madam, who is to say? Perhaps he enjoys collecting those dreary silver teaspoons.” And with that the Stranger rose and walked away.

  “Ta!” I called out as he was swallowed up by the crowd.

  Well, that was weird. Selling art forgeries to an antiques dealer was about the dumbest idea around. True, it was nigh unto impossible to get caught this way. Few antiques dealers knew much about forged art, and once the deal was transacted the forger simply drove off into the sunset. But an antiques dealer was unlikely to pay very much for artwork, and what was the point of being a forger if not to make money?

  And why Yountville? San Francisco had all the hungry collectors, the greedy gallery owners, and the corrupt customs officials that an art forger needed to make a decent living. The Napa Valley, in contrast, had delightful small towns, whimsical Victorian houses, world-famous wineries, charming bed-and-breakfasts, plus expensive boutiques and “junque” shops catering to yuppies.

  Definitely weird.

  Finishing my martini, I surrendered my table to a boisterous group hovering near the stairs and hit the sidewalk. I got all the way to the sex shops on Broadway before I realized that I had left my purse hanging on the back of the chair at Vesuvio’s. Rats. I hated it when I did that, and I did it more frequently than I liked to admit. I turned on my heel and hurried back to the bar.

  As I approached Vesuvio’s crowded entrance a woman emerged, glanced down the street, tucked her head into her collar, and walked quickly in the opposite direction. She was tall and thin, and before she looked away I caught sight of two piercing feline eyes. I had seen those eyes before. In Harlan’s apartment, in Chinatown, on an evening I would rather forget.

  I entered the bar cautiously, keeping an eye out for the woman’s less attractive sidekick, No Neck. The place was still bursting with yuppies, tourists, and pseudo-beatniks, but no one who looked as if he wanted to kill me. I slipped upstairs and found my purse right where I had left it, hanging on the back of the chair, which was now inhabited by a redheaded man with dreadlocks. He passed the bag to me and I checked for my wallet. It was there, with eight dollars and sixty-six cents, my two credit cards, and my driver’s license.

  The dreadlocked guy winked. Who said people couldn’t be trusted?

  Pushing my way downstairs, I trudged the twenty minutes back to my truck and stopped cold. The passenger-side window had been smashed, and beads of tempered glass covered the interior.

  I looked behind the bench seat. The drawings were gone.

  Shit. It was stupid of me to leave them in the truck.

  I brushed the glass off the driver’s seat, climbed in, and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. Michael X. Johnson, perhaps? It didn’t seem his style, but he was the only one who knew I had the drawings. Maybe some two-bit local crook happened upon the stash and found himself moved by a desire for culture. Or had it been someone with more sinister intentions? Maybe I should get the hell out of here.

  I fired up the truck’s engine and took off. I was wide awake and a little jumpy. Sleep was out of the question, so I decided to head to my studio. Seemed like a good time to work on the portrait I was painting of John Steubing.

  In another era John would have been a celebrated patron of the arts along the lines of Lorenzo de Medici of Florence, who was known to his contemporaries as Lorenzo the Magnificent. In tribute, I called my patron John the Magnificent, though never to his face, since although John Steubing had a generous soul, he was also a gruff, no-nonsense entrepreneur uncomfortable with emotions like gratitude. John was well known around town for his political work as well as for his bank account, and painting his portrait was a great opportunity. But unlike much of my mural and faux-finish work, I needed peace and solitude when painting portraits, which I hadn’t had much of lately.

  I pulled into my studio’s parking area and saw my landlord’s fleet of armored cars lined up at the rear of the lot, like a miniature panzer division poised to invade some unsuspecting country. DeBenton’s gleaming Jaguar rested in what was now, apparently, my former parking spot. A light shone in his office. The man worked even longer hours than I did.

  I would never have admitted it to old Fender Bender, but it was nice knowing someone else was in the building. As much as I liked working at the studio late at night, at times it was undeniably creepy. Especially considering the SFPD’s earlier warning. And the smashed truck window.

  I hurried up the stairs and down the hall, footsteps echoing on the wooden flooring. Flipping on my studio’s lights, I felt the usual proprietary satisfaction. It was peaceful here late at night, the red brick walls glowing warmly against the dark night framed by the huge windows, and I relaxed as I brewed coffee. I sat on the worn velvet sofa, sipped strong espresso, and reflected upon my conversation with the Stranger at Vesuvio’s.

  I still didn’t know where Anton was, but at least I had a place to look for him: the Dusty Attic antiques shop in Yountville. I pondered the forged drawings I had taken from Anton’s studio and that someone else had stolen from me. Had I merely been a victim of one of the hundreds of random break-ins that occurred daily in any urban center, or had someone been intent on getting those drawings back?

  One thing I knew was that the cat-eyed woman from Harlan’s Chinatown apartment didn’t strike me as the type to be out carousing at Vesuvio’s on a Friday night. I wondered if, like me, she had been following a trail to Anton, or whether she had been following me.

  Frustrated, I refocused. John Steubing’s portrait rested on its easel, awaitin
g my ministrations. It needed a lot of work. In terms of classical oil portraiture that meant a lot of time. I’d been trained in the traditional Italian method, in which the subject was first sketched in a single color—usually raw umber—so that problems of composition and the relative values of light and shadow could be worked out before the pigment was applied. This “underpainting” would not be perceptible in the finished piece, but it was as crucial to the portrait as a strong foundation was to a building.

  Steubing’s portrait was still in the underpainting phase, which meant that his face, although recognizable, was gray and muddy, the background shadows were too highly contrasting, and the sofa upon which he sat was indistinct and fuzzy. This was the stage I always thought of as a painting’s awkward adolescence. And just as with that excruciating stage of life, there was nowhere to go but through it. I girded my loins and began squeezing pigment onto my palette.

  A loud knock sounded on the door, causing me to jump and squirt a blob of raw umber paint on my apron. I bit off a curse.

  It was nearly midnight. Given the crowd I ran with, it could be just about anybody. I tried to remember if I had locked the door. Surely I had. Only a fool would leave the door unlocked in a nearly abandoned building in the middle of the night.

  I dropped my voice an octave to sound more formidable. “Yes?”

  “Ms. Kincaid? It’s Frank DeBenton.”

  I hesitated. What if it wasn’t Frank? What if it was some psycho who was smart enough to read the names on the downstairs directory board and use that information to lure me into opening the stout wooden door that was keeping me safe? There would be nothing to stop him from doing all manner of hideous things to me, things too awful to even contemplate, things that would make an open-casket funeral impossible.

  Not that I wanted one. A funeral, that is. Much less an open-casket funeral. How gruesome. When my time came, I wanted to be cremated. Had I ever told anyone that?

  “Ms. Kincaid?” the voice called again.

  My heart raced as the knob turned and the door slowly swung open. I held my paintbrush up high, prepared to poke some eyes out if I had to.

  Frank DeBenton stood in the doorway, dressed in pressed khakis, a starched white oxford shirt, a gray wool cardigan, and buffed Weejuns. His dark hair was slicked back, his face was closely shaved, he smelled faintly of soap, and his hands appeared to have been recently manicured. It was midnight on a Friday, and my landlord looked as if he had just stepped out of the pages of Gentlemen’s Quarterly.

  I dabbed ineffectually at the paint smear on my apron, wondered what my hair looked like, and feared that I knew.

  “Everything all right up here?” he asked politely.

  “Sure,” I replied nonchalantly, hoping my pulse returned to normal sometime soon. “Why do you ask?”

  “I noticed your truck window was broken,” he said. “You know, you really should keep the studio door locked when you’re working late at night.”

  “Right you are,” I said casually. “Life in the Big City.”

  An awkward silence descended.

  “I could smell the coffee all the way downstairs,” he said. “Smells good.”

  Could he be any more obvious? I wondered. Still, here was my chance to curry favor with my landlord. “Would you like a cup?”

  “If you’re offering,” he said with a smile.

  I waved him toward the sofa while I went into the kitchen area and prepared another cup of espresso. “I used up the last of the milk, I’m afraid, but there’s sugar if you’d like.”

  “No, thank you. Black’s just fine.”

  How manly. I handed him a demitasse of rich espresso and joined him on the sofa. We sipped in silence as DeBenton took in the many painted canvases. His eyes came to rest on Steubing’s still-adolescent portrait.

  “Isn’t that John Steubing?” he asked, surprising me with his discernment.

  “Yes, it is,” I replied, pleased. “Do you know him?”

  “We have a number of associates in common. You’re painting his portrait?”

  What did he think, that I had it done at the local poster shop?

  The look on my face must have given me away, because he added quickly, “I thought you just did faux finishes.”

  “I love painting portraits,” I said with a shrug. “There just isn’t any money in it. People spend thousands of dollars on a faux finish for their living room, but balk at paying more than a few hundred for a painting that lasts forever and takes months to complete.”

  “Americans have a strange relationship to art,” DeBenton murmured.

  Aha! A common bond.

  “Which is not surprising,” he continued, “considering that artists in this country are a rather spoiled lot.”

  The bond unraveled.

  “What do you mean by that?” I hated the stereotype of artists as selfish, lazy, and irresponsible, even if it was sometimes true.

  “Just that there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” he said pompously. “You’re a businesswoman, Ms. Kincaid. You understand the value of a dollar.”

  “Yes, I do,” I replied indignantly. “I’m also an artist who works twelve hours a day, six days a week. I have a tiny apartment in Oakland, an old truck I pray doesn’t break down since I can’t afford to replace it, no benefits, and a studio that, thanks to a recent rent increase, I can no longer afford. So remind me, please: how, exactly, am I spoiled?”

  “I didn’t mean—” DeBenton began.

  “I’m not the one who drives a Jaguar and jacks the rents up on loyal tenants,” I continued, cutting him off. “What’s more, all the artists I know are decent, kind-hearted people who work extremely hard just to get by and don’t expect handouts.”

  The part about my artist friends being decent, kind-hearted, and hardworking was true. The part about their not expecting handouts was not. All artists dreamed of a patron who would allow us to focus only on our art. But I would be damned if I’d admit that to him now.

  DeBenton stood and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I think I should go,” he said quietly.

  “Wait,” I said, belatedly remembering that I was supposed to be getting on his good side. “I’m sorry if I overreacted. I guess it’s a sore subject for me. So . . .” I paused. “I don’t suppose this would be the best time to negotiate a break in my rent?”

  I meant that last bit as a joke to lighten the mood. It didn’t work.

  “I suppose not,” DeBenton said. “Thank you for the coffee.” He left, closing the door softly behind him. I heard his footsteps echo down the hallway, and then the outside door slammed shut.

  Good going, Annie, I jeered as I locked the door and returned to the portrait. Maybe I was in the wrong line of work. I should give up on painting and launch a new literary craze: the self-defeatist book. How to Alienate and Lose All Influence with People within Mere Days of Making Their Acquaintance, by Annie Kincaid.

  I got home at two in the morning and woke up at nine, groggy but eager to pursue my new lead on Anton. Fortified with a steaming cup of Peet’s coffee, I sat at my kitchen table and called Directory Assistance in Yountville for the number of the antiques store the Stranger had told me about last night. When I dialed the Dusty Attic’s number, an answering machine picked up. The recorded voice of the shop’s owner, one Joanne Nash, thanked me effusively for calling, told me the Dusty Attic would open at 10:00 A.M.—sharp!—and insisted that she just couldn’t wait to meet me.

  Joanne Nash, eh? Was she by any chance the Joanne I saw at Anton’s studio yesterday? I started to leave a message, but changed my mind. For what I wanted to know I needed the face-to-face advantage. A trip to Yountville would be today’s first order of business.

  The stutter dial tone on my phone informed me that I had six new messages in my voice mailbox. Well, wasn’t I the popular gal? Three were from my new buddies at the SFPD, Inspectors Crawford and Wilson, who wanted to talk to me at my earliest convenience, blah blah blah. Anthony Brazil had called, ask
ing in his oh-so-refined way if I had made any progress on the drawings. I’ll be gettin’ back to ya, Tony, I thought as I erased the message. A gallery owner from London had called to urge me to “use my influence” to put a halt to the writing of Georges’ memoirs. Fat chance. Grandfather had not called, surprise surprise. There was also a message from Mary saying she was taking off for a concert in Mendocino. Rats. I had hoped to drag her with me to Napa, since at the moment I was feeling frustrated and needed a dose of her cheery derring-do. Mary’s call did remind me, though, that I still had to finish the sample boards and deliver them to my clients. I was supposed to be running a business, after all.

  Having the new landlord breathing down my neck wasn’t helping my mood. Since my campaign to win DeBenton over to my way of thinking wasn’t going too well, it looked like I had a month to come up with some way to persuade him not to raise the rent. Or to figure out how to pay the exorbitant increase. Or to find a new studio. None of which, at the moment, seemed even remotely possible.

  I needed that reward money from Anthony Brazil.

  Picking up the phone again, I dialed the SFPD. Did homicide inspectors work on Saturdays?

  “Homicide. Inspector Crawford.”

  They did.

  “Annie Kincaid returning your call.” I loved it when I sounded professional. It happened so rarely.

  “Thank you for calling, Ms. Kincaid,” she said crisply. “My partner and I are meeting with the board of directors of the Brock Museum this morning at eleven thirty. May I assume you will join us?”

  According to the rules of grammar, the inspector had just asked me a question. Funny how much it had sounded like a command.

  “Um, well, I’ve been awfully busy recently, Inspector,” I replied. “And I’m afraid I’ve already made some plans for later this morning. I’m going to Nap—”