Deep Fried and Pickled (Book One - The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles) (37 page)

I handed him the talisman. “The engraving is an eye.”

He focused on the piece. “I’ve studied the Mayans, Hitties, but this appears to be.”

“Egyptian. It’s the eye of Horus.”

“You know ancient symbols?”

I shrugged. “A lot of crazy stuff comes through my dad’s shop and we end up doing research. Once, someone brought a stone with hieroglyphics. It looked authentic, and Dad called a friend. Turned out to be from the Valley of Kings.”

“How old were you?”

“Nine.”

Lucky Jack peered over his glasses, and his words caught me off guard. “You have an expert eye, and a photographic memory.”

Not many people knew. Only family. I hadn’t told the girls. I don’t know why, but I confided in him. “I can recall stuff. Symbols and signatures. If someone dots an “i" center, left or right, size of loops—that kind of thing.”

His staring made me uncomfortable. I figured he thought I was full of shit or something. “Do you paint or sculpt?”

“No, I leave that to artists. I mend works damaged by time and mishandling. Give portraits facelifts--make them look young again.”

“What about sales? With your knowledge and keen eye, it could become a lucrative living.” His gaze lingered, and I didn’t respond. Handing the charm back to me, he asked, “Do you know what the eye symbolizes?”

“Strength, wisdom, spiritual guidance.”

The tourists left the shop and Lucky Jack excused himself to lock the door behind them. “There’s something I’d like to show you.” Guiding me through a dark corridor, he placed an arm around my shoulder. A voice inside my head pricked a warning. Although he hadn’t done anything wrong, his invasive grip made me uncomfortable. I’d knee’d one groin today. I didn’t know if I would be accurate a second time.

Lucky unlocked a door and switched on a light in a windowless storage room. Large metal drawers were stacked to the ceiling around the perimeter. A worktable sat in the center, and a desk in the corner.

Hesitating to step inside, I asked, “What’s this?”

He retrieved a key and a pair of black gloves from a desk drawer and motioned for me to sit. “I want to show you something.”

Piles of paperwork cluttered the desktop. While he searched the art drawers, I used one finger to fan a pile of invoices. Midstack, one caught me breathless. Lucky’s Art Consortium paid Billy Ray $46,000 for six primitives. The invoice had a New Bern address, and Lucky had signed his real name under a received stamp. There was nothing lucky about Jack Ray.

My breath quickened, and as I rewound my memory, I strung the pieces of an epiphany together. Billy Ray, a talented artist, partnered with his relative, Jack. The two moved fakes south of the Mason-Dixon. Nash had to be involved. What about Katie Lee? Was she involved? Jack Ray – initials JR. Shit! Bridget’s contact to arrange this trip. What did Jack Ray want? To recruit me or keep me quiet?

With an art drawer unlocked, he slid his hands into the black gloves. “These fireproof cabinets are airtight and indestructible.” Retrieving two wrapped canvases, he placed them on the white lacquered worktable, and turned on overhead lights before unwrapping the artwork.

I thought Bridget had drugged me at Jackson’s clambake, but maybe it had been Katie Lee or Nash. They both had access to pharmaceuticals. The airport. Bridget blundered running over me in Big Blue, so she went for the second best thing. Prison.
Why was Bridget after me? I don’t own art, I just help my dad restore it.
My heart drummed in a bad way.

No one would believe me. I didn’t want to believe me. I needed proof and protection. Slipping the invoice onto my lap, I asked, “What ya got?” and coughed to cover the noise I made folding it into a note the size you’d pass to the person sitting behind you in study hall. Alone in a room with an art forgery ringleader who wore black gloves, I stuffed the paper into my front pocket for safekeeping.

Lucky Jack drifted his eye to me. Curling his lips, he winked. With the artwork unwrapped, he stood back and motioned for me to join him.

Flee or fight. Personally I leaned toward flee, and was ready to run, but remembered the locked front door. Keeping a wide berth, I joined him at the worktable.

He watched me scan the paintings. Like a hunting cat, holding back a pounce he waited for me to twitch or blink out of sequence.

I leaned forward. “Two Clementine Hunter’s.
Baptism
, and
A Funeral
.”

“She’s the hottest artist to come out of Louisiana. Just turned a hundred years old. When she passes, the value of these will soar.”

What a sleeze.

The buzzer on the front door rang, and LJ excused himself. I scurried over to the desk and rotated his Rolodex to A. Methodically flipping the cards, I scanned each one. When I got to B, there was a card for B. Bodsworth and a Greensboro area code. “Jesus,” I swore, but kept turning the cards. Lucky Jack was still talking out front when I got to the H tab. There was a phone number for S. Hayes. Halloween weekend, the beefcake. He had artwork in the Alpha Delta frat house. Did half of New Bern profit from the forgeries? As I flipped the W tab, I noticed the voices in the gallery had gone silent. I went through that letter forward and checked a second time. Had I missed the card for Nash Wilson.

When Lucky Jack returned I was leaning against the worktable. He apologized for the distraction and moved close, invading the space etiquette between people who are acquaintances. Stepping back from the paintings, I asked, “Are these authenticated?”

Curtly he quipped, “Why do you ask?”

I’d seen the
Baptism
, before today. In a New Bern art gallery, at my Dad’s shop, and a third I don’t clearly remember in Jackson’s hall closet.

I wondered if LJ had locked the front door.
“Because they’re amazing. I’m sure you’ll get top dollar.” 

Lucky’s Art Consortium was in a touristy section of the French quarter, and I guessed it was no more than a five-minute walk to The Chateau hotel. He’d left the gallery lights on, and we both heard the bell above the door chime again. “I should go,” I said, swiftly moving out of the back room toward the front showroom.

“I can drive you back to the hotel.”

A large group had come in, and LJ greeted them. As he shook hands, I waved, thanked him for picking me up at Ezora’s, and left. I preferred the foot-journey in the dark. No way was I riding in a closed tin can on wheels with him. That was the last time I ever planned to lay eyes on Jack Ray.

I’d asked directions from a lady inside a souvenir shop. When I arrived in the hotel lobby, I borrowed a pad of paper, and a pen from the front desk. Plunking down on a tufted-sofa, I wrote down every contact I’d memorized from the Rolodex.

I had a call to make. He wasn’t going to be happy that I left town without telling him. I didn’t have a choice. I needed Dad.

SHARING A HOTEL ROOM with three others  for five days in a town that used to be a swamp, on a budget, without a car was a lot of together. My lips had been tattooed a shade deeper from the crawfish encounter, and scabby bruises decorated my knees and arms from the St. Paddy’s day altercation. I decided my run-in with creepy Santa wasn’t as nerve-racking as being in a small fireproof room with the head of an art fraud scheme.

On the cab ride to the airport, I emptied my carry-on and inspected my cosmetic case to assure the flight back wouldn’t be a repeat offense. I’d had to be careful around Bridget. I knew what she was capable of and wondered if her antics were a warning or if her real plans had gone off the tracks. And Katie Lee. I couldn’t trust my roommate until I figured out whether or not she was a player.

NOTE TO SELF

New Orleans, not the most relaxing vacation. Next year my vote is for the Florida Keys.

I don’t know who I can trust besides Dad.

APRIL 1987

36

E
ncounters
A
nd
C
onfessions

The
space between my ears kept replaying the phone conversation I’d had with Dad. I’d fessed-up about being in New Orleans for spring break, minus the airport security bungle. It seemed both New Bern and New Orleans were enamored with Clementine Hunter. If Dad hadn’t received the commission for her artwork, I’d never have noticed the duplicate paintings. But, I studied the brush strokes in the
Baptism
at his studio and now I’d seen the same artwork twice after that. I feared Dad had refurbished a fake. Not recognizing a reproduction was career suicide. Even worse, the museum could accuse him of switching out the original. Somehow I had to set things right.

I wished Dad would’ve shouted at me for being vague about my break destination. He didn’t even ask how I’d paid for the trip. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Both he and Mom had a gift of administering guilt without raising their voices. In my family, self-guilt worked as an effective means of discipline.

Dad had listened to what I told him. When I finished, he said, “Tell me again about the
Baptism
painting you saw in New Bern, and then the one in New Orleans.”

“The monogram signature, bottom right on both, not right center like the one in your shop. The circumference inside the curve on the C, on both, was tighter. The oils on the two here weren’t watered down. The colors were more vibrant. The backs of the canvases were off-white with some staining, thinner than the canvas board you worked on.”

“What makes you think the two pieces you saw were painted by the same person?” Dad asked.

“The scenery was identical, brushstrokes consistent, but the scale of the people varied, and there was one less person standing outside the church on the one in New Orleans. Four not five ladies in white.”

Dad blew a curt huff of air. “I’m going to make a phone call to my colleague at the New Orleans Museum of Art. I’ll ask if he knows of Lucky Jack Ray. Find out if he has a reputation. But Rachael, if no one’s complaining about being duped, there’s no case.”

Before we hung up, Dad asked me to mail him a copy of the invoice I’d nabbed and the Rolodex names I’d memorized.

“Masterpieces with a big price tag make people do crazy things. We don’t know who the players are and what they’re capable of. Don’t tell anyone what you know. And stay away from New Bern.”

MACY HELD UP THE CAFETERIA LINE while she decided what to order.

“Baked ziti,” she finally said to the lady in the red-stained apron who stood behind the steamy pans I deemed as unidentifiable.

With a ladle in her hand, the cafeteria server stared at me. Even though it was lunchtime, she wore that end of the day, glazed eye, pulled-too-many-teeth look. If it weren’t for her hair net, I would have pegged her as a dental assistant type, the ones that always drone on about flossing after they make your gums bleed. “What’ll it be?”

Since I’d taken a cash-payout on my meal-plan to fund spring break, I’d been skipping breakfast and by lunch was starving. All morning I’d been craving a hot hoagie-sandwich with all the fixings. “Steak sandwich. Extra onions and peppers.”

 Macy waved her pointer finger. “If I were you, I’d hold the onions.”

“Since when are you concerned with my breath? It’s not like I sleep with you--voluntarily.”

Macy pulled a penne noodle off her plate and popped it into her mouth. “Since Clay Sorenson stopped me on my way to class to ask about you.”

 “If this is your idea of an April fool’s joke, I’m not laughing.”

As we waited in line to have our I.D.’s checked, Macy lowered her voice. “I take your deflower quest seriously. You need to go big before you go home.”

 “I’m not sure I appreciate your special interest in my womanhood.”

“Rach, you need to hook-up. Clay is perfect. I know you lust him.”

“There’s a problem with Clay. He has a psychotic girlfriend who likes to threaten me.”

Macy didn’t move forward, and students walked around us. “He’s single. I asked. I told him you were too.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“Because you are.”

“He doesn’t need that information.”

“There’s no time for games. The clock is ticking. I told him to stop by.”  

Inside my head, things went fuzzy. I scraped the onions and peppers into a garbage can and followed Macy to our table in the back. Walking backward, she whispered, “It’s going to happen.”

Proper southern children grow up with a strict code of manners. Whether or not their intentions are genuine is irrelevant. Being a New Yorker, Macy probably cornered Clay and threatened him into saying what she wanted to hear. I’d been daydreaming about him since the first sighting at the Holiday Inn back in September. If Clay and I were meant to hook-up, we would’ve by now. There’d been opportunities. We’d had a class together last semester, and he’d admitted me to the campus infirmary when I had the unfortunate loft incident. Clay was a blip that faded on and off my radar. I wasn’t convinced that we’d ever get our flight paths aligned. But a part of me still hoped.

HONEYSUCKLE AND DOGWOOD BUDS BLOOMED filling the warm-air with sweetness. My spring break tan gave me a golden glow. It was the best thing I carried back from the trip and to preserve it, I sunbathed between classes with an open book. I hadn’t found romance or met any cute guys worth staying in touch with. Besides Ezora Laveau, there was nothing lucky about that town. I’d officially crossed New Orleans off my annual-spring-break hot spot.

I tucked my knotted T in my bra and hiked my shorts up my thighs to soak in rays. Sprawled on a red and white stripped towel, Macy wore an itsy-bitsy-teeny-weenie black and white polka-dot bikini. She looked like the optical illusion the optometrist shows you for an eye exam, but bigger, with a pottymouth and an aggressive foot that kept swatting my ankle.