Earth Colors (10 page)

Authors: Sarah Andrews

BOOK: Earth Colors

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My first reaction was frustration: How was he supposed to find Faye attractive if he thought she wasn’t interested in men? I said, “Fritz, you’re a sweet guy. But no, Faye and I are not, uh …” Then it hit home that this guy had thought that
I
was one of the guys, too. And he wasn’t clueless. No, he’d had some clues, so what were they? Did I look a little too butch in my blue jeans and sloppy shirt?

Fritz’s posture had gone oddly formal, and he was furtively looking me up and down in reevaluation. I realized that
he
had just realized he was standing in his bedroom with a heterosexual female he hardly knew. “Let’s see what else needs to come in from the truck,” I said, diplomatically leading the way out of the room, but deep inside, I felt sick. Something strange was happening to me, like waking up one morning to discover that I was a bug. And it was not just a matter of identity: The rules of the world seemed to have shifted. It was as if a hole was opening underneath my feet, and I was hanging over a dark, cavernous space that had no bottom.

We made short and austere work out of bringing the mattress and box springs in from the truck and hefting them into place, after which Fritz said he was certain he could get the rest in by himself and I excused myself and went back to Faye’s house.

Like an automaton, I picked up the mail on the way in from the street and tossed it onto the kitchen counter with the rest of the pile that had accumulated while I’d been in Cody. I didn’t even look through it. Certainly none of it was for me, because I did not have a life.

I decided that I needed a beer. I usually did not drink when I was unhappy, as booze sure hadn’t fixed things for my mother, but just then I could not think beyond the look on Fritz’s face when he realized that I was not what he had assumed. That look had said,
Something is wrong with this woman
.

As I reached for the refrigerator door I noticed that the envelope on the top of the stack of mail was in fact addressed to me.

It was a letter from my mother.

Another remittance check, guilt money to cover the hole in her conscience where she kicked her own daughter out,
I thought bitterly.

I decided to open it, extract the check, and light a match to it.
To hell with her. To hell with Faye and her new friend and his painting. To hell with my master’s degree. I’ll just get a job, any job, find myself a studio apartment
and a can of dog food to live on, climb the rest of the way down into my emotional hole, and pull the lid on after me
.

I grabbed the beer and a strike-anywhere match for the letter and headed down the hall to my room, tearing open the slim envelope as I went. Inside I found a check and a folded piece of paper with only one paragraph that read:

Dear Emily,

Here’s a miscellaneous contribution toward your education. Let me say as always that I am proud of you for going after an advanced degree. Don’t worry about paying this one back because I have a rather healthier cash flow situation than usual. This is because I have sold the ranch to the Nature Conservancy. Your father and I had to mortgage it to the quick years ago. Revenues have not exceeded costs for many years. With the rise in the value of the land, I can this way pay off the debt and have enough to retire on. I will be moving up to Douglas where I’ll be closer to friends and services, so at least you won’t have to look after me in my advancing years.

Sorry—

Mother

The world went numb and the open bottle of beer slipped out of my hand, hit the floor, and began to empty itself onto the rug.

She was sorry.

The hallway seemed to bend. I grabbed at the wall so I wouldn’t go down, and stumbled into my room through a narrowing world.

FAYE AND SLOANE RENEE ARRIVED HOME THE NEXT AFTERNOON in a big, gray rental car driven by Tert Krehbeil. They came into the house laughing and giggling, all just as giddy as if they’d been having a tickle fight. I withdrew quickly before they spotted me, and stayed in my room for as long as I could get away with it.

“Em?” Faye called out at last. “Are you here?”

“Just finishing something for class,” I called back. I was in fact doing nothing, unless you count staring at the ceiling as doing something. This was because I was lying on my back, which was a change from lying on my face, the posture in which I had spent most of the hours since reading my mother’s note. “I’m right in the middle of an important paragraph,” I added, fleshing out my lie. “I’ll be out in a moment.”

I heard Faye move down the hallway past my room and enter the bathroom. “What’s going on, Em? It smells like a brewery in here!”

I didn’t answer. Hours after the beer had gone flat in the carpeting, I had used a towel to soak up the worst of it, but had not moved past wringing out the towel into the bathtub and hanging it up over the curtain rail.

When I did finally drag myself out of my cave, Faye had disappeared into her own room with Sloane to do the things mothers constantly need to do for babies. That left me to face off with His Nibs in the living room. “Hi,” I said, my voice coming out as flat as the beer now was.

“Hi.”

“Pleasant drive?” I asked, meaning to be ironical. I managed to sound sullen.

“Very pleasant.”

We stood and stared at each other for a while. He appeared just as peculiarly serene as ever. His eyes were so pale that it was almost as if a silvery light played constantly across his face, a sort of Charlton Heston–plays–Moses effect.

In the long hours of nighttime and daylight since I had read my mother’s letter, I had moved from feeling shock to nausea to extreme self-pity, but now I felt only a deep, cold fury. Apparently this didn’t show, because as Tert spoke again, his tone suggested that he found nothing unusual about the state of my composure. “As I mentioned in Cody, I’d like to hire you to investigate a painting,” he said, coming right to the point. His point. The only point left in the world.

I picked up a soft fleece baby blanket and began to fold it. It had slid onto the floor next to the few items of luggage that had come in from the car. Had Gray Eyes carried it in and dropped it like this?
No
, I had to admit,
this is more like Faye, to be so casual with the baby’s things. This man I do not know, not really. Perhaps he’s nice. Perhaps he truly cares about people other than himself. Perhaps I’m just imploding on my empty little life, and I should just head out for the evening and leave them to the house, and to their bright future together
. I set the blanket on the back of the couch and smoothed it with my hand.

It was several moments before I realized that I had not replied to the man’s proposal, which could just fund the research for my thesis, that little five- to twenty-thousand-dollar budget item that stood between so many people and their degrees. Certainly I would not cash my mother’s check. I cleared my throat. “A painting,” I said. “Just exactly what do you want me to do for you?” After another moment, I added, “Tert.”

He folded his arms across his chest and raised one hand to his mouth. He played the fingers of that hand across his lips, as if exploring his own sensual beauty. “May I count on your discretion?”

“Yes.”

“Then I am your client, and you will keep my confidence.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t know if Faye told you that the painting in question is a Remington.”

“Ah.”

“So it would be quite valuable. It has been in the family since it was first exhibited at Knoedler’s Gallery in New York almost one hundred years ago. Knoedler’s was Remington’s main outlet, aside from the magazine contracts and the occasional sale straight out of his studio.”

“Mm.”

He began to move in a circle around the room, arms still folded, now looking at the gorgeous Chinese silk rug that Faye had laid down, now gazing out the window or briefly examining one of her prize Acoma pots. I felt almost as if I were watching him in the museum again, taking in an exhibit, except that this time he was talking to me. His speech sounded odd, as if he were speaking from the depths of a dream. He said, “My grandfather purchased the painting. He brought it home from New York on the train to Philadelphia, thence out on the spur line that comes out to Lancaster. My grandmother met him at the station in a hired cab, and he gave it to her then. It was a birthday present, you see. She had always wanted to travel west, but had been forbidden by her parents. The story goes that they were afraid she might marry a cowboy and live a life of pain and drudgery. They had money, you see—lots of money—and they did not want their daughter to suffer. But my grandmother had read the stories in
Collier’s Magazine
, and her heart was full of romance.”

He paused in his recitation and stared out into the street. Cars were going past, the late-afternoon return of the working world to their little homes. I had time to think on the image of his grandmother, forbidden to visit the West that had captured her heart. I knew that love. I loved the West to the last blade of grass, craggy peak, and lost calf that dwelt within its panorama. I loved it to the very depths of my soul. I loved it to the tight spin of every last electron in my body. But the West was more than just a romance. The West was a place of simple virtues, where lines between right and wrong were more precisely drawn than in the East. Doing what is right is embedded in the Code of the West.

I wondered if that code had called to Tert’s grandmother, or if she merely liked the idea of being somewhere she hadn’t been. She had buried her rebellion in house and family, no doubt; here stood her grandson as proof of the fruits of her duty. And she had loved her husband, I was sure of that even without knowing the rest of the story. She had met him at the
station, and he had brought her the best thing short of a train ticket west: a Remington, fresh from the artist’s brush, its colors bright and true, the varnishes untouched by the grit and yellowing of time. A Remington, the genius spawn of the finest Impressionist of the American West, a burst of prairie light frozen in paint.

Softly, I asked, “What was the scene?”

He sighed, long and deeply. “It was a group of horses in the moonlight in a corral. I guess you’d call them ponies. There’s a cabin in the background, just a touch of candlelight coming from it.”

He paused a moment in his description, moved up close to the window of the room we were standing in, and stared outward, his back to me. “Something has frightened the ponies. They lower their heads as they shy away from something outside the frame of the picture … . There’s something out there.” He shook his head. “I spent hours staring at that painting when I was a child. Hours.”

Now he turned and looked straight at me, his gray eyes locking with mine. “So you can imagine my surprise … my
horror
… when I realized that the painting was no longer the original.”

I could not figure out how to respond. In reciting his drama, he had managed momentarily to jog me from the darkness of my mood; he had reminded me that I was not the only creature in the universe that suffered. I could not imagine why he had brought this to me. He did not know me. I was just a friend of a friend, and I wasn’t sure how well he even knew Faye. And the experience of seeing inside him, however briefly, made me feel oddly naked.

Fortunately, Faye chose that moment to enter the room, and she was carrying Baby Sloane. The instant I saw her, I was again engulfed with the warmth and pain of my jagged heart. I rushed to her, and Faye handed her to me. I bent my body around her, snuggled her tiny head up beneath my cheek, and squeezed her as close as I could without troubling her. The scent of baby soothed me, reminding me that there were things in the world more important than land, or any particular outcome of any particular problem of the mind. I squeezed my eyes shut so that I would not cry in front of Tert or the stranger the child’s mother had become.

“Am I interrupting anything?” Faye inquired of her friend.

Tert cleared his throat. “I was just telling Emily about the painting,” he replied. “Perhaps we should see what you’ve got in the kitchen. It was a long drive, and I could really use a beer about now.”

They left me alone with the little girl. I sat down in the gliding rocker Faye used when nursing her, curled her in my arms, and quit fighting back my sorrow.

WHEN I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, I DECIDED THAT I’D SNEAK into the nursery and have some time with the baby—if she was not in bed with Faye—then grab some breakfast and make a clean escape before the happy family crawled out of their various rooms. But on opening the door to my room, I heard sounds in the kitchen. I approached cautiously, and found Faye fussing over something on the stove and Tert Krehbeil already sitting at the table with Sloane Renee on his lap, feeding her Cream of Wheat. The baby was staring up into his eyes with the awestruck glow of an Italian Renaissance saint observing an angel. I stopped short in the doorway, and was just throwing my feet into reverse when Faye spotted me.

She said, “Oh, there you are, Em. Hey, I was wondering if you could take the baby while Tert and I catch a little skiing up at Snowbird.”

“Um, ah … sure. I can take her to class with me, I guess.”

“No, I don’t mean for the whole day. This is a Friday, right? You’ve got classes just in the morning, and besides, you already missed two days of class this week helping me out. So, no, we were thinking of just doing a half-day pass.” She gave me a pleasant little smile.

“The eggs are scorching,” I said, then, realizing that she was trying to be considerate, added, “Okay, I’ll cover you from noon onward. Eleven, if you meet me at the Geology Department and bring the baby to me.”

Faye stabbed at the mess of eggs with a spatula. She had once been a fairly accomplished cook when she put her mind to it, but with the distractions
of motherhood, culinary disasters like this had become more frequent and of increasingly greater magnitude.

Tert said, “Thanks, Em. That’s really nice of you. But as regards our business arrangement—”

“I need to talk to you about that,” I said quickly.

The temperature of his gaze cooled. “You sound uncertain.”

“I have some questions.” I veered away from Faye’s seared omelette toward the cupboard, grabbed a cup of coffee, and led Tert out of Faye’s hearing into the living room. Once he was settled on the couch and I had room to pace, I said, “First, it’s obvious to me that there are a great many people more qualified than I am to evaluate your painting. Some kind of art specialist.”

“A conservator,” he said.

“Okay, a conservator.” I was annoyed that I hadn’t even known the correct term. “But you need a private detective because the art world is a nosy place and this is a matter you wish to keep just that way—private.”

He nodded. “That is correct.”

“Have you taken up the matter with the appropriate sheriff’s department or police?”

Tert averted his gray eyes to indicate emotional discomfort at the very thought.

I said, “Well, how do you expect me to find out when the switch was made—if indeed the painting is faked—and who did it? I can’t subpoena evidence, and I can’t—”

“All I want you to do is document that it is not original.”

I took a deep breath and let it out. I said, “Well, I am not a licensed detective, but I am a professional geologist with some experience in forensics, and you’re talking about a matter that a forensic geologist would categorize as trace evidence: artists’ pigments.” I paused, giving myself time to contemplate the line of B.S. I was coming out with. I was almost even convincing myself. “I’ve been reading up on these things. It’s an interesting topic. You see, the thing is, I’d like to make a master’s thesis out of the work.”

Tert looked pained. “No. I’m sorry. The information would be proprietary.”

“Well, then, I have a proposal. I believe Faye said you have other paintings, am I right?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I’d like to study one of them. Perhaps one of the ones you were going to loan to the Whitney. I could go there, and—”

He nodded. “I see where you’re going with this. I could probably arrange that.”

“And I’ll need your permission to consult with colleagues at the FBI labs. I will be absolutely discreet, don’t you worry. Your name needn’t be mentioned.”

He smiled vaguely.

“Then I’ll do it,” I said. “My fee is fifty bucks an hour plus expenses, plus I get to work with another painting.”

Tert did not even bat an eye. “Agreed.”

“Where do you keep the family paintings?”

He paused a moment, caught off guard. “Uh, at the family farm.”

“Where’s that?”

“But you would see the paintings when they are hung in Cody.” His smile came into focus. He seemed pleased about something he wasn’t saying.

I nodded. I wasn’t sure what he was hiding, but I saw no reason to go clear to the East Coast if the paintings were coming to me. “I’ve got exams and reports due in the next few days, but spring break starts in a couple of weeks. I can start then.”

“Good.”

“Where is the painting?” I asked, starting to raise my coffee for a sip now that the business was settled.

“In the car.”

I stopped with the coffee halfway to my lips. “In the
car
? You left a million-dollar piece of artwork in the trunk of your
car
?”

He looked mildly affronted. “The original would be worth at least three million. But as I said, the painting in the car is not the original.”

“You’re pretty damned sure of that.”

“I am.”

Tert went out to his car, unlocked the trunk, and returned with what looked like a long, fat mailing tube. He headed into the dining room, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, fastidiously dusted the table, then opened the tube and extracted a roll of canvas. This he unfurled and
spread out flat on the table, exposing a layer of cheesecloth. He lifted the cloth, and there before me was a picture of horses in a corral at night that sure as hell
looked
like a real Remington. “It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Not as beautiful as the original,” he said sadly.

I stared into the painting. The horses were gloriously rendered, and full of tension. But it was odd seeing a supposed masterwork without its frame and without even the stretcher bars. “You removed its skeleton,” I said.

“Easier to transport this way. The stretchers are in the car. I can take it home with me on the plane.”

“Take it home? Then you didn’t bring it out with you from the East?”

“No.”

“Where was it?”

He paused as if trying to decide what or how much to tell me. “It was near Cody.”

Near Cody
. My conversation with Frank Barnes came back to me. “Do you mean on a ranch?” I asked.

“Yes … at a summer place my grandmother owned.”

“Oh. Is it still in the family?”

Tert shifted uncomfortably. “I haven’t been there for … a number of years.”

“Then you can’t pinpoint exactly when the switch was made,” I said.

He stood with his hands gripped behind his back, drawing himself into a caricature of a British lord. He said nothing, the gentry defending the honor of privilege.

I said, “I looked through every book on Remington I could find in the University library. I saw several other night paintings.”

“Nocturnes,” Tert corrected me.

“Yes. Well, some of the earlier works seemed a little cruder than others. Even Remington saw that. The text said that he routinely built bonfires in his backyard and burned paintings that he thought inferior.” I knew I might be pulling my thesis project out from under my own feet, but it was essential that I approach the science with utmost integrity. If I started out with a lie, then the whole thing would be a sham. “It could be that you’ve got an original there that just isn’t as wonderful as some of his others, and you’re not remembering it as clearly as you thought. What if—”

He held up a hand. “I understand what you’re saying. I at first tried to convince myself of the same thing. But, no, I am certain.” He turned dismissively and moved back into the kitchen, where he resumed his seat at the table and once again began to feed cereal to the baby. Faye had put Sloane Renee in her high chair during our absence, and the baby watched us with grave eyes. Faye watched also, but more covertly.

“Then why did you bring it to the museum?” I asked, following him into the room. “You’ll excuse me if I’m a little confused, but why hire me in the name of discretion if you’ve already shown it to the Remington committee in Cody? Why close the barn door after the horse has escaped?”

“They didn’t see this painting.”

“Oh? Then why were you there?”

Faye rolled her eyes at me.

Tert said, “Because I am a member of that committee.”

This revelation hit me like a board with a nail in the end of it. I looked back and forth between Tert and Faye.
They lured me into this project like a rat to the cheese
. “So you’re one of their experts.”

“That’s right.” He set down the baby’s spoon and stared at me.

“Then what the hell do you need me for?”

He waved a hand as if to clear obnoxious smoke. “I’m on that committee because I know Remington’s painting style. His brushwork. The scumbles and glazes. We do aesthetic evaluation, not scientific documentation. I know his materials in a gross sense—the type of canvas he used, the Shattuck keys on the stretchers—but I know little of what you call trace evidence, and certainly cannot do the microscopic work. That analysis is usually done by a conservator. But as you accurately surmised, it’s a small world, and I want this kept quiet. And my reasons for doing so are my own, and I will not discuss them.”

I knew right then that he was lying.
I have not forgotten the first time I saw you. In the gallery, before you knew who I was. You were talking to another man—another committee member, no doubt—about the shade of green Remington used in the nocturne of the man by the Conestoga wagon. Hooker’s green. You named the exact pigments that make that color—Prussian blue and something that begins with a
G—
and if you’re worth your salt to that committee, you’ll know all about the National Gallery’s books on pigments.
Yes, you know a lot more than you’re letting on. And in some important way, in some critical detail, you are lying to me!

Tert and I stared at each other, neither of us blinking.

The baby let out a shriek.

I have no patience for lies. I said, “So, getting us up to Cody was all a ruse. You never had anything that needed to be transported.”

Faye’s spine stiffened noticeably.

For a moment Tert evinced incomprehension. Then he said, “Oh. Oh, I see what’s upsetting you. No, in fact there
are
paintings that need transportation, but the Remington was not one of them.”

“Most of the rest of the collection is near Lancaster at your mother’s house, isn’t it?” Faye asked.

He said, “I’m loaning them several Russells.” His tone was now professorial, almost condescending.

“
Several
Russells.”
Oh deary me.
I shifted my gaze back to Faye, who had tipped her head sharply to one side, her lips pursed as if affecting an innocent whistling.

Gritting my teeth, I said, “Fine, just fine. I think I’m getting up to speed now. Right now I need to head to class. I’ll see you both at eleven. And you,” I leaned forward and gave Sloane Renee a kiss on her fuzzy little head, “I will see all afternoon.”

I got my book bag and got my butt on the bus to the U as fast as I could, quick before I blew my chance for a thesis project the rest of the way out the window.

I sat the baby that afternoon while the fun couple skied, and while the baby napped, I took a tour of the guest room to see what I could discover about our resident liar. He had left behind a suitcase and a thin leather attaché. There was nothing of interest in the first, no electronic gizmos such as computer or Palm Pilot in the other. About all I found of interest was a small spiral-bound book full of notes written in a tight little handwriting which I presumed to be his. They read like this:

May 3rd

Rem to H*
Wyo / UPS (spec.)—SAC / will call
O/*—ridge / hoc
Pd. / ck + cash

June 8th

orange—no. 26
223,000 profit
split / 50.50

Aug 12th

Big One—10% to [ ]
new frame—Rocetti/Boston
Denver—van / cash
Split w/ GRR / London a/*

Sept. 30th

LA—SF—Napa
7 days
2 + 2 + 2
3 w/c—2 a*ib—1 ltr.—2 *****
7 sales—1.43
3 way split / ? / 500 net to me!

Dec 8th

It’s starting to look like …
2 b/w w/e
unframed
Por**t* Denver / Dallas