Offerings (11 page)

Ingrid talked quickly. She looked around, to be certain no one was watching their conversation. “I also told the young woman the family owned a textile plant on Rubenstrasse. I put the address on the note. I must go. I am sorry for my colleague. You say you have something that belongs to this family. In the name of God I hope you can return it. We owe them that much.”

Kate was unclear what to make of this information. It was so sudden, so unexpected, so rich with possibility. Her thanks were effusive.

Ingrid smiled. She turned away. “Really, I must go before my superior learns of this encounter.”

Kate looked at the note. The writing was small and precise. Marta Hirsch. Her address, her email, her telephone in Barcelona. Kate was tempted to take her BlackBerry out of her purse and send her an email. But what could she say? That she knew about a painting a man named Karl Hirsch bought years before, but that she had no power to return even if this Marta somehow were related to the man?

Nina pointed to the address Ingrid had written. “That’s in the same direction as the station. We can stop on the way if you like. I must admit, I’m a bit curious myself about what’s there.”

The building was in a light industrial area of small factories surrounded by modest, working class houses. It sat on a street where the first floors of the buildings housed a café with smoked-stained curtains, a butcher shop whose windows were littered with sausage and rabbits and geese hanging from white cords, two empty storefronts, and a dentist’s office marked by a large, freshly painted white tooth hanging from a wrought iron arm.

Nina parked in front of an old brick building running the length of an entire block. The brick had given in to the pollution and dirt of the city and faded to an ugly brown. It was being sandblasted back to its original color. The air was gritty with the dust being stirred up by the workers. Kate counted Nina’s footprints as they moved to the entrance of the building Ingrid identified.

Towels were spread on the floor. They wiped their feet. A receptionist made apologies for the mess. She was a compact woman, with short-cropped blonde hair. She spoke in staccato. Kate understood only an occasional word as Nina explained the purpose of their visit. She moved a short distance from them and began examining the tile wainscoting that circled the room. There were small flowers, roses and asters, rabbits and birds. The pattern was repeated on the floor, which had at its center a stylized
H
, with a vine looped through the vertical pieces of the letter. Kate bent down and touched the raised portion of the tile.

She wasn’t in the habit of kneeling to the floors of the buildings she entered, but so much of her time had been spent thinking of the man Chloe said bought the painting. She looked up at the two women. “Forgive me. I simply couldn’t resist touching something that once belonged to this family. I feel that’s why I’m here in the first place.”

In deference to Kate, the woman began speaking in broken English. “There is no need to apologize.” She bent next to Kate and wiped a small bit of dust off the tile. “I agree it is quite a lovely artifact.”

She brushed the dust off her hands. “This in fact is quite a well-known room in this part of the city. It’s actually in the local guidebooks as an example of nineteenth century ceramic industrial design, although not that many people visit Linz and those who do don’t come around here. I’m happy you found us. When the family opened their textile plant on this site there was a tile foundry next door, where the apartment building now stands. That accounts for the lovely tiles you see around the room and on the floor.”

The woman walked to a picture on the wall. Two men stood shaking hands. “The older man is Karl Hirsch, the founder. The younger man is Albert, his son. The photograph dates from around 1890, just before Karl’s death. According to the inscription on the back of the photograph, they are celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the business.”

Kate moved closer to study the image of the two men while the woman continued. “The picture has an interesting history. One of the weavers who was allowed to stay in Linz after the occupation buried it outside when the family was forced to leave. The box was discovered in the fifties when a new sewer line was being dug. It seemed only right to put it back in its place.”

Karl Hirsch was tall, well over six feet. He had a broad smile, rimless glasses and a neatly trimmed white moustache. His son had his father’s same dark eyes. They were standing in front of an ornately carved desk. The edge of a painting was visible over Albert Hirsch’s shoulder. There were clouds and a bit of a mountain peak. The frame was every bit as grand as the one that surrounded Chris Franklin’s picture.

Kate took a picture with her phone, although as she drew the picture into focus she knew the receipt plus this small bit of evidence could cast a cloud over Franklin’s title that even Clive on the most lucid moment of his most creative day couldn’t explain away.

“I’m afraid I can’t invite you into the back of the building. It’s now used as a paper distributor, so there’s not much you’d be interested in seeing in any event. I can offer you some paper and charcoal, though, to take a rubbing of the floor if you like.” The woman smiled and began reaching into a drawer on the side of her desk. “We had a school group through here the other day and I have some of the tissue paper they brought in my desk. Perhaps you’d like it as a memento.”

A bit embarrassed, Kate gestured to Nina they should decline. She pointed to her watch in the hope Nina might say Kate needed to get to the station.

But the woman already was on her knees, positioning the tissue paper, securing it with tape and sorting through the charcoals before either Kate or Nina spoke.

On one level, the idea struck Kate as folly, something she might do with Mack if she ever stole the time to chaperone a school trip, but not something she’d consider without an excuse or a child to provide cover.

But the offer was so sweet, so innocent, and given so freely, resistance would have been impolite.

EIGHTEEN

Peter was in the pool with Mack when Kate returned from JFK.

It was a little after six. The yard smelled of something cooking on the grill. Kate took off her stockings and dangled her feet in the pool. Mack floated by on an inner tube, splashed her to welcome her home and then pushed away from the side. Peter swam over and put his hands on Kate’s knees.

“Good trip?”

“Long, tiring.” Sarah walked toward Kate with a tray full of corn wrapped in aluminum foil. “Hey, Mom” was enough for Kate to know all was well with her daughter. Sarah and Mack would be leaving for camp in a few days. She’d miss the hell out of them both.

“Did you find anything useful?”

Kate rubbed the back of her neck, which was still stiff from all those hours on the plane. “I’m not sure. I have a name and address of a woman in Spain who might be related to Karl Hirsch.”

Under any other circumstance the news someone carrying his DNA might have slipped through the cracks of history would have been a cause of joyful noise. Peter grabbed her big toe. “Is that a good thing? You’ve really turned your life upside down for that deal for the past three weeks. What’s next?”

“There were twenty-seven emails from Ed and Steve and Clive when I turned on my BlackBerry after my plane landed. Ed and Steve are relentless about telling me to find some way to move the deal forward. There’s something about the two of them I just don’t understand. If Ed is so damned close to Steve that they parrot each other’s ideas, why did he reach out to me as a possible successor in the first place? He never told me I was his backup plan. It doesn’t add up.”

“And Clive?”

“Clive is trying to put the brakes on what he sees as a train wreck. But he really doesn’t have a say. There is so little inventory around at the moment even a relatively small deal like this is a precious commodity. We’re getting signals from the appraiser who thinks the painting may be legitimate, and that’s heightening the urgency to find out something definitive about this family. Everything is blown way out of proportion.”

“Who would have thought Franklin could be sitting in front of something worth millions and never bothered to ask? It’s like winning the lottery twice.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. One of my emails said Greene is now sniffing around about the painting. Chris must have said something. If the painting is authentic and really is the one Michael Hirsch bought from Chloe’s gallery, then I feel humiliated I can’t even think about helping the family.”

The time change was catching up with Kate. She fished through her bag for an aspirin tin. “What’s the latest at Ascalon?”

Peter put his head under the water, as though he needed to be refreshed before answering Kate’s question. “We’re starting to get letters from shareholder lawyers demanding the right to review our books. The lawsuits will follow soon enough. The Chinese want to wash the sale through bankruptcy and put the money they’re paying for the equity into a box and let us fight with the complaining shareholders over who gets what. That promises to be a lot of fun.” If Peter mentioned Jack Carpenter’s name, Kate would find an excuse to go into the house.

“How’s Cass holding up?” Kate was less interested in Cass’s emotional well-being than she was in the question of the difference in their loans.

“He paid me back fifty of his share of the loan before he left. I sent it off to the bank.”

That Cass was making good on his debt was a decent enough welcome-home gift.

Mack shouted that Kate should watch him. He dove under the water and began swimming the length of the pool without taking a breath, the way Peter started his laps. Mack could make it about halfway before bursting to the surface and gobbling for air, but each time he tried he inched a bit closer to his goal.

Kate looked around to be certain Sarah couldn’t hear what she was about to say. “I’m frightened, Peter.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I don’t know how long we can hold on. It was a terrible mistake for me to have gone to Drake, but now I’m stuck with that decision. I can’t stand Ed Roth or Steve Reed. They’re nothing but threats and manipulation. Reed even told me if I didn’t go to Linz and verify no heirs could be found he’d tell you all these terrible things about me. In this email frenzy I was reading on the way home, Ed even threatened to take away my bonus if I didn’t find some way to pull this deal off.”

“You have a written agreement.”

“Of course I have one, but what am I going to do? File a lawsuit so the whole world can read about it when Ed complains I didn’t produce what I promised or gives some other reason why he let me go? That will look great on my resume. Besides, bonuses are paid in January and I can’t imagine I’ll still be there by then.”

Kate pinched herself on the thigh. “And to be perfectly honest, now that I know the name of the man who owned this painting and that someone with his name made the same inquiries I did in his hometown, I feel dirty because I’m not fighting to return it to them. Instead, I’m throwing obstacles in their path. I hate that I put myself in this position. I wish I could just walk into Ed’s office and quit.” She waited. “And now you’re going to China. It’s like everything is off-kilter.”

There was nothing Peter could say except the obvious: they needed Kate to keep working to get out of the hole they were in. “What does Chris Franklin say about his interest in the painting?”

“I haven’t talked to him, but if it turns out it really has value and he needs to hold onto the painting to get his deal done, I can’t imagine he’ll give it up willingly.”

Mack started to swim toward Kate and Peter, but saw his mother looked unhappy and veered in another direction. “From the moment I touched that receipt I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with some way to bridge the gap between the two competing claims, some sharing or bartering or cooperation under which they both get something out of the deal. I’ve sketched out something but it’s such an incredible long shot I have no idea whether he’ll even consider it.”

“I’m happy to vet it if you want a second opinion, but the only person whose opinion counts is Chris.”

Peter was right, but Kate feared both Chris’s reaction to her idea, and, worse still, her ability to convince him it was the only way to move the deal forward.

Kate used the edge of her shirt to wipe her eyes. “Everything I’ve done since Mom died feels so wrong.”

Peter cupped some water in his hands and let it spill on Kate’s knee. He followed the water down her leg with his finger. “We’ll figure something out.” It was the first time he touched her since he suggested they should go to their neutral corners. Kate wasn’t certain whether Peter’s finger against her skin was the first step toward something later in the bedroom or a way of reminding himself of all the things he once had in his life. She was too tired to debate the question.

“God, I hate where we are right now. I hate the idea of selling this house, but even if we could get what we paid for it and then drained all of our savings, we’d still be a couple of million short. That’s why all that money you put into Ascalon made me so crazy.” She dabbed at her nose with a tissue. “How did we do this to ourselves?”

Kate’s perception of herself as a woman with an iron constitution who relished the battles she fought in a rough-and-tumble world was being challenged from every direction. And she was beginning to doubt whether she’d be up to the challenge.

“I honestly don’t know where we go from here.”

NINETEEN

Before Kate headed off to Boulder to meet with Chris, Mack kissed her goodbye and asked if he (and she) had enough Brewster miles to take him to Disneyworld if he promised not to cry when Peter left for China. Or after he was gone.
It’s okay to tear up a little, Mack. We’re all going to be unhappy when Dad goes.
They made a date to sneak away when he returned from camp.
But think of how happy we’ll all be when he comes home.

If the deal had been on track, the air around Majik would have been filled with the promise of enormous wealth about to drop from the sky. Television crews would be swarming in the parking lot the day of the stock’s opening. Newspaper articles would be celebrating the newest crop of software millionaires.