Offerings (6 page)

Kate wanted to get whatever business would intrude on her weekend out of the way before Peter and Sarah returned from their errand. She checked her messages on her BlackBerry. One caught her attention.

Kate:

I can’t find anything on the Internet or in the books I bought about the painting you described, so I tried to narrow the field to the point in Courbet’s career when he might have painted that type of scene. He did leave France for Switzerland after he got into a bit of a scrape with the law. Maybe that’s when he started painting mountains. It’s a needle in a haystack, but a place to start (Wait, haystacks are Monet. Bad metaphor). The Metropolitan research library has an archive of old books and foreign materials I couldn’t find in the stores. I’ve made arrangements to review them Monday morning.

MK

Mary Kay McDonald had a freshly minted Columbia MBA and a mop of red hair. She reminded Kate of her early days as a junior analyst waiting to be plucked out of the research pool and put on the track to become a managing director. But as much as she wanted to feel good about the spunk this first-year was showing, the fact that Ed knew about this before Kate did either meant MK was sucking up to Ed by blind copying him on her email or someone was monitoring her messages.

Peter and Sarah were all giggles and noise when they came into the house. He became sullenly quiet, though, the minute he spotted the letter to Mack’s camp on the table next to Kate. She was aware of his reaction, as though he’d been caught doing something he knew he shouldn’t, which, of course, he had. Kate waited for him to speak. She stroked the top of Siena’s head and neck.

“I wanted to talk once more before we committed to sending Mack to camp. It’s a lot of money and he’s awfully young.” Peter lacked conviction.

“Fortunately, Peter, we’re not at the point where a couple of thousand dollars will put us on the street.” Kate resisted saying the obvious: it was her three thousand dollars. “As for the age part, Mack was young when we took him to the camp fair three weeks ago. Jason and Ethan are going. We can’t back out now.” She waited for Peter to answer.

“I was thinking of renting a Hobie Cat for the summer and teaching him how to sail.” Peter worked to sound earnest. “The odds are looking greater and greater that I won’t be spending much time with him or any of you for a long while.”

Kate resisted saying what was on her mind: this wasn’t about Mack being the youngest kid at Camp Kiawah, the oldest, or anywhere in between. Peter was in denial about Ascalon and afraid to face the dim reality of going from entrepreneur of the year to a guy checking his email for a response to the want ads he’d answered.

“Mack would grow bored in a week,” Peter said. It was as though she were fencing with one of her children, grinding away at their excuses until they came around to her way of thinking. “There will be other things we can do. I’d like to use this time as a chance to really get to know him. Perhaps we should give him a vote.”

His effort to create a Norman Rockwell moment wasn’t resonating with Kate. Her body remained relaxed. This wasn’t a confrontation between equals. Peter was the one breaking the deal they made with Mack. Kate wouldn’t rise to his bait. She sipped her coffee, let her free hand linger on her dog. “I know what you’re going through, Peter. I’m genuinely sorry and I wish things were different.”

She didn’t need to remind Peter how she had come to regret her decision to leave Greene Houseman. What would be the point? She was as chained to Drake Carlson as she was to all the promissory notes and mortgages they signed when a mountain of debt didn’t seem to matter. Peter remained silent.

“But we’re stuck where we are. We’ve dug ourselves a hole and we need to find a way out,” she said. Histrionics only would have allowed Peter to respond in kind. Kate wanted to be as blandly clinical as possible.

“I’d still like to talk to Mack.”

“Eight-year-olds don’t get a vote, and besides, you’ll either be spending all your time at Ascalon if the market turns or positioning yourself to find a job if it doesn’t. Poor Mack will be left holding the bag.”

Kate didn’t want to spend every waking moment confronting their problems. If she and Peter were going to salvage what they had, they needed time to breathe and to laugh. She reached her hand out to his. “C’mon, Peter, let’s not have this conversation. The sun is shining. We have the whole weekend in front of us. Let’s find something fun to do. Normalcy. We both could use a couple of days’ worth of normalcy.”

Sarah was beginning her finger exercises on her cello, humming along with the music.

Peter walked into the kitchen. Kate knew he’d be back. He hadn’t stormed off because his bluff had been called. He had to see how transparent his pretext had been. He brought back the coffee pot and filled Kate’s cup. He sat on the edge of the lounge chair to Kate’s right. Siena curled between them. “I talked to Bank of America yesterday. They’ll lend us four and a quarter against the Leger for a year,” Peter said. His voice lacked assurance, but he had no alternative to pleading his case. He said the painting was a gift to Kate and insured it in her name. She had veto power.

“We can’t afford it.”

“We can spread it around to buy some time with everyone else. We actually save a few dollars on the carry. And the fact that the bank is willing to lend more against it than we’ll get selling it tells me it has some upside.”

“What if the art market doesn’t recover? Didn’t you say the other day it’s following the economy south?” Kate asked. She saw nothing but downside in Peter’s plan. She was growing tired of the whole debate.

“I’m comfortable buying some time. I told them to prepare the papers.”

Kate shifted in her chair. As much as she resented that Peter would go this far without even talking to her about his plans, Kate was weary of fighting Peter’s obsession over hanging on to this painting. “Do what you want, Peter.” Peter couldn’t let it go, but Kate was resigned to losing it one way or another. She saw no point in opening the fault line in their marriage any further over what seemed to be a done deal. If the bank repossessed the painting, the loss would be on his side of the ledger.

He shifted the subject. His voice was softer. “I read the papers you dug up about Amigo. There wasn’t much there.”

“That’s because there wasn’t much there, Peter. Mom was dying. Do you really think I’d talk about a deal under those circumstances even if Jack wanted to talk about the possibility? The idea is too offensive to consider.”

“Then why are the lawyers looking for a plaintiff? They must know something I don’t.”

Sarah’s cello was growing louder as she moved from her warm-up exercises to a Prokofiev scherzo.

“Know something you don’t?” Kate said. “The lawyers are looking for a plaintiff because that’s what lawyers do. Are you suggesting I’m withholding information from you?”

He shifted his chair so he was a few feet further away from her. The sun was no longer in his eyes.

“Peter, listen to me. It’s essential you believe me on this. There isn’t a hint of truth to the idea that I slowed your merger talks down.” Kate needed to make this personal. “Do you really think I would do that to you and Cass and to everyone else there? Do you really think I’d do that to us?” It was as though a skein of yarn was slowly unraveling in her hand.

“I wish all those questions answered themselves, Kate. I wish I had a compass to get me through all this.”

Kate never imagined they would reach the point in their life together where they’d begin dismantling what they’d built. She wasn’t ready to begin that process over a piece of canvas. She made a timeout signal with her hands. “Okay. Truce. We’ve met the morning’s quota for arguments over hypotheticals. Let’s move onto something else before we say things we’ll regret.”

Peter reached for the envelope. Kate covered his hand with a firm grip. She didn’t want to say the words out loud, but she didn’t believe Peter would actually mail it. Her disappointment that this lack of trust had wormed its way so deeply into their marriage after staying away for so many years trumped even her anger.

The gesture froze Peter. He pulled his hand back.

“You needn’t bother, Peter. I’ll take care of it.”

ELEVEN

MK was almost breathless when Kate met her in the lobby of the Metropolitan Museum a little before ten on Monday morning.

“You’ll never believe the remarkable coincidence I stumbled on to yesterday. I was so excited I almost called you at home, but realized I didn’t get back from New Haven until eleven.”

“New Haven? Is that where you’re from?”

“The guy I’m seeing is in medical school there.” Her voice was racing with the excitement of what was about to come. “But listen to this. At a party Saturday I started talking about Courbet and this complete stranger told me she was a curator at the Yale Art Museum. It’s being sued by a German family who claims one of the Courbets in its collection was stolen by the Nazis.”

“That can’t be Chris Franklin’s.”

“Of course not, but she burned a CD for me of some of the evidence produced in the case so far, including copies of every catalogue of his shows and listings of all the galleries that sold his work. We can check those names against the name of Franklin’s picture once you identify it. I’ve run a hundred different scenarios of what the letters
d
and
i
might stand for. Isn’t it amazing that I ran across this woman? This must be what Einstein meant when he said God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” MK was a red helium balloon ready to float away.

MK asked the guard to call the curator with whom Kate made the arrangements. She was an older woman, perhaps seventy, tall, taller than either Kate or MK, with a pleasing smile. Her dress was dark blue. She had a bright red belt around her narrow waist. She wore gold earrings but no other jewelry or even a wedding ring. Her name was Sylvie.

Sylvie led Kate and MK into the reading room. It could have been an exhibit. Burnished glass-faced cabinets lined with leather-spined books that appeared to have been painted in place encircled burled oak tables and chairs with green cushions. If it hadn’t been for the small reading lamps and the computer behind the front desk, Kate might have been stepping back into another century. The lighting was muted, to protect the archives. The only sound in the room was the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

Sylvie had set out everything the museum had in its collections about Courbet’s life and exhibitions on two tables. She handed each woman a pair of white cotton gloves to protect the pages and a small jeweler’s loupe.

Kate thanked MK for the research that brought them here. She used the words ‘thanks for letting us know’ about her email, in the hope MK might ask about the use of the plural when she sent only Kate the email. MK’s reaction, though, betrayed nothing. Kate didn’t know whether Ed would grill MK about their time together and certainly couldn’t nose around about how Ed knew about her email.

There were books in five languages about the painter, each book filled with color prints. He was as prolific as he was gifted, intensely visual and free with his use of color. Kate started with a book in French (she remembered enough from her high school days to understand a bit of the text) while Mary Kay bent over an Italian catalogue that chronicled every picture the man ever painted. The pictures were tiny, often not more than an inch square. They both were looking for images that matched the picture Chris Franklin had emailed.

MK’s initial research had proven correct. The paintings were arranged chronologically. Courbet moved from the indoors to the outdoors when he moved to Switzerland. The fresh air seemed to have invigorated him. There must have been thirty paintings of mountain peaks that might have matched the picture.

MK opened her computer. She scrolled through the Yale data. Most of Courbet’s output found its way to museums or corporations or wealthy investors. Nine were unaccounted for—described as
whereabouts unknown
or
missing
. Of those nine, four had names of an interior, a studio, a ballroom, or of a girl. Two were of flowers in a meadow, three were called
Le Dent de Midi
.

MK was electric. “This has to be the one.” MK began searching the galleries where his sales originated. “Isn’t that area somewhere in the south of Switzerland?

Kate lifted her head from the catalogue she was studying. How ironic. Less than a year before, Ascalon had a small project for Siemens in Geneva. Peter probably flew right over the peak Courbet painted.

“We should concentrate on this name in these books. What a goldmine Clarissa turned out to be.”

“Is that your curator friend?”

“Yes. Wait until she hears about this.”

MK was churning with the same energy Kate used to throw full-throttle into her deals.

Kate closed all of the catalogues except the two with pictures that matched the one in her hands. The picture on Chris Franklin’s wall had a name. Kate doubted that finding its history would be as simple. There was nothing for her to do while MK studied the information she’d downloaded, so she checked her email. With nothing to capture her attention, Kate opened the folder of Amigo documents she carried in her briefcase in the hope they might speak to her as fluently as had the Courbet.

Jack Carpenter certainly hadn’t said anything about Amigo being interested in Ascalon on the flight to Pittsburgh when Kate was rushing to see her mother before she died. That would have been obscene. But when they spoke a week or so after the funeral, when Kate called to thank him for his kindness, hadn’t he said the three of them should talk? His exact words were:
This could be interesting for all of us.
Did that mean anything? Kate certainly didn’t think so at the time, but in a world where truth has become as elastic as taffy, any plaintiff’s lawyer worth his Allen Edmonds could twist those eight words into years of litigation.

MK reached for Kate’s arm. “I found what I was looking for on the gallery list. Three paintings with this name can’t be accounted for. One was sold by a gallery in Basel, another by one in Zurich and a third in a private sale at an exhibition. The gallery in Zurich apparently has been closed for years. The one in Basel is still around. It’s a one-in-a-million chance, but we can call them in the morning.”