The Mistaken Masterpiece (31 page)

“But you made two copies, didn’t you?” I ask.

Gus nods sheepishly. “Yes. I’m afraid I did. Arthur asked me to, and I should have said no, but greed—and my ego—got in the way. I wanted to show off, so I took the job. And they were perfect except for one little thing. Just for fun, I switched the way two squares are overlapped, on purpose. I can’t believe you noticed that! Arthur saw the two forgeries side by side, and right next to the original, and he didn’t see it.”

Becca smiles proudly. “So who figured out that you had painted over a Paul Werkman?”

“Oh, that,” he says, looking nervously first at the door and then at the window. “
That
was the beginning of all my troubles. A nasty, nasty little man, he is.”

“Who? Arthur?”

He leans toward us and whispers, “Paul Werkman.” By the way he cringes at the sound, it’s obvious he doesn’t even like saying the name out loud. He’s wearing a black turtleneck, and I swear his head starts disappearing down inside the collar. He starts mumbling incoherently and his eyes dart around the room; he even
starts to sweat. “Can’t talk about this anymore. You’re going to have to go now.”

I start to stir, thinking it’s all over, but Becca holds her ground. “Let’s take a break for a few minutes—have another cup of tea. What do you say?”

Gus relaxes immediately when she mentions the tea. He closes his eyes, collecting himself. Several deep breaths and half a cup of Earl Grey later, he returns to his story.

“It was Arthur junior—Artie, I call him—who noticed the missing painting. Anyone might have made the same mistake. It was leaning against the wall, right next to the blank canvases I had prepared for the Pommeroy forgeries. Maybe if the light in the hallway had been better, I would have seen it, but from where I was, it looked like a white canvas. I set it up on my easel and started laying out the basic composition. And that was that. In a few hours, I turned a Werkman into a Pommeroy.”

“And then they handed over the two forgeries to Phillip, who never suspected a thing, I’m guessing,” Becca says. “And Arthur Svindahl kept the original.”

“Which has been hanging over
his
mantel for the past eight years,” adds Gus.

“But then …,” I start.

“Right. But then, a few days later, Artie starts screaming that one of the Werkman paintings is missing. He’s not the brightest guy in town, but it didn’t take him long to figure out what had happened, and to start yelling
at me. But that was
nothing
compared to what was coming. The Werkman show in the front room of the gallery was scheduled to start that night, and Werkman was on his way here with more paintings. Artie had no choice but to tell him what had happened—leaving out the part about me forging the Pommeroy, of course. That is
not
something an artist wants to hear from the gallery that’s selling his work.”

“Yeah, I guess I can see that,” Becca agrees.

“Well, Werkman went absolutely crazy. He was screaming at Artie that the one that I painted over was just part of a work that was made up of four separate canvases—and that without
that
one, it was all worthless. It was the best work he’d ever done, he said, and we were all morons. But he saved his real venom for me. He called me a ninny. A nincompoop. A spineless, brainless invertebrate—”

“Golly,” I say. “That seems a bit extreme.” (“And redundant,” Margaret noted when I told her the story. “I mean,
obviously
an invertebrate is spineless.”)

“And then …” Gus pauses to collect himself once again. “Then he looked me square in the eyes and told me that he was going to make it his
mission
in life—that’s how he put it—to see to it that every gallery, every art dealer, every artist, everyone with any connection to the art world would know what Cale Winokum had done. He actually said the words ‘Cale Winokum will never work in this town again.’ And then he spat on the floor in front of me. ‘You’re dead to me.’ ”

“Wow. Insanity much?” says Becca.

“
That’s
why you changed your name!” I say. “But that was a long time ago. Surely he’s not still after you—er, Cale, I guess.”

Becca nods at him. “Sophie’s right, Gus. It’s time to move on with your life. Those paintings of yours out in the front room—do you even see any of the money from those? The Svindahls are totally taking advantage of you.”

Gus immediately turns defensive. “No, that’s not true. They pay me. And they take good care of me—they warn me whenever that nasty little Paul Werkman is in the neighborhood. He has a show at a gallery a few blocks from here, and Artie and Amelia saw him walk past one day. I had to hide upstairs for two days.”

“Oh, Gus, they’re
using
you,” says Becca. “They know you’re afraid and they use that fear to keep you trapped in here, painting for
them
.”

But there’s really no point in pushing him any further; his head is disappearing back inside his turtleneck, and I’m afraid that I’ll explode if I drink any more tea.

As we get ready to climb out the window, Becca turns back to Gus one last time. “Just so you know, we’re not giving up on you,
Cale
.”

The look on his face when he hears her call him by his real name tells me that he is definitely
not
a lost cause.

“Well, this situation clearly deserves a plan of its own,” Margaret announces after listening to Becca and me retell the story of how Cale Winokum became Gus Olienna and how he transformed a Paul Werkman painting into the Pommeroy knockoff that hung on Prunella Scroggins’s wall for eight years. “I don’t care how crazy this Werkman guy is—we have to help Cale Winokum get his life back.”

“It sounds to me like he needs a psychiatrist,” Leigh Ann says. “Anybody who basically locks himself in his apartment for eight years because some mean-spirited artist yelled at him needs some serious help.”

“What are we supposed to do?” I ask. “He really still believes that Paul Werkman is after him. How do we make him believe that’s not true?”

“How do we know it isn’t?” Leigh Ann asks. “Maybe the Svindahls are telling him the truth.”

Becca shakes her head vigorously. “No way is he still
holding a grudge for something like that. Eight years ago, his stuff just wasn’t worth that much. I’ll bet you he doesn’t even remember the name Cale Winokum.”

Leigh Ann is searching online for anything and everything on Werkman, and pulls up a magazine interview and some pictures of him. “He doesn’t look so bad to me,” she says. “In fact, he seems kind of nice. And look—he still lives with his mother in Brooklyn! How bad could he be?”

“There’s one way to find out if he’s after Cale,” Margaret says. “We ask him.”

“We’re going to ask Paul Werkman if he’s still mad at Cale?” I say. “It sounds like
they’re
still in seventh grade. Are you going to pass him a note in gym class?”

That gets a smile out of Margaret. “Something like that. It’s time to cash in a little favor, my dear. Werkman may live with his mother, but he’s kind of a big deal now. He’ll never talk to us. But a big movie star—that’s different. Nobody can resist
that
. Nate even had me under his spell … for about half an hour.”

“You really want me to ask Nate to do it?”

“Sure. You took care of his dog for three weeks. He owes you one.”

“What about that twelve hundred bucks he paid her?” Becca asks.

“Totally different,” explains Margaret. “That was strictly a
legal
matter—this is a
social
obligation. One has nothing to do with the other.”

• • •

Luckily for us, rain is in the forecast for Monday, which means they won’t be able to film the remaining scenes of
No Reflections
, which means that Nate will have nothing to do. And
that
means that he actually agrees to my strange request.

My phone rings a few minutes after I send him a long email explaining what we want him to do, without going into all the gory details. Guess what he wants to know?

The gory details.

Turns out that Nate’s manager, Tia, is trying to get him interested in modern art, and when Nate said something to her about Werkman, she got very excited at the prospect of meeting the artist.

“I’ve never heard of the guy,” Nate says, “but Tia says he’s great. So we’re going over there tomorrow. I’ll give you a report when we get back.”

“Oh, and don’t forget—Elizabeth Harriman will be stopping by your hotel on Wednesday morning to pick up Tillie.”

“Right. Elizabeth. Tillie. Wednesday. Got it.”

“I think I’ll send you a reminder on Wednesday anyway,” I say, remembering Nate’s past record for timeliness.

“Probably a good idea.”

Phase one of Margaret’s grand plan, code-named Operation STS (Swindle the Svindahls), gets under way immediately after the dismissal bell on Wednesday, which is an hour earlier than normal because of the monthly
faculty meeting. Our objective: recover the original Pommeroy for Father Julian. By any means necessary.

Okay, that last part isn’t actually true. We have our limits—honest!

Becca and Leigh Ann hop on the F train for Chelsea and the Svindahl Gallery, while Margaret and I run next door to the rectory to gather up Father Julian, Malcolm, and three packages—all the same size and shape, and all wrapped identically in brown kraft paper and twine.

“How did I do?” Malcolm asks. “I followed your directions exactly.”

“They look perfect. Which one is the Werkman?” Margaret asks.

Malcolm points to the middle package. “See, there’s a little red dot by every corner, so no matter which side is up, we’ll be able to tell. The New York print you asked me to get has a yellow dot, and this other one—your big surprise—has no marks. Just like when you brought it in.”

“And we resisted the urge to look at it, just as you requested,” Father Julian adds. “You’re not going to tell us what it is?”

“All in good time,” says Margaret. “Let’s go.”

We totally luck out with the weather. It’s a beautiful fall day, more like September than November; the temperature is pushing sixty degrees and the sun is shining.

“A great day for a caper,” Malcolm says with a jaunty wink and a twirl of his walking stick. “We should have invited Elizabeth.”

“Way ahead of you, Mal. She has Tillie, and they’re
meeting us there,” I say as we cross Park Avenue on our way to Central Park. “Maybe when we’re all done, the two of you can go for a nice romantic walk. You know, holding hands, buying ice cream, sitting on a bench in the sun.”

“Those sound like the words of someone with experience,” he replies, and I feel myself blush.

“They are,” Margaret says, nudging me. “Aren’t they, Sophie?”

“La ferme, Marguerite.”

Elizabeth and Tillie—Nate’s Tillie, that is—are waiting for us at the outdoor café next to the Model Boat Pond. She has reserved two tables for us. With Margaret directing, we move them slightly closer together and arrange the chairs
just so
.

“Perfect,” she says, finally. “Okay, Malcolm—you and Elizabeth here and here. Father Julian, you’re going to be on this side. When the Svindahls come, make sure they sit in these two chairs—the ones closest to the other table. That’s important. Rebecca called in with her update; the two Arthurs are coming. They left Amelia in charge of the gallery, just as we suspected. Sophie and I will be at that table. Now, everybody, remember: you don’t know us. You’ve never seen us before. We’re going to laugh and talk and make a lot of noise, so you might even want to look annoyed by us. Okay?”

“Got it,” says Father Julian, who seems the most nervous.

Margaret turns her attention to me. “Okay, Sophie, time for you to make sure everything is all set for your big scene. Here you go.” She hands me the mystery package—the one with no marks on the wrapping paper.

“C’mon, Tillie!” I say. “We have to hurry.”

By the time Tillie and I get back to the table, the two Arthurs are seated at the table with Father Julian, Malcolm, and Elizabeth. Their package, wrapped in white paper with the Svindahl Gallery logo, rests on the ground next to Arthur junior’s chair. If they can be trusted at all, it is the original Pommeroy.

A mighty big if.

Tillie and I approach the table from the side, avoiding Junior’s line of vision, because I’m afraid he might recognize me from that fateful morning in the gallery. I get Tillie settled in under the table, next to the wrapped print of the Chrysler Building, and ask Margaret how things are going “next door.”

“It’s looking good so far here. I just got off the phone with Becca, and she says that Tillie’s dad showed up on time, even. How’s the other Tillie?”

I give her the okay sign and take a swig of the soda Margaret bought for me. “Thanks, Marg.”

We start a stream of completely mindless chatter about movies we haven’t seen and music we don’t really listen to, while doing our best to catch every word from
the next table. I type in a text message on my phone and keep my thumb near the send button. It reads:
On your mark. Get set …