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“I only wondered how much she’d told you.”
“Right, but why would it matter? Is the photo a secret?”
“Of course not. It’s hanging in the west wing,” says Mrs. Vanders, flapping one hand toward the west wing and finally stepping out of her one-footed stance. She brings her face very close to the painting before her.
“Did she come here?” says Jane. “My aunt? Did you know her?”
“We communicated about the photo,” says Mrs. Vanders.
“In person? Mr. Vanders seemed to know things about her, like, how she dressed.”
“Oh, hell,” says Mrs. Vanders, her nose only inches from the painting.
“What?”
“Forgive me,” she says. “Does this picture look right to you?”
Jane, who couldn’t care less about the picture, bites back an impatient retort and takes a look. It’s a lovely, smallish painting of a woman writing at a desk. A frog sits on the checkerboard floor behind the woman, its dusty blue skin touched by sunlight coming through the window. The frog has a secretive expression on its face and the woman is quite intent on her work.
“Right, in what way?” says Jane.
“Like the Vermeer it is,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Lady Writing a Letter with Her Frog.”
“I have no idea what that painting is supposed to look like.”
“Johannes Vermeer,” Mrs. Vanders says. “A woman with a pearl earring? A woman with her frog?”
“I know about Jan Vermeer,” Jane says. “He’s famous and all that. But how am I supposed to know if this one looks right? I’ve never seen it before.”
“Well, what do you think of the light?”
Jane peers again at the painting, which has soft, bright parts and deep, dark parts that she can, in fact, appreciate. The scene seems lit with true sunlight. “Incandescent?” she ventures.
“Hm,” says Mrs. Vanders. “I’m telling you, that lady looks peaky to me. She’s not as incandescent as usual.”
“Are you saying someone’s altered the painting?”
“Altered it or forged it,” says Mrs. Vanders.
“Forged it!” says Jane. “Seriously?”
“Or replaced it with a version by a different Jan Vermeer,” Mrs. Vanders adds darkly.
Jane is beginning to wonder if Mrs. Vanders’s physical balance is inversely proportional to her mental balance. “How much is the painting worth?” she asks.
“Vermeers are rare, and rarely change hands,” says Mrs. Vanders. “It could certainly fetch a hundred million dollars at auction.”
“Good grief,” says Jane. How strange that a painting can be more valuable than the entire house it hangs in. Like a wooden box containing a diamond ring, or a ship containing Aunt Magnolia.
“Listen, I can see it’s important,” says Jane. “But you should talk to Ravi about it, or Lucy St. George, not me. Can you tell me more about my aunt?”
At that moment, Ravi appears at the top of the hall, walking toward Jane and Mrs. Vanders with his remaining slice of toast in one hand.
“I’ll thank you to say nothing outright about the Vermeer to Ravi,” Mrs. Vanders mutters sidelong to Jane.
“Why?”
“Because I want to handle it,” says Mrs. Vanders.
Ravi carries a framed painting of lily pads under the other arm. It’s recognizably impressionistic, certainly a Monet. Except that as he approaches, Jane notices that there’s something . . . off about the frogs sitting on the lily pads. Their eyes are intelligent, but . . . dead. And the lily pads seem like they’re hovering, like, actually floating around the painting. Almost. It’s pretty strange.
“Have a minute, Vanny?” Ravi asks cheerfully. “I’ve brought you something.”
Mrs. Vanders glances at the freaky Monet Ravi’s carrying and comes over with a look of pure disgust. “Oh, honestly, Ravi,” she says. “Please tell me you’re not going to ask me to help you find a buyer for that.”
“Please, Vanny?” Ravi says.
“You try my patience. You and your mother!”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Ravi. “But you know all the specialized collectors.”
“I’ll think about it,” says Mrs. Vanders, then adds significantly, “As we stand here in front of the Vermeer.”
“Yes,” Ravi says, resting his eyes placidly upon the Vermeer. Jane watches Mrs. Vanders watching Ravi.
“It’s always been my favorite,” says Ravi.
“Yes,” says Mrs. Vanders, “it’s incandescent, isn’t it?” then says no more.
Jane looks from Mrs. Vanders to Ravi, still waiting for Mrs. Vanders to ask Ravi if anything seems strange to him about the Vermeer.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“Mind your own business, girl,” says Mrs. Vanders sharply. “I do things in my own time.”
Something inside Jane snaps. “So you don’t actually care if something’s wrong with the Vermeer?” she says. “Was it just a convenient topic of conversation to keep you from having to answer my questions about Aunt Magnolia?”
“Something wrong?” Ravi says. “What are you talking about?”
“She thinks the lady looks peaky,” Jane says, then adds belligerently, when Mrs. Vanders directs a look of fury upon her, “She used the word forged.”
Ravi freezes. He squeaks out, “Forged?”
“I didn’t want to trouble you, Ravi,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Particularly just before a gala. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Ravi reaches out and lifts the frame from the wall. “Screwdriver,” he says with what sounds like controlled panic.
“Ravi, I think it’s apparent I don’t carry a screwdriver on my person.”
“I do,” says Jane, reaching into her pocket for the small folding knife she keeps next to her phone. It has a tiny screwdriver extension that she snaps into place, then hands to Ravi.
A moment later, Ravi is crouching on the floor, ever-so-carefully taking the frame apart. With an intense focus, he separates the canvas from the frame, then holds it up against the light. Then he reaches his fi
ngertip toward the face of the writing lady, almost, but not quite, touching her eye.
Mutely, he sets the canvas on the floor, then hides his face in his hands.
“So, I was right,” says Mrs. Vanders, sounding defeated.
“Where’s Lucy?” is Ravi’s muffled response.
“We’ll get her immediately,” says Mrs. Vanders. “Jane, do you think you could find her?”
“Happy to,” she says, but before she can move, Lucy herself appears in the corridor, walking toward them.
Lucy picks up her pace, looking puzzled, when she sees Ravi kneeling on the floor. “Ravi?” she says. “Why do you have that picture out of its frame?”
“It’s a fake,” says Ravi, gripping his white-streaked hair.
“What?” Lucy exclaims. “How can that be?”
A tear runs down Ravi’s face, then another. It’s so odd to Jane, that she should be standing here while someone as rich as Ravi kneels on the floor and cries about the theft of a painting of unimaginable value.
“It’s a perfect fake,” Ravi goes on. “Perfect except that it’s missing the pinprick in the lady’s eye. The pinprick is family knowledge. We’ve never told anyone.”
“What?” Lucy takes the canvas into her hands. “Give me this thing. What on earth are you talking about?”
“The lady’s eye is the vanishing point of the picture,” says Ravi. “Vermeer stuck a pin in the canvas. He attached a string to work out the perspective. That’s why the scene is so well-balanced. Mrs. Vanders discovered the hole, years ago.”
Lucy stares, incredulously, at Ravi. “You had knowledge of the way Jan Vermeer worked?” she says. “And you’ve never shared it with the art establishment? When we know so little about how Vermeer worked!”
“Someone has our Vermeer, Lucy!” cries Ravi in an explosion of passion. “I don’t care if he painted it with a brush stuck up his ass!”
“This is unbelievable,” Lucy says, holding the painting close. “It’s a remarkable forgery.”
“Even the cracks in the paint look right,” says Mrs. Vanders grimly. “At a quick glance, anyway.”
