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“How is work going?” Connie asked.
Jean’s look said it all. She scraped her fingers through her hair. Her face seemed to collapse, becoming haggard. “The days are getting longer, the nights of rest shorter, and the money is stretching less than ever before,” Jean admitted. She was an accountant, employed by a local firm.
Connie nodded, unwilling to continue with a conversation that would highlight her sister’s frustration. The two women sat in stilted silence.
“You?”
Connie shrugged, said nothing. She was beginning to regret visiting. The bitterness and sadness of her sister’s life seemed to drape itself around her shoulders like a cloak. She was a sad, lonely woman in a sad home. Connie felt sorry for her… until she realized that Jean’s fortunes were little different from her own. That realization made her shake off her melancholy and force a smile onto her face and hope into her voice.
She reached for the briefcase. It was old, battered around the edges like a tradesman’s well-worn tool. The black leather had been stripped off the handle. Connie squeezed the latches and the sound of the brass tabs snapping open on their springs was as loud as twin gunshots in the fragile silence. Jean flinched.
Connie reached her hand inside for the first painting, and then paused. She flicked a glance across the table to Jean and then took a deep breath.
“I withdrew two thousand dollars from the nursing home joint account when I was in Maine,” she said. “I used the money to buy something.”
For a long moment Jean sat perfectly still, and then a look of appalling horror came over her face. She began to shake her head in slow, numbed disbelief.
“Connie… that money…” the words faltered.
Connie nodded. “I know,” she said. “It was the money for the next payment at the nursing home. But I bought something, Jean – something that will mean you will never have to worry about money for mom’s care ever again.”
She laid the first little painting out on the table, turned it around so Jean could see the beautiful colors, the exquisite craftsmanship that had gone into rendering the delicate gem of art. Connie’s eyes were alight and she waited to see the spark of understanding and joy come into her sister’s gaze.
Jean lifted her head slowly. Her eyes were dead.
She looked at Connie aghast – as though she had just come to her having spent all of their money on something as fanciful as a handful of magic beans.
“You…” Jean’s voice faltered, wavered and then came back, “You paid two thousand dollars for… for this?”
Connie shook her head. Jean was staring at her white-faced. “No. I paid three thousand dollars for two paintings. I have one more here in the briefcase. I used the last thousand dollars I had, and the money from the account.”
Connie laid the second, larger painting on the table. “They’re Blake McGrath originals!”
Jean sat back slowly in her chair and tears of despair ran down her cheeks. Her face seemed to crumple, her shoulders sagged as though her tenuous grip on life had at last slipped and the misery that was her desperate existence suddenly overwhelmed her.
“Can you get your money back?” she sobbed. “Connie? Will the person give us our money back?”
Connie shook her head, saw the tortured pain in her elder sister’s eyes. She reached across the old table and clasped at Jean’s hands. “These are original Blake McGrath’s,” Connie said again with more emphasis. “Together, they’re worth close to half a million dollars, Jean!”
Her sister looked blank and disbelieving at her through the smudge of her tears and there was nothing Connie could do to console her or convince her. She got up from the table, looked down at the forlorn figure of Jean one last time, and then made listless excuses to be away from her. “I’m tired from the driving. I think I’ll go to bed.”
As she lay in bed that night, Connie could hear her sister weeping softly through the thin walls.
In the morning, Jean moved listless as a ghost as Connie went out through the front door and set the suitcase and the briefcase in the trunk of her car. She came back to Jean then.
“I know you think I’m a fool,” Connie said, “And I know you don’t approve of the way I have lived my life – the choices I have made or the decisions I have made. But I am right about the paintings, Jean. And if all goes as planned, by this time tomorrow, you will never need to worry about the cost of mom’s care ever again.” She gazed into Jean’s eyes, hoping she could reach her with the force of her voice and the earnestness in her eyes. “Just trust me. Just this once, trust me to know what I am doing.”
Jean said nothing.
19.
Connie rode the elevator up to the offices above the art gallery with the briefcase held across her hips, both hands clutching tightly to the worn handle. She was shaking – literally trembling in her shoes. She was tired and grimy from the long drive back to New York that had taken most of the day, but now that fatigue and exhaustion had suddenly been shed by her fear of confrontation – for she knew too well what a cunning and malicious man Duncan Cartwright was.
She stepped off the elevator into a small plush carpeted lobby. The doors to Duncan’s office were closed, but the door across from it – the one that opened into the boardroom – was ajar. She could hear the murmur of voices from within. Connie took a deep breath, raised her fist to knock… and then impulsively pushed the door wide open instead and went striding into the room, her shoulders back and jaw set with grim resolve.
Seated at the head of the boardroom table was Duncan, reclined and elegantly relaxed in a big leather chair, while across from him two older men stood respectfully facing him. One of the men was heavy in the shoulders, his suit polished shiny at the elbows, his tie awry around his neck. He was very old, Connie realized. He had spectacles perched on the end of his nose, his complexion florid with anxiety.
Beside him was another elderly man, overweight in an ill-fitting suit that seemed too small for him. The man was in mid-sentence, his rusty voice rising in some querulous protest. The words died on the man’s slack lips as Connie strode wordlessly past them.
Duncan turned in his chair, smooth as a leopard that had spotted prey and did not wish to startle it. His eyes glittered with sly amusement, and something darker and malevolent that made Connie shudder. He flicked his gaze to the two elderly men and dismissed them with a scowl. They fled from the room and Duncan waited, the unruffled smile on his face frozen, until he heard the click of the door latch and knew for certain they were alone and would not be interrupted.
“Darling, you got my emails.”
Connie nodded. “I got them,” she said, “But I didn’t open them.”
Duncan arched his eyebrow in a parody of surprise. “Really?” he said. “Then why are you here? Why aren’t you still tr
aipsing up and down the coast of Maine, enjoying your vacation?”
“I came back early,” Connie’s mouth pinched. “I have something to show you.” Without another word she set the briefcase down on the gleaming boardroom table and left it there as a taunt.
Slowly, Duncan rose to his feet and stepped away from the chair. There was an antique counter against a wall with bottles of alcohol and tumblers on a silver tray. He poured himself a drink and then offered a glass to Connie in a silent gesture. She gave a curt shake of her head.
Duncan splashed cubes of ice into the glass, swirled the contents, and then sipped thoughtfully. He glanced at Connie over his shoulder. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked with feigned courtesy.
She shrugged her shoulders. Duncan lit a cigar and puffed contentedly for several seconds until the tip glowed. At last, he turned around to Connie, and they faced each other across the small space that separated them.
For the first time in many months Connie stepped outside of herself and viewed Duncan with eyes that were dispassionate – unaffected. He had become gaunt, she saw. His eyes were sunken, and below them there were smudges of some ordeal, like swollen bruises. His fingers were never still, and there were new creases chiseled around his mouth that had been unseen until now.
“The photos of the painting you emailed me – it is a genuine McGrath,” Duncan said, and his smile became oily. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
Connie nodded. Her lips were pressed thin and pale together so the words were little more than a whisper. “I told you. You didn’t believe me.”
Duncan nodded and held his arms out wide in a disarming gesture of surrender. “And you were right,” he admitted ruefully. “So where is the painting… or is that what you have hidden in your briefcase?” His eyes flicked back to the table.
“That painting isn’t for sale,” Connie said. “I told you that too.”
Duncan threw back his head and laughed, and the sound of his voice had a slightly jagged edge to it. “Well, maybe you’re not quite persuasive enough,” he said, his eyes glittering. “Money talks, darling, and I happen to have enough of it to make a very loud noise indeed.” He paused then, gnawed on his lip and watched her over the rim of the glass. “Where is it?” he asked again.
