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The painting was oil on canvas set within a simple silver frame. Connie went towards the wall, overcome with a sense of reverence. She caressed the frame with the tips of her fingers as if to feel what the artist had felt – as if to connect herself with this wondrous thing of beauty.
She had felt this same profound reaction to a painting only once before in her life. On a month-long vacation in Europe to celebrate her twenty-fifth birthday she had found herself in a gallery. Standing before Vermeer’s ‘Woman in Blue Reading a Letter’ at the Rijksmuseum, she had wept behind the red velvet rope, for she had never seen a painting that seemed to evoke and capture the sense of timeless sorrow and suffering of every woman who had ever known love.
That moment in Amsterdam had inspired her passion for art and set the course for her future. Now this little painting hanging in a craft gallery on the rugged coast of Maine spoke to her in the same mesmerizing way.
Connie sniffed back tears of deep emotion and wonder. She peered hard at the painting for long fascinated minutes. Every brush stroke was flawless, capturing the movement of the waves, the solitude of the sea, the looming menace of the sky. But it was the girl in the foreground that her eyes kept being drawn back to. She had long dark hair, whipped by the wind, and she was wearing a simple gown that hung to her feet. There was something beseeching in the way the artist had captured the girl – an ethereal quality that transcended mere paint to empower her.
On a reckless impulse, Connie snatched the painting off the wall. She turned the canvas over. It was unsigned. There was nothing on the back of the painting and somehow she felt cheated and disbelieving. She carried the painting to a light on the wall and peered closely at the edges. There was no mark, no signature. She felt the air escape her in a desperate sigh of disappointment.
Yet she was trembling, filled with a growing sense of incredulity. A swirl of superstitious nausea washed through Connie as she stared hard at the painting. She felt a preternatural chill turn her blood to ice. She began to shake with dawning realization of what this was – of who had crafted this masterpiece, and the thrill of that was an incredulous tingle of disbelief and giddy joy.
She tucked the painting under her arm and thrust her hand deep into her bag – then remembered she no longer had her phone. She went quickly to the glass counter. There was a phone on the wall. Connie snatched it up and realized her hands were shaking.
Suddenly the door behind the counter swung violently open and a middle-aged woman came into the gallery. There was a look of horror and alarm on her face. She glared at Connie and her mouth gaped open.
“What are you doing?” the woman rasped.
Connie froze for an instant. The woman’s eyes were wide with shock. She saw the painting wedged under Connie’s arm and she snatched at it. Connie dropped the phone and took the woman’s wrist.
“You have to tell me who painted this,” she demanded. Her eyes were wide and glittering, her expression twisted and desperate. “I need to know who the artist is!”
The woman set her jaw into a grim snarl of outrage and reefed the little painting out of Connie’s hands. Connie felt a sudden sense of bereft despair as though even to be parted from it for a single moment was an agony.
She took a deep breath, but the hectic desperation stayed in her eyes and put jagged edges to her words. She still had a grip on the woman’s wrist and Connie pulled the lady to her and pressed her face close. “Tell me,” she insisted. “How did you get this painting? Who is the artist?”
The storage door behind them opened again and an elderly man with bright sparkling eyes set within a weathered wrinkled face stepped into the room. He was scowling with annoyance. The man had spectacles hung from a cord around his neck. He perched the glasses on the end of his nose and stared hard at Connie like she was something extraordinary that he had never seen the likes of before. The man ran his hand through the remaining grey wisps of his hair and sucked his teeth thoughtfully.
“My wife is right, missy,” the man said at last. “You can’t just go taking paintings off the walls. It ain’t proper. Especially not that one.” The man pointed at the painting and everyone’s eyes went back to the remarkable canvas in his wife’s white-knuckled hands.
Connie flinched – and then the breath went out of her in a slow sigh. She seemed to deflate. Her shoulders slumped, the wildness went slowly from her eyes in a moment of sudden realization. She blinked at the man like she was waking from a dream.
“So sorry,” she said softly. She shook her head in bewilderment now that the reckless impulse of emotion had cooled. “I… I really don’t know what came over me.” She tried a disarming smile that hung lopsided from her lips. The man’s wife narrowed her eyes suspiciously and set the painting down on the counter – well out of Connie’s reach. She looked up at her husband. “Do you want me to call Buck, or one of the deputies?”
The elderly man rocked on the balls of his feet for a thoughtful moment and took another long appraising look at Connie before he shook his head. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” he mollified his wife.
“But she was stealing!”
Connie shook her head in mute denial but the man cut across her before she could speak. “Mable, most thieves don’t run for a phone, darlin’. They run out the door.”
His wife flinched, then folded her arms across her ample bosom in a gesture of defiance. She gave Connie a look of withering malevolence. The man turned his attention back to Connie and kept his voice reasonable.
“Now, do you mind telling us exactly what you were doing?”
Connie looked down at her shoes and wrung her hands. “I wanted to buy this painting,” she muttered softly. “Can you tell me how much it is?”
The man shook his head. “It’s not for sale,” he said.
Connie felt a shock like pain. She stared up into the old man’s eyes. “But… I’ll pay any price,” the edge of desperation came back into her voice and she couldn’t help it. She dug frantically into her handbag for her purse. She had a thousand dollars. She threw the money onto the counter like it was confetti. “Please,” the word sounded like a plea.
The man gave her a kindly smile of sympathy, and then shook his head again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But it ain’t for sale. Not at any price.”
“Why?”
The man and woman exchanged brief mysterious glances and for a long moment there was just tense, heavy silence. The man started to give an answer, then he stopped, as if he suddenly remembered that he was on the verge of revealing some private local business that shouldn’t be revealed.
“It was a gift,” he said abstractly. “It can’t be sold.”
“A gift to you?”
The man nodded. “That’s right. To me and Mable.”
“From the artist?”
The man nodded and Connie had an inkling that he was reluctant to be drawn any further on the matter.
“Why did he give you the painting?”
“That’s none of your business,” the old man stiffened visibly and Connie was forced to smile an apology.
“Can you at least tell me who the artist is?”
“Local man,” the woman said in a blunt tone to cut the conversation short. There was a flash of vindictive triumph in her eyes so that Connie felt the sting of the words like a slap across her face. “One of our own.”
“Oh,” Connie’s voice dropped and lost its timbre, so that it sounded hollow with disappointment. “Can you tell me his name?”
The old man sighed. “Bill Mason,” he said softly.
Connie nodded. For an instant she felt nothing but emptiness and despair. A creeping numbness began to fill her – and then slowly… very slowly, the flame of that thrilling sensation which had overwhelmed her flickered back into fire. She choked back a breath of realization and fought to keep her expression blank, but she could feel a faint heat rising on her cheeks. She dug quickly back into her purse and handed the man one of her business cards. “My name
is Connie Dixon,” she explained. “And I represent the Cartwright Gallery in New York.” The card was beautifully embossed, lettered in gold on thick cream stock. The man took the card and turned it over in his hand. “I am here in Maine looking for new artists to represent,” she told the white lie. “Your Mr. Mason seems exceptionally gifted, and I would like to talk to him. Can you perhaps tell me where he lives?”
The man handed the card back to Connie and his expression was made grim by her persistence. “Sorry,” he said and shook his head. He planted his big gnarled hands on the top of the glass counter and fixed her with his eyes, his gaze suddenly bleak and steely.
“The painting is not for sale, and I can’t tell you where Mr. Mason lives. He’s a man who likes his privacy.”
Connie sighed. She cast a longing glance at the painting on the counter – and then made a last desperate appeal, searching the old man’s eyes for a flicker of understanding. “Can I at least take some photos?”
The man straightened, taken off guard. He rubbed his chin, glanced at his wife, then nodded reluctantly. He carried the painting back to the wall and hung it with a special reverence. Connie fetched her camera from her handbag and took a dozen photos, some of the whole painting, then several of the haunting girl in the foreground, and then finally a couple of close-up shots that focused on the artist’s unique technique and brushwork. When she was finished she took a deep breath and thanked the man.
“If you want to know anything else, you can try Warren Ryan at the grocery store,” the old gallery owner said gruffly. “He might be willing to tell you more.”
“Warren Ryan?” Connie frowned with intrigue as she repeated the name. “Are they friends?”
The man shrugged and clenched his jaws. “As friendly as anyone is with Mr. Mason, I suppose,” he said mysteriously. “But he might be willing to tell you more, and he might be willing to sell his paintings. You’ll have to ask him that.”
