Tom jumped in before they could take any blame on themselves. “That’s my fault. I had my suspicions—remember the car that splashed us before we walked in? It followed us off the highway. I should have been more careful and kept better watch. Besides, with the rain coming down, it was hard to hear anything else.”
“I was listening for Mac,” Elsie admitted. “I was worried about him.”
“And we were all so intent on digging up the box.” Sue satisfied herself with that explanation.
Tom’s face grew stern. “Speaking of that box… Sue, you were way out of line taking pictures of it.”
She had the grace to look remorseful. “I was careful, Tom. I only handled them by the edges, and I put them back exactly the way they came out. And I had that glove.”
“That’s not the point,” he snapped. “You might have jeopardized the whole case.”
Without hesitation, Sue opened a port on her camera and extracted the memory card. “Well, then, here. You keep the pictures. You don’t have to tell anyone about them if you don’t want to. If the Douglass cops don’t get curious about what’s in the box, you can use them to nudge your buddies into looking at the case.” She shivered as she handed over the tiny gadget. “In case you’re wondering, it looked to me like they were all appraisals for jewelry.”
Tom shot her a glance of hot anger, but he accepted the memory card. He turned it in his fingers. “I suppose an extra set of photos won’t hurt. But dammit, don’t you ever do anything like that again!”
Sue looked suitably chastened, but then she grinned. “One thing for sure, though. We found out where that painting was made.”
Chapter Nineteen
Ginny was still contemplating the problem of how to identify one particular Rotarian with the minimal information she had dragged out of Matt Baldwin. She must know someone who was active in the Rotary Club and could point her in the right direction. As for Matt’s story of a volunteer finding the painting along the side of the road—forget it. That was impossible. Jerry Berger had been quite aware of the value of his work, and he would never have let any of his prints, let alone an original, fall out of a car. If he couldn’t deliver it in person, he relied on a trustworthy courier to transport anything that needed transporting.
That started her thinking about Yaneque Duprey and trying to work out how she could be involved, but before she could finish her thought the door opened. She turned to greet the customer who entered and had to choke back a cry.
It wasn’t Jerry Berger, of course, only Jerry’s younger brother Howard. He looked so much like Jerry, Ginny could have wept. He had the same thick eyebrows and sharp nose. His eyes were just as blue as Jerry’s, although Howard’s lacked their startling intensity. His hair was trimmed shorter and turning gray. He was a little more inclined to fat than Jerry had been, but perhaps if Jerry had lived, he too would have developed a little softness around the middle. Howard, moreover, had none of his brother’s artistic ability or temperament. He was a solid, reliable man nearing fifty, who managed Jerry’s estate with conscientious honesty. Ginny respected him but couldn’t muster any real warmth for him. “Hi, Howard. I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
He fixed himself a cup of coffee and settled down in a chair across the worktable from her. “I had some business in Mill Falls and thought I’d stop in on the way by. Thanks for calling us about the new painting. Can I see it?”
“Of course. Drink your coffee first. Have you found any time to get into the archives?” She couldn’t refer to it as “the attic,” as Pam called the storage area where all of Jerry’s sketches, notes, and papers were kept. Pam, the only sister of Howard and Jerry, was supposed to be going through the boxes of stuff and putting them into some semblance of order, but homeschooling her three children took all her time. In the end, Ginny supposed, she would have to do it herself—someday.
“I did some poking around,” Howard told her. “I remembered a box Jerry labeled ‘Abby.’ It took some hunting for, I’ll tell you. You know that little alcove way at the back, where the roof cuts down toward the dormer? It was back in there. I had to clear a path through all the old paint and boxes of paper. Whew! What a mess. I think I’ll have to hire a couple of art students next summer and go through it myself. Poor Pam doesn’t have the time.
“Anyway, I found the box and I took it downstairs. Pam let me use her back bedroom. I took everything out and sorted it on the bed. There were lots of photos of Abby, in all kinds of costumes, and some—” He broke off and sucked at his coffee for a long minute. “Do you have a brother?”
“No, just a younger sister. There was a cousin I looked up to, though.”
Howard nodded. “It’s really hard to think of your big brother all grown up, and then to look back at the bits and pieces that are left of his life. I suppose I always knew that—I mean, Jerry was a man, and a man has his needs. You know what I mean. He took some absolutely stunning photos of Abby. Nothing dirty, nothing like that. But very sexy, very sensual. There were sketches, too, of her and some other woman. At least one other woman, maybe two. It was like he was looking at women for the first time. As an artist, I mean. He would draw just an arm, or the side of a face, or the back. He was getting better and better at it.”
Howard frowned and shook his head in perplexity. “Such a damn shame. All this time and I still can’t believe he killed himself. I keep asking why, why…why would he do such a thing? He never gave any hint—” His sudden rush of anger ran out of energy and dried up. He shrugged and continued. “There was lots of other stuff in that box, too. Lots of photos of landscapes, especially some rocks in the woods some place. He liked to go out and shoot the same place over and over until he got the light just where he wanted it. This one particular place, he must’ve shot ten rolls of film. Abby was in some of the pictures, posing. Pretty place.”
“You didn’t happen to bring along any of those pictures, did you, Howard?” Ginny kept her voice casual and even, with great effort. It was a good thing Howard didn’t realize how much pain he was causing her.
“I did, as a matter of fact. We can go out to the house one day soon and look through everything in the box if you think we need to. There was one thing in particular that intrigued me, so I brought it along.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and brought out an envelope. He hesitated a moment before he handed it to her.
Ginny looked at it curiously, turning it over once or twice. It looked like an ordinary business envelope, yellowed with age. On the front, in Jerry’s florid hand, was written the single word, “Abby.”
She was suddenly afraid to open it. “What’s in here?” Her voice trembled.
“Not much. Just a receipt from RunAround. Nothing personal. It just didn’t seem to belong in that box, so I brought it with me.”
Reassured, Ginny opened the envelope and unfolded the yellow duplicate of a standard receipt form. The RunAround logo was printed across the top, with the date written in just below it. The package was described as “painting” with no further detail and valued at $100—a standard minimum value. The pickup location was listed as Jerry’s address, and the delivery address was Brush & Bevel.
She looked up at him. “It says here this was picked up ten years ago. That would’ve been after he started sending his work to Foxwood Editions in Maine for printing. I wasn’t handling his prints then. Why would he have been sending me a painting?”
“I don’t know,” Howard said. “But if the coroner was correct, that date was just about the day he died.”
The world turned dark and spun. When Ginny opened her eyes, she was slumped across the arm of the chair with Howard bent over her with deep concern.
“What is it?” Howard exclaimed. “Ginny, are you all right?”
He offered her a sip of his coffee, which she refused, and helped her sit up. “A little water?” she requested.
He hastened to the dispenser, poured a cupful, and set it in her hand. She drank gratefully and felt her trembling ease off. Howard hovered close to her. “Shall I call an ambulance?”
She gave her head a shake and kept her eyes shut against the vertigo. “I’m okay.” Hearing how weak she sounded but feeling strength return, she repeated, “I’m okay. Really. I just thought—oh, Howard, what if he was sending me a message? I never got it; I swear I didn’t. But it’s here. After all this time, it’s here.”
“What’s here, Ginny?” he said, patently not believing her.
“The painting Jerry was trying to send to me. He was trying to tell me something, and I never got the message until too late. Come with me, I’ll show you.”
He held his hand under her elbow as she led him downstairs and unlocked the safe. By then she was steady again. When she took out the Berger painting and laid it on the table, he leaned over it intently, all but ignoring her. He studied it inch by inch, examined the signature, and then let out a deep breath. His hand went back into his pocket, and he drew out a photograph.
“I found this in the box marked Abby,” he said.
It matched the painting perfectly.
Chapter Twenty
The rain had stopped again. The sky was clear over Mount Monadnock to the west as Elsie turned her truck east onto the highway and headed home. She checked to be sure Tom, following in his car, had made the turn, then took a look at the still-dark clouds ahead. The lowering sun cast a red glow on them, but they were breaking up. Sue sat beside her, eyes closed, her head resting against the window.
The Douglass police had let them go when they finished their initial inquiries into the incident in the woods. Elsie wondered how long Tom would let them go on believing Jemmie had interrupted a game of geocaching and become more unhinged than usual. The plan was to take him to the local hospital for observation and treatment. She hoped Tom would be able to clear the air with the Douglass cops without involving her and Sue.
“I hope Tom doesn’t get into trouble,” Sue worried as the truck descended Temple Pass. She sat up and glanced over her shoulder at Tom’s car. “The Douglass cops didn’t seem very happy with him.”
“I hope you don’t get into trouble,” Elsie retorted.
“About those pictures? Nah. If Tom finds anything on them, he can ask the Douglass cops to take a look. No need to involve me. What I want to know is…how did Jemmie know where to go today?”
“He’s always hanging around downstairs. It would’ve been easy for him to overhear us deciding to go out to Douglass, but why would he think it had anything to do with him?”
“He was very upset when he saw me cleaning that painting,” Sue reminded Elsie.
“But that’s no reason to follow us all the way out there. And on such a miserable day.”
“Well, I’m just glad you had Mac with us. Things could have been a lot worse if he hadn’t showed up when he did.”
Elsie was embarrassed but pleased. “He’s such a goofball. Off chasing frogs.”
“But it was brilliant of him to put one in Jemmie’s hand. Good thing the bullet went wide and didn’t hit anyone. I wonder if the police found it.”
“I doubt they even looked for it,” Elsie decided, after they spent some time thinking about everything. “Since no one was hurt there wasn’t any reason to search. You were great, swinging that stick of yours! Remind me never to make you mad.”
“And you, holding that gun. Would you have shot it if Tom couldn’t bring Jemmie down?”
Elsie downshifted and slowed to go around a car parked on the side of the road, gathering up the road-cleaning volunteers. “I don’t know,” she said soberly as she resumed speed. “Maybe if he was coming at me I could. Or at you. I think it would have to happen so fast I couldn’t think about it.”
“Mmmm,” Sue sank back into the seat and relaxed. “It’s over and I’m glad. I hope they keep Jemmie in the hospital for a long time.”
The sky cleared up as they drove east. Elsie’s spirits rose as the light brightened, but she still felt very tired, more from the danger than from the physical exertion. Mac, too, was tuckered out, resting on the old blanket in his crate in the back of the truck. Elsie dropped him off at home, then drove in companionable silence with Sue back to Brush & Bevel, where they had agreed to meet up with Tom again and fill Ginny in on their adventure.
****
Howard Berger was still at the gallery when they arrived. Sue was struck by how much he resembled his brother. She thought it was a very good thing that Jemmie, in his present condition, wasn’t around to see him. Ginny looked upset and tired. She seemed surprised to see them, but took one long look at them and flipped the door sign around to read “Closed.”
“You’re a mess! Did you have fun?”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Yes and no,” Sue told her, and launched into a recap of their day. Ginny was horrified.
“I should never have let you go!” she cried when Sue, supplemented by Elsie, had finished telling the story.
“Like you could have stopped us. We’re grownups. We had a dog and a policeman with us. Anyway, we’re fine, and we found out where the nude was painted. I bet you haven’t had such a productive day.”
It was Ginny’s turn to laugh. “I think I have, in my own way. I didn’t get shot at, but I did find out more about where the painting has been for the past ten years. Howard found a picture in Jerry’s effects that proves he was planning to do it. So it’s been a good day all around.” She filled in the details, except for the amount she was sending to Matt Baldwin. They exclaimed over their good luck. “I still don’t know how it got from RunAround, if Yaneque did pick it up, to the guy who left it at the bar. I don’t think I believe that story about picking it up off the side of the road.”
The image of the road crew flashed into Sue’s mind. “I’m not so sure. There were volunteers cleaning up the road today, and I remember seeing a Rotary sign—you know the ones that say ‘this road has been adopted by such and such a group’? I’m pretty sure the Rotary does that section of the highway.”
“But how would the painting have gotten there?” Ginny objected.
“Isn’t that when Yaneque had her accident? If the car was totaled, maybe everything that was in it got lost at the same time. Then when the Rotary came around to pick it up, somebody found the picture and kept it.” Sue gave a shrug, belying her excitement in her theory.