“Honestly? A lot of my buyers don’t care much about the art they hang up,” Oriana admitted. “They love the story of Larry Calvin Johannes. They especially love that he…” She trailed off because it felt too heinous to admit it. “Do you think he did something to Henrietta?”
Reese put his face in his hands and sighed. “I think there’s a darkness in that man’s heart,” he admitted finally. “But I don’t know if that means he’s a murderer.”
When Oriana pulled into the hotel parking lot, Reese said he was exhausted and needed to rest. She dropped him off at the front door and watched as he crept through the falling snow, looking every bit as old as Larry Calvin. Oriana’s heart dropped into her stomach. She hurried to park in the indoor lot, then made a call to an art historian and expert in Denver. She needed another opinion about something. She wasn’t sure what she could trust.
Chapter Fourteen
The art historian and expert Monica Benson explained over the phone that she couldn’t make it to Nederland that evening, but that the issue at hand was curious enough to her that she would make the trek out tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Oriana thanked her, feeling breathless. When she hung up, she found herself in the lobby of the hotel, snow dripping from her hair. She was grateful to see that the hotel’s receptionist was busy with another guest and hadn’t overheard what she’d described to Monica. She didn’t want more gossip flying around. Not yet.
Oriana had first met the art historian and expert Monica during a brief yet explosive art scandal back in 2002. One of Oriana’s colleagues, an ex-art dealer turned start-up founder named Chris Spellman, had been given what was said to be two hundred million dollars’ worth of paintings from a once prominent London-based painter who’d passed away during a battle of World War II. Chris was really quite arrogant about it, but everyone had to admit that the paintings were sensational. Oriana had gone with Chris to the warehouse to see them herself, and they’d brought tears to her eyes. She’d been achinglyjealous and sure that Chris’s career would far overshadow hers from then on out.
Chris made headlines after that. He gave numerous interviews, put together an art auction to sell the paintings to the highest bidders, and saw this as his launching pad to incredible wealth. The only problem was that the paintings were fraudulent.
Monica had been the one to call it. She’d come out to Manhattan to see the paintings for herself, as she’d been just as captivated with the newly discovered painting as the rest of the art world. But something about them had given her pause. Oriana happened to be there when Monica mentioned the “inconsistencies” with the London-based painter’s other well-known pieces. The brushstrokes, for one, were completely different. The signature was a little bit different as well. Chris Spellman had tried his best to push Monica’s advances aside. But she’d been adamant and eventually came out publicly to announce that the paintings weren’t by that painter at all. She’d provided proof, and the art world had turned on Chris Spellman.
Oriana supposed that that was when Chris had abandoned art forever and gone full tech.
At the time, Oriana had been incredibly impressed with Monica’s work. Monica had faced the ever-churning machine of the art world and spoken truth to power and money. She was brave.
Monica lived in Denver with her husband and three sons and had more or less given herself over to museum work and “less explosive” stories. But Oriana needed her now.
She couldn’t believe that she found herself questioning if she was the Chris Spellman in this story—if she had the capacity to launch a fraud. She’d always thought herself to be better versed in artistry than that. She wondered if she owed Chris a phonecall, if only to tell him that it could have happened to any of us, and she was sorry it happened to him.
She guessed he hardly thought about it at all, not now that he was so wealthy from tech.
Upstairs, Oriana found Reese asleep in front of the television. He wore his college sweatshirt and a pair of sweats. She sat at the edge of the bed and watched the snow outside, feeling out of her mind with worry and fear. She knew she couldn’t sit in this hotel for the rest of the day. She had to do something. She had to dig through the past.
She wrote Reese a note and also texted him with info about where she was going, in case he didn’t see the note on the nightstand. Within ten minutes, she was back out the door and wading down the street to the records’ office of Nederland.
It really wouldn’t stop snowing. She prayed it would be enough for Monica to drive up tomorrow.
The records’ office was held in the basement of the Nederland courthouse. She took a set of concrete steps to an ancient-looking wooden door that, once she pressed, delivered her to a long, low-ceilinged room filled with files upon files upon files. At the front desk was an ancient woman with spectacles who looked at Oriana with a mix of curiosity and surprise. Oriana felt as though she’d discovered a world that nobody had entered in decades.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said with a smile. “I didn’t expect any visitors today. Certainly not in this snow. And certainly not from someone I don’t recognize!” She stuck her hand over the desk and introduced herself as Gwen Baxter. “I’ve worked in this record office since 1982,” she said proudly. “I took over for my father after he got sick. You could say the town records of Nederland are my family’s business. It’s up to us to maintain history. Nobody else can manage it.” She laughed.
Oriana introduced herself and, after Gwen made a face, said, “You probably have heard of me.”
Gwen winced and said she had, of course. “You brought Larry Calvin Johannes to fame.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if it was the right thing to do,” Oriana admitted, watching Gwen’s eyes for clues. If she’d been in and around the records office for so many years, did she remember Henrietta? Did she perhaps know what had happened to her?
Oriana cursed herself for not having called the Nederland records’ office sooner. She’d been distracted back in Martha’s Vineyard.
“It surprises me you’re here,” Gwen said, furrowing her brow as she stepped around the desk. “I figured you for an eastern type who came to make her money and didn’t care about us little people.”
“I’m from a small town,” Oriana admitted. “Like Nederland, my small town is only as sick as its secrets. And I have to know. What are Larry’s secrets? And do those secrets mean I have to step back?”
Gwen bowed her head in understanding. “I was twenty-one in the summer of 1975,” she said, walking slowly toward the long rows of files and waving for Oriana to follow her. “I wanted to go to college, but my mother thought it best that I stay in Nederland and help out around the house. You see, I had about a thousand brothers and sisters, all of them younger than me. You should see all those birth records. My family alone takes up a huge percentage of these files!”
Oriana smiled appreciatively. “You knew about Larry’s art exhibition in Boulder?”
“I knew about it, sure,” Gwen said. “But I never made it there myself. Nobody I knew really cared about art back then. It felt like this thing other people were allowed to think about. Citypeople. I’ve fixed my ways since then. You should see my front room! And I’ve even tried my hand at some painting. I’m terrible—nowhere as good as Larry Johannes—but it’s just for me.”
Oriana smiled and watched as Gwen pulled a thin folder from a shelf and opened it to reveal the records that made up a human life: birth certificates, death certificates, housing deeds, and marriage licenses. Oriana’s heart pumped. What was she about to discover? What hadn’t Larry told her outright?
She watched Gwen’s expression, waiting to come to some kind of conclusion.
“As far as I know,” Gwen said, not betraying anything on her face, “Larry’s never been down to the records’ office to see what I’m about to show you. He was locked away in that cabin for decades. God knows how one of his paintings made it out to you in Manhattan. It was certainly an act of chance, and maybe not a very good act of chance at that.”
