Chapter 4 - The Frame That Didn’t Belong
By Sunday, the house at Blackwater had become a temporary command center.
I disliked the phrase when Dominic used it.
“It makes me sound kidnapped by a committee.”
“Fair criticism.”
We moved everything to Margaret’s dining room instead.
Miriam worked beside a forensic accountant named Owen Price. Judith traced the trust history. Detectives followed the van, the guards, and the purchases made before the engagement party.
Dominic kept his distance from the legal strategy.
He answered questions.
Supplied records.
Accepted being questioned himself.
I noticed how much effort the last part cost him.
The auction company’s public catalog lay open beside my laptop.
Wednesday’s charity gala would conclude with a private sale.
Arthur had marketed it as an opportunity to support arts education while acquiring rare works from distinguished collections.
One featured painting stopped me cold.
A woman in a green dress stood beside a window.
The title read The Merchant’s Wife.
Attributed to a Dutch master.
Estimated value: three million dollars.
I enlarged the photograph.
Then I enlarged it again.
“That frame,” I said.
Owen looked up.
“What about it?”
“My mother repaired it.”
I remembered the smell of rabbit-skin glue, the rasp of her brush against gilding, the way she tied her hair with a pencil when both hands were occupied.
I had been ten.
She let me hold the little lamp.
“That painting belonged to her.”
Judith checked her inventory.
“It’s listed in the trust.”
“Arthur says it came from a European collector.”
“Then we need the provenance packet.”
I found the catalog attachments.
A letter from a Geneva dealer.
A customs record.
An ownership declaration.
My mother’s painting had acquired a fictional history while I slept in the basement beneath it.
But something else bothered me.
The photographed woman’s left hand.
Too clean.
Too smooth.
I remembered a delicate repaired tear near the cuff.
“That isn’t the original.”
Dominic came closer.
“Are you certain?”
“The original has a structural repair beneath the paint. It might not show in an auction photograph, but the hand is wrong. Whoever copied it simplified the fingers.”
Owen frowned.
“Why sell a fake when he has the real one?”
“Because he’s selling the real one somewhere else.”
I opened the shipping files I had collected.
For months, Arthur had sent crates described as decorative reproductions through a warehouse in Chelsea.
Low declared values.
Minimal insurance.
I had assumed he was moving counterfeit stock.
Now I saw the opposite possibility.
Genuine works leaving quietly.
Copies remaining upstairs.
Miriam contacted the investigators.
Nobody suggested breaking into the warehouse.
That surprised a part of me I was beginning to dislike.
I had expected Dominic to solve things with threats because Arthur had taught me to expect violence from powerful men.
Instead, he handed over his shipping records and waited.
That afternoon, the first crack appeared inside his own organization.
Silas had received payments from a consulting company connected to Arthur.
Three transfers.
Each just below an internal review threshold.
Dominic read the statement twice.
His face emptied.
“Bring him in,” he said.
Then he looked at Miriam.
“For an interview. With counsel.”
She nodded.
“Good.”
Silas arrived furious.
He called the payments brokerage fees.
He called me manipulative.
Then he said something he couldn’t take back.
“She was supposed to stay quiet for a week.”
The room went still.
Miriam closed her notebook.
“About what?”
Silas stared at Dominic.
“You know how these people operate.”
“No,” Dominic said. “Tell me.”
Silas didn’t.
His attorney ended the interview.
He was suspended from the company and left with an escort.
I stood by the window after everyone else returned to work.
Dominic stopped several feet away.
“I trusted him.”
“So did I,” I said.
“Who?”
“Arthur. Once.”
He looked at me.
For the first time, we weren’t the frightened woman and the dangerous man.
We were two people looking at the space where trust used to stand.
That evening, investigators confirmed that the Chelsea shipment was scheduled to depart Tuesday.
May you like
Inside the listed cargo was a crate carrying the dimensions of my mother’s painting.
We had less than forty-eight hours.
