13 Little Blue Envelopes (28 page)

paintings were very different. They were alive. They seemed to vibrate.

“Hang on.” Keith reached over and pulled off something taped to the inside of the door. He looked at it and then held it over for Ginny and Richard to see. It was a heavy, dove gray card, with a name and number darkly imprinted.

“Cecil Gage-Rathbone,” Keith said. “
That’s
a name.”

Ginny reached for the card, then flipped it over. Scrawled in pen were the words CALL NOW.

They got the paintings, twenty-seven in all, out of the cabinet in packing tubes and oversized Harrods shopping bags. Richard had to spend a few minutes in the hallway convincing a very old security guard that they weren’t actually stealing things from the storeroom and finally had to flash something he carried in his wallet. The man backed away and apologized profusely.

They made their way to his office, which was a tight space entirely occupied with file cabinets and boxes. There was barely enough room to get over to the desk to use the phone.

Cecil Gage-Rathbone had a voice like ringing crystal.

“Is this Virginia Blackstone?” he asked. “We were told you’d be contacting us. We have all the paperwork ready—we’ve been preparing for this for months. I think we could manage . . .

Thurs
day? Is that too soon? That only gives you two days.”

“Okay,” Ginny said, having no idea what he was really talking about.

“When would you like us to collect them?”

“The paintings . . . right?”

300

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Um . . . whenever.”

“We could send someone round this evening, if that is agreeable. We’d like to get them in-house as soon as possible to prepare things.”

“It’s . . . agreeable.”

“Excellent. Is five o’clock all right?”

“Sure?”

“Splendid. Five o’clock, then. Same address in Islington?”

“Yes?”

“Very good. You’ll just need to come here at nine in the morning on Thursday. Do you have our address?”

After taking all the information from Cecil, who worked for something called Jerrlyn and Wise, Ginny set down the phone.

“Some people are coming to take the paintings,” she said.

“Who?” Richard asked.

“No idea. But we have to go to this address on Thursday at nine. Or at least I do.”

“For what?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, you’ve sorted that, then, haven’t you?” Keith said.

“Mystery solved.”

He looked between Richard and Ginny, then back toward the door.

“You know what?” he said. “I’ve been meaning to have a better look at those famous food halls. Get something for my gran.”

“Sorry about . . . leaving,” she said, once Keith was gone.

“Well, you’re Peg’s niece,” he said. “It’s in your blood. And it’s all right.”

301

Richard’s phone began ringing. It was a very loud, insistent phone. No wonder he always sounded hassled here.

“You better get that,” she said. “The queen might need underwear.”

“She’ll wait a moment,” he said. “I’m sure she has lots of pants.”

“Probably.”

Ginny kept her eyes on the dull green carpet. There were little paper circles everywhere, obviously fallen from the reser-voir of a hole punch. It looked like snow.

“We should really get you some clothes,” he said. “Why don’t you go pick out some things, and I’ll have them charged to my account? Nothing too crazy, if you don’t mind, but get yourself something you like.”

Ginny nodded heavily. Her eyes were tracing patterns of dots on the floor. A star. A one-eared rabbit.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have told you on the train.

I don’t know what I was thinking. I
wasn’t
thinking. Sometimes I just say things.”

“It never seemed real,” she said.

“What didn’t? Peg and I? I don’t know what it was, really.”

“Her being gone,” Ginny explained. “She sometimes did stuff like that.”

“Ah.”

Another, even louder line started to ring. Richard glanced over at his phone in annoyance, then depressed a few buttons, which silenced it.

“She always promised me she would be there,” Ginny said.

“For high school, college. She would promise things and then just not do them. And just leave without telling anyone.”

302

“I know. She was awful like that. But she could get away with it.”

It took effort, but she pulled her gaze from the floor.

Richard was absently pushing a folder around his desk.

“I know,” she said. “She could. She was really irritating like that.”

“Very,” he agreed. There was a thoughtful sadness about him—one that seemed very familiar.

“I guess she did know what she was doing, a little,” she said.

“I got an uncle out of it, at least.”

Richard stopped pushing his folder and looked up.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “It’s nice to have a niece, too.”

303

The Padded House

On Thursday morning, a black cab containing Ginny, Richard, and Keith wound its way down a quiet London street—the kind of quiet that whispers wealth, tradition, and the presence of lots of high-tech security systems.

Aside from being a bit bigger than the buildings around it, the Jerrlyn and Wise building had nothing to suggest that it was anything other than a house. The only thing identifying it was a tiny brass plate by the front door, which was swung open immediately by a man with frighteningly perfect blond hair.

“Miss Blackstone,” he said. “You look
so
much like your aunt. Please,
do
come in. I’m Cecil Gage-Rathbone.”

Cecil Gage-Rathbone’s dove gray suit matched the business card that they had found stuck to the cabinet door. His cuff links shimmered discreetly from the ends of sleeves that had to be made of obscenely high-count cotton. He
smelled
tailored.

If Keith’s green Jittery Grande kilt, black shirt, and red tie 305

threw Cecil at all, he didn’t show it. He introduced himself and shook hands with genuine pleasure, as if he had waited all his life to meet Keith and was full of sweet relief now that the moment had finally come. He took Ginny gently by the shoulders and glided her along past the antiques and the handful of gathered people as well tailored and coiffed as himself.

Cecil offered them food and drinks from an impressive display of silver pots and plates arranged on a long mahogany sideboard. Ginny couldn’t take anything, but Richard accepted a cup of coffee, and Keith took champagne, strawberries, tiny scones, and a huge dollop of cream. Cecil led them through a long hallway to the auction room. Everything was thick and plush—the heavy drapes on the windows, the soft, overstuffed leather chairs. It was so padded and low-key that it was hard to hear Keith’s murmured monologue on how much he’d always wanted to play James Bond and was very happy to be at the audition.

They stopped at the end of the hall, at a room where even more people in suits sat and chatted quietly into cell phones.

Blue chairs had been set up along the sides, along with tables that were wired up for laptops. The canvases had been put into simple glass frames and set up on easels at the front of the room.

Cecil ushered them into seats in the corner and then hovered over them, poking his head between them to speak in confidence.

“What
I
think,” he whispered, “is that we’re quite
like
ly to get a good offer for the col
lec
tion as a whole. People are calling them the Harrods paintings. Everyone loves a good story.”

It was only now that they were spread out and lined up that 306

Ginny could understand what the paintings were. She looked over to Richard, who was looking at them the same way, running his eyes down the line as if reading a sentence from a book.

The images started off bright and clear and powerful, like cartoon art. The next ones were similar but done in angry, quick slashes of paint that suggested haste. Then the colors began to fade and become muddled together, and the propor-tions became very strange. The last ones were in many ways the most beautiful and certainly the most striking. The bright colors and strong lines were back, but the images were fantasti-cally wrong. The Eiffel Tower split into two pieces. The London buses were fat and comical and purple, and flowers grew along the city streets.

“She was sick,” Ginny said, mostly to herself.

“This work is a record of her illness, which makes it very unique,” Cecil said carefully. “But you should know that your aunt’s work had started to attract attention before she fell ill.

She was being promoted as the next Mari Adams, who has been quite a vocal supporter of your aunt. We had a few major buyers ready and waiting for these paintings months ago.”

Mari Adams . . . Lady MacStrange. From the way Cecil’s voice went up just a little on saying her name, Ginny could tell that Mari really was a big deal, at least to him.

“So why didn’t she sell them?” Ginny asked.

Cecil folded himself in even lower.

“You must know that she was fully aware that the collection’s value would increase after her . . . passing on. That is the way of the art world. She deliberately delayed the sale.”

“Until . . . afterward.”

307

“Until I was contacted by you, but yes. That was the impression I was given.”

He bent his knees and came down even farther until his head was completely level with theirs.

“I understand that this may be a bit odd for you, but everything is arranged. Your proceeds will be wired to your bank account as soon as the sale is finalized.”

His attention was drawn to the buzzing of his cell phone.

“Excuse me for a moment,” Cecil said, cupping his hand over his phone. “It’s Japan.”

Cecil retreated to the side of the room, and Ginny fixed her eyes on the back of the head of the man sitting in front of her.

He had a large red blotch that the buttery comb-over of his four remaining gray hairs couldn’t hide.

“We don’t have to do this,” Ginny said. “Do we?”

Richard didn’t reply.

This room was too mute. Too cool for the weirdness that was going on in her head. She wished Keith would make a crack about the entire nation of Japan calling for Cecil or the fact that she had scrubbed the final remains of what was probably a valuable work of art off her arm just that morning. But he said nothing.

Ginny bored her eyes into the head blotch. It kind of looked like Nebraska.

“All right.” Cecil was standing next to them again, clicking his phone shut. “Are you ready?”

Ginny noticed that Richard was intently keeping his eyes off the pictures. They were causing him real pain.

“I guess,” Ginny said.

308

Cecil took his position at a stand at the front of the room.

Instead of putting away their phones, the people without them suddenly pulled them out and put them to their ears. A few more laptops opened up. He gave a very prim introduction and politely started the bidding at ten thousand pounds.

For a moment, nothing happened. A gentle buzz spread around the room as this figure was repeated into the phones in a variety of languages. No one spoke out or raised a hand.

“Ten thousand at the front,” Cecil said. “Thank you.”

“Where?” Keith asked, his mouth half full of strawberry and cream.

“And twelve,” Cecil said. “Twelve. Thank you, sir. Now at fifteen thousand.”

Ginny still saw nothing, but Cecil caught these gestures through some kind of magical transference.

“Fifteen thousand from the gentleman on the right. Do I hear eighteen? Thank you very much. And twenty? Yes, sir.

Very good. On to thirty?”

Keith very slowly lowered his plate to his lap and grabbed the sides of his chair.

“Did I just bid that twenty?” he whispered. “When I was eating. Do you think I . . . ?”

Ginny shushed him.

“Thirty. Very good. Thirty-five? Thank you. Forty. Forty to madam in the front . . .”

Richard hadn’t lifted his head from the program that sat closed on his lap. Ginny reached over and found his hand, and she didn’t stop squeezing it until the bidding stopped at seventy thousand pounds.

309

Seventy Thousand Burlap Sacks

The next morning, Ginny woke up feeling like she’d grown several inches. She squirmed on the bed, twisting toward the right and left, trying to determine if this was just a dream hangover or if the sudden influx of money had actually
expanded her spine
.

She reached her toes down to see if she was taking up the same amount of space on the bed as she had all along. It seemed to be the same.

The money would soon be shifted from one computer to another, and then it would just appear in her bank account.

Like magic. It seemed strange to her that it would come down to money. A figure. It was just a number, and you can’t leave someone a
number
. That was like leaving someone an adjective or a color.

She imagined the tiny burlap pound sacks again. This time, there were seventy thousand of them. They filled up this room, stacked high against the yellow and pink walls, covering the 311

carpet . . . covering her, going right over the top of the Manet print until they hit the ceiling.

It was a little alarming, actually.

She rolled out from under the phantom pile and slipped out of bed. She’d slept late, she noticed, and Richard had already come and gone. He’d left the newspaper spread open for her on the table, with a circle around the day’s exchange rate. He’d also penciled in the margin
$133,000 US
.

The imaginary pile reappeared in her mind, and doubled.

This time, it was a sea of light, loose dollars, waist high, filling the kitchen and swallowing up the table.

This couldn’t be Aunt Peg’s big surprise. There had to be something more, she was sure of it now. But she was going to need help figuring out what that something was, obviously.

Which meant only one thing.

The television was on when she arrived, but Keith wasn’t watching it. A long-haired man was opening up cans of paint for two surprised-looking people in matching shirts. Keith was bent over his notebook and didn’t even look up as Ginny came in and sat down on the sofa.