Starry Nights (15 page)

“There's kind of someone else I'm into,” I admit.

“Really?” Simon raises an eyebrow as we cross an unevenly cobbled patch of street. He points to take a right. We turn and this street is even narrower. The dilapidated buildings tilt inward the slightest bit, closing in on you as you walk down curving streets and along structures that whisper of the past, of candlelit nights and hooves on streets. And of a Paris without modern plumbing too, come to think of it. “What's the story?”

My phone buzzes with a text. I check the screen.
Sophie and I are tracking Dear Old Cass. She's up to something, going in and
out of a church near her shop in the afternoons. Will stake her out tomorrow this time and alert you, OK?

I punch in a return message to Bonheur—
The drama never ends. I'll be at the ready
—then tuck my phone back into my pocket.

“It's complicated,” I say to Simon.

“Oh well, don't tell me because my little pea brain can't handle it.”

“It's just that it's early.”

“So how do you know her?”

“She hangs out at the museum.”

“Have you talked to her? Asked her out?”

“Not exactly out.”

“Do you need me to come by and do it for you?”

“Ha. Hardly.”

Soon we reach a quiet side street wedged between two brick buildings. Ugly squiggles of graffiti line one building. On the other building there are smudged floor-to-ceiling windows that look into a shabby sort of studio space. The place is a mess, stacked with smocks and pottery wheels, kilns and sculptor's tools, sketchpads and pencils. “This is where he lives?”

“Nope. He lives there.” Simon points to the connecting flat. “I looked up the address in a real estate guide, of all things. It's like a closet. I think it's ten square meters and a total dive, from what I can tell. The chick who runs the studio let me into the building—I used my Simon charm, of course.”

“Are they connected? The studio and his apartment?”

“He lives with some other chick who rents space in the studio. He gets his studio space for free, and his apartment has been handed down from his grandparents. There is no way that dude
ever
owned any expensive art. Not in his lifetime. Not in his parents' or grandparents' lifetimes. Where would he hang it? Above the sink? And before you say he could have a country home in Normandy, I looked into that. Nothing. He owns nothing. He's an orphan too. Parents died years ago in a car crash. He is the classic struggling young artist.”

Simon points to an easel in the studio. There's a sketchpad on it, and a drawing of a dog with floppy ears. “That's where he draws. He's totally like your Impressionists before they hit it big. Living hand to mouth, barely making ends meet, just trying to rub a few centimes together.”

The big question, though, is why did Renoir choose this young artist to inhabit when Max isn't even a painter? Was there a rhyme or a reason to the possession?

“But he's hardly ever here. Lucy talked to him.”

“She talked to him?”

“Of course. She's quite an amazing secret agent. She had him do her caricature across from the museum this morning,” Simon says. Lucy must have been talking to Max while I was at the Louvre, and Max must have been himself if he was able to hold a pencil well enough to draw. “She got all sorts of details. He was telling her about the class he's going to be teaching. How he thinks cartooning or what have you is a fun way for kids to express themselves. Seemed really excited about it, she said.”

“The caricature class. He mentioned it to me this morning too.”

“She also chatted him up about where he hangs out. He said he spends most of his time outside the Musée d'Orsay.”

“Right, that's where I've seen him and talked to him,” I say, then things click.

Location, location, location.

Renoir must have picked Max for his proximity to the Musée d'Orsay. But is Renoir trying to stay close to one of the largest collections of his own works? Or to Clio, the girl he was supposedly once in love with.

Simon unfolds a piece of paper from his back pocket and shows me the caricature Max drew of Lucy. It's cute—he made her green streaks look like they're wings in her hair.

I press my forehead to the window of the studio. The place is a cluttered mess. At the floor of the easel are papers, sketches, and comic book drawings of cats and dogs with oversize heads and snouts. I notice a number at the bottom of one of the sketches:
19.
I try to make out the words that follow.
Rue de
something … but the marks are scratchy, scraped on by an unsteady hand. I peer closer until I can see the first three letters of the street name. The address is for the shop with the Jack Russell in the window.

The same one that verified the painting Clio's in right now.

We race up the Metro steps and dash by a café with late-afternoon coffee drinkers lingering over half-drained cups. A guy tosses
some bills onto the round table by his espresso cup, then leaves. I double back. The cup is red. I look up at the sign. It's the Red Café.

“What do you think this cup costs?” I ask Simon. “The cup itself.”

“Don't know. Five euros? Ten euros at the most?”

I grab a ten from my pocket and toss it on the table, then wipe the last bits of coffee dredge with a napkin before the waiter can make it over. I drop the cup carefully in the front pocket of my backpack as we keep going.

“I'm all for thievery, but might you consider something a bit racier than coffee cups?”

“Currency,” I say. “For Zola.”

“Ah. But of course.”

We reach Zola's mom's gallery and head inside. Zola is talking to a customer who's considering a pink painted canvas with a miniature metal skateboard sticking out of it. Modern art, for sure. Zola smiles at us and holds up one finger to indicate she'll be done soon. She's wearing an electric-blue dress with ruffles below the knees. Simon and I walk around as she finishes. There's an ornate armoire with gold trim and about one thousand drawers in it. The price tag is in the five figures.

“I'm getting that for my mom for her birthday,” Simon jokes. “She totally needs a new bureau.”

“She'll love it. But, you know, be sure to check online. You might find it cheaper,” I say, keeping up the volley, though, of course, neither one of us is a shopper.

“Great. We'll see you back tomorrow to pick it up,” Zola says and shows the customer the door, waving good-bye.

“Ring it up! That'll be ten new dresses,” Zola says as she waltzes back into the store, pumping her first.

I raise an eyebrow in question.

Zola points at herself with her thumbs. “Commission. This girl gets paid in commission.”

“Sweet. That beats the heck out of my hourly,” I say, as Zola sweeps by to bestow a kiss on each cheek.

“And to what do I owe the pleasure of a visit?” she asks, as if she's a grand old dame entertaining guests at her country home. “And from double-the-trouble boys, no less.”

“Always trouble,” Simon says, planting quick kisses on Zola's cheeks.

I reach inside my backpack and present her with the coffee cup. “First, from the Red Café around the street.”

“Oh, look. My favorite color. How was the coffee? Was it horrid?”

“Can't say. I just snagged the cup from a table as I walked past.”

Her eyes widen, and she pushes my shoulder. “I'm so proud of you.”

“I tried to get him to put it in his shirt like you do, but he wouldn't go there,” Simon says.

Zola laughs. “Well, he needs proper training from the master, but we can get him there.”

“And he'll need a bustier too.”

“So listen,” I say. “I hear there was a guy here today—” I crunch up my hands.

“I remember him,” Zola says. “He had a wheeled shopping bag with an art crate in it because he had trouble with his hands.”

“Why was he here? What was in the crate?”

She motions for us to step closer. “He had what he claimed was a Renoir. My mom's off at an appointment now, but she was here and he showed it to her. He was certain—we're talking adamant—that he had the original
Girl in the Garden
.”

“Is that what was in the crate?” I ask, a ribbon of fear running through me, even though I know rationally he can't have had Clio's painting.

She nods. “Or so he thought. He kept insisting that Renoir himself had specified that the painting be left with his family. That it not leave his family's hands at all. Never be shown, never be exhibited, never even be touched by anyone.”

Never even be touched
. “Why would he want a painting to never be touched?” I ask, but all I can figure is the legend has to be true. Maybe that's why his ghost is skulking around. Maybe he wants to be near her again. Or maybe he doesn't want anyone else to have her?

“It's strange, isn't it?” Zola says, but she doesn't have any idea either.

Something doesn't add up though. “If Renoir was dead-set on hiding the painting away, how did it leave his family's hands then?”

“That's the funny thing. Because the painting he brought in
today was a near-perfect replica. But it lacked his signature pigment.”

I turn to Simon. “Renoir had this special pigment for his signature. Supposedly so fakes could never be made. So Renoirs would always be verifiable and unique for all time.”

Simon nods. “Got it.”

“But this one was a copy obviously,” I say to Zola.

“Yes, from long ago. The canvas was more than a hundred and thirty years old. It was the same type of canvas Renoir's contemporaries used in the 1880s. In fact,” Zola says, placing her hands on her hips and tilting her head just so, “it was identical to the canvases Suzanne Valadon used.”

A lightbulb flicks on in a darkened room and it all makes sense. “That's what he brought you and he didn't know it! Valadon must have made a fake. After he made the original, she made a fake and tricked him. She switched out the paintings and kept the original. That's brilliant. That's how she kept the painting safe for all those years without him knowing. Because he thought he had the real one, but she really did, and she asked her family to keep the girl safe.”

If I were the type of guy who danced jigs, that's what I'd be doing. Because I get it now. Suzanne Valadon knew Renoir had trapped Clio and wanted to protect her.

Except there's that nagging detail of
why
Renoir's painting are fading now. There's more going on than a bait-and-switch. I flick back on his words to me the first time Max showed up—
some girls can just be trouble and they shouldn't be let out.
Why would Clio be trouble for him?

“Thank you, Zola. I will be bringing you coffee cups every day for the rest of my life,” I say.

“Anytime, Julien.”

Simon and I leave. “So, want to let me in on what's really going on?”

I turn to Simon in front of the Jack Russell in the window. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Should I believe in ghosts?” he asks as we keep walking.

He doesn't say much, just nods as I take him through my Ghost of a Great Artist Come Back to Preserve his Legacy theory as we pass more antique shops and art galleries that line the street by the river.

“And so Renoir's taken up cohabitation with this street artist Lucy and I have been tailing?” Simon asks.

“Yes. And a bunch of Renoir's paintings at the Musée d'Orsay, the Louvre, the museum in Boston, probably other museums and collections, are fading. It's like there's something bad going down with his art and that has to be why he's around. And somehow whatever is happening to his paintings has got to be related to
The Girl in the Garden
.”

Simon shakes his head and claps me on the back. “It is truly never a dull moment with you, Garnier.”

I stop walking. “You don't believe me?”

“Does it matter if I believe you? I'm your friend and I'm going to do whatever you need me to do. I'm all in, whether I believe in ghosts or not.”

“All right, whenever Bonheur figures out what's going on with Cass, you're coming with me then, okay?”

“As if I'd miss it.”

“I better get back to the museum.”

“For your complicated girl.”

I give him a sheepish shrug, an admission of sorts.

“Touch my painting.”

I lift an eyebrow. “I thought you'd never ask.”

Clio swats my arm.

“Sorry. But you kind of walked into that one.”

“I know,” she says and rolls her eyes.

“But I want you to touch the flowers first. So you know you can go through the painting without freaking out.”

“Whoever said I was going to freak out?”