Too Far Under (30 page)

Our Google search on eBay art fraud came up
with over a million hits. The sites we looked at weren’t
encouraging. Apparently getting action from eBay is difficult and
winning a lawsuit against them is unlikely. And as far as suing the
seller, victims say that even if you can identify the seller, the
documentation you have to collect for a lawsuit is complex and
problems are multiplied if the seller is in a different state—which
is usually the case.

We were both so tired and discouraged by then
that we went to bed and went right to sleep. Not the romantic
Saturday night we’d envisioned earlier, but then again, at least we
weren’t arguing about Mia.

In the middle of that night, I woke both of
us up screaming. Pablo shook me until I struggled out of a
nightmare where I had been stuck in a thick damp fog closing in on
me and filling my lungs so I couldn’t breathe. In my dream I was
terrified as I tried to escape the killer fog before it choked me.
Finally it lifted, briefly disclosing a grassy meadow in the
distance, where I saw Grampa beckoning me forward. He called me to
join him, and I tried, but no matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t get
there. Then the viselike mist returned worse than ever. I was
completely disoriented and the fog was strangling me. I couldn’t
find the meadow or Grampa again no matter which way I turned. I
screamed and woke up.

“I was suffocating and I couldn’t get out,” I
sobbed. “Whichever way I ran was worse than where I’d been before.
The fog was swallowing me up. It was horrible!”

Pablo held me close. “It was just a dream,
Cleo. Put it out of your mind,” he said in a sleepy voice, hugging
me tighter. “You’re safe here. Think about something else and go
back to sleep.”

As I snuggled into Pablo’s arms, my heart
rate slowed, my breath came more easily and I eventually got back
to sleep. But I was still feeling weird when we got up late Sunday
morning. My vision of Grampa had been so vivid that I wanted to
call him to ask why he was summoning me to the meadow. I feared he
was trying to warn me that time was running out to find the cash
Gramma needed to move. I had promised him that I would take care of
Gramma and now everything in her life was falling apart.

I wiped away some tears as I walked to the
bathroom to grab a quick shower while Pablo made some coffee. While
he showered I got a little breakfast together. He doesn’t keep much
food around, but I found some bagels and cream cheese and a couple
of apples. Briefly, I wondered whether Mia had laid in the bagels
and cream cheese for an anticipated morning after. But I quickly
banished that train of thought to my think-about-it-later drawer. I
couldn’t allow myself to focus on Pablo’s relationship with Mia
when I had so much else going on.

When Pablo joined me at the kitchen table, we
ate and discussed what to do next about the eBay art fraud. “I
think I should tell Faye what we found,” I said. “Maybe she’s run
into this sort of thing before and knows something about stopping
it.”

Pablo knit his brow. “Wait, let’s think about
this,” he said slowly. “I like Faye, but we have to consider that
she could be involved in the fraud in some way. Let’s hold off on
talking to her about it.”

“Really?” I asked. “You think she’s
involved?”

“No, I don’t think she is,” he said. “But
I’ve been surprised before. We can’t rule it out, so let’s not tell
her just yet that we’ve uncovered it.”

I thought he was being way overly suspicious,
but that’s how cops are trained. And I really had no reason to talk
to Faye about the fraud right away, so I went along. “Fine,” I
said. “I won’t say anything to her. I think I’ll look through
Gramma’s old files in the studio and see if I can find names of
collectors who have bought her work. Maybe if I call some of them,
I can sell some of the paintings I have without going through a
gallery.”

“Sure,” Pablo said. “That could work. And
when I go in to work later, I’ll see what I can find out about eBay
fraud and identifying eBay sellers.”

I didn’t want to linger any longer in
Longmont, so we kissed goodbye and went our separate ways—Pablo to
the gym and me back to Boulder. As I drove, I obsessed over the
inconclusive results of our eBay searches the night before. I
couldn’t believe someone could rip off my Gramma so easily and,
even worse, that it could be so hard for me to do anything about
it. Sometimes it seems like everything is set up in favor of people
who prey on others. I’ve heard Pablo complain often enough that his
hands are tied in bringing the guilty to justice. Now I get his
frustration about that in a whole new way.

Desperation had me by the throat. I had to do
something to stop this fraud right now. Legal channels are fine
when you have the time, but time wasn’t on my side here. I began to
wonder if there wouldn’t be some way to use under-the-table tactics
to catch Gramma’s scammer. Of course Pablo couldn’t do that, but I
felt justified in doing whatever I could, given the
circumstances.

Suddenly I thought of Shane. I remembered
that conversation I had overheard between Faye and Tim about Shane
running an ID theft and forgery scam, buying electronics and gift
cards with stolen credit card numbers and selling them on eBay. He
sounded like someone who knew his way around eBay and wasn’t
bothered by ethical or legal issues. Of course I couldn’t tell him
I knew about that, but I could appeal to him as someone who knows
the internet better than most of us. Maybe he could help me find a
way to unmask the scammer.

It was nearly noon by then, which didn’t seem
too early to call him, so I did. He wasn’t exactly excited to hear
from me. “I don’t even have time to get my own work done,” Shane
said after I’d asked him if he could help me with an urgent
internet problem regarding my Gramma’s art sales. “If it’s about
art, why don’t you ask Faye to help?”

“Look Shane, I’m desperate and I really need
your help,” I said. “I know you’re busy, but I need an internet
expert, not an art expert. If I could stop by for a few minutes and
show you what’s going on, you’d be doing me a huge favor.” I
probably wouldn’t have pushed him that way if it hadn’t been for
Gramma, but I didn’t feel even a little bit guilty when he
reluctantly agreed that I could come over.

I had to knock so long and hard before he
answered his door that I was about to open it and let myself in.
But suddenly there he was, barefoot, wearing baggy shorts and a
wrinkled tee shirt, and blinking as if he’d emerged from a dark
cave. He beckoned me in and I followed, gagging slightly at the
rotten smell that came from inside. The place didn’t look like he’d
done any cleaning or thrown anything out since Lacey and I had been
there on Wednesday. His blinds were closed and I struggled to avoid
tripping over trash in the dim light, which came from his laptop
and extra monitor glowing on the coffee table.

“Hey, Cleo,” he said half-heartedly. He had a
spacey look, like he might be hung-over or high. I began to doubt
my judgment. Good grief, what was I thinking coming to a spoiled,
slacker kid who lived in a virtual world, when I needed help with a
serious real-life problem? But there I was and there was no denying
he’s way savvier about the internet than I’ll ever be. After he
brushed papers off his futon couch, we sat and I explained about
Gramma’s need for money and the eBay fraud. Then I directed him to
the eBay pages Pablo and I had found the night before.

“I can see why you’re upset,” Shane said,
“but from what I know about eBay the sellers can describe the items
they’re selling any way they want and there’s essentially no
oversight as to authenticity. EBay takes pretty much a hands-off
approach to fakes or stolen property or whatever. The way they see
it, they’re a marketplace, not a retailer, so what’s sold is the
seller’s responsibility.”

Ouch. This didn’t sound good. “How do I find
out who the seller really is and how to get in touch with whoever
it is so I can stop this fraud?”

Shane rolled his eyes. “EBay isn’t going to
tell you who the seller is. If you want to know, you’ll have to be
your own detective. You’ll probably have to spend way longer than
you have to find out who it is.”

I drooped in despair. “What else can I do?
Are you saying it’s hopeless?”

“I’m saying that it doesn’t sound like trying
to stop the internet art fraud is the way to go right now. If I
were you, I’d forget the eBay thing and work on selling your
grandmother’s real paintings for now.”

I took a moment to think about his advice.
“But Faye isn’t getting good prices for Gramma's paintings.”

“Or at least that’s what she’s telling you,”
he said, skeptically.

Did he know something compromising about
Faye? And if he did, would he tell me? “What do you mean? Do you
think she’s lying to me?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I told you before that the
gallery isn’t doing well financially. Her situation is pretty
desperate. You might want to be careful how much you trust her.
Maybe she’s selling the paintings for more than she’s telling you
and keeping the extra for herself. Or—how do you know that she
still has all your grandmother’s paintings that she says she hasn’t
sold?”

Whoa—panic time! I was definitely losing my
cool. I would have gotten up and walked around the room to relieve
some tension, but the floor was too cluttered. So I stayed put on
the futon couch as I pushed on with more questions. “What are you
thinking about Faye?”

“Have you seen the paintings lately? How do
you know she hasn’t sold them and not told you so she could keep
all the money?” He lounged back with a sphinxlike look that
reminded me of Angelica.

I squirmed. “You’re making some serious
allegations here, Shane. Why would Faye cheat my grandmother? Her
gallery has been representing Gramma for years.”

“Like I said, Faye’s been under some serious
financial pressure lately.” His tone was downright cocky.

I decided to confront him. “How do you know
so much about her finances? Did your mother tell you?”

“Not exactly.”

“So how then? I can’t believe you if I don’t
know the source.”

He paused, staring off into the back of the
dark room. Then he turned to me. “Okay. Here it is. But I don’t
want Lacey to know about this. If you tell her, I’ll deny every
word of it.”

“Okay,” I said inquiringly.

He straightened up and looked me in the eyes
as he explained. “Last spring I was looking for something on my
mom’s desk and I ran across a list of her passwords. She was on my
back about some stuff so I decided to check out her emails and see
what she was saying about me. I read a lot of her emails for
months—both the ones she sent and the ones she got.”

“Wasn’t it risky that she’d find out?”

“Not really. I only went on her account in
the middle of the night when I knew she wouldn’t be on it. And I
was very careful to mark all her emails unopened after I read
them.”

“What does all this have to do with Faye’s
finances?”

He held up his hand to silence me. “Just
listen,” he said. “I’m getting to that. In about March I read an
email from Mom to Faye about creative bookkeeping Mom had
uncovered. Apparently the gallery had some big losses, which Faye
had covered up, and she ran through the reserves by continuing to
take a big salary even when the gallery wasn’t bringing in enough
to cover it. That got me interested so whenever I saw an email to
or from Faye, I read it. Mom was asking Faye a bunch of questions
about the gallery’s bills, pressuring her to be more accountable,
and threatening to come in and go over the books. For months Faye
kept blowing her off, making excuses. By summer Mom was questioning
Faye’s ability to run the gallery. Mom gave her an ultimatum—get
the gallery financially stable or Mom would dissolve the
partnership and take it over. Then Mom died and Faye inherited the
gallery, so I guess she gets to keep running it.” He sat back and
waited for my reaction.

“I agree, that sounds serious,” I said. “Did
you tell your dad about it after your mom died?”

“Of course not,” he said exasperatedly. “Then
I’d have to tell him I’d been reading Mom’s email. I did give him
some strong suggestions to check out whether Faye owed Mom money
for gallery expenses, but he said that was a small deal and he had
more important things to do.”

“Why don’t you want Lacey to know about
this?”

He scowled. “Lacey already doesn’t trust me.
I don’t want her to know I was reading Mom’s emails.”

“But maybe Faye is the one who murdered your
mother,” I objected. “Don’t you think Lacey should know what you
found out about the conflict between them?”

“Like I said, I can’t tell Lacey about that
without telling her I was reading Mom’s email. But one of the
reasons I came up with the plan to say Lacey found out that Mom
made a new will was to try to smoke Faye out. I wanted to see how
Faye would react because she would probably be afraid Mom wrote her
out of this new will, which would cancel out the old one.”

We sat silently for a minute—at which point I
realized that it was time for me to go. I wasn’t going to get any
more help here. I thanked Shane and headed for the door.

He didn’t bother to get up, but fired off one
parting shot. “I did some online research about the art gallery
business,” he said. “Owning a gallery is the second-worst business
to be in, after restaurants. They go bankrupt all the time. Faye
has a big advantage not having to pay rent.”

I sighed as I closed the door behind me. Of
course I knew that galleries are financially risky. But I was
hoping Shane was wrong about Faye’s gallery. If it folded, what
would happen to Gramma?

Vernon Evers’ funeral was set for late Monday
morning. Should I go? He was my grandparents’ lawyer, but it’s not
as though I knew him well. On the other hand, Lacey and Angelica
might expect to see me there. Right. Probably I should be there to
support them. Of course Glenna wouldn’t want to see me there, but I
knew the funeral would be huge, so she probably wouldn’t even
notice me. So, okay. I re-scheduled my clients, put on my black
dress and headed off to the service.