Master of Illusion

by Nupur Tustin

  “Julia asked you to come out here? You can help us find Celine?”

  Elliot smiled. “Sure can.” He looked at Julia. “But, no, Julia didn’t have to call me. I figured she might need my help.”

  “Elliot’s a psychic cop,” Julia explained. She pulled out a chair for Elliot, inviting him to sit down.

  “Okay.” This was beginning to make sense. “You’re going to make use of your skills to find Celine.”

  “Nope. Not good enough for that.” Elliot sat down and reached for the laptop case Julia was carrying. “I’m gonna use technology.”

  “What technology?” Blake was still standing.

  “Ever heard of GPS tracking?” Elliot squinted at his laptop.

  Blake found himself getting irritated. “Her phone’s lost. Or didn’t Julia mention that little detail to you?”

  Elliot looked up. “Don’t need her phone.” His eyes returned to the laptop. “Takes a bit of time to load, but once the software’s up and running, it’s pretty fast.”

  “I don’t understand. What does Celine have on her person that’s enabled with GPS tracking?”

  But neither Julia nor Elliot responded. They were staring at the laptop. Blake resisted the urge to walk around his desk to take a peek.

  A little ping sounded.

  “Is that her?” Julia pointed her forefinger at the screen.

  “Yup.” Elliot dragged his finger over the mouse. “So let’s see, this is . . .”

  “Charlestown.” Julia’s eyes were gleaming with excitement.

  She bent forward, peering at the screen.

  “She’s in Charlestown, Blake.” Julia straightened up. “In a warehousing facility near the Mystic River.” She grabbed her tote and crossed the room toward the door.

  Blake couldn’t believe it. They’d found her—actually found her?

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.” Elliot closed his laptop. “This thing is very accurate.”

  He strode over to Julia. “Are you coming?”

  Blake remained behind his desk.

  “For the last time, what is this damn thing?”

  “Just a little gift I gave Celine. It’s supposed to enhance her psychic visions. Don’t know how well it works as far as that’s concerned. But the tracking app is pretty useful.”

  “Come on, Blake.” Julia was sounding impatient. “Let’s go.”

  “Ms. Skye, I believe you have information for me.” The voice Celine heard over the phone was smooth, urbane, polished. She turned away from her captors and Lillian, focusing her attention on it.

  After several minutes of bitter wrangling, her kidnappers had forced Lillian to make a call. The General had agreed to call back.

  “It’s the best you can hope for,” Lillian had coldly informed her.

  He’s using an untraceable phone, Celine now thought. Her senses sagged. She’d hoped an examination of Lillian’s phone—once Blake had arrested the woman—would yield useful clues. But clearly, the General trusted no one.

  “I asked to speak with the General,” she spoke into the phone. “I don’t believe you’re him.”

  There was a lengthy pause, then what sounded like a chuckle.

  “You seem like an intelligent woman, Ms. Skye. I won’t insult you by lying to you. You’re right, I’m not the man you asked to speak with. I’m his executive assistant. I’m in his presence as we speak. This is about as close as you’re going to get to him.”

  She decided not to argue the point.

  “You were the one who made contact with Penny Hoskins, am I right?”

  “We’re wasting time, Ms. Skye. You don’t have to be involved in this situation. Give us what we want, and you can go free.”

  “Here’s the thing.” Celine looked down at her ankles. They were still bound to the chair. The shorter of her captors had untied her hands; she’d insisted upon it. “If I tell you where the Vermeer is stashed, what guarantee is there that you’ll let me go? Your boss has had three men murdered.”

  “I can tell you one thing”—the voice had hardened—“if you refuse to cooperate, your friends will never find you.”

  “You’ll kill me and dispose of my body so well it’ll be like I never existed.” Celine allowed herself a smile. “I have a feeling you’ll do that even if I do cooperate.”

  Good work, Celine. Keep stalling. Julia will get here.

  Thank God for Sister Mary Catherine, Celine thought. She had no intention of divulging the Vermeer’s location. But finally understanding where it was had boosted her confidence.

  You have the upper hand, Celine. They need you.

  “You’re wasting time, Ms. Skye.”

  “No, I’m negotiating,” she replied. “This must be worth a lot of money to you.”

  “You expect us to pay you for the information?”

  Julia is coming, Celine.

  “Why not? The Gardner Museum was willing to pay. Not as much as I’d hoped to get, of course.”

  The amethyst in the pendant Julia had given her was getting uncomfortably warm. Almost as hot as the cell phone Celine held to her ear. She moved the phone to her other ear, but just as she was reaching up to adjust her necklace, Sister Mary Catherine’s voice arrested her.

  Don’t finger the chain, Celine. Don’t call attention to it.

  “You do realize that there’s more than money at stake here, don’t you, Ms. Skye? At this point, my employer is more than inclined to cut his losses and move on.”

  Julia was getting closer. Celine knew that. But she didn’t know how much longer she could hold out.

  “If you do that, there’s one thing you should know.” She struggled to keep her voice from trembling. “I haven’t told Julia where the Vermeer is. But she has all the clues she needs to figure it out.”

  She could only hope he believed her. Where was Julia?

  “My death won’t prevent her finding—and returning—the Gardner’s Vermeer.”

  She paused. A faint sound caught her attention. The shadow of a movement flickered in the gap between the shed door and floor.

  Keep talking, Celine. Keep him on the phone.

  “If you release me, I can show you where it is.”

  With a loud thud, the shed door slammed open.

  “What’s going on?” Alarm thrummed in the voice over the phone.

  “Goddammit!” one of her captors swore as agents stormed in, guns in hand.

  “I think you lost your chance, General,” Celine said softly. Dead silence filled the air as the phone disconnected.

  “Am I glad to see you!” Celine threw her arms around Julia, hugging her tightly. They were out of the dingy shed in the bright sunlight. “I didn’t think you’d find me.” She stepped back from the embrace. “How did you find me?”

  “It was Keith.” Julia drew her toward the portly, gray-haired man standing a few feet away near an FBI vehicle. “You remember him, don’t you?”

  Celine looked at him. Keith Elliot, the detective who’d been instrumental in bringing Sonia and Nicole’s killer to justice in Durham. Who’d been there for her when she’d been working at the Montague Museum.

  He was older, grayer, and considerably heftier than he’d been when she’d been living in New Hampshire. But she recognized him.

  “You look the same,” Keith said, drawing her into his arms. “All these years later, you still look the same.”

  “As do you, Keith.” Celine returned the hug gratefully. “Thank you for finding me. And thank God for psychics!” She turned to Julia. “If we’d been relying on my GPS tracker, we’d have been straight out of luck.”

  “We were relying on your GPS tracker,” Julia informed her. “That silver cross you’re wearing has a chip embedded in it. Keith thought you might need something like it.”

  Keith laughed. “That’s as far as my psychic skills went, I’m afraid.

  Celine squeezed his arm. “Don’t sell yourself short, Keith. If it weren’t for your intuition and this pen
dant of yours, you guys never would’ve found me. I’d be dead.” She touched the silver cross. It was still warm. “It was burning up my skin in there. I couldn’t understand why.”

  “The battery activates only when someone’s using the wireless app to call up the data on the tracker,” Keith explained. “It was designed that way to save battery life.”

  Celine nodded. Her captors and Lillian were being handcuffed and led away by Blake’s team.

  “They may not talk,” Julia said softly. “You know that, don’t you, Celine? We may never know who they were working for.”

  Celine’s gaze shifted toward Julia. “I know, and it doesn’t matter. We’ll get him—sooner or later. I’m certain we will. But for now, we need to get back to Paso Robles.”

  “Of course. You’ve had a traumatic experience, and you need to return to familiar surroundings.”

  “No, it’s not that, Julia. We need to get back because I know where the Vermeer is. Dirck showed it to me. We have to return the Gardner’s painting. That’s what Dirck wanted to do. It’s what John wanted him to do when he realized his heart was getting weaker and he didn’t have long to live.”

  Chapter Sixty

  Celine faced the front door of the Delft, the heavy weight of expectation emanating from behind her as palpable a force as the waves that crashed against Morro Rock.

  “Are you sure this is where it’s at?” Julia surveyed the green-awning-fronted cafés and restaurants that neighbored the bar. A few cars were parked alongside the curb on either side, but 13th Street was relatively quiet on this warm spring morning.

  Few of the passersby paid attention to the small group crowded in front of the Delft’s door. Penny Hoskins and Blake Markham had accompanied Celine and Julia back to Paso Robles.

  “I want to see it for myself, Celine,” Penny had said. “I simply can’t wait.”

  “Mailand’s men scoured the bar as did you and I,” Julia went on, turning back toward the door. “We didn’t find any sign of that painting.”

  “It’s in here,” Celine assured her. Her fingers trembled as she inserted the key into the lock. It felt strange to be opening up the bar—her bar now. The key turned. She pushed open the door, wincing as the sterile odor of bleach and a mixture of other cleaning products assailed her nostrils.

  The cleaning crew had obviously been here. The leather chairs had been pushed back against the wall. A stack of brown-paper-wrapped canvases stood at the foot of the horseshoe-shaped bar counter—the artworks Mailand’s men had taken as evidence.

  She opened the door wider, stepping into the shaft of warm sunlight that slanted in a wide swathe across the wood floor. She was about to turn around and invite the others in when something caught her eye.

  A flutter of movement on the other side of the bar. It solidified into a familiar figure.

  Dirck? It couldn’t be!

  He turned to face her, so vividly present, she could hardly believe her eyes.

  He’s still alive! Exultation pulsed through Celine’s being. She hurried forward.

  The vision shimmered and faded from view.

  “Celine, are you okay?” Penny’s voice seemed to come from a distance; her fingers squeezed Celine’s arms. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Dirck’s still here, Celine, Sister Mary Catherine said softly. His spirit is here. He needs to see this thing through.

  “I’m fine.” Celine forced herself to smile, trying to ignore the heavy disappointment that weighed her spirits down.

  “So where is it?” Blake swiveled around, scanning the walls of the Delft. They were bare but for the few paintings Dirck and John had worked on.

  Celine hesitated, wondering how to explain what she knew. She’d found it hard enough to believe when Dirck had revealed the facts to her. The truth was far simpler than they’d surmised.

  “Do you remember when Dirck called in that tip?” she began.

  “He refused to give his name,” Blake said. “Insisted that whoever we send meet him here at the Delft and ask for Rembrandt.”

  “Right. Dirck and John may have been fascinated by Vermeer, but Rembrandt was the key.”

  “Rembrandt was the key?” Julia and Penny exchanged glances.

  “Yes,” Celine nodded. “I think Grayson understood that. See that portrait there?” She gestured at the large canvas—a little over two feet in breadth and quite a few inches more than that in length—that hung in a prominent position behind the bar counter.

  “That’s the portrait of Earl—John Mechelen—that Dirck painted, isn’t it?” Julia asked. “The one Grayson recognized rightly as portraying Earl Bramer.”

  “Yes, but initially, he suggested it was a Rembrandt,” Celine said. “That’s what called Dirck’s attention to him. Not the fact that he was from Boston.”

  Penny crossed the room toward the bar and peered curiously at the portrait. “It is in the style of Rembrandt,” she said over her shoulder. “A three-quarter view of the sitter wearing dark clothes and a brown turban.”

  She turned to face them.

  “It resembles a Rembrandt self-portrait in the Royal Collection Trust in England. It’s an oil on panel that some experts think was painted by one of his students, Isack Jouderville. But the monogram looks right, and many people have no doubt it’s a Rembrandt.”

  “Dirck and John and Grayson would’ve been familiar with the work,” Celine said.

  “I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with the Vermeer,” Blake spoke up. “Are you saying that portrait of Earl—John—conceals a valuable Vermeer?”

  Penny swiveled around to face the portrait. “It is the right size,” she said thoughtfully.

  Julia frowned. “But there are two portraits in that style at the Delft, aren’t there? Dirck painted that one and Earl created a similar portrait of Dirck. Why create two? Unless one of them was . . . a decoy?”

  Her frown deepened. She looked at Celine, seeking confirmation.

  Celine smiled. “You’re right, one of them is. If you had a valuable painting—even if it had been painted over to conceal what lay underneath—you wouldn’t keep it out in the open, would you?”

  “No, of course not,” Julia said. “I’m guessing they painted over the Vermeer and hung it in the room where we found Dirck’s body. No one had access to that room except for Dirck and his partner, and you, of course.”

  “So, this is the decoy?” Penny pointed a slender finger at the portrait of John Mechelen in a turban.

  “No.” Celine shook her head, still smiling. “Dirck said it was hiding in plain sight, remember? This is it.”

  Penny looked confused.

  “That can’t be it,” Julia protested. Celine nodded.

  “I don’t believe it!” Blake looked astounded. “You mean all these years that we’ve been looking for it, The Concert has been right here under a portrait of Earl—John, whatever you want to call him?”

  “Yes.” Celine’s smile widened.

  She was enjoying the astonishment on her friends’ faces. It had taken her some time to understand Dirck’s clues.

  “Few people would’ve guessed a tongue-in-cheek portrait concealed a priceless work of art. And anyone who entertained the notion would immediately assume this one—hanging in plain view—wasn’t it.”

  She turned to Blake. “Dirck didn’t know whether he could trust Grayson. He’d used the code word, but then it seemed unlikely he’d come as a representative of the FBI. He was going to call you after he sent Grayson away—”

  “I didn’t receive a call.”

  “I know. His attackers stormed in before he could make it.”

  Celine sighed and stepped closer to the painting.

  “Can you help me take it down?” she asked Blake. “It’s heavy.”

  Despite Blake’s help, Celine’s arms were straining as they lifted the canvas in its heavy wooden frame off the wall and lowered it onto the counter.

  “We’ll need to get the frame o
ff,” she said.

  “Please be careful with it,” Penny urged, her slender palm covering Celine’s. “It’s an old canvas. I’m not even sure we can get the top layer off without damaging what’s underneath.”

  “We don’t have to destroy Earl’s portrait to get to the Vermeer, Penny.”

  But the uncertain expression remained etched on the Gardner Museum Director’s features. Even Julia looked skeptical. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “You’ll see”—Celine smiled reassuringly—“You’ll both see, once we’ve taken the frame apart.” Her gaze shifted toward Blake. “Got that pair of pliers?”

  “Of course.” Blake withdrew a pair of blue-handled pliers from his jacket. “Let’s turn this thing over so I can pull out the staples.”

  It took a few minutes of concentrated effort to remove the staples. Then Blake took out a screwdriver from his pocket, wedged it under the black spline all around the frame, and carefully peeled that out as well. Under the spline, a few more staples attached the canvas to the frame. Blake removed those as well.

  “I’m going to stand this up now,” he told Celine. “Hold it up for me, while I push the stretcher out.” He gently tugged back on the frame, while pushing the stretcher forward with one hand.

  When the stretcher finally popped out of the frame, Penny caught it. “Now what?” she asked.

  “We snip the canvas off at the back.” With Blake’s help, Celine turned the stretcher over. Dirck had left the canvas untrimmed, allowing it to cover the entire back of the stretcher.

  Celine pointed to the stitches gathering the edges of the canvas into a little pouch at the center of the stretcher. “We need to get those off.”

  She took a small pair of sewing scissors out of her tote and carefully cut through the stitches.

  The canvas fell away, revealing the stretcher with an older gray-yellow canvas fastened to it.

  “Oh my!” Penny gasped softly. Her palm covered her mouth.

  “Let’s turn it over. Everybody ready?” Julia’s hands closing around one edge of the stretcher. “Grab a corner.” She waited for the others to follow suit. “All together now, on the count of three.”