Too Far Under

by Lynn Osterkamp

  I didn’t want to argue with her, but I was determined to get some answers. “You might be right, but before I make any decisions, I need some information. Like how many of her paintings have sold this year? How many do you have in storage, and how many of those are you actively marketing now? What prices are they selling for?” I waited.

  She closed her eyes. Then opened them and looked me in the eye. “I’ve been putting off telling you this, Cleo, because it’s not good news. Only a few paintings have sold this year and those for lower prices than I’d hoped. It seems that Martha just doesn’t have the fan base she used to have.”

  My heart sank. How could this be happening? “How many exactly and for what prices? Show me the figures,” I demanded.

  “All right, Cleo, take a look.” She called up a database on her computer and typed in “Martha Donnelly.” A page came up, showing that only three paintings had sold this year, each for around $1,500. These were large framed oils—48” x 60”. I was stunned. Gramma’s large paintings have usually sold for $5,000 or more. I stood there staring at the page in disbelief.

  “How did this happen?” I asked. “And why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “The art market is down overall,” she said. “And a lot of Martha’s fans were older than she is, so they’re not around anymore. Her work isn’t as popular with younger collectors. I decided to go ahead and sell at lower prices and take the loss to get her name out there again. I didn’t tell you because I kept hoping sales would pick up.”

  I wasn’t ready to accept this dire forecast without doing some research of my own into the art market. But I couldn’t see much point in discussing it further with Faye.

  I struggled to contain my anger. I wanted to get out of there before I lost my temper and said something I’d regret. “Okay, thanks for the information,” I said as I turned to leave. “I guess I need to think about whether I can find some other way to come up with the money.” As I headed off toward the front door and let myself out, a wave of sadness washed over my anger. I realized that I was grieving for all that Gramma had lost to her horrible disease, and missing Grandpa more than ever. He would have handled this tough situation she was in so much better than I could.

  Pablo had invited me to a family dinner at his parents’ house that evening. I enjoy hanging out with his family so I looked forward to the evening as a welcome break from my worries about Gramma. I drove out to his house in Longmont so we could go together in his car to his parents’ house nearby. It was so good to see him and get that big hug I’d needed all day, that I found myself in tears.

  “Hey, what’s going on,” he asked as I pulled away and fished in my pocket for a tissue. “Is this about Vernon Evers?”

  “No,” I said wiping my eyes. “It’s about Gramma. But I don’t want to be late for your parents. I’ll tell you on the way over.”

  As he drove, I filled him in on the new place the Shady Terrace staff was setting up, Gramma’s need for money to move there, and what I had learned from Faye that afternoon. “I’m so frustrated,” I said. “I don’t know what to do next.”

  “Hey, we can work this out,” Pablo said. “After dinner let’s go over to my house and do some searches on the internet to see what we can find out about prices for paintings. We can look up some artists we know or know about and see how their prices stack up against what we expect. And we can see if we can find any of Martha’s paintings for re-sale and check the asking prices.”

  “Thanks. That’s a great idea,” I said as he parked the car in front of his parents’ Victorian house in the historic district of Longmont. As I always do, I admired the wide tree-lined street and the meticulously cared-for houses, especially Pablo’s family home. Pablo’s father remodeled the house himself, restoring the woodwork and hardwood floors, and added a large deck in the shady back yard.

  His parents Fernando and Juanita welcomed me to their comfy home with open arms and loving words. In many ways I feel more comfortable with them than I do with my own parents. I’m pretty sure they would like to see Pablo and me married, but they never bring that up—at least not with me.

  It was too cool for the deck on that October evening, so we sat in their spacious living room where Juanita had laid out a platter of tiny corn tortillas topped with refried beans, chopped tomatillos, onions and cheese. Pablo grabbed us each a cold beer from the kitchen and we munched on the snacks while his parents bombarded me with questions about what I’d been doing.

  I was partway through telling the story of Gramma’s predicament, when Pablo’s sister Sofia arrived with her husband Eduardo and their two young kids, three-year-old Miguel and five-year-old Lucia. The kids were excited to see us, especially Pablo, and to show off their new shoes—black Spiderman athletic shoes for Miguel and shiny pink patent Mary Janes for Lucia. After we oohed and ahhed over the shoes, Lucia turned to Pablo and said, “Where’s Mia? I want to show her my shoes.”

  Pablo looked surprised. Apparently he hadn’t realized that five-year-old girls tend to be both talkative and indiscreet. If he’d been bringing Mia to family gatherings and hoping to keep that a secret from me, his cover was blown.

  “Hush, Lucia,” said her mother before Pablo could answer. “You have plenty of people here to see your shoes.”

  “But I want to show them to Mia,” she whined.

  Juanita jumped up and took Lucia’s hand, “Come, Lucia,” she said, pulling her in the direction of the kitchen, “I need you to help me get some juice for you and Miguel.”

  Pablo also sprang to his feet. “Hey Miguel,” he said, “Let’s go out back and see how fast you can run in those new shoes.” Miguel grinned and followed Pablo.

  I wasn’t happy to find out that Mia was still hanging around and that Pablo had brought her to events with his family, but I didn’t want to deal with those feelings that night. I had way too much going on to add another problem to my already overloaded brain. And in all fairness Pablo and I don’t have an exclusive relationship and that’s as much my choice as it is his. Plus, I didn’t want to talk about Mia with Pablo’s family any more than they did with me.

  I quickly engaged Pablo’s sister Sofia in a conversation about her impressions of local nursing homes. Sofia’s a hospital nurse, so I figured she could tell me something about the condition of patients who came to the hospital from various facilities. She had a lot to say, unfortunately none of it very encouraging. By the time Juanita called us to the dinner table, I was more convinced than ever that I needed to find the money for Gramma to move to the new place.

  Dinner was a delicious dish of lean pork marinated in a Mexican spice and citrus mixture and sautéed with onions, peppers, garlic, jalapeño chili pepper, tomato, and cilantro. We piled the succulent mixture into soft flour tortillas, which we rolled into cone shapes and topped with fresh avocado salsa. Heaven!

  I relaxed and let the Mia episode go, so I could enjoy the evening. Not to say I wouldn’t bring it up with Pablo later, but I couldn’t see any point of obsessing over it during dinner. And Pablo was being especially attentive and engaging. We ate, drank, talked, laughed at the kids’ cute comments, and lingered at the table over dessert the way families do when they take time from their busy everyday lives to enjoy each other’s company.

  After we’d all pitched in to clean up and do the dishes, Sofia and Eduardo took their kids home for bed. Pablo and I left also, respecting his parents’ habitual early bedtime.

  We headed over to Pablo’s house. He rents, but needs a house rather than an apartment so he can use the garage and basement for his sculptures. It’s a quiet two-bedroom brick ranch—standard issue with white walls, beige carpet, beige mini-blinds. Pablo’s furniture is basic as well—beige futon couch, black wooden entertainment center and matching coffee table. But the place comes alive with Pablo’s own style because of his abstract metal sculptures scattered in various nooks and corners. The cats, dogs, chickens and other animals that he builds from rusty steel tools, blades, gears
and other recycled stuff, create a quirky welcoming committee of silent pets.

  I hadn’t mentioned Mia on the way over and neither had he. I considered asking him about her before we started our internet search on art prices, but decided against it. My upset over Mia was less important than my concern for Gramma. I wanted to get to the internet search; I wanted to continue enjoying Pablo’s company; and I didn’t want a repeat of an argument going nowhere.

  We started with Google searches on some artists whose work we knew. But we found that rather than listing prices for their art, most of the artists suggested customers purchase their work through galleries or contact them directly for price information.

  “They’re probably not putting prices up because it will upset the gallery owners if the artist undercuts them by selling their own work on a website for less than the gallery prices,” Pablo said. “Which we can do when we’re not paying the gallery commission.”

  “Right,” I said. “So let’s look at some gallery websites for prices.”

  We started with galleries in the west and southwest—Denver, Santa Fe, Taos, L.A., San Francisco and Seattle. Some galleries showed prices, others didn’t. Prices varied by artists and we hadn’t heard of many of the painters, so it was hard to judge whether or not prices were lower than usual.

  “Let’s look on eBay,” Pablo suggested. “Lots of art is on there, so it might be easier to find work by artists we know. Or maybe even some of Martha’s work up for re-sale.”

  On eBay, we clicked on art, then clicked on paintings. The site showed over 38,000 paintings for sale by dealers or resellers, nearly 3,000 for sale by artists, and another 8,000 or so unspecified. We began to browse through the listings, which included original oil paintings, watercolors, and acrylics of all sizes; as well as giclee prints and other reproductions. But the prices were much lower than Gramma’s work. Many were priced at under one hundred dollars and most were under a thousand.

  “I don’t think we’re going to find much work comparable to Gramma’s here,” I said scrolling rapidly through the pages. But just as I was about to close the site, a familiar image popped up. “Wait—I see one of Gramma’s paintings,” I said, clicking to enlarge the image. It was a luminous abstract of Colorado’s state flower—the white and lavender columbine—nodding gracefully on a sunny mountain slope. Gramma had named it “Flower Power.”

  “No, Cleo,” Pablo said. “That’s not Martha’s work. Look there, it says it’s original art signed and dated by the artist, Monique Hixon.”

  “But I remember that painting,” I insisted. “This Monique Hixon must have copied Gramma’s work. And look at the price. Good grief! She’s selling it for $250. Gramma’s probably sold for $5,000. How can she get away with this?”

  “We don’t know yet if she’s getting away with anything,” Pablo said. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. We can try searching for Monique Hixon to see what else she has on eBay.”

  “Okay,” I said, typing the name into eBay’s search box. I clicked art as a category, then started the search. Several hundred listings for this Monique person popped up. I scrolled through and found five others that I was sure were Gramma’s. All were listed for sale by eBay seller TheBestArt4U in a private auction. No information was given about either the artist or the seller, except the seller ratings which showed good performance on shipping time and providing the item as described in the listing.

  I was steaming mad. “This is fraud,” I screeched, jumping up and pacing the room. “No wonder Faye thinks we can’t get good prices for Gramma’s paintings. If people can get these cheap reproductions, why would they buy her originals?”

  Pablo stayed in his chair and didn’t react to my angst. “Has Martha already sold these paintings that you think this woman copied?” he asked evenly.

  “Yes those have all been sold,” I said impatiently, continuing to pace. “Oh, and I just remembered, they were all photographed for a book of her paintings, which is probably how Monique or whoever she is was able to copy them.”

  “Okay they’ve been sold. So these copies, or whatever they are, aren’t competing with Martha for sales. At most they’d be a problem for someone re-selling the works.”

  “Sold or not, they’re Gramma’s copyrighted images,” I groaned. “If collectors who’ve bought her work see those copy-cat paintings selling for a fraction of the price they paid, they’ll feel cheated and won’t want to buy any more of her work. I can imagine all her artworks becoming worthless. It’s a disaster for her.” I circled back to stand in front of him. “How can you be so calm about this scam? How would you feel if someone was copying your work?” I shrieked. “We need to report this woman to the police.”

  Pablo laughed. “Cleo, I am the police,” he reminded me. “And I know we have to get the facts before we can do anything.”

  Bottom line, I knew he was right about getting the facts. So I sat with him at the computer for another two hours doing internet searches. EBay doesn’t make it easy. We couldn’t find out anything about the seller or the so-called artist. And when we looked at procedures for reporting problems, it was all about issues of not getting what you ordered. We finally discovered eBay’s Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) program where people can report violations of their intellectual property rights, but the instructions said that only the intellectual property rights owner can report potentially infringing items or listings. Obviously Gramma was in no position to make a report and anyway I wouldn’t want to upset her by telling her about this scam.

  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.

  Chapter 33

  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 qui
ckly 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.