The Mistaken Masterpiece

by Michael D. Beil

  ’Nuff said.

  After clicking the TV off, he sets a large cloth tote bag on the coffee table in front of us and starts to talk.

  “Okay, I’ll start with the basics, and then I can always add details later if you need them. But here’s the bottom line: I have a case for you girls.”

  Margaret smiles at me, then nods at Father Julian. “I thought you might.”

  “Is it something good?” Becca asks. “Don’t tell me someone’s cleaning the church after hours. I want something juicy.”

  “Hmmm. I think this qualifies. But before we get into all that, are you girls Yankees fans?”

  “Not me!” says Leigh Ann. “Mets all the way.”

  “She’s from Queens,” I explain. “But the rest of us are. Why?”

  “Well, you might be interested in this.” He stops, reaches into the tote bag, and pulls out something wrapped in tissue paper. When he unwraps it, we see it’s an old baseball in good shape—no scuff marks or dings—but the cover has definitely yellowed with age.

  “Are those autographs?” Margaret asks, leaning over the table for a closer look.

  “Yes, they are. The entire starting lineup for the 1928 Yankees. This one is Babe Ruth, and here’s Lou Gehrig. They’re all there.” He hands the ball to Rebecca to admire. “There’s just one little problem.”

  He takes another baseball from the bag and holds it up next to the first. It is the same dingy color and has the same signatures in exactly the same places.

  “Wow!” I say. “Are they both real?”

  Father Julian smiles. “I suppose that is a possibility, but as a reasonable man, I have to think that it is highly unlikely, to say the least.”

  “Where did they come from?” Margaret asks.

  “Ah, now that’s a good story. My great-uncle Phillip and his younger brother Oliver somehow managed to get two tickets for seats in the outfield for a World Series game. According to family legend, they sat just to the left of the foul pole in left field, but I can’t be certain about that. The Yankees were batting in the bottom of the eighth inning and Lou Gehrig hit a long fly ball that curved foul—right into Phillip’s glove.”

  “Cool,” I say. I’ve been to the old Yankee Stadium a few times, but I’ve never even come close to catching a foul ball.

  “After the game, Phillip and Oliver head over toward the Yankees’ dugout, and with a little luck and some good old-fashioned begging, they managed to get every starter’s autograph. Phillip takes the ball home and is, I’m sure, the envy of every kid in the Bronx.”

  Father Julian stops to take a swig of his soda. “But somehow, between 1928 and now, this second ball appeared, and we don’t know which is which. To tell the truth, we’d forgotten about them until Dad came across them when he was cleaning out the garage.”

  Margaret takes a closer look at the two baseballs. “I’ll bet we can figure out which is the original. There has to be a way to tell.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to try,” Father Julian says. “That would be a huge help. So I guess you now have two cases instead of one.” From behind the couch where we’re sitting, he retrieves a package, about two feet square and neatly wrapped in brown kraft paper.

  “This is the real reason you’re here,” he says, carefully removing the paper. “And, Rebecca, I think you are going to find this especially interesting.”

  “Why her especially?” I ask.

  “Because she is an artist, and this case involves a piece of art.”

  He holds up a painting—a very modern, abstract picture of rows of overlapping squares in bright blues, reds, yellows, and greens, surrounded by a simple wooden frame that is painted silver. It looks vaguely familiar, like something I’ve seen on a museum visit with my parents.

  “Holy cr—er, cow!” exclaims Becca. “Is that a Pommeroy?”

  “Elizabeth Harriman wasn’t kidding—you do know your art,” says Father Julian. “That’s exactly right. How do you know about Pommeroy?”

  “We studied some of his paintings in my class. He always uses those same primary and secondary colors, and there’s always some repetition of a simple geometric pattern—sort of his trademark.”

  I look at Becca with a newfound sense of admiration. I had no idea she knew so much.

  “Are you saying this is by a famous artist?” Leigh Ann says, sounding a bit—no, make that a lot—skeptical. “I mean, I guess it’s pretty, but I could—”

  “Stop! If you say you could paint something just as good, I’ll slug you,” Becca warns her.

  “Jeez. You artists are so touchy!” Leigh Ann says, backing away from l’artiste.

  “Well, Rebecca can correct me if I get any of the facts about the artist wrong, but let me tell you the story behind this painting,” Father Julian says. “And it starts a generation earlier, with my great-grandfather. He was what they call a finish carpenter—one of the people who did all that fancy woodwork in old houses—and from what I hear, he was one of the best. Sometime in the late 1950s, he was hired by Leonard Pommeroy to put up some wooden ceiling molding in his house out on the North Shore of Long Island. It should have been a quick job, but once Pommeroy discovered how talented my great-grandfather was, he kept finding more and more things for him to do, until he had spent several weeks there. They were both artists of a kind, I suppose, and became friends. When it came time to settle the bill, the artist was short of cash, and offered this to him in exchange. Now, my great-grandfather didn’t know the difference between a Picasso and a paint-by-number, but he was at least aware of Pommeroy’s reputation and he liked the painting. So he made the deal.”

  “Ohmigosh, and now it’s worth, like, a million dollars, right?” I say, getting excited.

  “Hold on,” Father Julian says. “It’s not that simple. So when my great-grandfather died in the sixties, the painting passed to his oldest child, Alice—my grandmother. She died in 2002 and left it to my father. My brother and sister and I are all trying to convince him to sell it and enjoy the money—travel with Mom, whatever he wants. They’ve lived frugally all their lives; they deserve it. Besides, he has never liked the painting. Goodness knows my siblings don’t need the money. My brother is a successful broker on Wall Street, and my sister is a partner in a big law firm in San Francisco. Which leaves me—and I certainly don’t want or need it. Well, we finally talked Dad into letting me take the painting to an expert to find out its value before trying to sell it. I did a little research and found a gallery that specializes in artists from the fifties and sixties, run by three generations of the same family. I don’t know if they were trying to keep my expectations low or just playing it cool in case they wanted to buy it, but they acted very blasé about it. There’s more to the story—I’ll tell you the rest in a minute—but the most important part they told me is that before we can sell it, we have to be able to prove it was painted before 1961.”

  “What’s so special about 1961?” Margaret asks.

  “That’s the year Pommeroy was killed in a car accident,” Becca, who has suddenly become a walking and talking Wikipedia entry, answers.

  “But …” The gears in Margaret’s brain are spinning so fast she makes a whirring sound when she opens her mouth. “But that doesn’t make sense. If he died in 1961, how could it possibly have been painted after 1961?”

  A perfectly reasonable question, n’est-ce pas?

  “The not-so-reasonable answer to that question is that he couldn’t have painted it, but someone in his family might have,” Father Julian explains.

  “Oh, right. I heard about that,” says Becca. “After he died, his sleazy family swooped in like vultures and found every scrap of paper and canvas the poor guy ever made a mark on. He used to prepare dozens of canvases in advance, doing really simple underpaintings in light gray or light blue. He would set them up all over his studio, and after a while, if he liked the way the shapes were arranged, he would add the color, and if he didn’t, he would just paint the whole thing over with whit
e and start again. Because he always used the same colors, it wasn’t too hard for them to keep the Pommeroy money train chugging down the track.”

  “They kept it up for years,” adds Father Julian. “And since he always had rocky relationships with the galleries that sold his work, neither he nor anybody else had reliable records of what he painted or when he painted it. It has created quite a pickle for people who want to buy or sell his work today. So here’s the bottom line, Sophie: it’s not worth a million dollars, but it is worth quite a bit if—and that’s a big if—we can prove it was painted before Pommeroy died.”

  “What’s the rest of the story?” I ask. “You promised to tell us.”

  “Oh, right. Well, when I first arrived at the gallery, I spoke to a young woman, but when I showed her the painting, she immediately went into the back room and brought out someone else—a young man who looked like he might be her brother. His eyes lit up like a Christmas tree when he saw the painting. He tried to hide it, but I could tell there was something he wasn’t telling me. Then they both went into the back for a few minutes. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, mind you, but I did overhear a few snippets—there were some raised voices. Things like ‘under wraps until we know for sure’ and ‘not according to that moron’s notes’ and ‘make a lowball offer right now, just in case.’ And … I’m not positive, but I am pretty sure I caught the word ‘masterpiece’ in there somewhere. They didn’t exactly fill me with confidence that they were playing fairly.”

  “What do you think they could be hiding?” Leigh Ann asks. “In case what?”

  Father Julian turns his palms upward. “I suppose in case I find the proof they say I need.”

  Margaret rubs her temples for a few seconds, deep in thought. “When the artist gave the painting to your great-grandfather, wouldn’t there have been a receipt or a letter or something to show what it was and how he got it?”

  “We’ve looked everywhere. Nothing. Except these,” Father Julian says. He removes the lid from an old shoe box that is held together with generations of yellowed tape and scoops up a handful of old family snapshots from the hundreds (thousands, maybe) inside. A few are in color, but most are black and white, and smaller (about three inches square) than I’m used to seeing.

  “These may be our only real hope of proving when the painting was done,” he says. “A lot of these pictures were taken at my great-grandfather’s house in the fifties and sixties. We know that he hung it on the wall above the fireplace right after Pommeroy gave it to him, so it must show up in the background occasionally.”

  “Ohhhh. Cool,” Becca says. “So you just have to figure out when those pictures were taken. And hope it’s before 1961.”

  “Once again, I think what you meant to say was, you need to figure out when those pictures were taken,” Father Julian says with a smile.

  “How are we supposed to do that?” Leigh Ann says. “I mean, unless one of them has a guy holding up a sign that says ‘Happy New Year 1961,’ how do you prove when a picture was taken? It’s impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible,” Margaret says, flaunting that determined look that I know so well. She taps the box full of pictures. “The answer is in here. We just have to find it. These pictures are just another kind of code for us to crack. And we’re getting pretty good at that, if I do say so.”

  “I like what I’m hearing,” says a cheerful Father Julian. “I had a feeling about you girls the first time I met you.”

  He then puts the two baseballs back in the tote bag along with the shoe box full of photographs and hands it to me. “Take good care of these things. They may be our only hope.”

  “You can trust me, Father,” I announce confidently. “I never lose anything.”

  Tell me I didn’t just say that.

  Whew! My computer and I both need a break after that last chapter

  Tillie has another surprise for me when I get home. My favorite shoes—red Chuck Taylors—are in shreds. Bits of canvas and rubber are scattered around the room, and she seems tremendously proud of her work. She brings me a piece of shoelace, trying to get me to play tug-of-war.

  It’s not that bad, I tell myself; it’s only one pair of shoes. Lesson learned: put shoes in the closet, Sophie.

  And then I panic. Mom’s shoes! I race into my parents’ room, terrified of what I’m going to find. But the floor is clean; not a single chewed-up piece of leather in sight. Inside the closet, her prized collection is safe. Whew.

  Back in my room, I place Father Julian’s tote bag—the one with the baseballs and the shoe box of pictures—on the highest shelf of the bookcase, away from Tillie the Terrible.

  “Tillie, we would both be living on the street if you had done anything to Mom’s shoes.”

  “What about my shoes?”

  I almost jump out of my skin. “Mom! When did you get home?”

  “Just now.” She spots the remains of the Chucks. “Oh, Sophie. Your new shoes.”

  “Oh, they weren’t that new,” I say. “I’ve had them a few months. And before you panic, your shoes are fine. I already checked. You want to come with me? I’m going to take her for a walk right now. Come on. She really is a good dog. She’s just a little … um, she’s still a puppy. I promise to keep all my shoes in my closet from now on. And I’ll pay for my new shoes with the money I’m earning from dog-sitting. I mean, I’ve got to have a pair of Chucks. It’s part of who I am.”

  “All right, I could use a good walk. Let me put on some comfortable shoes—and put these away. Not that I don’t trust you, Tillie dear.”

  When we leave the building, Tillie starts pulling us west toward Central Park.

  “I guess we’re going to the park. That okay with you?” I say.

  “Perfect. Do you mind going to the Conservatory Garden? I haven’t been by in months. It’s my favorite place.”

  A strange thing happens next. We’re walking past a row of beautiful old brownstones on Ninety-fourth Street when I see Livvy—at least I think it’s Livvy—helping a woman on crutches into the door of an apartment building in the middle of the block. I’m trying desperately to put the brakes on, but it’s like Livvy is holding out a handful of raw hamburger for Tillie, who is doing her finest sled-dog imitation, whining and pulling me in Livvy’s direction. It takes all my strength to hold her back.

  “Well, that’s weird,” I say when I finally have the beast under control.

  “What’s that, honey?”

  “Did you see those people who just went in that building up there—the one with the fence around it? I’m almost positive that was Livvy Klack.”

  “The girl from school—the one who broke your nose?”

  “That’s her. I must be wrong. It’s probably just someone who looks like her.”

  “Does she live in the neighborhood?”

  “No, she lives down by the school, like on Sixty-second or Sixty-third.”

  When we walk past the front of the building, I catch a glimpse of a curtain in a first-floor window move to the side, but I resist the urge to turn and stare. It’s probably not her, but if it is Livvy, I certainly don’t want her to catch me in the act of peeking into windows. I can only imagine how that would be interpreted and spread around St. Veronica’s.

  But I can’t stop pondering the sheer improbability of it all: Livvy doing something nice. Again. All right, so maybe not making fun of my nose wouldn’t count as being nice for most people, but in Livvy’s case, it’s all relative. After all, I know what she’s capable of.

  “She seems like such a sad kid,” Mom says when we get to the corner. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile. Is she like that all the time?”

  “Kind of. I mean, I’ve seen her smile and laugh—usually at people—but you’re right, most of the time she looks absolutely miserable. She acts like a snob, and I really don’t know why, because she’s not super-rich or anything. Some of her friends are, though, and I think she hates St. V’s because she feels like she ought to be at a r
itzy school with them.”

  “Well, just remember what our good friend Atticus said: before you criticize someone, walk a mile in her shoes,” Mom reminds me. She introduced Margaret and me to To Kill a Mockingbird over the summer, and as part of our exclusive book club, we discussed what the lawyer Atticus Finch meant by those very words. “You don’t know what is going on in her life, so don’t be too hard on her.”

  “Don’t be hard on her? Mom, this is the girl who sabotaged my English project, totally insulted all my friends, and then broke my nose.”

  “Accidentally.”

  “Humph. Maybe,” I say, even though I have suspected all along that there was nothing intentional about what happened in the pool.

  We enter the park near Ninety-sixth Street, and Mom takes a seat for a few minutes on a bench while I run around the ball fields with Tillie, trying to wear her out a little. (Mom warns me that all I’m doing is getting her into tip-top physical condition; there simply is no tiring her out.) There are a few other people with dogs, and I get into a conversation with the owner of two yellow Labs, who shares a valuable piece of information: before nine o’clock in the morning, dogs are allowed to be off-leash in the park. A good long run might be just the thing to burn off some of that extra energy, so I promise Tillie I’ll bring her over on Saturday morning if she’s still with me. Of course, I’ll have to check with Nate, to make sure she won’t take off or something. Losing a big movie star’s beloved dog would probably not be a great career move for me. I shudder, imagining thousands of Nate’s fangirls chasing me through Central Park with pitchforks and torches.

  I’m brought back to reality by Tillie, who has stopped in her tracks with ears perked up and head tilted, first to one side, then to the other. Somewhere in the distance, something—something that my inferior human eyes and ears can’t see or hear—has suddenly become very interesting to her, and she starts dragging me toward it.

  “Whoa, Tillie!” I yell, but she has caught me off balance, and I find myself running with her to keep from falling flat on my face. Which, considering the still-tender state of my nose, is not a great option.