Mergers & Acquisitions

by Jennifer Griffith

  Instead of looking dejected, Ryker brightened. “So you’re saying the tree has been planted and there’s a chance? Sweet!” He didn’t wait for a response. “I’m calling for a ride down to Burbank. You two— take your time.” He winked and pulled one of those smiles that had sold a million or more bags of horse feed in the past six months, and then he was gone.

  Aero lurched to go after him.

  “He’ll be fine.” I rolled my eyes. “The nerve of some people’s children.”

  “The nerve.” Aero turned to face me. “Can you believe him? Manipulator, conniver, verging on sociopath.”

  “But he did buy you a Van Gogh.” I pointed to the painting still leaning against the wall beneath the bunny warren. “One he thinks it’s fine to just leave lying around, no security, no insurance, just … bam. Against the wall.”

  “When I have kids, I’m going to teach them to take better care of their Van Goghs.”

  “Me, too. Top priority. We’ll have a special feature at mealtime every night— how to treat priceless pieces of art.”

  “Mealtime every night,” he repeated. “We’ll also make sure they tell us something good that happened in their day. My parents did that. Checking in kept us close, even when I didn’t always think I wanted to be. Knowing I’d have to face them, it stopped me from doing some of the dumber stuff my friends were doing.”

  “My parents still check in with me,” I said. “Not nightly, but they call every Sunday after church. I talk to them about everything. They even came out to Pasadena for the grand opening, which— yeah. They hate traffic, so it showed how much they love me. They also brought two of my sisters and roped in some extended family. I have a pretty good support system.”

  “Me, too. Grandma and I are each other’s.” Aero gave a little shrug. “She needs me. She might for a long time. That’s a good thing, of course.”

  Yeah, but it might also be a burden too. He would have a lot to be responsible for over the coming years as her sole support.

  “Poor Ryker.” I gave a little shrug in response to Aero’s.

  “Yeah.”

  I stared at the Van Gogh beneath the rabbit warren. It told me a little story of what might be possible, if I were to accept it, if I were to say, Yes, Aero, you can buy the Mars Yuber. The painting whispered to me I could be part of something bigger, something beyond myself, something like what my own parents had built. Breaking a promise to some relative strangers— in which I’d simply keep them in a gallery with a Van Gogh instead of a Mars Yuber— how big of a breach of promise was it?

  I might have to open my mind a little bit. The Van Gogh asked me to. From its little spot beneath the rabbits, it said, Consider. It told me things might be okay if I were to float a trial balloon with my displayed artists later today, ask them how they’d feel about sharing a gallery wall with one of the greatest painters of all time. Or, as Ryker googled, the most desirable painter of all time.

  They’ll be fine with it, the Van Gogh whispered.

  But I remembered the Art World article, the tours, the lectures, the newspaper stories, everything else that had been built up. It was like I’d spun a sticky, unbreakable spider web around myself and I would have to be brilliant or resourceful or plain, dumb lucky to get myself free.

  Then again, I’d been plain dumb lucky enough to find the Woman Draped in Red painting in the first place.

  “Do you believe in luck?” I hadn’t realized I was asking it aloud.

  “Huh?” Aero had clearly been lost in his own thoughts while also looking at the Van Gogh. Great art will do that to a person. “Sorry. It’s just I haven’t ever seen one of these in real life.”

  This shocked me.

  “You haven’t been to Paris?” So many of Van Gogh’s works were in the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre and other museums. “With your family history and close connection to Europe just a generation back, I would have thought—” And then I remembered how his parents’ lives had been lost in Europe when he was just a boy and realized it could be touchy, and that a trip to Europe might be too much to ask of him emotionally.

  “I have, but I didn’t go to see the art. I went after college graduation specifically to look at the medieval and Renaissance architecture.”

  Oh.

  “Wait.” I had to stop him. “I thought you must be a major art fan, the way you’re obsessed with owning the Woman Draped in Red.”

  “I never really said that—”

  My business phone rang in the back room. I couldn’t ignore it, not now that business open hours had begun about ten minutes ago.

  “Come with me while I field this call. There’s something else I really need to ask you before you go. Okay?” I couldn’t let him leave. This question pressed on me too heavily, and if I didn’t ask it today, in person, I’d have no idea how to make any future decisions for the rest of … well, maybe forever. “It doesn’t have to do with art appreciation. I promise.”

  He followed me, and I grabbed the phone. “Red Drape Gallery. May I help you?”

  The voice on the other end of the line was low and rumbly. The man cleared his throat several times before speaking. I was starting to think this was a prank call, when finally he said, “Jillian Price?”

  “Yes. This is Jillian Price.”

  “Oh. Very good. I was hoping to talk with you directly. You’re the owner of Woman Draped in Red.”

  “Yes, I am.” I didn’t want another person making a bigger offer. Frankly, there couldn’t be a bigger offer than five million dollars and a dearly departed mother’s amethyst ring, so I should probably get off the line fast and get to asking Aero the question pressing on my soul. “I’m sorry to tell you it’s not for sale.”

  “I see. Very good. Well, I saw the article in Art World today, and I have a different question for you.” He cleared his throat again. Twice. It had to be about ownership or provenance or similar. I cringed.

  But then I glanced over at Aero, and he was waiting patiently, his shoulder against the doorframe of my office, one hand in his pocket, his jacket hanging open like he was some kind of international model. Those eyes. I could never plumb the depths of their blueness. They were the Marianas Trench of eyes. They calmed me.

  “I’ll be glad to help you if I know the answer.” This caller could be a relative of Yuber’s. Not a direct descendant, as he reportedly had none. But still, I dreaded the Mars Yuber ownership questions. This eventuality had loomed over me— his relatives, long lost or otherwise, turning up and demanding to see the provenance of who had owned the painting when. Ice water trickled through my veins. One lawsuit and I could lose everything. I wasn’t established enough to get all my investment back yet. And the people I worked with might not trust me enough yet to back me up.

  I gulped and stared at Aero, fear probably showing like measles all over my face, because he then came and stood closer to me, a question knitting his eyebrows. This phone volume blared loud enough he’d have been able to easily hear everything the man on the other side said. Even though the conversation should perhaps be private, I needed some support, so I wanted Aero to listen, too. It would be better this way— then Aero could advise me, help me figure it all out, and I wouldn’t have to reinvent the conversation for him later.

  “I didn’t see it discussed at all in the write-up of Woman Draped in Red, and what I want to know is whether you know where the model is for the painting.”

  Whew! I probably exhaled audibly. A question I could answer. “I’m afraid, sir, she’s unknown.” I opened my mouth to babble on about all the speculation that had been done in art circles beginning soon after my grand opening, about the searches that had been planned for her by those who believed she might still be alive somewhere in California despite the many years that had passed, but then I caught a glimpse of Aero. He looked positively ill.

  The man on the other end of the call coughed loudly into my ear. “No, miss. She is most definitely not unknown.” He started coughing, but I shouted ove
r it, too excited to stop and wait.

  “You have some information to share with me? I’d love to hear it. Thank you.” Anticipation sparking in me, I grabbed for a pencil and prepared to write so fast the graphite would catch fire. “Did you have personal knowledge of the artist, or perhaps the painting itself?” My words sped in my eagerness. The caller’s voice did make it sound like he’d be in the right age range to know such a thing.

  Excitement’s heat melted and replaced all the ice, almost the same energy that buzzed in me the moment Aero and I had first met. I glanced over to see how his eyes would be dancing along with my great moment— and to my shock, he had sat down on a chair and doubled over.

  “Aero— are you— ?”

  But the man finished his emphysema fit and answered my question. “Yes, I most certainly do. I know both the artist and the model. Well, I did at one time know the model. I’d like to find her.”

  “A name, perhaps?”

  “I only know her first name. She’s married someone since then.”

  “Her first name, then?”

  “Beatrice.”

  Beatrice. I’d heard the name lately— an unusual name, and …

  Wait. “Is a nickname for Beatrice— ?”

  “Trixie,” Aero whispered. I stared at him and saw the horror on his face and knew the caller was telling the truth. Before I had a chance to let all the implications of this sink in, the most important ones did. In fact, all my protective instincts went haywire. No stranger with a major phlegm problem was allowed to start art-magazine-stalking my boyfriend’s grandma. Forget that!

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid that I can’t give you any information.” My super-spy skills kicked in. “And could I please get your name?”

  One big clear of the throat and then, “Mars Yuber.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mars Yuber. Seriously? This had to be a joke.

  “I’m sorry, are you making a prank call?”

  “No, this is the artist. How else would I know the name of the model?”

  “Oh, I don’t know— a million different ways. Gossip, old newspapers, a wild guess—”

  “She also went by the name Trixie back in our Cal Berkley days in the 1960s.” That rang true. She did say she had been at Berkley and sown her wild oats— and that her parents had yanked her home to attend USC where she’d met Aero’s Grandpa Jantzen.

  Could wild oats have entailed posing for a salacious painting for then-unknown artist Mars Yuber?

  However, an obvious flaw glared out of this guy’s story at me, and I pointed a red hot finger at it.

  “If you are Mars Yuber, why are you alive?”

  “Because I haven’t died yet.”

  “Everyone else in the world seems to think you’re dead. So forgive me if I’m skeptical.”

  “Believe me, I’m sympathetic to your situation. I did my best to leave no trail. So I guess I faked it well.”

  “Why on earth— ?”

  He interrupted me. “So that I’d have more time to paint and spend less time stuck in conversations with gallery owners who think they know everything.”

  Thanks a lot, pal.

  Aero waved a hand in front of my face to get my attention.

  “It’s him,” he mouthed, and I got a sick feeling. I slid my hand over the receiver for super-spy-skill muting.

  “Just a moment, Mr. Yuber,” if that’s who you are, I said.

  Aero frowned and whispered a fast explanation. “Until your grand opening, Yuber and my grandma were the only two people alive who knew she’d modeled for him. She only told me out of fear; they’d sworn a blood oath never to tell a soul.”

  “A blood oath. Seriously.” College people. I lifted my hand from covering the mouthpiece on my phone’s receiver. “Sir? Listen, there’s an outside chance I know someone who knows Trixie, er, your Beatrice. Let me take down your number and be back in touch with you.” I knew it was a total long shot asking for this. He could easily hang up on me in a split second, and I’d never hear from him again. The number on the caller ID read “blocked,” so unless I actually employed super-spy-skills, which I clearly did not possess, I’d lose him forever.

  I held my breath and bit my lower lip.

  “Two-one-three … ” He gave me a ten-digit number with a California area code. I wrote it down with sparks practically flying from the pencil’s tip. I just might be the sole possessor of Mars Yuber’s personal number.

  “So, I’ll be hearing from you the minute you know, right?” His emphysema seemed to have cleared up, and I heard an earnestness in his voice that hadn’t been there when I’d been raking him over the coals. Me, raking Mars Yuber over the coals!

  “Of course.” I hung up and then Aero and I locked eyes. After a second I whispered, “I just talked on the phone to Mars Yuber.” Then I said a little louder, “I just talked on the phone to Mars Yuber.” A little screech leapt from my throat and I took Aero by both biceps and jumped. “He was dead and now he’s alive. Unless I talked to a ghost, I just talked to Mars Yuber. He’s alive.”

  “I’ve got it, I got it.” Aero wasn’t going all fan-blitz-o-zoid like I was. Instead he looked concerned.

  It dawned on me why, and I sobered up. “Sorry, Aero. If Yuber is alive, and we know it, that means something to the world, of course, but it means far more to your grandma.”

  “There’s no way we can sit on this information and not tell her.”

  I looked around the gallery. I’d set early-open hours today, but I’d been too busy fielding calls to advertise them much.

  “I can shut the gallery for the morning— because maybe we’d better do this together.”

  ______

  I rode in the passenger seat of Aero’s car, my foot tapping the floorboard with nervous energy. We’d dropped off the Van Gogh at his bank, where we placed it in the safe, and now we were heading to Aero’s house to find Trixie.

  Honestly, I had no idea what Trixie Jantzen would say or do when Aero or I or both of us told her that not only was Mars Yuber alive, but that he’d contacted me in search of her. Considering the effect just seeing the painting had had on her the night of the grand opening of Red Drape, my concerns pinched in me that she might not take it well.

  Plus, I still had another couple of millstone-weight questions for Aero dangling around my neck— like the meaning of the amethyst ring offer and whether or not I should sell him the painting or keep displaying it now that I knew the real reason for Aero’s wanting it in private hands.

  I couldn’t ask those, however, until I had a block of time, and he seemed to be gripping the steering wheel and staring out at the road with his jaw clenched. I didn’t want to interrupt whatever cogitations were going on in his mind.

  We covered ground toward our big mission, the trees of Pasadena blurring past us between the lurching stops of traffic signals. When I recalled Grandma Trixie’s initial reaction to the Woman Draped in Red portrait, I had to now admit that the dramatics were definitely warranted. No wonder she’d suffered an anxiety attack when she saw her naked self on display in a gallery. If it had been me, I would have probably screamed, not just gone into an anxiety fit that mimicked cardiac arrest— or maybe that had been real cardiac arrest, in Trixie’s case. It had seemed like a full-on heart attack in her case that night. The paramedics had hauled her away.

  Poor Trixie. What a shock.

  Other things made sense, too, now that I had this information. No wonder Aero’s financial offers did nothing but spiral into the stratosphere as he tried to stop me from displaying it. Plus, no wonder he couldn’t tell me his reasons— there was the blood oath to consider.

  “How did the portrait come about in the first place? Did she tell you?” I asked as we entered a neighborhood with wide streets and eucalyptus trees lining both sides of the road. Even on this November day, the leaves’ powdery, medicinal fragrance still hung in the air. “I mean, your grandma herself told me about Berkeley.”

  Aero t
urned down a private drive.

  “She was a freshman.”

  Dude, say no more. Freshman bad judgment was so notorious it could almost be a proverb.

  “She met Yuber at school and was swept off her feet, she said. Somehow she got talked into sitting for the portrait. It’s my grandma, so, you know, it’s hard to talk about the fact she sat for a nude painting. I’m shuddering even mentioning it, but when she admitted everything, I got the sense he was her first love. She was eighteen. He wasn’t much older, but he was a prodigious talent and already starting to be well known, at least in the Bay Area.”

  I’d studied some of Yuber’s early work. It had been noticed by critics for its merit even when he’d barely hit his twenties.

  “So she fell for him.” Obviously. “And?”

  “And when she told her parents she and Yuber were going to elope, my great-grandpa and grandma rocketed from L.A. to San Francisco, breaking land speed records to extract her from the arms of the ne’er-do-well artist.”

  “They took her away?”

  “She never saw him again.” Aero had his eyes on the road. “She did love my grandfather. I know she did. But they say you never get over your first love.”

  I wouldn’t know. Sure, I’d had a raging crush a couple of times through my teen years, as well as on one of the TAs at law school, but nothing that I could ever define as real love. Nothing that even began to compare to how my feelings for Aero had blossomed in such a scant amount of time together.

  Real love. I’d seen it a few times, especially in my parents’ love for each other. But this was different, and I didn’t mean between Trixie and Mars. No, this example of Aero’s love for his grandma touched me deeply. I’d known he loved his family— enough to honor his dad’s memory by taking over his grandfather’s business when the time came, despite what Aero’s own hopes and dreams might ever have been. I hadn’t asked him about that— yet. Beyond that, he also cared enough about his grandma to pay me five million dollars to keep her identity in the painting a secret. That? That was dedication. That was loyalty. That was love.