The Lover's Portrait

by Jennifer S. Alderson

  Zelda nodded, giddy with excitement. Sleep could wait.

  FIFTY

  Thirty minutes later, Zelda was stepping back into Rita’s childhood garden, this time through the kitchen door. According to the neighbors, Eva and her family were on vacation in a faraway land, blissfully unaware of what was taking place in their backyard. With the sun shining, the birds chirping and no one pointing a gun at her, the garden seemed a lot less sinister now than it had a few short hours ago. Her feeling of security was most certainly enhanced by the hordes of uniformed police officers spread around the small patch of grass, guarding the crime scene and its valuable contents.

  Zelda hesitated slightly as she approached the shed’s open door. Fresh memories of the gun shot ringing in her ears, blood seeping into Friedrich’s shirt and Konrad Heider’s mashed up face, flashed through her brain. She shuddered thinking about how easily it could have all gone wrong. Yet here she stood, tired but unscathed, about to see the treasure trove Arjan van Heemsvliet and Philip Verbeet managed to hide from Oswald Drechsler seventy-three years ago.

  Sucking up her courage, Zelda stepped around the piles of concrete tiles she’d stacked up earlier that morning and quickly crossed to the opening in the middle of the floor. As she climbed down the small metal ladder, she felt as if she was traveling back in time, her own steps mirroring those taken by Philip and Arjan all those years ago.

  The ceiling was high enough she could stand upright. A wide path had been left clear in the middle, allowing her to walk unhindered from one end of the room to the other. Portable floodlights placed along the pathway illuminated the space. It seemed even larger than the shed above and was completely filled with wooden crates stacked up on top of each other. Most of the towers touched the ceiling. A number had been stenciled onto the side of each crate with black paint.

  Close to the ladder, three crates had been pulled down onto the floor and opened, their lids still ajar. Zelda knew that one of the first officers to arrive at the scene had pried their tops off. She didn’t blame the police for not believing her when she’d told them the root cellar was filled with priceless artwork. Who would have expected to find any of this tucked away beneath Rita’s old shed? Especially when a hysterical foreigner, screaming for an ambulance, was the one telling them about it.

  Figuring it was alright to touch everything now that the police had released the scene, she lifted the lid off the crate closest to her and peered inside. A mustached man in a clown suit stared back at her, guitar in hand. She crouched down to get a better look at the canvas. As her eyes adjusted to the low light, her heart skipped a beat. “Oh my God,” Zelda whispered aloud, instantly recognizing the artist’s distinctively cubist style. How could she not? He was one of the world’s most famous modern painters and prominently featured in every art history book known to man.

  Sure her eyes were deceiving her, she pulled the yellowing sheet of paper sticking up from behind the painting, out of the box. Written at the top in Arjan’s unmistakably neat handwriting was ‘Pablo Picasso, Harlequin Study Number Three’. She laughed aloud, lightly stroking the painting’s surface while she absorbed every detail, figuring that in her lifetime this would be her one and only chance to actually touch such an important and expensive piece of art.

  After studying the painting awhile, she finally tore her eyes away and looked again at the paper included in the crate. All of its owners were listed, starting with the person who bought it directly from Picasso in 1904 and ending with the man who’d purchased it from a Dutch art gallery in 1927. She squinted a little to better read the final name listed: Frans Keizer. She recognized it from Arjan’s inventory book; the Keizer collection filled five pages. Thanks to this slip of paper, it would be a cinch for the museum’s staff to return the painting to its rightful owner. Zelda felt tears welling up as she realized that Frans Keizer’s relatives, and all of the other families Arjan van Heemsvliet had helped would soon be reunited with pieces of their past, objects intertwined with their own histories, as Irises was to the Verbeet family.

  The clanking of high heels against the metal rungs of the root cellar’s ladder interrupted her thoughts and sent her stomach spinning. She wiped the tears from her cheeks and tried to compose herself, unsure of how Bernice Dijkstra and Huub Konijn would react to her presence. She hadn’t spoken to either of them since their last disastrous meeting two days ago, at the end of which she’d been kicked out of the Amsterdam Museum and told not to come back. Detectives Merks and Oosterbaan had assured her both museum professionals knew what had taken place this morning in the shed above. Zelda hoped this major find would wipe away any residual hard feelings generated by her own bull-headed behavior.

  She turned towards the ladder to see the project manager standing with her feet on the floor but her hands still clutching a metal rung. Bernice was mumbling to herself in Dutch as she took in the root cellar’s contents, clearly mesmerized by what she saw. Just above her was Huub Konijn, tilting his head sideways to get a better look. Only after the curator cleared this throat for the third time did Bernice release the ladder and move aside. Huub acknowledged Zelda’s presence with a nod before turning his attention to the crates filling the room.

  “How did you figure out the artwork was hidden here under this shed, Zelda?” the project manager finally asked, still gazing reverently around the room.

  Zelda chuckled. “I’ll tell you all about it after I’ve had a good night sleep. Right now my story would come out a jumble,” she answered slowly in Dutch. She felt embarrassed to still be dressed in the white jumpsuit usually worn by the police’s forensics unit when on-site, given to her by the detectives after they’d asked to keep her blood-stained clothes as evidence. Sure, she could have gone home and changed, but that would have meant passing up on the detectives’ offer to see what was down in the root cellar before the crates were transported to the Amsterdam Museum. There would be plenty of time for a shower and clean clothes later.

  As Zelda began to apologize for her outfit, she noticed both Bernice and Huub were too busy studying the open crates and their contents to be curious about her clothing.

  “If all three-hundred and twenty-six pieces are here, Bernice, that would make this the single largest discovery of missing artwork in the Netherlands,” Huub cried out, shaking his head in disbelief. “How wonderful to be able to see and study all of these works again.”

  “And how fantastic that so many will soon have their family’s long-lost artwork returned to them,” Bernice added, almost as if to remind the curator that the paintings wouldn’t be staying in the museum’s depot for long.

  The project manager’s words brought Rita Brouwer to the forefront of Zelda’s mind. “Philip Verbeet’s collection must be down here, too,” she exclaimed. “Rita and her sisters will get their father’s paintings back after all.”

  “Rita will be so pleased,” Bernice replied sincerely.

  Zelda wiped away a tear, happy the project manager agreed so wholeheartedly. There was no more doubt as to who Philip Verbeet’s artwork belonged to. Not only would Zelda get to tell Rita what happened to her father, the Verbeet girls would get his entire collection back. Her sister Iris would get to lay her eyes upon her own self-portrait once again, painted by her first love so long ago.

  “It will take us months, possibly years, to reconstruct the provenance of all of these pieces,” Huub muttered, irritation creeping into his voice, his joy already fading.

  “Not months, Huub, weeks at most,” Bernice corrected him, holding up the Picasso’s list of owners for the curator to see. “Arjan van Heemsvliet has done our work for us.”

  “We’re going to have to assemble a new project team, one which will be responsible for locating and contacting the owners or their heirs,” Huub said. He was silent a moment, obviously considering something, before he spoke again. “You have definitely earned a place on that team Zelda, if you want it,” he added.

  Zelda looked up in astonishment, flabberga
sted yet overjoyed. “Mr. Konijn, are you offering me a job?”

  Huub’s dove grey eyes stared back at her, a hint of a smile crossing his lips. “I guess I am, Miss Richardson.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  September 1, 2015

  “What a beautiful boat.” Rita Brouwer gushed, pointing to an old but well-restored steamboat chugging up the Amstel River. Wisps of smoke puffing out of its tiny smokestack slowly propelled it forward through the choppy waters, its highly polished wooden hull bobbing up and down like a seesaw. Zelda managed to get them a table on café De Jaren’s popular waterfront terrace, situated alongside a bend in the river before it narrowed and joined the Rokin canal, the main entrance to the city center’s network of ring-shaped canals. In the waters before them, boats of all sizes and shapes glided by; their rocking motion and the sound of lapping water were slowly lulling her into a meditative trance.

  “If I were rich, I would buy an old steamboat like that one and sail around on it all summer long,” Rita smiled at the thought, sipping her tea contentedly.

  “But, Rita,” Zelda sputtered, “you are rich.”

  “Hush child. Getting my daddy’s art collection back doesn’t automatically make me a wealthy woman,” the older lady giggled.

  Zelda knew she’d been courted by pretty much every art museum in the Netherlands, and several others dotted across Europe, since she’d returned to Amsterdam a week ago. Many of the pieces in her father’s collection were deemed to be crucial to the oeuvres of their famous Dutch creators as illustrations of their early development and progress as artists. Zelda was certain the numerous institutions salivating for Verbeet’s artwork were mercilessly calling and contacting every sponsor and donator they could think of in a desperate attempt to outbid the competition. And the wining and dining would surely continue until Rita and her sisters decided which museum would get some, or even all, of their father’s impressive collection.

  “You mean you aren’t going to sell?” Zelda asked hopefully. Rita had just told her about some of the extraordinary sums of money offered for a single painting. She could understand how tempting it would be to cash in, especially when none of the Verbeet girls had seen the pieces in so many years.

  “Heavens, no. I have to talk everything over with my sisters first, but I can’t imagine them wanting to sell any of them. None of us girls are rich, but we’ve all worked hard and saved up enough to live comfortably. We don’t need the money. I’m going to suggest we donate most of the paintings to one Dutch museum, but only after we’ve all passed on. This kind of collection deserves to be seen as much as daddy’s story deserves to be told. All of those fancy dinner meetings with them museum directors have sure convinced me of that. But until we’re gone, my sisters and I are going to hang our daddy’s artwork in our homes and enjoy them for as long as we can.”

  “What about your children, and your nieces and nephews? Won’t they expect to inherit your father’s collection?”

  “Why should they expect anything? For starters, neither Rose nor Fleur have got any children to leave them to. Viola hasn’t heard from her daughter in going on ten years, since she went off and joined some silly commune. And Iris’s son Joe has never been interested in art or our family history. Come to think of it, my boys aren’t either. I might want to leave a piece or two to my daughter Sophia; she wants to work in a gallery someday and has a keen eye for art to boot. But I wouldn’t want to leave all of it to her; it wouldn’t be fair to the others. Besides, do you know how much inheritance taxes are these days? Keeping the whole collection would cost our kids a fortune!” Rita exclaimed.

  “Have you told anyone you are thinking of donating the paintings to a museum instead of selling them?”

  “No one’s asked. To be honest, I don’t think they want to wait until all of us Verbeet girls have passed on before they get their hands on the artwork,” Rita guffawed loudly, attracting stares from other café goers. “Besides, I’ve never had caviar or real champagne before. What’s the harm in leading those museum professionals on a bit?” she grinned conspiratorially. “And the pricey meals have been a good way for me to learn more about the types of artwork all those different museums specialize in. Whichever one we end up choosing, they will have to display all of our daddy’s collection – not just the pieces from artists who later became famous. Those promising young artists who didn’t survive the war deserve our recognition and respect, too.”

  “Just like Lex Wederstein,” Zelda said, nodding in understanding.

  “Exactly,” Rita agreed, her voice tinged with sadness. She fell silent for a moment, staring off into the boat-filled waters.

  Zelda wondered if she was thinking about Lex or her father, both taken too soon. She’d had the dubious honor of telling Rita in person all that Konrad Heider had said about Philip Verbeet’s murder, as well as the information she’d gleaned from Arjan van Heemsvliet’s letters about his last days. Rita had listened silently as Zelda relayed everything she could remember, the old lady’s lips a drawn line, glimpses of sorrow and anger crossing her face like clouds on a stormy day. Zelda could only imagine how freeing, yet devastatingly painful it was for Rita to finally know how her father had died and why. The senselessness of it all was what she had so much trouble explaining to the older lady.

  Before Zelda could think of something appropriate to say, a large touring boat cruised too quickly around a plodding rent-a-boat trying to moor on the café’s dock a few feet from their table. The larger vessel threw up waves and grey clouds of burnt diesel fuel in its wake, the stench momentarily overpowering that of their tea and eggs. The sickening smell seemed to bring Rita Brouwer back to the present day.

  “Anyway, I’ve got what I really wanted, right here.” The older lady patted the larger of two boxes resting on the chair next to her. “Thanks to you, I got my daddy back.”

  Her sincerity overshadowed Zelda’s discomfort at eating lunch with a cremated body. Philip Verbeet and Arjan van Heemsvliet were both buried in the art dealer’s backyard, as Konrad Heider said they were. However, only Verbeet had been shot; Arjan’s broken neck was the official cause of his death. Why Konrad’s uncle told him a different version of events, or what really happened that night in Arjan’s home, they would never know. This morning she’d gone with Rita to the police department and collected her father’s remains. After letting the older woman cry on her shoulder a while, she’d suggested they come here for a late breakfast, hoping the fresh mint tea and breathtaking views would help calm her down before her long flight home.

  Zelda leaned over and squeezed her companion’s hand. “I’m sure your sisters are as glad as you to finally know what happened to your father.”

  “Yes, they are,” Rita said before picking up the smaller box from the chair next to her. It was roughly the size of a coffee-table book. “Here,” she handed the package to Zelda, “this is our way of thanking you for finding our daddy.”

  “Oh, Rita, you didn’t need to get me anything,” she said, grasping the package with both hands. She opened the box, expecting to find an art-related tome, but instead discovered a bubble-wrapped object. As she pulled it out, she felt a metal frame through the packaging. Though she had an inkling of what it could be, her mind refused to believe that Rita and her sisters would be so generous.

  “Open it.”

  She carefully removed the bubble-wrap, staring in awe at the object inside for several seconds before finally getting her voice back. “Is this really one of your father’s pieces?” she whispered.

  “Yes, it is.” Rita’s grin stretched from ear to ear.

  Nestled inside the packaging was a framed watercolor of a girl standing on a bridge watching the sun rise. The clouds in the distance were painted in the most vibrant pink and purple hues Zelda had ever seen. She recognized the artist immediately; he was, after all, one of her favorite Dutch painters. Her hands started to shake as her mind registered what she was holding. “Is this really a Jan Sluijters?”

&nb
sp; “That girl sees a bright future before her, full of hope and promise. Like the one I see ahead of you.”

  Zelda choked up with tears, embracing Rita with one arm as she held the painting tight with the other. “Thank you so much. And all of your sisters, too.” She released the older lady and wiped her face clean before clearing her throat, unable to look her in the eye. “Rita, you know this watercolor is worth a lot of money. Are you absolutely sure about this?” She wanted nothing more than to keep the Sluijters piece but didn’t want the Verbeet sisters to feel obligated.

  “As long as you don’t go and sell it, then yes, all of us girls are absolutely sure,” Rita said. “In fact, I have a little finder’s fee for you, to make sure you aren’t tempted.”

  Zelda was horrified. “Rita, this Sluijters is more than enough.”

  Rita looked pleased, but determined as she shoved an envelope into the younger woman’s hand. “This is what my sisters and I were willing to pay you to look for clues leading to any of our daddy’s paintings. We sure didn’t expect you to find them all!”

  Zelda opened the envelope to find a check for five thousand dollars. “This is way too much,” she stammered. She’d hoped to earn a few hundred dollars helping the Verbeet girls out, not thousands.

  “Nonsense. You just told me you got into that master’s program you were so gung ho about. Now you won’t have to worry about getting a job right away.”

  Rita had no idea how right she was, Zelda thought ruefully. She was extremely grateful and relieved that she’d been one of the twenty students selected for the Museum Studies master and couldn’t wait for classes to begin. Only after she’d been accepted did she realize it would be virtually impossible to work and study full-time, especially in another language. Reading and writing in Dutch still required a tremendous effort, though she was pleased to note that she needed her Dutch-English dictionary less and less. She knew it would get easier in time. This check, in combination with her savings, would guarantee her several more months of freedom, giving her time to settle into her classes and get used to the workload before having to think about taking out student loans or finding a job.