The Pegasus Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  When Lang got home, Richard the doorman wasn’t as much an amenity as an obstacle. He was inspecting Grumps with the same expression he might have used for garbage dumped in the building’s marble foyer. The dog’s wagging tail and imploring brown eyes did little to diminish the disdain.

  Grumps didn’t much look like a pet of the affluent, Lang grudgingly admitted. The dog could have been claimed by almost any breed, with his shaggy black coat and white face. One ear was pointed, the other folded over like a wilted flower. Straining at the end of his new leash, Grumps was sniffing a bow-fronted boulle chest that Lang had long suspected might have been the genuine article. Had the dog not already anointed the boxwoods outside, Lang would have been nervous about the Abkhazian area rugs.

  He figured a fifty would turn contempt to gratitude and he was right.

  “He was my nephew’s,” Lang explained apologetically as he handed over the folded bill. “I didn’t know what else to do with him.”

  Richard pocketed the money with a smoothness of one accustomed to residents’ largess beyond the Christmas fund. No doubt he was aware of Janet and Jeff’s deaths. Like all the building’s employees, he seemed to know what was going on in the lives of those he served.

  He winked conspiratorially. “Looks like he weighs under ten pounds to me.”

  The condominium association’s rules forbade pets in excess of ten pounds, a weight Grumps clearly exceeded five or six times.

  “The gift is to make sure your powers of estimation don’t deteriorate,” Lang said with a wink.

  “Count on it. Can I help you with the package?”

  Richard was referring to the wrapped painting Lang had under the arm that wasn’t holding the leash.

  Lang thanked him but declined, in a hurry to reach the elevators before any of his more realistically sighted neighbors appeared.

  Once the dog had inspected every inch of the condo, verifying that he and Lang were the only living creatures present, he slumped into a corner, staring into space with one of those canine expressions that is subject to multiple interpretations. Lang would have guessed he missed Jeff.

  A good feed would cheer him up. But what to feed him? Lang had neglected to stop by the store for dog food, even had he known what brand Grumps preferred. Guiltily, Lang transferred a pound of hamburger from the freezer to the microwave. His offering received no more than a polite sniff. The mutt really did miss his young master.

  “You don’t want to eat, it’s okay with me,” Lang said, instantly feeling foolish for trying to strike up a conversation with a dog.

  Grumps’s only acknowledgement was shifting his mournful brown eyes in Lang’s direction. Lang sat on the sofa and wondered what he was going to do with a dog that wouldn’t eat and a painting he didn’t want.

  Grumps began to snore. Swell. Nothing like a dog for companionship.

  Lang gazed around the familiar space. The door from the outside hall entered directly into the living room. Across from it, floor-to-ceiling glass framed downtown Atlanta. To his right were the kitchen and dining area. On his left was the door to the single bedroom. Most of the available wall space was occupied by built-in shelves loaded with an eclectic selection of books that demanded more space than the small suite had to give. He had been reduced to buying only paperbacks because he could not bear to discard hardbacks but had no place to put new ones.

  What little wall space remained was given to oversized landscapes by relatively unknown impressionists, paintings he and Dawn had purchased together. His favorite, a reputed Herzog, hung in the bedroom where its rich greens and yellows could brighten the mornings.

  The art was among the very few things he had kept after the sale of the house he and Dawn had hoped to fill with children. Most of her antiques were too large for the condo, their fussiness too feminine for his taste and the association too painful. He had kidded himself into believing the hurt would be diminished by getting rid of things familiar.

  Shedding the furniture had been an epiphany in a sense, though. It had led him to recognize furniture, clothes, appliances as mere stuff, objects rented for a lifetime at most. Dawn’s death had made him acutely aware of the futility of material possessions: they were only things you had to give up in the end. Not that he had become an ascetic, shunning worldly delights. But if he could enjoy the better restaurants, live in the place of his choice, drive the car he wanted, the rest was excess baggage.

  Lang had replaced antiques with contemporary pieces of chrome, leather and glass, retaining only two items, both predating his wife: a golden oak linen press, which housed the television and sound system, and a small secretary, the pediment of which bore the carved lazy eights that were the signature of Thomas Elfe, Charleston’s premier cabinetmaker of the eighteenth century. Behind the wavy, hand-blown glass was his small collection of antiquities and a few rare books.

  He forgot Grumps’s snores for the moment while he considered the brown paper package leaning against the wall by the door. Might as well have a look.

  He found pretty much what he had expected: a canvas of about three by four feet depicted three bearded men in robes and sandals. They appeared to be examining an oblong stone structure. The two on either side held sticks or staffs while the one in the middle knelt, pointing to an inscription carved into the rock, “ETINARCADIAEGOSUM.” Latin. “I am in Arcadia” was Lang’s tentative interpretation, but that left over the “sum.” Why would there be a superfluous word? An incorrect translation was the answer that first came to mind. But he couldn’t make sense of the words any other way.

  The fourth figure, a woman richly dressed, stood to the right of the men, her hand on the shoulder of the one kneeling. Behind the figures, mountains dominated the landscape, chalky hills instead of the verdant foliage of most religious pictures. The geography seemed to converge on a single gap, a rugged valley in the hazy distance.

  There was something about that gap. . . . He turned the picture upside down. The space between the mountains now resembled a familiar shape, roughly similar to the profile of Washington on a quarter. A small peak made the long nose, a rounded hill the chin. It was a stretch, but that was what it looked like.

  The painting had no meaning he could see, Biblical or otherwise. He crossed the room to where he had tossed his suit jacket across a chair and took the appraisal out of the pocket, putting the Polaroid on the secretary. “Les Bergers d’Arcadie, copy of the original by Nicholas Poussin (1593–1665),” read the note from Ansley Galleries.

  Did that mean the work was a copy of Poussin’s work or that Poussin had made the copy? Had the copy been made between 1593 and 1665 or had the artist lived seventy-two years? Whichever the case, the appraiser at Ansley Galleries had put a value of ten to twelve thousand dollars on the painting which Lang assumed included the two-hundred-buck-plus frame he had paid for. Whether the value was real or merely a feel-good for a customer, he could only guess.

  No matter. It wasn’t going to fit easily here. He stepped back to take another look before moving the painting from beside the door. Where could he put it where it wouldn’t be in the way in the small apartment? Nowhere, really.

  He set it on the fold-out desk of the secretary, stood back and stared at it again. Bergers—French for shepherds, perhaps? That would explain the staffs or crooks but not the woman who was far too well-clad to herd sheep. Arcadie? Acadia? A name given to part of Canada by eighteenth-century French settlers, wasn’t it? He was almost certain. When the English expelled them, they had immigrated to the nearest French territory, Louisiana, where they became known as Acadians or ’Cajuns. Longfellow’s epic Evangeline and all that. But the British hadn’t conquered Canada by 1665, had they? And what the hell did Canadian shepherds have to do with anything?

  Curious, he searched the bookshelves until he found a historical encyclopedia. The province in Canada had been named for a part of Greece. Great. Now he had shepherds that were Greek instead of Canadian. Lots of help that was.

  Lea
ving the puzzle of the painting on the secretary, he took the appraisal and Polaroid into the bedroom and put them in the drawer of his bedside table, making a mental note to take them to his lock box next trip to the bank. Exchanging his suit for a pair of jeans, he headed back into the living room as he buttoned up a denim shirt.

  3

  Atlanta

  The next day

  When Lang got home from work the next day, he noticed scratches on the brass plate of the lock on his front door, small marks that an untrained eye would never have noticed. Squatting so his eyes were level with the doorknob, Lang could tell that these were no random marks left by a careless cleaning crew. Each tiny scrape led to the opening of the lock. Someone had tried to pick the mechanism.

  Lang stood. He had almost succeeded in dismissing the incident on the Ile St. Louis as a botched robbery attempt. But not quite. Someone from his former life? It was still unlikely they would have waited this long to conclude whatever business they might have had. Besides, he was in America, not Europe. As if that still made a difference.

  The more important question was, had they succeeded and how many were “they”?

  Lang made himself swallow hard, giving himself time to dissipate the outrage of having his personal space violated. Bursting in on one or more possibly armed burglars might make for a great scene from a Bruce Willis movie but it wasn’t a move towards a longer, healthier life.

  Call the cops? He was reaching for the cell phone on his belt and paused. The Atlanta police? It would take them forever to arrive and if there was no one in his unit, he’d look like a fool.

  He turned and went back to the elevators.

  At the concierge desk in the lobby, he waited until the pimply-faced kid in the ill-fitting uniform finished making a phone call and turned to him.

  Lang shrugged with an embarrassed smile. “I locked myself out.”

  “Your number?” The kid was already looking under the desk for one of the skeletons. With the number of geriatric residents, Lang’s problem was not unusual.

  On the ride back up, Lang felt a twinge of guilt. If burglars were in the apartment, there was some possibility they were armed. Maybe he should have summoned the law after all. Involving this young man in a possible robbery, exposing the lad to potential physical harm, wasn’t a nice thing to do. Conversely, facing one or more red- handed felons alone was stupid. Heroes died young.

  Accustomed to the idiosyncracies of the wealthy, the concierge never asked how Lang had managed to engage the dead bolt from outside in the hall. Instead, he pushed the door open and gestured Lang inside. “There we are, Mr. Reilly.”

  Lang’s eyes were searching the small space as he handed a folded bill over. “Thanks.”

  “Thank you, sir.” From the tone, Lang must have given him a larger tip than he had anticipated.

  Lang noticed nothing unusual until he turned to face the interior wall. The painting was gone. He hurriedly glanced around in the unlikelihood he had misplaced it. How do you lose a canvas that big in an apartment this small? You don’t.

  He took two steps, stopping at the counter that separated kitchen from living room. Enjoying the coolness of Mexican tiles on his stomach, Grumps looked up and yawned.

  “Great guard dog you are,” Lang muttered as he started to turn towards the bedroom.

  He stopped again. Beside Grumps was a large grease spot. The intruders had occupied the dog with something to eat. As verifying the fact, Grumps burped loudly.

  “Excuse you, bribe-taker. You better hope they didn’t lace that hunk of meat with rat poison.”

  Unabashed, Grumps stretched and belched again.

  At first, the bedroom seemed untouched.

  Then Lang noticed that one of his silver hairbrushes was on the side of the dresser opposite where he normally left it. A photograph of Dawn faced the room at a slightly different angle. Someone had been careful but not careful enough.

  Stepping around the bed, Lang opened the single drawer of the bedside table. The Browning nine-millimeter he had carried for years was where he kept it. Besides the gun and a box of ammunition, the drawer was empty.

  Lang was certain he had put the Polaroid and appraisal of the picture there for temporary safekeeping. Who would steal a Polaroid?

  The memory of the smoldering ruin in the Place des Vosges was his answer: someone who wanted to leave no trace of that picture.

  He shook his head. Stealing the painting and the photo . . .

  Lang took a quick inventory of his home. A few items were an inch or so out of place but nothing else was missing. Perhaps the disappearance of the three items made a sort of illogical sense. The thief had been unhurried but left the sterling silverware, a pair of gold cuff links and studs, and the pistol. The purpose of the break-in had clearly been the Poussin and all evidence of it.

  Why?

  Lang had no idea but every intention of finding out.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1

  Atlanta

  The next day

  Lang was waiting at Ansley Galleries when it opened the next morning. The same purple-haired girl was behind the counter with the same bored expression.

  “Our copy?” she asked. “Good thing we keep copies of all our appraisals, like I told you. You’d be surprised how many people keep ’em in the house. There’s a fire or something and both the art and the appraisal’s gone.”

  “And the Polaroid,” Lang asked, “you said you keep an extra of it, too?”

  She nodded, chewing a wad of gum. “Yeah, the Polaroid, too.”

  He smiled weakly and shrugged, a man embarrassed by his own ineffectiveness. “Dumb me. Can’t remember where I put the envelope with them in it. Be happy to pay for copies.”

  The gum snapped. “No problem.”

  A minute later she was back. The copy of the photograph, though not in color, was remarkably clear. He handed her a twenty.

  She shook her head. “Happy to help. You lose that, we’ll charge for the next set of copies.”

  Outside, he pretended to search his pockets for car keys while he checked up and down the street. If there were watchers, they were out of sight.

  2

  Atlanta

  An hour later

  “High Museum as in art museum?” Sara asked incredulously. “You want me to get the number of the art museum?”

  Lang settled behind his desk, speaking through the open door. “What’s the big surprise? I go to the museum, theater, ballet, et al, regular culture vulture. You don’t remember my getting tickets for you for the opening of the Matisse exhibit?”

  Sara shook her head without a gray hair moving out of place. “Lang, that was years ago. And it was one of your clients who got the tickets.”

  “Just find out who the director is, okay?”

  Two hours later, Lang parked in the MARTA lot behind what appeared to be white building blocks dumped into a random pile by a giant child. The contemporary edifice had to be one of the ugliest in a town not known for its architectural treasures. Lang’s theory was that Sherman’s destruction of the city a century and a half before had given Atlanta an atavistic insensitivity to structural aesthetics. The High Museum was named for the donors of the site, the High family, not for any preeminence in the art world. In fact, the concrete and glass housed a collection surprising only in its modesty when compared to similar institutions in comparable cities.

  Lang passed by the circular ramp inside the main hall and took an elevator to the top floor. Exiting, he passed a modern mural on canvas that an alert janitorial crew anywhere else would have recognized as a painter’s drop cloth and hauled outside to the Dumpsters. At the end, he found a door marked “Administrative Offices.”

  Lang had the impression he had stepped through Alice’s looking glass. Hair of every color, rings in every visible orifice, clothes from Star Wars. The clerk at Ansley Galleries had been conservative in comparison.

  A young woman with half her head shaved and polished, the
other covered by Astroturf-green hair, glanced up from the computer terminal on her desk. “May I help you?”

  “I’m Langford Reilly. I have an appointment with Mr. Seitz.”

  The woman jabbed a dagger-length fingernail painted an ominous black. “In there.” She picked up a phone. “Mr. Reilly’s here to see you.”

  A man stepped from a doorway. Lang wasn’t sure what he had expected but Mr. Seitz wasn’t it. Instead, he was normal looking. Well-tailored dark suit, red power tie, shiny black wingtips. He was slender, just under six feet tall. Early forties, judging by the dove-wings of gray over his ears. His chiseled face had recently seen the beach. Or the inside of a tanning booth.

  A gold Rolex competed in dazzle with jeweled cuff links as he extended a manicured hand. “Jason Seitz, Mr. Reilly.”

  “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” Lang said. “Quite a colorful crew you have here.”

  His eyes followed Lang’s stare. “Art students. We try to hire from the art school,” he said as if that explained the costumes. “Won’t you step this way?”

  They entered an office that was as traditional as the employees outside were weird. Seitz indicated a leather wing chair where Lang could admire the wall of photographs: Seitz shaking hands with or hugging local business leaders, politicians and celebrities. He slipped behind a dining room table–sized desk littered with snapshots of paintings, sculptures and some other objects Lang didn’t immediately recognize.

  Seitz leaned back, made a steeple of his fingers and said, “I usually don’t have the pleasure of meeting with people I don’t know, but Ms. . . .”

  “Mitford—Sara Mitford, my secretary.”

  Seitz nodded. “Ms. Mitford was quite insistent, said it was urgent. Fortunately, I had a cancellation. . . .”

  His gaze had the practiced sincerity of someone used to soliciting money. It fitted nicely with the favor he wanted Lang to know he was doing him.

  “I really appreciate your taking the time. I’m sure running this place keeps you busy.”