Laura Caldwell - False Impressions

Off to the side was a small office. On a table in the center of the room was a white laptop. We sat and Madeline pulled her chair close to mine, her laptop in front of us. She pulled up a website.

“It’s your gallery site,” I said.

“Yes,” Madeline said. “I have photos of nearly all our artwork on the site. I like to make it as interactive as possible. One of the features is the ability to comment freely on any piece of art.”

She clicked to a page of tiny images, all showing various artwork. She clicked on one—gray on a white canvas, depicting four sketches of some urban landscape, the whole thing glossed to a high sheen.

“It’s a very interesting piece by Sir Arthur Dudlin,” Madeline said. “I can tell you more about it later. But this is what I want to show you. The comments I received.”

I read the first one—something about the artist getting older but not better.

I stopped reading and looked at Madeline. “Do you have approval on the comments, so you can authorize them before they appear?’

She shook her head. “I despise censorship. I feel with deep conviction that response to art is as important as the art itself.”

Madeline showed me the next comment. Dudlin not only aged at the end of his life…. Check your Dudlin if you have one. Especially if you bought it from this gallery.

I stopped reading and pointed at the sentence about checking a Dudlin artwork. “Is this the first indication you had that something might have been forged?”

“The first public one,” Madeline said, her voice thin. “But it’s the last few lines that disturb me most.”

I looked at the last two lines. Madeline Saga makes everything she touches rotten. She obliterates.

“Obliterates,” Madeline said. “Obliterates. I don’t understand that. I try to bring things to life. I bring art to the world.”

“Do you have any idea what they mean in context with you?”

“No.” She sounded bereft. I wanted to comfort her, but I had no idea how one would do that with Madeline Saga.

I looked at the comment again, then at Madeline. “I think it’s time to enable your approval settings on these comments.”

Madeline’s face was distressed.

“Let me run it by Mayburn.” I texted him what I wanted to do, and he agreed.

But Madeline didn’t move when I told her that.

“Do you want me to handle it?” I asked.

Finally, Madeline nodded, gave me her passwords and watched in silence as I adjusted the controls of her website comment section and deleted those about the Dudlin.

I was just about done when the sound of a bell startled me.

“That’s the front door,” Madeline said softly. But she still gazed at the space on the screen where the comments had been; she was staring into it as if it were a long tunnel, one where she could somehow see many things. And those things—whatever they were—were deeply disturbing to her.

“Let me go see who it is,” I said, since Madeline wasn’t moving. I was glad to have something official to do for my new job.

She looked at me. “Thank you,” she said earnestly, as if someone hadn’t helped her with anything for a long time. “But no, I’ll come with you. And Isabel, I don’t mean to be difficult but…Mayburn has suggested that you’ve had a lively few years.”

I looked at her, unsure where she was going with this.

“I was wondering if we could give you an alias. Perhaps we call you Isabel or Izzy Smith. I wouldn’t want anyone to search you on the internet and find out you’re really a lawyer and not an art dealer. It might raise more questions than I can answer right now.”

“Of course. I should have already thought of that.” I stood and began to follow her out the door.

But, one more time, she looked back to the computer screen, and somehow I could tell that she was pondering that one word—obliterates.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.