Tracy Guzeman - The Gravity of Birds

‘This will make Sylvia extremely unhappy,’ Stephen said, looking pleased with himself. ‘She’ll be forced to be civil to me.’

‘Who is Sylvia?’

‘Dreadful cow. Here’s hoping you never meet her. Now, about these arrangements …’

Any semblance of calm had evaporated once Thomas confirmed the existence of two additional pieces. Cranston’s normal nervous mannerisms became amplified, his fingers dancing across the air, plucking at some invisible keyboard. Stephen had begun to fidget and mutter, no doubt sensing an opportunity for redemption. Finch himself had felt an unusual level of agitation.

‘All three works to Murchison & Dunne then, Mr. Bayber?’ Cranston could hardly contain himself.

Thomas nodded. ‘Of course, Mr. Cranston. That has always been my intention. That the work be sold in its entirety. Only in its entirety.’

‘Marvelous,’ Cranston said.

Finch’s throat tightened. Of course . Never a good sign with Thomas. He felt the need to sit down, the weight of a promise he hadn’t wanted to make sitting like a stone in his gut.

‘So, Mr. Cranston. You will contact me with a plan, I assume?’

‘A plan?’ Cranston’s brows arched closer to his hairline, but he smiled indulgently.

‘A plan for finding the other two panels, of course.’

Finch put his hand to his forehead.

Cranston blanched, the color quickly leaving his face. ‘You don’t have them here?’

Thomas smiled, and shook his head.

‘But you know where they are?’ Stephen asked.

‘Well, if he did, it’s unlikely there’d be a need to find them, Mr. Jameson. Look here, Bayber …’ Cranston’s mood had abruptly sharpened, which was understandable. Finch himself was becoming less enthused by the minute.

‘Please, Mr. Cranston.’ Thomas opened his hands to them, as if offering the most obvious of explanations. ‘Don’t alarm yourself. It’s a simple matter. The other two panels were sent to the Kessler sisters many years ago. I believe they’d be happy for the income the sale would presumably bring.’

‘You’ll call and ask them?’ Stephen appeared to wait for another rebuke from Cranston, but evidently Cranston was wondering the same thing.

Thomas walked to the window, staring at the velvet curtain as if he could see through it, out onto the street and into the flat afternoon light. ‘I’ve lost track of them, I’m afraid.’

Finch coughed. The situation was clearly getting out of hand. This wasn’t anything he’d signed up for, shaky promise or not. He needed to extricate himself from the looming mess as rapidly as possible.

‘Thomas,’ he said, ‘surely this would be better suited to an investigator of some sort? A professional person who could locate the Kessler sisters and find out whether they still have the paintings in their possession? Then Murchison & Dunne could approach the owners regarding an acquisition. And Jameson could authenticate the works. I doubt anyone in this room has the particular skills required to track down missing persons.’

‘Yes,’ Cranston agreed. ‘That sounds quite reasonable.’

‘Oh, but you have the skills,’ Thomas said, pressing his fingertips together. ‘Denny, I believe you and Mr. Jameson are exactly the right people for the job.’

It became alarmingly clear that Thomas had thought the whole thing out, and that Finch and Stephen had just been tasked with a quest, their fortunes now intertwined.

‘If I might ask, Mr. Bayber, why is that?’ Stephen appeared to be completely baffled.

‘Who better to look,’ Thomas said, ‘than those who have a vested interest in the outcome? Financial, and otherwise.’

‘So, Professor, should I make the reservations, or should you?’

‘Reservations?’ Finch was distracted. Drops from one of the umbrella’s ribs funneled down the back of his neck. His wool socks were damp, driving the chill straight into his ankles.

‘For our flights. We can get to Rochester from JFK in no time. It’s probably not much of a cab ride from there.’

‘I’m not entirely convinced this is the best way to go about things. Cranston shouldn’t have left so quickly.’

‘Is there a problem?’ Stephen asked, shifting his briefcase to his other hand and waving at a taxi that slowed briefly before speeding past them. At Finch’s hesitation, he blurted, ‘You do believe it’s his work, don’t you? It was only a cursory examination, but I’m reasonably sure …’

‘You may be only reasonably sure. I have no doubt of it.’

Finch knew it was Thomas’s work the moment he saw it. Not that the portrait was like anything else Thomas had done, but Finch recognized it, nonetheless. The black, white, and yellow pigments of his verdaccio deftly knit to produce an underpainting of grayish green that toned the warm bone of the primer. He could identify Thomas’s technique as easily as he could Lydia’s childish scrawl on a piece of paper. Besides which, his reactions to Thomas’s paintings were immediate and visceral: a sudden drop in his gut, a tingling at the tips of his fingers, a knockout punch to any prejudices he harbored regarding what defined art.

This was the gift of knowing an artist’s secret language, a gift that came with age and focused study: the ability to interpret a brushstroke, to recognize colors, to identify a pattern the artist’s hand created instinctually from comfort and habit. Finch could look at Thomas’s work and read his pride and frustration, his delight in perfection, his obsessive desire. But he would be forced to leave it to Stephen, with his arsenal of toys and gadgets and technology, to officially christen the work a Bayber. That fact lodged in his craw like a rough crumb, making a home for itself in the darkness of his throat, refusing to be dislodged. He was an expert of one sort, Jameson of another. Money followed the word of only one of them.

‘Yes, it’s Bayber’s work, Stephen. I’m sure a closer examination will confirm it.’ Finch was furious with Thomas. The holidays were coming, the anniversary of Claire’s death only a few weeks away. He didn’t want to embark on some ill-defined mission. He wanted to be hibernating in his own apartment, waking only when the darkness of the months ahead had passed. But he’d given his word. That meant something to him, as Thomas well knew. He was trapped.

‘You think we should start looking somewhere else then? Not go to the cabin first? Do you want to start at the house instead?’

Finch steeled himself for the inevitable abuse. ‘I don’t fly.’

‘What?’

‘I said I don’t fly.’

Stephen dropped his tool case and started shaking violently until he finally bent over, hiccuping into his knees.

‘I don’t find it all that humorous,’ Finch said.

Stephen righted himself, dabbing at his eyes with the edge of his jacket. ‘Oh, but it is,’ he said. ‘I can’t drive.’

Finch drummed his fingers on the corner of his desk, waiting for his computer screen to refresh. Once Stephen found out he didn’t want to fly, he’d somehow ended up with the mundane task of handling logistics. Who, in this day and age, didn’t have a driver’s license? How did the man function? On the other hand, Finch could think of hundreds of people, both well-known and obscure, who chose not to fly. The laptop screen finally blinked and offered up a home page for the car rental agency; a form with questions to be answered, boxes to be ticked, numbers to be filled in, felonies to be reported; all required before they would deem him worthy to drive one of their Fiestas or Aveos. He lingered over the ‘Specialty’ class, tempted by the bright red of a Mustang before coming to his senses. Late fall, unseasonable weather, and Stephen Jameson. None of these screamed sporty roadster. He squinted and punched a key, squinted and punched, paused to review, then punched once more—‘Submit.’