Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 141, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 858 & 859, March/April 2013

Girl Feeding Birds by Elizabeth Zelvin

Elizabeth Zelvin is a poet, short-story writer, mystery novelist, and psychotherapist. Her three mystery novels feature series character Bruce Koehler, a recovering alcoholic; the most recent entry in that series, Death Will Extend Your Vacation, was published by Five Star Press in 2012. For her short fiction, the New York author has received three Agatha Award nominations and a Derringer nomination from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. She joins us this month with a nonseries tale.

I stumbled up the broad steps of the Metropolitan Museum six paces behind Cousin Ashley. My arms ached with the weight of the tower of books and files she’d loaded me up with. Every time I bumped another step upward, the whole pile threatened to escape from under my clamped chin and slide away. I nudged one knee up and braced my arms to grip the load more firmly. I winced as something sharp nicked my arm and added paper cuts to the list of hazards I hadn’t considered when I agreed to work for Cousin Ash.

I had only done it because, as Ash had predicted, in a bad economy I couldn’t get a job with my MFA in art conservation from NYU. It was infuriating when she was right.

“Let’s face it, Janny darling,” she had said, “you can’t be anything in the art world without a doctorate or good connections, especially if you’re not gay.” Her brow had furrowed prettily as she rummaged in her bottomless store of zingers. “If only you actually had talent. But we both know you’re not an artist.”

I remembered Ashley practicing that furrowed brow in the mirror in the room we shared, summers at Aunt Gwen’s in Southampton. And she remembered how to get to me. It had been the hardest decision of my life to accept that what Ash called “your little gift” was less talent than a working painter needed. I had thrown myself into the discipline of conserving and restoring the masters. I had grown to love the work. But she could still make me feel like a failure.

“You’d better come work for me, darling,” she’d said, “if you must work. Oh, that’s right, you don’t have a trust fund, do you?” She knew damn well I was the poor relation. She’d tossed her head without disordering the Bergdorf-blond hair.

“You could go to retail.” Retail was the Met’s bread and butter. “Anybody can do it, and they always have openings. Still, you’ll do better as my assistant.” Silvery laugh. She’d practiced that too. “Unless you’d rather be a guard?”

So I’d sold my soul to the devil and taken out the change in wear on the teeth I couldn’t help grinding in my sleep. Things got better when I met my current boyfriend. Joel was a guard at the museum and a gifted painter. Now he waved from the top of the steps as Ash sailed past him. He reached out to help me with the stack of books as Ash’s entourage of sycophants swept by, nearly knocking me down. Joel’s big, competent hands steadied me.

“Hey, you,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m okay. Listen, I got Cousin Ashley to promise she’d look at your portfolio.” Joel needed recommendations for the prestigious MFA program in painting at Yale, where he hoped to get a fellowship. I’d offered to call in a few chips with Ash.

“You didn’t have to.” He hugged me hard. “I hate for you to owe her anything. But thanks.”

“Janny! I don’t have all day!” Ash’s shrill voice floated back, impatient and commanding, like Hannibal telling the elephants to get a move on. “We’ve got a major event in less than two days, in case you’ve forgotten.”

I hadn’t forgotten. The museum was unveiling a major acquisition, a newly discovered Vermeer. For this occasion, the Met would throw a party on the scale of the Saturnalia in ancient Rome.

“Gotta go,” I told Joel. “Are you working the party tomorrow night?”

“Yep. Have you seen the Vermeer?”

“Not yet. Ash did. Even she was impressed.”

“Jan-ny!”

“You’d better go,” he said. “Can you get away at lunchtime?”

“Not a chance. Too bad.” I didn’t try to hide my disappointment. Joel and I could sometimes find half an hour in the workday to talk and even kiss. We would meet in a small gallery of late Roman architecture, most of it in fragments. Hardly anybody ever entered it, and those few only by accident. It had a marble bench and a little fountain whose gurgle was enough to mask soft conversation.

“This evening, then?”

“I wish I could, but I have to go see my uncle Solly. I want to talk to him about you. He’d make a better reference than Ash.”

“Janny! Now!”

“I guess I’ll see you at the party, then.”

“I’ll be working too, but look for me.” I blew him a kiss as I scurried after Ashley.

I let myself into Uncle Solly’s brownstone in the East Seventies, a four-story gem that, unlike most of its neighbors, had never been divided into apartments. He’d given me a key when I got the job with Ash, so I’d have someplace to disappear to within walking distance of the Met. I started down the high-ceilinged hall that ran the length of the parlor floor to Uncle Solly’s den at the back of the house.

“Is that you, Janny?” Uncle Solly called. “Come in, come in.”

“I’m looking at the naives. Oh, wow, is this new?”

“They were always your favorites.” Uncle Solly’s voice had cracked and faded with age, but his rich chuckle survived.

“When I was ten,” I said. “They’re still great, though.”

The track lighting made the most of his collection of American naive animal paintings: zoos, Noah’s arks, and peaceable kingdoms. Each canvas, crowded with bright colors and painstaking detail, was innocent of perspective yet perfectly balanced. Each scene attracted and satisfied the eye, charming without being cute.

“This one is new,” I said. “Did you really need another Bronx Zoo?”

“See if you can spot what makes it unique.” Uncle Solly chuckled. When I was little, he’d always made up games for me that involved some sort of visual training.

“The baby giraffe!” No doubt the Bronx Zoo really had a new baby giraffe. Uncle Solly had no use for anything inauthentic.

I wriggled out of my coat and slung it over the back of an armchair. Uncle Solly’s den was like a Victorian gentlemen’s club from the waist down: dark leather, chairs built for comfort, gleaming parquet peeking out around the edges of a muted but still gorgeous Persian carpet, an antique Kashan. The walls, however, were stark and white to show off his magnificent art collection.

Uncle Solly sat hunched forward, sunk in the depths of a bulky cabled sweater like an old, wrinkled turtle. I dropped a kiss on the top of his bald head.

“Sit, sit,” he said. He rubbed his hands together as if the friction between his palms might strike a spark. “I’m always cold these days.” He examined the backs of his hands, papery skin draped over blue veins that stood out like rivers on a map. “Never get old, Jannele.”

I sat down facing him and laid my hand over his.

“Don’t say you’re old.”

“The calendar doesn’t lie. I wish it did.” The remains of a Viennese accent still clung to his lips, turning “wish” into “veesh.” Uncle Solly had been a resistance fighter in his youth. He had come to America at twenty, right after the war. “So open your eyes and look. What do you see?”

This was an old game between us. I twisted in my chair and scanned the room.

“The Kandinsky.” It glowed on the wall behind him, another favorite from my childhood.

“You called it ‘The Big Bang’.”

“You told me that was its title!”

We both laughed. Uncle Solly had taught me how abstract painters like Kandinsky and Jackson Pollock express energy and motion. “Open your eyes and look” was an old catchphrase between us.

“So what else?”

“The Tchelitchew.” Another luminous painting, this one a small watercolor study for the famous “Hide and Seek,” which hung in the MOMA.

If my dad’s grandpa had been Solly’s father instead of his uncle — or if he had trusted Great-uncle Herman’s enthusiasm for the radical young painters he met in Paris before the war — I might not be a poor relation. But I never thought about that, except when Ash reminded me.

“So what else?”

“Something new?”

“There!” My eyes widened. The small painted panel hung where he could see it from his chair. “Is that a Botticelli?”

“So what’s wrong with the Old Masters? Meet la bella Simonetta.”

“My God, it really is.” Simonetta Vespucci, the toast of late fifteenth-century Florence and inspiration for its artists, dead at twenty-two.

“I outbid three museums for her. I put her where I can look at her all day.”

“This isn’t catalogued,” I said. “How on earth did they ever miss her?”

“How do you think?” His eyebrows, dappled tufts that had outlasted his hair, drew down in one of his rare frowns. “Looted and hidden away.”

Oh. He meant the Nazis, who had stolen a staggering amount of art from Jewish families. Pieces were still turning up, and international law was still grappling with the claims of the original owners’ descendants versus the collectors who had ended up with them.

“Is the provenance known?”

“They are all dead in the camps, with no survivors to start over after the war or children and grandchildren to come forward now. If I could, I would give it back, Jannele.” He shook his head to clear the moisture in his eyes.

“I know you would, Uncle Solly.”

“So. What’s bad and what’s good?” This was another game we’d always played. I could remember giggling at his accent as he explained, “Bad is wegetables. Bad is ven the teacher scolds because you make a mistake. Good is love and art and learning something new.”

“Bad is Cousin Ash, as usual,” I said.

“That girl.” He shook his head. “Good head, bad heart.” Ash was not on the Jewish side of the family — Aunt Gwen was my mother’s sister — but Uncle Solly was on the board of the Met, so their paths crossed from time to time.

“She’s okay,” I said. “Well, she’s not, but I can take it.” I didn’t want him worrying about me. “Good is Joel.”

“Ah, the boyfriend.” His head popped up out of his turtleneck, and his eyes were bright with interest.

“I think he’s a keeper, Uncle Solly.”

“He is the lucky one,” he said.

“The Vermeer is good too,” I said. “I haven’t seen it yet, but I can hardly wait. Are you going to the opening?”

“Too many people, too much standing, not so good champagne,” he said. He lifted a bushy brow and cocked his head. “You will be there? Working?”

“Holding Ash’s train as usual,” I said. “But I’ll get to see the painting. If I have to stay late, can I come back here?” The guest room on the top floor was always ready, though I didn’t like to impose on him too often.

“Yes, yes, whenever you wish.”

“I may not come.” I hoped that Joel would invite me home to his place in Brooklyn. We were too new as a couple to take anything for granted.

“Whatever is best for you, my Jannele. Be beautiful, and enjoy the party.”

The Met knows how to throw a party. The Great Hall was packed. Everybody from the mayor on down had been invited, and it looked as if no one had declined. The hall’s perpetual display of flowers was glorious tonight: out-of-season dogwood and mimosa, oversized sprays of lilies whose heavy scent mingled with the guests’ Chanel and Guerlain. Champagne flowed, canapes topped with dabs of caviar circulated, and vast trays of elegant finger food were demolished and replaced.

To view the Vermeer, guests had to mount the broad marble stairs and follow signs to the small gallery where they’d hung “Girl Feeding Birds.” It had gone up only that afternoon, the location a secret that had been widely leaked. Security and the higher-ups had been livid, but everybody else, like me, had managed to sneak away to see it before the crowds arrived. At the Met, even the trolls in the basement love art.

The setting was a seventeenth-century Dutch domestic interior. The amazing Vermeer light slanted in from the window. A shallow bowl sat on what could have been a kitchen table. A girl stood between table and window. A bird perched on her extended right hand, taking seeds from her palm. Another bird sat on her left hand, which she held up under her chin. The bird was taking a seed from between her lips, so it looked as if girl and bird were kissing. If the subject was unique, the coloring of the birds was astounding. Vermeer’s palette had included vermilion, yellow ocher, and red madder. But nothing in the known works was half as bright as those birds.

Cultural events, like funerals, can become noisy, cheerful parties at which the guests talk about anything and everything except what brought them together. But at this party, everyone was talking about the Vermeer. I caught the buzz in snatches as I darted through the crowd. Cousin Ash demanded frequent refills of champagne and made me put her bottle of Xanax in my purse so she wouldn’t be tempted to mix them. But in between, I enjoyed the party.

Halfway through the evening, I ran out of steam. My feet hurt. My cheeks ached from smiling. I was too tired to find a place to set down the empty champagne flute in my hand. I scanned the crowd. I couldn’t see Ash. Good. That meant she couldn’t see me. I closed my eyes and let the talk and laughter eddy around me.

“How do they know it is a real Vermeer? There was van Meegeren.”

“That was back in World War Two. With today’s techniques, it’s a lot harder to forge a painting that old. They’ve authenticated this one up and down and sideways.”

“What about the red and yellow birds? They’re so un-Vermeer.”

“Vermeer had the palette. He was a genius. Why shouldn’t he try something different?”

“Where did it come from, anyhow? How could a painting like that be hidden?”

“They’re still finding works the Nazis looted. I don’t want to spread any rumors, but I heard this was one of those.”

“Van Meegeren sold some of his forged paintings to the Nazis.”

“Aren’t those works all supposed to go back to the Jewish families that owned them before the war?”

“That’s a matter of opinion. Anyhow, a lot of those families died out completely.”

Died out? My eyes snapped open. Murdered! I felt a surge of fury. Six million Jews had been rounded up, herded into cattle trucks, thrown into concentration camps, and gassed or tortured to death. Uncle Solly’s parents and his younger brothers had been killed. I wanted to speak up. But I couldn’t make a scene in the middle of the Great Hall unless I wanted to throw away not only my job, but my career.

“Champagne? Your glass is empty.”

It took me a moment to realize the smooth male voice was addressing me and another to realize he was not a waiter, but a very attractive man in black tie that fit as if he’d had it custom made, possibly on Savile Row, not rented it for the evening. He smiled, flashing perfect teeth against skin a little darker than a world-class tan. Liquid black eyes narrowed as his face crinkled into lines of good humor. He took the glass from my unresisting fingers and handed me a fresh one, brimming with bubbles.

“You look rather lost. Do you know where you’re supposed to be?”

His accent was Oxbridge English over the faintest breath of foreign — from his looks, probably Arabic. I smiled at him.

“Thank you. I’m supposed to be glued to my boss’s heels all evening. But she’s vanished, and I don’t particularly want to go and look for her.” There, I’d let him know up front I wasn’t a somebody. “I’m Janny. How do you do?” I shifted the glass to my left hand, held out my right, and shook. His hand was warm, dry, and fine-boned, not a big paw like Joel’s.

“I am very glad to know you.” He held my hand in a light clasp until I pulled it away. “I am Daoud. I am nobody. That is my prince over there. Sheikh Akhmed Abdelaziz. I too am expected to heel and much happier not to.”

Too polite to point, he lifted his chin toward a knot of gentlemen wearing white keffiyehs on their heads. At the moment, they were talking to one of the Met’s big donors, a crony of Aunt Gwen’s. “The one in black tie,” I guessed. The others all wore flowing white robes below their headgear. “He looks angry.”

“He wanted the painting,” Daoud said.

“He could afford it?” I blurted before I could stop myself.

Daoud laughed.

“He is one of the great collectors.”

“Oh.” Belatedly, I recognized the prince’s name. “Stupid of me. I’ve heard of Prince Sheikh Akhmed Abdelaziz.”

“In my country,” Daoud said, “he has a museum that is part of his palace. Climate controlled, experts to make sure every piece is always in perfect condition.”

“Is it open to the public?”

Daoud laughed again.

“Americans are so refreshing! In my country, that is not the way things work. Only the prince’s most privileged guests are invited to view his collection.”

“What’s he got?” I asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I am not offended that you ask,” he said. “But regretfully, I am not allowed to tell you.”

I remembered reading that the prince’s collection was rumored to include quite a number of works that had passed through Nazi hands. He had fought against returning to their rightful owners those works that the families of European Jews had identified as theirs. All at once, Daoud didn’t look quite so attractive.

“Have you heard,” I asked, “that the reason this Vermeer has just come to light is that it was Nazi loot?”

“I have heard this.” Daoud pressed his lips together, and the twinkle faded from his eyes. “True or not, that is ancient history. Some collector acquired it decades ago, and now it belongs to the museum.”

“You don’t think the Jewish families ought to get their treasures back, if they can prove the provenance?”

“Is the Metropolitan Museum offering to give this painting back? Has the British Museum returned the Elgin Marbles? Besides, they are only J—.”

He caught himself. He must know it was impolitic to make anti-Semitic remarks in New York. But it was too late. To him, the Holocaust survivors’ descendants were “only Jews.”

We parted awkwardly. I still couldn’t see Ash anywhere, and I was in no mood for her. I needed a hug. I wanted Joel. He should be somewhere between the top of the stairs and the Vermeer. He’d told me Security wanted the guards to keep moving throughout the evening, so that part of the time he’d actually stand guard over the painting.

“I’ll be tom between wanting to examine every brush stroke and making sure no one makes off with it,” he’d admitted.

I couldn’t imagine how thieves would get it out the door, even if they rolled the canvas, which I could hardly bear to think about. But then, I wasn’t an art thief. There was always some crook who had the skills. And there was always a collector with more money than God and more covetousness than conscience who would pay a fortune to possess such a painting.

In the small gallery, the crowd had diminished but not dispersed. I walked the route from the Great Hall to the Vermeer and back twice, asking guards along the way if they’d seen Joel. The one who’d talked to him last said he had gone for a break, but he should have been back by now.

“Maybe he snuck out to smoke,” the guard suggested.

But Joel didn’t smoke. Maybe I’d find him in the little room with the fountain, our special place. It would be quiet there even with thousands of people on the premises. He’d been on his feet all evening. He’d want to sit down. Nobody else would preempt the marble bench. Maybe he’d even stretched out — or curled up, since the bench wasn’t that long, as we’d discovered — for a cat nap. He might have hoped I’d join him or simply lost track of time.

My feet were killing me. When I reached the first empty gallery, I slipped off my patent-leather party shoes, too high and teetery in the heel and too pointy in the toe for comfort. The marble floors felt cool under my stockinged soles as I walked from room to room, dangling the shoes from my hand. Not a single person crossed my path.

I reached the first of three rooms of boring late-Roman artifacts. From the innermost room, I could hear the gurgle of the fountain. Or was it laughter? I crept forward until I could see into the last gallery.

I saw Joel half-reclining on the bench. He wasn’t alone. I couldn’t see his companion’s face, but I knew her hair, her back, her low-cut glittering silver sequined gown. It was Ash. She straddled him, not only her arms but her long, slim legs wrapped around him and her lips glued to his. I stood watching long enough for them to run out of air. I kept telling myself to go, but my feet wouldn’t obey. My nose tickled. I pinched my nostrils closed, but it did no good. My breath exploded in a monumental sneeze. They had both heard my sneeze before. Joel sat up, pushing Ash off him. Our eyes met for a split second. Then I turned and fled.

I spent a miserable night tossing and turning in my bed at Uncle Solly’s. How could he! I didn’t exactly not blame Ash. But poaching and betrayal were in character for her. Her behavior didn’t shock me the way Joel’s did. I hadn’t known him as well as I thought I did. How could I face either of them? I thought of calling in sick, but for any Met employee not to appear at work the morning after a major party was Not Done. I wasn’t ready to leave my job — yet. Maybe Daoud’s prince could use a highly trained art restorer. An Arab emirate might be almost far enough from New York.

I cut over to Fifth Avenue and trotted uptown on the park side. I resisted the temptation to turn on my cell phone. I didn’t want to listen to Joel making excuses — or know for sure he hadn’t bothered to call. How could he? Was he that desperate to get into Yale? Or had I somehow failed to meet his standards? I couldn’t compete with Ash on any level. Except, as Uncle Solly had said, our hearts. At the moment, I didn’t know whether a connoisseur would value a bad heart higher or lower than a broken one.

Lost in my thoughts, I paid no attention to the sound of wailing sirens and excited voices — New York’s everyday music — until I stopped for the light at 79th Street. Then I saw police cars up ahead, red lights whirling. Barriers bracketed the museum, blocking Fifth Avenue from 79th to 84th. The cops had shooed everyone off the steps, though a crowd of onlookers lingered, milling around on the broad sidewalk by the fountains. I could see the flutter of yellow crime-scene tape.

I pushed my way forward through the crowd. The buzz of people asking what had happened gave way to a few authoritative voices claiming that they knew. The grim thought crossed my mind that if someone had murdered Ash, I’d be the prime suspect. But the word I kept hearing was not “killed,” but “stolen.”

The sidewalk vendors seemed to be packing up. One of them, a regular whose photographs of the city’s best-known monuments were popular with tourists, caught my eye. I threaded my way over to him.

“Someone stole that new Vermeer last night,” he said, “after the big bash. Biggest art theft ever in New York.” His voice rang with what sounded like civic pride. “Cops told us all to pack up and go. Dunno why, even if the museum stays closed all day.” He pursed his lips and surveyed the rubberneckers with regret. “It’d be a great day for sales.”

“But how? Who?” As if he would know.

“Cut the painting right outa the frame. Izznat what they do? They’re questioning all the guards.”

My insides felt as if a giant foot had tromped on my abdomen.

“Why the guards? There were a lot of people there last night.”

“That’s what I say.” The vendor zipped up his giant portfolio and kicked at the legs of his folding table so he could snap it shut. “Blame the proletariat.”

“I work there.” My voice came out cracked and wispy.

“You look upset.” He eyed me with a certain sympathy. “Why doncha call your boss? Bet he’ll tell you to go home. Enjoy the day.”

“Thanks,” I croaked. He waved and walked away as I fumbled in my purse. He was right. I’d better call Ash. As soon as I flipped the cell phone on, it started beeping. Seven messages. I didn’t want to hear them, but I couldn’t afford not to.

“Janny, I know you’re mad at me, but it’s not what you think. Please call me and let me explain.”

“Janny, I know you’re angry, and you have every right to be. Please, please don’t walk away without hearing my side of it.”

“Janny, I don’t know what Ashley told you, but it’s not true. I wasn’t coming on to her. She grabbed me. Who are you going to believe, her or me?”

“Janny, you probably have your cell phone off. I don’t blame you. But please call me back. We’ve got to talk.”

“Janny, call me, all hell is breaking loose around here. You probably never want to see me again, but — oops, gotta go. Please put on your cell phone and call back when you get this.”

“Janny, don’t hang up when you hear my voice. I’m in big trouble. I need you. Even if you hate me, call me right away.”

The last call was from Ash.

“Janny, I hate to tell you this,” she cooed, her voice thick with cream and canary feathers, “but you may be in serious trouble. I’m sure you already know the Vermeer is gone. You may not have heard the police have got your boyfriend. You’d better encourage him to tell them where he hid it. I told them you’re my cousin and I didn’t believe for a second you were in it with him. But your best chance is for your boyfriend to come clean as soon as possible.”

My hands shook with anger as I stabbed at the button to return her call. I expected to get her voice mail. Anticipating having to leave a message riled me even more. But she picked up on the second ring.

“Oh, Janny, you poor thing. Have you talked to the police? Did they let you see your boyfriend? I’m afraid it looks bad for him, because Security says he’s the only guard whose time last night isn’t completely accounted for. The detective in charge told me they can’t see how he got the painting out, unless he had an accomplice. But maybe he hid it somewhere in the museum. Believe me, they’ll search the whole place, no matter how long it takes, so he’d better tell them where it is before they decide they won’t accept a plea bargain.”

“What the hell are you talking about!” It came out in a screech. Yelling at Ash never did any good. It simply bolstered her conviction that you were irrational. I lowered my voice. “Who says his time isn’t accounted for? You know damn well where he was when he wasn’t on duty.”

“Janny, darling, I know you’re upset, or you wouldn’t be making things up like this. I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

After I hung up on Ash, I stood irresolute, my thoughts racing. Had Joel been arrested? Had he called because he loved me and trusted me to help? Or did he just need bail? I pounded my fist against my palm, earning wary glances from the passersby. He knew I was the family have-not. For money, he should have gone to Ash. Unless he couldn’t go to Ash because they weren’t on intimate terms. Could I have misinterpreted what I’d seen? Maybe she’d pounced like a black-widow spider as he waited for me. If so, I’d walked in at just the wrong moment. Knowing Ash, I could believe she’d counted on that.

What did I know for sure? One, Joel hadn’t taken the Vermeer. I couldn’t be that mistaken about his character. Two, Ash had lied to me. She had been with Joel at least part of the time he’d been “missing.” I’d seen them with my own eyes. Who knew what lies she’d told the police. She’d managed to bring my name into it along with Joel’s. They’d had to talk to her because she knew all about the logistics for the party. But she’d had nothing to do with security for the Vermeer. She could pass as just another partygoer who hadn’t seen a thing. But wouldn’t Joel tell them he’d been with her? He might hesitate for fear that it would finish him with me. And if he dragged her into it, he could forget that recommendation to Yale. But his alibi was more important than a fellowship or what I thought. If he didn’t know that, I’d better call and tell him so.

My feet started moving of their own accord. I drifted down Fifth Avenue like a sleepwalker. I clutched the cell phone, squeezing and releasing it over and over. I made myself drop it back in my pocket. I couldn’t call, not yet. Uncle Solly. I’d go back to Uncle Solly’s, tell him everything. He’d help me figure out what to do. He’d still been asleep when I’d left this morning, but he’d be up by now. I wondered if he knew yet. At some point, they would have to notify all the members of the board that the Vermeer was gone.

If Joel needed money for bail or legal fees, I was sure Solly would supply it if I asked. I still wasn’t sure whether to rush to Joel’s rescue. It would depend on what he said about last night. Still, we were friends, weren’t we? I knew he didn’t have any family in New York, and his dad was a grocer back in Indiana. Was I still mad at him? I thought I wasn’t until I felt my fist punch my palm again. I wouldn’t call until I could tell him I had the money if he needed it. Then we’d see. My pace quickened. The sooner I talked to Solly, the better I’d feel.

My key clicked in the lock, and I swung open the heavy oak door. The scent of coffee floated in the air.

“Uncle Solly?” I raced down the stairs to the ground floor. He’d be in the kitchen, having breakfast looking out at the garden, which caught a little morning sun. But the level of the coffee in the electric pot had not gone down since I’d dashed out, and the table held only the small plate and scatter of toast crumbs I’d left.

“Uncle Solly! Are you up?” Could he be ill? Uncle Solly liked to get up and about early. He said sleeping in was for old men. I took the stairs to the parlor floor and the more heavily carpeted flight up to his bedroom two at a time. He kept the whole floor-through as a kind of suite. His door had been closed this morning when I clumped down from the top floor. It was still closed. The artworks in the hall were all museum quality: a Corot, a Klee, a Dürer woodcut. But I barely glanced at them.

I rapped on his door. Nobody entered the master suite without permission. It was his one area of reserve, as far as I knew.

“Uncle Solly! Are you there?” I knocked again. “It’s me, Janny.”

A faint groan responded, then my name.

“Come, Janny. Help me.”

I pushed open the door and peered in. At first I couldn’t see him, my view blocked by the early Empire pineapple four-poster bed, which I’d adored as a child and sometimes been allowed to bounce on, and the half-open doors to what he called his dressing room, really a deep walk-in closet.

“Here I am, Janny. I think I’ve broken my leg.”

He pushed the closet doors further ajar so I could see him lying on his back across the threshold. He wore silk pajamas and a Cardin bathrobe. Like Cinderella, he had lost a slipper, and the leg with the bare foot was twisted at an unnatural angle.

“Oh no! How did it happen?”

“I tripped,” he said, “like an old fool.”

I knelt beside him as he tried to push himself up, grunting with the effort. The leather scuff slipped off his other foot, and I caught it and laid it on the floor. At the same time, I eased my shoulder under his arm.

“Lean on me, Uncle Solly. Don’t try to move. Lie down and rest while I call nine-one-one”

My arm bracing his upper back, I tried to lower him to the floor.

“No, no!” He trembled as he shook his head. “Don’t call! Not yet!”

“You need an ambulance, Uncle Solly. And a stretcher, and probably some painkillers.” I reached for my phone. “Lie down so I can make the call.”

“No! I have to tell you first.”

Why wouldn’t he let me call? Was his distress simply old age’s fear of losing independence? I’d never had to humor Solly before.

“Tell me what?”

“I’m not getting senile, child.” That sounded more like the old Solly. “Open your eyes and look.”

As I slid my arm out from under him, he relaxed onto the floor and laid his head on the Kirman runner that started on the threshold of the closet and ran between ranks of beautifully tailored suits and shirts to what should have been the rear wall of the closet. Instead, a sliding door opened on a blaze of light that poured from a hidden room. Not daylight. Gallery light.

“May I look?”

“The secret is out,” he said without opening his eyes. He had aged ten years since the day before. “Unless — but see for yourself. Then I will explain. After that, it is up to you.”

The rows of clothing parted like a curtain going up. My feet made no sound as I stepped into the bright little room. I already knew what I would see: the missing Vermeer. Six other paintings hung on the spotless walls. I recognized all of them. All were of known provenance and had dropped out of sight in the past fifteen years. The art world believed that they were squirreled away in some private collection. And so they were.

Seeing them all together dazzled me. I took my time. It was hard to tear myself away, but eventually I came out and sank down next to Solly. I took out my phone.

“If I call nine-one-one,” I said, “I can ask for an ambulance and the police at the same time.”

“Don’t be angry with me, Jannele. I did not steal all of them, only my beautiful girl with birds. The others I paid for, more money than any museum would offer, through agents paid to be discreet.”

“But why? I don’t understand why you had to hoard them. You’re the one who always told me museums make art lovers of us all.”

“It is the vice of my old age,” he said, “the only one I have left. I become selfish and demanding, like any rich old lover.”

“But the Vermeer!” I insisted. “You’re cheating the museum.”

“It is well insured,” he said, “I made sure of that.”

“I still don’t understand. It was looted by the Nazis.”

“This I know,” he said. “It is the reason for everything.”

“That’s the part I want to hear.”

“Wait a little,” he said. Vait a leetle. Agitation made his accent more pronounced.

I could see beads of sweat on his forehead. He must be in terrible pain. Part of me thought he deserved it. He reached out for my hand, and I let him take it.

“You see, I know this painting. When I was a boy, it belonged to the family of my dearest friend. Her name was Elisabeth — Liserl, we called her. Such a pretty little girl. She died at Auschwitz. But her older brother survived. After the war, he made a family in America. It returns to his grandchildren when I die. The museum would have kept it forever.”

“But you’re not dying,” I protested — not because it made his crime more heinous, but because I loved him.

“I am, Jannele. I have an inoperable tumor. The doctors give me six months. Then the Vermeer goes back home where it belongs. I give the others to the Met to make up for it. I have made you my executor. You will find a way.”

“Give me a moment,” I said. I kissed his wrinkled knuckles and laid his hand gently on his chest. I entered the hidden room and looked at the Vermeer for a long time. Then I slid the door shut behind me. Closed, it looked like an ordinary wall.

I crouched down beside Uncle Solly.

“One more question. How?”

“I asked your cousin. I told you — good head.”

“Bad heart, you said. She did it for money?”

“Bad morals too.” He gave the ghost of a chuckle.

“But she had an—” Oh. She had an alibi. She’d made sure of it. Then she denied it, holding back as she waited for Joel and me to become outraged enough to tell the police exactly where she’d been.

“She hired a professional?” Of course she had. Cousin Ash didn’t even clip her own toenails.

“I thought it was better not to ask.”

I patted Solly’s hand and flipped my phone open.

“Emergency? I need an ambulance. My elderly uncle has a broken leg.”