The Masterpiece

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

April 1975

On Clara’s last night in New York City, Virginia insisted she join her for dinner.

The invitation had come out of the blue. In the weeks since they’d been caught in the art school, Clara had made plans to pack up and head back to Arizona. The clerks at the info booth had thrown a small going-away celebration party for her that afternoon, with Doris passing around homemade cupcakes that tasted like glue, and Clara had accepted their kind words and good wishes. Virginia showed up late. Not a surprise, as she’d pulled away recently, disappearing during lunch hours, coming in late and leaving early. No longer harassing Clara. Which at first was a relief—the woman was a nutjob, after all—but then hurt more than she would care to admit.

Clara had told Virginia she couldn’t possibly go out to dinner, that she had far too much to do before leaving, but Virginia had refused to take no for an answer. In truth, all Clara had to do was put the suits hanging in the small closet into her suitcase and pack up her art gear. She’d been painting, up in her hotel room, but hadn’t told Virginia about that.

Something about being forced to paint again opened the floodgates. Her mind whirled with thoughts of the work at hand: how to shape the shoulders, what colors would capture the intense whiteness of the scar. She’d been painting, from her memory, Virginia. Remembering the sad, faraway look in her eyes as she stared up, trying not to cry, so exposed. If anything, Virginia’s bravery in that moment had made Clara feel closer to her than ever. She’d been proud of the woman, of the shocking display of her vulnerability.

But then the men had come barging in, and after that, Virginia had completely withdrawn.

Virginia wasn’t alone at the table when Clara entered the restaurant, an Italian place with checkered tablecloths and candles stuck in wine bottles, wax dripping down the sides like white lava.

“I’m so glad you came.” Virginia was breathless. She put her arm around the girl next to her. “This is my daughter, Ruby.”

“The one who took your boyfriend?”

Virginia turned red. Clara should have held her tongue, but she was peevish about Virginia’s cold shoulder over the past few weeks. Now she thought she could make it up to her by taking her out to dinner right before she left?

“Mom?” Ruby turned to her mother, confused.

A bit contrite, Clara shook her hand. “I’m just kidding. Your mother mentioned that you’d found a new beau. She said he was delightful.”

Ruby gave a shy smile. “He is.”

They sat and ordered wine, which helped melt some of Clara’s bitterness. That and the way Virginia looked at her daughter as Ruby spoke about her photography and the bar where she worked—like she couldn’t believe this stunning child was her offspring. Sweet, really.

The wine was making Clara loopy. They ordered pasta, and that helped steady her.

“Your daughter is lovely,” she said to Virginia.

“Isn’t she? The two of us have been through a lot these past several months.” Virginia looked over at Clara. “But then again, haven’t we all?”

Virginia carried on, telling Ruby about the going-away party. How Clara had returned from her lunch break to find her seat decorated with ribbons and balloons—a ridiculous idea in that small space, in Clara’s opinion—and how excited they’d been to surprise her. As if Virginia was there the entire time and hadn’t blown in late, gasping her apologies.

When dinner was over, Virginia insisted that Clara join them in a taxi.

“I’m not going your way. I’m downtown; you’re up.”

Ruby and Virginia exchanged a strange look. Ruby spoke up. “We insist. Come on, it’s your last cab in New York. We want to treat you.”

The girl’s sweet smile was hard to turn down.

Once in, with Clara squashed between Ruby and Virginia, the cab headed north. “Where are you taking me?”

“Just one stop and then we’ll drop you off.” Virginia stared straight ahead. In fact, all during dinner, Virginia had seemed out of sorts. Usually she reminded Clara of a sparrow, hopping aimlessly about. Tonight, her energy was more like that of a woodpecker. Noisy, yet focused.

Never mind. It wasn’t as if Clara had something important to get back to.

The cab pulled up in front of a low gray building on Madison Avenue. The home of Sotheby Parke Bernet auction house. Clara’s stomach flipped when she remembered what day it was.

April third.

The day the Clyde painting was going to auction.

“No. I’m not going in there.” She braced one hand against the front seat of the cab, as if expecting them to yank her out.

“Please,” Virginia pleaded. “We’ve come this far.” She and her daughter held both doors open.

Clara got out only because she was worried Ruby would be run down by a passing bus, standing in the middle of the street like that.

She’d catch another cab home, and silently cursed Virginia for the additional expense.

“Now that we’re all here, why don’t we pop inside?” Ruby took Clara’s arm.

Clara resisted. “Unless you have the money saved up to buy the painting, what’s the point?”

Virginia stepped close, her face serious. “I know you don’t trust me and that I’ve disappointed you at every turn. But I sat for you when you asked. You know how hard that was for me. I’m asking you to do something that’s just as hard for you.”

Clara looked over at Ruby, who was biting her lip. God only knew what was really going on. “Fine.”

Inside, they took the elevator up to a cavernous room, at the front of which stood a dais and a large easel. Smartly dressed men and women filled most of the seats, but Virginia nabbed three near the back. Clara began to leaf through the auction catalog that had been placed on her seat as a prim-looking man with a mustache spoke out from the lectern.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today for Sotheby Parke Bernet’s American Art Spring Auction. Our first artwork is Edward Hopper’s remarkable watercolor House on the Shore, signed by Hopper, dated 1924, and inscribed Gloucester. I’m going to start the bidding at sixty-five thousand dollars.”

The auctioneer spoke with an English accent. As he motioned with his hands, he kept his fingers together, so they resembled fins. He indicated to each bidder as they raised their paddles, left fin, then right.

“He looks like a robot,” said Clara under her breath.

But the man’s mastery of the room impressed her. When the bidding paused, he didn’t rush to fill in the space but left them all hanging until another potential buyer jumped in to relieve the tension.

A de Kooning pastel went for $40,000. Seeing it was like seeing an old friend again. She remembered drinking and laughing with him around Levon’s fireplace. Next up was a Stuart Davis gouache. He’d been working on that for ages, complaining to Levon that he couldn’t find the right perspective. The memories brought tears to her eyes, and she wiped them away. This was torture.

She started to rise.

“No. Not yet.”

Virginia’s words were a command, not a request. Clara sat back down.

Only then did she notice that Virginia was quietly communicating with the other people seated nearby. She exchanged a whisper with a woman with long braids sitting in the row in front of them, while Ruby nodded to the man on her right. In between auction items, the people in the rows behind murmured to one another, leaning forward to check in with Virginia.

“How do you know all these people?” Clara asked Virginia.

“What people?”

Two art handlers wearing white gloves lifted the next work onto the easel.

The Siren.

Clara sucked in her breath. She hadn’t laid eyes on it in forty-six years, and analyzed it with a fresh perspective. Even from this distance, the strength of the composition was evident. As was the power of the colors, the blues and the blacks. It had been her best work. Now a packed room of strangers ogled her painting as if it were just another item on the auction block, not an open wound. She suddenly understood, viscerally, Virginia’s reaction to those men barging in on their session together. She wanted to snatch it off the easel and run off into the night.

The auctioneer piped up. “Next we have an untitled painting attributed to Levon Zakarian, signed as ‘Clyde,’ the only such work to survive. Bidding will begin at seventy thousand dollars.”

Clara tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry.

Virginia stood and held something up above her head.

The auctioneer blinked a couple of times and opened his mouth to speak, but Virginia cut in. “My name is Virginia Clay, and I am here to protest the sale of this painting. First off, it has a name. It’s called The Siren. I believe The Siren was stolen from the painter by the anonymous seller.”

What on earth was she thinking? This was mad. No one interrupted an auction. Already, the auctioneer was waving to the security guards in the back.

Virginia continued, her voice loud. “I believe the sellers, Irving and Hazel Lorette, stole this painting from the artist.”

Clara stared up at Virginia. She was taking a huge chance here. No one had confirmed that the Lorettes were the sellers. Stupid girl.

“How dare you?”

A man in the very front row stood. Mr. Lorette. The auctioneer asked for everyone to please take their seats, as Mr. Lorette and Virginia glared at each other across the crowd. Clara made out Mrs. Lorette next to him, straining her neck to look back.

“Mr. Lorette,” said Virginia, “I’m here with dozens of family members of alumni of the Grand Central School of Art, all of whom accuse you of theft.”

People in the three rows around them also stood, many clutching large posters in their hands, which they raised high above their heads, just as Virginia had done. Clara glanced about. They portrayed images of artworks with the artist’s name in block letters at the top. Several press photographers snapped photos as the crowd rumbled with unease.

Virginia’s voice rang out. Louder now, clearer. “These twelve paintings were stolen from students at the Grand Central School of Art during the 1920s, thirties, and forties. After the artists’ deaths, they were all put up for auction by an anonymous seller. Irving and Hazel Lorette.”

Clara looked back at the auctioneer, who glanced down at the Lorettes with a raised eyebrow, his face ashen. Virginia had called it correctly.

“The Lorettes pilfered the work of the top students over the twenty years the school was in session and have been living off the proceeds ever since.” Virginia yanked Clara to her feet. The flashes from the cameras blinded her. “This is ‘Clyde.’ The artist of The Siren was not Levon Zakarian but Clara Darden, the famed illustrator and industrial designer. She’s alive and well, which is the only reason this fraudulent scheme was discovered.”

Clara looked around, stunned. The Grand Central School of Art had a long list of distinguished students. How had Virginia tracked these people down?

The woman with braids stepped into the aisle. “My name is Janice Russo, the curator of the Art Students League. The past several weeks, we’ve been accumulating the proof to show that these allegations are true and should be taken seriously. We are asking for the opportunity to present our documentation to the auction house before this work is sold.”

Reporters hurried forward, notebooks and pens in hand. The auctioneer banged his gavel a few times to try to restore order, as if they were in a courtroom, but gave up as the noise level rose. “We’ll stop the bidding and reconvene at a later time.” He rushed off quickly, trailed by several assistants carrying The Siren out of harm’s way, and disappeared out a side door. The Lorettes weren’t far behind, with reporters giving chase.

“What just happened?” Clara turned to Virginia, who was hugging her daughter close. The people in the crowd behind them were shaking hands and hugging, too.

“Jackie O said that it’s never too late, that even at the eleventh hour, you could change the course of events.” Virginia glowed with triumph. “That day we looked out the clock and over the rally, I realized she knew the secret: There’s power in numbers. I figured if the Lorettes had done this to you, they’d probably done it to others. I went back up to the school and searched through the crates to find anything that was administrative, including names of former students, listed by year. Janice helped out, going through the class lists and highlighting any alumni who had made it big but were no longer alive.”

Ruby piped up. “Then we went through old Sotheby Parke Bernet auction catalogs and cross-checked our list of names against any lots by anonymous sellers.”

Clara remembered the random thefts while she’d been a teacher at the school, usually blamed on the cleaning staff or jealous students. The Lorettes had total access, of course, and the most promising students were easy enough to spot. An insurance policy for their later years.

“So then,” said Virginia, “along with Janice, we contacted the living relatives of the artists. None of them had even seen the paintings before, because the Lorettes always waited until the artist died to bring it to auction.”

Clara nodded. “They’d assumed that I probably died by now, or disappeared into the ether. How did you get all this done so fast, in time for the auction?”

“It wasn’t easy. All hands on deck. Janice even enlisted some of the students from the Art Students League to help out.”

“In the end, you didn’t even need the watercolor.” Clara’s single-mindedness had prevented her from seeing the bigger picture. She had to hand it to them. “You’ve pulled off quite a stunt.”

Virginia smiled broadly. “We figured out an end run around it. The Lorettes were never going to let the watercolor go once they had their hands on it, because by questioning the painter’s identity, it would have attracted a lot of attention.”

“And press.”

“Right. That was the key. I figured I’d use the press the same way Jackie did. To make a splash.”

Three reporters appeared in the aisle. “Miss Darden? We’d like to speak with you. Do you have a moment?”

Clara looked at Virginia.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Virginia gave her a hug. “Now, go and take your place in the spotlight.”