Twenty-two

WENDY AND I GOT BACK to Seattle to find chaos. There was an immediate family meeting to which Doc Henredon, Bob Bowers, Clarice, and Jack were all invited.

While Wendy and I were enjoying being out in the sun and working on a house, Kate had flown to San Francisco. She had met Doc and Clarice there and they went into the gallery to close out Kate’s show. Mr. Gillette had prepared papers that he expected Kate to simply sign that were the same as mine. He wasn’t expecting Clarice and when she snatched them away, Kate threw a fit. If it had been anyone but Doc there with Clarice, Kate probably would have signed the papers without hesitation. It sounded like such a good deal.

When they packed Kate’s remaining artwork, the inventory didn’t match the sales. Gillette insisted it was because our original bill of lading was off and refused to release Kate’s check. Clarice called an attorney and paid something like triple time for him to file suit and get an injunction against the Gallery. They were prohibited from selling or accepting money for any work of art by Katarina Mirela until the suit was settled. As several pieces that had been marked ‘sold’ had not been paid for, Kate and Doc packed them and shipped them to Seattle. Clarice cleverly pulled and photographed the sales tickets with the names and addresses of the buyers. Gillette could neither legally accept payment for the artwork, nor could he deliver it.

Kate was still steamed. So far, she had yet to receive any money for her exhibition and she was going down a list of Seattle attorneys that she thought could represent her. People had her artwork and she hadn’t been paid. She was pissed.

Bob Bowers had gone to New York to retrieve my artwork and Jack had joined him straight off the plane from Omaha. They actually interrupted a shipment of two of my pieces that were listed on the inventory as “not received.” My buddy, Al Liebowitz, clued them into what was happening when they went to pack up the remaining artwork. Jack had taken a different tack and called the police. He had Mr. Caldwell arrested on the spot for attempted theft. While Caldwell was being questioned, Dominic di Mento showed up and wrote a check for the full amount of all the pieces in my exhibition, including Bacchanalia, provided they drop charges against Caldwell. Jack had the presence of mind to call the bank to verify funds and discovered the check was no good. The police were still here with Caldwell and arrested di Mento for attempted fraud. It looked like I was going to spend time in New York testifying in somebody’s trial.

It turned out that with Caldwell and di Mento both being hauled down to the police station for questioning, Al had access to everything. He immediately went through the official inventory, checked the prices of recorded sales and made sure all pieces were accounted for. All unsold paintings and prints were checked off the inventory as they were crated and shipped to our studio.

Al saw the safe in the office was open, so took it upon himself to get enough cash out to cover all my sales, less the gallery commission, figured to the penny. He paid Bob in cash since he didn’t know Jack, and Bob signed a receipt in the name of C. Bortelli Agency. He’d brought us close to forty thousand in cash.

Kate, of course, saw this as being a failure on Clarice’s part since she did not bring cash back from San Francisco. In spite of all that, Clarice had just received word that Gillette was ready to make a bank transfer for the amounts owed if Clarice would arrange shipment of the outstanding pieces and call off the lawyers. When Kate found out that there would be a deposit in her account of close to fifty thousand as soon as the banks opened on Monday, she was mollified and apologized to Clarice.

We were glad school was starting in a week and we could get back to life as normal as it could be. We felt that our first non-Seattle showings had been a war rather than an art exhibit, but we’d survived.

With a mix of emotions and hormones still raging at the house, I staggered into the studio on Monday about noon to receive the shipments from New York and San Francisco that were slated to arrive. I had some time to settle my mind and do some sketching. I settled into the recliner in the studio and grabbed a sketchbook to start recording some of my impressions from the Habitat for Humanity build. There were a couple of scenes that I wanted to capture.

I looked around the studio trying to place what was wrong. I’d been gone three weeks and something seemed out of place. Melody’s loom was set up with a new piece she was working on. The props were still set from the last painting session I’d done on the dais. There was an entire corner filled with clothing racks and plastic-bagged sportswear. Kate and I had arranged a nice storage rack for canvases and we had drawers of paint, paper, and pencils.

That’s when I saw the draped easel in the corner of the studio.

I’d finished a self-portrait that last night before I left and arranged a drape over it while it dried. The drape didn’t look right. And there was no note on it.

I lifted the drape to look at the empty easel.

God-fucking-damn it!

The doorbell rang and I went out to receive our shipment of art, carefully checking off each item and opening the crates and boxes before I let the Fedex guy leave. Everything that was on the bill of lading was on the truck. He pulled away and I was left there with a room full of partly opened boxes and crates and a sinking feeling that I’d never see that self-portrait again.

I got everything stowed correctly, stacking the empty crates against a wall. We’d probably need them again sometime soon. If it hadn’t been for the arrival of the Fedex guy, I’d have rushed home and demanded to know who had been in the studio. It didn’t look like it had been broken into or disturbed. That meant the painting had to have been taken by someone with a key—my family. The darkness I remembered putting on the canvas, slowly crept into my heart. God-fucking damn them all!

I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was the best thing I’d ever painted and I had only my memory of it. I’d been called home to face the music for my outburst before I’d even had a chance to photograph it. Lissa would never touch anything in the studio that didn’t have to do with Ice Queen Sportswear. She liked my art, but she wasn’t critical of it. Melody? Artists know art. She could have seen that painting and decided to hide it so no one else would see into my soul. That was the best-case scenario. In her current state, if Kate had seen it and felt threatened by it, no one would ever see it again. No. Kate wasn’t malicious. She’d never do anything to intentionally hurt me. It’s beyond her to destroy artwork. But she’d become so competitive—comparing my sales numbers to hers. It’s like she saw everything I did as a standard against which she had to measure up. If she’d seen it when she came back from California, she might have done anything. The painting would be safe, but it would never be seen again.

But I couldn’t confront her. I was so afraid I’d lose her. What the fuck am I thinking?

Fuck! I couldn’t let anyone know about the painting. I’d never be able to paint like that again. I couldn’t explain what the painting was or why I’d painted it. I’d have all my family suspecting each other because everyone would deny it. And I’d still be suspecting everyone else. And everyone would hate me for suspecting a family member. Kate, Lissa, and Wendy had come back to Seattle after only three days in San Fran. Shit! If anything happened to the painting in that time it was ruined. I’d put so much oil paint on, so thick that it would take two weeks to dry and a month to fully cure.

I left the studio and went to the SCU campus.

Coach Frederickson was in his office and was quick to agree to a run. I decided to run in street clothes and Coach chased me as I took off downhill straight for the waterfront. Did you see the first Bond movie with Daniel Craig? Early in the movie he chases an enemy in what can only be considered a Parkour course. They run through a construction site and up huge cranes, behind bulldozers, and just about every place. That’s the kind of run I led Coach on. I hit the docks and vaulted a fence into a restricted area. It was almost dark with Seattle’s stupid short winter days, so I figured no one would see us or pay attention and Coach was only a few steps behind me. Port of Seattle ships a lot of grain to the rest of the world and I ran up an elevator like I was back on the farm in Nebraska. There was a bridge to the control tower and a series of platforms that led me out to the dock. A barge was tied up on the north side of the dock and I hit a piling before jumping to the tarp-covered deck. No question that this was dangerous. I’d heard that some of the shippers left armed guards on their vessels, but unpowered barges didn’t seem to need that kind of protection.