Chapter 6 - THE GIRL IN RED SHOES
“Chose me for what?”
No one answered.
I tore the child’s drawing from the wall.
The paper was old.
Not twenty-two years old.
Maybe ten.
The crayon had faded at the edges.
Kamal studied it.
“That isn’t my handwriting.”
“I assumed.”
“Helen?”
She shook her head.
“I’ve never seen it.”
“What about the painting?” I asked.
The missing portrait had always unsettled me.
A little girl sitting on the edge of a chair.
Dark hair.
Red velvet shoes.
No smile.
Catherine Vale had purchased it privately and consigned it to us for an exhibition opening after Christmas.
According to the catalog, the artist was unknown.
French, circa 1985.
Kamal stared at the empty wall.
“Who approved the consignment?”
“I did.”
He looked at me.
That should have embarrassed me.
Instead it frightened me.
“Catherine specifically requested me,” I said.
“When?”
“August.”
“Why?”
“She said she liked how I handled provenance research.”
Helen closed her eyes.
“What?”
Helen looked at me with something close to pity.
“She didn’t select you because of your work.”
Anger flashed.
“I am good at my work.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t reduce me to someone’s target.”
“I’m not.”
She touched the drawing.
“I think Catherine was testing whether Edward taught you what he knew.”
“My father never taught me anything about criminal ledgers.”
“Maybe he did without telling you.”
I almost laughed.
“What? Through bedtime stories?”
Helen looked toward the empty painting hook.
“Through provenance.”
That stopped me.
My father had taught me art history.
Not professionally.
Casually.
Museums every Sunday.
Old auction catalogs piled beside his chair.
Games where he would show Daniel and me paintings and ask what didn’t belong.
Find the lie, he used to say.
Not the pretty part.
The lie.
That was why I had become an authentication specialist.
Not because Dad told me to.
Because he taught me to notice inconsistencies.
My throat tightened.
“He trained me to look for forged history.”
Helen nodded.
“Exactly.”
Kamal watched me.
“Your father knew you would work in art?”
“He hoped I’d become a dentist.”
A faint smile crossed his face.
It disappeared quickly.
I turned the drawing over.
Nothing.
Then I held it toward the light.
There were pressure marks.
Writing from another sheet had transferred onto it.
Kamal noticed too.
“Pencil.”
We took it upstairs.
Under angled conservation lighting, the impressions became visible.
A list of numbers.
Lot numbers.
Auction dates.
Initials.
I recognized several immediately.
“Those are paintings.”
“Which?” Kamal asked.
“Works sold through different European auctions over the last fifteen years.”
“How many?”
“Twelve.”
Helen went pale.
“The six missing Yilmaz paintings were never recovered.”
“Maybe because they were divided into more objects.”
Kamal frowned.
“What?”
I thought aloud.
“Works can be altered. Panels cut down. Manuscript leaves separated. Miniatures removed from albums and reframed individually.”
I pointed to the numbers.
“If Catherine broke the six works into smaller pieces, she could sell them gradually.”
“Why would she risk that?”
“Because the paintings were never the point.”
Kamal understood.
“The transactions were.”
I nodded.
“Every resale creates clean provenance. Clean payments.”
Money laundering over decades.
Art as a washing machine.
Then one lot number caught my eye.
Lot 417.
New York.
Buyer listed only as private.
I knew the image.
I had cataloged it.
“A woman holding a pomegranate.”
Kamal stared at me.
“The missing sketch.”
“Yes.”
“But the sketch was Bellini workshop.”
“That was the attribution.”
“Wrong?”
“I think deliberately wrong.”
I hurried to the catalog database.
The Renaissance sketch had entered the gallery with an old European provenance.
Except now that I knew what to look for, the history was too neat.
Every gap conveniently filled.
Every owner deceased.
Every dealer no longer operating.
Fake provenance.
My father’s lesson echoed.
Find the lie.
“The sketch wasn’t Renaissance.”
Kamal leaned over my shoulder.
“What was it?”
“A study related to the missing Ottoman works.”
Helen whispered, “Leyla.”
I enlarged the image.
The woman’s face had always seemed oddly modern.
Not because it was badly drawn.
Because the paper beneath the old pigment had been artificially aged.
Someone had created a false Renaissance drawing over a concealed image.
“Why?”
Kamal asked.
I felt the answer before I understood it.
“To hide something in plain sight.”
We went to the conservation storage.
The sketch had technically been returned after the earlier disappearance.
But when I opened its crate, my stomach dropped.
The drawing was gone.
In its place lay a Christmas card.
Catherine Vale’s foundation crest embossed in gold.
Inside:
YOU WERE ALWAYS YOUR FATHER’S BEST WORK.
Under the card was a small silver cigarette case.
Leyla’s missing case.
Kamal opened it.
Inside was not a key.
It was a tiny piece of painted paper.
A woman’s eye.
I knew immediately what it was.
A fragment of a larger artwork.
On the reverse was a handwritten coordinate.
Not latitude.
Not longitude.
Inventory notation.
YFA-94-18.
I entered it into our internal system.
An object appeared.
NO IMAGE AVAILABLE.
DESCRIPTION: CHILD PORTRAIT, RED SHOES.
My pulse jumped.
“The painting Catherine consigned.”
Helen looked confused.
“But that catalog number is from 1994.”
Exactly.
The painting supposedly entered Catherine’s collection in 2011.
Yet Yilmaz records listed it seventeen years earlier.
“Kamal.”
He stared at the screen.
“1994 was before my father opened this location.”
“Where was Yilmaz Fine Arts then?”
“My grandfather had a warehouse in Brooklyn.”
“Does it still exist?”
“No.”
“Records?”
“Most were digitized.”
I scrolled.
One line remained.
OWNER: L. YILMAZ.
Leyla.
The painting of the girl in red shoes had belonged to Kamal’s mother.
Not Catherine.
And beneath ownership was another field.
SUBJECT.
My breath caught.
ISABEL BENNETT, AGE 4.
The room stopped.
I stared at my own name.
“That’s impossible.”
But I was doing the math.
I had been four in 1994.
My father had worked for Yilmaz accounts.
My mother had known Leyla.
The portrait was of me.
I just hadn’t recognized myself.
Kamal’s face changed.
“The girl is you.”
I felt suddenly unsteady.
“Why would your mother have a painting of me?”
Helen sat down.
She looked like a woman watching a twenty-two-year lie collapse.
“Because Leyla loved your mother.”
I looked at her.
“As a friend?”
Helen hesitated.
“No.”
My heart gave a strange, painful beat.
“What are you saying?”
“Your mothers were sisters.”
The room blurred.
“No.”
“Half sisters.”
“No.”
“My mother never had a sister.”
“She believed she didn’t.”
Helen’s voice softened.
“Their father had two families.”
I almost laughed from shock.
So Kamal’s mother was my mother’s half sister.
Which meant Kamal and I—
“Cousins?” I blurted.
Helen’s eyes widened.
“No.”
Kamal looked almost offended despite the circumstances.
“Thank God.”
I stared at them.
Helen explained quickly.
Leyla had been adopted by the Yilmaz family as a baby.
Her biological father was not Kamal’s grandfather.
Her mother later married into the Yilmaz family.
There was no blood connection between Kamal and Leyla’s adopted family.
Still, my head spun.
“Why didn’t my mother know?”
“She learned shortly before Leyla disappeared.”
“And Dad?”
“He knew earlier.”
Of course he did.
Another secret carried by my father.
Kamal touched the cigarette case.
“So Catherine knew Isa was connected to Leyla.”
“Yes.”
“Why target her?”
Helen looked at me.
“Because your father placed the ledger where only you could identify it.”
I swallowed.
“Where?”
“The missing portrait.”
Kamal’s eyes narrowed.
“The painting Catherine stole tonight.”
Helen nodded.
“The ledger was hidden inside the backing.”
My heart sank.
“So she has it.”
“No.”
Helen looked at the fragment in Kamal’s hand.
“Edward never trusted anyone enough to leave the whole thing in one place.”
I stared.
“How many pieces?”
“Three.”
“And the painting contained one?”
“Yes.”
“What about the others?”
Helen looked at my wrist.
At the place where my father’s Christmas watch usually sat.
“One was inside the watch.”
I opened the secret compartment again.
The tiny photograph of our mothers.
I removed it.
Behind it was another fragment.
Painted paper.
A child’s red shoe.
Two pieces.
Eye.
Shoe.
One missing.
Kamal spread them together.
They fit.
On the reverse, letters began to form.
Not enough to read.
My stomach tightened.
“Where is the third?”
Helen looked toward the velvet necklace box.
“The snowflake.”
Kamal froze.
He opened the pendant.
We had removed the note.
But beneath where the note had rested was a second false floor.
He pressed it.
Nothing happened.
Then I noticed one diamond sat slightly higher than the others.
I pushed it.
The floor opened.
A third painted fragment slid into his palm.
We fitted it beside the other two.
Together they formed a small rectangle from the portrait.
On the reverse was a complete inscription.
Not account numbers.
Not names.
An address.
Kamal read it aloud.
Then went completely still.
I recognized the street immediately.
It was in Queens.
A modest residential block.
Nothing remarkable.
Except the apartment number.
4B.
The same apartment where my mother had lived before marrying my father.
May you like
Below the address was one sentence.
LEYLA IS WAITING.
