Page 44 of Enduring Caine
“Sì, but of course.” Antonio’s forced smile was unlike him. He didn’t want to go into this room. Why not?
Cesca reached for the number pad next to the door.
“Remember, tesorina,” said Giovanni.
She moved closer to the pad, shielding the numbers from both our view and that of the camera. Why did their gallery have a keypad door lock that had to be kept secret? Anyone coming here had already gotten access to the house and everything else in it.
I looked at Antonio from the corner of my eye, watching a muscle flex in his jaw. He noticed me and raised both eyebrows. Theno snoopingsign. That’s why he wanted to go anywhere but into the gallery. He was afraid I’d find something inside.
Cesca pushed the door open, revealing a room with terracotta tiled floors and rich Oriental rugs in whites, blues, and browns. An inset bookcase dominated the far wall with Doric columns dividing it into three, showcasing a few books, several small sculptures, and one painting I couldn’t make out any details of. The walls were a pale coppery color, a perfect background for the six antique chairs at the perimeter, upholstered to match the rugs. A crystal chandelier hung at the center of the room, over a narrow inlaid wood table with a vase of white flowers.
Thick curtains covered the tall windows, just like at Antonio’s parents’ house, so a controlled environment could protect the artwork.
“Sam, do you like art?” asked Cesca.
“I do.” Part of me wanted to tell her I’d studied art history, but the less I told them about myself, the better. Not that I could have carried on a conversation at the moment—I was too busy drawing it all in.
How was their such beauty in this horrific place? Two more cameras in this room, globes at opposite corners to capture every movement. It was like being in an old movie, with secret passageways leading behind the artwork and eyeballs peering out from portraits.
The wall to the left was jam-packed with paintings. Most were two- to three-feet wide, with barely six inches separating the frames. Post-modern, Folk, Impressionism. There was little rhyme or reason to their order, other than an apparent need to pack the space like a Tetris game.
I drifted toward the wall, scanning signatures, heart leaping into my throat. A Picasso next to a Renoir, then a de Kooning above a Chagall. Were they all legal purchases?
But as I swept my gaze across them, I didn’t get that eerie feeling like I had the night Antonio and I went to the auction and found a stolen painting in their lot. I didn’t recognize anything from a news article or a stolen artwork database. That was something, at least.
Cesca was talking behind me, telling Antonio about a painting she made of the ruins. Antonio responded about light, complimenting her. She giggled and continued talking, her words lost on me.
“Which one’s your favorite?” asked Giovanni, suddenly next to me.
I’d almost forgotten about the other people in the room.Keep up the ruse, Sam. Pretend you don’t know as much as you do and don’t give Leonardo more fodder for his suspicions. “There’s a lot to choose from. Are any of them by famous painters?”
“Some of them are, but it’s not about fame. It’s about spirit. The soul of the art.” A smuggler who believed in the soul of the items he sold off to the highest bidder? Hardly. He smiled and touched a light hand to my back, guiding me along the wall. We stopped in front of a muted piece, showing waves lapping on a beach under a dreary sky. A solitary figure walked on the sand. “This is my favorite of my daughter’s. Do you like it?”
The figure melded with the scene behind them, as though they weren’t really there. Nothing but a ghost. “It’s sad.”
“Do you think so?”
“The dark colors, the ethereal figure, the waves washing away their footprints. There’s nothing left of them.”
“No legacy,” he whispered and turned to me. “The plans I shared last night, that’s exactly what it’s about. What’s left of us when we’re gone?”
“Memories.” I stepped closer to the painting, taking in the brushwork and the light impasto texture, and read the artist’s signature. “‘Francesca Ferraro.’”
Giovanni came even with me, squinting at the figure in the painting. “My girl is talented.”
“She is.”
“Now speaking of talent,” he said, ushering me to the end wall. The shelving was built around the smaller painting I’d noticed when the doors opened, only a foot and a half wide and under a foot tall. Also muted colors, with a woman reading a book by a dark river, draped in loose blue fabric.
Holy shit. Goosebumps shot up my arms.
I knew this painting.
“This is by Antonio da Correggio—” began Giovanni.
“What’s this?” asked Antonio, the use of his name no doubt catching his attention. Everyone gathered around us to admire the piece.
Giovanni beamed, staring at it as reverently as he’d stared at Cesca’s painting. “I purchased it two months ago from an art dealer in Brazil.”