The Mistaken Masterpiece (19 page)

“What? Oh. Yeah. Why don’t you start, and I’ll jump in if you leave anything out.”

She shakes her head slowly. “Chicken. Um, Father Julian, before we go, Sophie and I have something to tell you. Sort of in the interest of complete honesty.”

“Oh? Something else about the painting?”

“No, it’s the baseballs this time. It’s one of those good-news, bad-news stories. The good news is that we figured out which baseball is the real thing.”

“Really?” he says. “That’s
terrific
. What’s the bad news?”

“Tell him, Soph,” Margaret orders.

“Well, we had a little accident with the other ball. Tillie ate it.”

“Who’s Tillie?”

“Tillie is a dog. She’s not mine. She belongs to Nate Etan—you know, the actor? We met him, and, well, it’s a long story, but now I’m taking care of her for a while.”

“And she ate a baseball?”

“Yes, but it was the fake,” I add quickly.

“Lucky for you,” Becca snorts. “I’d love to hear how this would have turned out if she’d eaten the real one.”

“Is she okay?” Father Julian asks. He seems genuinely concerned about the stupid dog that almost ate a valuable family heirloom.

“Oh, she’s fine,” I say. “She didn’t actually eat much of it. Mostly she just tore it into a million pieces. But even if she did, I think she’s pretty much indestructible.”

“Unlike the baseball,” says Becca. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

“And the other ball—how can you be sure it’s the original?”

Margaret explains about the fake rubber center that proves the ball that Tillie ate was made well after the 1928 World Series.

“Not exactly the way the experts would have done it,” Father Julian says with a broad smile, “but the result is the same—so no harm done. Now let’s go see Aunt Cathy.”

He grabs his coat from a hall closet and leads us out the door. His aunt lives in a doorman building just off Third Avenue at Fifty-sixth Street, and we take the elevator up to her apartment on the ninth floor, where she’s waiting for us with the door open. She’s dressed in that classy-but-comfy cashmere-and-pearls style, like a grandmother from a sixties sitcom. And even though it’s almost fifty years later, I would still recognize her from that picture of her standing in front of her birthday cake. I don’t think her hairstyle has changed a bit; there’s a big ol’ aerosol can of hair spray lurking somewhere in her apartment.

“Aunt Cathy, you look great!” Father Julian exclaims, kissing her on both cheeks.

“My goodness, look at you,” she says with a disapproving look at his jeans and sweater. “Traveling incognito, I see. No one would even know you’re a priest.”

“I’m undercover today,” he answers with a wink.

“Oh, leave him alone, Mom,” says a young woman’s voice from another room.

“Hi, Deb!” shouts Father Julian. “Come here, there are some people I want you to meet.” He gathers his four crimson-blazer-attired friends around him as Debbie, a pretty, round-faced woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, barrels into the room and attempts to squeeze the life out of him.

“Uhhhnnn. Good to see you, Deb,” he says, catching his breath.

Debbie takes a step back to get all four of us into her
frame of vision. “Hey, I remember reading about you girls. You solved a big case a couple of months back and found a valuable necklace, is that right?”

“A ring,” Margaret corrects. “It was hidden in the church for twenty years.”

“And they’ve been very busy since then,” Father Julian says. “They recently solved a case involving a violin that was stolen—twice!”

Once we’re all settled in, with glasses of milk for us, coffees for Aunt Cathy and Father Julian, and a glass of wine for Debbie, he explains the situation with the painting, including the newest detail.

“So, one reason we’re here is to see if you would have any idea of how or when or why this happened. For instance, do you remember anyone talking about making a copy and then hiding the original for safekeeping? Dad certainly never mentioned anything like that.”

Cathy looks at the photograph of her grandparents, standing proudly in front of the fireplace, the painting hanging above the mantel. “Now that you mention it, my sisters and I raised a bit of a fuss with your great-uncle Phillip. When Mom died, she left the painting to your father in her will, no doubt about that. Oliver didn’t want the painting, but Phillip was not pleased by that. He swore that Mom had promised him the painting. After her funeral, your father was away on business for a few days, and Phillip used that opportunity to take the picture from her house. We begged him to return it, but
he finally stopped answering his phone. But then, just before your father came back, Phillip suddenly returned the painting, saying that his conscience was bothering him.”

“You’re kidding,” says Father Julian.

“Oh no. It’s all true. We never said anything because we didn’t want to cause any hard feelings between your father and Phillip. And then, remember, Phillip dropped dead six months later.”

Margaret absorbs all the information and then says, “Maybe Phillip made a copy—or had one made. Rebecca, how long would it take you to make a really good copy of this painting?”

“A couple of days, maybe three or four, to do a nice job,” Becca answers. “The paint wouldn’t really be dry all the way through, but you probably wouldn’t notice anything like that unless you were looking for it. And I’m sure there are ways to help that along, too.”

“It sounds like a possibility,” Father Julian acknowledges. “Which just raises a whole slew of other questions, the most important of which is, if Uncle Phillip kept the original, what did he do with it?”

“You’ll need to ask Miss Pennsylvania about that one,” answers Aunt Cathy.

Leigh Ann makes a quizzical face. “Miss Pennsylvania?”

“Miss Prunella Scroggins. We called her Miss Pennsylvania—not to her face, of course—because she
always had her hair done up on the top of her head like a beauty queen. She was Phillip’s, ahem,
girlfriend
. For more than forty years.”

“Goodness. I haven’t thought about her in years,” Father Julian says. “Good old Prunella.”

“Something tells me there’s a great story connected with her,” Margaret says.

Aunt Cathy chuckles quietly. “Oh boy. About a million stories. One thing I can say about Prunella: life was never dull when she was around. She was from some tiny town up in the Pennsylvania mountains, I believe. Eagle’s Lake, or Eagle Mountain, I think. Eagle something. Phillip used to go fishing a couple of times a year, and he met her on one of his trips. Something of a local
character
up there, if you know what I mean. The woman could hold her liquor like no one I’ve ever seen, before or since. Phillip found her in a tavern and, for reasons no sane person can imagine, he was absolutely smitten. And her language—oh my.”

“I do seem to remember it being on the spicy side,” Father Julian recalls.

“That’s putting it lightly,” Aunt Cathy says. “It could peel paint off the walls. It was the sixties, and civil rights marches were in the news all the time. Let’s just say that Prunella did
not
approve of Martin Luther King. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite so bigoted—certainly no one so
outspoken
in her bigotry, at least. Phillip dragged her out of that bar in the early sixties, and she stuck with him to the bitter end. Because they weren’t
married and he didn’t leave a will, all of his possessions should have gone to your father, your aunts, and me, as we were his closest living relatives. Nobody really cared about the money; after all, life with Phillip was no bed of roses. He was a pain in the neck, and frankly, Prunella was welcome to whatever he had. But some family heirlooms—items with sentimental value only—disappeared. Family photos, jewelry, my grandfather’s pocket watch—things she had no right to. I guess she had adapted to life in the city, because she didn’t go back to Pennsylvania when Phillip died. She moved right into his rent-controlled apartment uptown.”

“Whatever happened to her?” Margaret asks.

“Thankfully, she stopped coming to family functions,” Aunt Cathy says with a relieved expression. “The first couple of years after Phillip’s funeral, I ran into her a handful of times. I know it sounds quite juvenile of me, but if I saw her first, I turned and
ran
in the other direction, as fast as my legs would carry me.”

“Is she still alive?” I ask.

“Last I heard, yes. Still in that same apartment.”

“Father Julian, you
have
to go visit her,” Margaret declares. “She can’t be hard to find—how many Prunellas can there possibly be?”

“Oh, let’s hope she’s the last. One is more than enough,” Aunt Cathy says.

“If Phillip made a copy of the painting and kept the original,” I say, “she might still have it. And even if she doesn’t, she can probably tell you what happened to it.”

“Have you shown your aunt the pictures from her birthday?” Leigh Ann asks.

“No, but I have them right here,” Father Julian says, handing an envelope to Aunt Cathy. “Although I’m not sure it matters anymore. If the original painting is gone, the year the pictures were taken just isn’t that important.”

Aunt Cathy smiles when she sees her birthday pictures. “Oh my. This handsome young man is Denny McCormack. He lived next door, and my parents were always hopeful that we would fall in love, but neither of us was much interested in the other, except as good friends. He went away to Indiana or Illinois for college, and the summer after his senior year, he came back married.”

“Can you tell which birthday you’re celebrating?” Margaret asks.

“Seventeen? Could be eighteen or even nineteen. Honestly, I can’t be sure. Denny was always around at family affairs. I’ll bet our families took a dozen pictures of the two of us in front of birthday cakes over the years.”

She flips through a few more pictures, stopping to laugh at two grumpy-looking old people on the couch in one of the more recent color snapshots. “Ask and ye shall receive. You wanted to see Prunella and Phillip, and here they are. And don’t they seem just
thrilled
to be with one another?”

She hands the picture to Debbie, whose mouth drops
open when she sees it. Her eyes get a little watery right away.

“Oh my,” Debbie says. “Cale Winokum.”

“Who’s that?” Father Julian asks.

“He’s the young man in the picture standing in front of the fireplace,” Debbie says. “He taught art at some school in the city—Bramwell, on the West Side—but he really just wanted to be an artist. I met him through Phillip, but I don’t remember how they knew each other. They didn’t exactly have much in common, to put it mildly. Cale was this gentle, quiet, shy person. He was … well, wonderful, and
so
talented.”

“Was?” I ask tentatively.

But before she can answer, Margaret points to the older man standing in the background of the picture. “Who’s this?” she asks.

Aunt Cathy squints at the picture and shakes her head. “I have no idea. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s a friend of Phillip’s—they’re about the same age. I don’t ever remember seeing him again. To tell the truth, I don’t really remember him from this party, but I guess photographs don’t lie.”

“I want to hear more about this Cale Winokum guy,” Becca says to Debbie. “Whatever happened to him? Did you two ever, uh, get together?”

“Becca, that’s kind of personal,” I say, even though I’m dying to hear her answer.

“No, it’s all right,” Debbie assures me. “We went out
on a few dates, but then, seven years ago, he just disappeared from the face of the earth, right in the middle of the school year. The school where he taught went crazy looking for him. Someone told me he joined the army, but I never believed it. He wasn’t the type, not at all. Others said he went to Europe to study painting and never came back. That one always seemed more likely to me, so that’s what I’ve chosen to believe all these years.”

Leigh Ann sighs. “That is so sad. And you never even heard from him? A letter, a postcard, even?”

“Not a one. I thought about looking up his family, but I never did. He made his choice, and I had to get on with my life.”

“You, however, should go see Prunella—but
please
don’t tell her I sent you,” Aunt Cathy says to Father Julian. “I don’t want her looking me up. Do tell me about your visit, though. I can’t wait to hear.”

That makes two of us, at least.

Finding Miss Prunella Scroggins requires some serious detective work; the four and a half brains (Margaret has the extra half) of the Red Blazer Girls are pushed to their absolute limits. And it doesn’t happen without some sacrifice; we lose a lot of good people on the way.

Okay, so I’m exaggerating. The truth is, Rebecca opens a Manhattan phone book and—bam!—we have a phone number and address for a P. Scroggins.

Father Julian tells us about the phone call and visit after school the next day. Despite some initial reluctance on her part to see a member of Phillip’s family, she changes her mind when she learns that he is now a priest.

“I suppose to her that means I’m not a threat,” Father Julian says. “She was—is—definitely suspicious of my motives.”