By Monday lunchtime, the photo of Imogen Wardell examining Pears in Winter Light had been shared four thousand times. That's a lot for Westmere. Our last big local post was a raccoon in a bowling alley.
People added captions. "When the waiter says it's gluten-free." "Me reading the terms and conditions."
Someone put a pair of white gloves on a photo of a cat. My sister Wynne sent me all of them, followed by a text: Is she OK?? Also the cat one is very funny, don't tell her.
I didn't know if she was OK. She wasn't answering her phone.
So I did what caterers do when we don't know what else to do. I cooked.
Imogen lived on the third floor of a brick building on Underhill Street. I knocked with my elbow, because my hands were full. I was carrying a soup pot, which I recognize was a risk.
She opened the door in a gray sweatshirt, reading glasses and her gloves. The label on the bag in her pocket said MONDAY. That seemed right.
"I brought soup," I said.
"Soup is the most dangerous food there is."
"It's potato leek. It's practically a mashed potato with ambitions."
I held up the second bag. "And bread rolls. No olive oil. I checked them myself."
She looked at the soup pot for a long moment. Then she stepped aside.
Her apartment served two, maybe three if one of them didn't mind the floor. It was very neat and very quiet.
Along one wall stood a tall metal shelf, and on the shelf were white cardboard filing boxes. Every box had a year on the end. The years went back to 2007.
"Are those the—"
"Gloves," she said. "Retired pairs, dated and labeled with what I handled."
She set two bowls on the table and lined the spoons up square. "I know how it looks."
"It looks organized."
"It looks like the glove lady," she said. "That's what they're calling me online. The Glove Lady. Capital G, capital L."
"There's a cat one."
"I saw the cat one," she said. "The cat one is very funny. Don't tell anyone I said that."
We ate. She ate the soup without spilling a drop, which I had privately bet against. When she finished, she put her spoon down and looked at the boxes.
"When I was twenty-six," she said, "someone told me I'd rather hold a painting than a person. I was engaged to him at the time. So it came up."
"Was he right?"
"Partly. Paintings stay where you hang them."
She smoothed the tablecloth flat. "The gloves started as work, then they were just easier. Nobody expects you to shake hands with a woman in conservation gloves. Nobody expects much of anything."
"I expected a backup pair. I got one."
That got the short laugh, the drawer-opening one. Not a big one. But it counted.
"Conrad thinks I'm being paranoid," she said. "Maybe Laszlo filled the hole because he's fussy. Maybe the varnish was a rush job."
She picked up her spoon and put it down again. "I can't prove anything. It's my glove against his reputation."
"It's not your glove," I said. "It's your gloves."
She looked at me.
"You keep every pair," I said. "You told me so on our first date. You can check what was on your hands that day."
"Yes."
"Something went wrong. So check."
The box marked 2026 was on the second shelf from the top. Inside were dozens of sealed bags in date order, each labeled in block capitals.
MARCH. SEASCAPE, LOWER EDGE. MAY. ADMIRAL, FLY AREA.
She found it in under a minute.
JULY 14. UTTLEY. WAINSCOTT, FULL EXAM.
She laid it on the table beside the bag from Saturday night. Then she put on a fresh pair of gloves from a drawer. The new label said MONDAY, BACKUP, and she didn't comment on that, so neither did I.
She held both gloves up to the window.
The July glove was white. Not perfectly white. It had a faint gray tint, the way anything does after touching a frame that's hung over a radiator for forty years. But there wasn't a trace of yellow anywhere.
The gala glove had a clear yellow smudge on one fingertip, about the size of a lentil.
"Same painting, same corner, same hands," I said. "Three months apart. One of them's sticky."
"A glove isn't proof," she said. But she was still holding them both up to the light.
"It's a start. What else do you need?"
"Something that shows the painting left his gallery as one thing and came back as another." She lowered the gloves. "And I need to know where the first one went."
I looked at the clock on her stove. It was 1:40.
"I told someone something on Saturday," I said. "I said she should ask you on Monday."
"Who?"
"Mrs. Uttley," I said. "It's Monday."
Philippa Uttley's house on Willet Avenue served about twelve, seated, if you used the piano bench. She opened the door before we knocked, as if she'd been waiting behind it since Saturday.
"Monday," she said to me. "You kept your word, young man."
She turned to Imogen. "You look terrible, dear. Sit down. I've made tea that you won't drink."
The dining room had a bright, empty rectangle on the wallpaper over the radiator. Mrs. Uttley lowered herself into a chair and pointed her cane at it.
"Tell me," she said.
Imogen told her all of it: the varnish, the hole, the gloves.
I watched the old woman's face while she listened. It didn't crumple. It sharpened.
"Nine weeks," said Mrs. Uttley, when Imogen finished. "He said two. Then the frame was difficult, then the cleaning was slow."
She tapped the cane once. "I've played cards with men like that for sixty years. They always need one more week."
"Did he ever ask you about the painting?" said Imogen. "Before the donation?"
"He tried to buy it," said Mrs. Uttley. "Four years ago. He offered me eleven thousand dollars and called it 'sentimental value.' I told him Abner's pears weren't for sale."
She sniffed. "Then I announced the gift to the Varnum, and suddenly he was so very helpful. He took a hundred photographs and measured everything twice. He asked whether anybody else had examined it."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him a young lady from the museum had looked it over. He asked if she'd found anything. I said it was in very good shape."
She looked at Imogen. "I didn't mention the tack hole. I didn't think it mattered."
"It matters," said Imogen softly. "It's the only thing he didn't know."
On the drive back, Imogen's phone rang. She looked at the screen and frowned.
"It's the museum," she said, and put it on speaker.
"Dr. Wardell? Otis Yancey, front desk." The voice was gravel and pencil.
"Otis? I'm on leave."
"I know. I wrote it down."
Paper rustled. "Mr. Wendt's people came for the painting at two-forty. Two men, one crate, one van."
"Otis—"
"I logged the plate. Purpose of visit: touch-up."
"Thank you, Otis, but—"
"I'm not finished. Mr. Wendt came in after them. He took a phone call in my lobby."
A pause. "People in scarves never look at the desk, Dr. Wardell. So he talked like I wasn't there."
"And?"
"And I wrote it down. You never know."
Imogen's hand tightened on the phone. "What did he say?"
Otis cleared his throat and read aloud, flat as a weather report.
"'Friday at eight. Tell him to bring the cashier's check. And have the back room ready, the real one's in the back.'"
Nobody in the car said anything for a long moment.
"Otis," Imogen said at last. "Has anything happened at the Varnum since 1986?"
"Not until today," said Otis, and hung up.
At 4:15 that afternoon, my business phone rang. It was a young man who said he was calling from Wendt Fine Art on Vesper Street.
Mr. Wendt was hosting a private viewing on Friday evening, he said. Forty guests, very exclusive. Their caterer had fallen through.
Mr. Wendt had been impressed by the crab puffs at the Varnum, despite himself.
I realized, standing there with the phone, that Laszlo Wendt had never once looked at my face. He'd looked at my tray. Twice.
"There's one condition," the young man said. "Mr. Wendt is very particular. All staff must wear white gloves."
Up next: White-Glove Service
Continue to Part 5 →