Feint of Art: by Hailey Lind Read Free Book Online Page A

achieve the coveted Old Master crackle, back when I was a budding teenage forger and he was still working with my grandfather. I could not believe he would have willingly been involved in Dupont’s demise. Anton had a hot temper, but he was not the violent type. He was more the sneaky, behind-the-scenes type.
    Still, I was willing to bet Anton could shed some light on what had happened at the Brock. After all, the list of people with the money, knowledge, and connections to commission a high-quality forgery and arrange to swap it for a museum’s original masterpiece was a short one. It was also possible that the Caravaggio forgery had no connection whatsoever with last night’s events at the museum, in which case I could concentrate on shaking down Anton for Anthony Brazil’s stolen drawings—thus securing my immediate financial future—without feeling compelled to mention the wily art forger when I spoke with the police.
    Invigorated, I circled the hilly, clogged streets of San Francisco’s Noë Valley and Bernal Heights neighborhoods, sure that I would recognize Anton’s studio when I saw it. True, it had been several years since I’d last visited, but my memory was pretty good. After half an hour of fruitless searching I lost all confidence in my powers of recollection, took a deep breath, and tried to think of other ways—besides my grandfather—to find Anton’s address. I had my cell phone in my pocket and fully charged in case Georges called me back, but I wasn’t betting the family portfolio on it.
    Who else might know where to find Anton? I angled the truck into a tiny parking space on Sixteenth in front of Mission Dolores and pulled out my phone. I stared at it, but it stared back mutely. Perhaps Anton had already been questioned by the police and fled the country with the genuine drawings and I was wasting my time. Maybe Ernst had finally turned up, the real Caravaggio had been recovered, and the murderer had been caught. But how would I find this out? The City’s art community would know; its grapevine put the UN to shame. But unfortunately I was no longer part of that community.
    I continued to stare at my cell phone, wondering what was happening at the Brock. I decided to try calling Ernst again, figuring I had nothing to lose.
    His voice mail picked up at both numbers.
    Rats. Frustrated and at a loss for what to do next, I watched a young cassock-clad priest shepherd a group of teenagers into the mission’s historic garden. I wondered what it would be like to be part of a religious order. I kinda liked the wardrobe . . .
    Okay, Annie, focus. Who else did I know at the Brock? There was Naomi Gregorian, although that was iffy. Not because we didn’t know each other well, but because we did.
    The year after college, Naomi and I had been art interns at the Brock. We spent hours shoulder to shoulder under a fume hood, cleaning paintbrushes with noxious chemicals; wore itchy polyester uniforms while serving canapés at receptions to which we were not invited; and ran countless personal errands for the upper-echelon staffers. And we did all of this gladly, in exchange for the privilege of learning the ancient techniques of art restoration.
    I was disappointed but not surprised when Naomi dumped me the moment I was bounced from the Brock. She had always known which way the wind was blowing. While I sweated to get my faux-finishing studio off the ground, Naomi grimly climbed the museum’s steep ladder from intern to art restorer. From time to time our paths would cross at a gallery opening or at the Legion of Honor, and we would exchange nods and a few polite words. If I called her, Naomi probably wouldn’t hang up on me.
    Probably. The Brock’s switchboard operator put me through.
    “Naomi Chadwick Gregorian,” a voice singsonged officiously. Chadwick was Naomi’s middle name, which she had never used until she became a full-fledged art restorer and snob.
    I found it all a little hard to swallow.