“Where’s Feldberg?” she murmured.
“Not here.” He stood blocking her entrance into the apartment.
“How did you get in?”
“I’m not a burglar. It was open.”
She looked over his shoulder at the apartment. “Open?”
“You don’t believe me? I knocked. I heard him moving around in the apartment and I waited. Then everything got quiet and I got suspicious. So I tried the door. It was open and he was gone.” Then something on the wall behind her distracted him.
She turned to find the keypad of what looked like a fancy burglar alarm. “I’d say you were lucky he hadn’t turned the alarm on.”
“I ran in. He probably didn’t have time. He must’ve gone out the back door, but I wasn’t fast enough to see him.”
She turned back to look at the spotless apartment, the baby blue leather sofa, the steel and leather armchair. “Maybe he keeps a lot of cash,” she said. “Why else would he need a burglar alarm?”
Then she noticed it. The Corot that had hung over the fireplace was gone.
She pushed her way past Nesha and ran to the spot where two hooks pierced the wall above the mantel. Against one arm of the leather couch leaned a very empty carved gilt frame.
She dove into the dining-room, Nesha on her heels. The Utrillo was missing. The empty frame had been thrown behind the steel and leather armchair. Everything else appeared as she remembered.
“Did you actually see who was in the apartment?” she said.
He shook his head.
“Then it could’ve been a thief who didn’t know any better. That means that Feldberg could come walking in any minute.” She stood still, listening. Someone honked outside on Bathurst Street, but the building was quiet.
“Let him come,” he said. “I’m ready for him.”
“I’d like to avoid a confrontation,” she said. “If anyone comes to the door, we run out the back.”
He gave her a wry smile. “You run, I’ll cover you. What d’ you mean the thief didn’t know any better?”
“These paintings aren’t real. They’re good reproductions, but not valuable.”
Nesha shrugged. “I don’t know anything about art. I’m going to take a look around.” He disappeared into one of the bedrooms.
Suddenly tired, she leaned against the small round table in the centre of the dining-room. “I don’t understand any of it,” she said out loud to herself. Sitting down, she lay one arm along the cool shiny surface of the burled wood. What exquisite taste he had for a man who repulsed her.
She looked up at the drawings she hadn’t seen before on the wall opposite. They were religious sketches of saints and angels, possibly studies drawn before a painting in oil. She tried to cross one leg over the other under the table, but there wasn’t enough room beneath the wooden apron skirting the tabletop. Her leg had elicited a dull thud from below, making it apparent that a panel closed off the bottom of the apron. Then where was the drawer? There was more than enough room for a drawer, but there was no drawer. She poked her head beneath: there were no openings, no latches, no knobs. What was she looking for?
She knocked the flat of her fingers gently against the underside of the table, like somebody’s belly. Hollow. She moved her fingers further to the left. Hollow. She moved to the right. Not hollow. She struck it again. The table resonated. Definitely not hollow. Something was inside that section of the table. She bent down on one knee to examine the apron. It was divided into four quadrants, each ending with a seam at one of the legs.
She pulled at the quadrant that echoed with its elusive contents. No movement. Maybe she was wrong. She pried around its edges trying to loosen any joints. She pulled at it again. Nothing. This time she took off her shoe and banged it around underneath the apron.
Nesha emerged from the bedroom. “Are you crazy?” he said under his breath. “There might be people upstairs.”
Rebecca tugged at the quadrant of wood once more. To her surprise it pulled out easily. Inside lay an album of some kind. Nesha came closer as she lifted the plastic cover. Each page contained two plastic sleeves for photos, one above the other, set into a wire spiral. The first photo was a likeness of a Claude Monet painting of lilies. A very good likeness, the swirling violets and greens approximating summer in Giverny. Inserted into the sleeve below was a typewritten card: Alfonso Hauptmann, Avenida Arboles, 124, Buenos Aires, 467-9342. She flipped to the next page. A photo of a crowd scene by Renoir. The women in hooped skirts and flounced hats, the men cavalier in their boaters. The card below read: Victor Ocampo, Calle Cordoba, 56, Buenos Aires, 921-0743.
“This is a waste of time,” Nesha said impatiently, and returned to his search through the bedrooms.
She kept flipping the plastic-sheathed photos, mesmerized by the beauty of the paintings. What could such a catalogue mean and why was he hiding it? All the addresses on the cards were from South America. Then she came upon an extraordinary picture. It was labelled Portrait of a Young Man, by Raphael. Good God, she thought. Raphael. They really picked the best ones. The painting was a tease — a young nobleman with dark hair curling over shoulders that blended, in the shadows of the photo, into a rich robe. Wistful eyes beneath perfect feminine brows watched sideways, averted from the viewer. She froze when she read the card below: Max Vogel, 103 Northgate Cres., Toronto, Ontario.
How did Vogel know Feldberg? And what did this picture mean? She pried the photo and address card from their plastic sleeves. Then she replaced the catalogue into the quadrant of wooden apron beneath the table and pushed it back into place as quietly as she could.
She knew a little about Raphael from her undergrad art history courses, that he was overshadowed in the Italian Renaissance by the giants da Vinci and Michelangelo. He was famous for his dewy, graceful Madonnas, but it was his secular portraits that lingered in the memory for the depth of their feeling.
Had she seen this particular portrait before? She approached the oversized art book that lay on Feldberg’s coffee table. It was a good compendium of art history from prehistoric times to the present. She looked up Raphael in the index at the back. There was reference to a Portrait of a Young Man in chapter eight. She quickly turned to the page where the title was narrowed down to Portrait of Bindo Altoviti. The arrogant young man there looked quizzically over his shoulder, his neck adorned with reddish-blonde hair. The elegant narrow shape of the head was similar but the two young men were miles apart in character. This one lived at the National Gallery in Washington. Who knew how many portraits of young men Raphael had painted. What was she looking for anyway? She’d have to wait to speak to Vogel.
She crept into the small bedroom at the front of the flat, listening for sudden noises. A bare clothes dummy stood in one corner, a tiny delicate size that probably suited both Chana and Goldie. There were two dressers, a wooden chair, its seat covered with a homemade cushion, and a table that looked like it had been a stand for Chana’s sewing machine.
Rebecca began to open the drawers of one of the dressers, painstaking in her attempt at silence. Cuts of neatly folded fabric lay stored inside, awaiting the seamstress. Each time Rebecca made a noise, she stopped and listened, waiting
