He eyed her. “Meh,” he yelled. But the sound of it wasn’t as guttural and intense, and for a moment he fell silent.
Lizzie let out a breath. “You better?” she said, and allowed herself a tentative half smile.
“Meh!” He swatted at the air.
“I’m sorry, no smiling. But I don’t know what you want,” she said. “What do you want?”
Oscar grunted and crawled on his belly, commando-style, toward a trio of boxes in the corner. He grabbed hold and began to pull himself up.
“No, no,” Lizzie said, and swooped him up. He screamed as she carried him into the kitchen. Screamed as she heated his milk. He batted the bottle away. Was he going to scream for the next three hours? Is this what she had signed up for?
“What about a peach?” She grabbed a perfectly ripe one from the bowl, washed it off. He followed her movements with his eyes, too distracted, it seemed, to cry. She sped up, sliced the peach fast. Any minute that ungodly screaming would begin again. The peaches were only a part of the bounty she had purchased yesterday at the Santa Monica Farmers Market. She had been contentedly walking among the stalls alone, tasting samples of pluots and apricots and tiny strawberries grown in Oxnard, still feeling amazed by the gorgeous abundance of produce in February. That’s when she saw him.
It’s someone who looks like Max, she first thought as she stared at the back of a lanky man in a gingham shirt several paces ahead on his cell phone, standing near the oranges. She still saw versions of her father all the time—men younger than him, men with more facial hair, a man at least six inches taller but with a similar determined step in his walk. She would feel a drop in her stomach, the ground unstable. Was it him? It wasn’t him.
But no, this man in the gingham turned and it was decidedly Max, baseball cap visoring his roughly handsome face, sleeves rolled up to reveal his sinewy arms. He was ending his call, looking around; he was chuckling. She ducked near the almonds. He looked tanned, relaxed. Her heart jackhammered. And she simply knew: He’s seeing someone, she thought.
He inspected a handful of satsumas, paid the cashier, and walked off. The bags didn’t seem to weigh him down. Lizzie observed all these details with prickly astonishment, waiting for him to notice her, waiting to hear herself call out his name. I’ve never said anything to anyone about the paintings, she wanted to tell him. But she said nothing, her insides wrenched. Was he leaving? Could she actually let him go? She felt drunkenly off balance, as if one of her legs was heading off without her. The crowd had swallowed him up; for a moment, she strained in the bright sunlight and could see a spot of royal-blue check, a flash of shoulder. And then that too was gone.
Now Lizzie cut tiny pieces of the peach, sticky and dripping. She handed them to Oscar. “Meh,” Oscar said crossly, and dropped them on the floor.
“My sentiments exactly,” she said. All that sweetness, and she was left wanting too.
Her phone rang, a 213 phone number she didn’t recognize. Sarah? She picked up.
“Ms. Goldstein?” the male voice said. “Elizabeth Goldstein?”
“Yeah,” Lizzie said. He sounded vaguely familiar. She opened up a bottom drawer filled with Tupperware, and gave two pieces to Oscar to play with.
“This is Detective Tandy. From the LAPD.”
Detective Tandy. Her stomach lurched.
“We found the paintings, Ms. Goldstein.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, though there had been nothing unclear about his words.
“Your father’s artwork. The stolen Soutine and Picasso.” She detected a shred of impatience.
“I’m sorry,” she said. The paintings? Her mind couldn’t take anything in. “You found The Bellhop?”
“We found the artwork holed up in the garage of a house in the Valley; Reseda, actually. A ranch house in miserable condition, falling apart.”
“Jesus,” she said. “The paintings—are they all right?”
“Yeah, unbelievably, they’re all right.”
She closed her eyes, woozy. Could this really be? Rose; she had to tell Rose. And her sister. She heard something slam and opened her eyes: there was Oscar, banging away happily on the Tupperware lids, drooling. She sank down beside him.
Tandy was still speaking. “No thanks to the person whose care they were in. The house is owned by a Jane Reynolds. The mother of Desdemona Reynolds, the ex-girlfriend of Sean Malone. Do any of those names ring a bell? Did your father ever mention Malone to you?”
Lizzie shook her head. “No,” she whispered. Who were these people?
“Sean Malone’s a former cop who contracted services to Kruger and Dunn, where Max Levitan worked before he started his own practice. Levitan and your father enlisted Malone to take the paintings—”
A hot viscous sensation heaved up, flooding Lizzie’s insides. “You know that?” she asked. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Tandy said, and the single drop of the word sounded gentle. “Malone will testify to it. His girlfriend too; she was privy to conversations. There is significant evidence.”
Lizzie nodded, but didn’t say more.
“There were disagreements afterward,” Tandy continued, his voice warming up. “Malone wanted a larger take, saying he hadn’t gotten paid enough for the job, that there were complications.”
“The party I threw,” Lizzie choked out. Oscar was trying to climb into her lap now, his tiny sticky fingers clawing at her hair.
“Yes. So he held on to the paintings, refusing to turn them over. He wasn’t exactly quiet about it. He told his girlfriend, bragged about it. Everyone seemed to know about the goddamn paintings.” For a moment, he sounded strangely like Joseph. “Years went by. Desdemona was pushing Malone to get married. Then she caught him screwing her best friend, and she decided that she’d had enough of him. She went to the cops—turned out he was dealing opiates, big-time, in cahoots with a doctor in Woodland Hills. And she told the police all about it, and then said, maybe you’d be interested in some old artwork too? It’s a miracle those paintings survived. Desdemona’s mother had built an aviary in her garage, metal cages filled with birds—all different kinds—and let me tell you, birds are nasty creatures. Dirty and mean. She had decided to raise the birds as part of her retirement plan—she had some crackpot scheme to breed them.”
“And the paintings?” Lizzie broke in. “What about the paintings?”
“The paintings were holed up on a top rack of a shelf, surrounded by that squawking mess, a carpet of bird shit and seeds. I never knew birds smelled that much. They were in metal canisters. Desdemona had told her mother that it was a drawing and a painting of hers from high school; can you believe that? Her mother didn’t have a clue that they were worth millions.”
“Of course she didn’t,” Lizzie said, and she felt a strange rush of feeling. Poor Mrs. Reynolds and her birds.