“Perfect,” she said, taking her cup at the door. “There are a few things you ought to deal with straightaway,” she began. Meret was organized, and there were limits to the amount of time she would allow a loose end to remain loose. Strand increasingly took advantage of this, letting unessential details go unattended, knowing that if they were even potentially important, Meret would catch them and bring them to his attention.
“Such as…”
“Such as these,” she said, snatching a pink Post-it off her desk and waving it at him. She kept “to do” things on the bright adhesive squares, and sometimes the whole left side of her desk blushed with ranks of reminders.
Strand settled into an armchair beside the sofa where Meret presided during their morning conversations. She sat down, her legs and feet together, and stuck the pink note on the hem of her skirt, which left more than half her leg exposed. Meret was not a petite young woman, but she knew instinctively how to dress to her best advantage. The stylish short skirts and revealing blouses that she favored were worn with a sexy intelligence that told you immediately that she knew what she was doing. Degas or Maillol would have asked her to take off her clothes in a minute. She would have done it, relishing the adventure and the humor of it, though she would have charged them by the quarter hour and wanted her payment in cash. On top of that, she would have had a highly educated opinion of the artist’s efforts.
“Leaman Stannish,” she began, holding her cup and saucer like a duchess. “The matter of his Gerome studies.”
“What do you think?”
“I thought we’d agreed they were too weak.”
“That’s what I remembered.”
“Then you have to let him know we’re passing.”
“I’ve been putting that off…”
Meret looked at him with her best “that’s the point of this conversation” expression.
“… but he’s got those fine, those very fine, Carpeaux drawings, the sculpture studies…”
“And you don’t want to piss him off,” she said.
“Right.”
“What he’s saying is, You want my Carpeaux? Take my Gerome first.”
“That’s right.”
“You shouldn’t play that game.”
Strand sipped his coffee. “I know. Write him and tell him we can’t do it.”
Meret stiffened. “ You’ve got to write him, Harry. Stannish is a pain in the ass, but you can’t afford to alienate the guy. He knows he’s being unfair, and he’s also very much aware of your reputation as an ethical dealer. He’d much rather operate under that cloak of respectability than work in the market without it. He’ll come around.”
Strand nodded. “I’ll let him know.” He had already decided what to do, but it was good to hear Meret’s opinions coinciding with his. It had gotten to the point that he was no longer testing her to see how her judgment and instincts were maturing; now he was actually relying on her counsel to confirm his own instincts.
“I’ll mail it this afternoon,” Meret said pointedly, putting him on notice that he was expected to do it today.
Strand nodded again.
Meret glanced at her lap. “You got another fax late yesterday from Denise Yarrow in San Francisco. She wants to add the Eakins collection to her ‘reconsider’ list.”
“She’s going to wear me out.”
“She always does this, but… she always comes through, too.” Meret was consistently optimistic. She was upbeat. She did not believe in fate’s negative side, and Strand found it surprising how many times she was rewarded for her bright expectations.
“First,” she said, “Aldo Chiappini called yesterday and wants to know when you’ll be coming to Rome. He wants a specific date. I think he’s got someone else interested in the Fuselis.” She raised her eyes at him expectantly. “They’re worth the trip. That many together… fine quality.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to lose those. I’ll check my calendar later this morning and give you a date. I’ll call Aldo, too. Smooth his feathers.”
“Next, this,” Meret said, holding up the pink note by the tips of her tapered fingers. “A woman called yesterday who said she had a collection of drawings she wants to sell and wants to know if you would handle it. Said you were recommended to her by Reynolds Truscott in New York.”
“Good old Reynolds.”
“Says she has Maillol, Klimt, Delvaux, Ingres, Balthus.”
Strand gave her a skeptical look.
Meret raised a testimonial hand, an eager expression on her face.
“That’s an odd grouping. What’s her name?”
“Mrs. Mitchell Reinhardt.”
“First name?”
Meret shrugged, sipping her coffee.
“Did you look her up in the collector’s catalog?”
Meret nodded. “Not listed.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“Uh… as soon as possible.” She leaned over and handed Strand a second piece of pink paper with the address on it.
“I’m going to call Reynolds first,” he said. “Get some idea of what I’m getting into.”
The prospect of seeing drawings by these artists whose works seldom came available on the market anymore prompted Strand to call Reynolds Truscott within the hour. But Truscott was of little help. He did not know the woman personally, he said, he had gotten her name from a dealer friend of his in London who specialized in twentieth-century British paintings. This man had mentioned her almost incidentally in a conversation, said he knew a woman who had recently moved to the United States, to Texas, who had an interesting little collection of drawings. Then one day Mrs. Reinhardt herself had called Truscott, using the British dealer as a reference, and asked if he knew any reputable dealers in her area. Thus Strand. That’s all Truscott knew about her.
“There aren’t that many of you concentrating on drawings,” Truscott said. “She was surprised to find someone in Houston.”
“If she’s a collector, she should have known about me.”
“Hello-modesty? Well, the fact is I don’t think she is a collector,” Truscott said, lowering his voice in a tone of confidentiality. “I think this is a divorce thing.”
CHAPTER 4
When Strand called Mrs. Reinhardt to make an appointment, she gave him an address in Tanglewood, an upscale neighborhood near the posh Post Oak shopping district in West Houston. The address did not live up to the reputation of its environs. La Violetta Terrace was a cluster of old town houses tucked deep into a wood of dark pines and aged water oaks whose ponderous boughs were draped with verdigris beards of Spanish moss that hung limp in the warm spring air. The motley brick facades of the town houses had acquired a rusty patina of neglect, and the tight little meander of a lane that fronted the small gardens of each address had the faded air of a disregarded byway.
Strand parked in front of Mrs. Reinhardt’s address and got out of the car. He followed a pathway of dun bricks through a tiny garden of ordinary shrubs, nandina and boxwood and wax ligustrum. The midmorning sun penetrated the thick overstory in broken amber streams and fell onto the crown of a small dogwood near the front door, the soft light illuminating the pale pink blossoms as if it were a theatrical spotlight.
He rang the doorbell and waited. All around him the dense woods dampened every sound to quietude, the constant rumble of city traffic seemed distant, and even a contentious blue jay sounded more disgruntled than raucous.
