about. Maybe you can find the junk shop where Vachey says he bought it. Go to Paris if you have to… uh, Chris, are you there?'
I was there. I was just wondering whether I ought to mention to Tony that Inspector Lefevre had made it plain that I wasn't leaving France for the next several days in any case, and that I had in fact already learned the name of the junk shop, and had made plans to go to Paris. Hearing this would certainly ease Tony's conscience. On the other hand, it would have been nice to have him thinking he owed me a favor.
It was an ethical dilemma, over which I agonized for almost two nanoseconds.
'Yes, I'm here, Tony,' I said stoically. 'All right, if you think it's for the best… I'll stick around.'
'Thanks, Chris,' he said warmly. 'I knew you'd come through.'
'Forget it.' Now he was starting to make me feel guilty. 'Anything else?'
'Just one suggestion. You might want to look up Ferdinand Oscar de Quincy and see what light he can throw on things.'
I blinked stupidly at the receiver. 'Ferdinand de Quincy is still alive?'
De Quincy was the man who had been the director of SAM in the early 1950s, the man who, a decade before that, had supposedly located and returned some of Vachey's paintings to him after they had disappeared eastward with the Nazis, the man because of whom Vachey was giving us the Rembrandt in the first place. It had never occurred to me that he might still be around.
'Yeah, I was surprised too. But it suddenly dawned on me that he was only about thirty in 1945, which would put him in his seventies now, so I asked Lloyd to see what he could find out. And it turns out he lives just outside of Paris.'
'But-then why wasn't he at the reception? Surely Vachey would have invited him, surely he'd have wanted to come-'
'I have no idea. Why don't you go find out? He's bound to have information on Vachey. His number's-'
'Wait. Pen. Okay, go ahead.'
'His number's 43-54-23-31.'
I wrote it on the flyleaf of a Wallace Stegner paperback I'd brought with me to pass the time when things got dull. Needless to say, this was the first time I'd opened it.
After I hung up, I sat on the edge of the bed and stared moodily at the telephone. My mind was still in Seattle, but not on Tony or SAM. I was thinking about the house I rented in Magnolia, about two miles from the museum. Anne would be arriving tonight, and I wanted to talk to her. It looked as if I was going to be stuck here until Friday, which meant I couldn't be back in Seattle until Saturday, which would leave us just a single day together. One day-and no nights; a dismal yield after all those months of anticipation and planning.
But I had an idea for salvaging something. Anne's conference was a one-day affair. It would be over at the end of tomorrow, Wednesday. What if she arranged for a military flight back to Europe tomorrow night? There were plenty of them to England, Germany, and Holland. She could be here in Dijon late Thursday. That would give us Friday together, and Saturday, and even a bonus of Sunday, because Kaiserslautern was only three hours from Dijon, and she wouldn't have to leave until late afternoon. What's more, my time limit for coming to a decision on the painting was the close of business Friday, so one way or another my work would be done the day after she got here. We could go back up to Paris for a couple of days, or rent a car and drive through Provence, or do whatever she wanted.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. If she couldn't get on a military flight, we'd get her a commercial one. Maybe we'd do that anyway, and book her first class. It'd be my treat. What better way did I have to splurge?
But it was barely afternoon in Seattle, so she was still somewhere on the road, probably on the Olympic Peninsula near Kalaloch or Ruby Beach if she was taking the route we'd planned. It hurt to think of how much pleasure there would have been in showing her those wild, magical places. Still, something was better than nothing.
I sighed, punched in my own telephone number, and waited for my voice to come on. When she arrived, she would turn on the answering machine to see if I had left anything for her.
'Hello,' said a sepulchral voice. 'This is Chris Norgren.' It paused to allow this complex message to be grasped, and proceeded somberly. 'I'm sorry I can't come to the phone now, but if you will wait for the signal and leave a message, I will…'
I tapped my foot impatiently. Was that really what I sounded like, or was it some mysterious quirk of answering-machines that made everybody sound like a zombie?
Finally, the beep came. 'Hi, Anne,' I said, making an all-out effort to sound like a living person, 'welcome to the Emerald City, and hope you had a wonderful drive. There are lots of good things in the freezer, and you know where the booze is. Everything in the fridge should be fresh, more or less. Listen, I just had a terrific idea. Call me when you get in. Don't worry about the time-'
Click. 'Chris?'
It was a moment before I could reverse gears and get my voice going again. 'Anne? What are you doing there?'
'I got in early. I swung over to Highway 5 at Portland. I wanted to save the Peninsula to see with you.'
And bless you for it, I thought warmly. 'Listen, I'm glad I caught you early. I'm going to have to stay over in France for another two or three days-'
'Three days! But that'd only leave us- Why do you have to stay three more days?
'Well, the police asked me to-'
'Police? What's going on there?'
And so I had to shift gears again and explain, which took some time; it had been an eventful couple of days. I even told her about getting pitched out the window, managing to minimize the more ludicrous aspects of it without playing down the dramatic, brush-with-death elements.
'My God, Chris,' she said, gratifyingly shocked, 'I'm just glad you're all right. You are all right?'
'I'm fine. And I have a great idea. I want you to come here to Dijon. Fly back to Europe early.'
I told her about the marvelous fall weather northern Europe was having. I suggested driving to Languedoc and spending a night in one of the old inns in the walled city of Carcassonne, something she'd talked about wanting to do. I pointed out that the new plan would give us Sunday together, which we wouldn't get otherwise.
'Can't,' she said.
'Why not?'
'If you knew the strings I had to pull to get my nights, you wouldn't ask me to change them.'
'Well, don't change them. Come commercial. I'll arrange your tickets from here.'
'Chris, I just can't. It would be too-well, too embarrassing to cancel, after the trouble I put them to. I just can't do it. They bumped people to get me on.'
'Well, couldn't you-' But I didn't have anything to offer. 'Oh, hell.' I was feeling good and sorry for myself.
'Chris, it's not the end of the world. It's just a logistical snag, that's all. We've had them before.'
I smiled. 'That's what I was telling you last week.' A snatch of that conversation came back to me. 'Did you have a chance to do your thinking?' I asked.
She hesitated. 'Did I tell you I wanted to do some thinking?'
'Yes.' Now I hesitated. 'You didn't say about what, though.'
I heard her swallow some wine. 'I think you know.'
'Your commission,' I said.
Anne was at a crossroads of her career. After ten years in the Air Force, she had been thinking about the possibility of resigning her commission and coming back to civilian life. But she was also up for early promotion to major, and I knew how much that meant to her.
'Yes, my commission.'
'And?'
'And I came to a decision. Sort of.' I heard her drink some more. I heard her put the glass down.
