I heard voices behind me. Rena had arrived and Marcus was letting her in.
“Hi, Kathleen,” she said as she stepped into the main part of the building. She’d brought cardboard to wrap around her paintings and I could see a roll of bubble wrap poking out of the top of her canvas tote. Marcus took the cardboard from her.
I reminded myself that if Rena hadn’t done anything wrong there was nothing to worry about and forced myself to smile at her. “Good morning,” I said.
“Am I the first one here?” she asked, looking around.
“You’re the only one, actually,” I said, taking the cardboard from Marcus and leaning it against the desk. “Ruby said you’ll be at the high school all day for the next couple of days. I thought it might be easier for you to get your paintings today.”
“It is. Thanks,” she said. She glanced at Marcus. “Thank you, too, Detective.”
“You’re welcome,” Marcus said. He looked around. “Tell me which pieces are yours and I’ll lift them down for you.”
Rena pointed at her two paintings, one of a small mouse and the other of a turtle near the edge of a pool of water.
Marcus lifted down the turtle painting and carried it over to the checkout desk. I slid the card with Rena’s name and the name of the painting out of its holder on the wall and handed it to her.
She ran a hand along the side of the frame. “I like this frame,” she said. “When Margo chose it I wasn’t so sure, but now I can see she was right.”
“You can keep it,” I said, running my own finger over the smooth pale wood.
Rena looked uncertainly at me. In jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt, with her black hair in a loose side braid, she looked a lot younger than I knew she had to be.
“Margo wanted you all to have professionally framed pieces. She arranged it through the museum.” I smiled at the memory of Margo, walking the length of the upstairs hallway, having an animated conversation with someone from the museum. “She was hoping these pieces would be part of other shows.”
“What happened to her was horrible,” Rena said softly, her expression a mix of sadness and gravity.
The emotion looked genuine. The energy coming off her felt genuine. A knot of uncertainty twisted in my stomach.
“The last time you saw Margo Walsh was right after lunch on Thursday?” Marcus asked.
Rena shook her head. “No. Before lunch.” She looked at me and I nodded my head in confirmation. “We were all here. All the local artists, I mean.”
His gaze had been drawn to the picture on the counter. “That’s the turtle preserve isn’t it?”
Rena smiled. “It is. How did you know?”
“I’ve hiked all through that area, though not for a while.” He narrowed his blue eyes at her. “It’s very good. Have you been painting your whole life?”
She nodded and reached for the roll of plastic wrap in the bag at her feet. I was surprised that she was wrapping the painting so carefully. Maybe it was going somewhere other than back to Red Wing with her. “If you count finger painting in kindergarten, then, yes,” she said.
“I didn’t like finger painting,” I said with a sheepish smile.
Rena turned to look at me. “Why?”
“I didn’t like getting my hands dirty because we could only go to the reading corner with clean hands and that was my favorite place in the classroom.”
“It sounds like our destinies were already set,” she said.
I laughed, remembering having this same conversation with Maggie and Ruby. “If our destinies are set in kindergarten, then my brother’s destiny is to burp for a living.”
“Burp?” Rena asked.
The edge of the plastic refused to tear. I reached over the counter and retrieved a pair of scissors for her.
“Ethan’s big accomplishment in kindergarten was learning to burp the entire alphabet.”
“You’re not really serious,” Rena said as she cut the plastic and then reached for one of the large pieces of cardboard that she’d brought with her.
“Give Ethan a big bottle of root beer and he can still do it.”
She laughed as she held up one sheet of cardboard, looking from it to the painting. She gave Marcus a sidelong glance. “What about you, Detective?” she asked. “What were you into in kindergarten?”
A smile played at the corners of his mouth. “I was coatroom monitor.”
“What’s a coatroom monitor?” I asked.
He brushed something off the sleeve of his sport coat. “I made sure everyone hung up their coat and put their boots underneath their hook.”
I looked at Rena. “I think we may just have proved your theory.”
She laughed again. Rena was guarded, careful, but it seemed to me that she had relaxed, just a little.
I looked back over my shoulder. “The pond with the turtle is beautiful, but the mouse is my favorite,” I said. “The detail is incredible.”
Rena lifted the painting and slid the cardboard underneath. Marcus reached over and helped hold the frame, edging the scissors out of the way. “Thank you,” she said. “I did that one all from photographs.” She made a face. “It’s hard to get a mouse to pose for very long.”
“Is there really egg in egg tempera paint?” Marcus asked.
Rena nodded, shifting the placement of the painting a little to the left. “Yes. Egg yolk for the most part, along with the pigment and something to keep the mixture from drying out too quickly. Water usually, but not always. I think the final effect is more like watercolor. You don’t get the intense colors you would with, say, oil paint, but you can create some incredible detail.” She folded the cardboard along a line she’d already scored, bringing one side up over the front of the painting. “The technique goes back to the Egyptians.”
I remembered what Julian had said about having likely seen Devin at the gallery party. “You must be a fan of Antony Williams, then,” I said.
“I am.” She lifted her head and looked at me, surprised. “How do you know his work?”
“I used to live in Boston. My family is still there. His portrait of Queen Elizabeth was part of an exhibit marking her Diamond Jubilee.” I reached for the tape roller at her feet and handed it to her. “I was so taken with his work I came home and looked up his other paintings online.”
Rena folded the cardboard over the plastic-wrapped painting. “Do you have a favorite?” she asked.
“Eleanor on Her 87th Birthday,” I said. “He captured every line on her face, every single strand of her hair.”
“It’s even more incredible in person,” she said.
“Could I hold that?” I said, gesturing at the cardboard.
“Oh yeah, thanks,” Rena said. I held the folded cardboard in place as she secured it with several wide pieces of tape.
“So you were at the Weyman Gallery party, what, three years ago?” Marcus said.
“Uh, no,” Rena said. She glanced up at Marcus, frowning just a little. She was good. Her voice didn’t falter. Her hands didn’t so much as twitch. The only thing that gave her away was looking away just a fraction too soon.
“That painting is part of a private collection,” Marcus continued. “It’s only been shown in public once in the past thirty years. At that party.”
Rena recovered well. “I guess I must have been there, then,” she said with a small smile. “People give me tickets to things.” She looked at me and shrugged. “It’s like collecting a few sets of salt and pepper shakers. Suddenly everyone you know is bringing you a pair when they go on vacation.”
“A very valuable watercolor painting was stolen from that gallery the day after the party closed,” Marcus said. “The only thing the police found was part of a fingerprint that they weren’t able to identify.”
Rena smiled at him. “So you think that I went to the opening gala and did what? Hid in a bathroom stall for twenty-four hours so I could steal a painting?”