The Art Thief

Looking beyond the tarmac stepping from the plane, Paulina could see the jungle. There was a familiar wall of heat draping over her, her first breath filling her lungs with humid and tropical urban air. For the past few years, she had lived in the United States, and not since her graduation party, where she broke the news she was leaving for good, had she stepped foot on Belizean soil.

She made her way around the nose of the plane to the terminal. A feeling of heaviness grew as she entered into the baggage claim, compounding as she stepped out to wait for the car that would pick her up. She had never removed her sunglasses for fear that she might inadvertently make eye contact with a familiar face. So far, no one had seemed to recognize her. Perhaps now enough time had passed that the phantom long looming over her family had been exorcised.

A Toyota truck pulled through the carport and stopped before her as its passenger side window rolled down.

"Miss Delgado!"

It was her family's driver, Narcho.

She waved and crouched in vain to pick up her bag before it was taken from her by the portly middle-aged driver. Despite his plump figure and shorts hanging far too low to practically cover his lower half, he moved swiftly.

"Please miss- allow me."

"Thank you, Narcho."

Moments passed, and they were soon out of the traffic and onto the surrounding thoroughfares. They made several turns, exiting and joining crowded streets, before arriving at the mouth of a dirt road, signaling the real border into the country and the end of the airport's bubble. They faced a sign opposite them: an arrow to the right read BELIZE CITY, and an arrow left read ORANGE WALK.

Narcho turned left.

They spent a half-hour in silence.

Now almost 25, the sight of her native country overloaded her senses. All of her surroundings were familiar and yet given the integration of new perspective and routine making up her life in the United States, her arrival was of fresh flavor. It made her uncomfortable, as though she were a phony now forced to reckon with sins of the past, although they were not her own.

"Miss?" he said, breaking the silence.

"Hello,” she said.

"Hello," he said. He pointed to the air conditioner button, and she glanced into the rearview mirror, seeing his face beaded with sweat.

"Do you mind?"

"Not at all."

She returned her gaze to her countryside.

"I never believed it, about your father, you know?"

She stared at him.

"That's good to know, Narcho."

"All the newspapers, all of Miss Geraldine's neighbors, they don't know anything."

She lightly bit her bottom lip and returned her line of sight to the reflection of Narcho's tanned face, as he nervously glanced at her in the mirror.

She offered only a nod, and her mind turned to Geraldine.

She hadn't thought much of her stepmother since she left. It would have served no purpose, Paulina thought, as the woman had sworn her off the moment Fabian, her father, had passed away.

Perhaps Geraldine felt betrayed, as though Paulina was abandoning her by not spending her remaining youth in a community which had rejected her family, and like a Belizean-born Sisyphus, she was meant to suffer with them the weight of admonition. Escaping the mountain, and leaving the boulder for others to burden, was her only option.

The remainder of the car ride went by all too quickly, and she found herself standing outside the gated door that led up a floor to the front door of their three-story home. It was the same color orange that she remembered from before, now weathered from the rain and humidity. She had helped her father with the first coat of paint on her summer vacation, some decade ago, before all the trouble started. And despite her protestations among the heat, they’d seen the job through to the end.

Upstairs, she found the lights off and an unsettling quiet ruling over the house. There were signs of life, with uncleared coffee cups atop the counter and table and a casserole dish soaking in the sink. She dared not call out for fear someone might answer. She was not yet ready to speak with anyone.

She set her bags down in the living room and peered around the house, finding a note pasted to the fridge door:

"YOU'RE IN YOUR OLD ROOM.

WE'LL BE BACK LATER TONIGHT,

LOVE, NAT"

Something resembling a smile came across her face. Perhaps she would be able to rely on her sister during this time, but for now, all she felt was relief in the solitude.

She found her old room and closed the door once inside. The room had changed only slightly since Paulina had left, with an unused treadmill having replaced an old dresser and a pile of blankets replacing the bedspread of her youth. A nap would do for now.

Some hours later, she heard the rustling of people making their way inside and stirred from beneath the blankets, which ran too short, forcing her to bend her legs to be wholly covered. She held her breath as they walked by, hearing them comment on her bags sitting in the living room.

"Is Paulina here?" she heard her Uncle Victor say.

"Who cares?" came the liquor-induced retort of Geraldine. "After all that he did to this family, to me especially, I don't see–" her speech slurred and trailed off in an unintelligible mess.

"You're drunk. Be careful so she doesn't hear you."

Even though it was non-verbal, she could feel the force of Geraldine's rebuff of her uncle from behind the closed door. Tears formed in her eyes as she did her best to fall back asleep.

Perhaps an hour later, there was a restrained knock on the door. Paulina had spent the time between her last interruption and this one in a state of half-sleep but was now fully alert, blood pumping like a drum in her head.

She caught her breath and stood up, toiling with herself over what to say, dependent upon who might be behind the knock. She must play it cool, whether it was Geraldine looking to fight or Victor looking for midnight conversation.

She opened it slowly.

"Hi sis," said Nat, beaming under the hallway floodlight.

Paulina further opened the door from the inside and let her in as the two embraced in a deep and affectionate hug. Tears welling in both their eyes, they whispered sweet greetings into one another's ears, each speaking of how much they missed the other and how happy they were to see them. Paulina could feel Nat clutching something in her hand but couldn't make it out in the dark. When they stepped back, and Nat shut the door now behind her, they dared to speak at a tone just above a whisper.

"How are you sister?"

"I'm okay," she said. "Where were you guys tonight?"

"Maria Paisano's house. She hosted dinner after the will-reading."

"Ah, ok."

Paulina did her best to fight back further tears, born of the pain of having been excluded from such a deeply personal event.

"I'm so sorry you weren't there, sister."

"What could you do?"

Natalie pursed her lips, knowing any explanation would add insult to injury.

"Did the art thief leave us anything?"

"Enough for one night's bar tab," said Nat. "The bitch gets everything."

"Figures."

Nat reached for and turned on a lamp that extended from the wall. In her hands was an envelope.

"Dad did say you were supposed to get this."

Paulina squinted, her eyes adjusting to the light.

"What is it?"

"Not sure, it feels like a notebook. Geraldine almost opened it, but I stopped her."

Paulina chuckled silently.

"Thank you, sister."

"He put it in there before he died and gave it to the attorney. No one knows what it is."

She handed it over and Paulina clutched it, surprised at how much it meant to her.

"I was hoping we could get breakfast tomorrow at our old spot."

Paulina smiled and nodded.

Nat turned to leave, but paused, offering up one more thing.

"You know, most people have forgotten about the whole scandal with the painting. He wasn't ever convicted, so the rumors died out."

Paulina nodded again, and Nat turned back around to leave.

They said a few more words, and then Nat saw herself out. Left alone, Paulina cried no more and set the envelope inside her tote bag. It would keep until the morning.

The next morning, Paulina awoke early before breakfast and found herself walking along the sidewalks of her town as the sun came up. Hoping to get out the door before her stepmother, whose boozy snores could be heard from the hallway, she remembered the envelope. Paulina glanced around, seeing only day laborers with their lunch pails or school children in their navy and white uniforms populating the street around her. She found a bench and tore open the envelope.

Inside was a brand-new notebook with a black cover and lined pages. It was practically untouched and as far as she could tell bore only a single inscription on its first page:

"MY DARLING PAULINA—

THEY'LL ALWAYS HAVE PLENTY TO TALK ABOUT,

WE MIGHT AS WELL MAKE IT GOOD.

PASSWORD: MATA HARI"

Below that was a safety deposit box number and an address on Loquat Road.

She stood up.

Head spinning, she began to feel lightheaded. Sometime later, after much internal debate and mental calculus, she found herself outside the address, the clock now reading 8 a.m. Almost nauseous, she ventured inside.

"Can I help you miss?" asked a woman behind the teller's glass.

"I have a safety deposit box I'd like to access."

"Ok, do you have the key?"

"No, just a password."

"I'm sorry?"

"I have a password. The box number is B-151."

"I'm sorry ma'am, our safety deposit boxes only run 1-100, and there are no letters involved in them, I suggest—" the woman stopped, cut off by a manager who'd overheard their conversation.

"Hello Miss Delgado, I wondered when you might show up."

"Hi, I need to access a safety deposit box," she said.

"Right this way, please."

They stepped around the desk, and dodging a look of confusion from the teller, made their way toward the back. Passing from the lobby through a hallway, they arrived at a basement door. She felt further unease begin to foment in her throat.

No one had a basement in Belize.

"The teller wasn't being fresh, I assure you," he said. "We have a select number of private safety deposit boxes for customers with special circumstances, your father included. She's clueless."

She struggled to breathe as they descended. Once they reached the foot of the stairs, the man turned and stopped at another door, this one strikingly out of place with rich and polished mahogany shining under a single light, tucked amid a dusty and unkempt floor and unfinished walls. On it was a badge bearing "B-151".

"Password please," he said.

"Mata Hari."

He chuckled and unlocked it with a key extracted from his jacket pocket.

Immediately, he flicked on a light, illuminating a dusty off-white cloth sitting over an object on a tabletop in the middle of the room. Surrounding the table were other artifacts, some interesting, some grotesque, and some made of gold or gemstones. The man closed the door behind them.

"I was to inform you that the back page of the book your father left you contains a list of buyers," he said.

She froze.

"They are motivated and have money standing buy. The bidding starts at $20,000."

The man clutched the sheet and tore it from the table. Underneath lay the very painting her father had, all those years ago, been found not guilty of stealing.