The Color Cure

“Three thousand, maybe four … tops.” Tom gave Beryl a sympathetic frown. “Your father was known more as a collector and appraiser than as a painter. It’s good, don’t get me wrong. Lovely composition, gorgeous color. But the subject matter has limited appeal, and he’s not a highly collectible name. After fees you’d end up with around $1,500.”

In the world of professional art appraisal, Tom was well respected. He’d worked with Beryl’s father, Walt, for decades, traveling from one North Side Chicago mansion to the next slapping insurance values on paintings hanging in the marble halls and silk-damask dining rooms of the wealthy. They were the go-to guys for 19th-century art, but the business is not especially lucrative.

Beryl chewed her lower lip, weighing her need for cash against her love for the large, quirky painting of a shoe that had hung in her bedroom ever since she was six years old. A lady’s shoe—the old kind with buttons and a heel—rested amongst a shock of grasses, fresh and springy. It was a dusty shade of ivory, adorned with a purple satin ribbon. A nice subject for a little girl’s room, but it was rendered deftly in thick oil paint, with more mystery than sweetness. Beryl sighed as she realized that her father’s love and skill for painting wouldn’t amount to much, financially. Since his long illness and death, she had bills to pay, a hefty student loan, and no job yet despite just having finished her Master’s in biology.

She sighed. “Fine. It’s not nearly as much as I’d hoped for, but Dad always said that if I needed money, this is the first one to sell. I guess he wasn’t that fond of it. Put it on the block and I’ll cross my fingers.”

Tom hugged her, understanding her reluctance to sell something with sentimental value. As Beryl headed for the door, Tom said, “The 23rd. That’s when the auction is. I’ll call you after the hammer.”

Beryl thought about her father as she pulled out of the parking garage for the long drive home. She barely remembered their life in California, when Walt worked as a curator for the venerated Archer Museum. It was the perfect career for a man who could lose himself for hours in a single painting. Leaving was the last thing he wanted to do, and as the story goes, he didn’t do it cooperatively. His firing had resulted from his careless purchase of a fake Vermeer, spending more than an entire year’s acquisitions budget on the tiny portrait. His judgment could no longer be trusted, the museum board had determined. And in this field, there’s little chance he’d ever be hired again.

That’s what brought the family to Wisconsin—Walt, Mary, Beryl and little Violet. Walt wanted to escape from the museum world and his crumbled reputation. They moved into a little white farmhouse way outside of Madison, and that’s the childhood home Beryl remembered best—and the one she had recently inherited.

Shortly after the move, her father began driving to Chicago every few weeks to assist Tom. It was while he was away on one of these trips that everything changed. Mary had dropped Beryl at school for the day and headed home with the baby, but a patch of black ice sent her sedan over an embankment where it rolled to a stop against a hulking maple, the two dead on impact or soon thereafter.

In the years that followed, a palpable sadness filled every nook of the old farmhouse. Beryl faltered in school, Walt struggled to work. When the situation became dire, Walt started painting again, a pastime he hadn’t practiced since college. It lifted his mood and helped him to start working again, and things got better. Soon his colorful canvases filled the walls of their home, and they both sensed fresh energy from it. Dreamy landscapes and optimistic still-lives in his signature palette of fresh greens and clear blues seemed to draw sunshine through the drafty old windows. Her father’s paintings hung next to favorites by lesser-known artists that he’d collected and supported over the years. His only real joy seemed to come from a sort of meditation where he would explore these worlds within the frames.

“Fifteen hundred bucks.” Beryl scoffed. It was something, anyway.

MARCH 23

“Beryl, you won’t believe it,” said Tom. “Your dad’s painting went crazy.” He paused and his breath crackled over the phone. Then he quietly and deliberately stated, “Forty. Thousand.”

“Stop it, Tom,” Beryl admonished.

“I wouldn’t joke about this. It went for forty grand. Two phone bidders from California fought it out. Everyone in the room was astonished.”

“But why?”

“We may never know. The important thing is, you’re getting a lot more money than you expected. After commission and taxes, you’ll end up with around $20,000. Not bad, huh?”

Beryl slumped into her father’s tired reading chair. She looked around the room at his dreamy little worlds, wondering what it all meant.

APRIL 7

“Can I help you?” Beryl never expected visitors, much less a policeman on a quiet afternoon.

“Beryl Strong? May I have a few minutes of your time?” The officer held a plastic bag with some kind of paper sealed inside.

Beryl looked skeptical. “Sure, what’s this about?”

“A painting by Walt Strong that you recently sold at auction contained this note, and we think it might help us find a stolen painting. A valuable one.”

The officer handed Beryl the paper encased in plastic. “Does this mean anything to you?”

The small page with two rounded corners was seemingly torn from a little notebook. It held a message written in her father’s distinctive upright script:

Behind my clothing do I hide

The beauty of my soul inside.

Behind my skin

The truth within

Shall in its rightful place reside.

A shirt, a hat, perhaps a shoe…

The key is found Beyond the Blue.

Beryl was flummoxed. What was her father trying to say, and to whom?

“The buyer of the painting was The Archer Museum in California,” the officer continued. “They suspected it might contain a clue about the stolen painting’s location, so they disassembled the frame backing and found the paper inside. The painting’s been missing since 2000, and apparently your father was questioned about it at that time. I don’t suppose you’d remember?”

“No, I was a little kid. Why would they question him?”

“They said he’d been fired and his leaving hadn’t been amicable. Apparently he’d acquired this painting for their collection and it was very special to him. A river scene, I guess? He was a bit obsessed with it. They suspected that with his access privileges, he might have taken it out of spite, but their investigation back then was fruitless.”

“Can I keep this?” Beryl asked, holding up the note.

“No, it’s evidence. You can take a picture if you want. Think about it. If anything comes to you, please give me a call.”

Beryl snapped a photo with her smartphone and suddenly felt as if her father were texting her from the grave. Dad, what are you thinking? This is crazy. ‘Beyond the Blue’? Isn’t that the title of one of your paintings?

She closed the door slowly, deep in thought. Beryl was pretty sure that Beyond the Blue was the little seascape he’d painted when they went on a weekend trip to Lake Michigan, when Mom and Violet were still here. For both of them, it was a sweet memory they often revisited. She headed for his bedroom where it hung low, over the nightstand. A pleasant morning greeting.

Beryl lifted Beyond the Blue from its hanger. Walt had made the frame himself from an old board he’d found washed up on the beach where he painted it. The wall behind it was blank but a little scuffed. She sat on the bed to take a closer look, and as she did, she heard a metallic clink on the maple floor. The key is found Beyond the Blue.

Beryl was slightly annoyed, being thrown into this mess unexpectedly. Why hadn’t her father warned her about it? The key looked ordinary enough: small and silvery, with an oval-shaped head.

She looked around the spacious room with slanted ceilings and generous dormer windows, art crowding the walls and the floor. By the north window a big easel stood, splattered with bright colors. Beryl hadn’t even been up here since he died. It needed a dusting.

She read the poem again, catching on to her father’s game.

Behind my clothing do I hide…

She opened the heavy oak doors of the added-on closet. Inside, Walt’s sparse wardrobe screeched to the side in one easy swipe. In the light of the bare bulb, nothing looked unusual. A shelf up top held hats and sweaters, and the floor was stacked with Walt’s boxed shoes. Shuffling the boxes, Beryl noticed a subtle seam disguised along a stripe in the equestrian-themed wallpaper her mother had chosen so long ago. Pressing just a bit, a panel came loose.

After jiggling the panel out of its tight opening, Beryl saw a door made from the same oak as the closet doors, but unfinished. It was just big enough for a small person to sidle through, and there was a silver padlock holding the hasp closed. She inserted the key. Click.

With excited apprehension, Beryl opened the door. Fumbling in the darkness, she found a pull-chain and, half expecting it not to work, tugged. Light flooded a tiny space with walls painted a rich purple. The light was not a bare bulb like the one in the closet, but a museum-quality full-spectrum picture light. It looked like a shrine, of sorts, tucked into the eave space. She clambered in, landing on a soft rug and a cushion positioned just so for perfect viewing of a breathtaking oil painting.

Beryl sank into the cushion, not entirely surprised that her father had stolen this particular painting, nor that he’d created a space where he could fully enjoy his contraband.

Immediately, Beryl understood why her father would want to escape into this scene that came alive before her eyes: a resplendent riverbank on a warm day in June, the sky dotted with optimistic clouds and a few happy birds. A young russet-haired woman in period dress reclined in the grass, having removed her shoes. Only one was visible, and there it lay in the grass, an ivory doeskin buttoned heel with a purple satin ribbon. A minor element in the composition, but one she certainly remembered waking up to see every morning of her childhood.

The color was exquisite, with brilliant yellow-greens and sky blues jumping off the canvas against the walls that Walt had painted the perfect complementary purple. Violet, actually.

Beryl’s hand detected something under the rug, and she pulled out a small, black leather notebook, buttery soft and molded to the shape of Walt’s hand. She opened the delicate pages to find a diary. The first entry was dated February 5, 2001—the day after her mother and sister had died. Entries continued once or twice a week. Some of the short passages were mundane, others more philosophical. Beryl flipped to a little chartreuse paper flag on a page near the end to read:

All my life has been for art. It sustains me, especially now that my time here is fading. I’ve sacrificed money, time, attention, and even my reputation to escape into a reassuring world of color where I feel happiness. To the finders of this magnificent work: I hope you’ll love it half as much as I did and put it back in its rightful place for others to enjoy. My selfish crime has kept it hidden too long. It has brought a great, quiet joy to my life. Now let it bring meaning to my death.