Attic Ward

By Bill Gourgey

>>>Don't Miss Book 2 of the Cap City Kids Mystery-Thriller Series

Fifteen-year-old Brooke has been bounced between foster homes for half her life. With her rare and exceptional ability to draw and paint, Brooke knows she’s not normal. She has always felt misunderstood and mistreated by the adults in her life. When Brooke decides to run away to Washington, DC, her luck begins to turn. Just as things are finally looking up, however, Brooke’s probation officer catches up with her. But that becomes the least of her troubles when she suddenly finds herself having to choose between fleeing for her life and saving a centuries-old masterpiece. In Attic Ward, greedy art world power brokers find themselves up against a brilliant and determined young artist who is willing to sacrifice everything to save the art she loves.

>>>An entertaining glimpse of legendary artists, forgers, and their masterpieces
Experts suggest that as much as forty percent of the pieces of art circulating in legitimate art markets are forgeries. Even Michelangelo was allegedly hired to forge copies of ancient Roman sculptures. Brooke learns more than she ever wanted to know about the dark side of art, which is at once thrilling and infuriating.

>>>You won't view a painting the same way ever again
Imagine masterpieces coming to life! Better yet, imagine that they’re already alive. Brooke sees art in every aspect of her life. Her passion and perception are so infectious that you won’t be able to view legendary artists and their masterpieces the same way ever again. And the next time you wander the halls of a museum, you might find yourself holding your breath...

>>>This action-packed book will take you on a thrilling ride through the stunning world of fine art!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill Gourgey
• Release date: Mar 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370695324

Bill Gourgey

Critically acclaimed author, Bill Gourgey, has been praised by reviewers and readers for his entertaining and thought-provoking projections of modern science and technology. His books include the Glide Trilogy, which won the Beverly Hills Book Award in Science Fiction, and his Cap City Kids young adult mystery-thriller series about talented but disadvantaged teens who take on Washington, DC.A former IT consultant to Fortune 500 companies and managing partner at Accenture, he has designed and developed software for the communications, utilities, finance, and high tech industries. With a passion for both technology and creative writing, his sci fi and young adult mystery thrillers feature technology’s dual-edged promise. Gourgey has held board and advisory positions at various technology startups. He has been a panelist at Digital Hollywood, and speaker at Intervention Con. He is also the Managing Editor of The Delmarva Review, a literary journal.Gourgey is a graduate of Cornell University with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Materials Science, where he received numerous academic honors. He currently attends the graduate program in Science Writing at Johns Hopkins University. He lives with his family in Washington, DC and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Book preview

ATTIC WARD

by

Bill Gourgey

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Sleeping Gypsy Girl

Metro

Soap Bubbles

Château Rowe

Conspiracy

A Portrait of Lucius Evans

Salome

Water Snakes

Girl in a Gold Scarf

Mount Corcoran

Setting Out to Fish

Still Life with Champagne Bottle

Flower on a Ledge

The Girl in the Mirror

Thinking about Death

Poor Artist’s Cupboard

Sweet Substitute?

The Girl Who Made a Delacroix

Art Trap

Girl Holding a Balance

Tiger and Snake

Penitence

The Voyage of Life: Artist

More Fun Museum Facts

References

Fine Art Talk

Acknowledgments

Other Books by Bill Gourgey

Jacked Arts

Washington, DC 20008

www.jackedarts.com

Copyright © 2016 by Bill Gourgey

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016908925

ISBN-13: 978-1533485274

ISBN-10: 1533485275

Front cover font: Montserrat.

Front cover image: Hopeless by David from AdobeStock; digital image of Tiger and Snake by Eugène Delacroix provided by the National Gallery of Art.

Interior Title font: Life is Messy by Kimberly Geswein.

Interior Title Page image: digital image of Orphan Girl at the Cemetery by Eugène Delacroix (masked view) downloaded from Athenaeum.

For

David & Georgia,

Brian, and Edwina

who’ve been like

brothers and sisters

And for

their Keidan Clan,

every one

Sleeping Gypsy Girl

It’s happening again: strange incantations seep through the cold stone, charging these hushed halls. The still air stirs with otherworldly anticipation. Somewhere in the archives, perhaps, a rare work of art, wrought with alchemical gold leaf and infused with spells, has begun its long-awaited transformation. Or maybe it’s the unearthly charisma of a cursed portrait, like Dorian Gray’s, crafted with a dark elixir. Only, this magic isn’t confined to a single painting or the soul of a single man. This magic…this magic is taking over the National Gallery of Art!

Can’t you feel it?

It’s the paintings—some numinous energy, rooted in their pigments, has awakened them. But paintings don’t stir from slumber like fossils and relics, shaking off cobwebs and dust. No. When paintings come to life, vivid worlds expand from their canvases to blend, melt, and fuse with reality; they forge a sublime alloy, a breathtaking kaleidoscope.

It happens only at night, when I’m here in the National Gallery, alone…

I’m standing before The Sleeping Gypsy—a mystical Surrealist painting by Henri Rousseau of a gypsy woman asleep in the desert sands beneath the moonlight. Suddenly, a hot, dry breath of air sweeps past me. I know what’s coming, so I hurry to take refuge in one of the Impressionist galleries where the paintings are bright and colorful and less intimidating than these Surrealist dreamscapes.

Tonight, I also steer clear of the galleries filled with Abstract animations, Cubist distortions, glowing Fauvist colors, and strident Constructivist propaganda. I’m looking for something earthly to ground me. Even though I typically favor the works of Postimpressionists like van Gogh’s Starry Night or Munch’s The Scream, I’m not in the mood for their hallucinatory angst, either; they liquefy the air and veil the light until all the nearby paintings disappear into their fluid reach. I’ve learned that certain paintings—the more potent masterpieces—hold sway over the others when this unexplained enchantment takes over the museum.

For example, Leonardo da Vinci’s Ginevra de’ Benci freely wanders the conjoined worlds like a glowing goddess, and Rubens’s Pan Reclining—let’s just say that Pan the goat god turns out to be sixteen feet tall and he reeks; I can smell him even before I feel the impact tremors of his approaching hooves.

I slip into my favorite Impressionist gallery, and there it is, what I’ve come for: Monet’s Japanese Footbridge. By now, the transformation is well under way. I step lightly onto the bridge and stop at the center of its blue span. The water lilies bob gently in their pond below. I can hear the birds and frogs, and the long chirr of cicadas. I breathe deeply to take in the sweet, intoxicating scent of early summer. Somewhere in the distance, cathedral bells toll.

Outside the sphere of the footbridge, chaos swirls as other paintings come to life and fuse to the edges of this one. On another night, I might plunge into that chaos to see where it takes me, but tonight I seek solace, and I’ve found it, here in the heart of this profound work by Monet.

When I’m immersed like this, in a painting, I can feel the artist at work; I can follow the motion of his hands—how he’s prepared his canvas and palette, rendered shadow and light, employed contrast and hue, juxtaposed shapes and lines, manipulated space and motion, built layer upon layer, brushstroke by painstaking brushstroke, until it happens: his vision leaps to life!

My eyes flutter open. I’m shivering. It’s dark. I look at the clock. 7:00 a.m. Time to get ready for work.

Metro

Move along, miss," the DC Metro Police officer drawls, as if he’d pressed repeat on a monotone recording of his own voice. I must have frozen in the turnstile without realizing it.

My heart’s racing. It’s the Huntress. I just know it. I don’t see her, but I can tell that she’s nearby.

Detective Luanne Hunt is the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) probation officer who’s been tracking me. I call her the Huntress—as in Diana, goddess of the hunt—because she has an uncanny ability to divine my whereabouts and find me.

She was assigned to my case nearly five years back when I gave one of my foster families the slip (the Pauls in Roanoke). I was eleven at the time. The Huntress caught me even though I’d made it all the way to Kentucky. Since then, I’ve had to meet with her four times a year. But ten months ago, I took off for good. I hate being a ward of the state of Virginia, and there’s no way I’m waiting until I’m eighteen to be set free. This time I decided to hide in plain sight, in a big city.

In Washington, DC.

Everything was fine until two weeks ago when I thought I saw Detective Hunt on the National Mall, lingering by my favorite place—the National Gallery of Art. I caught only a glimpse of her face before she disappeared, so I wasn’t sure. But I’ve been having nightmares about her since, and that tells me she’s nearby.

I’ve learned to trust my hunches and dreams as much as I trust my horoscope, which is a lot. I believe that all things—but especially the living—have natural energy fields floating around them, more even than scientists know. It’s what gives things beauty and harmony, but also ugliness and discord. Most of the time I just get jumbled sensations, no more than white noise. But when frequencies align unexpectedly and break through the static, I become a lightning rod; it’s exhilarating—and frightening.

Not that I see ghosts or anything.

I call these sensations the voice of my Guardian Muse, my GM. But it’s not really a voice; it’s a feeling—the same feeling that guides me when I’m drawing and painting. I believe it’s the source of my inspiration (and probably my unusual artistic abilities, too). But sometimes it’s the source of my fears.

Like now.

It’s crowded here in the Metro station, but I feel the Huntress. It’s like she’s so close she could reach out and grab me. That must be why I froze involuntarily.

Do you know where you’re going, miss? the same DC Metro police officer asks. Now he’s out of repeat mode. He takes a step toward me, looking irritated and suspicious. I can’t afford to get picked up.

Oh, sorry, yes, I reply. I stick my CharmCard in the turnstile and hurry through. Predictably, the strap on my backpack catches the turnstile bar and I nearly fall over backward. I can be a little clumsy sometimes, especially when I’m anxious. I unhitch the strap, smile sheepishly at the officer, who’s glowering at me with his arms crossed, and rush to take the escalator down to the platform.

I can tell the officer thinks I’m guilty of something, but he’s not concerned enough to come after me.

Detective Hunt’s another matter. I take the left side of the escalator and push past people who haven’t moved fully to the right. It’s not like me to draw attention to myself like this, but I feel a prickly heat all around. I just know the Huntress is in this station with me.

As soon as I’m on the platform, I sneak a peek back up the escalator. Sure enough, about halfway up, I see her face. But it’s not her face—not exactly. Her straight-as-a-rail black hair is shorter, or else it’s tied back and tucked into her brown leather jacket. And she has on shades, which make her look like a narc, especially with that worn, khaki-green Tennessee Smokies baseball cap she’s wearing. Down in southwest Virginia where I come from—and Detective Hunt, too (I’m from Castlewood, she’s from Roanoke)—there’s a bunch of die-hard Smokies baseball fans. They regularly make the trip to Kodak, Tennessee, to watch their team play since the closest Major League ballpark is in Cincinnati. And that’s about all I know about baseball: where Smokies fans go and what Smokies gear looks like…I’d know that logo anywhere.

Even though Detective Hunt’s face doesn’t look quite right—thinner, I think—it’s that baseball cap that gives her away.

I can tell she’s spotted me through those shades. My legs go numb. Where I was the one pushing before, now people push past me as they get off the escalator and the Huntress moves closer.

Just then, the train I need to catch pulls into the station. The blast of air and surge of commuters is enough to spur me from paralysis. Unfortunately, it also gets the Huntress going, too. She starts shoving her way down the escalator.

I take off, darting between people and keeping my head low. I’m not tall, but I’m not short, either, so hunching over helps me stay out of sight. I hear the doors ding and jump onto the train at the last second. It’s the front car, which means I have nowhere to go if I see the Huntress come through the connecting door. I squeeze between two large women, who glare at me, and grab the strap overhead.

The train lurches away. Since I got on at my usual Smithsonian station, I have two quick stops to the Metro Center station where I’ll switch trains. Metro Center is a madhouse during morning rush hour, so it’s my best chance of losing my determined pursuer. But that means two stops trapped in this car.

I stare at the dark glass. In the reflection, I see the faces of surrounding commuters in their customary poses. It reminds me of Subway, Lily Furedi’s 1934 New Deal painting, which depicts subway passengers looking down, staring blankly at the space in front of them, stealing furtive glances, and generally avoiding eye contact with their fellow passengers. I’m always amazed how city people can be so close and yet so distant.

Gradually, my gaze settles on my own reflection. Seeing myself makes me wonder what Detective Hunt sees. I look different from the last time I saw her. Back then I was a tangled mess of a teen. My hair is longer now, but I wear it mostly up in a French twist, which makes me look older and helps me fit in. But as cosmopolitan as I strive to be, especially now that I’m living (hiding) in a big city, I gravitate to my country roots when it comes to fashion. Plus, I like to wear comfortable clothes when I paint, which is most days. Comfort to me means flannels (T-shirts in summer), jeans, and sneakers.

Since it was cold this morning, I have on a teal-and-plum flannel shirt, a raven-black hooded down vest, my usual jeans, and black Skates. I used to wear high tops, but Skates are dressier and almost pass for real shoes. I keep some dressier clothes at Artbeat in case Kat needs me to work the gallery. Kat—Katerina Sokolov—is the gallery owner. She insists that I look professional when I’m interacting with her patrons, which is OK by me. I don’t mind wearing nice clothes when I’m not painting; it makes me feel important.

My hands have the usual paint and gesso ground in under the nails and caked into my dried and cracking skin.

Even in my comfortable clothes, I look a lot older than I used to. Kat helped with that. When I first met her, and decided to share my story (well, some of it), she told me there was a pretty face hiding under all that orphan rejection and defiance. She also said I needed to look and act like I was already of legal age if I was going to be on my own.

Kat made me up that day.

I’ve painted a zillion things in my life, but that’s the first time my face was the canvas. It made me feel pretty.

I know I have homely features—my dad used to remind me of that all the time when I was much younger; but I like to think I have a certain appeal, too—something like the Orphan Girl at the Cemetery painted by Eugène Delacroix in the early 1800s. He’s my favorite artist, probably because of that painting. Just like the orphan girl, my ears are a little too big, my nose too pointed, my eyes too round. But I also have her pillowy lips, long lashes, and wavy chestnut hair. Kat knew how to add just the right touches to emphasize my strengths. Now I put on a little makeup every day to look older, and I put my hair up in a twist, just like the orphan girl. But there’s more to my connection with Delacroix’s painting. Some see sadness and despair in the painting’s hues and the girl’s bearing, but there’s so much more. I imagine the orphan girl is a Leo like me. It’s the gold-to-sepia shades lacing the painting and the expression on her face that say Leo. Of course, she looks sad, but beneath her sadness Delacroix painted a layer that’s warmhearted, loving, and creative, and the resolve needed to be bossy and take charge. I’d love to be able to ask Delacroix if that’s what he intended, but it doesn’t really matter because it’s what I see. And that’s the beauty of art.

Just now, last night’s dream comes back to me: of wandering the National Gallery as all the paintings suddenly come to life. It’s a recurring dream that started shortly after I moved here. I’m prone to recurring dreams. I believe they come from my Guardian Muse, rife with portent and insight. The National Gallery dream both comforts and frightens me; it’s like being in the eye of a storm.

I shiver and rub the backs of my arms.

As I stare at myself in the dark subway window, I notice my choker—brown leather strap, turquoise stone set in its center. I groan. I don’t even think about it and I almost never take it off. Just like Detective Hunt’s baseball cap gives her away, my choker gives me away. It’s like wearing a neon sign that flashes Brooke Rowe. I’ve worn it for as long as I can remember. It used to belong to my mom.

I swear under my breath. I should have known better than to wear it so brazenly all this time.

But the choker would only explain how Detective Hunt spotted me, in spite of my older looks. How did she locate me in the first place? I feel my stomach flip a few times and beads of sweat break out across my upper lip. If she’s discovered where I work or where I live…I don’t even want to think about it. I have a good life here. I’m finally doing what I want to do with my life (mostly)—I’m painting. I’m surrounded by art all day, every day. It’s everything I’ve dreamed of.

Suddenly, I’m more angry than anxious. What right does Detective Hunt—or the State of Virginia—have to disrupt my life and take all this away? Before my anger takes hold, however, the train makes its next stop at Federal Triangle. I’m tempted to get off, but I know I should be patient. One more stop.

People file off and more people file on with that guarded look of detachment that Furedi captures so well in Subway. The train is crushingly full. When the doors close and it finally gets going again, I think I’m safe. But something doesn’t feel right. I get such a powerful premonition of danger that I reflexively crouch.

Sure enough, someone’s forcing their way through the crowd from the other end of the train. I can hear people complain. I don’t need to look to know who it is.

Keeping my head low, I shuffle toward the door. I need only thirty more seconds before the train makes its next stop. But then I see the baseball cap and I know my luck—and my freedom—has just run out.

I brace myself. I’m not going down without a fight. Just then the train lurches to a stop, and I see a flash of the Huntress’s face as she flies forward awkwardly, along with several other people who had moved out of her way to let her through. I seize the momentary off-balance confusion to push mercilessly in the other direction, shoving people out of my way. I head for the far end of the car. It’s risky because I’ll be cornered if the Huntress gets to me before the doors open. The train lurches forward again, which only makes people angrier with me because they’re not braced for it. But it has created a human barricade.

By the time the train barrels into the Metro Center station, I’ve got myself poised in front of the doors. I glance to my right. The Huntress has her shades pulled up. Instead of coming after me, she’s waiting by the doors at the middle of the car. She tries to make eye contact. I don’t give her more than a fleeting look. I see her jaw muscles ripple. It’s going to be a footrace.

I’m glad I wore my sneakers.

Whenever a train comes to a stop in a station, there’s always a delay before the doors actually open. It can’t be more than a few seconds, but right now it feels like an eternity.

I hear the train’s intercom recording say, Doors opening, and I’m through the crack before they’ve slid fully back. I dart into the crowd waiting to board the train and sprint left, away from the Huntress. I don’t even bother to see where she is because I know my lead is only a few seconds and I can’t waste any of them.

I charge up the nearest escalator, shoving people out of my way. I hear the Huntress shout, Stop that kid! The good news is I have a bigger lead than I thought; the bad news is there’s a DC Metro Police officer at the top of the escalator. But he’s slow to react and I slip past him easily and take off along the tunnel that leads me to the Red line, which is the train I need to catch. I’m not very athletic, but I have long legs and can run like the wind, even while dodging pedestrians. When I get to the down escalator, I don’t bother with the moving steps. I slide down the stainless-steel center divider, narrowly missing the speed bumps placed there to prevent people tempted by the promise of a fast, smooth ride. My hip catches the last one, but I hardly notice the pain as I land on my feet, stumbling because I’m moving so fast, and head toward the platform.

There’s a train waiting there, with its doors open, but they start to close before I’m on board. I stick my foot in the gap. I hear the usual recording, Stand clear of the closing doors. It’s playing in a loop since my foot’s preventing the doors from closing. I hear the conductor shout from halfway up the train, telling me to back away, but I don’t. He’s forced to open the doors and let me on.

I slip onto the train. The doors close behind me so fast they nearly snag my backpack. This train isn’t as crowded as the last one since it’s heading away from downtown.