Danube Defiance

By Jane Golden

DANUBE DEFIANCE, by critically appraised novelist JANE GOLDEN, is an enthralling mystery about an art heist involving ancient icon art. Travel with super sleuth, Jeni, as she ventures through the antique markets in New Orleans' French Quarter and across the ocean to Eastern Europe's bustling city of Bucharest and the Romanian countryside. Jeni stumbles upon one clue that leads to others. Something doesn't add up, and she gathers a few friends... an antiquities expert, a journalist, and a dashing New Orleans shopkeeper. Together, they follow a river of clues and dead bodies. But will the thieves get them first? Read to find out!

CLARION REVIEW:

"Golden's first-hand knowledge of Romania is fascinating."

BLUEINK REVIEW:

"Nothing makes an overworked genre like mystery seem quite so fresh as a story set in an exotic locale. SECRETS IN THE VINES takes this theory to heart, offering up a murder mystery set in the wine country surrounding Romania. It's a winning formula." "Author Jane Golden drew on her own time in Bucharest to set up this tale, and it pays off nicely. Observations about the life of a foreigner trying to make sense of a new culture are spot-on and often funny; thoughts about parking customs and the laconic pace of government reflect an outsider's tendency to compare things to life at home, while also taking us deeper into the atmosphere. The mystery is gripping, but it's the setting that steals the show." The review concludes with this about SECRETS IN THE VINES: It has a "terrific pacing and a plot that ends well." Better yet, the reviewer states that "we're left wanting more of this juicy escapism."

KIRKUS REVIEWS:

"An engaging mystery that turns the classic expatriate dream on its head."

Marian Petrutza, President of the Romanian-American Press Association:

"The perfect vacation book.... Colorful, entertaining, and beautifully written."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524556808

Jane Golden

Jane Golden lived in Eastern Europe and traveled the broader region extensively when her husband was attached to the embassy in Bucharest. Drawing upon her unique experiences, Jane writes about women who leave their ordinary lives and enthusiastically embrace the thrill and challenges of exploring far-off lands. She currently resides in D’Iberville, Mississippi. This is her fourth book.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

It was a shock to the rest of the world when a Romanian mother burned some Old World paintings—masterpieces allegedly stolen from a Netherlands museum—by tossing them onto a blazing fire in order to shield her son from prosecution. I was sitting cross-legged in pajamas on my gold corduroy state-department-issued sofa and nursing a cup of coffee when the BBC anchors gave the English-speaking world the sad news. Let there be no mistake—this news was confirmation to the Western world that Romania was backwards. Any self-respecting Brit would have pointed out their shackled child standing in a courtroom full of white-wigged lawyers and identified him or her as the art thief to the delight of the international media.

But the reporters do not know Romania. It is a country where every surface is a piece of art, and every view is a scene worthy of painting. Art is pervasive. Romanians wear it, live in it, and look at it. They are world-renowned for elaborate hand-embroidered peasant clothes different from those flimsy mass-produced shirts of the same name that I once wore in high school. Here, the home-made shirt, belt, or skirt is an individual work of art identifiable by region and effort, worthy of wearing on special occasions and protected under European Union rules as if they were French champagne.

Romanian architecture combines art with necessity, as evidenced from its thick, short-columned porches in intricate designs to the stone edifices decorated with statues and reliefs. In Transylvania, the narrow streets are bordered by rows of medieval homes with weathered paint in soft pastels and steeply pitched roofs with sleepy, almost sexy, eyes in the slate roofs for venting. Candy-colored homes with trailing rose vines are anything other than the scary structures that movies lead us to expect.

Each home, even the smallest, has a religious icon—gold on wood or gold and bright red or blue painted backward on glass panels or some other variation of a hand-painted piece of iconic art. Linens on the table, beds, and windows are made with hand-drawn lace. Furniture is ornately carved and then hand-painted with the scenes of everyday life. Even the simplest home has some little touch that sets it apart—some piece of pride that reflects its owner and is worthy of a picture. Gypsy homes, with their steep bright metal roofs and sharply carved designs at each turret, are a signature of their pride. The lack of glass in the windows is not an oversight but only a cunning way to avoid the tax collector.

Then you have the Danube Delta—one of the largest unspoiled Deltas in the world, so pristine that it is labeled a UNESCO World Heritage site. It provides sustenance for millions of migrating birds and tranquil scenes for centuries of paintings and photographs, enticing artists from everywhere into its vast wetland. Its hardy inhabitants, the accused mother being one, include the little known Russian Lipoveni descendants. Often called the Old Believers, they refused to obey changes in the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-eighteenth century and moved to the Delta, never to return to Russia. Over time, their unique culture has melded with that of the inhabitants of remote nunneries and small fishing villages to create a colorful and fascinating living work of art.

So it was no wonder to me why the mother burned the paintings that her son had left for her to safekeep. Instructed by him to hide them, and suspecting the worst, she first buried them in an abandoned house and, then later, a cemetery. It seemed a good plan until the authorities closed in on the village, and the distraught mother panicked. Her hiding space was not secure enough. In a final desperate attempt to save her son, she dug the priceless artworks from their grave and took them to her home, where she then stuffed them into her stone oven, started a wood fire, and threw them in one by one until they were unrecognizable, and there would be no evidence. Or so the news said.

It all made sense in a sad way—art was everywhere in Romania, but I surmised she probably had only one son.

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CHAPTER ONE

It was only an exaggerated sense of obligation that forced me to go get dressed and leave the news about the Netherlands art heist on the TV and move from the worn and comfortable couch, the same piece of furniture delivered to US diplomat homes all over the world. I did not realize when we first arrived in Bucharest that all my embassy friends would have the exact same furniture as me. It was creepy. The artwork we hung on the white walls and the dishes in the cabinets were all that set us apart—evidence of a life lived before in dishes or India or some other exotic location. Our only assignment was here in Bucharest, and that is what defined Zach and me.

I had to prepare for a board meeting of the International Ladies of Bucharest at noon. ILB had been a life-saver to me two years ago when I arrived in Bucharest with my husband after leaving our home in the States. Many countries had an organization like ILB—a group that promised friendship and immersion in the local culture for the newly arrived foreign wife, provided she pay a one-hundred-euro fee. There were coffee mornings, cocktail parties, trips, and tours. It was all great when I was a member, just a happy new face in love with life in Europe. But then I became president, a job for which I was totally unqualified—a prime example of the Peter Principle on a global scale.

It was one thing to attempt to blend into a group of well-dressed, sophisticated women but quite another to be responsible for that organization of two hundred members from fifty different countries. I grew up with only brothers and boy cousins and had no skills for running an organization of only women. I tried. I tried hard. But soon enough, talk emerged about a coup attempt when a member died at a wine tasting, and then my activities’ coordinator mistakenly planned a luncheon at a gentlemen’s club when her Romanian language skills failed her. That, too, was deemed my fault. I survived but wondered if a successful coup might have been a better outcome.

My first plan after the club outing was to inform the members that I was soon to be employed and no longer free to simply wander about town. I would have a tearful and graceful resignation. But it was hard to find a job when you are overqualified for most spousal positions at the Embassy and not licensed in Romania for any outside professional positions. Several months back, I had decided it might be fun to become a private investigator. It was the only job I could divine for an English-speaking person like me, and it seemed like a perfect match given my innate curiosity about other people and their secrets. Plus, I had already met lots of people in need of a person with my skills. There seemed to be a big void which I could fill within the expat community.

My friends were not impressed.

The phrase We will never speak to you again if you go around spying on people succinctly summed up their responses. No one agreed to help translate the application, much less go to the authorities with me for a business permit. Since it had been tough enough to get friends in the first place, I reluctantly ditched the plan to be employed and never even bothered to tell Zach, my husband. It was demoralizing.

Like I said, it had been tough at ILB for the past few months, and now I was worried. As president, I had been forced to learn Romanian charity laws, banking laws, and the delicate and unwritten law of conduct between international women. However, planning events for women who’ve had distinct and embedded cultural differences for thousands of years was the most difficult task, by far. By midyear, I had run out of speakers. The challenge was to find speakers with appropriate topics and enough fluency in English to convey a message that might please the majority of them and perhaps not offend the rest. Members had begun to grumble among themselves and, although no one had wanted to be president last year, now everyone was in the running to replace me. Anyway, there was only so much coffee you could drink, and I had not done nearly enough to entertain the women who had paid a hundred euros each to be entertained.

If I don’t do something to generate excitement in ILB, I risk an ugly showdown at the annual General Assembly meeting in March, I told Zach.

Unfortunately, he had no suggestions other than to reply that perhaps it was not that bad. I knew better and was resigned that my reign as supreme leader would most likely be over very soon.

"It’s not that I really want to still be president. I just don’t want to not be president," I told myself.

It was an epiphany a few days later that revived my spirits. It came while I was packing for our annual R & R, which included a visit to my niece in New Orleans.

"I’ll plan a Mardi Gras party! That’s what ILB needs. It will be a New Orleans-style Mardi Gras party, and it will be something that no one else in Bucharest has ever done before." Once I settled on the party idea, I happily started a shopping list for the French Quarter.

R & R means rest and relaxation, but the truth is that it usually means going home to prepare taxes, figure out finances, fix the broken air conditioner in your home that you’re renting out, go to your cousin’s graduation, plan a shower for your best friend, and apologize to everyone who is taking care of all your other details while you are gone on your extended European vacation, as my brother called it. If you are lucky—depending on how you view it—you can also get your dental work and physical checkups all done at the same time. The sixteen-hour flight is simply icing on the cake.

But no matter how absurd it sounds, at some point, I begin to live for the day that we will take our R & R and return to the normalcy of the States. Many of our friends plan their R & R trips to Thailand and exotic islands—they either have no worries, or they have decided to go even further away from them. We planned to fill our R & R with trips home and were just as happy.

New Orleans is a city so European that it makes some parts of Europe look Americanized. Its sultry feel, overgrown and almost uncontrollable foliage, moss-laden trees, rambling wrought iron balconies, streetcars, riverboats, and food—incredible food—make it unique in the world.

My niece Kate had purchased her first home, a small shotgun fixer-upper in the much-desired Uptown but just a little bit on the wrong side of the tracks. Her unfettered optimism led her to view the persistent group of men drinking beer outside the corner grocery store—the Pop-Up Bar, as she calls it—to be some type of avant-gardé security service more than any kind of threat.

You don’t need to worry so much—I have absolutely nothing for anyone to steal, Kate told me repeatedly. Although Kate and I were more like sisters in many ways, and we were closer in age than the normal aunt and niece, I often worried about her living alone in the city.

Zach and I generously offered to help her paint the living room but selfishly intended to stay in the French Quarter for a few nights while the paint dried. I made reservations on the far end of Royal Street at a small inn near the Old Ursuline Convent, both places that have been operating for well over a hundred years. The hotel room had brick walls, massive wooden doors, and floor-length windows that shutter at night to block out sounds but open in the morning to allow access for coffee on a small wrought iron porch. An eclectic mix of old French furniture and odd-ball art deco made the room warm and inviting. The sounds at night in the Quarter drifted up to the room—laughter and singing and loud talking—but in the morning, they are the hushed sounds of workers preparing for the day. This is when New Orleans is at its best. The smell of chicory coffee and thought of beignets are the only things that can possibly lure you out of bed.

It is no wonder that, when the time arrived for us to go to New Orleans, I could hardly wait. It would be hot and humid, and the weather forecast of scattered light rain would make it a quintessential New Orleans day. Had it been sunny and sixty degrees with 10 percent humidity, I would have been disoriented. The off-and-on rain showers of this typical weather forces you to dodge in and out of darkly lit bars with live jazz players, even in the middle of the day, or visit antique stores so full that their windows have no space left for the smallest piece of jewelry. The rain both cools you down and provides a really good reason for the bad hair day that you are having.

On this day, I was prepared and had pulled my shoulder-length hair back in a clip. Sometimes, my slightly wavy hair with its reddish-blonde color could be a challenge. I tended to be that way—a bit of a mix of everything—green eyes that could look blue at times and an average height that seemed to feel awfully short sometimes. The rest of me is usually average as well, although sometimes on a good day, I could reach a respectable above average.

Average is good, I have often told myself.

Plus, average can look way above average if it tries, just like a motivated student in school. Unfortunately, the fact that I did not go to Harvard is an indication that perhaps I’m not one of those average people who tries hard enough often enough. Mostly, I am happy with my sometimes-above-average self, and Zach appears very happy. Thus, I bump along without too much improvement.

The paint on Kate’s house dried slowly in the humidity, and on the second day, we knew that we had plenty of time to lazily wander along the French Quarter streets, to drink coffee in the morning, and to consider buying a sweet syrupy hurricane in the afternoon at Pat O’Brien’s. As a result, it took a break in the rain to provide the impetus for us to leave the comfort of our room and head out toward Royal Street. It was one of those days that I felt sure I would find some perfect items for the Mardi Gras party that I was planning in Romania, if not royalty. To me, this street, with its high-end antique stores mixed among small restaurants and cafes, discrete inns, and a souvenir shop or two, was the ultimate shopping experience.

Unlike most places in the world, New Orleans’ sales clerks do not define you by your looks or clothes. Every person might be a potential customer. On occasion, Zach and I think really big or rich. We stroll into the most expensive stores and are transported from one floor to the next in an old freight elevator with the sales person who acts like it is nothing out of the ordinary to ride up in a freight elevator to see a thirty-thousand-dollar Louis XIV table. In fact, thirty thousand might be too low. Think sixty. As I said, we dream big.

No furniture shopping today, I warned Zach as we left the hotel room.

There would be no tempting me with finely turned French legs. On the other hand, paintings and small antiques were fair game. Just how expensive can a painting be?

It was shortly after our morning coffee and only a few blocks into the walk that my eyes were drawn to the dulled golden sheen of a beautiful icon in the middle of an antique store’s window. This icon, or religious piece of art, was a painting on wood about eighteen inches tall with a simple scene of Mary holding Jesus as the Man-Child. The background was gold, and the clothing on the Mother and Child were painted in blues and reds, muted only by age. Mary appeared with an inscrutable Mona Lisa curvature of the lips and large red dots on her cheeks, like a porcelain doll, to signify that she was healthy. She was holding a figure representing Jesus, who was the size of a baby but had the appearance of an older child. The Man-Child held a paper scroll in his hand, portraying his role as a teacher. Both the Mother and Child had a round halo over their heads. I had heard that these types of icons were painted in the medieval period, and perhaps it might be from Romania.

It also looked old and significant. I could not help but enter the cluttered small shop to ask about it, pulling Zach by the hand to force him to follow me. This is not what he had planned.

Can you please tell me something about the icon in the window? I asked the young woman behind the glass desk.

It’s here on consignment, she said in a New England accent. Education and class oozed from her every pore. I am just here cataloging and helping the owner. He is busy. It was dropped off by a man who said that he wanted to sell it. We talked for a bit, and he said that he lived in Romania and had inherited the piece. He didn’t say much else. Before I set a price on it, I’m trying to prove its provenance, so I called someone to help me identify its age, and I expect him later this month to look at it and verify its authenticity. Lots of people will try to fake these old icons. However, I kind of think this one will turn out to be real. I studied these in art history and saw some on my travels with school. Anyway, the owner was supposed to stop by here today, but he never made it.

It looks Romanian to me, I said. We’ve been living there for the past two years and are just home for a visit. It looks so familiar.

That sounds wonderful—living in Romania. Anyway, I agree. I think it is Eastern European, and the man claimed it might be Romanian, but he was awfully vague. He just told me that it was old and expensive, and when the right client showed up, they’d know it was something valuable. The young woman was friendly and charming. She had long dark brown hair and dark eyes but wore little makeup or jewelry, just a fine small gold watch on her left arm. Her wrist was so delicate that the thin strip of jewelry slipped around her wrist as she moved. She was, as my aunt would say, tasteful.

"He also told me that he inherited it and would get me more information today, but he hasn’t come back. I have his phone number somewhere. Perhaps I can call him for a more detailed history, and you can come back tomorrow if you’ll still be here. I apologize for not knowing more. I probably shouldn’t have displayed it, but I thought it was so beautiful and rare. I’ll be sure to let him know it was a couple who live in Romania so he’ll see that you might be a serious buyer. Maybe you’re his special clients," she said, smiling broadly to show that she was teasing me.

That all sounds great. We’ll stop back by tomorrow to see what you have learned—that is, if you’ll be here.

I’ll be here from ten until six. Hope to see you then!

We said our goodbyes, and at the last minute, I lifted my phone for permission to snap a quick picture of the icon.

No problem, she said.

I dropped the phone into my purse, and we began our shopping trip around the Quarter for Mardi Gras beads, masks, signs, and whatever other decorations we could use in the planned Romanian party. The first stop on our list was only two doors down, and I rushed a bit too fast out of the entrance of the shop, failing to look for other pedestrians. My purse accidently clipped the umbrella of a dapper older man wearing a houndstooth cap for additional protection against the rain. It was an old-school hat, like one that my Romanian friend’s father wore. The man was momentarily startled but then turned away and pretended to ignore me when I attempted to apologize. It looked like he was headed for the shop we had just left, but when he saw the shop had other customers, he suddenly changed direction.

That’s odd, I said to Zach.

He’s just wet, in a hurry, and probably lost, Zach said as we ran for cover in the rain. Let’s go ahead and start your buying frenzy.

Despite the shopping that awaited me, I hesitated for a second and looked back at the man as he rushed in the other direction to cross the street. Where would someone dressed like him be heading in the Quarter this time of the day in the rain? It was only when I realized that there were a million places he could be going that I shook my head to dismiss those thoughts and turned my attention back to the job at hand.

CHAPTER TWO

It was time for dinner when we finished the foray into souvenir stores and dropped our bags of junk, which it really was, on the chair in the restaurant. I could not believe that I would have to pay to get this stuff back to Bucharest.

Dinner was at a restaurant owned by a friend of Kate’s in Carrolton Market near her new house. We simply took the streetcar from the Quarter down St. Charles Avenue, past the mansions and universities, shops, parks, and hotels until it ended in the more subdued residential area of Carrolton. It was a perfect ending to the day.

The next morning, we painted some more walls, and then after lunch we ventured back to the Quarter. When we arrived at the Royal Street shop, the icon was not in the window. I didn’t think anything about it given the young lady’s concern about displaying it the day