Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,140

got to be a coincidence,” he said.

“It’s not a coincidence!” I said, excited. “Look at Anna’s signature. Then come in the other room.”

Getting to his feet, Oliver followed me into the gallery where the Shipley painting hung. Standing next to him, I pointed out the iris in the sea of daisies, then watched his face as he took in the distinctive loopy handwriting in Judith Shipley’s signature. It wasn’t just the unusual shape of the script. “Look,” I said, pointing to the name. “The small l and e in ‘Shipley’ are nearly identical to the same letters in ‘Dale.’”

“Holy effing shit,” he said.

It was the first time I’d heard him even come close to swearing, and I laughed. “Anna was never caught!” I said happily, pressing my hands together in front of me. “She went on to find fame, and somewhere along the way, she and Jesse must have reconnected and some of Anna’s work came to be in his collection. She changed her name, Oliver! She reinvented herself.”

“Okay, let’s not jump to conclusions,” Oliver said, his voice calm now. “Let’s take a closer look at everything.”

For the next thirty minutes—precious minutes when I knew I should be working on the mural—we hurried back and forth between the foyer and the room where Daisy Chain was displayed, comparing the shapes of eyes, the way fingers and nails were painted, the distinctive length and depth of the artist’s brushstrokes, the thinness of the paint layer.

“This is definitely Anna’s,” I said with certainty as we stood once more in front of Daisy Chain. “I’ve spent the last month getting to know these brushstrokes.”

Grinning to himself, Oliver put his arm around my shoulders, almost absentmindedly, I thought. “I’m not sure I would have noticed this on my own.” He tightened his arm around me, and my body went soft, leaning against him. “Good sleuthing, Christopher,” he said.

“It just…” I lost my train of thought, distracted by the weight of his arm. Distracted by the leathery scent of his aftershave. By his nearness. “It was the iris,” I said weakly, because I could think of nothing else to say. My brain had suddenly turned to mush. But then I noticed the wall text Oliver had written and hung next to the painting.

“Oh, no,” I said, feeling the keen sting of disappointment.

“Oh no, what?” He lowered his arm from my shoulders.

I pointed to the wall text. “Judith Shipley is still alive, but look at her birthdate. June seventh, 1922. Anna Dale was twenty-two when she painted the mural, so she was born in 1918.”

Oliver laughed. “If she changed her name, she probably changed her birthdate as well, don’t you think?” he said. “Took the opportunity to shave a few years off her age?”

I bit my lip, hopeful that he was right. “What do we do?” I asked, nodding toward the painting.

“I’m going to call an art authenticator I know at the museum in Greenville to see if he can take a drive up here to give us his take on this,” Oliver said. “We don’t dare go public with this without knowing for sure.”

“Do you have any doubt?”

“I’ll be shocked if it isn’t,” he said, “but I’m not an authenticator.”

“Is there any chance Judith Shipley’s coming to the opening?” I asked. My heart was in my throat at the thought of meeting her, but she was ninety-six—or one hundred—years old, and she lived in New York. Very unlikely.

“I don’t think so,” Oliver said. “Lisa said only a couple of the artists in Jesse’s collection can make it. The majority are dead, and a lot of the others are elderly or live too far away.”

I stared at the painting. “We have to get her here.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“I’ll call her … Try to see if there’s any chance … But I can’t ask her outright if she’s Anna, can I? That might scare her into a heart attack.”

“And she might not be Anna, Morgan,” Oliver said. “Let’s not get our hopes up too high.” He nodded toward Daisy Chain again. “We may just be seeing what we want to see.”

Chapter 63

From the wall text next to Judith Shipley’s painting Daisy Chain:

Daisy Chain (mid-80s) oil

Judith Shipley

June 7, 1922–

Little is known about Judith Shipley’s early life or formal art education. Her birthplace is also unknown. Although she spent her early adulthood in New York City, Shipley was never part of the New York school of experimental artists, preferring the dramatic realism of other New York