A Surrealist Affair Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discover more Amara titles… Trap ‘N’ Trace

  Girl Long Gone

  Dangerous Desires

  London Calling

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Jacqueline Corcoran. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  10940 S Parker Rd

  Suite 327

  Parker, CO 80134

  [email protected]

  Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Stacy Abrams and Robin Haseltine

  Cover design by LJ Anderson/Mayhem Cover Creations

  Cover photography by NeoStock

  MarcelloLand/iStock

  ISBN 978-1-64937-137-9

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition May 2021

  To Mark, my wonderful husband, who took me, as well as our children and my parents, to Paris for a “big birthday” celebration, which inspired the writing of this novel.

  Chapter One

  Indefinite Divisibility, Yves Tanguy (1942)

  A bare tree scraped against the window. The sky, heavy with snow, was dark, even in the late afternoon. During the holiday break, Elle was given the “honor” of using her advisor’s office while she skied with her family in Switzerland, a bone Diane Roche had thrown her after dismissing Elle’s efforts at a dissertation proposal. Elle wanted to be going full steam on her proposal during the winter break, but now she was stuck laboring over a journal article revision Diane had assigned her. Elle’s brain felt like sludge as she read the reviewer’s comments: The authors need to provide a more detailed and nuanced framework for the analysis.

  Diane had written the section on the framework, so Elle didn’t want to be presumptuous and change what she’d done. Her advisor became prickly if sensing correction by a mere student. Yet Diane had also given Elle, her student, the task of revising the article and responding to the review. As usual, she was caught in a bind.

  The sharp peal of the phone on the desk startled her from her frustration. Who would call Diane here over the break? A student desperate for an A? Elle had done all of Diane’s grading. Had she misjudged something and was now getting a student complaint?

  The phone rang three, four, five times.

  Silence settled around the office—the voicemail must have caught it.

  The shrill ring started again.

  Diane had said she wanted a complete holiday! No work at all. I’ve promised Bill and the children. With all those takeovers and mergers, he’s been so stressed out. He needs a break.

  Work? Elle seemed to do most of that for her.

  The phone cut off then started again. Was there some kind of emergency? Mama?

  She snatched up the receiver.

  “Bonjour,” said a male voice into her ear. A rapid onslaught of French followed.

  Elle waited for an opening in the stream to finally say, “I am not Dr. Roche, but I can take a message.”

  “Ah, is this her assistant?”

  Elle realized the man had been speaking English all along, his accent so strong she hadn’t recognized it.

  Finally she understood. “Monsieur Luc?” Her tone was reverential. Jean-Pierre was Marc Luc’s grandson. Marc Luc—the Surrealist on par with Yves Tanguy and whom Elle wanted to write about for her dissertation.

  Elle had met him last year in Paris. Not Muskogee, not Saginaw, not even Ann Arbor, Michigan, but Paris, where she was transformed from the girl who grew up with a car mechanic, alcoholic father into a visitor of that sophisticated, romantic, historical city. She would always be grateful to Diane for paying her way to Paris, through the foundation money she’d received for cataloguing Marc Luc’s sketches.

  “This is Elle Dakin,” she reminded him. When he still paused, she said, “Dr. Roche’s assistant?”

  “Bien sûr, Elle.” Jean-Pierre’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Is Professeur Roche available, s’il vous plaît?”

  Speaking slowly so he could understand, Elle said, “She’s actually closer to you than the U.S. at the moment.” She went on to explain about Diane’s ski trip to Switzerland.

  “I have tried emailing—a couple of times. I phoned her home, her mobile, now here.”

  Elle tried to fill him in, stammering out the story, although she didn’t understand it herself, how Diane had carved out this sacred time for her family and couldn’t be disturbed.

  “But time—it is of the essence!”

  “I’m not able to get a hold of her, either. Is there something I can help you with, Monsieur Luc?”

  “Jean-Pierre, s’il vous plait, Elle”—he put a delightful “ah” on the end, extending her name. “It is impossible, but one of my grandfather’s paintings—it has come to light.”

  Elle’s heart beat faster at the prospect, even as her mind wondered how likely it could be that another work by Marc Luc had surfaced. He had done so few paintings.

  “What time period?” she asked.

  “About 1942 peut-être.”

  “His last work?” Marc Luc had stopped painting about fifteen years before his death. There was speculation he had started some other work but was unable to finish, due to grief at his wife’s death or the alcoholism that had started long before.

  “Je ne sais pas.”

  Jean-Pierre seemed to know so little, she was prompted to ask, “Have you seen it yet?”

  “Ah, oui, I think you will do nicely. You are almost finished with your training, non?”

  “Yes.” She had told Diane that in her last meeting. She’d summoned up her courage and told Diane she wanted to move forward quickly with the dissertation, have the proposal ready at the end of the holiday break, and graduate at the end of the spring semester.

  Unfortunately, Diane’s response had been, “There’s really no there there, Elle.” Diane hadn’t even made a motion to her buttery-leather briefcase. Elle imagined the first three chapters in there, a big black clip clawed around them. Diane liked to read hard copies as she gallivanted around the world in planes. The edges of the papers would be frayed. Diane had been carrying it around for a while.

  “But you thought it made a good topic,” Elle had said, not mentioning Diane had given her the idea. “I’ve been working on it for months now.”

  At that, Diane’s eyes had narrowed. These subtle gestures alwa
ys served to put Elle in her place. “You can’t rush the process, Elle. That’s why we like people to take six years.”

  That was for people like Diane Roche, who didn’t have to worry about money. She probably made a decent-enough salary at her job as full professor, but she was also married to a CEO, CFO…one of those vague titles with a bunch of fancy letters in them.

  Jean-Pierre’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Elle, si’l vous plaît, will you come to Paris? I know it is short notice, but you will soon be professeur.”

  That’s what she had tried to tell Diane. She wanted to finish, graduate, and get on the job market for a professor position. The only way to do that was to get approval to move forward on her proposal, and Diane had not granted that.

  “I will, of course, pay for the flight and your stay.”

  Elle turned on the cashier’s light, trying to see more clearly. She had just told her younger sister she couldn’t help her daughter—Elle’s niece—pay for a spring break STEM camp. Now Elle was thinking of flying to Paris? It was amazing he was willing to pay for the trip, but she also knew from last time how many other expenses were involved—trains, Le Metro, meals, the café.

  What she said, however, was, “Dr. Roche wouldn’t like me filling in for her without permission.”

  “You have just said, have you not,” Jean-Pierre said, “that she will not allow you to contact her? She is off-limits completely, correct?”

  Elle had to admit that was true.

  “Mais— I need an expert now. And I noticed what you did with the sketches, my dear. You were the one who did the actual analysis and cataloguing, and you were excellente.”

  “But Diane could drop me, and I’d have to find another advisor.” She didn’t want to throw Diane under the bus, a phrase the French didn’t have, but Elle had to be honest. “We don’t have any other twentieth-century modernists.” Not to mention that Diane was a foremost expert on French surrealism.

  “I will talk to her that she must not do that. Non, non,” he said, as if scolding Diane in advance. Then he said to her, “You are being a little like a nervous mouse, eh? You can’t be under her thumb for the rest of your life, Elle.” Elle-ah.

  He’d obviously seen her last year as the scuttling mouse going about its work, being neither seen nor heard. Playing the role of the quiet, obedient student had worked well for her for the last—gulp—twenty years!

  But now she was finding, with the process of the dissertation, she was suddenly supposed to show independence of thought, take charge. She was frankly more used to—and better trained for—showing interest in her professors’ opinions about things. She didn’t trust her own opinion. What did she know—a hick from a factory town with no more factories? And who was she to think she could write an original analysis of the work of Marc Luc?

  As if in answer to her thoughts, Jean-Pierre said, “You might not need Diane if you are involved in such a discovery, no?”

  Was he insinuating she would have the most amazing dissertation yet—the discovery of a lost artwork of Marc Luc? Of course, that couldn’t be the topic; it would have to be more of a statement of the times or analyzed within Marc Luc’s progression as an artist. But still!

  “I am looking for a dissertation topic,” she said carefully and paused to see if he would elaborate. She allowed a beat to pass and then hastened to add, “Not how you got it and where it’s been all this time.” She sensed this was a touchy subject. “The technical merits, where it fits into the context of his work.”

  “Ah, that is a definite possibilité, but first, you will have to attribute it, no? I cannot say more. If word should get out…it might put me in danger.”

  Danger?

  She waited and marveled at how silent the transatlantic line between them was. He didn’t explain, and she wondered if he was just being dramatic, trying to manipulate her.

  “Tell you what,” she said, “why don’t you email me a photo of the painting? That way, I can take an initial look, see if it’s worth a whole trip.”

  “I think you will indeed find that it is worth it, Elle,” he said. “And I am old-fashioned, as you say. I don’t want such a thing floating around in the air.” She could imagine him wafting his hand around in an expansive gesture.

  “Can you mail it to me?” Her knuckles were white, she realized, with her grasp of the receiver. She couldn’t believe this conversation. She’d been sitting there, struggling over how to change Diane’s prose as she’d been ordered to without offending her. And now, she was being presented with an opportunity to be the first to see a long-lost masterpiece.

  “We don’t have time for that,” said Jean-Pierre. “And I don’t want to send my only copy. It would be easier if you just came over here.”

  Easier for whom? And easier than putting a photo in an envelope and sending it in the mail?

  Then again—Paris?

  It would definitely beat Christmas in Muskogee. She wouldn’t have to face home without her father and with the resentment she now felt toward her mother for his death.

  Jean-Pierre interrupted her thoughts. “Now I am certain you are très discrete, but until we are absolutely sure, I don’t want word getting out.”

  “I won’t say anything.” Who would she tell? Everyone was gone, and she couldn’t get hold of Diane Roche if she tried.

  “In fact, I would like to conduct all business over the telephone, no? I don’t want anything in email. We must keep it to the telephone. Bonne. I will send the photo rush post. You will see.”

  Chapter Two

  Time Transfixed, Rene Magritte (1938)

  In the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Ryan deLong sat across from the chief of the FBI Art Crime Team. Ryan didn’t like facing his back to the door. He wanted to see what was coming at him from behind.

  Kevin Greene flicked at a packet of sweetener, opening it with deliberate movements. “You need a haircut.”

  “That’s why you called me in here?” Ryan rifled his hand through his hair. He had just taken off his hat coming in the building.

  Kevin’s eyes were magnified behind his glasses. The office smelled of scorched coffee wafting out of a mug that said World’s Greatest Dad. The surface of Kevin’s desk was as clear as the ice rink at the Smithsonian Ryan had hurried by on his way to work.

  “Don’t cut it.” Seeing Ryan’s questioning look, Kevin said, “They wear it longer over there.” A grin broke open the stiff demeanor of his face. “You’re going to Paris. We had a theft last night—or rather, early this morning,” Kevin said. “A Luc.”

  Finally, some action.

  Most of Art Crime was pursuing cold cases, chasing leads that had closed up years before, heck, decades, even centuries. Ryan frowned, struggling to recall the name “Luc.” He knew Kevin was testing him. Ryan hadn’t slept well last night, and his brain felt like sludge. French—he got that much. “Surrealism?”

  Kevin couldn’t resist throwing in a little lecture. “Post-World War I, disillusionment in Europe, the power of the unconscious, Freud?”

  “Marc Luc.” Ryan snapped his fingers. “Marc Luc and Yves Tanguy.” They did similar schticks—blobby forms in empty landscapes. Existential dread or some such. “Most people like one or the other.” He didn’t like either. He wasn’t a fan of the Surrealism movement as a whole. Call him prosaic, but he was Renaissance, if anything.

  Kevin nodded in approval. “Very good.” He pointed his monitor toward Ryan.

  “Expectation of Time.”

  Yup. Lumpy shapes in a blue wash.

  As Ryan studied it, Kevin gave background information on the theft. “It was stolen from a private home in Chicago. James Egart, CEO of Ameritrac corporation.”

  He got the picture—wealthy businessman art collector. That was yet another reason not to like Art Crime—catering to the wealthy, not national security. And, until now, it had be
en only a desk job, no out in the field at all. That’s what he craved. But administration thought he needed the kind of calm environment Art Crime provided.

  Ryan reminded himself to focus. This was his chance, and he had to pay attention, despite his objections, if he was to ever get out of here. Kevin had made him a deal. If he solved a big case, not just a five-thousand-dollar Ming vase but something in the priceless category, Kevin would give him the recommendation Ryan wanted to return to Counterterrorism.

  He just needed to pay attention and not go off on random thoughts, which led to memories of the day that got him grounded, with the sweating man, curls clamped across his forehead, wearing the suicide vest.

  James Egart, Kevin was saying, was in L.A. on business all week. Kevin flapped his hand. “That’ll be my job, verifying his statement.”

  Occasionally, a person staged their own theft. When it worked out, they got to keep the insurance money and the piece, which they could sell eventually on the black market.

  “When James Egan returned home last night, his dining room window was smashed, the Luc taken,” Kevin said, eyes alight behind his glasses. “Must have happened quite a few days before by the amount of debris blown in through the window. The place was like a refrigerator. Can you imagine—Chicago?” He folded his arms, as if he were cold at the thought.

  Ryan asked the routine questions. “No alarm system?”

  “The cleaning woman came and forgot to reset it.”

  “Wife, kids—no one else home?”

  “Divorced. He’s engaged to be married to someone else. I’ll check into all that.”

  Ryan had no romantic illusions about Paris. Most people would have preferred it to the plains of Somali, but not him. Not that he was trying to look a gift horse in the mouth, but he had to ask, “So why am I going to France if the theft happened here?”

  “The Germans did what they wanted in Europe. They plundered artwork to fund the war effort.”

  Ryan nodded. That fact had certainly stood out in History of Art. “The Nazis stole Expectation of Time?” he guessed.

  “That’s what the Rothenbergs allege. Most of their family ended up in the gas chambers.”