Chapter 1 - The Velvet Signature “Mom, let her sign it.”
“I told you, Clara, we are leaving this room right now,” Eleanor whispered fiercely, her voice cracking as she pressed a trembling, manicured hand against her tear-stained cheek.
Across the polished parquet floor of the grand gallery, the sophisticated blonde artist in the deep red velvet dress ignored the rising tension. With a slow, deliberate movement of her wrist, she pressed a fine black archival marker against the lower right-hand corner of the massive canvas.
“Did you paint the ladybug too?” eight-year-old Clara asked, her innocent voice cutting through the heavy murmurs of the wealthy patrons who stood clustered around the easel like vultures at a feast.
Eleanor lunged forward, her dark blue off-the-shoulder evening gown whispering harshly against the floorboards, and grabbed Clara’s frail shoulder. “Don’t look at it, sweetheart. Look at me. Close your eyes.”
“And please turn the painting around,” Clara whispered stubbornly, ignoring her mother’s panic as she unclasped the brass lock of her weathered green photograph album.
With maddening slowness, Clara lifted a faded polaroid photograph from the plastic sleeve, holding it up directly beside the framed oil painting of the young girl in the yellow dress standing inside a sunlit, flour-dusted kitchen. The resemblance was uncanny, almost terrifyingly exact, down to the way the sunlight hit the copper kettle resting on the stove.
A sharp gasp rippled through the front row of the gallery spectators as a prominent art critic pointed a trembling finger at the canvas. “My God,” the critic choked out, his voice rising in sudden, hysterical alarm. “That kitchen… that’s not a memory. That’s the crime scene from the Carlyle estate fire twelve years ago!”
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Eleanor let out a sharp, choked sob, her eyes widening in absolute horror as the security guards surged forward to block the exits. But it was already too late for hiding secrets, because as the artist slowly turned the massive painting around to face the back wall, a hidden compartment slid open, revealing a scorched silver locket nailed directly into the raw canvas.
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