What was up with that rock anyway? I glanced in the rearview mirror and put the car in reverse. That diamond was obscene. Too big to be nice, when you really thought about it. Had Carter picked out that engagement ring himself? Or had Mariel seen a ring like that on the hand of one of his celebrity clients and given him instructions to duplicate it? That would be just like her. I pressed my foot on the gas. Had he gotten down on his knee to propose? The image made my stomach twist. And what had he said? What were his exact words? More twisting, but I couldn’t stop myself now. Did he say—
Crunch!
There was a loud cracking sound behind me, like splintering wood. Or was it a splintering car? I gasped. I pulled forward. In the rearview mirror I could see it. I’d hit a picket fence? Where had that come from? And there was a man standing behind my car. Had I hit him too? Oh God, I hoped not. I jumped out. The man, who looked around forty, was dressed in khakis and a dark blue polo shirt. He was standing to the side of the car, tearing bubble wrap off something huge—six feet high, almost as wide, and a few feet thick. I could see green through the plastic.
“Don’t you look where you’re going?” His brown eyes bored into me. He had the kind of week-old beard I’d never liked. It always made me suspect the guy couldn’t decide whether to really grow one or not.
“Did I hit you?” I said, my heart speeding up.
“No, you didn’t hit me. You hit this.” He turned away, continuing to unwrap whatever it was.
I didn’t appreciate his tone. I knew it was my fault. “I’m sorry I hit your…your thing there.” I pointed. “I didn’t mean to.”
He had the bubble wrap off now and I could see it was a giant hand, painted in shades of green and made from something that looked a lot like papier-mâché. The thumb, index, ring, and pinkie fingers were crushed and bent at ninety degrees, while the middle finger pointed straight to the sky.
“What is that?” I asked. “Some kind of a costume?”
He shifted the hand toward a white van nearby. “A costume? No. This is a sculpture. An Alex Lingon.” He sounded almost insulted that I hadn’t known that.
“Alex who?”
He wheeled around, glaring at me. “Alex Lingon. You haven’t heard of him?”
“I don’t think so.”
“There was a big article about him in the New York Times just a couple of weeks ago. Sunday’s Arts and Leisure section.”
“I live in Chicago.”
“They don’t sell the Times there?” That tone of voice again. I could have done without it.
“I don’t usually read the Times.”
“Maybe you should, then. He’s been called a national treasure. You ought to look him up.” He stepped closer to the hand, slowly shook his head, and blew out a loud puff of air. “Well, this is ruined. Four fingers bent, smashed.”
“Look, I’m really sorry. But maybe you should have packed it a little better. I mean, since you’re an art handler—”
“I’m not an art handler. I’m in real estate development.”
Well, no wonder. That was a different story. I thought about someone I’d once dated who’d worked for a company that built houses. I wondered if this guy did that. “What kind of real estate development do you do?”
“What kind?” He took a step away from the hand and considered the question. When he spoke again, he seemed a little calmer. “We buy and sell buildings. Apartment buildings, retail buildings, mixed-use.” He wasn’t talking houses. “Sometimes we build or renovate. It depends on the situation.”
I guessed that made us about even as far as art expertise went.
He looked back at the hand, touched the bent section of the pinkie, and grimaced as though it were his own finger that had been damaged. “I only did this as a favor for Anastasia. And now she’ll probably lose her job.”
“Anastasia?”
“My girlfriend. She’s Alex’s assistant.”
“Oh.” The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit together. “So, you drove this from…”
“Brooklyn.”
“As a favor for your girlfriend.”
“Yes. There was a mix-up with the art-transport company. And now I’ve got this crisis to deal with.”
“There has to be some way to resolve it,” I said. I knew from years of planning events that there was always a way to fix a problem. “I assume it’s insured?”
He looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “Of course it’s insured. But that’s not the point. It’s supposed to be in a show of Alex’s work at the Brookside Gallery. It opens a week from Friday.”
I’d been to the Brookside Gallery. It was right in town. They exhibited a lot of contemporary art and had a large following. I was about to tell him I thought it would be best to let the artist know and then help him make an insurance claim, but then I had another idea. “Let me ask you something. What’s this made of?” I reached out.
“Don’t touch it!”
I drew back my hand. “Okay, okay.”
“It’s papier-mâché. Alex does a lot of work with paper.” He stepped closer to the hand, staring at the thumb, as if by some magic trick or mind game he could get it to straighten itself.
“And when did you say the show opens?”
“A week from Friday.”
The day before Mariel’s wedding. Today was Tuesday. That was ten days away. Ten days was an eternity in my line of work. In my fifteen years as an event planner, I’d solved all kinds of crises. Usually in a couple of hours, and sometimes much faster than that. I’d tracked down a best man who’d gone missing, found him drunk by the hotel pool, sobered him up, and written his speech just minutes before he had to give it. When a guest knocked over a dessert table, sending a wedding cake to the floor, I’d substituted two sheet cakes from Costco and had them sliced and plated. And all that was just one wedding…
“Ten days is plenty of time,” I said. “What about repairing the fingers with more papier-mâché? You know, fill them in or whatever so they’ll stand up straight, fix the parts that are crushed and bent.”
The man squinted at me as though he were trying to figure out if I was real or not. “Are you kidding? I can’t do that. It’s a piece of art. I’m not in the art world, but I’ve learned enough about it from Ana. Even if I could straighten the fingers, the paint is another thing altogether. Alex mixes his own colors and he uses lots of different shades and pigments to get the effects he wants. It’s complicated.”
I stepped closer to the hand and took a long look. Sure enough, there were all sorts of green shades in there—fern green, olive green, kelly green, hunter green, and dozens of others blended together. Still, as he began to rewrap the hand, I continued to think the problem had to be fixable. After all, I’d had ring bearers lose the wedding rings or swallow them. I’d cleaned up red wine spilled on brides’ dresses, stopped fistfights at bachelor parties, and halted at-the-altar confessions by brides and grooms who’d had sex with each other’s college roommates. I was a fixer. It was in my nature.