Free Brush With Death by Hailey Lind Page A

what had happened to his 1966 forgery. Could the Barberini Palace’s Raphael have been stolen and replaced by Grandfather’s copy? Assuming it was possible, why would the original wind up in Oakland, hanging unprotected in a columbarium and labeled a nineteenth-century copy? And assuming that was possible, who would have replaced it with a computer-generated copy? And where was Crispin Engels’ painting?
    I rubbed my forehead, fending off a headache.
    Speaking of headaches . . . six months ago Michael X. Johnson had been driven away from a crime scene in the back of a police car, and I hadn’t heard a peep from him since. I had assumed he was languishing in prison somewhere, and had even worried about him. Clearly that concern had been misplaced.
    â€œBy the way,” I said to Mary, “I thought we agreed that you would never reveal my personal information to the enemy, aka Michael Johnson.”
    â€œThis you know I never would do,” Pete said. “I honor and esteem you, Annie. You are to me the most transfigurent of women.”
    â€œThank you, Pete,” I replied. “I aspire to transfigurence. But I was talking to Mary.”
    Mary put a pillow over her head and pretended to be asleep. Her snore sounded a lot like a Bronx cheer.
    I pulled out Michael’s business card and typed in the URL. The Web site opened with exploding multicolor graphics, a blaring musical score of Beethoven’s Fifth set to a hip-hop beat, and a string of black-clad women high-kicking across the top of the screen. With a jolt I recognized the women as Whistler’s Mother. Directly below the octogenarian chorus line, in a screaming eighty-point font, a fuchsia sentence took shape against a black background: What’s in your grandmother’s attic?
    Whistler’s mothers cha-cha’d off the left side of the screen, and a more sober Web page loaded. A Biography section described Michael X. Johnson as “an internationally recognized art expert” with “decades of experience in all aspects of the professional art world,” whose “extensive hands-on knowledge of the world’s finest art collections” put him on a first-name basis with “the leading curators and collectors in Europe, the United States, and Asia.”
    From a “profound love of art and artistry,” the Letter from the Expert page explained, the “fabulously successful and recently retired” Michael X. Johnson had launched this Web site to provide “low cost!” assessments of art and artifacts, and invited viewers to send in photographs of their art objects for a professional evaluation. Don’t be fooled by greedy art dealers and collectors, the Web site warned. Go straight to the source! Let my wealth of experience and intimate knowledge of the mysterious world of art work for you!
    I stared at the screen, impressed and appalled. Michael X. Johnson knew everything there was to know about art theft and the art of seduction. He knew nothing about authenticating art and artifacts. What in the world was he up to this time?
    The Contact Me! page listed an e-mail address and a post office box in Cupertino, which I recalled was somewhere in the South Bay, but no street address or phone number. After a few minutes of silent debate I sent Michael an e-mail to call me ASAP. I wanted to find out what he might know about Grandfather and Donato Sandino. In addition, his mere presence lent a whisper of credence to Cindy’s tale of an errant multimillion-dollar painting.
    I logged off the computer and started working my way through a stack of bills. Paying my debts was usually enough to send me into a downward spiral of fiscal shame, but Aaron Garner’s checks had fattened my bank account, as had a long-overdue payment for a mural in an upscale home in Piedmont. And for the next four Saturdays I had a paying gig teaching a faux-finishing course to do-it-yourselfers at the Home