Page 63 of Family Affair
It was hard for Coco to digest. How can a mother not be nice in her child’s eyes? “What about Frank? Was he nice?”
Like before, a strange stillness came over Cade at the mention of Frank’s name.
“Not him, either.” His tone remained light but Coco sensed an increased watchfulness in him. “He was a snob, like Dan, but more entitled, and considerably more unbalanced. He drank. In a way, his early death makes sense. Mother Nature culling the herd.”
Coco blinked. “I can’t believe you said that. What about him being talented?”
“His talent,” Cade informed her, “almost cost our family everything.”
There was no love lost between Cade and his dead brother, that much was clear as day.
“Were the two of you close?” she asked.
“We had been close growing up. We grew apart in the later years.”
“Because of what he had been doing?”
Cade raised a brow at her. “Been digging again in the archives?”
“The information was easy to find,” she defended herself. “Frank’s forgery arrest made all the headlines. Then there was this exposé by an investigative journalist who later… died.”
“The journalist whom Frank killed, you mean.”
“Did he?”
Cade leaned back and was toying with his dinner knife. “He had a pretty solid case against him. There was evidence, witnesses who saw him come and go from the reporter’s apartment. If he had lived and gone to prison, I figure he would still be serving his time.”
How bleak. “It’s an awfully long time.”
Cade shrugged. “He had multiple felony charges brought up against him. Forgery, of course, then fraud, tax evasion, running a criminal operation. And doing away with one pesky reporter. Go ahead, call him nice.”
Coco looked down. Cade’s antagonism toward Frank was justifiable. “I suppose you’re right, and he deserved to be punished. But as an artist, I am curious,” Coco admitted in a way of explanation. “Does your family still have his works?”
“God, no. Everything he left behind was thrown away. As for what had already been sold, I imagine there are plenty of collectors today who are sitting in their leather armchairs admiring their very expensive Dali or Picasso, having no clue about their investment’s real origins. It’s impossible to track Frank’s legacy. He was a prolific forger.”
“I didn’t mean his forgeries. I meant his own paintings.”
Cade cocked his head. “He never painted for himself.”
“All artists create to self-express. It’s only natural.”
“His forged paintings contained plenty of self-expression. Went a long way toward helping move his inventory. After all, if this example of synthetic cubism by early Carl Holty projects so much feeling, surely the damn thing must be original.”
Coco absorbed this explanation. “I am surprised you know Carl Holty. I am blown away that you know his style.”
“Everyone did cubism back then. It was a huge fad in the early 1900s,” Cade grumbled, further cementing Coco’s suspicion that his knowledge of art history went a lot deeper than he let on.
“Cubism was revolutionary in terms of shaping modern arts,” Coco remarked. “It still has a huge following.”
“I let experts like you worry about the direction of modern arts. I’ve had enough of it with Frank to last me a lifetime.”
“That explains why you have a better grasp of the arts thanDan,” Coco mused.
Dan’s name shattered the fragile illusion of normalcy that had fallen over their table.
Cade’s lips twisted in an ironic smile. “Another argument why Dan can never make a good long-term partner for you. No common ground.”
She frowned, weighing the wisdom of asking him, but decided she had nothing to lose.
