"Art of Trouble" 10

Thomas picked up one of her fries and munched on it thoughtfully as Jade scrolled through the photos of the previous paintings he'd acquired at auctions, and had already passed over to the buyer.

“I see that bit of red we’d looked at before in this painting, the third in the series, but it's clearer on this new phone. Now I can see it appears to be a number. It looks like the number 5, I think, but have a look and tell me what you see." Jade slid the phone to Thomas.

He nodded and leaned in closer, “It’s not as good as having the real painting in front of us but I agree it does look like the number 5.”

“Then we can assume the third painting in the series has a number 5 as a clue.”

“Or it’s just a number on the tractor and nothing more,” Thomas offered his unconvinced opinion of there being a treasure to find.

Jade smirked, “Why would a tractor have a random 5 on the cab? “

“Painter’s prerogative?” he shrugged.

“No, it’s a clue and we need to find the clues in the other paintings and connect it.”

“Or it's just a random number," Thomas reiterated.

“Maybe, or maybe it will be part of an address…an address that leads to a treasure,” she wiggled her eyebrows and gave him a beaming smile.

Thomas might not agree on there being a treasure but he was enjoying this happier side of Jade,

“I'm not saying there's a treasure here but I'll admit these paintings certainly have caught the interest of some high paying clients."

"Exactly and why would that be? They aren't masterpieces," she grimaced at the landscape on her phone.

"No, they're not. I suppose there could be something to this idea of a treasure. Go on then, scroll to the next painting and see if we can connect this number to any kind of message.”

“You mean any kind of treasure map?”

“Sure,” he chuckled and Jade scrolled over to the next picture. It was another dreary canvas. This one depicted a rainstorm over a drab, rundown grey and black painted farmhouse.

“This artist must have had something against color. Are all his paintings this dreary?” Jade asked zooming in to find any oddity.

“Yes, in regards to everyone I’ve purchased, but I haven’t seen the other seventeen.”

“Oh, Thomas look...I found another number.  Which painting is this one in the series?” She asked and moved the phone to him then pointed at what looked like a green dot.

“It’s the second in the series,” he told her then looked closer at the screen, “Is that a green number two above that broken window?”

“I believe it is. So painting three had a number five and now painting number two has a two,” she mused as she wrote the discovery down on a napkin, “Did you by any chance purchase painting number one, or four?”

“I did purchase both,” he scrolled through the photos and brought up the first painting in the series,” Here’s number one.”

Jade shook her head, it could have been a joyful painting of a snowy day but instead it was a blizzard of white. Pure white was splashed across tips of frozen trees in what looked to be a tree farm. There was a tiny snowman in the lower left corner but it was so tiny, you only knew it was a snowman by the curve of the paint stroke and a tiny, very tiny, spot of orange and two miniscule dots of black paint that could be a nose and coal eyes.

“I’m getting snow blind looking at this one,” she said sliding the phone to Thomas, “You’ll have to look for the clue in this one; my eyes have given up.”

"Let me see it." Thomas finished the French fry in his hand and pulled the phone closer to have a look at the painting. Jade was right. It was difficult to scan with your eyes. Everything blurred in snow white swirls of paint. The sky a thunderous grey-white, the slashing hail a darker grey-white, the blanket of snow on the ground covered everything else in a dirty-white. Only the tips of the glistening, tree tops had a hint of green where they were exposed. Then there were the two dots of black and a spot of orange that made up a snowman’s eyes and carrot nose. He zoomed in closer to the treetops, nothing unusual there so he zoomed in on the snowman’s face. Sure enough, the orange carrot was actually a shape and it looked like a pound sign, or what some called a hash tag.

“I believe I’ve found another clue,” he said tapping on the carrot.

“Is it another number?”

“No, it’s a sign.”

“A sign…?” Jade looked where he pointed and saw the tiny lines of a hash tag. “Okay, a sign,” she nodded and wrote the new clue on her napkin, “So now we have #25. Do you suppose it could be an address,” Jade’s eyes lit with interest. The idea of a real treasure hunt was exciting, “if we find all the clues first, we’ll have an arrow to the treasure.”

“Or to nothing, it could be oddities the artist added for fun. Jade, these clues could be fodder for a fairytale, a way to up the interest in his paintings.”

Jade frowned. “You're an adventure killer.”

“I’m just keeping us grounded,” he smiled but she didn’t return it.

“I know but…my apartment was ransacked, we’ve jumped off a train, nearly wipe out on a motorcycle and…we’ve got two goons following us because big money was paid for these sorry landscapes...so…why shouldn’t we imagine there’s a treasure map hidden in these mediocre paintings?” her eye’s shone with the thrill of adventure and for the first time in a very, long while, she wasn’t worrying about trouble.

Thomas considered it and conceded. “You have a point. Okay, let’s assume these are real clues but we don’t have all of them. I have painting four but not five through eight or twelve. I have nine, ten and eleven and of course, painting number thirteen in my back pack, but that leaves a lot of holes. We don’t have fourteen through twenty five either.”

“So we won't have all the clues but we can still find the clues in the eight paintings we do have.” she was staying optimistic, unusual for her.

“Yes, the seven paintings on the phone and the one in my back pack.”

“Show me number four.”

Thomas scrolled to the fourth painting and they both leaned in to the screen but it was Jade who found a hidden letter I.

As they chewed on cold French fries they gathered the clues from the seven paintings on the phone. The combined clues read like this: # 25 I YOU. That was in the order of the numbered paintings they'd viewed on her phone but it meant nothing. There were too many clues missing. They couldn’t decipher the message; if it was a message.

“Do you think it's going to be a password, or combination, like to a forgotten locker in some random bus station?” Jade's eyes twinkled at the prospect of solving it, even though the clues so far were too cryptic to solve.

Thomas was focused on the first numbers they'd uncovered the two and the five, twenty-five, it was the number of the illusive last painting. Would the clues lead them to that painting? Was that the treasure, finding it?

"What do you think it is?" Jade asked.

“It isn’t coherent; we’ll need all the paintings.”

“Well, we do have one more,” Jade whispered, keeping their conversation private, as more people had entered the bar car.

“We do, but it’s not wise to bring it out to look at it here.” He’d noticed the increase in passengers coming into the car too.

 

Jade was about to suggest they find somewhere to view it but she’d felt a stirring of trouble behind her and the hair on the back of her neck stood up and goose bumps rose up on her arms. Whatever it was it was close, and it wasn’t good. 

She peeked over her shoulder and noticed two tall, muscular looking men entering the car. They seemed to be taking an avid interest in the occupants at each table.

“Uh Thomas, I think we need to get out of here,” she nodded in the direction of the men.

Thomas looked over his shoulder and saw the two men walking slowly their way. “You’re right, but I’m not sure how we can move without them seeing us.”

Jade bit her lip trying to think of a way out but it was Thomas who came up with a plan.

“I can distract them,” he whispered and pulled a hundred dollar bill from his wallet. He wrapped it around a salt shaker and secured the bill to it with a slathering of honey he’d squeezed from a packet on the table. He lowered his hand to the ground and rolled the shaker with force towards the back of the car.

Several people noticed the shaker rolling along because of the denomination of the bill rolling along with it and they stood up, blocking the way for the two men but the men had also noted the flight of the money, and both had become distracted by it.

Thomas secured his backpack over his shoulder, grabbed Jade’s hand and walked with her out the train door at the front of the bar car, while the men remained distracted.

 

The door they walked through led into the first sleeper car.

“Oh no, I’ve been here before,” Jade groaned, “Are we train jumping again?”

Thomas didn’t respond. He continued to pull her through the next three sleeper cars and then he picked the lock on the baggage car and led her inside it. Once inside, he answered her question.

“I’m hoping we can hide out in here until the next stop.”

“And then?”

He gave her a half smile, “And then we jump.”