My heart fluttered a little. I wasn’t one for cheap praise, but boy, was it nice to get a little credit sometimes.
Everyone leaned forward, waiting.
“I know what’s hidden behind Dad’s painting,” I said, then elaborated.
They looked skeptical at first, but the more I explained — about the voices of a mother and son, the matching voices coming from the Monet in the museum, and about Gordon’s nest egg — the more seriously they considered my theory.
And no one looked more serious than Mina.
“Mom mentioned Dad trying to track down a missing Monet…” she murmured, typing search terms into her phone.
I scooched over to look with her.
“Well, it’s notWoman with a Parasol,” Roux said, leaning over my shoulder to peer at the results.
Wow. This tiger shifter really knew his Impressionists.
“No. That’s in a museum in Washington, DC,” Mina agreed.
Bene patted Roux on the shoulder. “Bonus points for knowledge, champ.” He yawned and handed his glass to Henrik. “Refill, please.”
“Then there’sThe Cradle,” Mina said. “But that’s not missing either, and Jean would have been too little to do anything but gurgle.”
Roux opened a laptop and ran his own search. “There are these too.In the Garden at Argenteuil. But one is by Renoir, and another by Manet.”
“Monet,” Bene corrected him.
Mina shook her head. “No, Manet. He, Monet, and Renoir were all friends, and they all met to paint in Monet’s garden.”
Bene rolled his eyes. “Manet, Monet… How are you supposed to keep track?”
“Not that difficult,” Roux grumbled.
“All of those are in museums,” I pointed out. “So we can eliminate them too. We need a missing painting.”
“Monet also painted Camille and Jean in the garden…” Mina murmured, still searching.
Bene perked up. “See? Monet. I was right!”
Marius patted his head. “Amazing, Sherlock.”
Bene shot him a dark look and pulled out his own phone. “This can’t be that difficult.”
We ignored him, focusing on the painting Mina indicated.
She cocked her head at the photo. “That one’s in a private collection. So it would only be a candidate if it was sold or stolen.”
I shook my head. “Surely a stolen Monet would have made the news.”
I’d been so sure about what I’d heard, but the longer we searched, the more I started to doubt myself.
For a while, everyone went quiet, even despairing.
“So, what did we discover today?” Mina finally asked, rebooting the conversation.
I gritted my teeth. “That Gordon is a lying, deceitful crook?”
Marius rolled his eyes. “She means something we didn’t already know.”
