“What say you and I get some dinner at Tante Mimi’s diner?”
She nodded. “I have to prepare tomorrow’s dough and pastries before I leave. Fortunately, the shop is closed. What I cook in the morning is for delivery to Broussard’s Country Store. They sell my baked goods on Monday so that I can have the day off. I can get started on tomorrow’s pastries. I can start that in between customers.”
Maurice glanced toward the front. “I can handle anyone coming in. Go. Do your thing. Just keep that back door locked.”
Rather than leave it up to chance, he followed her into the kitchen in the back and twisted the deadbolt, locking the back door to keep anyone from wandering in who didn’t belong.
He touched her cheek, loving that she was just as beautiful with her hair in a net as she was with it down. Though he could easily imagine it spread out across a pillowcase, her breasts bare, her hazel eyes dark with passion.
His cell phone chirped with an incoming text.
As he stood between the front of the shop and the kitchen, he glanced down at the text.
“It’s Swede. He says he’s identified the painting hanging over the mantel in the Benoît home.” He looked up and met Amelie’s gaze. “It’s one of the paintings considered lost during WWII.” He paused. “It’s a Monet.”
Chapter 7
Amelie sat across the table from Maurice in Tante Mimi’s diner. She’d barely touched the burger and fries she’d ordered. Hell, she never ordered a burger because of the caloric intake she allotted herself. What had she been thinking?
That was just it. She hadn’t been able to think once Maurice had given her the news from Swede.
“A Monet?” she whispered for the tenth time, glancing around as if the diner might be full of spies. “The Benoîts owned a Monet?”
“Swede matched it with a color photo that dated back to 1939 and the record of the sale of a relatively unknown painting titled Lady by the Stream by Impressionist artist Claude Monet from a private art collector to Germaine Benoît for one-hundred-fifty-thousand Francs.”
“That has to be what Schulz is looking for,” Amelie said. “How could something that unique and precious just disappear?”
“Armand told you his parents packed up their belongings and valuables and left their estate.”
“He did,” Amelie agreed.
“They had to have taken it with them.”
Amelie nodded. “They hid in the country until they could get on a boat to the US.”
“They could’ve hidden the painting in the place where they were lying low in France,” Maurice said. “Armand didn’t mention where they hid, did he?”
“No. I’m not sure he knew. He was pretty good at remembering details. If his parents had told him where they’d hidden, he would’ve remembered.”
“And he didn’t mention what they took with them on the ship to the US? I wonder if there are copies of the ship manifests from that timeframe. If we could find the ship they were on, it might tell us something about how much luggage the Benoîts brought with them.”
“Finding a manifest from the ship the Benoîts were on would be like finding a needle in a haystack.”
Maurice’s lips curled.
Amelie’s curved as well. “Let me guess. Swede is good at finding needles in haystacks?”
“He is.” Maurice grinned. “What month did you say the Benoîts left Paris?”
“Early June.”
Maurice keyed information into his cell phone and sent a text to Swede. “He might find records of the ships that left France headed for the United States around that time.”
“Would they have used their own names to book passage?”
“Maybe,” Maurice said. “It doesn’t hurt to search on their names.”
The door to the diner swung open.
