Next stop was the old boat factory, where a few of his teammates would be waiting to help them go over the clues.
Maurice led Amelie, followed by Luis, through the active boat factory, filled with sheets of aluminum, the machines needed to bend and form the aluminum and more. At the far end of the factory floor stood a door leading into the remodeled section of the building, outfitted as a war room with a conference table, a bank of computers with an array of monitors and a large screen at the end of the table.
As soon as they walked in, Remy, Gerard, Lucas, Beau and Xavier, pushed to their feet.
Remy was the first to approach Amelie and Luis. “Welcome to the headquarters of the Bayou Brotherhood Protectors.” He held out his hand to Luis. “I’m Remy Montagne, lead over this branch of the Brotherhood Protectors.”
Luis shook Remy’s hand as he glanced around the room. “This is amazing. And the boat factory is beyond cool.”
Remy waved a hand toward the conference table. “I know you want to get to New Orleans early enough to give yourself time to follow the clues. If you’ll take a seat, we can get started. Swede, bring up what you all discovered in the recipe book, using the numeric positioning of the alphabet.”
The string of words appeared on the big screen.
* * *
CLIMB PASS TIME EGLW WALL FIND US THERE
* * *
“According to Luis,” Swede continued, “the pocket watch Armand Benoît gave him prior to his death hasn’t worked for as long as he remembers.” The photo of the watch appeared on the screen with the other clues. “The hands on the watch are frozen in the one o’clock position, which corresponds to the photograph of Germaine and Celine Benoît standing in front of the St. Louis Cathedral at exactly one o’clock. This leads us to believe the missing Monet painting could be hidden inside the cathedral.
“Now that you know the location is the St. Louis Cathedral,” Swede said, “let’s see how these words might apply.” He added a photograph of the cathedral to the display. “As you can see, St. Louis Cathedral has three towers, with a clock mounted in the center. The center tower also contains the bells.”
Maurice moved closer to the end of the conference table to point at the central tower. “The first word we identified was CLIMB,” he stated. “Since the clock in the photo matches the time on the pocket watch, we think it means the clock tower of the cathedral is where we’d climb.”
“PASS is next, then TIME,” Maurice said. “We figure you’ll have to climb past the clock.”
“The next letters are where we have to get creative,” Remy said. “EGLW WALL. Does that mean you need to pass EGLW WALL or pass EGLW, then go to a wall? And which wall?”
“What is EGLW?” Gerard asked.
“That has us stumped,” Maurice said.
“What if we take each letter separately?” Remy suggested. “What object in the St. Louis Cathedral starts with an E and can be found in the central tower?”
Silence stretched.
Maurice shook his head. “If the first word is climb and you pass the clock, what would come next?”
“The bells,” Amelie said.
“Bells’ notes start with B, not E,” Remy pointed out.
“Unless the bells have names,” Maurice said. “Swede?”
“They do,” Swede came back. “The largest one is the Victoire, and there’s one called the Philomena Virginia.”
“Again, not E,” Remy said.
“Okay, so we don’t know what EGLW stands for. We can figure it out when we get there. How many places above the clock would be big enough to hide a painting anyway? We’ll need to check all the walls after we pass the clock. It has to be there.”
“FIND US THERE, has to mean the spot where the painting is hidden,” Amelie said. “Why does it say US, as in more than one?”
“They escaped with valuables. Maybe they hid more than just the painting,” Maurice suggested.” He looked around the room, his gaze stopping at Amelie. “We don’t have all the answers, but we have enough to focus on the central tower of the cathedral above the clock.”
“It’ll have to be enough.” Amelie’s lips tightened in a straight line. “We have to make it work because we might not get more than one shot at sneaking in.”
“Before we go to jail or are fined and banned from ever visiting the cathedral again,” Maurice said.
