Imposter, she thought again. That was the word that was making her uneasy. But why? Obviously, she had solved the clue and figured out the right movie – exactly as she had been meant to. And this painting was supposedly pointing her in the direction of her next step.
She propped the painted canvas up against the wall in her living room, allowing a curious Brinkley to come forward and give it a cursory sniff. Realizing it was nothing edible, the dog quickly lost interest and hopped up on the couch, sighing contentedly and closing his eyes for a snooze.
But Beth was the exact opposite of her unconcerned dog. Energy coursed through her veins. She truly didn’t understand why she felt a sense of foreboding, but she figured the only way to rid herself of this feeling, and settle her mind, was to solve this clue.
She went to her bedroom to retrieve her laptop and as she entered the room she momentarily smelled Danny’s familiar scent. He always wore Chanel Pour Homme. The fragrance was in the air as if he had just left the room, but she knew that not to be the case.
Beth felt vaguely put off by the feeling and, as she picked up her laptop from the nightstand, she even looked back, confirming in her own mind that he wasn’t actually in the room with her.
The spooky feeling was heightened further when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. Her intuition was trying to tell her something, that much she knew, but what, she didn’t have any idea. The synapses in her brain were obviously not connecting.
Trying her best to brush off the feeling of discomfort she was suddenly feeling, Beth returned to the painting in her living room.
She picked up her phone as she booted up the laptop and called Jodi on her cellphone. She had to tell her friend what had happened and what she had found.
Jodi finally answered on the fourth ring. She sounded sleepy, as if Beth had just woken her up.
‘Are you still in bed? Did I wake you?’ Beth asked, looking at the clock. It was almost midday, though she did know Jodi was on the later shift that day. Then she stifled a smile when she heard a man’s voice in the background. Obviously Trevor had come over last night when Jodi reached home – the reason her friend was still in bed.
‘I’m still in bed,’ said Jodi groggily. ‘But I wasn’t asleep. What’s up?’
Beth got straight to the point. ‘I was right about the paintings,’ she said, and filled Jodi in on the rest of the story. When she finished, she admitted, ‘However, something’s still not sitting right with me.’
Fully alert now, Jodi mumbled something to her bedmate and focused on Beth. ‘OK, so talk to me. What’s not adding up? You have confirmation that the movie in question isThe Thomas Crown Affair.That’s good. And it’s an easy clue. I’ve seen that flick so I know that it’s all pretty obvious. The whole movie centres around the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Easy.’
Beth knew that, but it was something else. It all felttooobvious to her, plus there was something more that she was reading into this clue as well. As much as she searched her memory, she couldn’t remember talking aboutThe Thomas Crown Affairto Ryan at all. It was true there were other coincidences at play here, yet he himself had told her there were no coincidences. There was the mere fact that the painting had shown up while Ryan was taking her to brunch and making a very open effort about wooing her. And yes, obviously this entire hunt was focused on New York movie locations, but the clue continued to trouble Beth.
‘I thought about that, too. However, it’s not like the painting is actually there at the Met. The original one, I mean – that was just in the movie.’ She typed the painting’s title,San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk, into her laptop.
‘Are you in front of a computer?’ she asked Jodi.
‘I can be. Give me a second.’
A moment later the two women were comparing the findings of their respective internet searches.
‘So the original is owned by, and apparently housed at the National Museum in Wales,’ said Beth. ‘That doesn’t do me any good.’ She sighed. ‘Again, simply going to the Met and wandering around feels way too obvious to me. I know the clue has to do with not just any painting but this one.’
Jodi made some agreeable murmuring noises on the other end of the phone. ‘Right, no, I get you. It makes sense. But what if…?’ her voice trailed off.
Beth felt eager to hear what Jodi was thinking. ‘What if what?’
‘Hold on. I’m just checking something out. Something just occurred to me.’
Beth peered at the screen of her computer, wondering if Jodi was seeing something on her end that she apparently wasn’t seeing on hers. There seemed to be a considerable mountain of information out there about this painting – tons of essays on it, history on it, what Monet had been thinking and contemplating while he was working on it. But there wasn’t necessarily anything that was current and timely.
‘So think about it this way,’ Jodi said then. ‘If you feel very sure that this painting is part and parcel of the next step in the trail, then just learning a bunch of history about the painting isn’t going to suffice.’
Beth pressed the phone to her ear. Jodi shared the thought that just occurred to her but it sounded as if her friend was on to something else too. And her suspicions were confirmed when suddenly Jodi let out a little squeal of satisfaction on the other end of the phone.
‘Bingo,’ she said.
‘What, what is it? What did you find?’ Beth flipped through Google pages – nothing was standing out.
However, Jodi sounded determined to torture her a little longer, allowing the suspense to build. She wasn’t about to divulge her knowledge easily.
‘So you know how sometimes art collections, or individual works travel?’ she said to Beth eventually. ‘Obviously not everyone can drop what they are doing and head off to the Louvre or the Vatican Museum or the National Museum in Wales at a moment’s notice, yes?’
Beth was having none of this drawing out the explanation. Jodi had this thing figured it out and if she knew what was good for her she seriously needed to tell hernow. ‘Jodi, please, what is it? What are you looking at? What do you know?’
