Horatio led the three of them to the basement. They walked down a narrow staircase and through a series of rooms that were partially finished with brick walls and exposed timbers and had a dank, musty smell. It was an old-school basement, with a no-frills wine cellar, a root cellar for vegetables, and storage for furniture and odds and ends. All the clutter must have come with the house, Phoebe figured, since no one lived here, or so it seemed.
This was the type of basement where secrets were buried.
“I am to leave you here,” Horatio said, a little too smoothly.
“Wait a second,” Phoebe said. “I don’t think so. Patch, you go with him.” Phoebe had seen enough of the Society’s maneuvers to know that she wasn’t going to step into a strange basement without anyone aboveground knowing where she was.
“As you wish,” Horatio said.
Patch followed him. “This was all getting a bit too Edgar Allan Poe for me anyway,” Patch said. He was right. It was very “Cask of Amontillado,” the story where one man leaves another to die in a catacomb. Phoebe shivered.
“If you don’t hear from us in twenty minutes, call the police,” Phoebe said.
Nick laughed at her, though she wondered if it was for Horatio’s benefit. “We’ll be fine. Pheeb, your imagination is far too vivid.”
Phoebe glared at Nick. How could he be so nonchalant about all this? Maybe it was merely a front for the terror he was feeling. Horatio and Patch were soon upstairs again; she could hear their footsteps above her.
After going through several more doors, all of which were unlocked with nothing behind them, they approached an old steel door.
“Do you think…” Nick’s voice trailed off as he held up the key. It seemed like their last chance.
“Go ahead,” Phoebe said. She bit her lip as Nick removed the tiny key from around his neck. He inserted it into the brass lock and gave it a turn. To their astonishment, the door opened, as if it were controlled electronically.
The two of them stepped inside.
Nick fumbled for a light switch and finally found one. Just as the lights flickered on, the metal door closed behind them.
“Oh my God,” Phoebe said. She fumbled frantically at the door. Were they trapped?
“Relax,” Nick said. He pushed a button below the light switch, and the door opened again.
“We’d better get out of here,” Phoebe said. “This is way too creepy. What if there’s no oxygen in the room or something?”
“Come on, don’t you want to find out what this is all about?”
He was right. Phoebe blinked as she looked around. The door closed again. She noticed one difference already, as the door closed. Not only were the walls of this enormous room a clean, pure white, with properly finished surfaces, but the humidity was much lower, not the dank moisture of the basement, but an even, steady level of cool air. Not too dry, not too wet. And the lights were not too bright, not too dark.
Like a museum.
Phoebe looked around and Nick followed her. There were at least a dozen enormous wooden packing crates. She was suddenly drawn back to her time at the Schrader Gallery, when she had been allowed to browse the artist collections that were stored in the back room. She now realized that this was the same thing.
Inside all of these boxes were artworks.
Three paintings were on easels at the back of the room. She didn’t recognize the first two, but when she looked at the third, she realized it was the Pollock that belonged to Nick’s parents. She pointed it out to Nick, and he shook his head in dismay.
She looked at some of the names on the crates. Each was meticulously labeled with the name of an artist: Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, Cezanne.
Phoebe gasped as she read the title of each piece. “Do you know what these are?” she asked Nick.
“No, I don’t.” He seemed frustrated with her.
“They are only some of the most famous stolen paintings in the world. I mean, holy crap, was your grandfather really part of this? Do you know how much jail time he could have done if he was ever caught?”
They looked around the room, walking by each boxed work, as well as the few that were on easels. There were more famous names: Brueghel, Watteau, Manet.
“Okay, this has got to be a joke.” Nick pointed to one box.
Phoebe read aloud. “The Mona Lisa.”
“You’re kidding me,” Nick said. “The Mona Lisa isn’t a stolen artwork.”
“No,” Phoebe said. “It’s not. But it was stolen from the Louvre in the early 1900s. My mom read a book about it. At that time, they actually made copies, and then thieves would return either the copy or the original back to the museum, depending on how they were playing it.”
“So you’re telling me that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a copy, and this is the original?”
“No,” Phoebe shook her head. “The Mona Lisa in the Louvre has been authenticated. Your grandfather had a copy there.”
“But he had to have known that. Why would he keep a copy?”
“I think he probably did. Maybe it thrilled him to have a little piece of the history of art. Or, rather, the history of art theft.”
“Okay, this is all getting too weird,” Nick said. “I say we go back up.”
Phoebe followed Nick through the door and back through the dank basement passageway.
“What do you think we should do?” Phoebe said, her voice echoing slightly in the basement. “I mean, these pieces have to be returned, don’t you think? Some of those works have been missing for decades!”
Did Nick realize the enormity of what they had uncovered? The discovery of these paintings would shake up not only the art world, but quite possibly, the global economy. It would be in the news for months. Books would be written about it, films would be made, the parties involved would be interviewed-
If the Society knew about their discovery, none of that would happen.
Nick and Phoebe reached the staircase leading up to the first floor and were grateful when they found themselves in the kitchen of the enormous house. Patch was waiting there, sitting at the antique farm table while Horatio read a copy of the Financial Times.
As Nick and Phoebe told Patch what they had seen, he shook his head in amazement.
“Give me your car service account number,” Patch said to Nick. “There’s only one person who can help us figure this out.”