The Monet Murders by Terry Mort Page B

of poverty sitting there, big-eyed, on their way to what they must have thought was a better deal, and one that most likely would not be. Is there a moredepressing place than a Greyhound waiting room? What sort of life stories gather or drift through there? Aside from the occasional soldier or sailor getting home on the cheap for a few weeks’ leave, or maybe a high-school girl thrilled to be going anywhere away from home, everyone else is more or less broke, in all senses of the word, and the future not only doesn’t look bright, it looks unlikely. The journey itself involved unpleasant smells and discomfort and long spells between bathrooms, and at the end of it you were in Yuma or Oakland or any other crummy town that’s a stand-in for purgatory.
    Rita hustled over to the banks of gray metal lockers and quickly retrieved the cardboard tube.
    â€œHere you go,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Wanna open it here?”
    â€œI don’t think so.” I was burning with curiosity, but I didn’t want to open it just yet. I needed to be careful with the thing, assuming it was a painting worth six figures, maybe more. Not the sort of thing you want to do in a bus station. “Let’s get back to the car. I’ll take you home.”
    â€œOkay. I have a telephone in the apartment, just in case you want to make a call, or something. And I have some gin. And tonic.”
    â€œKind of early, isn’t it?”
    â€œYou know what they say—it’s five o’clock somewhere.”
    The “gin and tonic” seemed to be a pretty clear offer.
    â€œWhy not?”
    Either way, I was still intending to call Ethel about her. A promise is a promise.
    When we got to her apartment, Rita went into the kitchen to mix a couple of drinks. On the way there, she looked backover her shoulder and gave me what’s known as a meaningful look. She couldn’t smolder like Myrtle, but she certainly smoldered above the average. Plus, she had a good sashay. Not for the first time, I wondered what those cream-colored shorts more or less concealed. Her backward glance seemed to indicate that I’d find out.
    But there was business to attend to first. I got out my penknife and very carefully removed the seal on the tube. I stuck two fingers into the tube and gently removed what certainly felt like a canvas. And so it proved.
    It was a painting of a vase full of flowers. To me, it looked like something a bored housewife could produce in an afternoon at the country-club art class. The flowers looked kind of blurred. But in the lower right hand corner was the word “Monet.” Put “Joe Schwartz” there instead, and you had something any canary would be proud to have on the bottom of his cage. Why that should be was an idea worth pondering at some point, but not now. For the present, I had either a hundred thousand bucks in my hand, or a worthless forgery. The question before the house was—which was it?
    There was another question before the house, too. A bigger question. But I didn’t want to think about that, just yet. I needed some time to think.

    I stayed for lunch, which consisted of three gin-and-tonics, along with several generous portions of Rita, who by the way was much better than advertised and more than expected. She easily delivered on the promise of those cream-colored shorts, and I hoped that her story about not being able to fakeit was true. This was after I had called Ethel, who responded to my request with a sly sort of tone in her voice that suggested she knew I was sending her a new protégé. Well, that didn’t bother me. Ethel actually liked that sort of tomcat behavior. I guess it made her believe that she was still in the game, because deep down she must have known she wasn’t.
    Anyway, Ethel agreed to do me a favor and set up the test for Rita, which occasioned some ecstatic appreciation from my new friend, who wriggled out of her