Read Chapter 16: A Brush with the Law

The morning light through the gallery windows had a sickly pallor, the kind that made dust motes visible and secrets harder to keep. Julien stood at the back counter, pretending to catalogue a box of minor Impressionist etchings he'd bought at auction six months ago and still hadn't sold. The coffee in his cup had gone cold an hour ago.

The bell above the door chimed.

She was tall, mid-fifties, with silver hair cut sharply at the jaw and a charcoal coat that cost more than Julien's monthly rent. She moved like someone used to being let into rooms without knocking. Her eyes swept the gallery once—the empty walls, the three unsold canvases, the dust on the sills—and settled on him with the patience of a cat watching a mouse that didn't yet know it was cornered.

"Julien Moreau?" She didn't ask. She held up a leather folio with a tricolor emblem stamped on the front. "Geneviève Rousseau. Ministry of Culture, Heritage Division. I'd like a word about the Vignon estate."

Julien's hand tightened on the etching he was holding. He forced a smile and set it down carefully. "Of course. Can I offer you a coffee? It's not fresh, I'm afraid—"

"I'll stand." She walked toward the counter, heels clicking on the parquet. "I understand you conducted an appraisal at Château Vignon last month. On behalf of the heirs."

"That's correct." Julien leaned against the counter, arms crossed, casual. "Liquidating the estate. Standard affair. The family was quite satisfied with my preliminary valuation."

"And the Caravaggio."

Julien let his eyebrows rise. "The attribution was tentative at best. A follower, perhaps. The condition was poor—"

"The Caravaggio that was listed in the estate inventory as present at the château as of three weeks ago." Rousseau's voice was flat. She opened her folio and slid a photograph across the counter. The painting. His find. The one now wrapped in oilcloth and canvas in the false compartment beneath his floorboards. "Is now nowhere to be found. The inventory conducted by the Ministry two days ago shows the painting sheet absent, with no record of shipment, donation, or transfer authorized by the court."

Julien picked up the photograph, studying it as though seeing it for the first time. "I only appraised the pieces on the ground floor and the central wing. The painting was not in my scope. If it's missing, I'd suggest you speak to the family. Or perhaps the estate agent. There was a woman, a curator, handling the contents—"

"A woman who has since disappeared without trace." Rousseau's eyes narrowed. "Funny, that. Her employment records at the agency she worked for turned out to be fabricated. And here you are, the last accredited professional on the property, walking out with a van full of crated goods the same week the painting vanishes."

Julien spread his hands. "Madame Rousseau, I'm a small-time dealer with a failing gallery and a tax problem. If I had a Caravaggio, I wouldn't be drinking week-old coffee and pricing etchings for rent money. I'd be in Saint-Tropez with a yacht."

"Perhaps." She studied him. "Or perhaps you'd be in a basement somewhere with a very expensive problem on your hands, trying to figure out who to sell it to."

The words landed harder than she knew. Julien kept his face neutral. "Is there something specific you want from me?"

Rousseau closed the folio. "Paul Moreau."

Julien's chest tightened. "My father. Dead eighteen months."

"An unfortunate accident. A fall in his apartment. The authorities ruled it that way." Rousseau's voice carried an edge Julien didn't like. "But your father wasn't merely a retired dealer, Monsieur Moreau. He had a relationship with the Ministry going back many years. A confidential one."

The words hung in the air. Julien felt the floor tilt slightly. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about a man who worked undercover for us, cataloguing the provenance of disputed artworks across Europe. Who fed us information about trafficking networks, forged documents, stolen antiquities—for the better part of a decade." Rousseau watched him closely. "You didn't know."

Julien's mind raced. Paul. Quiet, careful Paul, who collected cigarette cases and spoke rarely of his past. Who had connections in Prague. Who had known Olga Vacek, a document forger, before she defected. The pieces tried to rearrange themselves into a pattern Julien didn't want to see.

"My father was a dealer," Julien said carefully. "A legitimate one. He retired because of his health."

"He was a man with many faces." Rousseau moved closer, lowering her voice. "And I believe he left something unfinished. A thread he was pulling. One that involved the Caravaggio at Vignon—why it was there, who put it there, what the connection was to certain parties in Marseille who would very much like to get their hands on it."

Julien's blood went cold. Dupont. She was talking about Dupont.

"If you know something," Rousseau continued, "about where that painting is, or who has it now—I'd advise you to come forward. Not for my sake. For yours. The people who are looking for it are not the sort who file paperwork. And there are others who have noticed its absence. Certain interested parties in Geneva. In London. In Prague."

Prague. That was not a coincidence. She couldn't know about Olga. Could she?

"I don't know anything about a Caravaggio," Julien said flatly. "I appraised a house. I filed my report. If you have questions about the inventory, take them up with the court. I've told you all I know."

Rousseau studied him for a long moment. Then she reached into her coat pocket and set something on the counter. A photograph, worn at the edges, creased across the middle. It showed a group of men at a café table in what looked like the 1960s, younger, healthier. One of them was unmistakably Paul Moreau. Another, across the table, had a hard Corsican face and a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"That's your father," Rousseau said. "The man across from him is Pasquale Mariani. Godfather of the Mariani clan. Your father was with him in Corsica in 1968. And again in 1974, in Nice, six months after he supposedly began working for us." She paused. "Your father played both sides, Monsieur Moreau. We never knew where his true loyalty lay. And now the painting's gone, and I find you sitting in the middle of it like a spider with its web torn down."

Julien said nothing. His throat was dry.

"One more thing." Rousseau picked up the photograph and slid it back into her folio. "Your father wasn't the only one connected to the Ministry who had an interest in that painting. There was a man, an old friend of his, who visited the château twice in the year before your father's death. A Swiss buyer. Name of Keller."

She let it land.

"If you hear anything, Monsieur Moreau—anything at all—you call me." She placed a card on the counter. "Before someone finds you the way they found your father."

She left. The bell chimed again, and the door swung shut, and Julien stood frozen behind the counter, staring at the card, the name KELLER burning in his mind.

Keller had known his father. Keller had visited Vignon before Paul died. And Paul—Paul had been working for the Ministry and the Corsicans at the same time, threading a needle that had eventually cut his life short.

The safe-deposit box at Crédit Lyonnais. Whatever Paul had left him—it wasn't just documents. It was a key to the whole puzzle. And Julien was running out of time to open it.

He glanced at the clock. Claire would be arriving within the hour, and they had a copy to build and a provenance to forge, and now the Ministry was sniffing around his tail like a bloodhound with his scent.

He looked down at the card in his hand. Geneviève Rousseau. Heritage Division.

The bell chimed again.

Claire stepped in, a leather satchel over her shoulder, her eyes bright with the conspiratorial energy that had been building between them for days. She saw his face and stopped.

"What happened?"

Julien pocketed the card. "Nothing. Nothing." He managed a smile. "I was just thinking about my father."

He would tell her. Just not yet. There were things he needed to know first.

About Paul. About Keller. About what exactly was in that box on the Rue du Quatre-Septembre.