“Oh!” she yelped when she saw us. She was at the far end, a bottle of Windex in her hand, cleaning the glass case that held Wendell’s antique clothing collection. “You two scared me!”

“Sorry about that,” I said, taking a step back. “We’ll come back later.”

“No, it is okay,” Angelina said, folding the cleaning rag over her arm. “I am finished here.”

She started to exit, then turned to speak.

“The museum people will be here next week to get the rest of the collection,” she said to Carlos, an odd expression on her face. “I just wanted it to look nice. For your grandfather’s sake.”

“Thanks, Angelina,” he said. “I won’t touch the glass.”

She left, pulling the door shut behind her. I headed for a chair so that Carlos and I could sit and talk, but he ran to the other end of the room, stopping just short of the glass case.

“Have you seen Grandpa’s collection?” he asked me enthusiastically. “It’s so cool.”

I was surprised that an 11-year-old boy would find any interest in antique clothing, but I didn’t say as much.

“You see this one here?” he asked, pointing to an old-looking white shirt. It had ruffles at the collar and wrists, and the neck was tied with a yellowed drawstring. “Grandpa bought that shirt for $10,000.”

“That’s a lot of money for an old shirt,” I said, smiling.

“No, get this,” he continued. “When he bought it, he thought it might have belonged to Thomas Jefferson, that it might even be the shirt in that painting. Then they did some tests and research and things, and now they’re almost sure it did. That makes it worth ten times as much!”

Carlos pointed toward the portrait on the wall, a print of the famous portrait of Jefferson by Françoise Dumond. Unlike the more formal portraits of the era, this painting showed Jefferson deep in thought, leaning over a desk as he put pen to paper, composing the Declaration of Independence. I knew the original painting hung at the Smithsonian, but this copy wasn’t bad. And, indeed, the shirt he wore in the painting looked identical to the one in the case.

“Wow,” I said, meaning it. From $10,000 to a $100,000 was quite a return on an investment.

“But now,” Carlos said, lowering his voice. “This is a secret. You see that dark spot on the sleeve?”

“Yes?”

“If it’s what we think it is, that makes the shirt worth even ten times more.”

I did a quick calculation, my eyebrows raising.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Ink,” Carlos whispered. “They think that’s a spot of ink from when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.”

“Wow.”