Yes, but no. My guess was that John Pinnock was still trying, through what my dad would call sheer cussedness, to convince Sylvia to abandon any plan to move north full time.

“What do you think, Eddie?” I asked a few minutes later as I put his carrier into my car and belted him in. “What would be worse at three in the morning, rousing marches or that heavy metal music Rafe likes so much?”

“Mrr,” Eddie said, flopping against the side of the carrier.

“Yeah, you’re right. Anything played loud at that time would be bad, wouldn’t it? Genre isn’t the point; it’s the decibels. And I have a favor to ask. Are you okay with a quick stop for some investigation on the way home? It won’t take long, I promise. Eddie?”

A light snore told me that a short stop wouldn’t bother him in the least because Hunter and Julia had kept him awake all day.

Smiling, I drove to Gallery 45.3 and blew Eddie a kiss as I parked. I told my sleeping cat that I’d be back in a jiffy and went inside, blinking at the stark white of the walls and ceiling. The sky had darkened with cloud cover and the white seemed whiter than it had before.

“Hello, can I help . . . Oh, hey. Minnie, right?”

It was Skyler, who was again wearing a black turtleneck, black pants, and bright green shoes. I wondered if it was a uniform but hoped it wasn’t. “Yes, hi.”

“You were asking about Conti sculptures. Did you decide to buy one for that wedding present?” He smoothed his beard. “If you’d like, I can ask around for you. Finding a Conti would be such a pleasure that I’d cut my finder’s fee by twenty-five percent.”

“Thanks, but what I was really wondering was how easy it might be to fake a Conti.”

“Fake?” He reared back and his face turned red. “You want to buy a forgery?”

“No, no, of course not,” I said. “It’s just that . . . a friend of mine heard about a Conti and the price was so low he thought it might be a forgery.”

“It’s all about the provenance,” Skyler said. “If you’re going to buy a true work of art, you need to have proper provenance. Otherwise you’re wasting your money.”

“Is there a market for Conti forgeries?”

He gave me a long look. “There are forgeries of any artist who has produced works that have high monetary value.”

That made sense. I wasn’t sure it got me any closer to a plan to tempt the murder suspects with a Conti, but at least my knowledge base was a little broader, and that had to be worth something.