“Ah, oui. It was here when I arrived, in the back of the little closet. I liked it, so I hung it up.”

I looked at the signature and date in the lower left corner: V. Peruggia, 1910. “It belonged to my great-grandfather. I mean, he painted it.”

“Vraiment?”

I studied the composition and technique, imagined Peruggia’s hand and brush moving across the small canvas, saw how he had attempted to link everything together with his blue-black line. It was not revolutionary, but it had a simple beauty and integrity.

Colette lifted it off the wall with gnarled arthritic hands. “I have enjoyed it for many years, monsieur, but it belongs to you.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“You must.”

I offered to pay for it, but she refused.

“Wait then.” I took the stairs too fast, almost had a serious tumble, then slowed and managed to make it down to the vestibule and out the front door in one piece. Daylight was fading, a misty rain creating haze. The flower stand I had remembered seeing was still open. The old man, beginning to wrap up his stock, gave me a deal, two bouquets for the price of one, proudly identifying the various flowers in French. I thanked him and headed back, this time more cautiously up the six rickety flights.

I handed Colette the bouquets. She brought the flowers to her nose, closed her painted eyes, inhaled, and smiled.

The mist had turned to drizzle, and with nothing to protect the painting, I placed it under my jacket, the hundred-year-old canvas next to my heart.

When the rain got worse, I got a cab. I looked at the painting, noted the heavy paint, slightly cracked with age, but the colors remained vibrant and alive. When I finally stopped studying the painting, the Paris streets had gone dark. I got my cell phone out and saw I had missed two calls, both of them from Étienne Chaudron.

58

I let the lion’s-head knocker fall back against the heavy wooden door, Étienne Chaudron’s messages, both identical, playing in my mind:

I have something important I must show you, something in my great-uncle’s meticulous hand… Please come.

His tone was urgent, almost pleading, so much so I had asked the taxicab driver to take me directly to his home.

I jammed Peruggia’s painting into the waistband of my jeans and tried the knocker again. When there was no response, I used my cell, but the call went straight to Chaudron’s voicemail for the third time.

“It’s Luke Perrone,” I said. “I’m at your front door. It’s…”—I checked my phone—“almost nine o’clock.”

Why, after being so insistent that I come, was he not home? I slid the phone into my breast pocket just behind the stolen journal page and tried the knocker one more time.

I have something important to show you, something in my great-uncle’s meticulous hand…

I backtracked down the townhouse stairs and looked up. Several windows were lit like bright rectangles of yellow against the dark night.