Hemlock Bay

can’t get over their going to all this trouble,” Lily said.
    “After we verify that Mr. Olaf Jorgenson of Sweden now has three in his possession—no, we want him to have all four of the paintings, it’d keep things simple—we may be able to find out how much he’s paid for them. I’m thinking in the neighborhood of two to three million per painting. Maybe higher. Depends on how obsessed he is. From what I hear, he’s single-minded when he wants a certain painting.”
    “Three million? That’s a whole lot of money. But to go to all this trouble—”
    “I can tell you stories you don’t want to hear about how far some collectors will go. There was one German guy who collected rare stamps. He found out that his mother had one that he’d wanted for years, only she wanted to keep it for herself. He hit her over the head with a large bag of coins, killed her. Does that give you an idea of how completely obsessed some of these folk are?”
    Lily could only stare at him. “It’s just hard to believe. This Olaf Jorgenson—you told me he’s very old and nearly blind in the bargain.”
    “It is amazing that he can’t control his obsession, not even for something as incidental as, say, going blind. I guess it won’t stop until he’s dead.”
    “Do you think his son Ian has the real Night Watch aboard his yacht?”
    “I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
    “Are you going to tell the people at the Rijksmuseum?”
    “Yeah, but trust me on this, they won’t want to hear it. They’ll have a couple of experts examine the painting on the sly. If the experts agree that it’s a forgery, they’ll try to get it back, but will they announce it? Doubtful.
    “We’ve been checking out Mr. Monk, the curator of the Eureka Art Museum. He does have a Ph.D. from George Washington, and a pedigree as long as your arm. If something’s off there, Savich hasn’t found it yet. We’re going deeper on that, got some feelers out to a couple of museums where he worked. You keep looking back there. Is anyone following us?”
    Lily shifted in her seat to face his profile. “No, no one’s back there. I can’t help it. To me, this is enemy territory.”
    “You’re entitled. You had a very bad experience here. You met Mr. Monk, didn’t you?”
    “Oh yes.”
    “Tell me about him.”
    Lily said slowly, “When I first met Mr. Monk, I thought he had the most intense black eyes, quite beautiful really, ‘bedroom eyes’ I guess you could call them. But he looked hungry. Isn’t that odd?”
    Simon said, “He has beautiful eyes? Bedroom eyes? You women think and say the strangest things.”
    “Like men don’t? If it were Mrs. Monk, you’d probably go on about her cleavage.”
    “Well, yeah, maybe. And your point would be?”
    “You’d probably never even get to her face. You men are all one-celled.”
    “You think? Really?”
    She laughed, she just couldn’t help it. He pushed his sunglasses up his nose, and she saw that he was grinning at her. He said with a good deal of satisfaction, “You’re feeling better. You’ve got a nice laugh, Lily. I like hearing it. Mind you, I’m still mad because you followed me out here, but I will admit that this is the first time I’ve seen you that you don’t look like you want to curl up and take a long nap.”
    “Get over it, Simon. We must be nearly to Abraham Turkle’s cottage. Just up ahead, Highway 211 turns left to go to Hemlock Bay. To the right there’s this asphalt one-lane track that goes the mile out to the ocean. That’s where the cottage is?”
    “Yes, those were my directions. You’ve never been out to the ocean on that road?”
    “I don’t think so,” she said.
    “Okay now, listen up. Abe has a bad reputation. He’s got a real mean side, so we want to be careful with him.”
    They came to the fork. Simon turned right, onto the narrow asphalt road. “This is it,” Simon said. “There’s no sign and there’s no other road. Let’s try it.”
    The ocean came into view almost immediately, when they were just atop a slight rise. Blue and calm as far as you could see, white clouds dotting the sky, a perfect day.
    “Look at this view,” Lily said. “I always get a catch in my throat when I see the ocean.”
    They reached the end of the road very quickly. Abe Turkle’s cottage was a small gray clapboard, weathered, perched right at the end of a promontory towering out over the ocean. There were two hemlock trees, one on either side of the