Simply Lies

Chapter 84

Gibson steered the rental car down the street in Yarden, New York.

She and Francine had flown in and were now pulling up in front of the small house that Harry Langhorne had lived in as a child.

It looked exactly like the picture that Gibson had earlier pulled up on Google Maps.

A car was parked in front. Flowers were in the flower beds. Everything looked neat and trim. There were four other homes on the street. They all looked the same. Cars in front, flowers in the beds.

But what Gibson had subsequently found out was that each of these homes was owned by one corporation that she had finally tracked to one of Daniel Pottinger’s companies. And she had also found out that a management service had been hired to keep the outside of the homes in good order and to look after the vehicles. And that there was a housekeeping service to look after the interiors of the other homes. But they had not been given access to 199. No one apparently went in there.

They got out of the car and approached the house.

There was an alarm pad next to the front door.

“Little unusual being on the outside,” noted Francine.

“There’s no key lock on the front door, only a handle. My guess is this is where Harry lived for the most part. Now we need the code to get in.”

Francine opened her notebook and looked at the numbers she had written down there: 14, 25, 19, 9, 25, and 4. These represented the numerical equivalent of each first letter in the phrase Harry had left with his registered agent after leaving out the words “but then.”

“The leftovers for Sesame Street?” said Gibson.

“As in ‘open sesame,’ we hope.”

“Here goes nothing,” Gibson said, as she punched all these numbers into the alarm panel.

The red light on the pad turned green and they heard a click.

Francine gripped the handle and pulled the door open. “After you,” she said to Gibson.

The women walked in and Francine closed the door behind them.

The house was small, the rooms plain but spotless. The kitchen was functional, if rudimentary. They noticed that the windows were simply facades. There was no light coming in from them. The air was cool, and they could hear the hum of the HVAC system.

“The lights and HVAC must be on a program,” noted Gibson. They turned the corner and walked into what looked like the living room, which was the largest space thus far. There was track lighting on the ceilings and the lights were pointed at the walls.

And on the walls—

“Holy shit,” both women exclaimed at the same time.

Arrayed on all four walls were paintings. And not simply any paintings.

They drew closer to one of them. It was a simple depiction of a room: a tile floor, and part of a blue door. But the focus of the work was clearly a wooden chair with a straw seat that held what looked to be a pipe and cloth on it, and—

Francine pointed to the name that appeared on a wooden box sitting behind the chair that contained some vegetables.

“ ‘Vincent’?”

“As in... Van Gogh?” mumbled Gibson. “The NFTs were just misdirection, or maybe a digital sampling of the real thing?”

Francine took out her phone, did a search, and showed the screen to Gibson.

“Van Gogh signed his first name in odd places on the pieces he thought had some merit apparently. This one is entitled Vincent’s Chair. He painted it in December 1888.” She kept reading. “It was housed in the National Gallery in London.” She paused and then jerked her head up. “Until it was stolen eleven years ago.” She looked around. “It wouldn’t surprise me if all of these paintings had been stolen.”

“So Harry bought them from whoever stole them, and housed them here where he’s the only one who gets to enjoy them. And he bought NFTs of all of them and housed them in a metaverse room that is probably a duplicate of this one.” She looked around at what was clearly world-class artwork from a series of masters. “What a dick.”

“Who cares?” Francine leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and let out a long, calming breath. She opened her eyes, looked at Gibson, and allowed herself an ear-to-ear smile. “We just found the treasure.”