“Thank you! That’s all I wanted to hear.”
“But it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth that,” I say. “And that we’re not going to get a nice chunk of cash when we take it.”
“I’m not saying that at all. I just wanted to hear that I’m not crazy for thinking that that’s an outrageous amount of money to pay for something like that.”
This conversation lightens the mood a bit and we manage a few smiles.
I continue to go over the details, which are a lot more general than I would’ve wanted.
Art promised me that he’s going to take care of all of the planning, but the problem is that he thinks giving me the address and the location of their safe is enough.
As I relay everything I know about the plan, Olive quickly decides that it’s not enough and that we must do more research.
Tempted to fight her on it, I decide against it.
I am not doing this job on official FBI business and if we were to get caught then Art would wash his hands of me.
Olive is the only one with real art theft experience so if she thinks we need to do more prep work then that’s what we’ll do.
23
Olive
When we get ready…
The Linchfield house is located at the end of a cul-de-sac on a street with only three other houses.
The lots are wide and expansive filled with thick vegetation that walls them off from their neighbors.
At first, I thought we would have to contend with gates and guards but neither are present there.
There are also no neighbors in sight.
I have staked out this house for a few days and I haven’t seen a single other person coming or going on this street.
Martha’s Vineyard is known to be a summer playground for rich New Yorkers but the isolation on this street takes even me by surprise.
I am tempted to think that this will be a much easier job than I had originally imagined it to be, but I don’t dare allow myself to get complacent or lazy.
Stealing almost three quarters of a million dollars’ worth of art is not something anyone should take lightly.
After the initial fight in that hotel room, Owen and Nicholas seem to be getting along quite well.
Owen is behaving himself. He hasn’t made any of his usual under-his-breath remarks.
I appreciate it more than he’ll probably ever know but I hate choosing sides and being stuck in the middle of them.
We planned the robbery for this evening, during sunset.
The painting is large and we will need a car to get it out of the area.
But out of fear of being spotted, I decided that Owen should wait for us away from here.
It’s not so late that it would look suspicious for Owen to sit in the van with Thompson’s Plumbing on the side.
In case anyone asks him, he will play the role of a frustrated plumber frantically talking on the phone to get parts that should have arrived already.
He will wait for us in the driveway of an empty house one street over and we will carry the painting down the ravine between the two houses and right into his van.
The plan isn’t flawless.
I wish I knew exactly what kind of safe the Linchfields have and had more time to think of possible problems that could come up.
Unfortunately, the owners are coming home this weekend and we are out of time.
After going over the plans late into the night, we review them a few more times on the drive over.
Everyone seems ready on the outside.
We are all properly caffeinated with empty bladders and stoic faces.
Trembling on the inside, I hide my nervousness behind a layer of workout clothes and bury my unsteady hands in the pockets of my hoodie.
Owen is dressed in a Thompson Plumbing uniform with a fake name embroidered on the front.
The shop wasn’t going to have it ready until tomorrow but with a bit of prodding and a one-hundred dollar tip, the snotty teenager manning the desk was able to miraculously finish it in time.
When I handed him the shirt this morning, I avoided going into the details.
The exorbitant tip would get him all hung up and he’d focus his grudge against the eleventh grader instead of the task at hand.
Owen circles around the cul-de-sac, slowing down only briefly for Nicholas and me to open the door and slide out.
We rush to the back of the house, knowing that the owners of the two adjacent homes won’t be here for another two months.
Still, you can never be too careful.
I run our cover story in my head over and over again in case anyone does stop us.
We are training for the 10k Wild run, a local race taking place in two weeks that requires contestants to run ten kilometers in the woods and over uneven ground. The ravine behind the Linchfield’s house is the perfect training space.
Nicholas picks the lock on the back door. It only takes him a few seconds wiggling the metal tool to get it unlocked.
Now, it’s my turn.
I have inspected the door before and I know that the security system that they use is magnetic.
It’s a small metal box and the sensor has two parts.
One is stationary and the other is attached to the movable part of the door.
The idea is that when the magnetic connection between the two parts of the sensor are broken, the alarm activates.
I pull a magnet that I bought at a nearby dollar store out of my pocket.
It’s a smiley face emoji refrigerator magnet but it should do the trick.
I slide the magnet over the sensor through the tiny slit in the door frame.
Once it attaches, I hold my breath and open the door. A wave of relief washes over me when the alarm doesn’t go off.
“Good job,” Nicholas whispers.
The door leads us to a spacious Mediterranean-style kitchen with a big hood and thick bricks lining the stove.
Near the dining room, we find the staircase that goes downstairs.
The steps are covered in carpet as is the rest of the basement, consisting of three rooms.
The owners use the first room as a home theater and there are large overstuffed recliners facing a seventy-inch, wall-mounted television.
One of the rooms leading off this one is a bedroom and another is the office.
“Here it is!” Nicholas yells while I briefly lose myself in the small five by eight painting on the wall in front of the enormous oak desk.
It has to be a replica, right?
I take a few steps closer to it and peer into the piece. The work isn’t so much a painting as a plan for a painting.
There are a few brush strokes made in oil but the rest of it is in pencil. The artist was making plans for what’s to come.
“Olive, we don’t have all day,” he calls me from the other room.
A moment later, he appears in the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“This…this can’t be real,” I whisper.
“What do you mean?”
I grab my phone and look up his work on Google, confirming my suspicions.
“This is by Claude Monet. It’s an early version or a proposal for his famous Waterlilies in Bloom painting,” I whisper. “At least, I think so.”
Nicholas stares at the picture for a moment. “We have to open that safe,” he finally says.
I nod.
He’s right.
We’re here to get that painting and I shouldn’t be sidetracked. On the other hand, the one in the safe is worth seven-hundred grand on the real market, probably around four hundred on the black one, and this one, if it’s real, is worth millions.