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“No problem.” Felix spun back around and started opening other files.
Cal and Jack were still bickering, and I pushed them out of the room, sending them away to either fuck or fight. I needed to think, and I needed it quiet. There had been a moment in time before she retired that my grandmother had been obsessed with finding Crowe’s painting. She thought it could be her crowning glory, but despite years of research, her holy grail eluded her, and she retired without ever finding out where the painting was so she could make a play for it. While her major area of interest was classical antiquity, I doubted there was another person alive who knew as much aboutThe Evolution of Manas she did.
Looked like ORCA was picking up another case.
“Hey. Cal and Jack said you were down here. What’s going on?” Quin walked into the room wearing a pair of dress pants and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up on his forearms. Hewas holding an egg roll he’d wrapped neatly in a paper towel and leaned against the doorframe.
Julius and Felix gave him a fast rundown of what we’d discovered, and Quin walked over to the computer screens, leaning down to look closely at an image of the painting Felix had pulled up. The canvas was large, at least three feet tall by five feet wide, and showed a man emerging from a pool to take the form of a two-legged creature, then an ape, then a primitive man, then a modern human, before retaking the form of a great ape.
“Why are you looking at that?” he asked, gesturing with his half-eaten egg roll at Felix’s computer screen.
Julius rolled his eyes. “We just told you. We think someone knows where this painting is, and they’re going to try to steal it.”
“Yes, I get that, but where did you find that particular photo of the painting?”
Felix tipped his head and studied Quin, eyes narrowed. “It was in the file. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the painting, so I pulled it up for reference.”
“That’s not the original.” Quin popped the last bite of egg roll into his mouth and wiped his hands with the paper towel.
“What?” Felix asked. “What do you mean? How do you know it’s not the original?”
Quin shrugged. “An artist always recognizes their own work.”
