Jeff resumed teaching himself how to play the harmonica. Dee went to the kitchen to get the glass cleaner, then picked up a print leaning against one of Jasper Gormley’s old trunks and set to work wiping decades of grime off it. “Too bad this isn’t real. We could add a dozen more cabins with the money we’d make selling it.”
She froze. Jeff dropped his harmonica. They stared at each other. “Do . . . you . . . think . . . ?” He spoke slowly, the possibility they’d simultaneously landed on tantalizing.
“Only one way to find out,” Dee said, excitement mounting. “Check every single picture.”
Brimming with excitement and anticipation, Dee and Jeff examined every print in Dee’s place to see if one might be the original missing Honestadt hiding in plain sight for decades. None were.
“We need to check the ones we rehung,” Jeff declared.
The two ran from the apartment to the few rooms and cabins decorated with the restored prints. To Dee and Jeff’s crushing disappointment, that’s what they proved to be: prints.
Disconsolate, the two trudged back to Dee’s. Jeff got them each a beer from the fridge. Dee sat on the floor with a thump, resting her back against Jasper’s trunk. Too lazy to walk, Nugget inched over from his prone position and rested his head in her lap as if commiserating with her defeated mood.
“I had a terrible thought,” Jeff said, handing her a beer. “What if the original painting was in Michael’s cabin and burned down with it?”
“I bet that’s what happened.” Dee grew teary. “It’s so heartbreaking. Not just for us. For the art world.”
Her cheeks wet, she glanced in Jasper’s trunk and saw a rag. She reached for it, but the rag turned out to be wrapped around something. She took the item out of the trunk. It was rectangular. And the same size as the sixteen Honestadt framed prints Dee had so carefully cleaned.
She unwrapped it . . . and gasped. With shaking hands, she held the stunning painting up to Jeff. His jaw literally dropped.
The glorious mountains of Majestic National Park, rendered in oil paint, loomed over a bucolic woodland grove. Deer grazed where the Golden Motel now stood. “With Baker spending a good chunk of his life in the area, he must have heard about the missing painting,” Jeff said, gazing at it in wonder.
“And I can totally see him manipulating Jasper into revealing anything he knew about it. Whatever the poor old man told Michael must have led him to assume the painting was somewhere on the property.” Dee carefully laid the painting back in the trunk. “We need to keep it in a safe place until we can get an appraisal. I’m calling Owen to see if he’ll let us store it in one of his safes for at least a little while.”
She called up Owen’s number. He answered the call after one ring. “Dee? Hi. Everything okay?”
“More than okay,” she said, beside herself with excitement. “Wait until you hear this.”
She filled the jeweler in on the marvelous discovery.
“I don’t believe it,” Owen said. He sounded like he was in shock.
“Believe it.”
“After all these years.”
“I know!” Dee couldn’t help bouncing up and down a little.
“So the rumor was true. Jasper did steal it.”
Dee stopped bouncing. She paused. “Steal it?”
* * *
“Smile!”
Dee and Jeff managed smiles as the newspaper photographer snapped a shot of them on either side of The Sierras in Springtime, the long-lost Kristof Honestadt painting now returned to its rightful home, the Majestic Lodge. Rather than stuck in the hallway where it once resided, The Sierras in Springtime was now front and center in the lodge lobby, offering Ranger O’Bryant more opportunities to milk its miraculous reappearance.
At the moment, he was spouting off about the painting’s history to a news crew from Fresno. “Jasper Gormley was a janitor at the lodge for decades. He also ran a beat-up old motel in Foundgold his family built in the early 1940s.”
“Beat up, my a—” Jeff muttered.
Dee shushed him.
“Jasper was under suspicion for the theft,” O’Bryant continued. “He made a lotta noise about how the painting should belong to his family because it was of the view behind the Golden. But there was never any proof connecting him to the theft. Bottom line: The painting belongs to the Majestic.”
The newspaper photographer motioned to the ranger. “Let me get a picture of all three of you with the painting.”
“Sure,” O’Bryant said, happy to hog the spotlight.
He positioned himself in a way that led Dee to assume she’d be lucky if her arm made it into the photograph. “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said to the ranger when they were done, “is there by any chance a reward for finding the painting?”
“There is,” O’Bryant said, raising hopes that were instantly dashed. “Two hundred fifty dollars. Standard amount. Most people who receive a reward donate it right back to the park. Funding these national wonders is a real struggle.”
“We’ll do the same, of course,” Dee said, caving to guilt. Jeff gave a weak nod of agreement.
By the time the celebratory reception was over, it was dark outside. “I added the sluice to our website,” Jeff said as he drove. “That’ll bring a couple families to the Golden. I hope, I hope.”
Dee called up the website on her phone. “Nice job. It looks very appealing.” She opened another tab and beamed with her first genuine smile of the day. “Good thing we’re going to get the sluice up and running, because guess what?” She triumphantly held up the phone. “A class of fourth graders from Sherman Oaks just booked the whole motel for a California history overnight school trip! They love the sluice and my historic map.”
“Whoo-hoo!” The two hooted.
Jeff took a hand off the steering wheel and high-fived Dee. “We’re gonna make this work, Deester.”
“We are.”
She settled back in the car seat. They rounded the bend. Dee’s eyes widened. She grabbed Jeff’s arm. “Jeff, look.”
