Captain Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes” of the Sandersonville Police Department, was – reluctantly but attentively – attending a law and order symposium in Minneapolis.

In December.

The streets of Minneapolis were knee-deep in what Noonan knew to be snow. He was sure it was snow because it was a substance he only experienced when his wife dragged him to Alaska during too many Decembers to have Christmas with too many members of her family. The Alaskans were his in-laws so he had no choice but to acquiesce. His preference was to be close to the sea – Atlantic, not Pacific – on the Outer Banks of North Carolina where the closest one came to snow was in a cone.

But here he was, in Minneapolis, a civic newcomer in its formation. Sandersonville, after all, had been founded by shipwreck survivors in the last 1600s. Minneapolis was more than a far cry from the ocean and here, in the West, the only saltwater was a mixture of tap and Epson.

And why was he here in Minneapolis?

In the dead of winter.

Where the temperature fought its way all the way up to 25 and the snow came down in inches rather than flakes.

Because he was the guest speaker – courtesy of the Sandersonville Commissioner of Homeland Security, Edward Paul Lizzard III – at a conference on forensic advances in crime fighting. Lizzard could not attend the conference as he was at another venue, a Homeland Security convention in New Orleans.

Where the temperature was 64.

And snow cover was zip.

The only blessing was Noonan was not the keynote speaker. It was not as though he had nothing forensically to offer the crowd, rather, he specialized – so to speak – in transgressions which were often not a violation of the law. This was heresy for a convention such as this one since all speakers ended their presentations with the fateful words, “. . . were convicted and sent to prison.”

So Noonan did his civic duty representing the Sandersonville Police Department for 20 minutes on stage.

In Minneapolis.

In December.

Where the temperature fought its way all the way up to 25 and the snow came down in inches rather than flakes.

As he was not a people-person in the political sense of the term, he spent his socializing time in the local museums and art galleries. If there was one thing he enjoyed when on vacation – or assignment – it was local museums and art galleries. This was because they offered the viewer a snapshot of the local community. Noonan knew history was not the story of the past but the study of the future and he was best served by seeing different perspectives on the past. Which would become the future. Minneapolis history was no different from Sandersonville history – and San Francisco history and New York. There was nothing new under the sun and one never knew what historical tidbit one might pick up in Minneapolis that would be useful in solving a crime in Memphis or Virginia Beach.

Today he was in the Washburn Art Museum. The museum had been funded courtesy of the descendants of General Cadwallader Colden Washburn, a man Noonan had never heard of. After serving as a general in the Union Army, Washburn had settled in the Minneapolis area where he opened a grist mill. It was wildly successful and became what was now known as General Mills. However, as Noonan read the Washburn historical plaque further, he saw the past reaching in the future. Washburn’s General Mills was making so much money there was inevitably going to be competition. In 1869, Charles Alfred Pillsbury moved to Minneapolis for two reasons. First, of course, was the abundance of grain to make flour. Additionally, the Falls of St. Anthony outside the growing city was a guaranteed source of power. To capture a large share of the flour market, Pillsbury advertised its flour as “Pillsbury’s Best” and competed – successfully to this day – with General Mills.

The Washburn Art Museum was clearly an attempt by the descendants of General Cadwallader Colden Washburn to have their namesake remembered. The corporate name of General Mills did not give a hint as its founder – other than ‘general’ which was generic and did specially link to ‘General’ Cadwallader Colden Washburn – so the descendants clearly felt a civic institution was necessary. But, as with all inherited wealth, the succeeding generations where not as well-heeled as those who created the wealth in the first place. So the Washburn Art Museum was a modest establishment in a three-story home in the disappearing maw of the advancing high rises of Minneapolis.

That being said, the Washburn Art Museum did have a small claim to fame. Washburn, the progenitor, was a modest art collector. In those days, he was buying old masters who were priced within his pecuniary reach. They were not top-of-the-line in either the Old or New World but they were reputable. Some of the artists were actually listed in college art history book albeit in footnotes.

Footnotes aside, it must be said the Washburn – so-called by the locals – had a modest but impressive collection of 17th and 18th Century paintings. Washburn, the General, had picked them up in Europe more as accoutrements to his personal Cabinet of Curiosities than because they had monetary value. The best of his Cabinet of Curiosities went to Minnesota museums while the paintings was passed down to his children, children’s children, children’s children’s children and assorted rapacious former in-laws in divorce settlements. The painting which remained in 1970 were deeded to the Washburn for public display.

Noonan stumbled on the Washburn by accident. Rather, he stumbled into the Washburn by accident. There were two reasons. First, it was in the downtown corridor and close enough to the convention site to be walkable to and through. Second, when he arrived there was a contingent of unmarked law enforcement vehicles along the side of the structure. Noonan flashed a badge and asked what was happening.

“Well,” replied a patrolwoman young enough to be Noonan’s granddaughter, “a rather odd robbery, sir.”

“Heinz,”

“Eh?”

“Heinz. I’m not ‘sir’ or ‘Captain Noonan’ unless I’m on a case. I could say I’m just here as an observer and information source if you need one.”

If this caught the woman by surprise she gave no indication. “Fine, Heinz. Since you are in law enforcement I can tell what we’ve got. Or what we haven’t got. Seems there was a break-in but it was into the workshop, not the museum itself.”

“You mean, workshop like where frames are repaired, identifying plaques are made and light fixtures are fixed.”

“Right. The workshop is not on the same security network as the regular museum. It has the conventional security surveillance equipment which, in this case, unfortunately, is as old as old man Washburn himself. But the door from the workshop into the museum itself is high tech. So the thieves got into the workshop with no problem. When they tried to the connecting museum door, the alarm went off.”

“So they scampered for the hills.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Did they get anything?”

“Odd you should ask that. Yes. Sort of.”

“I hate answers like that.”

“Sorry. The Washburn, er, Washburn Art Museum is slowly doing an upgrade. The work is progressing room by room so as not to disrupt the public viewing. Artwork is removed from a room and placed in adjacent rooms during the renovation process. Then, all the artwork in the adjacent room goes into the room which was just renovated. Room by room the renovation is continuing.”

“That doesn’t tell me what was stolen.”

“Primarily picture frames. During the renovation the frames of the paintings are removed and renovated.”

“In the workroom, right?”

“Correct. A lot of frames are missing. Stolen. Clearly the thieves wanted the frames to authenticate the masterpieces they expected to steal.”

“But they could not get through the door into the museum itself.”

“Correct.”

“But if the frames were off the paintings, were the paintings displayed without frames on the museum walls?”

“A few, yes. But for the rest generic frames were just put around the artwork. People do not come to an art museum to see frames. They want to see art. The frame is incidental. Unless you are an expert and then the frame is an exquisite fixture. Other than that, it’s just wood or plastic or metal.”

“So all the thieves got were the frames?”

“Yup. Just the frames.”

Just as the policewoman said ‘frames,’ a distant bell chimed in the deepest recesses of Noonan’s cerebral valleys. Someone stealing something of little value was very much like many of his oddball cases. Was there value in frames? If so, how much? If not, why steal the frames if you do have the associated artwork?

Noonan asked if he could speak with the curator of the Washburn Art Museum. He got a hem and haw from the patrolwoman who took his badge number along with his hotel name and room number. When he returned from another mind-numbing presentation on the forensic use of tree rings and DNA, he had a call waiting for him on his hotel room phone.

After Noonan identified himself, Clarissa Androfsky, Director of the Washburn Art Museum, quickly said “You’ve got quite a reputation, captain. Even the Commissioner of Homeland Security here in Minneapolis knows who you are. What are you doing here?”

“Well, first, unless there’s crime, I’m Heinz.”

“I can live with that. What are you doing here in Minneapolis?”

“I’m at a convention. I just happened to be by the Washburn Art Museum when the police were investigating the break-in. Just a professional interest.”

“Well, I can use all the help I can get. Fortunately, nothing was stolen. I mean, other than the frames. But the publicity will not be good for the Museum.”

Noonan pulled out a notebook. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t know much about picture frames. Can you fill me in?”

Androfsky laughed, “Well, depending on what you want to know, it’s either a short story or a long one.”

“Well, let’s start with what was stolen.”

“That’s easy. 18 picture frames but with no paintings. A dozen of them, 15 actually, were either metal or wood and modern in the sense the paintings were created over the past half century. The replacement value of those frames is about $100 apiece. Not that much. The other three were from much older paintings and are irreplaceable. We’ll get a modest amount of insurance for those frames but it’s those frames date the paintings, so to speak.”

“Sorry.” Noonan looked up from his notebook. “I didn’t catch that.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Androfsky laughed. “This gets very complicated very quickly. Let’s suppose we are talking about one of the painting which was not stolen: THE LOST FISHERMEN. It was painted by a Giovanni Vitello. We really don’t know who Giovanni Vitello was. I mean, he is not mentioned in any art books so he was probably a local artist who never made it into the big time in the 1700s.”

“But you have his painting, correct?”

“Maybe. We have a painting signed by a Giovanni Vitello. That’s it. General Washburn picked it during one of his trips to Europe in 1886 or 1887. We know he bought it in Venice because he mentions the painting in a letter. But that’s all we know. We also know the painting was created in the 1700s because the canvas beneath the paint is consistent with 18th Century canvas. But this does not really tell us much. A clever forger could have used an old canvas from the 1700s and used period paints to create THE LOST FISHERMEN. Then he would have sold the painting to General Washburn as an old masterpiece.”

“How could you tell it was a forgery?”

“I didn’t say it was. What I am trying to illustrate is the power of the frames. When the painting of THE LOST FISHERMEN was appraised, the canvas was consistent with the mid-1700s. So was the frame. Frames are easier to authenticate because you can date the wood. Not to the actual day the tree was cut, but within a few years of variance. There are all kinds of techniques and, over the years, appraisers have gotten better. For some of the more popular woods there are even tree ring data bases. All I am saying is dating a canvas can put it in a century but the tree rings of the frame can date the frame to a decade.”

“So what you are saying is in some cases the frames are more telling than the painting.”

“Yes. To an expert forger the stolen frames can be a boost to the credibility of the painting. But be careful how you use that information. In the case of the stolen frames – and I assume that is your line of thinking – you are assuming the frames were stolen by a forger and he – or she, there a lot of women forgers – would put an old frame on a forged painting on an old canvas and that would authenticate the work. For low end paintings, yes it would work. But the more expensive the painting, the harder the forger has to work. If the painting was supposedly by a master, authenticators will examine the frame. If the painting was from a Southern Renaissance artist and the wood frame is from wood grown in Germany, it would be a dead giveaway the painting was a forgery.”

Noonan kept writing in his notebook. Then he asked, “Were the frames stolen from you all the same in any way?”

“We have no idea. General Washburn bought what he bought. We accepted the paintings and frames together. The paintings were appraised as a unit. All of the paintings were by minor or unknown artists so there was no reason to spend the money to authenticate the frames.”

“So you don’t really know when the frames were made.”

“Correct. All three could have been from wood in the same forest or a continent apart. For us, it makes no difference. We display what General Washburn bought. Each of the paintings had a Provenance when they were bought and that ended the story, so to speak. Do you know what a Provenance is?”

“Actually, yes. It’s a list of who bought the painting, for how much and when.”

“Correct. We have the Provenances for the General Washburn paintings and the names and dates stretch back to the 1740s. We’re not worried about the value of the paintings because we are not trying to sell them. He bought the three frames, if you will, in about 1885 and they have been in the possession of the Washburn family until the Washburn Art Museum was established. Then we got the paintings and the frames.”

Noonan had one more questions before he closed his notebook. “So, unless the forger was incredibly clever, the three antique frames have no real value. Even if he – or she – put an antique frame on a forged painting on 300-year-old canvas, a Provenance still has to be produced.”

“Yes. And the more expensive the painting, the more scrutiny there will be of the Provenance. Libraries have oodles of books and documents on the masters so there is very little chance there is a painting that was missed. Sure, you can forge an old painting and say it was done by an unknown artist, but that’s not where the big bucks are.”

“How much to paintings by unknown artists go? I mean, from the 1700s if that’s the era of the frames that were stolen.”

“Depends. A few thousand at best. In most cases there is more money in the donation to an art museum then cash at auction. Remember, the auction house takes a quarter. So if you sell a painting at auction for $4,000, the auction house gets $1,000. But if you donate the painting to a museum; you get the full $4,000 as a tax write off.”

Noonan closed his notebook. “Well, you certainly have been informative, Dr. Androfsky. Do you mind if you call you back in the future . . . just in case I have any more questions?”

“Not a problem.”

* * *

One of the curses of Noonan’s occupation was lingering of suspicion. Even if everything was ‘going right,’ there was always the very real possibility ‘not all was right.’ Any ‘one little thing’ opened the door to ‘a very big problem.’ Crime, age and fat never sleep. All the way back to Sandersonville, Noonan was aware of the distant clang of the ‘something is not right here’ bell in the innermost recess of his mind. Something was amiss with the frame theft. He could not just write-off the frame theft as a crime interrupted.

It pays to have a devious mind so Noonan reversed the contemplative process. If he were a forger, he would need four things to make the big bucks. But only three of them were time-free. That is, only three of them were timeless: canvas, paint and paint remover. Suppose, just suppose, he thought, you could get an unknown painting dating from the 1700s. How hard was that? Suppose, just suppose, that was possible. Maybe you could buy one in Europe. Or even buy it at auction.

Either way, the forger could buy the painting at auction, strip off the paint with the same liquid used then and now to remove paint. It was the same substance wasn’t it? Or at least the great, great grandson of the paint remover. Art experts knew enough about the history of paint remover they could conjure up an historically accurate rendition. Once the canvas was clear, the forger would paint the now-clear canvas with the new image. Was the paint today the same as the paint then? Again, paint experts would know the composition of the paints then.

But the one thing that could not be ginned up was the frame. Assuming Androfsky was telling him the truth, the picture frames would fingerprint a specific time frame. So if you wanted to sell a very expensive painting, you had to have the right picture frame from the right time frame.

On paper, or, in his case, his mind, it was simple. But nothing in real life is simple. First, and foremost, the art world was small. Everyone knew everyone else. Even more important, everyone had read the same books, documents and diaries. So if you wanted to create an unknown da Vinci, for instance, there had to be a reference to an unknown da Vinci in known da Vinci’s documents or diaries. You could not just appear with a supposed da Vinci and have it accepted as authentic even if art appraisers could scientifically place it in da Vinci’s time period.

Second, even if you could come up with a perfectly reasonable da Vinci painting, there was still the problem of the Provenance. A painting that valuable could not suddenly appear from the ether. To be authentic, it had have been owned by someone before it hit the market. Then, it had to have been owned by someone before them, and before them, and before them all the way back to da Vinci. Gaps were possible, of course, like during the Second World War when the Nazi stole artwork from everyone and anyone, but someone had to have owned the painting before the Nazis seized it and after the work had been repatriated.

Further, with a da Vinci painting, those who had owned this unknown da Vinci had better have been known in the artworld and been reputable. It was unlikely that the purported da Vinci could have been ‘discovered’ in the possession of deceased, retired, hermit, former bartender in Queens. Even if he had been in the United States Army in Germany during the Second World War.

Noonan was still mulling over the possibilities the next day in his office at the Sandersonville Police Department. It was called his office but his wife referred to it as his cavern. He preferred grotto but Harriett, his assistant, called it her occupational sink hole and Noonan’s specific office space as the cavern of the unknown. Noonan’s supervisor, the Sandersonville Commissioner of Homeland Security, called the entire second floor his fiefdom – if he had known a word such as fiefdom existed – but used the terms “my people” or “you” in both the singular and plural.

One of the curses of a deviant mind is the obvious is often not that obvious. Harriett noticed Noonan was mulling over a crime-to-be-or-was and asked for details. Noonan gave her the overall scheme with the frames and stated he was struggling with the acquisition of an ancient canvas and a Provenance. Harriet gave him the obvious answer which he, Noonan, had neglected to consider. He had neglected to consider it as he was thinking like a criminal.

“What’s the problem?” Harriet had snapped over her shoulder as she was leaving Noonan’s office. “Every museum has, what, six or seven times as many things in their storage as they have on display. Why go out a buy an old master if you can just lift one out of the storage room. If it was really a poor painting, no one’s seen it in decades and no one is going to check on it for decades. I mean, how often do you inventory stuff in your attic?”

An excellent thought, Noonan concluded. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he muttered to himself.

“Because you’re a detective, not a housewife,” yelled the sharp-eared Harriett from the outer office.

This new bit of logic put Noonan on a different track. If the theft of the picture frames in Minneapolis was just an odd crime, maybe it was just a standalone crime. Just in case it was not, he jumped onto the computer and plowed through what he called the ‘law and order archive of crime.’ The problem, however, was not that he could pinpoint any one crime which fit what he was looking for. It was that every theft of every painting in America was listed. Thefts of picture frames were rare. He only found three others, all in big cities. Two of them he eliminated after phone calls to officers of the law in New York and Chicago who 1) did not believe he was actually calling about the theft of picture frames, 2) did not believe he had any real interest in painting frames, and 3) where the blazes was Sandersonville, North Carolina, anyway and was this a crank call? After convincing the ‘law enforcement professionals’ in New York and Chicago he was a serious and there really was a Sandersonville, North Carolina, he was told the frames in question had been modern, been pawned and been the reason the perpetrators were in the hoosegow.

The third one was interesting. It was quite similar to the theft at the Washburn Art Museum. It had also been at an art museum, though this one was substantially larger than the Washburn. But the theft had not been in the museum itself. It had been from a museum van. A dozen frames had been loaded into a van for transport to an historically oriented restoration  facility and someone had stolen the van. There had been two dozen frames onboard. When the van was recovered, 16 of the frames had been found with the van. They had been badly mangled but were in the van.

Four frames were never found.

All four frames were wood.

All four frames were from the 1700s.

Clang!

* * *

“Sandersonville? North Carolina? Where is Sandersonville?”

This was the reaction Noonan usually got from people in the West. Or, for that matter, East, Middle West and Far West.

“We’re on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Do you know where that is?”

“Not really.” The voice on the other end of the phone – in this case, a line not an electronic connection to Noonan’s iPhone, which Noonan referred to as the “tool of Satan” – was Mark Valen of the Valen Museum of Art in Phoenix.

Noonan decided to inform him. “Simply put, you start from the coast of North Carolina and then go 40 miles due east into the Atlantic Ocean. There are a string of islands out there called the Outer Banks. That’s where Sandersonville is located.”

“Really?”

“Really. Look at a map. And I really am a cop.”

“OK. What can I do for you?”

“Just a few quick questions. Did you ever find the wooden picture frames that were stolen three years ago in September?”

“That’s ancient history, what did you say your name was?”

“Noonan. Captain Noonan.”

“Captain, that’s ancient history. A long time ago. We got the van back but not the wood frames. Odd, you know. The other frames were ripped apart but the wood frames were gone.”

“Why odd?”

“The wood frames were the only things missing. The van was found a week later and had been used as a shelter by some homeless people. Everything in the van been damaged. Ripped apart, you know, like the homeless were looking for things to pawn or burn for warmth.”

“Warmth? In Phoenix?”

“Hey! It does get cold here. Cold for us.”

Noonan pressed him. “But the only things missing were the wooden frames?”

“Yeah, why do you ask?”

“Professional interest. I do not have a concept of how large the Valen Museum is from your web site but how much storage space do you have?”

“Scads. Why?”

“Well, put another way. How many painting do you have in storage you never display?”

“Oh, maybe a hundred or so. We only put the best out for the viewing public.”

“How often do you check on those painting which are never displayed.”

“Once every five years. Our insurance requires an inspection every five years. So, yeah, I’d say every five years.”

“When you inspect those paintings in storage, do you actually look at the paintings or do you just glance at them to make sure they are there?”

“Captain, it is captain, correct?”

“Correct. How close do you inspect the paintings you never display.”

“The actual inspection is done by interns or docents. I’d say there is more than a glance, if that is what you are implying. We have photographs of the paintings and there is a visual comparison. If the painting matches the photograph, it’s logged in as having been inspected. Why? Should I be worrying about something?”

“Not yet. I’ll get back with you.”

“Well, be sure to do that. Now I’m worried. But why should any of the storage paintings be missing. They don’t have a value. Even to a forger.”

That caught Noonan by surprise. “Not even to a forger? Why not?”

“No Provenance. Even if someone replaced one of the dogs, er, less than quality paintings from our storage area, the Provenance of the painting is still on file in our office. Both on paper and on the computer. Without a Provenance a painting is worthless.”

“Did the missing wooden picture frames have a Provenance?”

“No.”

“You might double check the paintings which had the frames removed to see if they are still there.”

“Good idea.”

“Oh, one last thing.” Noonan flipped to a new page in his notebook. “The interns and docents who do the checking. Any of them from Minnesota?”

“No way of knowing without checking. Interns come from local universities and the docents are retired. Any of them could have come from Minnesota. Why?”

“I’ll get back with you.”

* * *

Jacob Slotsky of the Sandersonville Art Gallery laughed when Noonan asked him about forgeries.

“You got one to sell? Market’s loaded with ‘em.”

“So, there are a lot of forgeries for sale. How do you know they are forgeries?”

“Heinz, I can call you Heinz, right?”

“Until there’s a crime, yeah. Are there a lot of forgeries on the market?”

“The market’s loaded with ‘em. But, since a crime might be involved, let me be more specific. Generally speaking there are three kinds of forgeries. First, there are the fake paintings like the Van Gogh or Matisse you see on hotel walls. We call those reproductions, not fakes. Then there are paintings by unknown artists or lesser known artists from any era. They may be old but not high quality. They may or may not have a Provenance. Do you know what a Provenance is?”

“Yes. How could a very old painting not have a Provenance? I mean, if it was painted in the 1700s, how could it have been around for so long with no Provenance?”

“It could have been lost or the painting had been stolen years earlier. Today the biggest bugaboo with Provenances is the Second World War. The Nazi stole every piece of art they could find. Maybe they saved the Provenance files, maybe they didn’t. If you buy an old painting with no Provenance you are taking a gamble. Someone from Poland or Austria or Italy might recognize the painting and want it back. If they have proof it was theirs, like a photo, they get it back.”

“So you cannot make the big bucks without the Provenance?”

“True. But don’t start to believe a Provenance is airtight. About 40% of the so-called masterpieces are forgeries by some definition. You can fake a Provenance easily. You just find an old one and dump the paperwork on the last two or three buyers. A Provenance is not a single sheet of paper; it’s a file. The older the painting, the thicker the file. You dump the paperwork on the last two or three buyers and substitute new ones. Dead one. With real addresses where they lived on the dates of the sale. You can get that information from old telephone books on the internet.  You substitute a few for-sure dead people as previous owners with sales’ dates while they were alive. You list yourself as the last owner and, presto!, you have a legitimate Provenance file.”

“But you’ve have to know what you are doing to pull something like that off?”

“Sure. But any serious art student could do it. All they’d have to do is work at a museum long enough to see how the system works. As long as they work for small art museum, they could pull it off.”

“I would have thought the opposite. In a small museum, everyone knows what is going on.”

Slotsky laughed. “You’re thinking like a cop, not a forger. The larger the museum, the more of the paperwork is on computer. Small museum, small staff, no money to digitize. So they only upload the most important documents. If that. Old paintings with no value, naaahhh. They’ll never come out of storage so there’s no reason to digitize the Provenance files. Those files just sit in some file cabinet.”

CLANG!

* * *

Harriett sauntered into the cavern of the unknown with a full-sized painting of van Gogh’s STARRY NIGHT.

“Guess what arrived in the post this morning. Do you think it’s real?”

“Absolutely,” Noonan said with a beatific smile, “The STARRY NIGHT in the Museum of Modern Art in New York is a forgery.”

“FAN-tastic. This is going to look FAN-tastic on my living room wall.”

“But it came here. It belongs with the office.”

“YOU,” she said as she shook a finger at Noonan, “cannot accept gratuities. Neither can the office. But I, an underling in this occupational sink hole can. So I am. And I am taking it home.”

“Did the painting come with a note?”

“With this masterpiece? Of course, what made you think it came anonymously?”

“Stranger things have happened. The note?”

Harriett pulled a small sheet of paper from behind the masterpiece. “It’s from someone in the Art Fraud Division of the FBI. It just says your lead panned out and six people have been charged with forgery.”

“Let me guess, a few of them are from Minneapolis.”

“YOU,” again Harriett shook an index finger at Noonan. “are psychic. A museum director, as a matter of fact.”

“In Minneapolis?”

“Doesn’t say. Just that one of the perpetrators,” and she snarled when she said the word perpetrators, “was a museum director. Two were docents. What’s a docent?”

“A retired person who volunteers at a museum.”

“Don’t retired people do retired things, like watch grandkids and talk of the good old days that never were?”

“Well, if they don’t have grandkids and don’t want to remember the good old days, they volunteer to work in museums.”

Harriet snipped back. “I don’t have grandkids and I sure don’t want to remember this occupational sink hole when I retire. Maybe I’ll become a docent.”

Noonan pointed to STARRY NIGHT. “Well, you’ve got a good start.”

Harriett started to leave when she turned and asked. “What exactly did you tell this, this,” she looked at the note. “Fraud Division.”

“Not much. Just a hunch. I told them someone associated with both the Washburn Art Museum and the Valen Museum in Phoenix was involved with some forgeries. I suspected old, valueless paintings in storage were being stolen. The forger would strip off the old paint and repaint a person or a scene. Then a wooden frame from the era the painting was supposed to have been painted framed the artwork. Then the forgery went on the market.”

“Why not keep the frame on the stolen artwork?  Wouldn’t that make the theft a lot easier?”

“That’s what made the crime so clever. The old valueless painting could have been done in 1850. Canvas didn’t change that much over the years so a 1750 painting would have same canvas as an 1850 painting. But wooden frames can be dated within a few decades. The trick to making forgeries which will pass inspection by the art appraisers is getting wood frames which are time specific for the time period the forger wanted.”

Harriet nodded. “So the perpetrators stole valueless paintings from, say, the 1850s, and the forgers painted what they wanted and then put on 1750s wooden picture frames.”

“Correct. As long as they did not say the painting was a da Vinci there would be no books, letters or diaries by the artist to double check the painting.”

“But wouldn’t the appraisers know something was fishy. Old painting do not just appear.”

“Yes, they have what are called Provenances. This is a file of who bought the painting, how much they paid, when they bought it. All the way back to the artist.”

“How’d the forgers fake that?”

“Simple. They had one of the gang work for a very small art museum. Small art museum do not have the money to put their Provenance files on computer so they are kept on paper. All the forger had to do was get the paper and add some names of dead people and then their own name as the latest owner. On paper in the file it would appear the small art museum sold the painting to someone who was now dead. As long as the art museum didn’t say otherwise, the sale had to be considered legitimate.”

“Dicey.”

“Or,” continued Noonan, “they could have the Provenance file start at the end of the Second World War.  The Nazi stole all kinds of art and destroyed a lot of Provenance files. But once the artwork appeared in a museum, the assumption would be the museum checked the Provenance before they acquired the painting.”

Harriett shook the sheet of paper in her hand. “So, with the director of an art museum in on the scam, it would work.”

“It almost did.”

“Well,” Harriet hefted the van Gogh. “Except for this one original which slipped through the cracks.” Then she leaned forward and whispered to Noonan, “I’m in the Monet now.”

“Well,” replied Noonan as he went back to his cold case crime scene photos, “make sure you have plenty of gasoline in your van.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you will need gas to make the van go.”