Céline and Gil in Monte Carlo

“WOW. RICK’S GOT A LOT of stuff stashed away in here,” I whispered to Gil, feeling worried.

“But all we’re looking for is a blue cupboard, right?” Gil replied as we searched for Grandma’s furniture that he’d sent here from the mas. I followed him past Rick’s enormous, mysterious crates marked Africa Safari and Ming, China and Grand Hotel auction, Sweden. There were also polo mallets and antique horse saddles, and a hand-carved ivory chess set sealed in a glass box.

“Here!” Gil said triumphantly, pointing to a more modest cluster of brightly painted, Provençal furniture: a red rocking chair, a yellow chest of drawers, a blue-and-white dining table surrounded by a set of six white dining chairs with bright blue tufted cushions.

“This is definitely the stuff that came from the mas when I bought it,” he said positively. “Rick and I just threw ’em into the van and he carted it off here. I remember this box of pots and pans.”

I wandered behind the yellow chest of drawers. “Look!” I exclaimed, having landed face-to-face with the blue cupboard. “It’s identical to the one in the photo of Grandma,” I said, getting excited now.

“Okay, great. Check it out. Better hurry,” Gil warned.

I studied the cupboard carefully. I knocked on its door with the funny wooden knob before I opened it up. Then I checked out the interior with its four shelves, and searched for hidden drawers or compartments. I tapped its walls to see if a painting could have been sealed up in there, or sequestered in a false bottom. Nothing. No sign even that it had ever belonged to Grandmother Ondine. It was just a nice, country-style oak cupboard painted a bright blue.

“It’s empty,” Gil said, feeling it necessary to state the obvious. “You sure it isn’t in some other piece of furniture?”

I was sure of nothing now, except that if I could ever get my hands on Madame Sylvie again I’d cheerfully wring her neck for giving me false hope with this fool’s errand.

“I guess we’d better check them all,” I said, feeling gloomy now.

Gil obligingly helped me ransack the other furnishings that had been trucked over here from the mas. We had to work quickly, but it was soon obvious that there was absolutely no Picasso hidden in their midst. I dusted off my hands, unable to look Gil in the eye after having completely misled him with false hopes. But he was busy sorting through boxes of copper pots and pans and other cookware that he’d gotten with the mas. He now put all the things he thought he could use in one box.

“At least we’re not leaving here totally empty-handed,” he said wryly.

We retraced our steps, yet when we reached the door of the vault, I noticed for the first time that it didn’t have a handle on the inside.

“How do we get out of this cracker box?” I asked. But as I moved closer to the door, its automatic sensors responded, and it obligingly, eerily slid open. We glided down the carpeted hallway just like all the other visitors, never uttering a word even when we rode down in the freight elevator to the lobby. I held my breath as the guard stopped Gil, but the box from the mas was bar-coded under his name, so Gil signed out his pots and pans and we sailed on. He hoisted the box into the van and climbed into the driver’s seat, looking singularly unimpressed by this whole episode.

“Go ahead and say it—you think I’m a crazy fool,” I said morosely.

“No, you’re just desperate to help your mum,” Gil said resignedly, as if now, out in the stark reality of daylight, he was adjusting his expectations. “Let’s face it—maybe your Gran cooked for Picasso, but it just doesn’t look like she ever got one of his paintings.”

“I absolutely believe she had it,” I insisted. “I still feel that she did.”

“Well, then how come you can’t feel wherever the hell it is?” Gil asked a bit testily. I thought of Madame Sylvie again, and decided that Gil was right; relying on intuition at this point seemed just plain delusional.

For the rest of the trip home he remained moodily silent, staring straight ahead as he drove, lost in his own thoughts and no doubt returning to the stark fact that he was going to have to swallow Rick’s deal or surrender his restaurant to the loan shark.

When we entered the mas we found Maurice looking frantic, telling Gil he had a ton of messages. I slipped upstairs to my room and threw my handbag on the chair.

“Well, Grandma,” I said aloud, “looks like my goose is cooked.”

I knew I should stop talking to my dead grandmother. And I knew I should stop obsessing about that Picasso. And yet…and yet…

“Damn it, I know that was Mom’s striped pitcher in the still life,” I muttered. “I know that was Grandma’s long curly hair in those other two paintings. And I know she cooked those fabulous meals for him. So why would she bother to tell Mom that she owned a Picasso if she’d already sold it or given it away or lost it? Come on, Grandma. Where did you put it?”

And then my mind landed on a terrible thought; one that had been lurking in the shadows all along, but which I had resolutely pushed away until now.

Dad had been staying at Grandma Ondine’s house when she died, I realized with a chill. What if it was Dad who found the painting, after all?