Portrait in Crime by Carolyn Keene

Author:Carolyn Keene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse

Chapter

Nine

IT’S BEAUTIFUL!” Bess gasped.

The painting certainly was magnificent, Nancy thought. The photograph Bob Tercero had shown her had been clear, but it had failed to capture the luminous quality of the girl’s skin, the deep, fiery color of her hair, or the way the white nightgown she wore seemed to shimmer.

The subject looked as though she had been frozen in the act of fixing her hair. One hand was raised over her head, and in it there was a long, thin silver object. Nancy wasn’t sure what it was, but she was sure of one thing: The man who had painted this picture was a great artist.

“But what’s it doing here?” Bess asked after a moment.

“Especially since Megan told me there was no Vanity painting,” Nancy added. “But I think we’re about to find out. I just heard the door.”

“Hello?” Megan’s voice called nervously.

“We’re here,” George answered, appearing in the bedroom doorway. “I think you’d better come up.”

“Who are you?” Megan asked angrily, taking the stairs two at a time. “And just what do you think you’re doing in my . . .” Her voice died away as she saw Nancy and the painting. Crossing the room, she sank down onto her bed, facing the three girls.

“You said there was no painting,” Nancy said quietly.

Megan couldn’t meet Nancy’s eyes. “You broke into my house,” she accused Nancy weakly. “I thought we were friends.”

“I thought you were being honest with me,” Nancy replied. “But you lied about the Vanity.”

“I couldn’t bear to part with it,” Megan said. “It was Nicholas’s favorite. Toward the end, he spent a lot of time just staring at it. I think he was very proud.”

“But the model is one of his old girlfriends,” Bess said, puzzled. “Why would you want a painting of her?”

Megan’s brown eyes flashed. “She wasn’t a girlfriend. Just someone he knew slightly.”

Nancy persisted. “It was his favorite? Why did he single the Vanity out as his favorite of all of Christopher’s paintings?”

“What are you talking about?” Megan asked. “This isn’t Christopher’s painting. Nicholas painted this.”

Nancy looked at the painting again, astonished. No one had ever mentioned Nicholas could paint. And certainly not like this!

“Of course he could paint,” Megan said when Nancy voiced her surprise. “He was very messy, he got it all over his clothes and in his hair—”

“Have you ever seen anything he painted?” Nancy interrupted.

“I just told you—he painted this!”

“Bob Tercero said Christopher sold the Vanity to the gallery,” George said.

“That’s a lie,” Megan declared. “It was never his to sell. Nicholas asked me to take care of it in case anything happened to him, and that’s what I’m doing.”

“If anything happened to him?” Nancy repeated. “Didn’t that seem odd to you?”

“He always said things like that,” Megan said.

Nancy was torn. She didn’t know whether to trust Megan, but she was sure she didn’t trust Bob Tercero. All she had was his word that the Vanity belonged to the gallery.

“I’m going to leave the painting with you, Megan,” Nancy said finally.

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