Kristy Gabres -part 1- Link

She hung up, walked over, and picked it up. Inside was a single photograph: a blurry shot of a painting hidden inside a shipping container, half-covered by a tarp. And taped to the back of the photo was a handwritten note in shaky script:

Kristy Gabres looked at her father's photograph on the shelf. "You always said trouble finds the curious," she whispered. Then she grabbed her jacket, her old Nikon, and a lockpicking kit she hadn't touched since the Herald fired her. Kristy Gabres -Part 1-

Kristy leaned against the windowsill. She knew the piece. Seventeenth-century Flemish, a grotesque masterpiece of a king eating a feast he couldn't see, surrounded by laughing courtiers. It had vanished from a private vault in Brussels in 1999 and resurfaced once—on the black market, then gone again. She hung up, walked over, and picked it up

"That painting is a ghost," she said. "Why me?" "You always said trouble finds the curious," she whispered

She almost ignored it. Almost.

"They don't want the painting. They want what's painted underneath. The real treasure is the lie. - M.T."

"Miss Gabres. My name is Julian Voss." The voice was smooth, unhurried, with the faintest European rasp. "I'm a curator at the DePaul Collection. I believe you're the person who exposed Councilman Hartley's slush fund."