Page 42 - Unlikely Stories 1

Ladreque’s Last Case

From Fantastic Transactions, volume 1 (1990)

Arsène Ladreque shuffled convincingly across the drably- carpeted
gallery floor, exchanging greetings in Tagalog with another guard at
the entrance to Masterpieces of the Golden Treasury. The Tahoe Museum
of Art had closed hours earlier; only maintenance and security
personnel remained within to ply their trades throughout the night.
No one but Aston Goodly-Gronch, the museum’s director, knew
that one of Offshore Rent-a-Cop’s night-shift guards was in fact an
undercover investigator.
Knowing his reputation, a consortium of insurers had overcome
their skepticism and given Ladreque an opportunity to prove his
theory that thievery of some of Europe’s greatest artworks was being
accomplished on an unprecedented scale using unbelievable methods.
In turn, an informal association of museum trustees had grudgingly
acquiesced to Ladreque’s request for co-operation, if only to keep
him from taking his fantastic story to the tabloids. The
embarrassment and expense to the owners and insurers of the works
in question would be phenomenal, should the former turn out to be
victims of the disappearance of the latter.
But there was the rub. Nothing was actually missing, and no art
expert in the world could examine a piece on Ladreque’s list and
declare it anything other than its original self. The part-time kick-
boxing instructor and connoisseur of Balkan goat cheese stood alone,
insisting that a high-tech ring of art thieves was getting away with a
fortune in paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts. His explanations
were abstruse, technical, and circumstantial, a loosely knotted skein
of largely unacceptable evidence. If he could not produce anything
better, the case would be dropped. For Ladreque, it was a test of his
abilities, the crown of his career. His intuition had not failed before,
and this time it led him to the Schlagenkirch Altar, on loan to Tahoe
and insured for seven million pounds sterling. He walked past the
heavily-gilded miniature monument to Late Gothic genius, giving it

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