Page 43 - 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,

42