“Okay, let’s see if I’ve got this right,” Maura said. “You think this little painting you saw in New Jersey might be connected to a bigger one by the same important artist, and that one might be in Ireland, if it exists at all. In fact, you think it’s somewhere near here, which is why you’re here. Why do you care?” Maura asked. “Because finding a long-lost painting by a master would be a really big deal, and because frankly, my job’s on the line. You know what the economy’s like. I’ve been at the museum for eight years now, ever since I got my master’s degree, but once the grant funding for this exhibit runs out, I’m out of a job. And believe me, there aren’t a whole lot of jobs for art historians specializing in seventeenth-century European paintings these days. So I figured if I could find the original painting and talk the owners into lending it to the museum for the show, and if I publicized it right, the museum would have to keep me on.
