Lost Art Assignment Read Online Free

one your boy was going to take, we’d have been stuck.”
    â€œYou know, it’s funny,” Cartellone said, although his face said just the opposite. “I started collecting art in thelate seventies, when the first restaurant started making money. Most of these were brand new when I bought them. Not worth much, but I saw something in this stuff, you know? No philosophy, no point of view. You just get the picture clear and sharp so you can make up your own mind.” He paused a moment to sip from his scotch.
    â€œThen Florence died giving me Tommy. Ain’t it funny how everything can be going great in your life and one thing can make it all empty? After that all I had was that boy, and these paintings. He grew. The business grew. This collection grew, and grew in value.”
    â€œYou raised him alone, right?” Morgan asked. “I mean, you did it all by yourself. And ran a string of Italian restaurants. And put him through school. And he pays you back by taking what you love the most.” Felicity shot him a devastating look, but Cartellone’s face didn’t change.
    â€œIt would seem that I’ve lost him too, Mister Stark. Maybe even my fault, I don’t know. But I’ve lost him. I can’t stand another loss.” Cartellone’s watery eyes suddenly pinned Felicity in place. “Can you get my two missing paintings back?” He pointed to the fakes, now on the floor, leaning against the wall. A boy riding a bicycle. A girl walking on a city street. Felicity opened her mouth to speak, but he anticipated her. “I know, I know. It’ll cost me, right? Well, I don’t care, and I don’t care how much. I want what’s mine. Can you make the set whole?”
    â€œWe can’t promise to find those things,” Morgan said, hands in pockets.
    â€œBut you’ll get our very best effort, you will,” Felicity added. “Don’t you be worrying, okay? We’ll give you a report in a couple of weeks.”
    Rolling down Cartellone’s lengthy driveway, Felicityturned to stare for a moment at the extensive manor house the restaurateur had purchased from some actor who could no longer afford its upkeep. Cheap houses didn’t exist in Bel Air, but even in such elite company, this particular rambling Spanish structure stood out.
    â€œStarted out in New York, like me,” Morgan commented. “Came up from nothing in the world’s toughest city. Sure would hate to disappoint him.”
    â€œMe too,” Felicity said. She steered her Corvette ZR-1 past The San Diego Freeway, preferring to take The Pacific Coast Highway down along the ocean to their offices in Manhattan Beach. “I’m glad I’ve got company this week. Raoul might have an idea how we can track those paintings. Maybe, if we can locate them, I can get in and steal them back.”
    â€œMind if I come up to your apartment for a couple minutes?” Morgan asked. “I don’t want to intrude, but I’m in no mood to hang out in the office. That kid, stealing from his own father like that. He doesn’t know what it’s like to not have a father.”
    â€œOr to see him killed in front of you,” Felicity added. “I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be raised in this splendor. Nothing like rural Ireland.”
    Felicity punched in her cipher lock’s combination and her penthouse’s door swung open. The aroma of blackened butter hooked her petite nose. She stepped in, her feet sinking into her deep, rose-colored carpet. Morgan dropped into his favorite overstuffed chair while Felicity skipped across her sparsely furnished sunken living room, then up the three steps to her small galley kitchen.
    The man in front of her stove was handsome in a classical way, with a long aquiline nose and thin expressivelips. He was tall and quite thin, his brown hair carefully styled, his suit the pinnacle of fashion, even with an