Free Portrait in Crime by Carolyn Keene Page A

home?” Nancy called. Getting no answer, the girls fanned out. “Look carefully,” Nancy warned. “We don’t want to disturb anything. Just look for any clue to the painting.”
    Nancy went upstairs and started with Megan’sroom. Quickly she sifted through the items lying around on the girl’s dresser and opened the drawers. Then she went to the closet.
    In the back of the closet was a pile of clothes. Sticking out from under all of them, Nancy could see the corner of a gray canvas drop cloth.
    â€œBess, George!” she cried in excitement. “Come quick!” Nancy pointed to the pile. “Look,” she said. She pulled the clothes away to expose the drop cloth. It was wrapped around something rectangular and flat. “Help me get it out.”
    George and Nancy dragged the object out of the closet.
    Nancy pulled away the canvas and exposed a stunning portrait of a red-haired girl.
    It was the Vanity!

Chapter

Nine
    I T’S BEAUTIFUL !” Bess gasped.
    The painting certainly was magnificent, Nancy thought. The photograph Bob Tercero had shown her had been clear, but it had failed to capture the luminous quality of the girl’s skin, the deep, fiery color of her hair, or the way the white nightgown she wore seemed to shimmer.
    The subject looked as though she had been frozen in the act of fixing her hair. One hand was raised over her head, and in it there was a long, thin silver object. Nancy wasn’t sure what it was, but she was sure of one thing: The man who had painted this picture was a great artist.
    â€œBut what’s it doing here?” Bess asked after a moment.
    â€œEspecially since Megan told me there was no Vanity painting,” Nancy added. “But I think we’re about to find out. I just heard the door.”
    â€œHello?” Megan’s voice called nervously.
    â€œWe’re here,” George answered, appearing in the bedroom doorway. “I think you’d better come up.”
    â€œWho are you?” Megan asked angrily, taking the stairs two at a time. “And just what do you think you’re doing in my . . .” Her voice died away as she saw Nancy and the painting. Crossing the room, she sank down onto her bed, facing the three girls.
    â€œYou said there was no painting,” Nancy said quietly.
    Megan couldn’t meet Nancy’s eyes. “You broke into my house,” she accused Nancy weakly. “I thought we were friends.”
    â€œI thought you were being honest with me,” Nancy replied. “But you lied about the Vanity.”
    â€œI couldn’t bear to part with it,” Megan said. “It was Nicholas’s favorite. Toward the end, he spent a lot of time just staring at it. I think he was very proud.”
    â€œBut the model is one of his old girlfriends,” Bess said, puzzled. “Why would you want a painting of her?”
    Megan’s brown eyes flashed. “She wasn’t a girlfriend. Just someone he knew slightly.”
    Nancy persisted. “It was his favorite? Why did he single the Vanity out as his favorite of all of Christopher’s paintings?”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” Megan asked. “This isn’t Christopher’s painting. Nicholas painted this.”
    Nancy looked at the painting again, astonished. No one had ever mentioned Nicholas could paint. And certainly not like this!
    â€œOf course he could paint,” Megan said when Nancy voiced her surprise. “He was very messy, he got it all over his clothes and in his hair—”
    â€œHave you ever seen anything he painted?” Nancy interrupted.
    â€œI just told you—he painted this!”
    â€œBob Tercero said Christopher sold the Vanity to the gallery,” George said.
    â€œThat’s a lie,” Megan declared. “It was never his to sell. Nicholas asked me to take care of it in case anything happened to him, and that’s what