"Art of Trouble" 10

Thomas picked up one of her fries and munched on it thoughtfully as Jade scrolled through the photos of the previous paintings he'd acquired at auctions, and had already passed over to the buyer.

“I see that bit of red we’d looked at before in this painting but it's clearer on this new phone. Now I can see it appears to be a number. It looks like the number 5, I think, but have a look and tell me what you see." Jade slid the phone to Thomas.

He nodded and leaned in closer to her phone's screen, “It’s not as good as having the real painting in front of us but I agree, it does look like the number 5.”

“Then we can assume the third painting in the series has a number 5 as a clue.”

“Or it’s just a number on the tractor and nothing more,” Thomas offered his unconvinced opinion of a treasure.

Jade smirked at him, “Why would a tractor have a random 5 on the cab? “

“Painter’s prerogative?” he shrugged.

“No, it’s a clue. Now we need to find the clues in the other paintings to connect it with.”

“Or it's just a random number."

“Maybe, or maybe it will be part of an address…an address to a treasure,” she wiggled her eyebrows and gave him a beaming smile.

Thomas chuckled enjoying this happier side of Jade, “I don’t know about a treasure but I'll admit these paintings certainly have the interest of some high paying clients."

"Exactly, and why would that be? They aren't masterpieces," she grimaced.

"You're right. I guess there could be something to this idea of a treasure. Scroll to the next painting, let’s see if we can connect this number to any kind of message.”

“You mean any kind of treasure map?”

“Sure,” he chuckled again as Jade scrolled over to the next picture.

It was another dreary canvas, this one depicted a rainstorm over a drab, rundown grey and black painted farmhouse.

“This artist must have something against color. Are all his paintings this dreary?” Jade asked while zooming in, looking for an oddity.

“I'd say yes, in regards to everyone I’ve purchased, but I haven’t seen the other seventeen.”

“Oh, look...I think I found another number, which painting is this one in the series?” she asked him moving the phone over to him and pointing out a deep green dot she’d just zoomed in on. 

“It’s the second in the series,” he said looking down at the screen, “Is that a green two above that broken window?”

“I believe it is. So painting three had a five and now painting number two has a two,” she mused as she wrote the discovery down on a napkin, “Did you by any chance purchase painting number one, or four?”

“I did purchase both,” he scrolled through the photos and brought up the first painting in the series,” Here’s number one.”

Jade sighed and shook her head, it could have been a happy painting of a snowy day but instead it was a blizzard of white over tips of frozen trees in what looked to be a tree farm. The only happy thing she saw in it was a tiny snowman in the lower left corner but it was so tiny, you only knew it was a snowman by the curve of the paint stroke and a tiny, very tiny, orange carrot and two dark blots of black paint. Those had to be the nose and coal eyes. “I’m getting snow blind looking at this one,” she said sliding the phone to Thomas, “You’ll have to look for the clue, my eyes have given up.”

Thomas finished the French fry in his hand and pulled the phone closer.

Jade was right. It was a difficult painting to scan with your eyes. Everything was a blur in snow white. The sky was a thunderous grey-white, the slashing hail a darker grey-white, the blanket of snow on the ground covering everything a dirty-white. Only the tips of the glistening, icy tree tops had a hint of green where they were exposed. The dots of black and orange that made up the snowman’s eyes and carrot were the only other colors. It was a harsh landscape to look at as a whole so Thomas zoomed in on the treetops first but nothing unusual showed up and besides, the color green had already been used in painting number two. He changed direction and zoomed in on the snowman’s face. Sure enough, that orange carrot was shaped it was a pound sign, or what some called a hash tag.

“I’ve got another clue,” he said tapping on the area of the carrot.

“Really? What is it?”

“It’s a sign.”

“Okay,” Jade nodded and looked at the carott then wrote the new clue on her napkin, “So we have #25, so far.”

“I suppose the # could be the beginning of an address." Jade’s eyes lit up with the idea of a treasure hunt, “If we can find all the clues, we’ll have an arrow to that treasure.”

“And maybe its not a treasure- Jade, we don’t know if these clues are just fodder for a fairytale to up the interest in his paintings.”

“You are an adventure killer; come on…wouldn’t it be something if there truly was a treasure map hidden in these mediocre paintings?” Jade’s eye’s shone with the thrill of it and for the first time in a long while, she wasn’t worrying about the trouble that would dog her if she did seek this treasure.

“Okay, supposing these are real clues. I have painting four but not five through eight or twelve. I have nine, ten and eleven and number thirteen is in my back pack. We  don’t have fourteen through twenty five, so we aren’t going to have all the clues.”

“But you have eight paintings we can start with.”

He smiled at her enthusiasm, “I do, seven on the phone and one in my back pack.”

“Then show me number four.”

Thomas scrolled to the painting she requested and they both leaned in to the screen and found a hidden letter P.

As they chewed on cold French fries they gathered the clues all in the seven paintings on the phone. The combined clues read like this: # 25 P D D E. That was in the order of the numbered paintings they'd viewed on her phone, but too many were still missing to make sense of the clues.

“Do you think it is going to be a password, but to what?” Jade frowned at the cryptic clues.

Thomas’s mind focused on that first number, twenty-five, it was the number of the illusive last painting. Would the clues lead them to that painting? Was that the treasure, finding it?

“It isn’t coherent enough becasue we don’t have all the paintings,” he reminded her.

“No we don’t, but we do have one more,” Jade whispered, keeping their conversation private, as more people had entered the bar car.

“We do, but I don’t think it’s wise to look at it here.” He’d noticed the change in privacy in the bar car too.

Jade agreed and then she felt a stirring of trouble around her. She peeked over her shoulder and noticed two burly men had just walked into the bar car. They seemed to take an interest in the occupants at each table.

“Uh Thomas, I think we need to move out of here,” she nodded in the direction of the men.

Thomas looked over his shoulder and saw the men walking slowly, taking an interest in each person they glanced at.

“You’re right but I’m not sure how to get away without them seeing us.”

Jade bit her lip trying to come up with something but it was Thomas who came up with the plan.

“I think I can distract them,” he whispered as he wrapped a hundred dollar bill around a salt shaker and secured it with a slathering of honey he’d gotten from a packet on the table. He lowered his hand to the ground and rolled the shaker with force towards the back of the car.

Several people noticed the shaker rolling along because of the denomination of the bill rolling along with it and they stood up, immediately blocking the way for the two men to walk but the men had also noted the flight of the money and had became distracted by it.

Thomas secured his backpack over his shoulder and grabbed Jade’s hand, walking her up to the train door at the front of the bar car while the men were distracted.

The door led into the first sleeper car.

“Oh no, I’ve been here before,” Jade groaned, “Are we train jumping again?”

Thomas pulled her through the next three sleeper cars and into the baggage car before he answered. “I’m hoping we can hide out in here until the next stop.”

“And then?”

He gave her a half smile, “And then we jump.”