The Case of The Perplexed Painting

The Kitchen

Margie Hansen agreed to meet the three of us at my uncle's mansion. She managed to beat all three of us there, which made Genoa even more suspicious of her. Miss Hansen wasn't what Genoa or Cross were expecting, but they came to appreciate my uncle's taste in beautiful women.

Miss Margie Hansen was a twenty-three-year-old, six-foot-tall, one-hundred-ten-pound woman with curly blonde hair that didn't go past her ears.  Her uniform always consisted of black shoes with fat and thick heels on the end of them, a black mini-skirt that only went past her butt, and a white top that was so tight on her, anyone with a good pair of eyes could see her bra underneath.

What can I say? I had a crush on her, but considering the age gap between us, I knew it wouldn't work. Then again, I had her often tell my uncle that age was just a number. So, who knows?

The second she let us into the mansion, Genoa began his questioning. It was through his questions that I was able to learn more about Miss Hansen's background.

Margie Hansen had been working for my uncle for the past two years as his housekeeper. She never went to college. Instead, she became a stripper after having a kid at age eighteen. My uncle didn't know about the kid, but he did know about her being a stripper. Apparently, he hired her to be his housekeeper after he saw her at the club he would frequently go to one night. It was at that moment I learned that my uncle wasn't as immaculate as I always thought him to be. I guess we all have a dark side.

After hearing about these facts about what my uncle did in his private life, Genoa asked me to leave the room as he felt some of the questions he was about to ask weren't appropriate for me to hear.

"Why not?" I asked. "I'm almost eighteen."

Miss Cross put her hands on my shoulders and said, "Come on honey, let's get something to eat."

We walked into the kitchen that was the size of two living rooms in a normal-sized home. Miss Cross opened the double door fridge that was right next to the freezer. She thought about cooking something but changed her mind. My guess is it was because she was intimidated by the stove with its eighteen different sized burners. So, she pulled out some meat and some cheese and we started eating that on the breakfast bar. I sat in one of the eight chairs surrounding the thing. She chose to stand.

"You really did love your uncle, didn't you?" She asked me.

I told her all about how he was my hero and how I always wanted to be like him when I grew up, but now that I was starting to learn about his double life and how many problems his money had caused him, I wasn't so sure.

She took a bite of a half-dollar sized piece of salami she had pulled out of the wrapper and then asked me, "Tell you what, why don't you take me to the room where this legendary painting is? I would love to see it.

"Okay," I said with a sigh. I was starting to feel more depressed about this whole thing, but I got a kick of adrenaline in me the second we got into the room where the painting was supposed to be.