Listening to Professor Kitteredge, Gus was transported back to his school days. Everything he said was so fascinating that Gus would have been content simply to listen to him for days.

“Plus you’ve got a nifty red curtain to pull away and reveal the body,” Shawn said. “Which maybe somebody should do.”

“Thank you, Shawn,” Lassiter said. “If it hadn’t been for you, I might have completely forgotten to do my job.” He walked over to the wall and pulled the curtain back a few inches, revealing a dangling push-button control like the ones for garage openers.

Gus noticed that Kitteredge was staring intently at the curtain. “You might want to look away,” Gus said. “This kind of thing can be pretty shocking if you’re not used to it.”

“I couldn’t look away if a thousand bodies lay on that floor,” Kitteredge said. “I’ve waited so long for this moment.”

“Umm, which moment would that be?” Gus said.

“Do you have any idea what’s behind that curtain?” Kitteredge said. “You should, so you understand what you’re looking at. The Defence of Guinevere isn’t just a painting, Gus. It’s not even just a masterpiece. It’s a work of art that has gone unseen for a century and a half. But it’s even more than that.”

“Is it a floor wax, too?” Shawn said.

“This was the last picture Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted before his untimely death at age fifty-four on April 9, 1882,” Kitteredge said, ignoring the interruption as only a man who’d spent decades teaching Intro to Art History to basketball players hoping for an easy grade could do. “For many years, it existed only as a rumor. It was never publicly exhibited anywhere, and the only references to it were brief mentions in other artists’ journals. Somehow it fell into the hands of a private collector-”