New Gabe Bergeron Mystery!

 

 Gabe & Cory's Momentous Misadventure

 

He called Aunt Flo to give her the news. It was necessary to stress the positives about this, because Aunt Flo didn't like it when he went sleuthing.

She was his great-aunt Florence Barnes and had taken him in when she'd returned from thirty years in Cuba. He had lived with her and her comrade, Ezmeralda Gutierrez, from the age of thirteen until he had gone off to college.

“Aunt Flo?”

“Yes, Gabriel. How are you?”

“Splendid! And not just because I finally got to see Cory's office, tour the Hoover Building, and meet Micah 'Fab' Ott and Neema Clemens, who also share the office.”

 

Aunt Flo giggle-cackled. “What else, Dear?”

“It has finally happened.”

“I need more, Gabriel.”

“Right. Well, I've been briefed by two FBI agents about a FBI case. The veil has been torn asunder, and I have been made privy to FBI secrets.”

“The two agents being Cory and Matt.”

“Yes, Aunt Flo. About a case that they haven't been able to solve in a decade. Not that they'd been working on it all that time. In fact, Cory and Matt have never worked on it at all.”

Aunt Flo said, “So isn't this what you wanted?”

“Right. It is. And I'm going to do my very best.”

“Of course you are, Dear. And you'll be with Cory and won't go off on your own?”

“I will be glued to his side. So a wealthy man named Petrou had some French paintings which he loaned to a museum.”

And he told Aunt Flo what he knew about the case. He looked at his phone. He hadn't told her that he thought Cory had misgivings about him being on the case. And that he had misgivings too. Scads of them.

He just had to be careful about not messing up their efforts. Right. That was all he had to do. Keep his head down and do as he was told. He certainly couldn't back out now after asking Cory about helping with one of his cases so many times; critical people might say that he had pestered Cory or even nagged him.

This wasn't true of course. Still.

This was just an experiment. If it didn't work out, then no harm done, and he'd never do it again. The case hadn't been solved in ten years after all. Maybe they'd find the paintings this time, maybe they wouldn't.