CHAPTER 40
Duke was surprised. "Whoa! Do you mean it's, like, the real McCoy?"
I shook my head. "Not possible."
Clarence Jr. cleared his throat politely. "I'm sorry if I gave you false hope, but this is definitely not a Chagall and it's not a fake either. It's a forgery, and that's an important distinction. Fakes are works by artists that are passed off as works by a more important artist. They can also be copies of a work from the same time period, which makes them difficult to identify. In the past, it was normal for the owner of a fine painting to commission an artist to make copies of a piece of art for them. But forgeries are what we call art crime—bogus works by modern-day artists made to look like the real thing." He held the painting at arm's length to take it all in. "It's such
