 Thugs break into the heavily-guarded art room of a multimillionaire and steal a Gaugain painting worth a fortune. When Five-O comes to investigate, the millionaire, his secretary and his grandson (who are the only inhabitants of the mansion) are surprisingly uncooperative. It turns out that the old man had been planning to sell the painting and had hired two art appraisers to market it. Soon, the group receives a ransom demand. The grandson figures out a way to pay the ransom despite intense Five-O surveillance -- with grandfather, grandson and secretary all leaving to "drop off" the $250,000, leading Five-O members on a wild goose chase, and arriving at the Iolani Palace at the exact same moment. The art appraiser, who wasn t under surveillance, paid the money and got the painting back himself. This bit of mass nose-thumbing really doesn t go over well with McGarrett, who suspects the grandson of stealing the painting to get the ransom money for his own lavish lifestyle. All is not what it seems, however. When the appraisers look over the returned painting and pronounce it genuine, the grandson promptly says it s a fake. How does he know? In a roughhousing bout with a buddy, he fell onto the real painting and damaged it. That means the real painting was stolen long before; the burglary was an elaborate scheme to steal a forgery. The grandson figures out immediately who was behind the theft of the painting (and the ransom money, presumably split among the thieves and their hired burglars), but is murdered before he can tell Five-O. McGarrett knows the appraisers did the dirty work, but has no way of charging them unless somehow he can find the real painting in their hands.