The Mistaken Masterpiece Page 13

  “What? I never taught her that. I don’t know much about dog training.”

  “Well, somebody taught her. She scared me half to death. I said the word ‘dead’ and she dropped like a shot.”

  “You’re kidding. My Tillie?”

  “Honest. And she’s really good at it. It looks like she has rigor mortis—her legs stick straight out and her tongue hangs to one side. Once I realized she wasn’t actually dead, I cracked up.”

  “Son of a gun. I had no idea. Somebody else taught her, because the only real trick I’ve ever been able to teach her is ‘jump.’ When you say that word, she jumps straight up in the air, like she’s on springs. And that wasn’t hard to teach; she did it every time I got ready to put her leash on. All I had to do was keep saying ‘jump.’ Go on, try it.”

  “Hey, Tillie! Jump!”

  Tillie tilts her head questioningly at me and wags her tail, but all four feet remain glued to the floor.

  “Jump!”

  More tail wagging, but still no defying of gravity.

  “Well?”

  “Nope. Nothing. She’s staring at me like I’m crazy.”

  “Huh. Maybe she only does it for me. Well, look, Sophie, I just called to tell you how much I appreciate all this—I know you didn’t expect to have her for this long. I promise I will make it up to you.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “She just helped me solve a little problem, and even my mom is starting to love her.”

  “Cool. Give me a shout if you need anything. Ciao!”

  And just like that—poof!—he’s gone.

  Oh, great—now my dreams are getting complicated

  I’m on the back of a scooter, arms wrapped around Raf’s waist, flying down the Champs-Elysées in Paris. All around us, taxis are honking and people are waving and shouting at me like I’m some kind of celebrity. I smile and wave back, my hair streaming behind me like the tail on a kite. There’s a sharp right-hand turn just ahead, so I squeeze Raf tighter as he revs the engine even faster.

  “Hold on,” he says, leaning into the corner. “Just a little bit farther.”

  A few seconds later, he parks the scooter in front of a café. “This is the place,” he says, turning around to face me.

  At the exact moment I realize that my arms have been wrapped around Nate Etan and not Raf, Mom wakes me up.

  “Sophie! Time to take Tillie out.”

  Completely disoriented, I instinctively reach out to stop myself from falling off the scooter. I sit up on my bed—still fully dressed, with Father Julian’s pictures still strewn all around me, and Tillie curled up with her head on my pillow.

  “Wha—what time is it?”

  “A little after nine.”

  I panic, leaping to my feet so fast that I see stars. “Nine! Why did you let me sleep so long? I’m late for school.”

  Mom laughs. “Nine at night, you goose. Come on, I’ll go with you. I could use the fresh air.” She glances at the pictures on my quilt. “What were you doing in here, anyway? I thought you were studying.”

  “I was, kind of. We’re doing a special project for Father Julian—you remember him, right? And having a really, um, strange dream.”

  “Oh yeah? Anything you’d like to share with your dear old mom?”

  “Uh, no. Definitely not.”

  When we come back from our walk, I get ready for bed, but after my two-hour nap, I’m wide awake. I scroll through all my missed text messages; in addition to the fifteen from Margaret, Becca, and Leigh Ann, sent while I was unconscious, there are three from Raf. Boy, do I feel guilty. Here he is, thinking about me, asking what I want to do next weekend, and what am I doing? Dreaming about another guy. Oy. Just what was Nate Etan doing in my dream version of Paris, anyway? That little fantasy world is supposed to be exclusively for me and Raf.

  As I’m holding the phone, it rings—it’s Raf.

  “Hey, you,” I say. “I was just about to call.”

  I mean, I was, wasn’t I?

  “I was starting to wonder—when you didn’t answer my texts, I figured you were probably out with that movie star boyfriend of yours again.”

  Another moment of panic as I check myself out in the mirror to see if guilt is, like, literally written all over my face. I compose myself enough to laugh—a little nervously—at the idea of Nate Etan being my boyfriend.

  “Ha ha. No, nothing that, um, interesting. You know that case we’re working on for Father Julian? One minute it’s seven o’clock and I’m staring at all these old pictures, and the next thing I know, my mom is yelling at me to take Tillie out. I slept for two hours! That’s why I didn’t answer. And now I’ll be up for hours. So talk to me. Seems like we haven’t talked—actual conversation, not just texting—in days. And the last time I saw you—well, you weren’t exactly talkative.” And then a teensy white lie: “I was just thinking about your uncle’s scooter, and how much fun we had.”

  “Yeah, until I got grounded for life.”

  “How much longer, seriously, until your mom lets you stay out past eight-thirty?”

  “Oh, she’s starting to crack. I got a hundred on my last French test—see, I told you that one quiz was a fluke—and that made her really happy. Do you want to go to a movie this weekend? If she knows it’s you, she’ll probably let me go. She likes you.”

  “That’s because you didn’t tell her I was on the scooter with you,” I say. “If she knew, she’d probably think I talked her perfect little angel into it. Whose turn is it to pick the movie?”

  “Mine. If you’re okay coming over to this side of town, they’re showing the original Frankenstein on Saturday. It’s a true classic. You have to see it; Boris Karloff is amazing.”

  “Is he the guy with the square head?”

  “That’s makeup, Sophie.”

  “I knew that.”

  As Raf reminds me of the superiority of classic black-and-white movies, I pick up the picture that I discovered (with Tillie’s help)—the one with the kids posing out in the yard.

  Then I’m digging madly through the pile for the loupe, all but ignoring poor Raf.

  Ten more seconds and several pictures go sailing as I search frantically for the birthday cake picture and the TV picture, which got mixed in with the others when I fell asleep. When I locate them, I place them all in a neat row so I can give each a close look.

  Finally, I lift my eyes and stare at Tillie, my mouth falling open in astonishment.

  “That’s it!”

  There’s an awkward moment of silence from Raf’s side of the conversation, followed by, “Uh, that’s what? Were you even listening to me?”

  “Of course. I mean, well, mostly. Listen, Raf, can I call you back in a few minutes? I need to call Margaret right now. It’s super-important. I’ll explain later.”

  I know it’s not fair, leaving you (and Raf—oh no!) hanging like that, but …

  So, do you see the answer yet? I’ll give you a little time to solve it for yourself, because I know that, deep down, you really want to do it on your own. Meanwhile, now that we have proof that the original painting was done before October 1961 (and we do, trust me), the Red Blazer Girls have a job to do, a job that’s going to take the three C’s—creativity, cunning, and good old-fashioned chutzpah.

  The adventure begins on a C-squared Friday; it’s cold and clammy. After a quick run-through of our songs in Elizabeth’s basement, the Blazers, along with our manager, Margaret, head uptown to stake out Miss Prunella’s apartment. After we told him the good news about the date of the picture, Father Julian provided us with one tidbit of information to get us started, even though he continues to insist that he wants nothing to do with our efforts to get the painting back. Prunella, he learned, goes out for the early-bird special at a local diner at four-thirty every Friday afternoon. What we do with that little nugget, he says, is completely up to us.

  On the way there, Margaret explains to Mbingu that we are on an intelligence-gathering mission, pure and simple.
“Before we can formulate a plan, we need to find out everything we can about her. Everyone has a weakness; we have to find hers, and then figure out a way to exploit it.”

  Mbingu looks at me. “Does she always talk like that?”

  “Pretty much,” I say. “Especially when she’s working on a case.”

  According to the information we got from the phone book, Miss Prunella lives on Ninety-fourth Street—the same street, I note, where we saw Livvy and that old woman.

  “How weird would it be if Miss Prunella and that lady we saw with Livvy are the same person,” Leigh Ann says.

  “Too weird,” I say.

  “That would be a coincidence worthy of Dickens,” says Margaret. She stops and points across the street at a building with an iron fence surrounding it. “That’s the place.”

  “Okay, you’re not going to believe this,” I say, “but that’s the same building I saw Livvy go in.”

  Margaret considers the circumstances for a few seconds. “Well, I think Father Julian would have mentioned that Prunella was on crutches or in a wheelchair, so it’s probably just a minor coincidence. Well, I guess we’ll see; it’s five after four, so she should be leaving soon. Let’s just wait here for her to come out.”

  One of those creepy iron fences—the kind that looks like hundreds of long, spiky spears sticking straight up and just waiting for people to impale themselves on—stands between Prunella’s apartment building, a place that clearly has seen better days, and the sidewalk. It may not be the high-tech security system I had imagined, but it looks like it does the job of keeping the occasional cat burglar out. I wince when I think about trying to climb over those spears … and slipping. Yee-ouch.

  At four-ten on the nose, the door to the apartment building opens, and a few seconds later a short, wiry woman with hair the color of a shiny new penny pushes open the iron gate and steps through.

  “Is that her?” Mbingu asks.

  “Mmm—bingo!” says Margaret. “Her hair is just like Father Julian described. Sorry, Sophie—no crutches.”

  “C’est la vie,” I say.

  “You’re kidding,” Becca says when she sees the person we’re talking about. “That’s who we’re up against? She’s a little old lady. She looks kinda like my kindergarten teacher.”

  “As a detective, however, you have to remember that she’s a little old lady who has something that belongs to someone else,” Margaret reminds her. “And don’t underestimate her because of her size. Remember what Father Julian said? She drinks and swears like a sailor.”

  “Ah … the end justifies the means, n’est-ce pas?” I say. “So, even if we have to tie up and rob an old woman to do it, it’s okay, because we’re doing it for a good reason, right?”

  “First of all, we are not going to tie her up or rob her,” Margaret insists. “All right, I guess if you really wanted to get technical, maybe we are going to rob her, but we’re not leaving her empty-handed. And we’re righting a wrong that was done a long time ago, so that, um, balances things out. Come on, let’s go.”

  We trail Prunella to a diner on Second Avenue, and a minute after she goes inside, we follow, sliding into the booth right behind her gaudy orange head. And that’s when we get the bonus. A man and a woman, both in their early twenties, approach her table.

  “Miss Scroggins?” the man asks. “I’m Arthur Svindahl. Junior, that is. From the Svindahl Gallery. We spoke on the phone. This is my sister, Amelia. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Becca’s eyes widen and she leans her head in to whisper, “That’s them! From the gallery. He’s the one who yelled at us.”

  We exchange silent glances at our table while Margaret scribbles this message on a napkin: “Keep talking so I can listen to them.”

  Even though we hadn’t planned on eating, I am suddenly ravenous when our waiter shoves a menu in my face, coming perilously close to my still-tender nose. And besides, it looks kind of suspicious if we just sit there without anything to eat or drink. I don’t want to be the one to blow our cover, so I turn to Margaret. “You want to split a turkey club with me?”

  She has her head turned, eavesdropping on Prunella and the Svindahls, but she nods at me. “Oui. Avec frites, s’il te plaît.”

  After we place our order, we pretend to have a conversation while straining our ears to hear everything we can.

  And boy, do we get an earful. It’s going to take a week’s worth of showers before I feel clean again, just from listening to Prunella, who has, as Leigh Ann puts it, a mouth “like a sewer.” And frankly, I think that’s doing an injustice to sewers; the stuff coming out of her mouth is filthier than anything I’ve ever seen in a New York sewer.

  Instead of a blow-by-blow description of every offensive thing that Prunella said, let me start with a list of emotions registered at our table in the time it takes to eat half a sandwich and some soggy, undercooked fries that no Frenchman would admit to having invented:

  Disbelief

  Indignation

  Irritation

  Exasperation

  Annoyance

  Anger

  Wrath

  Outrage

  Fury

  Borderline homicidal rage

  So much for feeling sorry for the little old lady. By the time I snag the last fry from Margaret’s plate, the five of us are ready to climb over the booth and steal her purse!

  Occasionally, Arthur Svindahl steers the subject back to the painting and whether she’s made a decision about selling it, but somehow she always seems to get back to her original topic.

  Amelia, clearly frustrated with Prunella’s behavior and her brother’s inability to deal with it, finally takes charge. “Miss Scroggins, if we can just focus for a few moments on the painting that we looked at in your apartment. We are prepared to write you a check for this amount for the painting today.” She slides a piece of the gallery’s stationery across the table to Prunella. “Now, you’re perfectly welcome to talk to other galleries, but I doubt you’ll find any who are willing to pay this amount—especially since you don’t have a certificate of authenticity or other real proof of provenance.”

  “Oh, it’s real enough, all right,” Prunella says loudly enough for every ear at our table to perk up. “Phillip took it from his sister’s house. I told him to do it and he did it.”

  She seems almost proud of that fact, the crazy old bat.

  “I want to think about it,” Prunella says. “I know I ought to take your money and run, because I have a hard time believing that anybody would want that monstrosity, but I need a little time to get used to the idea.”

  “Then let’s say the offer is good for a week,” says Arthur. “We will get in touch with you next Thursday or Friday. We’ll have a cashier’s check ready for you.”

  “Fair enough,” Prunella says.

  The diner door swings open and I instinctively duck down in my seat when I realize that it is Livvy Klack. She is pushing a woman in a wheelchair, and the brisk November wind is making it hard for her to hold the door open and maneuver the wheelchair inside.

  Our waiter hustles over to the door. “One second, Olivia. Let me help you,” he says.

  Olivia? How often does she come here?

  When everyone is safely inside, he greets the woman in the wheelchair. “Good afternoon, Miss Demarest. The special today is roast chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans. Get you started with some coffee?”

  I lean over the table and whisper, “Code red, everybody. Livvy Klack is in the building. Repeat, Livvy Klack is in the building.”

  “Where?” Becca says, spinning around to see for herself.

  “Don’t look!” I hiss, but it’s too late. We’ve been spotted.

  There is an awkward moment of recognition when Livvy’s eyes and mine meet. I sort of half smile, half wave at her, but she doesn’t return either; she seems to look right through me. I don’t know what it is, but at that moment, even with all the rotten things she’s done to me, I fee
l kind of sorry for her. She’s so used to being in control that she must absolutely hate situations like this, where people might see a side of her she doesn’t want to be seen.

  “We should go,” I say.

  Leigh Ann nods. “Yeah, I don’t think I can take any more of you-know-who.”

  “You don’t want to snoop a little?” Becca asks. “You’re tellin’ me you’re not a little curious about Livvy?”

  And that’s when good ol’ Miss Prunella puts the icing on the cake. As the Svindahls get up to leave, she points at Livvy and Miss Demarest and says, loudly enough to be heard by nearly everyone in the place, “Well. Now I’ve seen everything. A pretty white girl pushing a crippled old colored woman around in a wheelchair. I’ll bet you there’s nothing wrong with her; she just likes having a white girl do all her work for her.”

  I close my eyes, cringing. My face feels like I have a sunburn as the blood rushes to it, but I don’t know what to do. A quick peek at my friends’ faces, mouths hanging open in sheer horror, tells me that they’re all struggling with the same dilemma. Do we butt in and stand up for Livvy, Miss Demarest, and, well, common decency, for crying out loud, or do we just pretend we didn’t hear a thing and walk away?

  Livvy spares us that decision. Whatever discomfort she felt at seeing us in the diner is gone, and she stands up and unloads on Miss Prunella.

  “How dare you, you ignorant old bigot!”

  Arthur Svindahl starts to come to Prunella’s defense. “Now hold on. There’s no need to …”

  But Livvy aims her death-ray vision at him for a microsecond, and when he wisely backs off, she turns her attention back to Prunella.

  “You aren’t worthy to even be in the same room, to breathe the same air, as this woman. She’s done more in her life than you—”

  This time, she is interrupted by Miss Demarest, who has calmly placed her hand on Livvy’s arm. “Olivia, dear, sit. Don’t let her spoil our nice dinner. Please.”

  Livvy, whose face has turned the color of a nice piece of tuna sashimi, takes a deep breath, glares one last time at Prunella, and sits down.