The Guggenheim Mystery

by Robin Stevens

  When we stepped back through the spinning main door of the Guggenheim, people were running up and down the ramp, and they were all shouting.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Salim asked Lionel, who was standing by the entrance, yelling into his radio.

  ‘I just saw it,’ said Lionel. He was not smiling now. His face was creased up and he was sweating. ‘In the tower gallery. One of the Kandinskys has been stolen!’

  FOURTEEN

  The Definition of Tragedy

  Aunt Gloria would not stop crying. Mum and Sandra and Kat and Salim all stood around her holding things out as she sat on the main floor of the Guggenheim: tissues and glasses of water, and a slice of cake that Salim had brought from the café. Lionel was calling the police, and Helen Wu was talking to the rest of the crew in a low voice. I wanted to hear what she was saying to them, but Aunt Gloria’s crying was too loud.

  Aunt Gloria buried her face in a handful of tissues (I thought that was very wasteful of her, considering the environment), and waved away the water and cake. ‘Not—’ she gasped. ‘No – my diet!’

  ‘Not for me either, thank you, I’m gluten intolerant,’ said Sandra, so Salim ate the cake.

  ‘Glo, love, come on now,’ said Mum, patting her shoulder. ‘The police will be here soon, and you need to talk to them.’

  Aunt Gloria sobbed some more, and waved her hands about in the air. ‘I’m the most senior member of staff here!’ she wailed, and the sound made me wince. ‘The Director will be furious! He’s in Beijing this week – not even in the country. What if – what if – he blames me? What if he wants someone’s – someone’s – head on a plate?’

  I imagined someone’s head on a plate, and deduced that Aunt Gloria was using a figure of speech. But I still didn’t know what she meant.

  ‘Glo, don’t be silly,’ said Mum, sounding very firm. ‘Come on, sit up! You didn’t steal it, did you? You didn’t set off the smoke bombs! So it isn’t your fault that it’s gone. It’s terribly sad that it’s missing, but it’s just a painting. You’re quite all right, and so is everyone else – no one’s been hurt.’

  Aunt Gloria sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘But, Fai. That painting! It’s so beautiful – and it’s been stolen! This is a tragedy.’

  Aunt Gloria was exaggerating again, I knew. A tragedy is a disaster or a cataclysm. When Odysseus’s ship is sunk in The Odyssey and everyone else drowns, it is a tragedy. When Salim went missing in the spring we thought it might be a tragedy. That was frightening. But I did not think that a missing painting was the same thing at all.

  Salim had explained to us that the painting that was missing was In the Black Square – the tilted, black-bordered painting by Kandinsky we had seen in the side gallery of the museum earlier, the one Salim had told me was about the weather. I thought about its bright red and yellow circles and triangles with black lines running through them, Kandinsky’s code for the weather, and I thought how strange it was that we had seen it on the wall of the tower gallery less than an hour ago. It had been right in front of us, and now it was gone. It was like the x of an equation that had not been solved. That was very interesting, but it didn’t seem important enough for someone to cry over. I told Aunt Gloria so.

  ‘Ted!’ cried Mum.

  ‘The police will find it,’ I said. ‘It’s very large, and so it will be difficult to hide.’

  ‘Ted!’ said Aunt Gloria. ‘You don’t understand. When a piece of art is stolen, it’s very hard to find it again. Only five per cent of all stolen art is ever recovered.’

  I was impressed that Aunt Gloria knew a fact like that. ‘Why?’ I asked, but Mum said that this was not the time.

  ‘And what if it is never found!’ gasped Aunt Gloria. ‘What a loss that will be!’

  Then she started to cry again.

  The police came. Blue-and-white police cars screeched up the road, and officers stretched fluttering blue-and-white tape across the entrance of the Guggenheim. We all had to leave the museum so that they could do a full search, so we stood on the hot street outside while the police checked all the way through the building to see if the painting was hidden somewhere inside. They went up the ramp and into all the tower galleries.

  But they could not find it.

  Then a policeman came to talk to us. I found out that he was not a normal policeman, but a special art detective. He was a black man about Dad’s age, with short dark hair, gold-rimmed glasses and a long brown coat, like detectives have in films. He was very serious, and his mouth was always in a frown. He asked if we had seen anything. Kat and Salim said no. I started to tell him about the ten boxes, and the five people in the maintenance crew, and Rafael who had been hoovering, and Gabriel on the scaffolding, but the detective seemed more interested in talking to Mum.

  I thought this was stupid. The detective who had helped get Salim back when he went missing in the spring had wanted to know everything. I thought it was good that it was only a painting that had gone missing this time, not a person.

  The detective wrote down what Mum said in a small leather notebook, and then he told her to take me and Kat and Salim away while everyone who had been working in the Guggenheim was interviewed. I thought this was even more unfair. I wanted to stay. I wanted to know more about the theft. But the detective shook his head and waved us away.

  I turned back to watch him as he went inside the Guggenheim. His arms and legs were very long, and they all moved at slightly different rates, as though he had not calculated how the different parts of his body fitted together. I understood that. The detective was a bit like me – but also not like me at all, because I am good at noticing things, and I make sure to pay attention to everything.

  FIFTEEN

  Five-per-cent Probability

  It was almost dark by the time Aunt Gloria arrived back at the apartment. We ate Chinese food that Mum had ordered out of white cardboard boxes, because Aunt Gloria was too upset to cook. I stared into my box of food and felt a bad feeling creep up my oesophagus. It did not look like the sweet-and-sour chicken from Golden Mountain, the Chinese takeaway on the corner of our road. I took a bite and it did not taste like the sweet-and-sour chicken from Golden Mountain either. It tasted bright orange, like tinned tangerines. I put it down again, and decided that I did not like travelling at all. There were too many strange things, and they all made me feel exactly like Odysseus, alone on the sea without his crew: very small, and very lost.

  ‘It’s really gone,’ said Aunt Gloria in a shaky voice. ‘Taken out of the gallery. The police found out that the security camera and burglar alarm systems were cut earlier today, so the robbery must have been planned in advance. The traffic cameras at the end of the street show a removal van driving away from the Guggenheim at exactly the right time this morning. The police are trying to trace it now.’

  ‘So perhaps it will be part of the five per cent!’ said Mum. ‘And we can go back to enjoying our holiday.’

  I was impressed that Mum had remembered Aunt Gloria’s fact, but I wasn’t sure I believed her. What had happened might not be a tragedy, but it was a very big thing that would change everything and everyone around it.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Salim. ‘And maybe, Mum, it would be OK if Kat and Ted and I could go and see some sights on our own?’

  Salim had said and Ted. I looked at him to see whether he was pretending or not. He winked at me, and I understood that he wanted me to say something.

  ‘Hrumm,’ I said. ‘Yes, I want to see Times Square.’ This was true. According to my encyclopaedia, Times Square was very interesting.

  ‘Absolutely not!’ said Aunt Gloria, ignoring me and still talking to Salim. ‘Ted might get lost. And you’re still new to this city, Salim. It’s not safe.’

  ‘Yes it is!’ said Salim. ‘It’s just as safe as anywhere. Mum, you’ve got to get over it – I’ve told you that the London Eye won’t happen again!’

  Aunt Gloria erupted. This is a figure of spee
ch which does not mean that lava burst out of the top of her head, but her face turned red and her mouth opened wide and she shouted, ‘I thought you were DEAD, Salim! I can’t just GET OVER IT!’

  ‘Glo, Salim’s learned his lesson, surely,’ said Mum. ‘You shouldn’t coddle him.’

  ‘Don’t you start, Fai,’ said Aunt Glo, still red. ‘What about your daughter? She knows what she wants to do, but you won’t let her do it.’

  ‘That’s because she’s far too young to make such a silly decision about her future!’ Mum said, flushing red just like Aunt Gloria.

  ‘Fai, don’t you remember how I was at Kat’s age?’ asked Aunt Gloria. ‘I knew what I wanted, just like she did, but our mum would never see it. Don’t you make the same mistake.’

  ‘Mistake?’ said Mum. ‘Fai, you were on the dole for years! The worries I’ve had over you …’

  And just like that the evening turned into a loud argument that made me feel hot and messy inside.

  I walked to the side of the living room and tried to call Dad at home, but he didn’t answer. The line clicked and purred, and then I heard our answering machine message start. I imagined the sound travelling all the way from Rivington Street, through the telephone lines and the cable under the Atlantic Ocean, to my ear. Then I remembered that Dad wasn’t answering because it was 2.16 a.m. in London. That made him feel further away than ever.

  I put the telephone down and went to Salim’s room, where Kat was staying.

  I got up on Salim’s narrow bed, which was blue, white and orange, with the word Mets in curly letters on the duvet, and hit the wall, the way I do at home. I knew that Mum would be angry with me, but the feeling built and built in my head until I groaned and thumped his pillow, again and again, making it a pattern. Thump THUMP thump, thump THUMP thump.

  That felt good. I could think again. Sometimes, when I want to shake my hand out, or groan, and I know I can’t, I get that built-up feeling in my head. It wraps itself around everything, like a low-lying mist, until I can’t tell where I am, or what I’m thinking, just the way someone stuck in a mist doesn’t know which way they are going, or where they have been. People lost in the mist can sometimes go round and round in circles, just a few metres from their house. That is how I felt.

  I lay back on Salim’s bed and thought about the whorls of the Guggenheim, about the circles on its floor. I thought that if I owned somewhere like that, I would not put anything in it, or let in any other people. I would just sit in it, and feel everything moving around me in a pattern. That would be perfect. But real life is just as messy as Aunt Gloria and Mum’s argument, and in real life people had got in, and one of them had stolen In the Black Square.

  The shouting outside had stopped.

  I opened Salim’s door eight centimetres and heard Mum and Aunt Gloria talking in lower voices.

  ‘You know that we love you, Glo,’ said Mum.

  ‘Of course I do!’ said Aunt Gloria. ‘Oh, Fai, I am lucky to have you as a sister!’

  So the argument was over, and they were friends again.

  I got off Salim’s bed and went to brush my teeth.

  Brushing your teeth is important. If you don’t do it, you are at higher risk from tooth decay and also gum disease. I stood in Aunt Gloria and Salim’s bathroom, making sure to brush each tooth, inside and out. The light over the mirror was greenish, not yellow like ours at home. It made me look different. I stared at myself.

  Was New York Ted the same Ted as I had been in London? Was all the change around me making me change as well?

  SIXTEEN

  Wake-up Call

  The next morning I woke up to the sound of the phone in the apartment ringing. It rang twice, and paused, and rang twice. After the sixth ring it stopped. Then it started again.

  I sat up very carefully so as not to wake Salim, who was asleep on the futon next to me. Aunt Gloria had fallen asleep at the kitchen table, an empty glass of wine next to her hand. Mum had told us not to disturb her last night.

  On the eighth ring Aunt Gloria’s eyes opened, and she snatched the phone just in time to stop the tenth ring.

  The phone squawked like Kat when she is arguing with Mum, and then a soft chatter came out of the end of it into Aunt Gloria’s ear. I watched her face and saw it lift, her eyes widen, and then her mouth open, wider and wider, until I could see not only Aunt Gloria’s incisors and canines, but all the way back to her molars. The second from the back on the left-hand side had a silver filling in it. I have heard Mum say that Aunt Gloria has a sweet tooth, so I suppose that must have been it.

  Aunt Gloria’s tongue bobbed, and her mouth closed and opened and closed again. The phone whispered into her ear, and then it stopped. Aunt Gloria said, ‘No. Yes. I see,’ which is the least I have ever heard her say. I deduced that whatever the phone was saying was very bad. Then she put the phone down.

  There was a noise from the door of the living room – Mum was awake too, and she was standing there in her blue nightie with the hole in the collar. Kat was with her, yawning and looking cross.

  ‘What is it?’ Mum asked. ‘Glo, love, what’s wrong?’

  ‘The police,’ whispered Aunt Gloria. Her face was a very pale colour. ‘They’ve traced a removals company which apparently picked up a crate that they think contained the painting. The removals people don’t have anything to do with planning the robbery – they were just hired to take a packing crate from the back of the Guggenheim to their warehouse. And they were hired by someone who said they were me. They gave my credit-card details for the van and … and for buying smoke bombs, and they used a Guggenheim computer and telephone to do it! Oh, Lord!’

  ‘Glo, what on earth!’ cried Mum. ‘You didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?’

  ‘No!’ gasped Aunt Gloria. ‘Of course not! Someone must have … have stolen my credit card, and used my computer when I was out of the office. But – Fai. The police are coming here. They want to take me in for questioning. I think they want to arrest me. What will I do?’

  ‘Glo!’ said Mum. ‘They’ll realize soon that you couldn’t have stolen the painting, even if your card was used. You were with us all the time yesterday morning!’

  Then I saw Mum’s face sag as she remembered a fact that I already knew: Aunt Gloria had not been with us the whole time. She had been the last person to leave the Guggenheim before the fire crew arrived.

  ‘They’re going to try and blame me!’ gasped Aunt Gloria. ‘They’re going to put me in prison!’

  ‘Mum!’ said Salim. He was sitting up on his futon, and his face was creased up with worry. ‘Mum, are you serious?’

  ‘They’re coming here now,’ said Aunt Gloria, whose face had gone a strange greyish colour. ‘I can’t let you see them arrest me! I can’t – I can’t— Oh!’

  ‘Mum!’ said Salim again. ‘Calm down. It’ll be OK, I promise. I’ll help you.’

  I didn’t know how he could promise that. I felt frightened. Aunt Gloria was going to be arrested. My head went to the side and my hand shook itself out.

  ‘Salim!’ Aunt Glo gasped. ‘My wonderful boy. I know you will. Oh, what I wouldn’t do for a cigarette!’

  ‘Glo!’ said Mum, her mouth in a tight line. ‘Don’t let this lead you to take up smoking again, please. But I think we could both use some coffee. Salim, go downstairs to the coffee shop and get your aunt and me coffees.’ She paused. ‘Take your time – get yourself something to eat too. All right?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Salim. ‘Don’t worry, Aunt Fai.’

  Mum was trying to show Aunt Gloria that Salim was responsible, I thought, and also get him out of the flat so she could talk to Aunt Gloria.

  ‘I’ll go with him,’ said Kat, as quick as lightning. I am using a figure of speech again. Lightning typically takes two milliseconds to strike the Earth, so it is not actually true that Kat moved that quickly, but she spoke very fast, her eyes flickering from Mum to Aunt Gloria and back again.

  ‘Thank you, Kat,�
� said Mum. ‘And – take Ted with you too.’

  ‘Mum!’ wailed Kat. ‘Not Ted! Come on!’

  This was what I was expecting. I felt sad. It was still Kat-and-Salim, and that hurt me. But then I looked at Kat, and saw her close one eye at me. Why was Kat winking at me?

  ‘Either Ted goes too or no one does,’ said Mum. ‘Choose, missy.’

  ‘Fine,’ growled Kat, so mean that if my memory was not so good, I might have thought I had imagined the wink. ‘Ted can come too.’

  Kat went to her room to change. When she came back, she was wearing a long belted shirt with sparkles on it, tight jeans, and long feathers in her ears, like a bird. I thought it looked stupid, but then I remembered that it was fashion, and Kat wanted to be discovered.

  ‘KAT!’ cried Mum. ‘You can’t go out looking like that!’

  ‘Mum, honestly, I’m fourteen!’ said Kat, her face going stiff and turning away to the side in exactly the way she teases me about.

  ‘Exactly!’ cried Mum. ‘You’re not old enough.’

  ‘Your mum has a point, Kat. Do you know how many girls like you get kidnapped every year in New York?’ asked Aunt Gloria, wiping her eyes.

  ‘No,’ said Kat. ‘Do you?’

  Aunt Gloria opened her mouth and then closed it again, and expressions chased themselves across her face like clouds in a localized gale.

  ‘That is not the point,’ she said at last.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ said Salim. ‘We’re only going to the coffee shop!’

  Aunt Gloria put out her hands as though she was trying to catch hold of him across the room. But she only reached the edge of his shadow and, as I could have told her, shadows are only the effect of light in front of an object, not a real thing. You can’t touch one any more than you can actually sit on clouds. That only happens in myths. ‘Come back soon,’ she said quietly. ‘I can’t bear to lose you again.’

  ‘Muuuum!’ groaned Salim. ‘Come on!’