Chasing Vermeer

by Blue Balliett

  In two days it would be her twelfth birthday. Twelve-year-olds were old enough to sort out what made sense and what didn’t.

  Petra put down her toothbrush and, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, waited for the water to get hot. She suddenly thought about the Lady. Am I thinking clearly? she wanted to ask her. Did I just imagine what happened today? Are you in Delia Dell? She waited for a response. There wasn’t one.

  Doubt seeped back into her mind. Since when had she been so rational? Imagining: that was what she was best at. And hadn’t she and Calder agreed that they needed to rescue Ms. Hussey? And how about that letter she had just found in Mrs. Sharpe’s bushes?

  She hopped into the tub and put a hot washcloth on her head. Letting her neck flop backward, she closed her eyes.

  Suddenly she found herself picturing a rectangle inside a triangle. It was more a feeling than an image. She dunked her head, letting the water run into her ears. Couldn’t she stop thinking?

  It was a sparkling, whiter-than-white winter morning, a morning of brusque sky, inky black branches, and the blinding, two-dimensional look of new snow.

  Glancing out her window as she dressed, Petra thought that the branches could be rivers on a map, or cracks on a blue plate. Maybe they were symbols in an unknown code — how do we know that trees don’t talk deliberately with their branches, giving slow, intricate messages with an unnoticed vocabulary of shapes? Calder’s thinking was infectious.

  Whistling happily, Petra flew down the stairs to breakfast. The world felt rich with possibility. Her practical reasoning last night now seemed cowardly, unimaginative. What had gotten into her? She thought of the thief’s phrase, I congratulate you all on your pursuit of the truth.

  It was Saturday morning and her parents, still in pajamas, their heads almost touching, were absorbed in an article in the Chicago Tribune. They looked upset.

  “The guy is a maniac! A self-absorbed lunatic!” Petra’s father slammed his hand against the table. All the cereal bowls jumped.

  “What’s wrong?” Petra froze.

  “More news on the Vermeer painting. We’ll all have to pray that the FBI knows what they’re doing.” Frank Andalee stood up as he spoke, putting a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Aren’t you glad you aren’t responsible for saving one of the world’s masterpieces from a maniac?”

  “Yeah, Dad.” Her heart sinking, she began to read.

  THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING ANONYMOUS LETTER YESTERDAY. THE LAST COMMUNICATION FROM THE THIEF, AN ADVERTISEMENT SENT TO THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, HAD BEEN MAILED FROM FLORENCE, ITALY. THE LETTER RECEIVED YESTERDAY WAS MAILED FROM A POST OFFICE IN WASHINGTON, D.C. BOTH THE FBI AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART FELT IT WAS IMPORTANT THAT THE PUBLIC KNOW IMMEDIATELY ABOUT THE THIEF’S LATEST INTENTIONS.

  Dear National Gallery,

  The recently released book, THE VERMEER DILEMMA: WHAT HAPPENS NOW? points to the public’s overwhelming response to my letter and the three advertisements I took out in newspapers around the world. They have, indeed, come to agree with me. Now it is up to you and to your colleagues to agree, publicly, with us all.

  I demand that you write letters to all other owners of Vermeer paintings. You are to state that my point of view is a valid one, and to request that the attributions that I identified earlier be changed immediately.

  If these attributions are not changed within one month, by January 11, I will, against my desires, destroy A LADY WRITING. I will consider it a sacrifice in the interest of truth, a lesson for those too rigid, too dishonest, to do what is right.

  I am old and will not live long. I will, however, live to see this resolved on museum walls and in writing or, to the horror of us all, in ashes.

  I beg of you to spare A LADY WRITING. If you look into your hearts, I know that you will, as I predicted in November, come to agree with me.

  Do what is right.

  Petra dropped the paper and rushed out of the kitchen.

  “This thief is way more ruthless than we thought.” It was 9:00 A.M. and Calder and Petra were sitting in Calder’s kitchen drinking hot chocolate. His parents were out grocery shopping.

  “I’ll bet if we called the police, Delia Dell would be searched today. And if the painting is there, they’d have a better chance of finding it than we would. The other thing we can do is tell our parents and leave it up to them.” Petra didn’t sound particularly happy about either idea.

  Calder, absorbed in his own thoughts, grinned. “We can also tell no one. I can see the headlines now: ‘Kids Locate Missing Vermeer’ or ‘Kids Brilliantly Track Down Vermeer Masterpiece’ or ‘Kids Lead Discouraged FBI Agents to —’”

  “Calder! Come on! How can you even think about fame? What would be best for the Lady?” Petra closed her mouth in a tight, big-sister kind of line.

  “To be found.” Calder folded his arms across his chest and looked sulky. “You’d like to be on the news, too.”

  Petra paused to think about seeing herself on a talk show, or having her picture on the front of the Chicago Tribune. “Maybe,” she said in a kinder voice.

  “I vote we try to find it ourselves today, and if we don’t, we talk to our parents and the police tonight.”

  “Fine. I think we should call Mrs. Sharpe first.”

  “Why?” Calder had pulled the I pentomino out of his pocket and was flipping it back and forth on the table. “Because the letter sounds like her talking? We know it’s not. She’s in the hospital and, besides, she would never harm a Vermeer.”

  “She might help us.” Petra gave her mug a decisive tap with her spoon. “We’ll tell her what happened in Delia Dell. That will make her curious. Then, if she knows something, maybe she’ll just blurt it out.”

  Both were looking at the I. “What’s it saying?” Petra asked.

  “Instant,” Calder said. “Guess that means ‘get going.’”

  They called the hospital and asked for Mrs. Sharpe’s room.

  When she answered, Petra said, “Calder and I were spending some time in Delia Dell yesterday —”

  “And?” Mrs. Sharpe’s voice could have cut steel.

  “The letter in the paper … we’re worried.”

  There was silence on the other end. “Mrs. Sharpe? We just didn’t want you to worry. About us.”

  “Don’t flatter yourselves. Why should I worry?”

  Before Petra could tell her about the zap on the staircase, the old woman said, “Just be careful. Looking and seeing are two very different things.”

  The phone line went dead.

  Calder left his parents a note. He and Petra put on their coats and headed for the campus. They hurried in through the side door of Delia Dell, and Petra skidded on the wet floor tiles. Her feet went out from under her, and she came to a painful stop in front of one of the benches.

  Scrambling to her knees, she looked up into a man’s face. He had eyebrows so thick that they hung precariously over his eyes, which seemed far too small for the size of his face.

  “Slippery stuff, is it not?” The man’s voice was low and pleasant; he had a foreign accent. “Zees old floors are terrible vhen zey are vet. But it’s a vonderful building. Very vonderful.” He smiled at Petra, his eyes almost vanishing beneath the outcroppings of hair. He offered her a large hand. “You two vere visiting ze ozzer day, no?” Something about this man was familiar.

  Petra was on her feet. “I’m fine,” she blurted, and shoved Calder back out the door in front of her.

  “Great! That man noticed us, and you acted all nervous. Now what do we do?”

  “What was I supposed to say, ‘Which way to the Vermeer?’ Did you recognize that voice? I think it was the man from the post office.”

  “What man?” Calder asked.

  “The guy who stepped on Mrs. Sharpe’s letter!”

  “Well whoever he is, we could have just kept going. If we didn’t stick out before, we sure do now.”

  This was the closest they had come to a fight. Petra
’s elbows were sore, and she was mad at herself. She knew Calder was right. After all, the man might be nobody.

  “Wait,” Calder said. “I have an idea. I think I remember a basement entrance.”

  They walked quickly around to the east side of the rambling building. There, miraculously, was a small open door half a flight up behind a walled area. The door was propped open with a dented trash can.

  “Wow! If anyone asks us what we’re doing, we’ll explain that we’re making a plan of the building for school.” Calder didn’t sound as confident as he was trying to feel.

  “Let’s get out paper and pencils so it looks like we’re really working on something,” added Petra.

  Armed with materials, they crept closer. It was hard to see into the darkened doorway. They paused outside, listening, then peered around the corner. There was no one in sight.

  They tiptoed down a long corridor that curved to the left and then to the right. Swinging doors opened into a room with a single lightbulb overhead. Once inside, they were faced with three possible exits. They picked the one in the middle.

  “Ee-uw.” Calder stepped over a nasty pile of garbage that smelled of sour milk and sneakers. Petra kept her mitten over her nose.

  They were soon in a maze of small passageways.

  “What direction do you suppose we’re going in?” Calder asked, looking around at the peeling paint.

  “No idea, but I want it to be up,” Petra said.

  They found themselves at a fork. To their relief, one direction led to an iron stairwell. They hurried toward it.

  On the second floor, a diamond-shaped window looked into a hall.

  “I can’t see much. You try.” Calder stepped aside. At that moment a blue sweater flashed by. Both kids ducked, and Petra hit Calder in the nose with her hair clip.

  “Pet-ra! Watch what you’re doing, will you?” Calder forgot to whisper, and the sweater reappeared, pausing for several long seconds on the other side of the door before going on.

  “Calder, that looked just like my dad’s sweater. I’ve got to peek out.”

  “What’ll we say if it is him? He’ll ask what we’re doing here.”

  “I don’t know, but I need to see if that’s my dad.”

  They went as quietly as they could down the hall past several offices. When they reached the corner, they saw the man in the blue sweater walking up the stairs to the third floor, carrying a smallish rectangular package.

  The man was definitely Frank Andalee.

  “Weird,” Petra whispered. “What would he be doing here? He sometimes works Saturdays, but on the other side of campus.”

  Petra was remembering her dad’s anger that morning, and the way he had pounded the table. She also remembered his words: Aren’t you glad you aren’t responsible for saving one of the world’s master pieces from a maniac? The word “maniac” echoed in a frightening way in her mind. Did he feel that he was responsible? Maybe he had stumbled onto something he shouldn’t have and that was what had made him so grumpy lately.

  She remembered him muttering the words “a loan,” or had it been “alone”? Either one was spooky. And then there was the talk about two mysterious letters, and also what she’d overheard him saying that fall to her mom: Everyone has some thing to hide.

  Seeing how miserable Petra looked, Calder patted her on the back. “I’m sure he has a good reason for being here.”

  Stashing backpacks and jackets in a window seat, they began exploring the second floor of Delia Dell. During the next half hour they tapped, they studied, they pressed, they poked, they leaned, they tugged, they opened, they closed. Several closets appeared, walls creaked, but there was no sign of the painting.

  Petra couldn’t concentrate. “I just can’t imagine what business he’d have in Delia Dell,” she said.

  “He’d be wondering the same thing if he saw you.”

  “And that package he was carrying was just the right size….”

  Petra suddenly felt very tired of suspecting people — first Mrs. Sharpe, then Ms. Hussey, then both of them, and now … her dad?

  Calder seemed to pick up on her thoughts. “Sneaking around and trying to figure people out isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be,” he said.

  Looking through one of the windows, she saw her dad and the man from the post office cross the parking lot.

  “Calder! They’re together!”

  Petra noticed that her dad’s shoulders were hunched and his hands were stuffed in his pockets. He was no longer carrying the package.

  By the time Calder and Petra stepped outside, both men were gone. There were no footsteps to follow. The snow was packed into an unreadable mass.

  “Guess we should go,” Petra said.

  “Yup.”

  On the way back to Harper Avenue, Calder and Petra made a plan. They would return to Delia Dell that night. Each would tell their parents that they were over at the other’s house.

  “I guess we may be headed for a life of crime after all.” Petra gave Calder a halfhearted grin. “But this is different — it’ll be an early birthday adventure. I mean —” She stopped short.

  Now Calder looked uncomfortable. “How did you know?”

  “How did I know what?”

  “My birthday.”

  “What? It’s my birthday, too!”

  To Petra’s surprise, Calder seemed more preoccupied than anything else.

  He was looking at the T pentomino in his right hand. “T for twelve…. We’re both twelve on 12–12…. Why didn’t I see this before?”

  “Wow,” was all Petra said.

  He went on, “It’s a puzzle that hinges on twelves. There are the pentominoes, of course, and the fact that we’re both turning twelve on the twelfth day of the twelfth month, and I’ll bet there’s more about the painting or about Vermeer that works with twelves.”

  “Calder, you’re either totally nuts or absolutely brilliant. Maybe both.”

  “And we have just about twelve hours to figure this out — think we can do it?”

  “I do.”

  That evening, the kids were crouched behind a bush just under the first-floor windows of Delia Dell. It was ten minutes to seven. The blue sky and white snow of the morning had deepened into an icy purple laced with black.

  “It’s the post office man!” whispered Calder. Sure enough, he was one of the last people to leave the building before the doors were locked. He walked slowly down the stairs to a parked car. Before he climbed in, he scanned Fifty-ninth Street as if checking for someone. Calder and Petra got a good look at his face.

  As soon as his car was gone, Petra hopped out of the bush. “Quick!”

  They hurried around the building to the garbage area. The back door they had entered that morning was still propped open.

  They walked as fast as possible toward the dim opening and ducked inside. It felt like jumping into dark water.

  They could hear footsteps several rooms away, and someone whistling.

  Petra grabbed Calder’s sleeve and pointed to a giant file cabinet. They crouched next to it, hardly daring to breathe.

  The footsteps came closer, quick and heavy, and there was a grunt as someone put down a metal trash can. Both could see a man moving around in the shadows.

  Another two steps and he was slamming the back door, locking it with a double bolt. He switched off the light from the next room, leaving them in darkness. The footsteps grew fainter. They waited until they heard another door shut.

  Petra pulled the flashlight out of her backpack. It went on and then off. She shook it vigorously. Nothing happened. She felt the darkness clamping down on them, and heard a noise like the ocean in her ears. The space around them started to shrink in an extremely unfriendly way.

  “Oh, great!”

  “Didn’t you test it at home?”

  “Of course I did!”

  To their relief, the light came back on. Petra kept it pointed toward the ceiling.

  Carrying the fl
ashlight like a full glass of water, they walked carefully through the shadowy maze of halls and storage rooms. Nothing looked familiar. They must have taken a different turn. Calder was thinking to himself that “spooky” would be a mild word for this place. It made the basement in Gracie feel cozy.

  Both tried not to think about anything but the next step.

  The passageways felt endless. The flashlight went out once more, and this time stayed out. Holding on to each other, they groped their way around the next corner.

  A red exit sign glowed in the distance.

  “We did it!” They made their way down the corridor and finally through the door. They found themselves standing in the big entrance hall.

  A high-backed choir bench in the center of the room towered above them. The moon had risen since they’d been outside, and light came through the casement windows on the second-floor landing. A path of broken rectangles and rhombi spilled crazily down the stairs, coming to rest on the heads of the wooden monkeys at the base.

  “Maybe it’s good the flashlight’s out, in case someone is watching the building,” Petra whispered.

  “I was thinking the same thing.” Calder glanced toward the banquet room and library.

  Feeling small in the darkness, they walked through the entrance hall and up several steps to the next room. They headed under the arbor of plaster grapes and into the library.

  The room was cavernous and lonely at night. Outside, students wandering back to their dormitories were talking and laughing. Petra and Calder felt separated from everyday life by a chasm of responsibility. What had ever made them think they could do this?

  “Let’s start over here, and stay together,” Petra said. Looking for concealed closets or panels or knobs, they tapped along the south wall, straining their eyes against the shadows. It was slow-going.