Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - Beginnings
Chapter 2 - Lucas the Lionheart
Chapter 3 - Gallery Guy
Chapter 4 - My Parents, a Magazine, Traveling, and Me
Chapter 5 - From Allen the Meep to the Gleesome Threesome
Chapter 6 - Camellia’s Idea of a Wardrobe
Chapter 7 - Splitting Up the Loot
Chapter 8 - The Gleesome Threesome in London
Chapter 9 - Go A-way
Chapter 10 - Keeping the Truth from Mom
Chapter 11 - Blessings Upon Thee, O Camellia
Chapter 12 - “Watchit, Dad”
Chapter 13 - Rags, Treasures, and the Women’s Loo at the National Gallery
Chapter 14 - Bert
Chapter 15 - Oscars and a Fingertip
Chapter 16 - The Trouble with Intuition
Chapter 17 - Snakes, a Sari, and Nerves of Steel
Chapter 18 - What Happened to Bert
Chapter 19 - The Jaguar
Chapter 20 - An Orphan at 30,000 Feet
Chapter 21 - The Mother Myth
Chapter 22 - Love Lives of the Gleesome Threesome, and Trying to Do the Right Thing
Chapter 23 - Paris, and What We Saw in the Herald Tribune
Chapter 24 - What the Story Said, and Manipulating Mother
Chapter 25 - A Train Ride, Amsterdam, and My First Big Mistake
Chapter 26 - The Third Lucretia
Chapter 27 - Figuring It Out
Chapter 28 - Mom’s Not-So-Great Plans, and the Bad Part of Town
Chapter 29 - My Second Big Mistake
Chapter 30 - Keeping a Tail on Jacob
Chapter 31 - A Near-Death Experience
Chapter 32 - Bill, Rijsttafel, and Arguing in Bed
Chapter 33 - One Last Chapter Before We Get into Trouble
Chapter 34 - Sister Anneke, Sister Katje, and Mom
Chapter 35 - Blaming It All on Arnold Schoenberg
Chapter 36 - More Grounded Than Usual, and Learning About the Mission
Chapter 37 - What Happened When We Went Down to Dinner
Chapter 38 - Rescue, Part 1
Chapter 39 - Rescue, Part 2
Chapter 40 - Rescue, Part 3
Chapter 41 - Good-bye Jacob, and Telling Our Stories
Chapter 42 - A Few Minutes of Fame
Chapter 43 - Epilogue
NOTES TO THE READER
Acknowledgements
Discovered!
“It’s him,” I said.
“Him who?”
“Him, the man we saw in the Art Institute painting the Lucretias.”
First Lucas looked blank, then her face changed.
“What are you thinking?” I asked finally. She had an expression I’d seen before.
“Oh, nothing.”
“Nothing my meep. When you get that look, it usually means you’re making some plan that’s going to get us in trouble.”
“No, no, nothing like that,” she said, trying to sound all innocent.
But I was right. She was planning something. In fact, that afternoon in the National Gallery was the beginning of something that would get us into more trouble—and get the whole Gleesome Threesome in more danger—than we’d ever been in before.
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First published in the United States of America by Viking,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008
This Sleuth edition published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2009
Copyright © Susan Runholt, 2008
All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Runholt, Susan.
The mystery of the third Lucretia / by Susan Runholt.
p. cm.
Summary: While traveling in London, Paris, and Amsterdam, fourteen-year-old best friends Kari and Lucas solve an international art forgery mystery.
eISBN : 978-1-101-16287-3
[1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Art—Forgeries—Fiction. 3. Best friends—Fiction.
4. Friendship—Fiction. 5. Travel—Fiction. 6. Europe—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.R888293 My 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007024009
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume
any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
http://us.penguingroup.com
For my mother, Helen,
who always believed in me,
and my daughter, Annalisa, who
helped me write this book.
1
Beginnings
My name is Kari Sundgren. This story is about how my best friend Lucas and I got mixed up in a big international art crime, and all the adventures we had doing it. Lucas is Lucas Stickney. She’s a girl.
My ninth-grade English book says when you’re telling a complicated story, unless you’re a real expert, it’s usually best to begin at the beginning and go all the way to the end. That makes sense.
But since I read that, I’ve noticed that finding the beginning of a story, especially when your story is a complicated one, isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Some stories don’t seem to have a beginning. They just sort of happen because of a lot of things that have been going on for a long time. And some stories have too many beginnings. You could start almost anywhere.
This story is like that. It has a lot of beginnings. I could start it when we noticed the guy painting at the Art Institute, or when we saw him again in London, or in Paris when we saw the article in the Herald Tribune, or in the museum in Amsterdam—well, you get the idea. So I asked my English teacher how you find the real beginning of a story, and he said it’s the first thing that happened that you have to explain.
That’s what I was afraid he was going to say.
So I guess I have to start twenty-six centuries ago. In Rome.
Lucretia was this woman who supposedly lived in the sixth century BCE. This was, like, when they used to have gladiators. She was married to a Roman soldier who was always bragging about what a wonderful, good, pure, loving woman his wife was.
When he was off fighting some war, a guy named Sextus Tarquinius, one of his rivals, sneaked back to Rome and flirted with Lucretia to try to get her to have an affair with him. She wouldn’t, so he raped her.
Now back in those days it wasn’t bad enough that a woman had that kind of thing happen to her. What made it even worse was that it totally wrecked her reputation. A lot of women who got attacked like
that would have been kicked out of their house. It was the kind of thing that makes my mother go on and on about what a rotten deal women have always gotten. I have to admit, it does seem pretty unfair.
Anyway, Lucretia was a truly good person. So she called her husband and her father back from the war and told them about what had happened to her. They said it wasn’t her fault and it wasn’t that big of a deal. But because it was so dishonorable, she picked up a dagger and killed herself. Can you believe that? Even though she didn’t do anything wrong!
By the way, I’m not making this up. This may not be absolutely true, but it’s a real legend. Google it.
The second part of the story happened in Amsterdam way back in the 1600s. You probably know this, but Amsterdam is a city in the Netherlands, which is in Europe. It’s the place where they have windmills, and where people used to wear wooden shoes. Anyway, there was this painter named Rembrandt van Rijn. Nowadays most people just call him Rembrandt. You’ve maybe heard of him, and you might even have seen some of his paintings if you go to museums. He even has a toothpaste named after him.
Rembrandt painted two pictures of Lucretia. In one, she’s all dressed up in a beautiful white and gold gown, and she’s holding a dagger like she’s getting ready to stab herself. In the other picture she’s already stabbed herself, her dress is hanging loose, and there’s blood coming out of her side. Lucretia’s expression in the paintings is so sad. It just makes you feel sorry for her.
Now, you probably know this, but if you don’t I’ll tell you, because it’s going to be important. Old paintings by famous artists are worth a lot of money. Millions. Sometimes millions and millions. So far the artist whose painting has sold for the most money is a guy named Gustav Klimt, who painted pictures that have lots of little gold squares and twirls and things in the background. Anyway, one of his paintings sold for $135 million, if you can believe that.
But Rembrandt’s pictures are also worth a lot. As artists go, he’s a Very Big Deal. Let’s say somebody found a painting by Rembrandt that nobody had discovered before. They could probably sell it for twenty or thirty million dollars. Maybe more, depending on how beautiful and interesting it was.
I’m telling you this because it’s what makes everything else in the story make sense. The man in the galleries, the picture of the dead Lucretia, the car that almost ran over Lucas, the kidnapping—none of that would have happened if old paintings weren’t worth a humongous amount of money.
2
Lucas the Lionheart
Lucas and I met four years ago, when we were both ten. We were taking a summer drawing course at a museum called the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which everyone calls the Art Institute.
I hated her right away.
There were eight of us in the class, all from different schools, so I didn’t know anybody. Lucas and I had easels side by side, but we didn’t start talking until it was almost lunch break. All morning we’d been working on drawing a basket with a bunch of fruit in it and some cherries scattered around the side. We were all kind of circled around this table with the fruit on it, so none of us could see anybody else’s drawing. The teacher walked around and muttered privately to every student.
When he was muttering to somebody on the other side of the room, Lucas turned to me and whispered, “This your first class?”
I said, “Yeah. This your first class?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been taking classes for three years.”
I didn’t say anything else for a while, so finally she said, “Can I see your drawing?”
“Sure,” I said, “if I can see yours.” I was proud of what I’d done. I always felt like I was pretty good in art. My dad is a professional artist, and he helped me learn how to draw and paint. All my life I’d gotten As in art. Even that morning the teacher had looked at my picture a few times and told me I was doing a good job. I was secretly hoping I’d be the best one in the class.
So Lucas came over to my easel and said, “That’s really good.” And of course I was proud.
Then we went over to look at Lucas’s picture. I couldn’t believe it. She’d drawn the basket and the fruit perfectly. Perfectly. And she’d put in shading, and even drawn the pattern in the tablecloth. It looked like something somebody would put a frame on and hang over their fireplace.
It really ticked me off. I figured she just said my picture was good because she felt sorry for me. Okay, I admit it. I was also jealous because she was better than I was.
It turned out she was better than anybody. She was the best in the whole class, easy. I think even the teacher was impressed. After that first morning I didn’t talk to Lucas the whole rest of the week.
About a month later I was standing in line to get a cone at an ice-cream place near my house. Somebody behind me said, “Kari?” and I turned around, and there was Lucas.
It was a surprise. Neither of us knew the other one lived in Saint Paul. She went—well, I guess I should say she goes—to this really fancy private school, and I go to a regular public school.
By the way, for those of you who are bad in geography, maybe I’d better explain that Minneapolis and Saint Paul are right across the Mississippi River from each other. That’s why they call them the Twin Cities. It’s all like one big town, and people go back and forth all the time, so it’s not a surprise that our class was at a museum in Minneapolis, even though we’re from Saint Paul.
Anyway, we might not have gotten to be friends even then if it hadn’t been for the idiot clerk in the ice-cream shop. Here Lucas and I were, next in line, ready to buy ice-cream cones, and the girl just ignored us. Yeah, we were only ten. But that wasn’t any reason she should wait on everybody else before us.
But she did. First there were two women who ordered complicated sundaes. When they were finished, the two of us looked up, ready to give our orders. But the clerk looked right over our heads and took an order from a man and his two little kids.
“This stinks!” Lucas said.
“It’s totally not fair,” I said. I was whispering, but it was a loud whisper.
Now, you probably can’t tell it from how I treated Lucas in that class, but I can be kind of timid. Lately I’ve been getting better, but when I was ten I was really shy. I don’t suppose I’d have said anything to the ice-cream clerk even if I’d been waiting for an hour.
But Lucas isn’t timid at all. She wants to be an environmental lawyer when she grows up, and I feel sorry for the lumber and oil companies she goes out to get. You’d never know it to look at her—she’s thin, has curly reddish blond hair and glasses, kind of cute, and looks like any normal kid—but inside she’s tough. I call her Lucas the Lionheart.
So when the clerk took the money from the man and began looking over our heads at the adults around us to find her next customer, Lucas banged her fist down on the counter and said, “We were here before your last two sets of customers, and if you don’t serve us next, I’m going to report you to your manager.”
Remember, Lucas was ten.
Everybody in the store looked at us, and I thought I was going to die of embarrassment. But we got our ice-cream cones, and when we got outside we started laughing and we’ve been friends ever since.
We took another museum course together that summer, this time in painting, and I found out I’m better at that than she is. She draws well because she can remember almost every single thing she’s ever seen in her life and draw it the way it looked. Her mind works like that. They call it photographic memory. Also, she’s very careful and tries to get everything exactly right. I think the word is analytical. I don’t have photographic memory and I’m not very analytical, but I’m more creative than she is. I’m good with color and composition, and I can come up with new ideas.
She draws what she sees perfectly. I see something and make something new out of it. We make a good team.
3
Gallery Guy
Okay, here’s another beginning. The first time we saw Gallery G
uy.
Now, most of this story happened last spring and summer in London and Amsterdam and a little bit in Paris. But this part happened right here in Minnesota more than a year before that, before I turned thirteen.
One of Rembrandt’s two Lucretias is owned by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the place where Lucas and I took the classes. It’s the second one, where she’s already stabbed herself and her dress is bloody. Mom and I have been going to the Art Institute for as long as I can remember. We were able to go even when we were poor, because it’s free.
I like lots of things in the museum, but for some reason I’ve always been totally interested in the Lucretia painting. It’s not that she’s so beautiful or anything, because she’s not, really. It’s more because of her story and because she looks so sad. And also because I just like the way Rembrandt paints.
Anyway, the Art Institute was having an exhibit where they showed both of Rembrandt’s Lucretia paintings. The second of the Lucretias is owned by the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. The two museums got together and shared them that year for a special exhibit. So for a while both paintings were in Washington, then they were here. Or maybe it was the other way around. Whatever. Anyway, Mom and Lucas and I made a special trip to see the paintings one night.
I don’t know if you’ve ever spent much time in a museum, but if you have you’ve probably seen somebody with an easel set up, copying a painting. This happens in almost every museum. In fact, when Lucas and I were taking those art classes at the Art Institute, we had to go out and copy from the paintings in the galleries. My mom says that people who aren’t taking a museum’s art classes have to apply and get special permission in advance. Mostly they’re art students from colleges, but almost anyone can get permission to copy a painting if they just ask.
Well, that night there was this guy copying one of the Lucretias. He had kind of thick, mostly gray hair in a ponytail. Mom and Lucas weren’t especially interested in what he was doing, but I was. Maybe it was because I’d spent so much time watching my dad paint. Anyway, this guy had his stool in one corner and his easel was turned so you couldn’t see what he was painting unless you walked around it on purpose.
The Mystery of the Third Lucretia Page 1