“You’re probably right. Nothing is ever as easy as you think it should be, especially when it comes to adults.” We were quiet for a minute. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That we should do some detecting of our own?”
“Exactly.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Well, we promised my mom no going into the Rijksmuseum, and no funny stuff. But we didn’t promise her that we wouldn’t keep an eye on Marianne.”
“Marianne? Why would—” Lucas began.
“Here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about,” I broke in. “Remember when we were with Mom and looking for Marianne’s place, and her house ended up being on the other side of the canal from where we were?”
Lucas nodded.
“Well, remember that little outdoor café that was just about where we were standing when we realized we needed to go over to the other side?”
“Yeeeaaaah?”
“Well, what if we went and sat at that café and took your camera and watched her door, and ended up getting a picture of Gallery Guy—Jacob whatever-his-name-is—going into her house? Or better yet, a picture of them kissing on her doorstep? Remember when Mom said we didn’t have any proof they were in a relationship? Well, that would be awesome proof. And it would help in our case when the police finally get involved. Which they will eventually, once somebody figures out the Third Lucretia is a forgery.”
Lucas gave me a sideways glance and her face broke into a little smile. “Not a bad idea, Kari Sundgren. Not bad at all.”
“It’s five after four now. How about we go over to that coffee shop and just hang for a while. Marianne’s house is so close to the museum that if Jacob leaves work at five, he’ll be there before five thirty. That’s not so long.”
We were on our way, walking down the street, when Lucas said, “The more I think about it, the less likely I think it is that Jacob will turn up. He’s been super sneaky in everything. I don’t think he’d come to visit his girlfriend at her house.”
“Still, we’ll be doing something,” I said. “And that beats sitting around doing nothing.”
But we hadn’t been at the café for more than ten minutes when something did happen, only not what we expected.
When we’d gotten there, the coffee shop was just like I remembered, with cool house music piped outside and the smell of coffee spreading all out to the sidewalk. We sat down at a table where we had a good view of Marianne’s blue door through the trees planted on both sides of the canal. Lucas was wearing her camera around her neck. She took it off, pulling the strap over her head, then, as casually as possible so people at the other tables wouldn’t notice, she flicked it on, fiddled with the zoom lens, and set the camera down on the edge of the table. The digital screen on the back showed a perfect picture of the blue door with the number over it, and just enough of the surrounding building to prove that it was for sure Marianne’s place. If Jacob showed up, we were all set.
The waiter—Heri, according to his name badge, which I figured must be pronounced like Harry—was probably in his twenties, had spiky bleached hair, and spoke almost perfect American English. After we gave our orders he disappeared through the café door. A few minutes later he came out with a tray with all the stuff on it.
“Here are your hot chocolates,” he said, and started putting things down on the table: cups, two small pitchers of hot chocolate, and a plate with two little cookies. While he poured each of us some hot chocolate from our pitchers, he said, “And where in America are you young ladies from?”
I answered, “Saint Paul, Minnesota.”
Just then he looked down at the camera with the picture of Marianne’s door showing, but he didn’t mention it. Instead, he said, “Isn’t Saint Paul near the source of the Mississippi River?”
Lucas was asking how he knew so much about America when I happened to glance across the street. And there was the blue door wide open, and the woman whose picture we’d seen in the Rijksmuseum was coming out, a big canvas shopping bag over her arm.
“Holy meep!” I said, and I scooted my chair back on the concrete so fast it practically fell over backward. “Lucas, grab your stuff, we’ve got to go.”
I slung my backpack over my shoulder while Lucas got the camera strap around her neck. “How much do we owe?” I asked.
Heri, who’d been looking way cool all this time, suddenly looked confused.
“But you haven’t drunk—”
“How much?” Lucas piped up, using her firm voice.
“Five euros.”
I reached in my pocket, found a five-euro bill (they don’t leave tips in Europe), flung it on the table, and off Lucas and I went, running on our side of the canal to catch up to Marianne, who was far ahead of us now, only on her side.
I looked at Lucas as we ran. “Stupid us. Why didn’t we think of this?” We’d prepared for Jacob coming to her door. But like idiots, we hadn’t prepared for Marianne going anywhere.
Lucas ignored me. She says it’s not a good idea to “beat up on yourself.” Instead she said, “We’ve got to get to the other side of the canal. Let’s do it up there.” Still running, she pointed to where a big cross street went over the water.
Gorgeous Marianne with the great body had incredibly long legs, wouldn’t you know it, and she walked fast, so she was still ahead of us when she got to the bridge. But as it turned out, we didn’t need to cross over to her side. She took a left on the big street and crossed over the canal to our side—ended up walking practically right toward us, in fact, because by that time we were almost up to the street ourselves.
Before Marianne caught sight of us, Lucas came to a screeching stop. I slowed down beside her.
“Look down at the water and act natural until she goes past,” Lucas muttered. “Pretend you’re looking for a fish or something.”
“A fish!” I muttered back. “This water is way too dirty. You’d have to wait years to see a fish.” Just then a dead fish floated into view. “See? Too much canal water,” I said, and the two of us started to laugh.
By this time Marianne had passed us, so we took off after her again.
“Did you notice how low-cut her top was?” I asked Lucas as we rushed down the busy sidewalk. “How hot is that?” I’d gotten a really good straight-on look at Marianne while she was walking toward us on the bridge. She was wearing perfectly fitting black jeans and a pink V-necked T-shirt that showed at least an inch and a half of cleavage.
“I like her haircut,” Lucas said, just as Marianne turned left onto the next street.
I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. I was wondering if suddenly the sky would turn dark and the world would come to an end because Lucas had actually noticed somebody’s haircut, when we turned the corner after Marianne.
And there we were, in the middle of Amsterdam’s outdoor flower market, one of the most crowded places in the whole city, with flowers everywhere and about as many people as there were flowers. And Marianne had completely disappeared in the crowd.
We stopped at the corner and looked at the street full of shoppers. “Meep meep meep meep meep! We’ve lost her!” Lucas looked like she was ready to slam a fist into a nearby building.
“Maybe, but I think we should at least keep trying.”
Lucas gave me a look that said she wasn’t too happy about it, but she stayed with me. For the next fifteen minutes we snaked and pushed our way through the crowd, moving from flower stand to flower stand. We got shoved and smiled at, and once somebody accidentally stepped on my foot. But we didn’t find Marianne.
At last Lucas sighed. “Are you ready to give up yet?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Let’s go to the coffee shop again and see if she comes back to her house with flowers or groceries or something.”
I expected Lucas to complain that I’d led her on a wild goose chase, but she didn’t, and I was grateful.
When we turned to go, I said, “Heri’s going to think we’re weird
.”
“Who cares what Heri thinks?”
We were both a little depressed and glum as we walked back the way we’d come. Heri was outside when we got back to the café, clearing off some dishes. He turned around when he heard our chairs scraping as we sat down. When he saw us, his eyes got wide in surprise, and just for a second I thought I saw an expression that was definitely notfriendly.
Before he could say anything, Lucas said, “Two hot chocolates, please.”
“Are you going to drink them this time?” he asked sarcastically.
“Nobody likes a wise guy,” Lucas said.
“Is that an American expression?” Heri asked.
Lucas and I both nodded.
“‘Nobody likes a wise guy.’ I’m going to have to remember that one,” he said. Then he hoisted the tray of dirty dishes up to shoulder height, and off he went into the café.
This time when he came back and started to put our stuff down, he asked if we’d had to rush off to a fire.
Lucas said, “No, we thought we saw somebody we knew. But she got to the flower market before we did and got lost in the crowd.”
That look I thought I’d seen in his eyes returned. “So you know Marianne Mannefeldt?”
I caught my breath, but Lucas said, “Is that who she was? We thought it was our friend.”
“Hmm,” he said, now pouring our hot chocolates out again. “I thought you had a good chance to see who she was when you stopped by the side of the canal up near the Vijzelstraat. I must have been mistaken. Marianne’s a regular customer here.” There was nothing friendly in his voice or his eyes now.
I waited for Lucas, hoping she’d come up with one of her instant lies, but even she couldn’t seem to think of a likely story. So we stayed quiet while Heri finished pouring our drinks, put the tray under his arm, and disappeared inside.
Somehow the hot chocolate didn’t taste very good after that. While we sat there, I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to either one of us that Marianne might leave her house, or that she might sometimes stop in at the coffee shop nearest to where she lived.
Maybe you could call it beating myself up, but I personally felt totally stupid when I thought about everything that had happened.
When Heri came out again we asked for our bill, paid it, and left. The minute we were back out on the street and headed toward the hotel, I said, “I’m sorry. This was all my idea, and it wasn’t a very good one. We didn’t find out anything about Marianne and Jacob. And the first time we were there he saw your camera was on and pointing at her door, so he knows for sure we were spying on her. What if he tells her about it—maybe even tells both her and Jacob? What if he describes us?”
“So what? They don’t know who we are.”
I wanted to ask what would happen if Jacob heard about us, put two and two together, and figured out Lucas was the same girl who’d been trying to see his work in London. But I knew she’d think that was as ridiculous as thinking he’d been driving that Jaguar that had almost hit her.
And another thing: all this time, I’d felt like I was a lot safer than she was because Jacob didn’t know what I looked like. But now, with Heri maybe describing me to Jacob, I felt a little less safe. But even if Lucas didn’t make fun of me for my theory—and I knew she would—I couldn’t exactly ask her to feel sorry for me, since she’d always been in danger from Jacob.
So all I said was, “It still feels like a mistake.”
“It’s true it didn’t work out,” Lucas answered. “But I think your idea of getting a picture of the two of them together wasn’t stupid at all. In fact, I think it was pretty brilliant.”
But she was wrong and I was right. As it turned out, my idea of keeping watch on Marianne from a coffee shop on the Herengracht was my second big mistake.
30
Keeping a Tail on Jacob
When we got up in the morning, it was raining. Since we’d been really busy for the past few days, Lucas and I decided just to hang.
The hotel had a little TV lounge downstairs with comfortable chairs. Nobody else was around, so we watched some British sitcoms on the BBC, then listened to our iPods.
We also got to know the owners of the hotel, a couple named Tony and Miesje. Tony was tall and handsome for an old guy, and had silver hair. He was always dressed in a blue blazer without a speck of dust on it, and his gray pants always looked like they’d just been ironed. Miesje (whose name was pronounced MEES-yuh) was quiet and blond. Tony spoke perfect English, but Miesje’s English was pretty basic.
It was the middle of the afternoon when Lucas said, “Kari?” She had that sound in her voice again, the one that means she’s going to try to get me to do something that might end up getting us in trouble, and she wanted me to approve of it.
“I’m still here,” I answered.
“You know what a good idea I thought it was to try to see Jacob and Marianne together?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I think there might be another way to get a picture of them meeting. Or if they don’t meet, at least to learn a little more about Jacob.”
“Is it going to get us in trouble with Mom?”
“No, nothing like that.”
I must have looked like I didn’t quite believe her, because she said, “Remember, yesterday I went along with your idea to spy on Marianne and I never complained about it once.”
She was right. Fair was fair. So I said, “Like, what exactly were you thinking?”
Finding out what we needed to know from the Rijksmuseum was easy. All we had to do was make a phone call. Yes, of course she spoke English, the receptionist said. The museum would be open until six o’clock, but the administrative offices closed at four thirty. And the museum’s curators worked in a small building in the courtyard behind the museum.
We didn’t need disguises, but we wanted to blend into the crowd. So we wore jeans and our hoodies, because the weather was cool and rainy. Lucas had her backpack over her shoulder. Even though we were kind of young, we thought we looked like any of the thousands of kids who flock into town every summer from all over the world.
We found out from a guard which building the curators used, and which door they’d use to leave. I kept watch on that one. Lucas stood near the passageway in case Jacob took a tunnel or something into the main building and came out through the public entrance. We could only hope he wouldn’t leave from some other door.
Another thing we didn’t know for sure was if he’d go home at four thirty. One of the million things Mom had told us during our walk was that the Dutch get weeks and weeks of vacation every year and they’re less likely than Americans to stay late or come in early.
We hoped Jacob was that kind of guy.
At 4:31 on the dot, people started coming out of the entrance I was watching. Then, for about five minutes, they came out in bunches. Then they straggled out. And at 4:43, one of the stragglers turned out to be Jacob Hannekroot.
He was dressed in a tan raincoat with the collar up. The belt was tied instead of buckled around his waist. His shoes were shined. He had a black umbrella that popped up automatically when he pushed a button. He had great posture, holding his shoulders up high the way I’d seen other European men do, and he walked like he had somewhere to go. He carried his leather briefcase with a long strap over his shoulder. I wondered if his briefcase was full of forgeries.
Lucas and I both followed him, but she and I had decided to stay apart. We figured if he thought he was being followed he might try to lose us, or even come right up and tell us to “Go a-way!” But if he did that to one of us, the other could keep on following and find out where he went. And if anything more dangerous than that happened—not that we thought anything dangerous would happen—the other would be more able to help if she wasn’t in the middle of it.
Besides, although I didn’t say this to Lucas, I was still worried about what he might think if he saw us together—after what Heri might have told him.
We were hoping he�
��d go to Marianne’s place—Lucas had her camera and I’d bought a disposable camera in case I was closer than Lucas when we saw Jacob and Marianne together.
First he walked to a nearby tram stop. When the tram came, he got on in the second car. There were five cars, and I got into the third one. I didn’t know where Lucas had gone.
It was rush hour, and a lot of people were getting on. I had to stand in the aisle and hold on to a post. I couldn’t see Lucas, but if I stuck my head out far enough over the people who were sitting down, I could see the back of Jacob’s head, tilting down as if he was reading something.
Two stops up, we passed right by the place where we’d followed Marianne the day before. If he’d wanted to go to her place, he’d have gotten off there. But he didn’t.
On the whole trip, I got only one glimpse of Lucas, who turned out to be in the last tram car. We’d been traveling for what seemed like a long time, and I was wondering whether we were going all the way to the Centraal Station when I saw Jacob’s head come up and a corner of a newspaper as he folded it. He stood up and headed for the door. I headed for my door, too.
It was Dam Square. A minute later Jacob was moving around through the groups of kids hanging out, with me behind him and Lucas bringing up the rear.
Jacob was tall and walked fast. It had stopped raining and was just drizzling a little. He looked up at the sky, held out his hand as if checking for raindrops, then gave his half-folded-up umbrella a good shake, as if he’d decided it wasn’t worth putting it up again.
We’d followed Marianne the day before, but that was only for a couple of blocks. This time we were walking for a lot longer than that. I’ve seen enough movies and TV shows to know how to follow somebody without being spotted. The only times I had to duck into doorways or pretend to look in shop windows was when he waited to cross a street. Otherwise he never even slowed down, and he never once looked back. I didn’t know what he’d do if he saw me, but if my theory about Heri was true—and my intuition told me it was—I didn’t think it would be good.
A couple of times I saw Lucas behind me when Jacob and I were waiting at corners. Otherwise I was too busy following to keep track of her. I had to almost run to keep up.
The Mystery of the Third Lucretia Page 13