Finding the Forger

by Libby Sternberg

  We got out and stood shivering while Sarah went to her car to retrieve the painting.

  “You know,” said Connie, watching Sarah thwump the trunk to open it, “I probably should have—”

  “Ohmygod!” Sarah shrieked as the trunk lid popped open. We rushed to see what was the matter. I was thinking “snake!”

  Well, just for a nanosecond. Then my real brain kicked in and I mentally finished the sentence that Connie had started—that she should have immediately taken possession of the painting instead of leaving it in Sarah’s car, because …

  “It’s gone!” Connie stomped her foot and cursed as she looked into the trunk. “And I just called them and told them I had it!” She smacked her head with her hand. “Why couldn’t I have waited? Why? Why? Why?”

  That’s what I love about my sister. Like me, she makes mistakes.

  She ran out into the middle of the street, looking up and down as if she’d actually see some thief running high-kneed down the asphalt with the painting. She groaned and let loose a cascade of expletives, then looked at us and said “sorry” as if we hadn’t heard those words before. (Had she forgotten what high school is like?)

  Pulling a pair of tight leather gloves from her pocket, she quickly put them on and rushed back to the trunk, where she rummaged through the mess that was left.

  “Nothing else was taken,” she said more to herself than to us.

  “Well, there wasn’t much else but junk,” I volunteered.

  “There was this!” Connie dragged out a heavy case.

  “My laptop,” Sarah said mournfully.

  “You have a laptop?” I asked. I had to share one computer with two siblings, but Sarah had her own laptop? I was getting farther and farther behind in the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses race.

  “It’s an old one. Mr. Daniels lets me use it. I put it in the trunk because I didn’t want it sitting out in the open where someone could see it.”

  “And steal it,” Connie added. “But they didn’t steal it. They only took the painting.”

  “They were looking for the painting,” I said in a low voice. A shiver coursed up my spine. Someone had followed Sarah. I turned to her. “Who knew you were coming here?”

  “I don’t know!” She looked like she was going to cry. “You. Kerrie.”

  “What did you tell Kerrie?” I asked.

  “That I had something to talk to you about.”

  Great! Now Kerrie would be back in her jealous mode.

  “Anybody else know where you were?” Connie pressed.

  Sarah silently shook her head. While Sarah thought, Connie pulled out her cell phone and handed it to Sarah.

  “Call Kerrie and ask if anyone called, asking where you were,” Connie told her.

  While Sarah punched in the numbers and did as she was told, Mom appeared on the front steps.

  “Why don’t you girls come inside? It’s getting cold out there.”

  “We’ll be in in a sec,” I said cheerily. “We’re just making some plans.”

  “I can make hot chocolate,” Mom offered.

  “No thanks!” I said, so perky that I’m sure I was not only busting the perkometer scale, but practically achieving spontaneous combustion. It was enough to do the trick. Mom closed the door and left us alone. By this time, Sarah was off the phone and clearly uncomfortable.

  “Well?” Connie asked.

  “Hector called,” she said sadly.

  Chapter Thirteen

  AFTER SARAH WENT home, Connie and I talked for about a half hour out there on the cold street.

  “It doesn’t look good for Hector,” she said, holding her cell phone. I knew what that meant. She was going to call An Authority (either Fawn Dexter or the police) and divulge all—finding the painting in Sarah’s trunk, finding it stolen again, finding out that Hector knew where Sarah was.

  “You can’t,” I argued preemptively. “You know they’ll think Sarah did something wrong, too.”

  Connie pressed her lips together and folded her arms over her chest.

  “You know,” she said, squinting at me, “sometimes people used to being in trouble have a hard time giving up trouble.”

  “What?!”

  “The lines get blurred. And they never get them straight again.”

  “Are you talking about art or about Sarah?” I asked sarcastically.

  She harrumphed, which is Balducci for “you know what I mean.”

  “I have to tell,” she continued. “I can’t hide what I know.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. Oh yes, I put my hands on my hips. There are some gestures that never go out of style. “You don’t usually tell clients everything until you solve the case. You just want to give up the info on Sarah and Hector to cover your butt for losing the painting!”

  “I did not lose the painting. I never had the painting. Sarah had the painting.” But her tone sent a different message. It said “Yes, I lost the painting and I’m toast if they blame me.”

  “But once you found the painting, you should have taken custody of it,” I said in that charming neener-neener-neener tone known to siblings everywhere. “Immediately.”

  “I did have custody of it—in Sarah’s car.” Connie’s voice sounded high and squeaky, which meant I was hitting a bull’s-eye. The only reason she would hand over Sarah and Hector now, without corroborating information, was because it would make her look less foolish.

  “And it won’t help, anyway,” I said. “You know they’re going to get mad at you no matter who you betray.”

  “I’m not betraying anybody, Bianca! You’re too much! Where do you get this stuff?” she said, flailing her arms in the air, and dropping her cell phone. I scrambled for it and held it tight to my chest.

  “Give it over,” she seethed.

  “On one condition.”

  “Are you nuts? What condition?”

  “You don’t call Fawn. You don’t call the police.”

  “Bianca!”

  “No, listen—you don’t know for sure if that was the missing painting or a fake. You’re not an art expert. So you can tell them your other call was a big mix-up, but you have some leads to follow and will report soon. Hey, for all we know, the painting in Sarah’s trunk could have been a fake, right? I mean, haven’t you seen ‘The Thomas Crowne Affair,’ the movie where he paints fakes over real paintings and René Russo—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I saw it.” Her voice returned to a more normal tone.

  “Before you do anything, look at the security tapes from tonight,” I said, and immediately regretted it. What if the security tapes showed Hector carrying a suspicious package and heading for the dumpster door?

  From our doorway, an expanding shaft of light appeared. Mom again.

  “You girls still out here?” Translation: I can’t enjoy watching television worrying about you two.

  “We’re coming in now, Mom,” I said, looking directly at Connie. Translation: do we have a deal or not?

  “Yeah, we’ll be right there,” Connie said. As we walked toward the steps, she whispered, “Okay. I want to talk to Kurt about this anyway.”

  The next morning, I awoke with an ache. Not a headache or a backache or a neck ache. It was an unfulfilled-desire ache, the kind of dry, choking feeling you get when you’ve kept yourself from doing something you really wanted to do.

  I’d really, really wanted to talk to Doug the night before. I’d wanted to spend, oh, maybe a half hour or more on the phone with him (we have a “half hour” rule in our house, but sometimes Mom’s not paying attention and I go over). And I wanted us to laugh and blab away the way we used to—about school, about our plans, about the Mistletoe Dance, and maybe even about the painting mess with Sarah.

  But every time I’d thought of calling him, a switch would go on in my brain immediately cutting off the warm, fuzzy feelings I was having about him and replacing them with dark brooding. Brooding on why he had acted so attentive around Kerrie when I was
supposed to be his girl. Brooding on why he’d picked her up first and dropped her off last on Saturday. Brooding about how he’d nearly ruined my Applebee’s dining experience. And brooding as I thought of how I really couldn’t share too much of the Sarah stuff with him or I might get her in trouble.

  It was a cycle of despair, let me tell you. First, I’d start resenting him for abandoning me for Kerrie. Then I’d start resenting him for being jealous of Neville when I remained completely true blue to him. Then I’d start thinking that maybe he’s jealous of me and Neville because he’s feeling guilty about him and Kerrie.

  Yes, that’s where that brooding road led to—fantasies of unfaithful friends.

  To make matters worse, Connie had been on the Internet a lot Sunday evening, looking up some stuff and then talking with Kurt on the phone—she has some cheapo-schmeapo cell plan she’s locked into for a year, so she watches her minutes on that and hogs our phone instead. When I checked messages later, there was no Dougie-gram, which made me even more glum.

  So, when I came down for breakfast Monday morning, I was in a crappy mood. Connie and Mom had already left—Mom for her office and Connie to hers. That left Tony and me, and Tony is at his all-time worst when there are no witnesses around.

  “C’mon, I have to leave early,” he said, looking at me in my pink terry-cloth robe and curling his upper lip to indicate I looked particularly unattractive that day.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that last night?” I said, grabbing the Frosted Flakes.

  “I did, swamp thing.” He put his bowl in the dishwasher.

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “Did not.”

  We go in for sophisticated debate in the Balducci household.

  After a few minutes of this back and forth, Tony told me I better be ready in five minutes or I was walking to school, then he vamoosed upstairs to brush his teeth. I snarled after him, but I don’t think he heard. When I finished my breakfast and cleared the table, I was about to put the milk away when those darn poetry magnets caught my eye again.

  Right before going to bed the night before, I’d rearranged them to read:

  Funky survivor

  Cute groove

  Stars wild

  Kiss date

  I thought it was pretty cool—all those short little sentences.

  Now, someone had rearranged them to read:

  Groove funky

  Go wild

  Kiss stars

  Date freak

  “Date freak”? What the hey did that mean? Tony had to be doing this. Nasty, mean-spirited Tony. I ran upstairs and almost collided with him in the hallway.

  “What has Doug ever done to you, huh? He’s not a freak!” And I slammed the door on him as I ran into my bedroom to change.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, mutant woman,” he shouted as he walked downstairs. I took that as an admission of guilt.

  At school, my mood did not improve. In fact, everyone’s mood seemed to be on the underside of happy. Doug barely said hello, instead giving me a quick, sulky smile that meant he was still steamed at my going off with Neville on Sunday. Kerrie was irritated because her locker lock was stuck for the umpteenth time this semester and she kept forgetting to get it replaced. And Sarah was in a funk because of Hector.

  “I talked to Hector last night,” Sarah said. “And he was nowhere near that part of the museum when it happened. He said the security tapes would prove it.”

  “You called him?” I asked. Was she tipping him off? Sheesh, Sarah!

  “Well, he called me first. Remember?” she asked sheepishly.

  Just then, the first bell rang and I could have screamed. I was choking on inner screams. I was beginning to feel like a model for that painting, “The Scream.” Sarah, a nut about being on time, ran off to her first class while Kerrie pleaded for help with her locker. As I twirled and pulled and repositioned the thing, the locker hall emptied out and Kerrie spoke to me.

  “I keep thinking about what you told me last night,” Kerrie whispered. “About Neville and you.”

  “What about Neville and me?” I asked. Finally, the lock came free. Good thing. I was going to be late for Algebra.

  “You know—what you told me. How you kissed.” Kerrie pulled books from her locker and arranged others on a stack. Her locker was arranged as neatly as a display for the locker company while mine was always a jumble. “How did it make you feel?”

  The whole episode with Neville now seemed light years in the past, and as I looked back, I couldn’t quite figure out who that girl was who had let Neville kiss her, and why she had felt the crazy need to confess it to her best friend.

  “I don’t know. It was strange.” I looked at the clock. I really had to get going. Kerrie slammed her locker shut and we walked out of the hall together. “I mean, I’ve never kissed a Brit before.”

  I was about to add that Brit or not, kissing Neville had been a huge mistake since my boyfriend was Doug. I was going to make a joke about how, if she told another living soul about it, I’d have to kill her, when we rounded the hallway corner and ran into the only living soul from whom I wanted to keep this juicy piece of information—Doug.

  That day, I had Algebra, History, English, and Music. And every time the teacher asked a question, the first answer that popped into my head was: “Doug, it’s not what you think.”

  Boys might be Silent Sams, but they’re also pretty transparent. After he’d overheard the news that I’d kissed Neville, the look on Doug’s face couldn’t have been clearer. If I had been using poetry magnets to describe it, the verse would have gone something like this: “Boyfriend betrayed by silly steady/Crushed heart, bleeding hopes.”

  To make matters worse, we didn’t see each other much that day. I hoped to run into him at lunch, but he was nowhere to be seen. To make matters even worse than that, Kerrie was the one who knew why he wasn’t there. He had a doctor’s appointment, she announced over lunch.

  “His physical. So he can play varsity tennis,” she said, digging into a taco salad while I stared at my whole wheat and mozzarella. How did Kerrie know his intimate, personal schedule when I didn’t?

  Sarah came to the table, her tray holding a milk and her bagged lunch. When she sat down next to Kerrie, I should have been happy. They were speaking to each other again. Instead, I just moped.

  Sarah was moping, too. As soon as she sat down, she started talking about Hector.

  “The art gallery is looking into his past,” she said while opening her milk. “They think he might be involved in this art theft thing.”

  Ouch. That meant Connie was looking into Hector’s past. Maybe that’s what she’d been doing on the Internet the night before. What else wasn’t she telling me?

  “What art theft thing?” Kerrie asked, after which I told her what I knew.

  “Hector’s a guard, right?” Kerrie asked.

  “He’s also an art student,” Sarah volunteered, and she and I exchanged looks which, when translated, meant: okay, let’s not tell Kerrie about the painting incident last night.

  Sarah sipped some milk through a straw. “That’s why they’re looking at him. And because he was around. When it happened. When the works disappeared.”

  “Are the police questioning him?” Kerrie asked.

  Sarah shook her head “no.” “The museum is keeping it quiet.”

  “How come?” Kerrie asked. “Don’t they have a responsibility to turn this information over to the police?”

  Sarah’s color faded, and she was pale to begin with. The way Kerrie had said “turn this information over to the police” sent chills down my spine, too. It was as if she was really saying “turn Hector over to the police.”

  “Just because Hector’s an art student doesn’t mean he’s a forger,” I jumped in. “Why zero in on him?” Funny I should be sticking up for Hector. I kind of suspected him, too.

  Sarah didn’t say anything, but Kerrie did. “Does Hector have
a record?”

  Sarah slowly nodded. “But it was a long time ago. Two years. He was picked up with some boys who’d stolen a car. He was let go.”

  “How’d he get his job with a record?” Kerrie asked. “I mean, I thought you couldn’t get hired for a security job if you’d had a run-in with the law.”

  Sarah looked down.

  “He didn’t tell them!” I surmised. Sarah nodded her head.

  “You mean he lied,” Kerrie said in a “he’s getting what he deserves” kind of voice.

  Sarah’s head shot up. “He wasn’t sure it mattered. He was just a high school kid at the time.”

  Kerrie shrugged as if to say it did matter. Her indifference sent pink into Sarah’s cheeks. “He’s trying to make a living to put himself through college. His mother is on disability. He doesn’t even know his dad.” Her voice quivered and her eyes grew watery. Sarah had had her own “run-in” with the law recently. She’d been connected with an identity theft ring until Kerrie’s dad helped bail her out of trouble. So it was only natural that she was sympathetic to others in trouble, particularly if one of the “others” happened to be a fellow she liked.

  While Sarah’s background certainly illustrated that one should not automatically be considered a criminal because of a shady past, I wondered about Hector. I mean, who’s to say he wasn’t up to something, especially if he did have cash worries? He might be looking for a way to make a quick buck. And if he, as a security guard, had access to art works worth thousands of dollars, temptation might overrule good judgment. As Connie would have said, he had motive and opportunity. And if he was an art student, he had know-how, too. I felt sick for Sarah.

  But I kept those thoughts to myself, which is a good thing, because Kerrie voiced them for me.

  “I know you like Hector,” she said to Sarah in a voice supposed to sound sympathetic but instead sounded condescending, “but if he does have money problems, selling some valuable paintings on the black market would certainly be a way of fixing them.” She reached over and patted Sarah’s hand, but Sarah immediately withdrew it and turned an even deeper shade of red.