The Artsy Mistake Mystery

by Sylvia McNicoll

  Then I crouch to check out Ping. I can feel Pong’s long tail flopping against my back. “There’s a bit of blood on his incisor. I don’t see a cut on his tongue.”

  “That’s because there is none,” Renée says. “I just said that to make her feel bad. Like anything could.”

  “Really,” I say, patting Pong and Ping at the same time. “You were alone five minutes with the dogs …”

  “It wasn’t our fault. She’s the one who stopped to pat them.”

  “So? The dog’s not supposed to leap up and rip open her nose!” I snap.

  Renée rolls her eyes. “You were here by then. You could have stopped Ping, too.”

  She’s right — she always is — which doesn’t stop her from being annoying. “Could you have at least been a little nicer? The girl’s blood is on Ping’s tooth!”

  “Oh, her nose jewellery always gets caught on everything. Besides, she was never very nice to Attila.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her name is Star and she was Attila’s girlfriend till last month.”

  “Ohhhhh! Now I get it. So you have a hate-on for her?”

  “She’s the one who got him into trouble all the time. She suggested the tank on Champlain High’s wall. Then she took off when the cops came.”

  “Still, Renée, if she reports Ping, it would be awful. Dogs don’t get a lot of chances with this stuff. Sometimes, not even one.”

  “Which is why I wanted her to think Ping is injured. To let her know this is all because of her!”

  “All right. Let’s just go.” I am not going to change her mind and what’s done is done. “Home,” I tell Pong. He reluctantly turns around.

  Ping does his miniature mule routine. Stubborn, refusing to listen, digging his paws in. “Just pick him up, Renée. He has to obey!”

  She scoops him up and the two of them give me almost the same look. Those slivers of white at the sides of Ping’s eyes make him seem just as angry as Renée.

  “You were gone a long time,” Renée grumbles as we head back to the Bennetts’ house.

  I ignore her complaint. “Did you get my text about the art contest?”

  “No, I didn’t.” She puts Ping down to check her phone. She scrolls to my message. “I think Attila may have entered this already. I’ll send it to him, just in case.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say.

  “You’re welcome back. For watching the dogs,” she snaps. “Did you get the book, at least?”

  I hold it up. By now, I know I should loan it to her first to patch things up between us. But I don’t.

  We keep walking, no one saying much. The dogs don’t even mark anything on the way back. In the house, they each just head for their beds and slump down. Pong gives a long one-note whine as we head for the door.

  Beethoven’s Fifth plays from Renée’s phone. Probably means her brother is home. She can skip supper at our place, which could give us some cooling-off time.

  Mistake number ten of the day. Of course, I’m wrong about the message. Attila is still at the police station. But the bigger mistake was advising him to go to the police for questioning in the first place.

  They’ve arrested him.

  For theft and possession of a firearm.

  DAY ONE, MISTAKE ELEVEN

  “Did the police actually find a gun on Attila? ’Cause our school gunman left his weapon behind.”

  “How should I know?” Renée snaps. “Mr. Rupert reported Attila to the police because he saw him on his surveillance camera. And Mr. Rupert’s gun is missing.”

  “Really?” The word comes out on a high note, with all my relief and delight singing through. Mr. Rupert won’t be hunting me down for the missing mailbox. Not if he’s pegged Attila for the crime.

  Renée scowls at me.

  I try again, using a lower, more worried tone. “I mean, really?” We start walking again.

  “Yes. Apparently the camera caught him with the mailbox in his hands.”

  “Gee. He’s lucky the police have him and not Mr. Rupert. Things could have gone way worse.”

  Renée hangs her head.

  “What about the gun?” I ask. “That’s really a serious crime.”

  “I don’t know,” Renée wails.

  Whoops, I shouldn’t have reminded her.

  “There’s going to be so much yelling at home.”

  “You know what? Let’s ask Dad if you can sleep over.”

  That perks Renée up a little.

  When we arrive back at the house, I start making the salad right away to butter Dad up. I even slice olives because I know he likes them. Renée chops onions and cries; I’m not sure if they’re onion tears or not.

  Dad uses two forks to flip over each sweet potato fry, then shoves the baking sheet back in the oven.

  “Would it be all right if Renée stays the night? Her parents have something important to take care of.”

  “In the middle of the week?” Dad says.

  “We can do our homework together.”

  Dad knows how smart Renée is but he just keeps staring at us. His mouth buckles but he does not want to give in, I can tell.

  “My brother’s going to jail,” Renée moans. Her moan and possibly the onion tears finally win Dad over.

  “All right. Call your mother,” he says. “Stephen, why don’t you check that the sheets are on the guest bed. And see if you can find an old T-shirt and some sweatpants for Renée to wear to bed.”

  Renée gets the all-clear from her mom while I scramble through a bag of giveaway clothes in my closet. Then we both head for the guest bedroom, where we see it.

  The painting from the recycling bin — the one with the rabbit and the boy in the snow — as if by magic — hangs over the bed now.

  “Wow. Your dad must have taken it from the curb!”

  I tilt my head, take in the powder-blue sky against the sleepy whiteness of the snow, and inhale deeply. So calming. I release my breath. Then I focus on the charcoal-grey rabbit and the boy looking over the whole scene, almost the way I am. Does it make him feel peaceful, too? The signature scrawled in the right-hand corner catches my eye. It’s hard to make out, but I think I can see a loopy K and O and something that could be a W.

  Renée leans over the bed and squints at that corner now, too. “Kowalski — W. Kowalski,” she reads out loud.

  I tilt my head the other way. “Do you think it’s our hundred-year-old jogger?”

  She straightens and punches my arm. “Stop calling him that! Of course it’s him. His first name is William.”

  “Sorry, it’s just I keep seeing him running and he does look … old.”

  “He’s also Attila’s portfolio tutor. And he’s not even sixty-five. He has osteoporosis.”

  “Really?” Of course she would know exactly why he jogs hunched over. I don’t even know what that word means. “He plays a really intense game of Ping-Pong.”

  “He’s passionate about everything he does. Least that’s what Attila says.” Her face droops as she mentions her brother’s name.

  Luckily, Dad calls up the stairs at that moment. “The sheets on the bed must be the same ones you slept in last time you stayed over.” We hear his footsteps up, then his head appears at the door. “No need to change them … Oh, do you like my new painting?”

  “We love it,” I answer. “We saw it near a recycling bin this morning but didn’t have time to rescue it.”

  “My client threw it out. The Yorkies’ owner.”

  Renée shakes her head. “Throwing out art, that just seems wrong.”

  Dad nods. “She was in charge of redecorating her staff lounge. Says it no longer fit the decor.”

  “You think she could find another place to hang it, in the halls, or …” I hesitate.

  “Give it away,” Renée
finishes my sentence.

  “I agree.” Dad shrugs. “But she seemed almost angry with it. Maybe she has a beef with the painter.”

  “Well,” — I can’t help smiling — “at least you saved it.”

  “It makes the whole room cozy.” Renée smiles, too.

  “So I didn’t find a bookshelf, but this art found a home.” Dad folds his arms across his chest.

  We all look at it for an extra moment.

  When his watch beeps, Dad finally backs away. “Supper’s ready.”

  “Great,” I answer. “I’m starved.”

  We follow Dad downstairs to the kitchen to eat.

  What Dad’s homemade liver bites are to dogs, his meat loaf is to me. Irresistible. I’d sit, stay, shake paw, anything to have it. Maybe he even puts some of the same ingredients in it. Alongside the meat loaf, the sweet potato fries look crisp and perfect. “Dad, you’ve outdone yourself!”

  “Mmm, you make a very good salad, too.” Renée closes her eyes as she tastes another forkful. When she gives a compliment, she really means it.

  “Thanks. It’s the goat cheese. Always works well with the olives. And I find dairy so de-stressing.”

  When we’re done supper, Renée and I work on math problems.

  “I really don’t get estimating. I mean, what’s the point when your cellphone has a calculator?”

  “You’re training your mind, Renée. And like Mrs. Worsley explained, it’s a way of double-checking numbers, in case you press a button twice on your phone or something.”

  “I guess. Can we play Dancing Resolution now?”

  “Dancing Resolution?” I repeat, stalling for time. I want to bowl on the game station instead. It’s probably the only sport I’m good at. My old best friend, Jessie, would have played Wii bowling with me. “You really want to dance?”

  Renée’s eyes moonsize and she nods frantically.

  I have no sense of rhythm and I find following the moves hard; dancing makes me feel stupid. On the other hand, when my Wii bowling ball smashes against those white pins, the sound shouts out that I am a winner.

  But today Renée needs to forget about her troublemaking brother for a while. So instead, I become a manga-style hip-hop avatar with stick-up hair, a muscle shirt, sweatpants, and sneakers.

  She becomes a Wonder Woman–type girl with a long black ponytail, tall white boots, and a short bright-red dress.

  For an hour or so, we could be the coolest kids in the school with our moves. Although we’re probably the geekiest. Renée beats me by a couple hundred points, and by the time Dad reminds us that it’s a school night and we need to get our eight hours sleep, she looks pretty happy. I let her have the bathroom first, thinking we can forget about missing mailboxes, fish, doll corpses, guns, and especially the fact that Attila might be responsible for it all. I lie back in my bed, tired and relaxed. My eyes close.

  It feels like I’ve been asleep for only a few moments when Renée shakes my shoulder.

  It can’t be morning already. “What time is it?” I mumble.

  “Almost midnight,” she whispers.

  “Go back to bed. You can tell me about whatever you want in the morning.”

  Last mistake of the day, it’s a bonus one, number eleven, becomes trying to tell Renée to wait for anything.

  “No, no!” She drags me by the arm. “You have to see this!”

  day two

  DAY TWO, MISTAKE ONE

  Renée drags me to the window. “Look over there!” She points, knocking me in the nose in the process.

  “What am I supposed to be seeing?” I ask, blinking sleep from my eyes.

  “Over there by the parking lot. The kids with the wagon.” She grabs my chin and turns my head.

  Once I look in the right direction, I can make out what looks like three teenagers dressed in black from their caps to their sneakers. One hunches over a wagon. The lights over the lot cast them in a crazy glow. “Oh my gosh. They have Grumpy!”

  “That’s what the statue in their wagon is?” Renée asks.

  “Yeah! Quick, take a picture.”

  Renée grabs for her cellphone, raises it to the window.

  “Grumpy belongs to the Lebels next door,” I explain as she clicks away. “Mrs. Lebel bought him when Mr. Lebel complained about cleaning the pool all the time.”

  Renée checks the screen on her phone. “No good. The flash bounces off the window.” She frowns.

  “Call the cops, then!”

  “No, no. They’ll be gone by time they arrive. Let’s follow them ourselves!”

  Now if we were watching this in a movie, we’d both call out to the actors, “Don’t do it! They’ll kill you!” But instead, because I’m half-asleep, the idea sounds really good. We don’t even change out of our pajamas, figuring there’s no time, really. Not if we want to see where they go.

  “Shh!” I say as we tiptoe downstairs. We slide into our sneakers near the door. I open the closet and we both freeze when the hinge creaks. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, I count in my head. No sign of Dad getting up. I toss Renée her jacket and throw my own over my pajamas.

  I open the front door. No sound, so we dash.

  “We need to go through the backyard if we don’t want to lose them,” Renée says.

  “You mean climb over the fence?” I ask.

  “It’s the fastest way. If we take the sidewalk around the block to the parking lot, they’ll be gone.”

  Again, this sounds like a great idea at 12:15 in the morning. “Okay,” I agree and we run through the backyard to the fence.

  Neither of us is any good at gym, or climbing, for that matter. I try to hoist Renée up by giving her my cupped hands as a step. She makes it to the top of the fence, and then, as she attempts to swing her leg over, gets her sweatpants hooked on a wire.

  My sneakers stick in the wire diamonds, so I have to pull my feet out of them and scramble up in bare feet. I unhook Renée, but then catch my own pajamas. “Ow!” The wire scratches my thigh and my pants tear open as gravity throws me over the rest of the way. Now, the pajama material flaps in the breeze, and I stand on the cold field with no shoes. My teeth chatter as I try to pull my sneakers through the fence. No use. Not happening.

  “Oh, just come on!” Renée says. “They’re getting away.”

  Easy for her to say.

  The grass feels prickly on the soles of my feet in some places and squishy in others. I hop, step, and move as fast as I can, but it’s no use. The three of them have disappeared.

  “Ohhh,” Renée groans. “Where did they go?”

  “The shortcut?” I suggest as I huddle and shiver.

  “Or …”

  “Or what?”

  “Maybe they ducked into one of the houses right across the street.”

  We both stand and stare. From somewhere I hear barking. “The Yorkies?” I ask.

  “Seriously, Stephen. You can tell one bark from another?”

  “No, but they live over there. Mrs. Irwin is an artist,” I add as if that means anything.

  “You think those thieves live with your dad’s client?”

  “I dunno.” But a thought is forming. It’s late at night or early in the morning, depending on how you look at it. The thought feels like a storm cloud gathering in my brain. “By any chance, did you notice if any of them wore a nose ring?”

  “Honestly, no.”

  I shake my head. “So we can’t even know if Star is one of them.”

  “No. But at least Attila can’t be involved! He’s still in custody.”

  “Just because he didn’t steal Grumpy doesn’t mean he didn’t take the mailbox. I mean, he was caught on video.”

  “Yes, but there’s a perfectly good explanation for it all.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “I d
on’t know — I haven’t heard it, yet.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, he won’t say a word to the police, of course. I think he’s protecting someone.” Renée glares at me like she’s daring me to disagree.

  I don’t; what’s the point? “Look, can we just go? I’m freezing. And I still have to get my sneakers from the fence.”

  “Wait a minute, I see something!” She jogs over to the parking lot and picks up a black cap. “One of them dropped their hat.”

  “That’s great,” I say as I start heading back to the fence. “You think the cops will identify the perps with the DNA?”

  “Maybe Troy can sniff them out.”

  I roll my eyes and keep walking.

  “Wait! We’re not climbing back over. You’re injured,” Renée says.

  “What if someone sees us?” I ask as she pulls me the other way.

  “At this hour? Come on. Who would be out now, except maybe another crook?”

  I stop and pull away from her. “That doesn’t make me feel too good.”

  “Oh, don’t worry so much! Let’s just go by Duncaster and Cavendish.”

  You overanalyze everything, Mom always says. I know I do. And worrying is just another way I do that. Maybe I should knit a few rows before I go to bed since that works for Dad.

  It’s late, too, and my brain doesn’t want to work so hard. I end up just following after Renée as she cuts through the parking lot. My feet have developed hard hooves of mud by now so they’re numb. Walking fast keeps me warm.

  This definitely becomes mistake number one of the day.

  By the time we get to the sidewalk, I hear a familiar cannon-shot voice.

  “Hey, you! What are you doing out here?” Mr. Rupert skulks through the parking lot toward us!

  We break into a run.

  DAY TWO, MISTAKE TWO

  Did I mention we’re not good at gym? That’s because not only are we not great at climbing, neither of us can run very fast. Mr. Rupert should be able to catch us. But I don’t look back. It would slow me down, and I’d see him closing in on us and freeze.

  So I pump my arms and legs, hard as I can. The cement of the sidewalk sands the mud from my feet. The wind blows out my pajama pants like sails. “Have to keep running, keep running, keep running,” I tell myself even though I just want to roll up in a ball.