Pieces and Players

by Blue Balliett

  Calder nodded, and Tommy felt left out. Calder and Petra had found the stolen Vermeer painting she mentioned and had returned it to the world. They had actually held it. Tommy hadn’t been in Chicago at the time, which still felt unfair. He looked down and picked at a hangnail.

  “Think those three grown-ups are having a good time?” Zoomy asked suddenly.

  “I think the women are,” Early said. “And the man’s a mystery.”

  Ms. Hussey nodded and sighed. “A mystery is right. This whole thing is a horrible mystery. I believe Mrs. Sharpe would happily — no, joyfully! — give her life if this painting could be returned tomorrow.”

  Tommy shifted in his seat. Hard to imagine the old lady doing anything joyfully, he thought to himself. Much less having a husband. He practically gagged at the thought of Mrs. Sharpe being involved in any romantic activity, then tried to get the thought out of his head by examining his sneakers.

  “Don’t you think, Tommy?” Ms. Hussey finished, and Tommy could feel himself blushing.

  “Huh?” he asked.

  She sighed. “I’m not trying to put you on the spot. I’m just reminding you guys to pay attention to the right stuff whenever you’re in the same place at the same time. In teamwork of this kind, all progress can depend on it. Mrs. Sharpe is giving you each an information packet, just to get you started. You’ll find one of the short histories of the museum and a color printout of what I showed you on the FBI website, meaning a photograph of each stolen item. Thirteen pages. Soak up these images. Look at them before you go to sleep. Look at them when you wake up. Live with them. See if they speak to you.”

  Ms. Hussey sat back and beamed. “You five, I’ll bet, are the first kids to tackle this. Good luck! And, Early and Zoomy: Welcome to Hyde Park and to this awesome team. Don’t be afraid of Mrs. Sharpe. She can sound a bit frightening, but she’s really a pussycat.”

  This last was followed by a faint meow. Ms. Hussey smiled and murmured, “Well, hello! The neighborhood is full of cats. They’re everywhere in Hyde Park.”

  Yeah, and not pussycats like these two, Tommy thought to himself, glancing at the snarling lions on his chair.

  * * *

  The five left the house ten minutes later, each with a large, sealed envelope in hand. A plan had been made to get together on Saturday, the first day of their weeklong spring break. Ms. Hussey had asked them to meet her on the street outside the Farmer Museum. Mrs. Sharpe would, by then, have gotten permission for the kids to visit the crime scene. The old lady and the other trustees were meeting there at the same time, which seemed less than great. Tommy wondered if there was anyone in Chicago who didn’t do what Mrs. Sharpe asked.

  Early lived and went to school in neighboring Woodlawn, which was a short walk from Mrs. Sharpe’s house. Zoomy lived with his grandparents in a small town in southern Michigan, Three Oaks, and his grandma had brought him to the meeting today. Mrs. Sharpe had invited them both to stay in a bed and breakfast down the street when they returned on Saturday.

  Gam, as Zoomy called her, had shown up at the door just as the kids were getting ready to leave.

  “It’s great to have you on our team,” Tommy found himself saying to Zoomy, maybe because his grandmother was standing right there, but maybe for some other reason. Tommy raised his arm for a fist bump. Zoomy was confused for a second, then bumped him back.

  Tommy, Petra, Calder, and Early watched with interest as Gam and Zoomy headed toward an ancient pickup truck. Gam was cozy, relaxed, and had comfortable eyes. Zoomy, they realized, could see a short distance around him, but not far at all. They could hear Gam’s voice saying, “Curb coming up, now straight ahead …” as they walked side by side.

  The scene in Mrs. Sharpe’s living room suddenly seemed unreal.

  “Is — well, not to be rude, but is Mrs. Sharpe kind of crazy?” Early asked. “And is she on the right side of the law? She said something about a ‘sting.’ I can’t get dragged into anything bad — my family’s had enough trouble.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that word, too,” Tommy said quickly. “She’s an old wreck, probably thinking about bees and the bzzzzt shock of a sting, you know?”

  “Huh,” Early said.

  “I think she likes to sound romanti — I mean, dramatic,” Tommy added. “One of those ’atics.”

  “How about fanatic?” Calder said.

  “Yeah,” Petra agreed. “She’s kind of obsessed, but not in a bad way. If Ms. Hussey trusts her completely on this, I’m sure we can, too. And Mrs. Sharpe is truly a Vermeer fanatic. The world only has thirtysome of his paintings, and this is the only one that’s missing. Mrs. Sharpe understands that Vermeer’s work is not only irreplaceable but also kind of alive, and I love that about her. Those people in his paintings breathe. Calder and I rescued A Lady Writing a few years ago, and I still feel like the woman in that painting says things to me sometimes. Like a dream, but not.”

  Early nodded. “I hear you. When I was hunting for my dad last year, some of Langston Hughes’s poetry popped into my head at tough moments, as if someone was whispering clues to me. Like Langston came alive and helped me out.”

  Petra looked at Early with new interest. “Yeah, art can be weird that way — it can step right into your life. Mrs. Sharpe knows that, too. She scares me sometimes, but underneath it all she’s —”

  “Thirsty for blood,” Tommy said quickly, adding, “Nawww, just kidding,” when everyone laughed.

  “Huh,” Early said. “I think I’ve met people like that. Life made them prickly and then they try to frighten everyone. But that’s not the whole picture.”

  “Exactly.” Petra nodded. “And Mrs. Sharpe has some powerful reasons. Her husband’s murder and all.”

  “Well,” Early said, zipping her jacket under her chin and stamping her feet. “It’s getting late. And cold. Gotta get going.” She glanced around as if half ready for something dangerous. “See you guys.”

  She turned south as Calder and Petra headed east to their street and Tommy west to his apartment.

  “Hey!” Calder called out over his shoulder. “Zoomy went north, which means we’re covering all four directions.”

  “Good sign!” Early and Petra called back at the same moment.

  Tommy chuckled loudly and waved one hand as if to say, I already noticed the directions stuff.

  It had been a while, but he knew he’d get back in the game.

  Tommy and his mom lived with Goldman, who had been part of the family for many years. Goldman just got wiser and more orange with time, and Tommy loved giving him surprises to investigate.

  Sprinkling a pinch of fish food into his bowl, Tommy peered in just as Goldman did a quick whish around the territory.

  “Nothing much today, old buddy,” Tommy said. “Nothing new but us trying to solve the hugest art crime in US history. Gotta figure this one out. And it’s all tied into the nutcase down the street.” A shiver ran down his back, as if he shouldn’t have said that. “The old lady,” he muttered. “You know, Mrs. Sharpe. And she wants us three to work with two other kids, although I bet I’m the only really good finder.”

  Goldman swiveled one eye in Tommy’s direction and flipped his tail. He opened his mouth, sucking in some food. He spun around, fixing Tommy with the other eye.

  “What?” Tommy asked.

  Goldman dove for the bottom and then shot straight up to the top, scattering gravel. “Okay, I admit it doesn’t look all bad.” Tommy described Zoomy and Early. “But five is a weird number.”

  The fish shrugged his fins and swirled behind a large china dragon. “Something to do, you’re right.” Tommy watched Goldman looking carefully at the dragon’s spikes. He seemed to be counting them.

  “Why was spilling good, though? What was Mrs. Sharpe talking about?”

  At the word spilling, Goldman shot madly around the bowl. “Oops,” Tommy said quickly, remembering the terrible day a couple of years ago when Goldman’s world got smashed in a break-in and he spent som
e time on the floor.

  He placed one knuckle against the glass and Goldman came over and bumped it with his nose. Tommy then opened the envelope Ms. Hussey had given him and held each picture up to Goldman’s bowl.

  “Take your time, man,” he said. “Check this out.” Goldman was calm about each image except the Rembrandt storm at sea. At first sight, his eyes got even bigger and he darted behind some weeds at the back of his bowl. He stayed there for some time, the greens quivering.

  Tommy apologized. “I’ll never show you that one again. Sorry, old buddy.”

  Goldman returned when Tommy showed him the Flinck landscape. It had lots of peaceful trees that looked almost like seaweed. By the time Tommy turned on the family computer and typed in Farmer Hiest, Goldman was following with one eye.

  The browser corrected Tommy’s spelling, and he began to read. His mouth fell open — experts were speculating that the stolen art was worth well over 500 million dollars.

  “Man,” Tommy muttered.

  The hugeness of this adventure was beginning to sink in.

  * * *

  On his way back to Michigan, Zoomy talked to his best friend, Lorrol, on the family cell phone. She had moved to Boston a few months earlier, but they still called each other a lot. He told her about the meeting and described the theft as happening in some kind of garden place in Chicago, not far from Hyde Park.

  “Dang, Zoomy!” she shouted, so loud that his grandma could hear over the roar of the truck. “That’s the Sarah Chase Farmer Museum! And that’s the most tragic and awful art theft in the world! You are so lucky!” Lorrol said that every kid in Boston knew about the Farmer heist.

  Zoomy’s eyes were blank, but he smiled happily at the windshield. It was hard to imagine either the museum or the coming investigation with the other kids, but the fist bump — something Lorrol had taught him — with the boy named Tommy! Now, that was a first.

  * * *

  Early Pearl’s home was a ten-minute walk south from Hyde Park. She lived in a small apartment with her mom, dad, and little brother. Her dad was going to school to be a librarian while working at the huge public library downtown. Her mom helped in the cafeteria in her school and her brother was in first grade. They had lived in that building all her life except for a few terrible months a couple of years ago when lots of bad stuff had happened, her dad had disappeared, and they’d had to leave their home. She didn’t like to think about it.

  Her mom and dad had checked out Mrs. Sharpe’s invitation to visit. Thinking it might be exciting for Early to meet some other detectives and make a friend or two in Hyde Park, they helped her plan a safe walking route from home to Mrs. Sharpe’s house. Ever since her family’s terrible adventure, she’d had fears she couldn’t shake, and didn’t seem to have as many friends at school.

  On the way home that afternoon, Early noticed an unfamiliar man in a black leather jacket sitting on a bench in the Midway, an open area with grass and trees between the neighborhoods of Hyde Park and Woodlawn. Cell phone in hand, he glanced up casually as she scurried by.

  That evening, Early looked up the words heinous and infallible, and entered them in the family Word Book. The Pearls collected words the way other people collected coffee mugs or T-shirts. Next came sting. Webster’s gave many meanings, all having to do with a sharp, quick pain. You could be stung by insects or stung by words. The final definition was “an elaborate confidence game,” especially one “worked by undercover police in order to catch criminals.” Early felt a sudden jolt of panic and had to remind herself that for most people, setting up a sting simply meant playing a trick on someone in order to win something.

  Not wanting to worry her parents, she decided to stay away from sting and didn’t write it down. But why would Mrs. Sharpe use this word?

  Of course, the Farmer heist was giving those who loved this art the sting of a lifetime …

  * * *

  Walking north on the Harper Avenue block where both Calder and Petra lived, the two friends were quiet. Petra thought about Early and Zoomy, and what a strange group the five of them made. Calder thought about his pentominoes. When he stirred them around in his pocket, he sometimes came up with an unexpected answer to a problem. Just now, the Z and C had popped into his hand together. He pulled them out, palm up.

  “Huh. Z for Zoomy?” Petra asked.

  “Maybe this is Z minus C, the twenty-sixth letter minus the third, which equals twenty-three. Another prime, but why?”

  “You are a fabulous weirdo, Calder,” Petra said, and high-fived her friend. Calder was now a foot taller than Petra, which meant she held her hand up at shoulder level. She got a whiff of sweaty pits when they smacked palms. Someone should tell Calder about deodorant.

  Her stomach growled. “See you, Calder,” she muttered as she hurried up her steps, hoping her mom had made macaroni and cheese for dinner.

  “Later,” he said, the pentominoes back in his pocket. Walking away, he pulled out the T.

  T for trap … but why not T for theft? He looked up and down his street.

  * * *

  Calder phoned Petra that night, after checking in with Tommy.

  “It adds up in several ways,” he said, without even saying hello.

  “What are you talking about, Calder?” Petra asked, over a bloodcurdling scream. “Cut it out!” she shouted. “Oops, sorry to yell in your ear.”

  Calder didn’t seem to have noticed. “The twenty-third letter in the alphabet is W. That’s what I got when I subtracted the Z pentomino from the C, remember? But the C could also be a U, which has a value of twenty-one. If you subtract twenty-one from twenty-six instead, you get five. That’d be us kids. If you spin the W upside down, it could be an M, the thirteenth letter — and possibly a thirteenth pentomino, like the thirteen things that were stolen. It’s as if the primes that keep appearing fit the crime: three, five, thirteen …”

  “Hey, that’s Mrs. Sharpe’s rhyme.” Petra clicked her fingers. “A prime crime, just in time.”

  “Then there’s W for watch and M for murder,” Calder went on. “Plus T for trap. Came out of my pocket after you left. Maybe Early had a point. We should be extra careful. I’ll let Tommy know,” he added, and hung up the phone.

  The three were so used to one another that they didn’t have to explain much. Petra realized that might change with Zoomy and Early on the team.

  Tommy whispered the words to Goldman that night: Watch. Murder. Trap. His buddy froze for a moment in the center of his bowl, then dipped and spun neatly in place, as if giving a careful message about the clues.

  * * *

  That night in the neighborhoods of Hyde Park and nearby Kenwood, thirteen people lay awake. Five were kids, all around thirteen years old.

  One of the adults puzzled over the pileup of primes — numbers that couldn’t be divided by anything but themselves and one. There was the age of the kids, their number, the one younger adult, the number of stolen items and then the number of adults responsible for the Farmer Museum: 13, 5, 1, 13, 7. The numbers drifted and bumped in the dark.

  Down the street, another grown-up worried that this investigation could go very, very wrong.

  Of the six remaining adults, only an old man watched the moon rise between dark, leafless trees. He pulled the covers up to his ears. There was a face on the moon tonight and it looked worried. As if it were watching him. No, reproaching him.

  Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon. Funny how soothing those old nursery rhymes could be.

  He’d been rash and careless about much in his life, and might do things differently if given a second chance. He hoped the blackbirds would behave; they’d be fools to do anything else. When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing.

  Just at that moment of worry, he felt a burning pain race through the left side of his body. Help! Oh, help me! He felt himself spinning backward in time, to the day he’d fallen into a hornet’s nest as a child.

  About the
bush, Willie,

  About the beehive,

  About the bush, Willie,

  I’ll meet thee alive.

  Groping for the bedside light, his hand fell short. He was alone in the house and suddenly filled with a deadly clarity.

  He’d been stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid! His last thought, before blanking out, was an apology.

  So sorry … you trusted me …

  Tommy’s mom opened her newspaper the next morning and gasped. She spun the laptop sideways so Tommy could see. Cold cereal bulging in both cheeks, he read: William Swift Chase, Director of Farmer Museum, Rushed to Hospital.

  “Jeez,” he said, a glob of wet Cheerios landing on the table. “The old lady didn’t tell us anything about the other trustees. Can you read it, Mom?”

  Goldman swam closer and Tommy stopped chewing so as to hear.

  “The man who is both the director and head of the board of trustees of the Sarah Chase Farmer Museum is now in intensive care, having suffered a stroke. Mr. Chase is the great-nephew of Mrs. Farmer … ya-de-ya, one of the other six trustees, Carolyn Crunch, states this has been a ‘desperately upsetting’ week. None of the others were available for comment.”

  Tommy’s mom shook her head. “Such a terrible thing to happen, I still can’t believe it … and I’m so glad you five are going to jump in. They need you. Hey, listen to these names, Tommy — they’re marvelous. The trustees are Mr. Chase, Ms. Crunch, Mr. Hershel F. Hurts, Mr. Monument Cracken, Ms. Winnifred Whacker, Mr. Hurley Stabbler, and then your Mrs. Sharpe. What a lineup.” His mother smiled. “And they all live in this area, either in Hyde Park or near the Farmer Museum, in Kenwood. You’d better believe they all have money and connections. Trustees almost always do.”

  “I’m not sure I get why they’re all fighting — to move or not move the museum, that stuff,” Tommy said, swallowing. “I mean, I was doing research after our meeting yesterday but …” He shrugged.