Pieces and Players

by Blue Balliett

  “Well?” Monument Cracken had barked, followed by a “Well?” from Winnifred.

  “I’m not at liberty to share this,” Mrs. Sharpe had said abruptly. “Not yet. I have to think about it.”

  * * *

  On Wednesday morning, Ms. Hussey contacted the five kids with more news: Mrs. Sharpe had felt unwell during the night. Not wanting any of the reporters to get wind of another possible trustee emergency, she’d refused to go to the hospital, insisting that rest at home would help. She had, however, invited the kids to set up a meeting room in the attic of her house, and asked Ms. Hussey to welcome them. In addition, she’d invited the other trustees to come to the house for tea that afternoon.

  “It sounds like a madhouse,” Ms. Hussey told Tommy when she called. “But that’s what she wants. Maybe having your own workspace, away from each other’s homes, will be good. How about it?”

  The five met in front of Mrs. Sharpe’s house at eleven o’clock. A young man in a black jacket lounged on a garden wall across the street, picking intently at a fingernail. Another paced back and forth at the end of the block.

  After all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, the five paid no more attention to these guys than they might have to a couple of crows, which was probably a mistake.

  Ms. Hussey welcomed the kids inside. “Well. What a night we’ve all had,” she said, as if she, too, was still sorting through dreams.

  Mrs. Sharpe’s living room, in the clear light of morning, looked both elegant and inviting. Without her in it, the kids were free to marvel. Flowery patterns hugged sofas and chairs; geometry and a wild array of colors marched underfoot; lace led the windows in a dance of bows and ribbons. Fuzzy velvet, inlaid wood, wallpaper with a drape of vines, and around it all, art. There were small Dutch oil paintings and watercolors, some filled with scenes of everyday life. One boasted a plate of slippery oysters next to fruit and a half-spilled goblet of wine, the crystal so sparkly that the mess didn’t seem to matter. Across the room, a cabinet with a rounded glass front held stacks of porcelain plates and teacups, a silver teapot, and candlesticks.

  A sideways glance told Tommy that the lemonade spilled the other day had soaked in nicely, leaving no mark. He saw Early’s mouth open slightly as she turned first one way and then the other. Tommy noticed small statues he didn’t remember from before. A naked woman was drying her foot, her bottom to the wall … and then on a table next to the window, standing upright, a nude man! Tommy knew this was normal for art, but the very idea of having no clothes was awkward away from a museum, especially around the two girls.

  Zoomy ran his fingers over the lions on Mrs. Sharpe’s chairs as Petra squinted at a thick manuscript-like pile on a side table. Had she read it wrong, or was the title What If He Turns? Ms. Hussey swooped over and covered the fat stack of paper with an art book. Calder had stopped across the room in front of a reproduction of The Geographer, a Vermeer painting that he’d always liked. “Look at this hair,” he called. “Could he be the same man? The one with his back turned?”

  Startled, Petra blurted, “Hey, I just read about him,” and seconds later Mrs. Sharpe appeared at the top of the stairs.

  She wore a long white robe with a matching shawl draped around her head and shoulders. She looks like an old prizefighter, Tommy thought. Or maybe she’s practicing to be a mummy. The wall supported her on one side and a walking stick on the other. The cane was dark wood, topped by a gold animal head. Another lion, Tommy noted. He’d have to remember to tell Zoomy, who couldn’t see that far. It was weird that Mrs. Sharpe and Mrs. Farmer both went in for big cats and art — what else did they share? If Mrs. Sharpe admired Mrs. Farmer and the way she’d lived, were there any other leads in this place? And did all the lions point to something treacherous? After all, a big cat was rarely loyal to those who fed it.

  “Your conference room is upstairs,” Mrs. Sharpe said, her tone more of a snarl than a welcome. “You’ll find research materials for reference.” She stepped backward into a doorway, and there was a sharp click and the grinding sound of — what? A lock?

  As they started upstairs, they heard a remote thump from below. “Oh, that must be Eagle,” Ms. Hussey said lightly. “Mrs. Sharpe recently had a dehumidifier installed in the basement, and it’s been acting up.”

  What a home, Tommy thought to himself. Hidden grown-ups and closed doors everywhere. What did Ms. Hussey see in the old lady, anyway?

  Just then Tommy tripped on the edge of a thick rug in the second floor hallway, and he and Zoomy smacked into a wall. The four of them heard a meow from behind a door down the hall, as if Rat-a-tat had just realized they were in the house.

  “Ambush,” Zoomy said. “Rugs. Hard to walk on fat ones like this.”

  “Yeah,” Tommy said. “Who needs extra trippers in life?”

  “Okay, boys,” Ms. Hussey said in her that’s-enough voice, opening a small door at the end of the hall. “Up you go.” All peered up a narrow stairwell with a latch door at the top. As they started up the stairs single file, Calder in the lead, the five were forced to duck; the ceiling slanted, turning the stairwell into a tunnel.

  “Jeez, I feel like Alice in Wonderland,” Calder muttered.

  “You look like her, too,” Tommy called up.

  So as not to hit his head, Zoomy went on both hands and feet. Early followed.

  Petra was the last to climb the stairs; the thought of the boys tracking her progress from behind was not appealing. When she stepped into the attic, she gasped.

  Large windows bracketed a room creased by oddly angled eaves. Morning light flooded the corners, picking out knotholes on the floor and wallpaper covered with a romp of scallop shells and moon snails, their spirals and fan-shapes somehow cheerful. An old church pew, chairs that were missing a rung or a spindle, and several short stools surrounded an oval table with a ton of legs beneath it. In the middle of the table was a cardboard box neatly labeled FARMER SNAPS, a pile of old art books, a jar of pencils, and a stack of lined legal pads. Worn cushions and quilts peeked from a huge wooden box in the corner, and paperback mysteries and a few old-time games like Monopoly and Yahtzee lined the only vertical wall.

  “Thought you’d like it,” Ms. Hussey said happily. “Eagle and I tidied it for you — and oh! I guess he added the box of loose museum photographs, from a cupboard in Mr. Chase’s house. Mrs. Sharpe sent him over with some of the trustees, and suggested he bring these back for you to look through.”

  Zoomy walked right to the table, patted the sides of the box, and sat down. Just keep watching, he remembered from his dream. Abruptly he bent closer, sniffing the lid.

  “Fresh marker,” he said. “Someone just did this, I can smell it.”

  Ms. Hussey, who had her hand on the door, turned back toward the group, looking confused. “But he’s been downstairs —” she blurted, then stopped.

  “I’ll be back with a snack,” she finished abruptly, whisking out the door and shutting it behind her.

  * * *

  “Okay, let’s clobber the pie, as my grandpa says,” Zoomy ordered, sitting down at the table and pulling the box toward himself.

  “Hold on!” Early said. The others looked at her in surprise. “We should be organized about this. I liked the way Mr. Devlin — I mean, Eagle — gave us that neat Pieces and Players sheet in the museum, and then the five copies of The Truth. It seems like it kind of lined up our brains. How about if we share the dreams before we open the box? Who wants to take notes?”

  “You,” Tommy said promptly.

  Calder grunted, and Zoomy nodded.

  “Every detail,” Petra ordered, “and then we’ll make a list of who was getting a message from what piece. Next, clues or patterns.”

  Tommy saluted. “Aye-aye, General.”

  Petra stuck out her tongue and Zoomy pulled a sandwich bag filled with dilly beans out of his jacket pocket and plopped it down next to the box. “No treats until we’ve gotten our homework done,” he said. “And th
at includes Ms. Hussey’s snack, hodilly-hum.”

  “This sure is a bossy morning,” Calder muttered.

  “So?” Petra snapped. “Who wants to be like the trustees, rattling their jewelry and wobbling their skin at each other and getting nowhere?”

  “Right,” Early said. She pulled one of the legal pads over and got to work.

  Minutes later, her Dream List looked like this:

  —Zoomy: Manet’s Chez Tortoni. This man is writing something that he knows Zoomy will understand one day, something that might be secret.

  —Early: Rembrandt’s A Lady and Gentleman in Black. A chair waits for her in their peaceful home, and they want to hear what she will share. She has no idea what that is, but feels welcome and not threatened.

  —Calder: Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. He’s on the boat, caught in that terrible storm, and realizes that nothing matters but staying alive. Feels he’s got to save the thirteen, but which ones — pieces of art, or others who’re onboard? Note: Counting the figure that looks like Rembrandt, there are fourteen, not thirteen.

  —Tommy: Flinck’s Landscape with an Obelisk. He is happy that Mrs. Farmer saw Chicago in this painting. Suddenly he’s inside it and knows he’ll be finding treasures, perhaps inside what looks like a door in an old tree.

  —Petra: The Concert. She stands in the room and at first no one sees her. The woman singing uncurls the fingers of her hand. Petra sees three Xs that pull her into the painting, on a path that ends beneath the man’s chair. There’s a message from the Lady at the harpsichord. She nods to Petra, looking like a young Mrs. Sharpe: “For art, this building. This comfort.”

  Early read the list aloud then added, “Seems like everyone had a pretty good time but Calder.”

  “Who could have fun in that boat?” he squeaked.

  “Why’d you choose it?” Tommy asked. “Seriously.”

  “It was like they made me pay attention to them — the people who didn’t want to go under, you know?”

  The others nodded. “Yeah,” Tommy said. “I kind of felt like my painting picked me, too.”

  There was silence for a beat as everyone thought about that.

  “Maybe each one of us got the painting that told us we can do this,” Petra said.

  Early tapped her pencil on the pad for a moment, then wrote:

  —understanding a secret

  —waiting

  —fear of death

  —treasures in Chicago

  —art, building, comfort

  “So maybe this is all one big message, but in five parts,” Early suggested.

  “Thirteen words.” Calder nodded.

  “Brought to us by the moon,” Petra added.

  Calder stirred his pentominoes and held up the X. “Of course — here it is. The most difficult piece to fit in any rectangle, and the Farmer Museum is a rectangle …”

  “There were three Xs on those napkins that Ms. Hussey gave us at that first meeting,” Tommy said. “Like a symbol of something, and they had a snarling lion on either side.”

  “I’ve been noticing a bunch of crazy echoes around me, sort of like coincidence but not random enough,” Petra said. “Like when I saw a manuscript with the title What If He Turns? on a table in the living room just now, and Calder immediately said something about the man in The Geographer looking like the man whose back was turned in The Concert. I know he didn’t see what I saw. Or like the Xs in the painting being like the Xs on the napkin. Or the full moon turning into the collar on the woman in Early’s dream.”

  “Maybe the pieces we need to recognize have identities, like pentomino pieces. Identities that’re out of place.” Calder looked around at the group.

  “Hmm,” Tommy said. “You and I were talking about the men with black jackets after we saw five of them that morning we met in Powell’s — and then we saw five crows land on a tree. And Eagle was reading Mother Goose to Jubie and then characters from the rhymes kept popping into our heads when we went downtown with Ms. Hussey. Plus, crows might as well be blackbirds. But it could all be silly, you know?”

  “Not if there’s enough of it,” Petra said.

  “I wish we could make it work with the F-A hint,” Early said. “Maybe if we put that next to our dreams …” Her voice trailed off as she doodled Fs and As down the margin of her pad.

  Zoomy banged the table. “Scaz! What if F-A really is for Farmer, like we thought at first, and the stolen art wants us to find it and bring it back to its comfortable building!”

  “Well, duh,” Tommy said, but not in an unfriendly way.

  “Or maybe it’s hidden in the building,” Early said.

  “Yeah, but that means no one stole it!” Calder pointed out.

  “Maybe they stole it but got scared when the window banged, and stuffed it in a closet,” Early suggested. “Things go wrong, you know? And there must be a ton of hidey-holes in there.”

  “Maybe,” Petra said, jamming her hair behind both ears, “William Swift Chase had an F-A message slip into his mind, the way we’ve gotten messages from these dreams. Maybe it was the art talking, not him. It might’ve just happened because he was about to die.” Petra bit her lip. “Not that we’re about to die … Oh, never mind. Let’s open the box.”

  The paintings, sculpture, carvings, and miscellaneous treasures, photographed in happier times, made the building look endlessly colorful and fresh. Windows and doors stood open, and the courtyard was awash in flowers. There were snapshots of Mrs. Farmer beaming at the camera from the chair in front of her Vermeer, the beanbag men peeking over her shoulders; Mrs. Farmer welcoming someone who looked like the Queen of England to the museum; Mrs. Farmer shaking hands with a small boy in a soldier’s uniform in front of one of the massive fireplaces while flames danced behind them.

  “Such a place.” Early sighed. “Imagine living there.”

  “And not being bothered all the time by noisy family.” Petra sighed, too.

  “If we can get back in the building — and maybe that’s what your message was about, Petra — the spirit of the place will —” Early broke off.

  “Tell us more? Snap off our noses?” Tommy finished for her. He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “There’s something about that visit that I haven’t told you guys.”

  Just as he spoke, the kids heard Ms. Hussey’s voice, high and frightened:

  “Quick! Help me! It’s Mrs. Sharpe!”

  The five flung open the attic door to find Rat-a-tat curled just outside. He was on his feet in less than a second, pouring down the stairs in a furry blur.

  “He was listening!” Tommy hissed as the five hurried down, reaching the second floor just as Eagle bounded up from below. They found Ms. Hussey kneeling on the floor of an open bedroom, Mrs. Sharpe lying next to her. The older woman’s eyes were closed, and she seemed half her normal size.

  She looks like Goldman when he fell on the floor that time, Tommy thought to himself. Except that Goldman flipped back and forth, and she definitely isn’t moving.

  “She fainted,” Ms. Hussey said. “But she’s breathing regularly. I know this has happened before when she’s overtired, and she’s said it isn’t serious — just low blood pressure. Still, I think we should take her to the hospital.”

  Eagle nodded. “I’ll pull my van up in front, and maybe by then she’ll be awake and you and I can help her in.”

  He dashed down the stairs as Ratty strolled in. Zoomy leaned close. “Still got his collar,” he muttered.

  “Oh, poor Mrs. Sharpe,” murmured Ms. Hussey. “This has all been overwhelming. Too much stress.”

  The kids sat around awkwardly, trying not to be too obvious about checking out Mrs. Sharpe’s bedroom. She had a huge canopied bed covered with a mountain of tasseled pillows. A Vermeer-like rug, all royal blues and reds, covered the entire floor.

  “She got up to show me something over there.” Ms. Hussey waved an arm toward the corner of the room, a wall near a dormer window. “Then she blacked out.�
�

  “It’s The Concert!” Petra gasped, feeling as though she might pass out as well. She had a dizzying moment when questions flashed like lightning through her mind. Had Mrs. Sharpe hung Vermeer’s painting in her bedroom, and did Ms. Hussey know it? If so, who had stolen it from the Farmer? Was it possible that the trustees actually had taken the thirteen pieces of art and scattered them around in their houses, pretending to the outside world that they’d been stolen? Was that what Mr. Cracken and the others had been up to? Had she and Early blundered on one of the days when they gathered most of the art in one place, in order to —

  “It’s a beautiful copy. An almost perfect duplication.” Ms. Hussey smiled sadly, not noticing Petra’s strange expression, which was a mash-up of extreme relief and deep disappointment. “She told me once that her husband bought this painting for her in Delft, the city Vermeer lived in, many years ago. He told her it was the best copy of a Vermeer he’d ever seen and that she looked just like the young woman playing the harpsichord.”

  Petra gasped again and looked around at the other four. “I knew that,” she said quietly, sinking down on a nearby chair. “It was in my dream.”

  “Mrs. Sharpe really looked that good?” Tommy asked, studying the painting closely.

  Calder elbowed him. “Whadda you think you’ll look like in fifty or sixty years?” he asked.

  Even more of a toad, Tommy thought, but wasn’t about to say it.

  “Lemme see,” Zoomy piped up, turning away from the painting to bend over Mrs. Sharpe. “I’m good on faces up close, and I know that painting by heart now. Yup, that’s the same big forehead, I’d recognize it anywhere.”

  Ms. Hussey cleared her throat. “I don’t know if she can hear you …” she murmured.

  Eagle’s steps clumped upstairs. “Okay — I think it’s best if I scoop her up,” he said, bending down. “That’s right, cover her with that light blanket,” he told Ms. Hussey. “Can you tuck it under her feet and then across my shoulder?”