Three voices in perfect harmony shout: “You said what?”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I say. “I love Elizabeth. She’s just … unpredictable. If Pruneface says something crazy—which, let’s face it, is almost guaranteed—Elizabeth might explode or something.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it, too,” Margaret admits. “Here’s the situation: Father Julian doesn’t want to confront her about the painting, because he’s afraid that she’ll think that the family is accusing her and Phillip of something—”
“Something that she basically admitted to,” I say.
Margaret nods. “True. But he’s afraid of pushing her into selling it to the Svindahls. If that happens, we’ll never see it again. So we have to do something—and fast. We’re going to borrow Prunella’s painting for a while.”
Now it’s Leigh Ann’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Borrow?”
“Exactly,” confirms Margaret. “We get it checked out, and if it’s a fake, we return it unharmed. But if the painting is the real thing, which is likely when you consider that the Svindahls have already made her an offer, it’s totally up to Father Julian to decide what to do. He has the will, which proves who the rightful owner is, and on top of that, there are witnesses who were there back when Phillip swiped and then later returned the painting—although it seems pretty clear he wasn’t returning the original at all. He had replaced it with one he obviously knew was forged. Legally, I think Father Julian is on pretty solid ground.”
“Sounds good to me,” says Becca, who does not seem at all concerned with the legality of what we’re planning. “When do we make our move?”
Margaret looks around the table at each of us. “Today. To borrow one of Becca’s favorite expressions, Prunella Scroggins is going down.”
“Like a rotten tree in a hurricane,” Becca adds. “I like it.”
“And if it means taking the Svindahls with her, then so be it,” adds Margaret.
“So, do you have a plan worked out for the switch?” I ask.
“Ninety-nine percent.”
“What about the other one percent?”
“We improvise. Even Sherlock Holmes has to deal with unforeseen problems. Part of being a good detective is being able to think on your feet. Problem number one: we have to get ourselves and the fake painting into Prunella’s apartment. Legally, I should add. No break-ins.”
“Why does everyone look at me when she says that?” Rebecca says, suddenly full of mock indignation. She’s plenty proud of her reputation.
“I wonder,” I say.
“And then part two: we have to switch the paintings on the wall and get the real one out of her apartment, all without her seeing,” Margaret adds.
“Eh, that doesn’t sound so bad,” Leigh Ann says.
“Unless she has an alarm system,” I warn. “Or a mean dog. These things always have a way of being more complicated than they look. And it seems like I’m the one who always ends up hiding under an altar or locked in a closet.”
Margaret smiles at the memory of our shared experience under the altar in St. Veronica’s when we were looking for the Ring of Rocamadour.
“So, just how do we get in?” Becca asks.
“Through the front door,” says Margaret. “But you’re not going to have to pick the lock, Rebecca. Prunella’s going to open it for us.”
“Like when we pretended to be reporters for the school paper so we could check out those Russian ladies in the apartment over the violin shop?” Leigh Ann asks.
“Romanian ladies,” Margaret corrects. “But yes, something like that. Something more … original, though. Something truly inspired. Something that will have Miss Prunella eating out of our hands. Our grimy little Polish/French/Chinese/Dominican American immigrant hands. Hee hee.”
“Uh-oh,” I say, almost feeling a twinge of pity for Prunella. You don’t want to be on the bad side of somebody as smart as Margaret. It is not pretty. “What are you thinking, Margaret?”
She starts to unfold a sheet of bright orange paper and motions for us to huddle closely around her. “I really don’t want anyone else to see this. It might be hard to explain.”
REAL NEW YORKERS UNITE!
JOIN THE LEAGUE OF ORDINARY AND
ORIGINAL NEW YORKERS FOR BOLD IDEAS NOW
ARE YOU TIRED OF WATCHING THE BEST JOBS GO TO
IMMIGRANTS INSTEAD OF REAL NEW YORKERS?
ARE YOU TIRED OF HEARING LANGUAGES
OTHER THAN ENGLISH SPOKEN IN NEW YORK?
DO YOU FEEL THAT NO ONE IN GOVERNMENT
LISTENS TO REAL NEW YORKERS ANYMORE?
ARE OUR OFFICIALS OUT OF TOUCH WITH
REAL NEW YORKERS?
IF YOU ANSWERED YES TO ANY OF THE QUESTIONS, JOIN US!
IT IS TIME FOR BOLD IDEAS NOW!!!
BOLD IDEA #1: SPECIAL RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES
FOR REAL AMERICANS.
BOLD IDEA #2: ABOLISH ALL OF THE SO-CALLED PRIDE
PARADES IN THE CITY. IF YOU’RE NOT PROUD OF BEING
AMERICAN, WHY ARE YOU HERE?
BOLD IDEA #3: WHY ARE WE GIVING AWAY CITIZENSHIP WHEN
PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR IT?
COME TO OUR NEXT MEETING TO LEARN MORE AND SHARE YOUR
BOLD IDEAS!
WE NEED YOU!
“Why, Margaret Wrobel,” I say. “I had no idea you were so …”
“Crazy?” suggests Becca. “What are you going to do with this?”
“This,” Margaret says, waving the flyer in Becca’s face, “is like peanut butter in a mousetrap. And Prunella’s the mouse.”
“More like a rat,” Leigh Ann says.
“We knock on her door and shove this in her face, and I guarantee you she’ll invite us in. People like her are dying for somebody to listen to their wacky ranting and raving. I’ll bet she has ideas that will put my made-up ones to shame.”
I have to laugh, because the whole thing is so preposterous. It’s hard to imagine four less likely candidates for an organization like the one Margaret created. Let’s examine the evidence, shall we? Exhibit A: Margaret Wrobel. Born in Poland. Spoke Polish before she spoke English. Her parents still speak more Polish than English at home. Exhibit B: Rebecca Chen. Second-generation Chinese American. Exhibit C: Leigh Ann Jaimes, who is from the Dominican Republic. And Exhibit D: me. Mother American-born of Welsh/Irish/German ancestry; father born in France (gasp!). Out of eight parents, my mom is the only one with more than two generations under her American belt. Face it, we’re a mini-United Nations. And to somebody like Prunella Scroggins, we are the enemy.
“You guys are missing the best part,” says Margaret. “Look at the name of the organization again.”
“ ‘The League of Ordinary and Original New Yorkers for Bold Ideas Now,’ ” reads Leigh Ann. “Is this for real, or did you make it up?”
“LOONYBIN!” I shout, which earns me a puzzled look from Mr. Eliot, who is walking past.
“Patience, Miss St. Pierre,” he says, not missing a beat. “You’ll get there one day.”
“I’m sure I’ll see you there, too!” I say, but darn it, he’s already inside his classroom.
Meanwhile, Becca and Leigh Ann have spotted the acronym.
Becca snickers. “Loony bin. Pretty good, Margaret. Anybody who thinks these are good ideas belongs in one, that’s for sure.”
Leigh Ann shakes her head in wonder. “You’re a funny kid, Margaret. How did you think of this?”
Margaret shrugs modestly. “I don’t know; it just comes to me. I figured the easiest way into her apartment is if she trusts us. We already have an in—Father Julian. That should get us up to her door. He’s going to call her today and tell her that we’re friends of his, and when he learned of our interest in, um, politics, he suggested we meet her. When that door opens and we start yakking about how bad immigrants are for the country, she’ll be all over us. She’ll probably get out her checkbook.”
“Back
up a second. We’re gonna talk about what?” Leigh Ann asks.
I put my arm around her shoulders. “Easy, Leigh Ann. It’s all part of the plan. The end justifies the means, right?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “If she starts talking bad about Dominicans or Jamaicans, I might have to justify her one right on the nose. Oops, sorry, Sophie. Didn’t mean to …”
Almost involuntarily, I touch my nose, pressing on the spot where Livvy broke it until I wince from the pain. “It’s okay—it’s almost healed.”
The first-period bell rings, and Livvy and her Klack-pack (of wolves?) stroll past. I smile to myself at the memory of the giggling fit that we had about my nose, and wonder if she’ll acknowledge me in class. Despite everything we said in that cold, dark elevator, two days is a lifetime in the universe of seventh graders.
Anything can happen.
If you listen closely, you can hear that Twilight Zone music in the background—things get that strange
In Mr. Eliot’s class, we’re discussing another short story by Saki, whose real name, I learned, is Hector Hugh Munro. (I don’t know about you, but I like the sound of Hector Hugh Munro; I can’t imagine why he felt compelled to use a pen name. That, and I’m generally suspicious of people who go by only one name. It’s entirely too presumptuous.) “The Open Window” is about a young girl who entertains herself by telling one outrageous lie after another to a visitor who is a real nervous Nellie type, and scares the poor guy half to death.
When Mr. Eliot calls on me, I say, “It’s an okay story, but it just doesn’t have that, you know, totally butt-kicking ending of ‘The Interlopers.’ ”
Margaret’s eyebrows rise at my answer. She would throw herself under the wheels of the 6 train before she’d use an adjective like “butt-kicking.”
Mr. Eliot looks in Livvy’s direction. “How about you, Miss Klack? Do you agree with Miss St. Pierre’s assessment of the story?”
Curious—him calling on Livvy right after me. I wonder if he has already heard about the elevator ordeal, and that’s why he’s picking on us. That would be so like him. I resist the temptation to turn around and look at Livvy, but I hear the familiar annoyed sigh of someone who would rather be left alone.
“Yeah, I mean, no. It was better than ‘The Interlopers’—that one just wasn’t very realistic. True enemies don’t just become friends like that.” She snaps her fingers—inches behind my head—for emphasis.
Was that a not-so-subtle message for me?
“Interesting point,” Mr. Eliot says. “Sophie, care to rebut?”
“Well, I think it is possible. Especially if they, you know, share some kind of, um, traumatic experience.” I know Livvy is looking right at the back of my head, and I can feel my ears turning red.
Leave it to Margaret, who seems to be sensing my discomfort, to change the subject by pointing out something in the story that I (and everyone else in the class) had completely missed.
“I agree with Sophie that maybe ‘The Open Window’ doesn’t have that same kind of ‘wow’ ending, but the story itself is still full of irony. The girl’s name is Vera—and well, to me, that just says it all.”
There’s a moment of silence as everyone waits for the punch line.
Finally, a befuddled Leigh Ann asks, “Says what, exactly?”
“Vera. From the Latin veritas, meaning ‘truth.’ Get it? Her name is Vera, but she’s practically incapable of telling the truth. She’s pathological. It’s incredibly ironic.”
The rest of us mere mortals stare openmouthed, first at her and then at Mr. Eliot, who’s looking at Margaret like a proud parent.
“Well played, Miss Wrobel.” He writes the word veritas on the board.
Behind me, I hear Livvy mutter, “Good Lord. Latin? Is there anything she doesn’t know?”
I’ll let you know when I find something, Liv.
After school, I find a strange package sitting on my shelf in the locker that I share with Margaret. It’s not at all like Margaret to put something of hers on my shelf; we have strict rules about whose stuff goes where.
When Margaret squeezes in next to me to pack up her book bag for the night, she notices it, too.
“That yours?” she asks.
“Nope. I thought it was yours.”
“You’re saying you didn’t put it there?”
“Nope.”
“Nope, you didn’t put it there, or nope, that’s not what you’re saying?”
“You’re making my brain hurt,” I say as I lift the package out. It’s the size and weight of a book, wrapped in plain brown kraft paper. My name has been printed diagonally across the paper. “That’s the same printing as on all the other boxes.”
We both look around at the noisy crush of girls that surrounds us.
“Open it,” Margaret commands.
I peel off the paper to find a hardcover copy of The Secret Garden, which happens to be one of my all-time favorite books. Right away I notice that this isn’t just any old copy; it is my copy, the very same one that disappeared when I was in the fifth grade. My mom bought it for me in London, and it has a little sticker that reads “£5.99”—which I left on because I thought that having a foreign price tag was just the coolest thing ever. I touch the sticker affectionately and open to the inside cover, where my own handwriting confirms: “This book is the property of Sophie Jeanette St. Pierre.”
“Is that—” Margaret starts.
“The one I lost,” I say, hugging it to my chest. “I remember I had it with me in school for a book report. I left it on my desk when we went down for lunch, and when we came back, it was gone.”
“So how did it get into our locker two years later? Have you told anyone our combination?”
“I don’t think so. Except Becca and Leigh Ann, of course. But they wouldn’t … I mean, there’s no way one of them took it. We didn’t even know Leigh Ann then.”
Before she can respond, I have a moment of panic. I lunge into the locker and dig into my jacket pockets. My fingers wrap around my iPod and phone, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “Whew! My stuff’s still there.”
“Yeah, everything else looks normal,” Margaret says. “Save the paper it was wrapped in. There might be clues.”
“Clues? Where? For what?” Becca asks.
Leigh Ann pokes her head into the huddle. “What did I miss?”
I show them The Secret Garden. “Somebody swiped this from my desk in fifth grade, and now it suddenly appears in my locker. You guys—you’re not messing with me, are you, sending me all this stuff?”
Becca shakes her head. “Scout’s honor.”
“Never seen it before,” adds Leigh Ann.
“Okay, this is officially creepy,” I announce. “We need a new lock, Marg.”
“I’ll check with Sister Eugenia tomorrow,” Margaret says. “She’ll let us trade this one in. In the meantime, don’t leave anything valuable inside.” She pauses, rubbing her hands together in anticipation. “So, is everybody ready to pay Miss Prunella a visit?”
First stop: the red door of Elizabeth’s townhouse. Father Julian left his father’s copy of the painting with her, and Elizabeth, with the help of a friend at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has confirmed our suspicions. It is definitely a fake; there is no underpainting. They didn’t have time to do a full analysis of the paint, but it doesn’t appear to be the same kind Pommeroy usually used.
“It’s a beautiful forgery, though,” Elizabeth says. “Skillfully done. Whoever did it had some talent. He—or she—simply wasn’t aware of Pommeroy’s unusual method of working. Or didn’t expect anyone to look quite so carefully at it.”
Before we leave for Prunella’s apartment, Margaret goes through the painting’s backstory one more time for Elizabeth’s sake, emphasizing the word “borrow.”
“We just want to make sure you’re okay with it,” she adds.
Elizabeth nods enthusiastically. “Oh, I’m always up for a little adventure. And this is a mystery
that needs solving.”
Just as we’re leaving Elizabeth’s, Mom calls to tell me that she’s going to be late getting home, and that I need to go home and walk Tillie right away.
“It’s okay,” I tell Margaret. “I’ll run ahead of you guys, pick up Tillie, and meet you outside of Prunella’s. Becca and Leigh Ann can watch her while I go inside.”
“For a price,” Becca shouts at me as I skedaddle up Lexington.
Tillie greets me at the door like she hasn’t seen another human in months. She almost knocks me over, and then lies down flat on her back so I can rub her belly. Reality hits me: I am going to miss her craziness when Nate finally returns. In a few days, she’ll be gone forever and I’ll be back to begging and pleading with my parents to let me adopt a poor, defenseless mutt from a shelter.
We bound out of the building and Tillie pulls me all the way to Prunella’s. She seems to know exactly where we’re going, and the sight of everyone waiting outside the scary iron fence sends her into a full-blown tizzy.
“What’s she so excited about?” Leigh Ann asks.
“Who knows? It’s like she’s going to visit her best friend.”
Tillie looks up at the apartment building and barks.
“Okay, Becca. She’s all yours.” I transfer a handful of small dog biscuits from my coat pocket to Becca’s. “If she gets too excited, give her one of these.”
Margaret hands me a coiled length of vivid yellow twine with a sturdy safety pin tied to one end. “Hold on to this. And please don’t leave it behind when we leave.”
Sheesh. Make one little mistake and you pay for it the rest of your life.
“Oh, stop pouting,” Margaret says. “If you stick that lip out any farther, a little bird is going to land on it.”
“I’m not pouting,” I lie.
“Good, because it’s time to get to work.” The gate swings open and all five of us (plus Tillie) go through, but Becca and Leigh Ann, our “ground crew,” take a hard left turn once inside the fence, ducking down behind the hedges with Father Julian’s painting.
Prunella is expecting us, thanks to Father Julian’s phone call. He assured her that we weren’t looking for donations; we were simply recruiting new, like-minded members for an organization that she would almost certainly want to join.
The Mistaken Masterpiece Page 16