The Mistaken Masterpiece

by Michael D. Beil

  “I’ll bet they would,” I say. “They must be going crazy, trying to figure out how your copy ended up in Prunella’s living room.”

  “What did you tell them?” Margaret asks.

  Father Julian sets the painting beside his chair and exhales loudly. “I said I’d think about it. It is quite a dilemma. Unless we’re misinterpreting the conversation that Sophie overheard, they have the original Pommeroy in their possession. I’d love to hear their explanation for how they happen to have it, but ultimately, I just want that painting back in the family so Dad can decide what to do with it.”

  “You’re not thinking about making a trade, are you?” Leigh Ann asks. “Don’t do it. They’re crooks. They’ll cheat you.”

  The front door swings open and Malcolm glides in as if on skates, doffing his tweed cap to us before flinging it perfectly onto a hook on the foyer wall ten feet away. He turns back to us with his steeliest gaze. “The name’s Chance. Malcolm Chance.”

  “I don’t care if you’re Henry the Eighth,” Elizabeth scolds. “Wipe your feet. And take off that coat. You’re dripping all over the foyer.”

  “Lovely to see you, too, dear,” he says. He then catches us all by surprise when he scoops Elizabeth into his arms and kisses her.

  She pretends to push him away for our benefit, but she’s enjoying it. “Why are you in such a good mood?”

  “Because I just got back from the Met, where I got some absolutely astounding news. News that is worthy of a celebration.” He holds up the Pommeroy from Prunella’s apartment. “Remember when I told you that this is a fake? Well, I was only half right.”

  “Nothing unusual about that,” Elizabeth chides. I give her a high five.

  Malcolm chooses to ignore us. “As I was saying, beneath this lovely forgery is—”

  “A painting by Paul Werkman,” I say.

  Malcolm’s chin bounces off the plush Oriental rug. “Wh—what? How can you possibly know that?”

  “X-ray vision,” I say. “After thirteen years on your planet, my superpowers are finally beginning to develop. I’ll be flying soon.”

  I don’t think he’s buying the Supergirl story.

  “All right, the truth is that, for once, I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I overheard the Svindahls talking about it. But thanks for confirming the story. And, for the record, I didn’t get caught. Or leave anything behind.”

  “Astonishing,” he says. “The CIA doesn’t know what it’s missing, not hiring you girls right now.”

  “Well, if it’s worth what they say, it certainly explains why the Svindahls were willing to pay to get a ‘worthless’ forgery back,” Margaret says.

  “Oh, it explains it and then some,” Elizabeth remarks. “A Werkman is worth at least four or five Pommeroys in today’s market.”

  Father Julian buries his head in his hands. “It just gets better and better. What am I going to do?”

  “The preservationist I’ve been working with at the Met tells me that it is possible to remove the top layer of paint without damaging the Werkman,” Malcolm says. “It will take some time, and it won’t be cheap, but it can be done. All you have to do is give the word, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “I don’t understand why someone would have painted over the Werkman in the first place,” Elizabeth says. “If it was in a gallery, certainly they would have known its value.”

  “From what I heard,” I say, “the Svindahls totally blame Rebecca’s buddy Gus—the guy who works in the back.”

  “I know you guys are going to think this is terrible,” Leigh Ann says, “but I can totally see how it happened. After Sophie told me what she overheard, I went online and looked up this Paul Werkman. Do you know what his paintings look like? One that I saw was all white, with a circle of not-quite-as-white white painted in the middle. You can barely even see the circle. And even if you could see it—I mean, so what? I’m sorry, but I just don’t get modern art.”

  “Don’t feel bad, Leigh Ann,” says Malcolm, leaning in her direction. “Most of it is a mystery to me, too. Give me a nice Rembrandt or a Vermeer any day.”

  Before Rebecca and Elizabeth have a chance to defend modern art, however, Margaret holds up her hand to call a truce.

  “Father Julian, you trust us, right?” she says. “Give me twenty-four hours to come up with a plan.”

  “To do what, exactly?” he asks.

  “I’m not sure yet, but I may have a way to get your family’s painting back without handing the Werkman over to that family of felons. And then you can do whatever you want with it. Heck, you can even hand it over to Prunella if you want.”

  “Ewww. Don’t do that!” Leigh Ann says. “Donate it to charity or something. I mean, as far as she knows, she still has the same painting. It’s like my dad says: what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

  “I do trust you girls,” says Father Julian. “I promise not to make a decision until I hear your plan.”

  “Oh, how exciting,” Elizabeth says. “I do love a good caper.”

  Don’t we all?

  Dad’s coat is on and he is on his way out the apartment door as the four of us barge in, chattering away about the Svindahls and how much we’re going to enjoy sticking it to them.

  “Ah—bonjour, Monsieur St. Pierre,” says Margaret. “Comment allez-vous?”

  “Ça va, merci,” Dad replies.

  Leigh Ann’s eyes open wide when she sees him. “Ohmigosh. Did you cook for us? Please, please, tell me you made that killer macaroni and cheese.”

  I’ve begun to suspect that Leigh Ann is friends with me for one reason: my dad’s cooking.

  Dad pulls the corners of his mouth down, forming an exaggerated frown. “So sorry, mademoiselle. No fromage today. Monsieur Etan is coming and he asked for his favorite: poulet au vinaigre.”

  Leigh Ann’s nose crinkles up—just a teensy bit. “What’s that?”

  “Chicken with vinegar,” I say. “Don’t worry. You’re going to love it. Au revoir, Papa!”

  “Be good,” he says.

  As if we need to be told.

  After considering Nate’s past record of tardiness, we decide not to wait for him, and dig into the first of the two enormous dishes of Dad’s poulet. Moments after Leigh Ann threatens to lick her plate clean, there’s a knock at the door. It’s Nate, and he has brought a special surprise guest: Cam Peterson. Leigh Ann, who had been so nonchalant about Cam asking for her number, suddenly sits up straight in her chair and checks her teeth for bits of fresh parsley in the reflection of her knife while Becca teases her mercilessly.

  “Hey, So-So Sophie! Good to see you,” Nate says, catching me by surprise with a bear hug. He then takes my head between his hands and examines my nose. “I can hardly see where that chick clocked you.”

  “Yeah, it’s almost like new.”

  Suddenly Tillie bursts out of the bedroom where she’s been napping with Mom. She takes two steps and then leaps at Nate from a good ten feet away.

  “Now that’s the Tillie I know,” he says. “What happened, girl? The last time I saw you, you wanted nothing to do with me. It’s like you’re a different dog.”

  “Uh, yeah, about that,” I say. “Funny story.”

  Another knock, and as I open the door, the two Tillies stand face to face once again, with a speechless Livvy Klack staring in at the gorgeous Nate Etan and the rest of us mere mortals.

  I introduce Livvy to everybody (“This is the chick who clocked me,” I inform Nate), and while Nate and Cam compete to see who can eat more of the chicken, Livvy and I join forces to tell the Tale of Two Tillies.

  “If I hadn’t met you in that coffee shop and seen for myself how she acted, I wouldn’t believe you,” Nate says. “I knew she was acting strange—tackling Cam on the set that day, and doing tricks for you, but I never thought for a second that she literally was a different dog.”

  “And poor Livvy here thought something was really wrong with her Tillie,”
I say.

  “I was ready to take her to the vet,” Livvy says, “because she didn’t want to sleep in the bed with me, wouldn’t do any of her tricks, and refused to eat her usual food. I was convinced she had cancer or something horrible.”

  “That’s it!” Margaret cries. When we all turn and stare at her, she shoots back, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. A great idea—no, make that an incredible idea—just popped into my head. Nate, how long are you going to be in town? And Tillie—we’re going to need her.”

  “Till Thursday or Friday, probably.”

  “Cam, how about you?”

  “Sometime next weekend. Depends on … Well, I hope, anyway,” he says with a glance in Leigh Ann’s direction.

  Margaret next turns to Livvy and takes a deep breath. Those two haven’t spoken since that fateful English project, which now seems eons ago.

  “Livvy, how’d you like to be part of a little drama I’m putting together?”

  “Me? Really? I, um, uh, what do you mean, drama? Like a play?”

  “Yeah, kind of,” Margaret answers.

  I poke the Brainy One in her side. “What are you up to?”

  “Okay, this may take a while to explain. First, we have to …”

  We discover the only person alive who apparently never heard that old “sticks and stones” line

  When Margaret’s grand scheme is finally clear to everyone, the boys and Livvy make their exits—with, sadly, both Tillies. There is a bright spot, however; I get paid for dog-sitting Tillie!

  Nate is almost out the door when he remembers. “Ohmigosh! Sophie, your money!” He digs into his wallet and pulls out a thick wad of bills. “Are hundreds okay? I don’t have any small bills. So, let’s see, fifty a day times three weeks, so that’s fifty times twenty-one days—somebody help me out, I’m not that good at math.”

  “One thousand and fifty,” Margaret says without hesitation.

  “Thanks. Plus an extra hundred for your sneakers and the food you had to buy … Tell you what, let’s make it an even twelve hundred. That okay with you? Sophie? You in there?”

  “T-t-twelve hundred dollars?” I stammer. I guess I’ve been too busy to actually do the calculations myself before now. I was thinking it would be a few hundred dollars, and I was all set to be thrilled with that.

  “Is that wrong?” Nate asks. “Did I mess up the math?”

  “No, no—it’s just … that’s a lot of money.”

  “Well, you did me a huge favor,” he says. “You earned it. Just don’t go and blow it all on books or something.” He’s grinning; somebody must have told him about my “little problem.”

  “Holy crap, St. Pierre,” Becca says. “You’re loaded. If I were you, I wouldn’t tell my parents. They’ll make you put it in the bank or in some stupid college fund.”

  “Well, if she doesn’t tell, I will,” Margaret says.

  Becca sticks her tongue out at Margaret. “Buzzkill.”

  With Mom in hiding in her room with a book and (I suspect) a pair of much-used earplugs, the four Red Blazer Girls get comfortable in my bedroom. I just love it when everybody sleeps over, and with Tillie gone for good, I feel like I really need my best friends around to make me forget how much I miss that mutt. Of course, those twelve hundred smackers won’t hurt, either.

  Leigh Ann sits at my desk, checking her email until she’s too distracted by the assortment of strange gifts I’ve received over the past couple weeks to continue.

  “What is going on with all this stuff?” she asks. “Have you figured out who’s sending it yet?”

  “What? Oh, that stuff,” I say with all the nonchalance I can gather. “Um, no. Still working on it.”

  “Well, tell us what you have so far,” Leigh Ann says. “We’ve got time.”

  “Nah, we have to work on the plan for Wednesday. There’s still lots to do.” I take a notebook and a pen from my desk and pretend to jot down some notes to myself.

  My friends? They’re not buying a word of it. When I look up, they’re all staring at me with arms crossed.

  “All right. What’s going on?” Leigh Ann insists.

  “What?”

  “You’re not fooling anyone, Sophie,” right-as-usual Margaret says. “Spill it.”

  I really am out of options. If I don’t tell them something, they’ll tickle me or threaten to do something to my beloved books.

  “It’s Raf,” I admit.

  They are silent for a second as they exchange glances. Finally, Margaret says, “Are you sure? This doesn’t really sound like Raf to me. It’s not that he’s not smart enough to do it, I just don’t know how he could pull it off. Like, where did he get the book? And how did he get it into our locker—in the middle of the school day?”

  Good point.

  “He must have had an accomplice,” I say, locking eyes on Rebecca.

  “Hey, why are you pickin’ on me? Margaret is a much more likely suspect. She shares the locker with you, for cryin’ out loud. Plus, she lives right by you, which would explain those packages that showed up at your apartment.”

  “Hmmm,” I say. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Me?” Margaret says. “Becca, you’re crazy. You’re always sneaking into our locker. And everyone knows how good you are with locks.”

  “That’s true,” says Leigh Ann. “And you and Raf are always joking around together.”

  “Me and Raf! What about you? You two—”

  “Stop!” I shout. “Before somebody says something … This is just stupid. It doesn’t matter. I know where I’m going on Saturday, but I’m not telling any of you. You’re just going to have to wait to hear about it.”

  When everyone finally accepts that I’m really not going to tell them any more about Saturday’s rendezvous, we finally get back to work on our primary objective, which is to recover the original Pommeroy from the Svindahls. As the RBGDA’s art expert, Rebecca is responsible for learning as much as possible about the Svindahls and their gallery. She goes online and starts snooping around the New York art world for information about the three family members and the artists they represent. According to their website, Gus Olienna has been associated with the gallery for about eight years and is a “modern master of the still life.” Although an extensive biography exists for every other artist whose work is sold by the gallery, with a picture of the artist and a long list of schools, studios, and ateliers where they learned their craft, the bio page for Gus Olienna consists of one sentence: “Gus Olienna studied painting at the prestigious Eve I. Lebekam Academy of Fine Arts in Paris.”

  Becca does a search of his name, but the only place it shows up in the entire Internet universe is on the Svindahl Gallery’s site.

  “And when I search for Eve I. Lebekam,” she says, “I get absolutely nothing. No matches. Zero. That’s pretty hard to do in this day and age.”

  “Go back to the bio page,” Margaret says. “I want to see something.”

  Margaret stares at the page for a few seconds, then smiles. “Oh my, Mr. Olienna. Nicely done. Eve I. Lebekam. Look at it backward.”

  “Makebel I. Eve,” Becca says. “So?”

  “Make believe,” Leigh Ann says.

  “Your friend Gus is very clever,” Margaret says.

  Becca, always on the lookout for a conspiracy, adds, “Or maybe he’s trying to hide something. If they gave a make-believe name for the school, why not him, too? He never really seemed like a Gus to me.”

  “You may be onto something, Rebecca,” Margaret says. “I wonder … Hey, what was that Cale guy’s last name? The guy in the picture with Phillip and Svindahl where they’re all wearing their Bramwell ties. It was Winokum, right? The guy who used to go out with Father Julian’s cousin Debbie.”

  She taps out “Cale Winokum” and “Gus Olienna” on my computer, and we all gather around the screen.

  “What are you thinking, Marg?” I ask.

  “If you say the names backward, they’re Mukoniw Elac and Anne Ilos
ug,” Becca says. “The second one at least sounds like it could be a name.”

  “Becca, take a good look at that picture,” Margaret says. “Especially Cale. Does he look familiar at all?”

  Becca stares at the picture for a few seconds before the corners of her mouth start to turn north.

  “So? What do you think?” Margaret asks.

  “About what?” I ask, completely in the dark.

  “Cale and Gus are the same person,” Becca says. “Take away the beard, give him a good haircut—yep, I’m sure. How did you know, Margaret? You’ve never even seen Gus.”

  “Look at the two names again,” Margaret says. “That made me suspicious—and everything else just fell into place.”

  CALE WINOKUM

  GUS OLIENNA

  Becca, Leigh Ann, and I stare at the two names until Leigh Ann finally sees it. “The vowels! Both names have all five vowels: a, e, i, o, and u. And they’re in order.”

  “Yeah, they’re just reversed,” I say. “Why would Cale change his name?”

  “A million possible reasons,” Margaret says. “Maybe the Svindahls have some kind of hold on him.”

  “This must have something to do with that ‘nasty little man’ that Gus was talking about,” Becca says. “After class tomorrow, I’m going back to see him—with some tea. In a china cup. Gus is going to tell me the whole story before I leave.”

  “Can I come with you?” I ask. “I have swim practice in the morning, but I’ll be done by the time you get out of class. C’mon—I have to meet this guy and see the amazing, magical room where he works. Please?”

  “Okay with me,” Becca says. “Now that you’ve got all that cash, you can hang out with me all you want. But just so you know, you’re buying the tea.”

  And what a story it is!

  It takes several cups of tea and more than an hour, but after we tell him what we have already figured out about him, the Svindahls, and the mistaken Paul Werkman painting, Gus sighs and starts talking.