Hannah West: Sleuth in Training (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

by Linda Johns

  “That wasn’t in the plans!” Mimi said, admonishing Conner. “Did you know about this?” She turned to Mr. Snotty Art Guy, who just shook his head.

  “I did it for you,” Conner said quietly to his sister. “I don’t want you involved in any of this.”

  Mary Perez was looking from Mimi to Conner, who was still on the ground, as if deciding who to go after. I couldn’t help myself. I had to butt in.

  “The plans? You mean you knew what was going on all along? I knew it! You were stealing your own paintings!” I stared at Mimi. She didn’t say anything. “Wait! Let me correct that. You were hiring people to create paintings that you passed off as your own, and then you tried to steal them?”

  “Brilliant bit of publicity, wasn’t it?” Conner Murdoch said, standing up and brushing himself off.

  Mimi, the queen of publicity and TV interviews, seemed absolutely speechless now. Then she cleared her throat. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I’m ready to talk on TV now,” she said to Mary. “I want to do all I can to help you break this story to get to the bottom of who was stealing Mimi Hansen paintings.” She looked poised for a full TV interview now. You had to give her credit, she really recovered her public persona quickly.

  “I have a few questions to ask you and the others before I ask you to comment on camera,” Mary said. “Perhaps we could start upstairs with the artists’ help in identifying their work.”

  “I would like to identify my work,” James said.

  “Conner, I don’t know what’s going on,” Ms. Murdoch said to her brother. “But I think I’ll go stand behind my work right now.” She went upstairs, too.

  “I have an idea how your mom can stand behind the artists’ work—the real artists’ work,” I said to Jordan.

  I headed upstairs with Jordan and the others. I figured if the proposal came from Mimi’s daughter, and in front of witnesses, she’d have a harder time saying no. By the time I had explained it all to her, Jordan had a big smile on her face. This time, I could tell that it was sincere.

  CHAPTER 27

  AND THAT’S HOW we all ended up here at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel. Lily, Mom, Nina, James, Ms. Murdoch, Jordan Walsh, Mary Perez, and me—all at our own table at the Honcho auction. Jordan even had her limousine pick us up for the ride over.

  Sure, our table is in the back of the room close to the kitchen, but just getting in the door is $250 a head. We were here compliments of Mimi Hansen. That’s right. Mimi Hansen bought us tickets—$2,000 for our seats—to the auction. And the best was yet to come.

  “What did we miss?” Lily asked when she and Jordan got back from the bathroom.

  “Let’s see … a dinner for two on a sailboat in Shilshole Bay Marina for twelve hundred and fifty dollars—and the boat isn’t even going anywhere. A weekend at Whistler for four thousand fifty dollars. A glass bowl by one of Dale Chihuly’s students for twelve thousand.” I rattled off the prices. Mom and I were keeping track of each item in the hefty program.

  “Are you kidding? Twelve grand for a bowl? I’d be afraid to eat my Frosted Mini-Wheats in a bowl that cost that much,” Lily said.

  “Don’t worry,” Jordan said. “You didn’t buy it.”

  “You guys! This is the best part coming up,” I said. I looked over at Nina and James. “I mean, this is the second best part coming up.”

  The tuxedoed auctioneer onstage boomed, “Ladies and gentlemen, this brings us to the canine portion of our evening, beginning with Willow!” A beautiful Weimaraner with clear blue eyes came onstage, accompanied by a woman in a sparkling gray gown that complemented Willow’s coat. The dog stayed calm despite the applause. Bidding began at $1,500 and didn’t stop until $8,000.

  “I want to make sure Walker goes to a good home,” I said, pointing out an entry in the program.

  Walker came out onstage with a black velvet bow tie. “And here he is. A one hundred percent Shelter Special. All the dog you need in one package,” the auctioneer said. “Let’s start the bidding at one hundred dollars.” That seemed a little insulting to Walker, who was an adorable medium-size mutt with a golden coat and white paws. Soon I had new respect for these Honcho folks, because there was passionate bidding for Walker. He seemed to know all the excitement was for him, because when bidding topped out at $9,500, he started barking.

  Dorothy Powers was up onstage now. “It is my pleasure to introduce to you Mimi Hansen.” Mimi, resplendent in a backless shimmering lavender gown and high-rise heels, hugged Dorothy as the crowd clapped enthusiastically.

  “At this time, I’d like to unveil some of the greatest talent in art today,” Mimi began. One of the spotlights hit our table as Mimi continued: “Nina Krimmel, Shelley Murdoch, and James Farnsworth. Tonight you have the rare opportunity to bid on these artists’ work and then watch as they sign their work in front of you.” The applause was deafening.

  “I’m so nervous,” Nina said. “What if no one bids?”

  She needn’t have worried. Bidding was fast and high, with each painting going for at least $15,000, including the one by Ms. Murdoch that Conner had attempted to steal and return to his sister. Everyone in the crowd rose to their feet as the artists from our table worked their way up to the stage to sign their paintings. Mimi had promised to pay each of them half of what each painting sold for as her “donation to the arts.” Mom said it was guilt money, but Nina said it seemed cleaner to her than the $300 she would have gotten from Mimi for working at The Factory.

  The artists working at The Factory had ended up on the Channel 4 News last weekend, and they’d stayed in the news all week. However, Mimi still emerged as the star in the public’s eyes. She claimed the artists were working on pieces she’d commissioned for the auction and that there was no question that they would receive full credit for their work. That took care of the unsigned paintings, but she hadn’t come up with a good scheme for the ones she’d actually signed. Mr. Chomsky, our upstairs neighbor, had been working on his own to trace who had actually created the paintings Mimi Hansen had claimed—and sold—as her own.

  Speaking of Mr. Chomsky, I needed to get some footage of this part of the auction for him. Even with all the excitement of the auction and solving the Mimi mystery, he still wouldn’t leave his apartment.

  Conspicuously absent from this Mimi Hansen-loving crowd were Conner Murdoch and Mr. Snotty Art Guy. Conner had been delivering packages on the side to Mr. Chomsky. That turned out to be completely unrelated to the work he was doing for Mimi Hansen. But Conner admitted that he’d delivered the blank canvas to Dorothy Powers as an attempt to show Mimi that she needed to watch out or he’d leak it to the press that she was orchestrating all the thefts, with his help and a gallery insider (Mr. Snotty Art Guy). Mary Perez was going to break that story after the auction.

  It was all coming together quite nicely, I thought as I put Owen’s tiny video camera away.

  “Hannah, this was all such a great idea,” Nina said. “I wish I could thank you.”

  “I think you’ve come up with a pretty decent way to help us out,” Mom said. She passed her phone to me so I could read her text message: 436 Portage Bay, Dock 3.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “That’s our next address,” Mom said. “Thanks to a customer at Wired that Nina met.”

  “It doesn’t look like a real address to me.”

  “I assure you that it’s quite real. In fact, I predict you’ll be so happy living there you’ll be walking on water,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “And sleeping on water,” she added.

  “Again, I say: Huh?”

  “Oh brother, Hannah. You can put together all kinds of clues for this Mimi Hansen publicity stunt and art heist, and yet you can’t read your own mother. Maggie is practically spoon-feeding clues to you. Walking on water. Portage Bay. Dock,” Lily said. “You’re going to be living …”

  “… on a houseboat!” I finished for her.

 
; “Finally,” Lily said with a big sigh. “For a smart girl, you can be kind of slow.”

  I decided to ignore Lily.

  “Really, Mom? We’re living on a houseboat?”

  “Really, Hannah. We’re going to live on Jake Heard’s houseboat on Lake Washington.”

  “We’re going to live on a houseboat!” I yelped.

  “It will be wonderfully quiet,” Mom said wistfully.

  “I just hope it’s not too dull,” I said.

  “I bet nothing strange ever happens on the tranquil waters of Lake Washington,” Lily said.

  BOOK TWO

  HANNAH WEST in DEEP WATER

  CHAPTER 1

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE you get to live here,” Lily said from the backseat. “This is totally cool.”

  “Lucky for you that I still let you be my friend,” I said. I was secretly pleased that Lily sounded impressed. Mom and I might be only temporary residents on Portage Bay, but you have to admit that it’s a pretty sweet deal to get to live on a houseboat.

  “There’s the entrance to our dock,” Mom said, pointing to a sidewalk that led toward Lake Washington. She pulled our battered old Honda Civic into a spot across the street. “It’s a bit hidden from the street, but it’s always easy to spot because of the mailboxes.”

  “Even our mailboxes are cool,” I said smugly to Lily. I never gave much thought to mailboxes before except when I’d seen an occasional one shaped like Snoopy’s dog house or with a propeller to look like an airplane or something. The Portage Bay dock mailboxes were the traditional metal style, but each had a fresh coat of paint in the solid, bright colors of blue, green, and white. Purple, red, and white flowers grew below the mailboxes, and even more bright blooms cascaded out of baskets positioned around the mailbox platform.

  “It’s just like Sleepless in Seattle,” Lily said. “This is so exciting!”

  It really was like Sleepless in Seattle, the 1990s movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Much of the movie was set on a houseboat, giving the rest of the world the cockamamie idea that if you live in Seattle you could easily choose—and afford—to live on a houseboat. Actually, there are 570,000 people in Seattle and 1.8 million people in the county, but only five-hundred-some houseboats. That means only … well, you get the idea.

  We stepped out of the car and into the rain. Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about Seattle. Despite its reputation as the Rainy City, Seattle is actually pretty sunny in the summer. Except for today, that is. Just figures that a nonstop drizzle fell from the sky to greet me on my first day as a houseboat resident. I was wearing long pants for the first time in two months.

  “Maggie! There you are!” Rushing toward us came a gray-haired and bearded man pulling a rolling suitcase with one hand and holding an apricot-colored dog on a leash with the other.

  “Hi, Jake. Are you leaving already?” Mom said.

  “I’m so sorry. In the rush to get out of town I completely forgot to call and tell you that Heather wanted to get to the airport early. There’s a new day spa there, and she needs a pedicure before we get on our flight,” he said.

  Lily and I rolled our eyes at each other. This guy was making it sound like a medical emergency when in fact his girlfriend just wanted to get her toenails painted before she went to France. He fumbled in his shoulder bag and jangled things around until he pulled out a set of keys and handed them to Mom. “I left a notebook of information on the desk for you and Hannah.” He looked at Lily when he said my name. Lily doesn’t look like blond, curly-haired Maggie West, but she’s definitely a closer match to my mom than I am with my straight black hair, olive skin, and brown, almond-shaped eyes.

  “That’s me,” I said, before Jake could embarrass himself by assuming that the Chinese girl couldn’t be Maggie’s daughter. “I’m Hannah, and this is my friend, Lily. And you must be Mango!” I bent down to meet Jake’s apricot-colored dog.

  “I’m going to miss Mango so much,” Jake said, rather reluctantly handing the leash over to me. Jake looked seriously stressed about leaving his dog, which I fully expected based on the lengthy e-mail messages he’d sent Mom over the past few weeks. Jake wanted to be sure we knew all about labradoodles. That’s right: labradoodles. You see, Mango is half Labrador retriever and half Standard poodle. But don’t go thinking of him as a mutt, because these lab and poodle mixes are bred on purpose. In fact, it seemed as if labradoodles were the hot dogs of the year in Seattle. The poodle in them meant that they didn’t shed, making them good for people with dog allergies. The Labrador in them assured that they’d be gentle, friendly, and loyal.

  “Maggie, listen,” Jake went on, “there’s a film crew that’s going to be here this week. I’m assured it’s no big deal, but I thought I should warn you.”

  “Film crew? For a movie? Anyone famous going to be here?” Lily piped in. She’s an actress impatiently waiting for her big break.

  “What? Famous? Oh, the film. I don’t know,” Jake said distractedly. “It’s a movie or something for a cable-TV channel.”

  I could tell that Lily was thinking “cable-TV channel” could be the big time, especially if it was HBO or Showtime. I didn’t want to point out that it could also be one of those public access channels, or maybe instead of a movie it was a program on saving salmon or the merits of proper dental hygiene.

  A yellow cab pulled up to the curb and honked. A tall woman with high strappy sandals that made her even taller got out of the backseat and motioned impatiently toward us. Jake’s face literally melted, going from stressed out to all soft and lovey-dovey when he saw her.

  “There’s Heather. I need to go.” He hugged Mango again. “Thanks for everything, Maggie. Oh, one last thing.” He pulled an envelope out of his bag and handed it to Mom. I was betting it was more instructions on caring for Mango. “I’m not sure how much the filming will disrupt things. But just in case it inconveniences you, here’s a little something to make up for it.”

  “Thank you, but that’s really not necessary,” Mom began, but Jake was already rushing over to the cab. I snatched the envelope from Mom and took a quick look inside to find a restaurant gift certificate. Mom might be too polite to look inside in front of him, but it didn’t matter anyway, because Jake had eyes only for Heather. He gave her a quick kiss. I swear she rolled her eyes as he reached up and his lips made contact with her cheek. He was at least a half foot shorter than his girlfriend. I’m all for tall women and short men getting together with confidence, but this couple looked a bit cartoonish. Jake has that Mr. Northwest look—the kind of older guy who buys all his clothes at REI and hikes year-round and thinks it’s acceptable to wear socks with hiking sandals. His girlfriend looked as if she’d send a servant outside to bend over to pick up the newspaper in the morning.

  “We’re going to be late,” she snapped, moving away from him. “Just let the house sitters take care of everything.” She said “house sitters” so that it sounded like “low-life servants.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you,” Jake said, following her into the backseat of the taxi.

  We watched as the taxi drove off, and then we headed toward the houseboat.

  “Poor Jake. I hope they’ll still be together after nine weeks in Europe,” Mom said.

  “I know what you mea—”

  Splat! I slipped on the dock and fell flat on my butt. “Vincent! Pollock!” I cried, as the plastic bag I’d carried swooped out of my grasp.

  Plop. It fell into the water.

  Mango barked.

  “No, Mango! No!” I cried.

  And then … a much bigger plop.

  CHAPTER 2

  “MANGO, NO!” I cried, struggling to get up. “If he bites that plastic bag, it’s all over for Vincent and Pollock,” I whined as I watched him dog paddle toward the Ziploc bag that was serving as temporary transportation for my two goldfish.

  “Here, Mango! Here, boy!” Mom joined me at the very edge of the dock, calling out to the dog, who was now in fu
ll fetch mode. He is, after all, half Labrador retriever. Then again, he’s also half poodle, which might mean he’d decide to obey Mom’s command and swim back to us.

  Plop. Plop-plop.

  A fluorescent green tennis ball landed in the water to the left of Mango’s head. Two more tennis balls followed in quick succession.

  “Get the ball, Mango,” a small older woman instructed as she walked toward us. Obligingly, Mango turned his course toward the ball, intent on his mission.

  “Good boy! Keep going!” Lily, Mom, and I cheered him on as if his task was the most difficult in the world. Mango glided through the water, bringing the tennis ball back to the edge of the dock. The woman bent over to get it from him and to scratch him behind the ears. “Good boy! Now get the other ones! Get them!” she commanded.

  “I didn’t really need to tell him to get the other balls. He’s obsessed with tennis balls, and he won’t stop until he gets them all,” she told us. “Here, you can toss this one again if he gets the other two before I get back.” She handed me the soggy green ball and headed into a white houseboat with green trim. She came back out with a net and a paddle. “Keep telling him he’s a good boy. I’ll get your package. What’s in it, by the way?” She kept talking while she effortlessly lifted a kayak off the dock, lowered it into the water, and then slipped inside and pushed herself off from the dock.

  “My goldfish. They’re in a plastic bag,” I said, pointing. “Do you see them? It kind of looks like a bubble. Oh, good dog, Mango.” I accepted the third soggy tennis ball from him and then hurled it out farther into the water, just to make sure he’d stay occupied until Vincent and Pollock got safely back.

  “Got it!” the woman called from the kayak. “Or should I say, ‘got them’? Because it looks like there are two perfectly fine goldfish inside here.”

  “Thank you so much!” I was practically shrieking with happiness. When you’re technically homeless like Mom and me, you get pretty attached to the few things that you have. And I’m terribly attached to my two goldfish named after Vincent van Gogh and Jackson Pollock, two of my all-time-favorite artists. My fish rescuer pulled her kayak up to the dock and handed my pets to me. I kissed the plastic bag, wishing once again that they were the kind of pets you could pet and nuzzle. Right then Mango, a big bundle in need of some grateful nuzzling, returned to the dock, too.