Framed! Read online

  “Yes, but you’re using it to make wild speculations,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said. “Forget hit man. Forget forger and spy. Just tell me that you honestly don’t think he’s suspicious and I’ll let it go.”

  I studied him through the doorway as he started to pack up his paints and brushes for the day. It was definitely the same guy and he looked really different. . . .

  “Okay,” I admitted. “He’s a little suspicious. But we can’t call the police or tell security that they need to arrest someone because he changed his hair. I’m pretty sure they’d want evidence of something . . . you know . . . criminal.”

  “I completely agree,” she said to my momentary relief. Then she added, “So let’s find some and give it to them.”

  “Find some what?”

  “Evidence,” she replied. “Let’s follow him and see where he goes.”

  I thought she was joking, so I waited for her to laugh. But the laugh never came. She was serious. “That’s the worst idea ever,” I told her.

  “Why?”

  “First of all we don’t know how to follow people,” I responded. “We play games with TOAST. That doesn’t make us spies. Also, what if he actually is a bad guy and he catches us? That would be monumentally bad.”

  “He’s not going to catch us,” she said. “I guarantee it.”

  “And you’re so confident because . . .”

  “We’re going to follow him with TOAST,” she answered.

  “What does that even mean?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “We don’t actually follow him; instead we make him follow us,” she replied. “We read him and figure out where he’s going and we get there before he does. He can’t see us behind him if we’re out in front.”

  “You mean like predicting who gets off the Metro at which stop?” I said.

  “That’s exactly what I mean. You see that plastic bag he’s putting his supplies in?” she asked.

  I looked over at him. “Sure.”

  “The logo is from the George Washington University bookstore. If he’s a student and lives near campus, then he’s going to get off at the Foggy Bottom Metro stop. So let’s get there first and keep an eye out for him.”

  I hesitated before answering. She’d gotten my interest, but it still sounded dangerous.

  “Don’t forget that it’s my birthday,” she reminded me. “This can be your present to me.”

  “I already gave you a present,” I said in mock protest. “And the most dangerous part was the potential for a paper cut while gift wrapping.”

  “If there’s anything just a little bit dangerous, I promise we’ll call it off, go back to my house, and have some cake.”

  He was almost packed up. The copyists store their equipment in a room downstairs, so I knew this was our only chance to pull off her plan.

  “Come on,” she added. “Let’s have an adventure.”

  “Adventure” was the part I couldn’t resist.

  “Okay,” I said. “But only because it’s your birthday. And I still want a piece of cake.”

  Thirty minutes later we were sitting on a bench on the edge of the GWU campus drinking sodas to fight the summer heat and keeping an eye on the exit of the Foggy Bottom Metro station. And thirty minutes after that, we were still waiting.

  “How long before we give up?” I asked, only half joking.

  “We’re not going to give up,” she replied. “This will work. We just have to be patient.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to go out for birthday dinner with your parents?”

  “I’ve got an hour,” she said, checking the time. “That means we can wait twenty more minutes and I’ll still have enough time to get home and get ready.”

  “Are you going someplace fancy?” I asked.

  “The exact opposite. We’re going to Ben’s Chili Bowl. It’s a hamburger-and-hot-dog place over on U Street. We go every year on my birthday.”

  “That’s cool,” I said. “We don’t have any places that are traditions like that. We’ve moved too much.”

  “Not me,” she replied. “I’ve lived in the same house my whole life.” Then she hesitated for a moment and added, “Well, except for the first couple weeks.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Margaret took a sip of soda and thought about her answer.

  “Actually . . . I’m adopted,” she said somewhat carefully. “We don’t know the specifics of where I came from. We’re not even sure if today is my actual birthday. It’s just the one we picked to celebrate. My birth parents abandoned me at a firehouse when I was about ten days old. Engine House Four.”

  This caught me completely off guard. I think it was because she used the word “abandoned.” It was so cold and sad. I sat quietly for a moment before saying, “It’s amazing that one person could be so unlucky and lucky in the same week.”

  “How do you mean?” she asked.

  “So unlucky to have parents who would do that,” I explained. “So lucky to end up with the ones you did.”

  The corners of her mouth turned up into a tiny smile and she looked over at me. “Thanks.” She took another sip and was about to say something else when we caught a glimpse of our guy coming out of the Metro station.

  “There he is,” I said.

  He was alone and in a hurry. We froze for a second, surprised that the plan had worked.

  “Don’t get up,” I whispered. “You talked to him earlier, so he’s seen your face. Just look at me.”

  She turned toward me and I watched him. He got as close as twenty feet before jogging across the street.

  “Okay, you can look now,” I told her.

  We followed him, staying across the street and about fifteen feet behind him as he walked. My pulse started racing.

  He turned onto H Street and entered a ten-story brick building with a sign that read PHILIP S. AMSTERDAM HALL. It was one of the GWU dorms.

  “So now we know he’s a student,” she said.

  “Which is still not evidence of anything criminal,” I countered.

  “True, but we’re not done yet.”

  “We’re not?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve still got ten more minutes before we have to leave.”

  We crossed the street and approached the dormitory. We tried to open the door but couldn’t without a pass card. The windows were tinted, so we cupped our hands over our eyes and pressed up against the glass to see better. A flyer on the door advertised summer housing orientation.

  “I think we should go,” I said.

  “Just give me a second,” she said. She rapped her knuckles against the glass and turned to me saying, “I just want to peek inside.”

  She rapped again.

  We were about to give up when someone opened the door.

  Margaret started to say thank you but stopped when she saw it was the copyist. He looked at her with a hint of recognition.

  “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “No,” she answered, her voice cracking.

  “Actually, I think we’ve seen you before,” I said, trying to think fast. “We were down here in the lobby the other day waiting for my brother. He lives on the fifth floor.”

  He looked at me for a moment and slowly nodded. “That must be it.”

  He held the door open for us to enter, but we were way too scared to move.

  “Aren’t you coming in?”

  “No,” I said, trying not to sound nervous. “I was just looking to see if my brother was inside. But he’s not. We’ll wait out front.”

  “Yeah,” Margaret added. “Thanks.”

  He shrugged and said, “Okay.”

  He disappeared into the building, and after about twenty seconds of standing still (whether we were keeping cool or momentarily paralyzed by fear is open for debate), Margaret and I bolted toward the Metro station. We were still breathing heavily when we got on the train and plopped down into our seats. I didn’t feel any relief until the doors clos
ed and I knew he hadn’t followed us.

  “Okay,” Margaret said. “That was officially the dumbest idea ever.”

  I was too shaken to speak so I just nodded my agreement.

  6.

  The Scene of the Crime

  OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS Margaret and I avoided the National Gallery so we wouldn’t bump into the copyist. We also decided not to tell security (because we didn’t have any evidence) or our parents (considering following a stranger across town would definitely get us grounded). Instead we kept our adventure to ourselves and focused on the fast-approaching first day of school.

  With all the times my family had moved, I’d developed strong new-kid survival skills. Normally I used TOAST to find pockets of potential friends and avoid the jerks and bullies. But Margaret gave me something new: advanced intelligence. She told me about the different cliques, her favorite teachers, and what foods to avoid in the cafeteria. (Pretty much all of them.)

  We even went on a scout. Her soccer team played on the field behind the school, so one day I went to practice. Afterward she introduced me to some of her teammates in our grade, and then we looked around the campus. The main building was huge: three stories of red brick with large columns at the front entrance. It was intimidating, and when I looked through a window down an endless hallway of lockers, I wondered if I’d feel lost there.

  That same night my dad’s ringtone woke me at 2:17. I would’ve gone back to sleep but when I heard him talking I could tell it was an emergency. I worried about my grandfather, who’d been sick, and wondered if there’d been a turn for the worse.

  I sleepily staggered out to the hallway just as Dad hurried toward the stairs, still buttoning his shirt as he rushed.

  “Is everyone okay?” I asked. “Something wrong with Grandpa Ted?”

  “Grandpa’s fine,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Three paintings were stolen from the National Gallery and they want my help. Go back to sleep.”

  He was halfway out the door before my semiconscious brain made the connection.

  “Wait!” I called out.

  “I can’t, buddy, this is important. We can talk in the morning.”

  “Were they Impressionist paintings?”

  The door closed and I figured he didn’t hear me. But then it slowly opened and I saw him standing there looking up the stairs at me, his head haloed by the porch light.

  “Why do you ask that? What makes you think they were Impressionist?”

  I took a deep breath and sighed. “I may know something.”

  “I don’t have time for games, Florian. Something like what?”

  Awkward pause.

  “Like, I may know who did it.”

  He gave me a confused look.

  “Margaret and I noticed this strange guy hanging out at the museum. . . . We kind of followed him.”

  “You did what?” he exclaimed.

  “Yeah, I know, it was stupid,” I replied. “But he was suspicious. And he was hanging out in the Impressionism section.”

  Dad was in too much of a hurry to analyze the whole situation, so he trusted his gut. “Get dressed quick. I’ll tell your mom you’re going with me and leave out the part about you following a suspicious man across town. We’ll deal with that later.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “Although, we don’t really have to ever tell her that part, do we?”

  In normal traffic it takes about thirty-five minutes to get from our house to the museum. But with the streets empty, we made it in twenty. That gave me just enough time to tell Dad everything I knew about the man in the Europa trainers.

  He slowed down when we turned onto Constitution Avenue and the museum came into view.

  “This is going to be a zoo,” he said. “An absolute zoo.”

  As we got closer, we could see security officers setting up wooden barricades along the sidewalks and news crews unloading camera gear from television trucks. Everything was bathed in the red and blue lights of the police cars that clogged the road.

  The entrance to the underground parking lot was blocked by it all, so we parked down the street in front of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History and walked.

  Dad flashed his security credentials at the checkpoint and we climbed the massive steps that led to the entrance.

  “They’re looking for clues,” he said, nodding toward some cops who were shining their flashlights into the bushes along the front of the building.

  Everything was surreal.

  We entered the main rotunda and the first thing I saw was a pair of detectives questioning the cleaning crew. The custodians looked nervous, as if the giant pillars that circled them formed a marble holding cell.

  “You think they’re witnesses or suspects?” I asked.

  Dad just shrugged and said, “Good question.”

  I looked back over my shoulder as we continued walking, trying to make sense of it all. Skylights normally gave the hallway a bright, sunny feel, but now there were sinister shadows and pockets of total darkness.

  We stopped to look into the room where Margaret and I had seen the copyist painting Woman with a Parasol. The plaque on the door read IMPRESSIONISM/GALLERY 85, but the entryway was blocked by bright yellow police tape. Inside, the crime scene unit searched for evidence around the huge gap on the wall where a painting had been.

  “Wow,” said Dad when he saw the empty space. “Just wow!”

  “What’s missing?” I asked.

  “Child with Toys,” he answered. “Renoir.”

  “Unbelievable,” I said under my breath.

  We could see through to more activity in another gallery.

  “The other two were taken from there,” he said. “The Dance Class by Degas and Van Gogh’s Girl in White.”

  “Renoir, Degas, and Van Gogh,” I said, shaking my head. “This guy isn’t messing around.”

  “No, he isn’t,” said Dad.

  We took an elevator three floors underground to the security center. Although the marble and limestone made the rest of the building feel like a Roman temple, this room looked like it belonged in a science fiction movie. All the furniture was black leather and silver metal, and the wall was covered with a bank of monitors playing surveillance video from throughout the building.

  Two people were already there: a man in the corner with a British accent talking on a phone and another furiously typing away on the main computer console. The British man, wearing black jeans and a stylish black T-shirt, tried to sound calm but looked anything but as he paced back and forth.

  “No, sir, I’m on top of things,” he said unconvincingly. “We’ll have it under control.”

  The man at the computer looked up and saw my father. “Jim, I’m glad you’re here.”

  He was heavyset with a big moon face. His pale skin and the circles under his eyes made it look like he hardly ever slept or stepped out into the sun. His jacket and tie had been tossed aside and his overall vibe was rumpled wreck.

  “I want you to look over the data from the . . .” he stopped when he noticed me. “Who’s this?”

  “Earl, this is my son Florian,” Dad said. “It’s a long story, but . . .”

  He didn’t get time to explain. The door flew open and two more people stormed in. One was Serena Miller, the director of museum security and an old friend of Dad’s. I recognized her because she’d stopped by the house to visit the first week we were in Washington. The other was a tall African-American man wearing a dark blue suit with a matching tie. Unlike Earl, his suit was still crisp and pressed. And unlike the British man, he wasn’t trying to appear calm. He was completely cool and composed.

  “Jim, this is Special Agent Marcus Rivers of the FBI’s art crime team,” Ms. Miller said, introducing him to my father.

  “Nice to meet you,” Dad said, shaking his hand.

  “This is Jim Bates,” she said, continuing the introduction. “He consults with us and I�
��ve asked him to help and . . .” Like Earl, she stopped the moment she saw me. “And for some reason he’s brought along his son.”

  Rivers looked at me, more curious than angry, and then turned to my dad. “It’s not exactly a bring-your-kid-to-work kind of situation, is it?”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Dad replied. “But I think he may have seen something . . . interesting and I thought you should hear it.”

  “Interesting?” he asked. “In what way?”

  “Tell them,” Dad said to me. “Be as specific and accurate as possible.”

  Everyone was staring. Even the British man, who’d now finished his phone call. It was an intimidating group, especially considering there was a special agent in the mix. I took a deep breath and just started talking.

  “About four weeks ago, my friend Margaret and I saw a man asleep on one of the couches in the gallery with Van Gogh’s self-portrait. He was a tourist with blond hair. He slept for about fifteen minutes until his wife and their baby joined him.”

  They looked confused, but I just kept talking. “Then two weeks ago, we saw a copyist painting a replica of Monet’s Woman with a Parasol. He had dark hair and was dressed like an art student. A total hipster. He goes to George Washington University and lives in the Philip S. Amsterdam Hall. I point that out because that residence hall does not allow married students or children. Married students are housed somewhere else. I checked online.”

  This was when the British man spoke up. “What’s the point of this?” he asked impatiently. “Sixty-five million dollars in art is missing and we’re listening to a child recount insignificant information. I’ve just had a very unpleasant phone call with my bosses back in England and assured them we are acting swiftly.”

  I ignored him and focused on the agent. “The sleeping father and the artist were the same man,” I said. “A man who’d decided to completely change his appearance.”

  “Are we seriously letting this continue?” asked the Brit. “Every second we waste is a second the thief gets farther away.”

  “Why do you think they’re the same person?” asked the agent.

  “Both were wearing Europa trainers, a type of running shoe found only in Eastern Europe. Both were left-handed. And both had identical scars on their chins. I don’t think it was the same person, I’m certain of it.”