Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking (12 page)

When we got home, I zoomed upstairs to text Ollie. I’d left my phone on my bed, and it was nearly out of battery. So I had to spend fifteen minutes frantically searching for the charger before I could finally send him the message.

Think I have r site. Can you get out tonite?

And then there was the excruciating wait until he texted me back.

Yes. Rents owe me. I Scooby Doo’ed all morning. Where?

I sent him the details and asked him to figure out a way in. Although I’m sure the family of the deceased was heartbroken, I was now grateful that Mom had to work that wake. I’d be in the clear until ten, if I checked in with Nini before I left. The Sox were playing Cleveland tonight, and she’d be parked in front of the game, not caring what I was doing.

Then it was just a matter of killing time. I pulled out the proof and added a line to the statements column:
Possible hiding place: state house storeroom.
Under reasons, I wrote:
Brought Mom and Nini there on tour.

Of course, I could be wrong. I mean, if Grumps had access to the whole state house, what were the odds that he would
bring them specifically to the place where he hid the Gardner art? On the other hand…if they’d gone on the tour before March 18, there was no reason why he
wouldn’t
have shown them the storeroom.

I hopped online to check the state house hours: We had until 3:30 to get on a tour, or we could just go in on our own. The building closed at 4:30.

Oh.

That didn’t give us much time to find the art and get something out.

It was like Ollie read my mind. My phone buzzed.

“There’s no way we can get the stuff out by four,” he said, without even saying hello.

“I know.”

“Today we’ll do recon,” he said. “We’ll go in, take the tour, check it out, make a plan, and go back tomorrow.”

Time was slipping away, but I knew he was right. The only thing worse than not finding the art in time to hand it over to Sully Cupcakes and The Redhead was getting caught breaking and entering into one of the most famous buildings in the country.

We hung up, and I grabbed my bike bag and packed it with necessities: a notebook and pencil, my camera, the proof, cash, phone, and an apple. Mom caught me in the kitchen—she was dressed in a dark suit, hair in a twist, makeup on; looking grown-up and completely different than she had at lunch. I told her I was heading into town with Ollie—to Park Street and the Public Garden, which was not really a lie.

“We’re going to look for a cache,” I explained.

She reminded me to abide by the rules, and took off.

Ollie and I left shortly thereafter, bumping into town on the Orange Line. He’d made reservations for us on the last state house tour of the day. We jogged up the stairs—the same ones Grumps had stood on in the photo—and met the tour group at the door.

For forty-five minutes, we snapped pictures, touched woodwork, and admired the oil paintings of past Massachusetts governors and studied the statues that dotted the halls. There were a couple of other kids with their parents in the group, and they kept giving us funny looks like they couldn’t believe how into it we were.

If you only knew why
, I thought.

By the time the tour was over, I had a pretty good idea of the layout of the building, but no clue where that storeroom would be. Ollie and I left the group and crossed into the Common, where we grabbed lemonades at the Frog Pond stand and found a patch of grass under a tree.

“To treasure hunting,” I said, holding up my plastic cup.

“To treasure
finding,”
he responded. We clicked cups and sipped.

“So?” Ollie asked, after we’d sat in silence for a minute.

I gulped some more icy lemonade. “So I have no idea what we’re going to do. I couldn’t even find the storeroom. The tour guide never mentioned it.”

He grinned. “Really? It’s a hidden door, but not hidden
that
well.” He described a section of the third-floor hallway
that we’d gone through. Again, I was amazed by what Ollie
saw.
It was like he was in a different world than the rest of us. How could he pick out a camouflaged door after walking past it once?

“Cool…so, we think we have the door…now what?”

“We hide,” he said slowly, thinking it through. “There’s no other way to do it. We’re going to have to get in before they close, like today, and hide somewhere. Then, when it’s dark, we can go up to the storeroom.”

I didn’t like the idea—too much could go wrong—but I didn’t respond right away. Were there other options?

Probably not.

“What about security cameras and stuff?” I asked, finally.

“I’ll look into that,” Ollie said. “The cache boards are filled with people who are experts at getting around security to hide stuff. Someone will have a tip.”

“Don’t let any of your online buddies know what we’re up to,” I said. I hated to say it out loud—it was like I didn’t trust him or something—but I was sure of this: Those “urban treasure hunters” would be all over the Gardner art search. There was probably a group of them working on it right now!

“Cross my heart,” he said solemnly.

I laughed, but hearing him say that really did make me feel better.

We spent the rest of the afternoon as though there were no such things as The Redhead, or the Gardner museum, or a ticking clock: ate ice cream on Newbury Street, did some
window-shopping, and bummed around downtown. Ollie
did
find a cache in Copley Square park—and climbed on the back of the tortoise statue to proclaim his “mad skillz” after he found it—so my lie to my mom ended up not being a lie after all.

It was a taste of the summer I
thought
we’d have—the summer I
wanted
to have after all of this was finished.

But the longer this went on, the more I realized that my summer would never be what I thought it would.

My luck held out the next day. Mom went in to work a little late, and called just after noon with the news that they’d be receiving a body late in the afternoon. She’d need to meet with the family that evening. Although she wouldn’t be out as late as she would if there was a wake, I quickly told her that Ollie and I had plans to see a movie, and could I come home around 10:30? She was fine with it.

The day dragged. I repacked my bike bag a bunch of times, adding a flashlight and a bottle of water to the stuff that had been in there the day before.

Finally, Ollie and I met and hopped on the T. We didn’t say much. I didn’t know about him, but I was a mix of nervous, excited, terrified, and wishing we hadn’t done this.

“I got some info for us,” he said as the train clacked into Back Bay Station.

“Cool,” I said. A bunch of people got on and stood near us, though, so Ollie didn’t say anything until we reached our stop: Downtown Crossing. We walked through the tunnel connecting it to Park Street Station, and came out on the street just a block away from the state house.

“All we have to do is get into a conference room,” he said. “Although they have cameras and security in the halls, they can’t record what goes on in the committee discussions unless it’s via a state-appointed recorder. So we hide out in a conference room until dark. And since we’re going in at the end of the day…”

“There shouldn’t be any meetings happening!” I finished for him.

“Exactly.”

We were standing at the foot of the steps by this point. Today’s tour group was larger. It allowed us to blend in a little more.

When the group reached the third floor, where a lot of the meeting rooms were, Ollie and I drifted toward the back of the crowd. When we passed a particularly beautiful oil painting next to a conference room, we paused to admire it. The group kept going.

I twisted the doorknob. It spun, no problem. The tour turned a corner.

“Go!” I whispered.

Ollie and I ducked in, and I pulled the door closed quietly behind us. The room had no windows; a big table stretched away from the door, and huge black chairs crowded around it. We each curled up in one, Ollie across the table from me. We swiveled the backs of the chairs to the door, and with our feet off the ground, no one could see us.

“Bet you didn’t have this in mind when you were planning the best summer ever,” Ollie whispered.

“You mean the gangsters, art thefts, and breaking into state property?” I tucked my feet under me more tightly. “Oh yeah, totally on my list.

“I’ve given up on the best summer ever,” I added. “I just want us to survive July without getting killed or arrested.”

Ollie laughed. “Admit it. Even though it’s scary, it is also pretty awesome—the ultimate treasure hunt.” Even separated by the sea of table, I could see the excitement on Ollie’s face.

He was right. It
was
pretty awesome.

“Agreed.”

We were quiet for a minute, and Ollie swiveled his chair back and forth.

“Can I ask you something, Mox?”

“Sure.”

He scratched under his glasses. “Do you think I’m making the right choice—about Chestnut Prep?”

That was
not
what I expected to hear. Ever since I met Ollie, he said that’s where he was going to high school. It was one of the best schools in the state, and had
the
best science program. MIT, Ollie’s dream college, offered a full scholarship to one senior from CCP every year. Ollie would totally win.

“Um, I didn’t even think it
was
a choice,” I said. “I thought you were programmed from birth to go there. You’re going to do awesome.”

He flushed. “Thanks. I just…it’s weird, you know? I mean, I’ll know a few people from the troop, but still…”

“You’ll be fine,” I said. It’s funny, but hearing Ollie say that he was nervous made me feel so much better about Boston Classics.

“Besides,” he added. “Not that it’ll matter. We’ll both be taking correspondence classes from jail.”

“Now
that
is truly the Uniform of Horror,” I said. “Orange is so
not
disco.”

We grinned at each other, then settled in to wait.

And wait. And wait.

One thing I never considered about sneaking into buildings? If you’re hiding, you really can’t go to the bathroom. And two hours into our wait, I had to pee. Ollie—smart kid—had fallen asleep, but I was too uncomfortable.

I checked the time on my phone: 6:34. Should I chance sneaking out and running to the ladies’ room down the hall? What about the surveillance cameras? I pulled on my lower lip.

If I got caught and Ollie was still in dreamland, he’d have no idea what was going on when he woke.

By seven, I was considering emptying my water bottle and, well…refilling it. Luckily, Ollie woke up before I got that drastic.

“We should be in the clear,” he said, “except for the cleaning crew. We can run into the hall and you can do your thing before we go upstairs. Stick close to the walls so you’ll have less chance of being seen by the cameras.”

I was grateful to have the opportunity, but nervous too.

We waited a few more minutes—until just after seven. Ollie opened the door and we peeked into the hallway.

Totally clear.

I scooted down to the ladies’, and when I was finished, I peeked out the door and spotted Ollie, crouched underneath a big old desk against the opposite wall. He brought his finger to his lips and pointed up to a camera panning the hall. When it was pointed the other way, I raced over to him and slid in on my knees, straight out of an action movie. Apparently unimpressed by my entrance, Ollie watched the camera.