Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking (13 page)

“Let’s go,” he whispered.

A few steps down the hall, and we were at the camouflaged storeroom door. Ollie twisted a funny knob, and we found ourselves at the bottom of a stairwell, no cameras in sight.

We crept up the dusty stairs, flashlights brightening the gloom. With each step, the temperature in the narrow space increased by about five degrees. I wiped the sweat off my forehead. It was hard to breathe. Behind me, Ollie smothered his 576th sneeze.

“You are
so
going to get us caught,” I whispered.

He honked into a tissue. “’Cause that’s part of my plan,” he mumbled, sounding filled to the gills with snot. “At least I don’t have to pee!”

He had me there.

Even though he couldn’t see me, I smiled. A few more steps—and muffled sneezes—later, we came to one of those heavy fire doors. Ollie squeezed next to me. We shined our
lights on the big sign screwed into the metal door:
AUTHORIZED
PERSONNEL
ONLY
.

“Do you think there’s an alarm too?”

“Not according to my sources,” he replied. Ollie swung his flashlight around the perimeter of the frame. “Can’t tell, anyway,” he responded after a second. “Hinges are on the other side.” A crash bar, just like the one on the caf door at school, bisected the door below the sign. Ollie mopped his face with a red bandanna.

“On three?” I asked, half hoping he’d talk me out of it, half hoping this was just a dream…all the way hoping that we would know what to do if the art was on the other side. Ollie grunted. We put our hands on the bar.

“One…two…” I took a deep breath. “Three!” We pushed.

It opened without even a squeak.

Ollie and I had put so much of our weight into it, we nearly fell into the room. Our flashlights stabbed the dark in all directions, like a laser-light planetarium show. I grabbed the doorframe and steadied myself. Ollie directed his flashlight to the wall.

“What are you looking for?”

“Light switch,” he said. “There’re no windows up here. It’s safe.” As soon as he said that, his light found one of those multi-switch control panels. Six switches, all turned to the off position. He reached out and flipped the first one. Nothing happened.

The second—same thing. My hands were turning into sweat waterfalls.

Switch number three: jackpot.

I blinked at the brightness.

We were standing on the edge of a massive storeroom at the top of the state house. Boxes and crates were stacked against the walls, objects covered with sheets and tarps dotted the floor, and the wall to our right was jammed with rows and rows of metal filing cabinets.

I inhaled the hot, stale air and stepped in, tugging Ollie with me. He turned around and wedged his flashlight in the doorjamb.

“In case it locks behind us or something,” he said.

“Nice,” I responded. I hadn’t thought of that. And with the door (mostly) closed, I didn’t feel the need to whisper anymore. “Where do we start?”

Ollie walked into the middle of the room, head turning in every direction. “Where would you put priceless art?” he asked.

I considered all we thought we knew about the theft, Grumps, and Sully Cupcakes. “There’s a lot of stuff, so I’d probably box it and put it where people wouldn’t look very often.”

Ollie nodded, and walked over to some boxes and crates. “These are the state house Christmas decorations,” he said.

“Those come out every year.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Ollie responded. He sneezed again. Although his words ruffled my feathers, they also made me feel better.

I glanced around the room and headed straight across
from the door. As I walked, I peered at the boxes. Some were dated and labeled, some were blank, some were those boxes that copy machine paper come in, and by the looks of the writing on them, were pretty old. Ollie, probably anticipating what I was going to do, squeezed in between a few boxes near the Christmas decorations and started rummaging.

The stuff at the far side of the room was definitely old—a few boxes were dated 1964, others were from the ‘70s and ‘80s. All were covered in a thick, gritty gray dust. I sneezed.

“Bless you,” Ollie called from across the room, in a voice sweeter than syrup and designed to show me how…
magnanimous
he was. I scowled in his general direction and went back to work.

What was I looking for? Grumps wouldn’t have labeled the paintings
GARDNER
MUSEUM
—
MARCH
1990 or anything. He was up here to replace some floorboards and structural beams, but the art was way too big to put in a hidey-hole in the floor…

Then I saw it. Wedged between a big wooden crate and a cardboard box, there was an old-looking dusty dresser. The drawers were tied shut with the same green-and-white twine that Grumps kept in his toolbox—and that I’d found in my own attic. I squirmed through the cardboard maze, trying to get closer. Ollie sneezed again.

All that was between me and the dresser was a giant carton of “Time Sheets—1988.” I stretched my arm out, fingers grazing the drawer handles, and tried to open one. It gave a little, then stopped. The twine was tied tight.

“I think I found it!” I called to Ollie, my voice hoarse. I didn’t turn around, but I heard him slide against boxes and crates, crossing the room.

“How do you know?”

I pointed to the green twine. “That’s all over stuff at our house.”

“Can we get it out?”

I wiped my moist palms on my now-grimy skirt. “I think we need to cut it.” I grabbed a handle and tugged, leaning awkwardly over the box at my feet. Again, that same resistance. The handles were tied together, so the drawers couldn’t open.

“Here,” Ollie muttered. He bent and lifted the box of time sheets out of the way, straining with the effort. We squeezed in front of the dresser.

“This seems like a risky spot, don’t you think?” he asked. “Someone could have moved this or taken it to the Dumpster.”

I nodded. “Yeah. But Grumps must have known that it would stay put, otherwise he wouldn’t have chosen it.”

Ollie dug out his house key and sawed through the twine. It came apart pretty easily, and we unthreaded the rope from the handles. We stepped back. I didn’t know about him, but my heart was slamming harder than Joey Kramer’s bass drum at the end of “Living on the Edge.”

“Ready to open it?” I asked. Back to whispering. What is it about searching for stolen art that makes me whisper?

Ollie chewed his lower lip. “I guess so. What should we do with it if we find something? Leave it? Take it? And how would we get it out of here?”

I hadn’t figured that part out yet. I stared at the dresser. Dark wood, carved with a little pinecone on the top of it. Nothing special.

“Let’s do it.”

“All right,” Ollie said. I hadn’t realized I’d said it out loud, but there you go.

“One drawer at a time,” I said. No whisper that time.

Ollie caught on. “Yeah.”

I grasped the first of the six drawer handles. It squeaked and opened.

And it was empty. So were the next two. And then…in drawer number four—a brown-paper-wrapped package, tied with the green-and-white twine.

“Got it!” Triumphant, I held it up. It was a little more than a foot square, and heavier than it looked. The twine was wrapped around it like you’d see on a birthday present—dividing the top of the paper into four squares, the bow in the middle.

“Best. Birthday. Present. Ever.”

“Totally,” Ollie agreed.

I handed him the package. Carefully, Ollie holding it with two hands, I cut the twine with my house key and stuck a fingernail into the paper, right at the corner, and slid it down the seam, opening a pocket. Then I went back to the top, and did the same thing to two other sides, slicing the edge of the wrapping so we could fold it back, but not enough so it would flap open on its own.

We were about to see something the world was waiting for.

We saw plywood. Plain, boring plywood. My heart plummeted down the three floors we’d just climbed. If the stuff wasn’t here, then where? All of a sudden I realized how little time I had left.

“Look,” Ollie said. “There’re two of them.” He pointed to the corner, where—sure enough—there were two pieces of plywood wrapped together.

“D’oh!” I slapped my hand to my forehead, feeling like a total idiot. “Of course!” The art needed to be protected, and you couldn’t just roll it up—it was too fragile. Making a priceless art sandwich was probably the best thing Grumps could think of to do.

He’d also wrapped them so tightly together that it was nearly impossible to pry them apart without splitting open the whole package. But we needed proof.

Ollie held the paper while I slid the piece of plywood out, leaving the bottom piece and the artwork behind. Finally—finally!—we were rewarded. One of the pieces, a watercolor of a crowd, was on top. Sketches—there were five of them—were in the bundle. Ollie pulled a folded sheet of paper from
his pocket: the flyer with the images of the stolen art off the Gardner website.

We were looking at a Degas.
La Sortie de Pesage
, to be exact. Watercolor and pencil.

“We found it! Oh my god, we found it,” I gasped, totally geeking out. Unexpected relief rushed through me. It was over. My knees sagged a little bit. Ollie grabbed my arm, eyes frowning behind his glasses.

“Don’t keel over yet,” he said. “This isn’t all of it. Not even close.”

After I’d gotten over thinking that it was totally over—and it totally wasn’t—Ollie and I sat on the dusty floor and leaned against one of the crates.

“There just isn’t enough room in that dresser,” he pointed out. “All six of the small works are in there, but thirteen items were stolen—some are really big paintings.”

He was right, of course. And inside, I totally knew everything he was saying before he said it. But hearing it out loud was something else entirely.

“Should we look around some more?” I asked.

Ollie cocked his head at me.

“Yeah, yeah…” I muttered. I glanced at the time displayed on my cell phone. It was late, and we still had to get out of here and get home before our parents got suspicious. But I couldn’t just walk away from the small works and leave them. Plus—oh yeah, minor details—
we were sitting in the attic of the state house
after hours and had to sneak out. Yeah.

I pulled the proof from my pocket, and added
Etchings and watercolor found in state house
to the reasons column.

“What should we do with them?”

I shrugged. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I mean, we’d found
some
of them—but now what? Wait around for The Redhead? Call the police? I wrestled with the options. Part of me never expected to actually find anything, I guess.

“We have to hide them somewhere,” I said finally. “There’s no way we can leave them here, and I’m not sure what to do with them yet.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ollie nod. It was our best choice—I knew that—but it still freaked me out. We’d be hiding the art again, which was some kind of criminal act, I was sure of that.

Ollie and I stood and dusted off.

“Hey, Moxie?” Ollie said. I stopped swiping at my skirt and turned to him. He was wearing a huge, face-splitting grin. “Can we just take a moment here?”

“Uh, sure?”

Ollie raised his hand for a high five.
“We found some of the Gardner art!
We found millions of dollars of stolen property!” I slapped his hand, and we fist-bumped too. I couldn’t stop smiling now either.

“We are pretty disco right now,” he added.

I laughed. “We are
so
disco, we make disco cooler than it ever was.”

We continued our little celebration for another minute, then it was back to the business of re-hiding the formerly stolen art.

“Maybe we should put them somewhere else in the room,” I suggested.

“Negatory,” Ollie replied. “First rule of hiding something: Put it where no one can find it. We found this, and it’s pretty obvious that we’ve been in here.” He gestured to the smeary dust and tracks all over the floor. “Anyone who comes up here would find this stuff in a second.”

Although I bet that no one came to the storeroom once the holiday decorations were put away, I could see Ollie’s point…and didn’t want to risk losing what we found if The Redhead decided to check this place out.