Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking (16 page)

The Redhead…she’d been following me for a few days;
that much was obvious. I squinted into the chaotic scene in Copley Square. She was probably out there somewhere, waiting for me to leave so
she
could scope out the church. And she had the luxury of no curfew, no rules about traveling into the city on her own, and no compunction about breaking the law. And I’d just led her to the next hiding place.

Head cradled in my arms, I squinched my eyes shut as tight as I could and willed all of this to go away.

I sat like that until the big doors behind me opened for the bride and groom to exit. The wedding guests trailed behind them like untied shoelaces.

The church was empty! Well, almost. But everyone would be paying attention to what was going on
outside
, not inside. Mood improved, I skirted the edge of the guests and slipped in through one of the big doors.

Inside, the church was massive. Religious murals were painted on the ceiling and walls, and the stained-glass windows sent colorful splotches of light dancing on the pews and floor. It was way, way bigger than the church Nini took me to in our neighborhood, but had the same incense-and-dust smell. I had no idea even where to look for the art. Did churches have storerooms like the state house? Was there a closet somewhere that Grumps had repaired?

As I thought, I walked around the edge of the room, ducking to glance under pews or behind columns. I offered an apologetic smile to two older, straggling wedding guests.
Hopefully they thought I was looking for something I’d left behind during the ceremony.

For its beautiful design and peaceful vibe, all the church was giving me was frustration. Let’s face it—Ollie is good at finding stuff; I’m good at figuring stuff out. But I didn’t even have a clue to work with. Even though I was sure I’d led The Redhead straight to the next batch of art, I had to admit defeat. It was nearly four, and I had to get home before my mom used her super-sense to figure out that I’d zipped into town on my own.

I took one last glance around the beautiful inside of the building before stepping into the summer heat and sunshine. The bright light after the dim church made me squint, and I wondered, as I crossed the square, if the flash of red that I caught out of the corner of my eye was my imagination.

I sure hoped so.

“You
are in big trouble, missy!”

Her voice cut through traffic noise and Aerosmith, currently playing through my earbuds, and I nearly fell off my bike in shock.

I was at a stoplight just a couple blocks from our house, and after frantically swiveling my head in all directions to figure out where her voice had come from, I spotted Mom two cars behind me.

Crap.
What had she seen? The telltale white cords of my earbuds? Another bike-riding infraction? As the light changed, I did a quick inventory—helmet on, nothing obstructing my reflectors, I’d used hand signals all the way back from the T station, where I’d…

Oh no.

Mom was coming from the wrong direction! The funeral parlor was in West Roxbury, a totally different neighborhood. Unless she’d been at the supermarket or running an errand or something, she wouldn’t come home this way.

My stomach dropped, and I focused on pedaling the rest
of the way to the house, conscious, the whole time, of Mom keeping right with my bike.

She turned into the driveway, and as I straddled the bike outside our gate, I had a moment when I thought,
Just keep going.
Sully Cupcakes and The Redhead won’t know where to find you, and Mom won’t be able to kill you. But Mom would probably track me down with the intensity that I was using to find the Gardner art.

I waited for her on the porch. She clomped up the stairs, still in her work clothes, carrying a bag from the kitchen store down the street from the T station. That explained it.

“I saw you,” she said. I held the door open for her and she brushed past me, not stopping at Nini’s like usual. This was Mom at Class-A Flaming Mad—single-minded, focused only on the target of her wrath. Best not to say anything until asked a direct question. I followed her up the stairs as quietly as I could, trying to calm the anxiety in my chest. What had she seen? If it was me coming out of the T station, it was all over. We went into the kitchen.

“I saw you come out of Forest Hills like it was the most natural thing in the world. Alone,” she said. “Alone! What were you doing?” She rummaged through the cabinets for a glass, pouring herself an iced tea.

I opened and closed my mouth, unsure of how to answer. Typically, I try to tell the truth. Lying makes my mother go absolutely mental, and I’d rather deal with her fury at what I actually did as opposed to the absolute nuttery that results
when I lie, then she finds out the truth. It’s like double the nightmare. I never understood why she got all crazy like that about fibs, but now—after finding this stuff out about Grumps—it made sense.

“I went into the Back Bay,” I responded, carefully picking my words. “Ollie’s family had plans, and I stopped by Alton Rivers to see Grumps, and he mentioned something about working on Trinity Church, so I thought I’d check it out.” Not exactly a
lie.

She held out her hand. “Do you have the card that came with your T pass?” I dug through my wallet, trying to resign myself to the fact that I was about to be grounded until I died (which, considering how things were going, might be sooner rather than later, anyway). I found the printed paper and she pointed to rule #1: Travel to Boston/Harvard Square with a peer.

“Can you read that to me?” she asked, voice even.

I read it.

“Do you understand what it means?”

I nodded.

“So why did you go alone?”

I shrugged. “I told you. I talked to Grumps. He mentioned the church in Copley. I had nothing better to do, so I thought I’d check it out. I know you didn’t want me to go alone. I’m sorry. I thought since it was daytime, it’d be okay.”

“What if you got hurt? Or lost? Jeez, Moxie, you need to be more responsible. How can I trust you if you take advantage of the freedom you’re given?” She slumped into a chair,
the anger washed out of her, and took a long swallow of her drink.

For a moment, seeing her like that, I wanted to confess—everything. Let a grown-up handle it. But that couldn’t happen. Bad enough that The Redhead was following
me
around and threatening Grumps, I couldn’t deal with having something happen to Mom or Nini. Or, just as bad—having Mom decide to pack up and leave for New Hampshire and pull me away from Nini and Grumps for good. So I bit my lip and didn’t say anything else.

“Hand it over.” Mom extended her hand, palm up.

For a second, I honestly didn’t know what she meant—the art?—and then I realized: My T pass. My freedom.

I gulped, and slid it from its spot in my wallet. As soon as it touched her palm, she made it disappear into a pocket. Then she picked up my laptop and stuck it into its zippered case.

“How long?” I asked.

She raised her eyes to me. “Until I decide that you fully understand how serious this business is.”

Heart heavy, I nodded.

“This business” was more serious than she knew.

How stupid was I? I blitzed into town not even thinking that I’d get caught, and now I was stuck with no computer, no options, and a handful of days before…well, whatever was going to happen. I put “Seasons of Wither” on repeat, and in a dramatic moment threw myself across my bed,
prepared to spend the rest of my short life depressed.

Instead, I scraped my face on the corner of the photo album sticking out from under my pillow. I flipped onto my back, hand on my cheek, blood warm between my fingers, and cursed. Steven Tyler sang about how “sadly” he felt for me. I cursed again—this time at him.

The bathroom mirror revealed the damage: a thin red scratch stretching from the left side of my nose, across my left cheek, to the corner of my jaw. Ruby beads of blood lined the trail; some smeared from when I’d grabbed my face. I groaned, then wiped it with a cold washcloth and smeared antibacterial ointment all over it.

With my hands, knees, and now face all damaged, I looked more like an ultimate fighter than a detective.

I grabbed a wad of toilet paper in case the scratch opened up again, and went back to my room.

Desire for more drama depleted, I climbed onto the bed and propped the photo album on my knees.
May as well make the most of my jail time
, I thought.

I opened the book to the page where Ollie and I had found the image of the state house and kept going from there. Even though the photos were of Grumps at his work sites, a certain shirt or a way that his head was tilted would remind me of something that happened when I was younger: like my first trip to Fenway Park or my eighth birthday—when Nini insisted on baking me a cake and put so much salt in it, it was too disgusting to eat, but Grumps
devoured a big piece anyway, because he didn’t want her to feel bad.

That was the Grumps I knew—the guy who loved my Nini, took me into town, and tried to make everyone feel good.

This lying, sneaking Grumps? He was a total stranger.

I put my head back against the headboard and let the tears come. They ran out of the corners of my eyes and dripped into my hair. It wasn’t fair—one of the people I loved most in the whole world had hurt me in a way I hadn’t thought possible, and I couldn’t even
talk
to him about it, let alone get mad and fight with him over it. Stupid Alzheimer’s. Taking my grandfather, his secrets, and—I was realizing more and more—the trust I had in the people around me.

A salty tear stung my scratched face. I swiped it away, along with other thoughts about Grumps. If I was ever going to get through this, I had to focus.

I pulled my proof out of my pocket and spread it next to me. Where in Trinity Church—if they were in that building—was the rest of the art?

I flipped through a few more pages, and then I spotted it—Grumps standing on the stairs of Trinity. I could tell that’s where he was because the corner of the blue sign poked into the shot. My heart rate shot up as I pulled the photo off the sticky paper, but even before I turned it over, I knew something was wrong. There was snow in the picture—a lot of it.

January 1990.

January?! The heist was in March. Could he have hidden
the art there if he wasn’t working on the building? I doubted it. And the snow on the ground, well, it’s not like you could fake that. Especially not in 1990. Was Photoshop even around back then? So why would he lie to me?
How
could he lie, especially with the Alzheimer’s?

He’s been lying for a long time, Moxie.

The voice in my head was my mother’s, but I knew it was right. Grumps had trained himself to lie, over and over again, to protect the things he hid. And he hadn’t realized it was me he was speaking to this morning—he thought I was my mom at first—which could also have made him less interested in telling the truth.

But it still hurt.

I put the photo back in its spot and doodled an elaborate question mark on a sticky note.

On the next page, I hit the jackpot. Grumps in front of Old North Church, near Faneuil Hall. Date?