Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking (8 page)

Ollie frowned and turned away from me as the T bumped its way into Boston. I leaned my head against the probably-filthy window behind me, not caring that gnarly bacteria were setting up shop in my follicles.

“Seriously, Moxie? C’mon. This is a timed cache. Can’t we go to the museum after?” He cocked his head at me and I clamped my lips shut. Ollie wanted to head straight into Back Bay so we could go to the Public Garden and search for a cache.

“The cache is part of a contest,” he explained patiently, like he was talking to his three-year-old sister. “And how fast you find it determines the number of points you get.”

“Points toward what?”

“The next level.”

“You are
not
serious,” I said. “It’s an imaginary game! I’m talking real-life stuff here.” I rubbed my face. I needed to start this proof like a wolf needs to howl. Ollie would come around.

He thumped his head against the window and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts and glared at me out from under the brim of his Sox hat.

“Fine,” he snapped. “But we go from there straight to the Public Garden.”

Victory!! To show him how serious I was, I crossed my eyes and my heart. “Absolutely,” I said, trying not to grin or anything.

The train let us out downtown. It was gorgeous outside, but already hot at barely ten—and we decided to walk over to the Gardner instead of switching trains. A couple of blocks into our walk, he wiped his forehead.

I barely noticed the climbing temperature. Although I didn’t know what to expect at the museum, the closer we got, the more my heart pounded. It was like the sidewalk was electrified: I bounced up to balance on a low wall in front of Simmons College, then swung around a light pole.

“You are such a dork,” Ollie said.

“I totally am,” I said, and did a little skip-hop over a tree root in the sidewalk. “But I seriously think that I’m gonna find something today.”

“What did you lose, little girl?” The voice came from behind me, and I stopped short, nearly tripping. My spine froze.

Ollie’s head snapped around and he stopped walking too. I didn’t even have to look. I knew who it was.

“Can I help you find it? See, I’ve lost something too.” Her buttery voice dripped contempt again.

I wanted to book it out of there, but what good would that do? Instead, I turned around slowly and casually, faking it, like I didn’t care she was right behind me. Like I didn’t care that she
was following me around the city. Like I didn’t care that she was as unpredictable as a scorpion.

She was leaning against one of the college’s gates, inspecting the navy polish on her fingernails and dressed all in black again, like she didn’t care how hot it was. Her eyes flicked from her hand to my face in a lazy way, like she was pretending she didn’t care I was there. Only in this case, I was
supposed
to know that she was pretending. I clamped my lips together. Out of the corner of my eye, Ollie’s head swiveled in all directions. What was he looking for, help?

As if.

After waiting one more beat, I titled my head toward her. “You couldn’t help me find my butt with two hands and a flashlight,” I said pleasantly, as if I were speaking to Jolie Pearson and not some psycho gangster lady.

Her mouth went into a tight line. Next to me, Ollie chuckled. I wanted to grin, but I kept my eyes on The Redhead, expression steady. Kept pretending that I knew what I was doing.

“Classy,” she snarled. “Bet your grandfather would be proud to hear that come out of your mouth.”

“You don’t know
anything
about my grandfather!” I shouted, instantly so mad, I saw purple, and then, even before the slow smile appeared on her face, I realized the mistake I’d made, letting her get to me. Idiotville: Population—Moxie.

“Enjoy your educational experience at the museum,” she purred, obnoxious smirk on her face. “Hopefully it will help you trigger your grandfather’s memory so he can tell me where Sully’s items are.”

“So it
is
the art you want,” I said, triumphant. Two could play the “get under your skin” game. “Thanks for confirming.”

“Of course that’s what it is, genius. And Sully will do whatever it takes to get his hands on it. Or is that ‘take whatever he wants’ to get his hands on it?” She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Maybe I should spend some time with your mommy or grammy, and see if they can help me find them?” She pushed off from the gate.

Mom and Nini? I couldn’t let them get involved in this. What if they got hurt? They were all I had.

“Don’t you go
near
them,” I growled, forcing strength into my voice that I didn’t feel. “I’ll get the paintings for you. Promise.”

The Redhead gave me a slow, predatory smile, and headed down the street in the opposite direction. After a few long steps she turned and waggled her fingers at me. “Do it. You have ten days, sweetheart.”

I turned to Ollie, who was pale, but had a determined expression on his face.

“Psycho,” he whispered. “Forget the Public Gardens, Mox. We’ve got work to do.”

A few minutes later we were inside the cool darkness of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The bored desk guy handed us a map and barely looked at us, but the lady checking our ticket at the door raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“We don’t like unaccompanied minors touring the exhibits alone,” she said.

“What? Do you think we’re going to tag the walls?” I snapped, still annoyed from losing my cool with The Redhead and rattled about the promise I’d made.

Her face turned an ugly brick color and she puffed up like a plump pillow. Ollie stepped forward and put his hands out before she could say anything.

“We’re very responsible, ma’am, and just want to look at the art.”

Her face was still that brick color, but she deflated. Ollie has that effect on grown-ups—not that they deflate around him, but they trust him. Maybe it’s the glasses?

Whatever it was, it worked. She stepped back, took our tickets, and let us in.

I’d been to the Gardner in sixth grade, but hadn’t really remembered much about it except for the empty frames. What we stepped into wasn’t a dark and dusty museum, but instead an open and airy indoor…

“Courtyard,” said Ollie. Who, of course, was staring at the map. “We should be in the courtyard.” I nudged him with an elbow and he looked up.

“Whoa.”

The courtyard was this big rectangular space with stone columns and arches all around it. Flowers and plants grew in this crazy riot of color, and a fountain splashed and trickled. A statue of a woman wearing one of those toga things with her hair up in a pile on her head stood off to one side. It looked like she was reaching for something, only she had no arms.

Why are there so many sculptures of armless women?

I took a deep breath of fresh flower-smell, and next to me, Ollie sneezed.

Even though I wanted to get up to where the not-paintings were, the courtyard was so beautiful we had to walk around it. It’s roped off, so you can’t go all the way in, but there are cool window-benches all the way around that are close to the plants.

“This is the perfect place to set up a mad cache,” Ollie said as we stood in front of a giant planter box bursting with ferns and huge white flowers. He sniffled. I dug a tissue out of my pocket and passed it to him. His eyes watered a little.

“Taking a wild guess, but I bet caching here is totally out of the question,” I said. “They’ve, ya know, probably had enough with people taking stuff out of the museum.”

Now it was Ollie who turned brick red.

“Oh. Yeah,” he said. “You’re probably right about that.” He blew his nose into the linty tissue.

“Dutch Room?” I asked. Ollie nodded and sneezed again.

“Sweet. Let’s find some paintings.”

“This is like how Nana’s parlor used to be,” whispered Ollie.

“If Nana collected real art instead of those doofy Thomas whoever paintings.” Ollie’s grandma on his mom’s side lived in a big old house near Salem before she died. She was the type of grandma who didn’t want you to touch anything because she was afraid it might get dirty. There were plastic covers on her couch and rug.

Ollie raised an eyebrow. “He
was
the painter of light, Moxie,” he said in his Very Serious Voice. I tried not to crack up. A security guard sitting in a chair glanced in our direction. The museum had only opened a short time ago, and we had the room to ourselves.

The Dutch Room is big and rectangular, and everything in it oozes richness—not rich like money-rich, but rich like thick and beautiful richness. Two of the empty frames were across from where we walked in: big, golden squares that showed only wallpaper and tiny shreds of canvas from where the paintings were cut out. Ollie and I gasped as we stood in front of them.

Tiny plaques with the names of the paintings—Rembrandt’s
Storm on the Sea of Galilee
and
A Lady and Gentleman in Black
still hung on the wall, lonely.

“Creepy, isn’t it?” The security guard had come up behind us. He scratched at his almost-white mustache. “There’s another empty frame.” He pointed to a table near the door. It was where
The Concert
had stood. We’d walked right past it. The big blank spots on the wall had grabbed our attention first.

I nodded.

He launched into a long story about the theft—stuff that Ollie and I both knew, but we listened anyway. Well, I listened. Ollie shifted and ran his eyes over every nook and cranny in the room. He’d walk out with it memorized.

“Yep,” finished the guard. He hitched his pants up around his waist. “They don’t have any idea who took the stuff.” He paused, then leaned in close. Too close—I got a whiff of breakfast sausage and maple syrup. “But I think I know what happened to it.”

My ears perked up like a cat hearing a can opener. Ollie’s attention changed too. I didn’t want to appear too overexcited, though, so I cocked my head and tried to act casual.

“Yeah?”

The guard nodded.

“I think they’re hanging in some collector’s room,” he said. More maple syrup/sausage air in my face. “Some wicked rich art collector has ’em.” Only when he said it, in his thick Boston accent,
art
came out like
ahht.

My heart, which had started to beat heavier in my chest, slowed down.

“Oh,” said Ollie, voice as disappointed as I felt. This guy had no idea what he was talking about.

“Um, yeah. Well…I hope they find the paintings someday,” I said. Time to leave Officer Breakfast.

According to the flyer I’d printed off the website, there were six paintings, a small etching, and a little vase stolen out of the Dutch Room. Ollie and I did a quick walk-through and looked at the other empty frames. The little etching wasn’t actually in a frame, just under glass on the wall. The wall was still scratched up from where the thieves pried it off. The ku had been on the table under
The Concert.

“It was small enough to stick in a cargo pocket.” Ollie sketched its location on the flyer and showed me the image: It looked like a little beaker, nothing special…just thousands of years old.

My head swam. The Redhead had confirmed what I suspected when we were outside: Grumps had hid the Gardner art. Could I get him to tell me where it was? And then there was the nagging voice in the back of my mind—paired with a sickening sensation in my stomach. I turned to Ollie.

“How
could
Grumps have hid the paintings? They were so beautiful, and there’s
only one of each of them in the world.
Everyone should be able to see them,” I whispered. “Besides, if Sully Cupcakes had been in prison all this time, unable to hurt him,
why hadn’t Grumps returned them?”

Ollie gave me a sympathetic look. “I don’t know, Mox. I’m
sorry. Maybe we’ll know when we figure out where they are.”

I sighed. With the way Grumps was slipping, I didn’t know if I’d ever get answers.

We crossed the hall, went through two other rooms, and entered the Short Gallery. Here, some of the art was hung on a rack of window-sized hinged panels—kind of like how doors are hung at big hardware stores.

“You can display a bunch of small pieces of art this way,” Ollie said. He flipped a panel open. Five small Degas sketches were taken out of there. Five empty spots, each about the size of a sheet of paper, labeled with the date of the theft, were all that was left of them.