Salem's Cipher (5 page)

11

Eight Years Old

“
Y
ou know why people hide things, don't you, Salem?”

Daniel Wiley is hand-sanding a walnut monk's bench. The sun pokes through the shop window's dusty glass, and sawdust the color of heartsblood gambols in the beam. Salem trails her finger through the specks, upsetting their fairy dance. She's on summer break between second and third
grade. The weather's been moody, starting out cooler than usual but winding toward the end of the hottest July on record.

She's helped her dad pick out the wood for this bench. Held tools while he measured, cut, drilled, and dremeled. Watched in awe as he carved the lion's heads that would decorate each end of the two armrests. His woodshop is her favorite place on earth to be, most days.

“So other people don't find them?” she guesses.

He blows the last of the sawdust off his creation and reaches for the varnish. She wants him to open it more than anything in the whole, whole world. He's always made her leave at this point in a project. She imagines the varnish must smell like butterscotch.

“That's right.” He is smiling, encouraging. He wears the cut-off jean shorts and the faded, paper-thin Led Zeppelin Icarus t-shirt he always wears at this stage in the project, this time of year. “And why don't they want other people to find them?”

Salem pushes a sticky curl from her face. The Powderhorn Park wading pool closes at five o'clock. It's clear water that stops at her knees. She tells herself it's not scary, it's just a big bathtub, and cooling off an entire third of herself will feel like heaven. Maybe Bellie can ride the bus over and they can skip to the park together, joking about how they're too old for the baby pool but secretly loving it, and then walk home and drink grape Kool-Aid with ice cubes and watch the afternoon showing of Bel's favorite TV show,
Days of Our Lives.
Bel has promised Salem she'll understand it when she turns the ripe age of nine and that until then, it's her job to watch and learn.

“Because they don't have enough to share?”

He studies her. “You know what, I think you're old enough to watch the final step.”

Her mouth forms a perfect O. “You're going to let me watch the varnish?”

He sets down the can, chuckling. “If you like, but I have something that comes right before the varnish that I think you'll like even better. It's the final test of the furniture.”

He reaches into the mouth of a carved lion's head and tugs its wooden tongue. Without releasing the tongue, he turns the head 45 degrees and slides the top of the armrest toward the center. Underneath lies a narrow hidden drawer. He repeats the action with the other lion's head.

Salem is speechless.

“I added the compartments while you were sleeping. I do that with every piece of furniture I make.”

He flips the varnish lid and stirs the viscous liquid underneath. She wrinkles her nose against the acrid odor. It doesn't smell like butterscotch at all.

“Remember the question I asked you earlier?” He uses the inside lip of the can to scrape the excess varnish off the stir stick. “There's only one reason a person ever hides something.”

She blinks, waiting.

He clicks the lid back into place. It makes a hollow snap, like a metal bone breaking.

“Fear. That's the only reason.”

Salem looks at the hidden drawers her father just revealed to her. She is no longer thinking of grape Kool-Aid.

12

Minneapolis Institute of Art

F
ear. If her dad had been right, that's what had motivated her mother to hide her instructions in a cipher, which led Salem to this message hidden in
Judith Slaying Holofernes
.

But what level of fear would send her mom to these lengths?

“Amazing!” Bel barked.

Salem snapped her mouth shut, puzzled. Then, she caught the shadow of the security guard closing in on them. She yanked off the glasses and stuffed them in her pocket.

“It really is!” Salem nodded energetically. If they hadn't been drawing attention before, they certainly were now. “A real work of art, this Gentileschi. Ladies are doing it for themselves.”

Bel grabbed her arm and steered her toward the door, marching right through the guards. They didn't speak again until they reached the bathroom.

Bel spun her around. “What did you see?” she demanded.

Salem pointed at the glasses in her pocket, her voice disbelieving. “The spectacles must be some kind of moiré device. They showed up a pattern in the blanket's fringe.”

“Moray device? Like the eel?” Bel stepped away to peek under the stalls. Finding them all empty, she pulled Salem away from the door.

“Close—moiré. I know it from math, but the principle works on cloth, or canvas, I suppose.”

Bel waited, eyes trained over Salem's shoulder, toward the entrance. At 5'11", she was over half a foot taller than Salem and nearly the same weight. She carried hers lightly, on the balls of her feet, ready to pounce on anyone who entered.

Salem massaged her nose where the glasses had left a mark. “It's when you have one lined pattern, and then you slightly rotate a second lined pattern on top of it. If you have something that mimics the initial lined pattern, like etched glass”—she tugged the glasses out of her pocket and held them up—“it essentially renders the first pattern invisible. Only the lines of the second pattern can be seen. They can be shapes or words.”

“And in this case … ”

“Words!” Salem said triumphantly.

Bel was used to how Salem's brain worked. “And they said … ?”

“I could only read a little bit at a time, but I think I got it all before the security guard came over.” Salem spoke the words into her phone loud enough for Bel to hear. “We need a translation of
Il cuore della prima chiesa nel nuovo mondo
.”

“Is that Italian?” Bel asked. “What's it mean?”

Siri's robotic voice answered: “The heart of the first church in the new world.”

13

Minneapolis Institute of Art

B
el and Salem passed the same clueless expression back and forth in a poor imitation of Laurel and Hardy. Bel broke the spell. “I don't know what the hell that means, but I'm confident you'll figure it out. And the sooner you do, the sooner we rescue our moms.” She hauled her own smartphone out of her back pocket. “Tell me what to look up.”

Three women entered the bathroom, forcing Salem and Bel to move closer to the sinks. They huddled as far in a corner as they could, Salem talking them both through what they already knew. “The message in Gentileschi said ‘first church of the New World.' Vida's note said to go home. So, let's Google First Churches in Minnesota. It's in the New World, technically, and home to both of us, right?”

Bel saluted, and they hunched over their phones, typing furiously.

“There's about a million first churches in Minnesota,” Bel groaned. “First Seventh-Day Adventist, First Congregational, First Covenant … ”

Salem bit her lip. “Let's take out the Minnesota and try it in quotes.”

“Try what in quotes?”

“‘First Church.' That'll screen out competing names.”

Bel updated her search and scrolled through her phone, reading out loud, under her breath. “First Church in Cambridge, First Church in Wethersfield, First Church in Boston, First Church in Texas—wait!”

They spotted it at the same time: “First Church in Salem, Unitarian.”

Bel's face scrunched up. “‘Go
home
.' Have you ever been to Salem, Salem?”

Salem shook her head. “Not unless I was a baby and no one told me.” She clicked the link and opened the “About Us” page on the First Church website. “The church was founded in 1629, one of the first in the nation.” She pointed toward Bel's phone. “Verify when Gentileschi painted
Judith Slaying Holofernes
while I read the rest of the history.”

A woman who had left the closest stall to wash her hands turned
off the water and reached for a paper towel. “1614 to 1618. Somewhere in there.”

“Excuse me?” Bel asked, hackles raised.

The woman turned from the paper towel dispenser. It was the same coral-lipped staff member who'd let them into the Women in Art Exhibit. “
Judith Slaying Holofernes
. Artemisia Gentileschi worked on it from 1614 to 1618, give or take.”

“Are you an art history student?” Bel asked.

She pointed at faint crow's feet accenting the corners of her eyes. “Ten years ago I was. I'm hoping to be a curator here someday. Or, more likely, at another art institute. They don't like to hire from their own pool in most places. They prefer a ‘diversity of ideas.'” She held out her hand. “I'm Sheila. And word is you two almost got yourselves kicked out of the exhibit. If I'd known you were such weirdos, I never would have allowed you in to find Dr. Keller.” Her smile belied her words.

Bel shook Sheila's hand. Salem followed. The woman's confident grip, combined with her open expression, made up Salem's mind for her. “Speaking of weird, can I ask you something?”

Sheila glanced at her phone. “Sure. I'm on break for another five minutes.”

“Have you ever heard of a secret message, or a code, maybe, hidden in a painting?”

Sheila's soft laughter made Salem think of chimes. “Ah, I didn't peg you two for conspiracists, but it all makes sense now. Were you looking for a message in the Gentileschi?”

“We're just curious,” Bel said.

Sheila's eyes narrowed. If she knew Bel was lying, she had the good manners not to call her on it. “I've never heard of anything in a Gentileschi, but there are some famous examples. Da Vinci, of course, painted an
LV
in Mona Lisa's right eye. Domenico Ghirlandaio's
Madonna with Saint Giovannino
depicts a pretty clear UFO flying in the background over Mary's shoulder, and that was painted in the fifteenth century. Michelangelo liked to dig up and dissect corpses, and the ceiling panels on the Sistine Chapel are supposed to be silly with hidden representations of brains and organs, though I don't see them myself.”

Her eyes lit up. “My personal favorite Michelangelo is
The Prophet Zechariah
, which, if you look closely, features an angel flipping off Pope Julius II.” She lifted her shoulders. “Art nerds love this stuff. It's our social currency. But yeah, I've never heard a peep about anything hidden in a Gentileschi.”

Salem was studying a hundred angles a second, trying to line up the painting's dates with the founding of the First Church in Salem. “You said she painted
Judith Slaying Holofernes
from 1614 to 1618. I don't suppose there's any way she could have gone back to the painting to add something new, say a message, around 1629?”

Sheila tapped her upper lip. “Gentileschi didn't die until the 1650s, if memory serves, so timewise, it would certainly have been possible. But she wasn't the only one who could have added something. That painting was incognito for a good chunk of time. People actually mislabeled it a Caravaggio for years, and then it turned up in Boston in the 1840s before finding its way back to the Uffizi.”

“So it'd be possible for someone to have painted a secret message into it at any time?”

“Sure,” Sheila said, “anytime until it was placed in a museum under lock and key.” Either her patience or grace had run their course. She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Can you tell me what you found in it?”

“Sorry,” Salem said. “I wish we could.”

Bel nudged Salem, thanking Sheila for the information before leading Salem out and heading toward the main entrance. They wound through crowds to step outside into brisk air that smelled of rotting leaves. A bus full of costumed kids was unloading in the parking loop in front of the institute. They were heavy on the Batman, Disney princess, mermaid, and ninja getups. Normally, the sight would make Salem smile. The day had ground her down, though, her brain a war zone of spinning thoughts and bottomless worries.

“We both know what this means, right?” Bel shoved her hands in her pockets against the cool fall air. They walked briskly toward the parking ramp.

“That we need to … ?”

When Salem didn't finish, Bel filled in the words, her voice tender. “That we need to fly to Massachusetts to investigate.”

Salem had feared what the Gentileschi message meant as soon as her phone had translated it, but there was something about Bel saying it out loud that drove it home as real as a nail to her forehead. She would need to leave Minneapolis and the routine that had kept her safe all these years. The thought froze Salem's blood, turning it thick and sluggish, choking her veins, tracking toward her heart. She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, as her therapist had taught her.

“Hey, it's about time I left the state,” she said creakily.

Bel stopped and placed her hands on Salem's shoulders so she couldn't look away. Her voice was firm. “I can go to the First Church alone. You can be my brain on the ground back here, researching for me.”

Salem wiped at the corners of her eyes. “It's about time I expand my horizons, right?” She infused her voice with her best imitation of bravado. “If you've got my back, what can't I do?”

Bel's expression was sour with worry, but she matched Salem's tone. “Turn invisible? Make a decent grilled cheese sandwich? Have any semblance of good taste in men?”

Salem punched her arm. “That's enough of that, missy.” She didn't know if it was reconnecting with Bel or the trauma of the morning, but the words spilled past her lips before she could stop them. “Hey, you and your mom are close, right?”

Bel looked taken aback. “Of course. We tell each other everything. Just like you and Vida. Thick as thieves, right?”

Salem bobbed her head, hoping the motion would distract from the flush spreading up from her neck. “Right! So we have a plan. You drive, I'll find us plane tickets. That's what credit cards are for, right?”

Dr. David Keller stood at the glass panels of Mia's second-story walkway, phone to his ear, speaking urgently, his stare glued to Salem and Bel until they disappeared from view. His pupils were dilated despite the daylight, his body's ancient fight-or-flight response meant to provide him with the best possible vision when his life was on the line.