The Mystery of the Third Lucretia (25 page)

Believe it or not, her biggest donation came from Allen the Meep. He gave her some huge amount, like $50,000 or something. Lucas said she had asked her if it wasn't hard to get money from Allen, and Grandma Stickney had said, “Dealing with your father is hardly a challenge, dear. I'm accustomed to going toe-to-toe with presidents and prime ministers. Besides, I'm still his mother.”

Anyway, she let Lucas and me name the program, and we decided to name it after Lucretia. We figured if it hadn't been for her, none of our whole adventure would have happened. And also, like Mom had explained, if Lucretia hadn't killed herself, she might have had to become like the women in the Quarter. So we named it the Lucretia Project.

Hanne was the first person to get a loan. She and her roommate used some of the money to make the first rent payments on an apartment in a different part of town. Also, the nuns said they'd hire her to be kind of a secretary for them if she could learn how to use a computer, so the rest of the money went for her to take a course on word processing and using the Internet.

As she goes back and forth between the Twin Cities and Amsterdam, Lucas's grandma is keeping us up to date on what's happening with Jacob and Marianne. Jacob's already been tried and convicted of forgery. When that happened, they called and interviewed us again for the two local papers.

They can also get Jacob on the kidnapping. Even though we gave all those statements to the police, Lucas, Mom, and I may have to go back to Amsterdam to testify about that.

The police also found out from Willem Mannefeldt's dead body that he was poisoned. (Are we surprised?) Marianne—who, by the way, was caught trying to escape to Argentina—is saying that she was totally innocent, that Jacob must have poisoned her husband by himself. But Jacob is saying it was all Marianne's idea and she slipped the poison into something her husband ate. So it looks like both of them will be locked up for a long time.

Here's one major bummer. Remember the London woman who said she saw somebody push Bert out in front of that bus? Well, she looked at the picture Lucas had drawn of how Jacob looked in London, and she said she was pretty sure, almost sure, more than 90 percent sure, but not absolutely sure it was the same man. So they dropped the case.

 

 

Lucas has started to like a guy named Josh Daniels who she met in a coffee shop. I'm starting to like Aden, a guy who lives in my neighborhood who was in American History with me and has his eyebrow pierced in two places. I expected Mom to be totally freaked when I finally told her about the piercings, but she's handling it pretty well.

Lucas and I are both working on projects for a summer art contest at a community art center. Lucas is drawing a self-portrait. I'm doing a set of hands kind of like the ones in the Lucretia painting, holding some peach and yellow roses that are lying on a pillow. We'd both like to win a prize, but mostly we just want our works to be chosen and hung so other people can see them.

After what happened to us in Amsterdam, Mom, Lucas, and I all enrolled in a community ed course in self-defense. Mom's never been very athletic, but she used to take karate when she was younger, and she's the best one in the class. She says that's because every time she has to kick or hit or throw somebody, she thinks about Jacob and that makes her mean.

Speaking of Mom, here's another thing that happened because of the Lucretia mystery. She sold her article for el biggo buckso to a new magazine just starting up called
Internationale
. She got her name on the cover of the very first issue. My favorite part was the opening paragraph of her article. It went:

The article was such a hit that the magazine offered her a job. Mom really wants to take it, especially since they said they'd pay her a lot more than what she's been getting. But it would mean even more traveling and she doesn't know what to do with me since I only have so many school vacations. It's like déjà vu all over again. Lucas and I hope she'll take it, because we think it will mean even more traveling for us.

Lucas seems to be getting along a little better with her parents. Her dad actually asked her the other day if she was serious about being a lawyer. When she said yes, he said if she keeps on getting really good grades he thought she could probably get into Harvard Law School, where he went. I think that's another change that happened because of the Lucretia adventure. I think it helped him start thinking of Lucas as a real person.

You wouldn't believe Camellia. She still spends more time shopping in department stores and malls than any other living human being. But lately Grandma Stickney has her calling friends to help raise money for the Lucretia Project, and Lucas and I are beginning to wonder if what she needed all along was just a good cause.

The other day when I got to their house, Lucas put her finger to her lips and led me to Camellia's study. The door was open just a crack, and I could see Camellia on the telephone, sitting at her little desk in front of this huge, ugly painting of a bunch of dalmatians that she bought last time she was in Santa Fe.

It was eleven o'clock in the morning, and Camellia must have been up for at least two hours, and she never even gets as far as breakfast without putting on her makeup. But there she was, no makeup, wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and an old pair of gray shorts and a T-shirt she'd probably used sometime for aerobics class.

She was saying in her accent, “And some of them are single mothers, bringin' up their children in that awful place. Your gift could help some woman make a better life for herself and her little babies. D'you think you and Dennis could do two thousand?”

I looked back at Lucas, and she mouthed the words, “She's been doing it all morning.” Then she opened her eyes wide, spread her hands, and gave a big shrug, as if to say, Don't ask me, I don't get it either.

Before I leave off, I should probably catch you up on Lucretia herself.

It turns out the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the National Gallery in Washington, and the Rijksmuseum are going to team up for a traveling exhibit with all three of the Lucretia paintings together. They're calling the show Portrait of a Forgery. They're going to have a panel that tells our story, and they got permission from Mom and the Stickneys to include our pictures. Exhibits like these take time to organize, so we won't have it in the Twin Cities for another eighteen months. Maybe then Lucas and I will have another fifteen minutes of fame.

Before we left Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum gave each of us a copy of the poster they used to advertise the Third Lucretia before they knew it was a fake. It has a big reproduction of Jacob's painting at the top, and something about Rembrandt van Rijn underneath. Both of us got our posters framed, and we each have them hanging in our bedrooms.

I have mine on the wall across from my bed. Beside it I have smaller reproductions of the other two Lucretias and the painting Lucas and I made in London. Lucas has the drawings she made in the Rembrandt room.

Sometimes when I look at Lucretia I think about how hard it was for women in the olden days, and how hard it still is for some women in a lot of places all over the world. And sometimes I think about how the Lucretia paintings and Gallery Guy's forgery have made life better for a lot of women—not just the women who are helped by the Lucretia Project, but my mom, and Lucas's mom, and even Lucas and me.

But mostly when I look at the picture I think of the mystery and how we solved it. Last week when Lucas was over, we were looking at the poster and talking about what happened in London and Amsterdam, and Lucas said, “I sure hope we have another adventure sometime.”

“I think we will. I think another mystery is waiting for us.”

“Really? You think that?”

“I do. I feel it inside. And I think it might not be too long until it happens.”

“Happening soon! Sweet,” Lucas said. Then she added, “Like, tomorrow would be good.”

This is a work of fiction. None of the characters in this book are real people or based on real people. Especially not Jacob Hannekroot. The Rijksmuseum is an actual place—one of the world's greatest museums, I recommend you go there as fast as you can
¹
*—but as far as I know, they don't even have a staff position called Curator of Dutch Art. I made that up.

Speaking of museums, there really are paintings of Lucretia in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Belshazzar's Feast actually hangs in room 23 of London's National Gallery, along with a lot of other Rembrandt paintings. The British Museum is full of unbelievably cool stuff. If you live near any of these places or have a chance to visit them, go take a look. You don't even need to pay—all four have free admission.

By the way, most of the other places in these pages actually do exist as well. I hope this book makes you want to go into the world and find them. But if you follow in the footsteps of Kari and Lucas, you'll discover that a few of the places they visit came straight out of my imagination.

Let me know when you figure out which ones are real and which ones aren't, and tell me if you have an adventure along the way!

Authors often begin their acknowledgments by saying they had help writing their book. In my case, this is literally true. As the dedication notes, my daughter, Annalisa, played a big role in writing The Mystery of the Third Lucretia. She gave the characters names, physical descriptions, and personalities. Her response to art and travel made their way into these pages. And Kari channels the voice of Annalisa when she was fourteen. Where the kids sound cool, it's probably my daughter's doing. Where they don't, it's all my fault. I couldn't have created this book it without her help, and I am enormously grateful.

Second only to her, thanks to the members of the writers' group Crème de la Crime: Carl Brookins, Julie Fasciana, Scott Haartman, Michael Kac, William Kent Krueger (Kent to us), Joan Loshek, Jean Paul, Mary Monica Pulver, Tim Springfield, Anne Webb, and past member Betsey Rhame. They are steadfast friends and superb critics, and their contributions made each chapter of the book better, stronger and smarter. Special thanks to Jean for her proofreader's eye.

I am tremendously fortunate to be represented by the delightful Tina Wexler, who is every bit as good a critic as she is as agent. I am equally lucky to be edited by Tracy Gates—a dream to work with—and to benefit from the talents of the whole Viking team. They care about quality, and it shows.

Pete Hautman's sage cousel helped make this book better. Thanks, Pete. And thanks to Lily Crutchfield for much-needed fashion advice.

I owe much to the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain and whoever had the brilliant idea of creating a special CWA Dagger Award for unpublished writers of crime fiction. The contest's enlightened rules allowed an American book for younger readers to be considered alongside British works written for adults. I am truly grateful to the 2005 Debut Dagger Award panelists, especially Edwin Thomas and Kate Jones who helped move this book into the marketplace.

Finally, love and gratitude to family members Rusty, Patty, Steve, and Robyn, and many friends, for patience, encouragement, and cheerleading.