The Statue Walks at Night (4 page)

As soon as Ms. Brown was out of sight, Brian and Sean tiptoed to the door that had Mrs. Gomez's name on it and silently opened it. Brian was about to say hello when he noticed that Mrs. Gomez was on the phone. She had her back turned to the door and didn't notice the boys enter.

“John!” she cried into the phone. “I've just discovered something horrible! The Monet paintings have also disappeared from the collection!”

Brian and Sean exchanged looks. The “John” she was talking to was their dad. Their father must have asked when the paintings had been taken because Mrs. Gomez then said, “Sometime after I examined the collection yesterday and before the locksmith changed the lock on the storage cabinet this morning.”

Suddenly Sean nudged Brian and pointed. Mrs. Gomez was waving her left hand as she spoke. There was a gauze bandage across her palm!

B
RIAN AND SEAN STEPPED
back, and Brian quietly closed the door to Mrs. Gomez's office.

“Maybe Mrs. Gomez took the art,” Sean said to Brian. “Then she hired Dad to investigate, thinking that nobody'd suspect the person who hired the investigator.”

Brian nodded slowly. “It's possible.”

Ms. Brown suddenly appeared behind them. “Boys,” she barked, “I told you to wait right where you were!”

Ms. Brown's lips pursed as though she'd just swallowed a caterpillar. “Mrs. Gomez will see you now,” she announced. “Don't keep her waiting.”

Under Ms. Brown's watchful eye, Brian and Sean hurried into Mrs. Gomez's office.

Mrs. Gomez smiled when they came in, but Brian noticed that she seemed flustered.

“We just dropped by to say hello,” Brian said.

“So, we'll be going now,” Sean added. “Good-bye.”

Brian clamped a hand on Sean's shoulder. “You don't have a cafeteria in the museum,” Brian said.

“Huh?” Sean stared at Brian.

“This museum isn't large enough to warrant a cafeteria,” Mrs. Gomez said. She opened a side drawer of her desk. “If you're hungry, I have an apple and some cheese crackers in here.”

“No thanks,” Brian said. “I'm not hungry. I was just wondering how the people who work in the museum eat lunch. I guess they brown-bag it.”

Mrs. Gomez laughed. “That's a strange thing to wonder about.”

Brian smiled back. “I was just curious.”

“Well, to satisfy your curiosity,” she explained, “with the exception of our security guard, George Potts, most of the museum employees leave the museum during lunchtime. George and Harvey bring their lunch and stay during the day without leaving. Harvey takes George's place as guard while George is on his breaks. The rest of us usually eat at nearby restaurants. Hilda's apartment isn't far from here, so she goes home at lunchtime to feed her cat.”

Just then there was a knock on the office door. It was flung open a second later by a tall, tanned, elegantly dressed man who clumped into the room, leaning on a cane. He smiled at the boys.

“Sorry, Maggie,” he said. “I didn't know you were busy.”

“Come in, James,” Mrs. Gomez said. “I'd like you to meet my friends, Brian and Sean. Boys,” she said, “this is Mr. James Vanstedder, the museum's assistant curator.”

Mr. Vanstedder winced as he shifted his cane from his right hand to his left so he could shake hands. Brian and Sean both zeroed in on Mr. Vanstedder's left hand, which was wrapped in a thick gauze bandage.

What is with the people in this museum? Sean wondered. Do they all have bandaged hands?

Mr. Vanstedder gave an embarrassed shrug. “I guess I must look pretty battered,” he said. “I was waterskiing and got all tangled up in my skis, and, well…this is what happened.”

“Poor James,” Mrs. Gomez said. “What did the doctor say?”

“The doctor?” he repeated.

“When you saw him this afternoon,” Mrs. Gomez said.

“Oh,” he said quickly. “Of course. The doctor. He just prodded and poked my leg and changed the bandages,” Mr. Vanstedder explained. “He said I should be fine by this time next week.”

Mr. Vanstedder looked at his watch and smiled apologetically at Brian and Sean. “I hope I'm not rushing your guests, Maggie, but you promised that at four-thirty we could discuss how we're going to exhibit the Metropolitan collection. Time's running out.”

“Yes, it is.” Suddenly Mrs. Gomez looked frantic.

Brian and Sean thanked Mrs. Gomez for her time and said a quick good-bye.

“By the way,” Sean asked Mrs. Gomez on his way out. “How did you hurt your hand?”

She looked down at her hand as if she were surprised to see the bandage. “I cut it on some metal staples that fastened one of the museum's cartons,” she answered. “Why?”

Sean shook his head. “No reason. See you later.”

“Where to now?” Sean asked Brian outside the museum offices.

“First the lecture hall,” Brian said, “then the art galleries.”

But after a thorough search of those rooms, the boys hadn't found anyplace where they thought the stolen sketches might be hidden.

“Let's go home,” Brian told Sean finally. “We've got to talk, and I'll write up my notes on what we've seen and heard.” Brian pulled out their claim check and headed for the counter where they'd left their backpacks and jackets.

As they passed under the watchful gaze of George Potts, Brian suddenly stopped. “Sir,” he said, “I'm very much interested in museum security. Will you let me ask you a few questions?”

“You kids,” Mr. Potts grumbled good-naturedly. “Go ahead. Ask away.”

“Thanks,” Brian said. Obviously, Brian thought, Mr. Potts assumed he and Sean were just another couple of kids with a dumb school project.

“I know you don't allow visitors to carry things—even coats—into or out of the museum,” Brian said. “But how about the people who work here? If they leave with briefcases or boxes, do you trust them, or do you check the contents?”

“It's not up to me to trust anybody,” Mr. Potts explained. “I just go by the rules. And according to the rules, every container of any kind taken out of the museum has to be examined. No exceptions.”

“What about when Mr. Marshall takes your place?” Brian asked.

“He follows the rules, exactly as I do.”

“Do the museum employees ever go in or out of the museum by the back doors?”

“Never,” Mr. Potts said. “Those doors are unlocked during the day but are used only in emergencies. If anyone tries to open them, locked or unlocked, they set off the alarm system.”

“Who controls the alarm system?”

Mr. Potts looked pleased with himself. “I do,” he announced.

“But what if an employee stayed after you'd gone home?” Brian was thinking about the burglar alarm system they had at home. “He could turn off the alarm and reset it, couldn't he?”

“Not in my museum he couldn't!” Mr. Potts answered. “The curator and I are the only ones who know the combination.”

Brian smiled, thanked Mr. Potts, and then he and Sean left the museum. Outside, Sean reminded Brian about his class field trip.

“Good,” Brian told him. “I know exactly what you'll need to do.”

B
RIAN AND SEAN ARRIVED
home before their parents did. Through the windows in the garage door they could see that the garage was empty. Mrs. Quinn usually made it home by five o'clock from her job as a graphic artist at a small advertising agency in town. But Mr. Quinn was just as likely to show up early as late. His hours varied with the work he had to do on each case.

As the boys let themselves into the kitchen, the fax machine in their father's office rang once and beeped.

“Maybe we should see what the message is,” Sean said.

“It's Dad's business, not ours,” Brian told him.

“Unless Mom and Dad have been kidnapped by foreign spies,” Sean suggested, “and are being held on a submarine until we come through with the ransom money. How are we going to know if we don't look?”

“You think someone's faxing Dad information he asked for that has to do with the museum thefts?”

Sean grinned. “It makes more sense than the kidnapping, doesn't it?”

The fax machine beeped again, signaling an end to the message.

“I guess it wouldn't hurt to look,” Brian said.

Brian and Sean raced each other into their father's office and read the fax.

Sean frowned. “This says that Harvey Marshall was arrested and convicted on a charge of shoplifting when he was eighteen,” Sean said. “But he's an old man now,” he said. “What he did way back then shouldn't matter.”

“Police records don't go away,” Brian said. Just then he discovered a legal-size sheet of paper lying on top of a folder on his father's desk. It was labeled “Redoaks County Museum.” It was their father's notes on the case.

“Sean,” he said, eyeing the sheet of paper. “It's not exactly like we're snooping into Dad's things if we're helping him on the case, is it?”

“Dad will be glad we helped him,” Sean answered. “At least, he ought to be.”

Brian began reading his father's notes.

“Listen to this,” he said. “Hilda Brown recently withdrew most of the money from her savings account. She's been paying for nursing home care for her mother.”

“She could probably get all the money she'd need if she sold the stolen art,” Sean said.

“Dave Brandon borrowed more than twenty thousand dollars to pay his college expenses,” Brian said, “and hasn't begun paying it back.”

“So he needs money, too,” Sean said. “Except Mr. Brandon wasn't in Redoaks. He was in San Francisco when the sketches were stolen.”

Sean thought about James Vanstedder, who had hobbled into Mrs. Gomez's office on his cane. “What did Dad write about Mr. Vanstedder?” he asked.

“Mr. Vanstedder owes a lot of money to half a dozen credit card companies. And he hasn't been able to pay the telephone company's charges for making a lot of calls to a number in Italy,” Brian said. “He doesn't have a savings account, and there's less than two hundred dollars in his checking account.”

“But remember,” Sean said, “he got really banged up in that waterskiing accident. He couldn't be the thief. What did Dad write about Charles Wang, the accountant, and George Potts?”

“Nothing,” Brian answered.

Sean sighed. “How could any of the museum people steal the sketches when they weren't even near the museum when the sketches disappeared?”

“They
claimed
they weren't there,” Brian said. “But Ms. Brown could have left her mother with the nurses, returned to the museum, and gone back to the nursing home at any time during the weekend. Mr. Brandon could have returned much earlier from his business trip to San Francisco than he said he did. Knowing Dad, he's probably checking out their alibis.”

“How?” Sean asked.

“By asking questions,” Brian explained. Brian had been on enough cases with his dad to know the kinds of questions he asked.

“I bet Dad will ask the people at the nursing home if anyone saw Ms. Brown leave at any time,” Brian said. “He'll probably check with the San Francisco hotel where Mr. Brandon stayed and find out what times he checked in and checked out. And he'll also ask about the phone calls he made to the New York art dealer.” Brian nodded. “He might even talk to Mr. Vanstedder's doctor and to the people who run the water-ski rental about Mr. Vanstedder's injury and find out more about those phone calls to Italy.”

“OK,” Sean said. He counted on his fingers. “If we include Mr. Marshall, then our list is back up to five suspects: Dave Brandon, James Vanstedder, Charles Wang, Harvey Marshall, and Hilda Brown.”

“Six, if we count Mrs. Gomez,” Brian said. “Remember, she had a bandage on her hand. And don't forget that we can't discount George Potts as a suspect, either.”