The Mistaken Masterpiece (30 page)

“Hey, So-So Sophie! Good to see you,” Nate says, catching me by surprise with a bear hug. He then takes my head between his hands and examines my nose. “I can hardly see where that chick clocked you.”

“Yeah, it’s almost like new.”

Suddenly Tillie bursts out of the bedroom where she’s been napping with Mom. She takes two steps and then leaps at Nate from a good ten feet away.

“Now
that’s
the Tillie I know,” he says. “What happened, girl? The last time I saw you, you wanted nothing to do with me. It’s like you’re a different dog.”

“Uh, yeah, about that,” I say. “Funny story.”

Another knock, and as I open the door, the two Tillies stand face to face once again, with a speechless
Livvy Klack staring in at the gorgeous Nate Etan and the rest of us mere mortals.

I introduce Livvy to everybody (“This is the chick who clocked me,” I inform Nate), and while Nate and Cam compete to see who can eat more of the chicken, Livvy and I join forces to tell the Tale of Two Tillies.

“If I hadn’t met you in that coffee shop and seen for myself how she acted, I wouldn’t believe you,” Nate says. “I
knew
she was acting strange—tackling Cam on the set that day, and doing tricks for you, but I never thought for a second that she literally was a different dog.”

“And poor Livvy here thought something was really wrong with her Tillie,” I say.

“I was ready to take her to the vet,” Livvy says, “because she didn’t want to sleep in the bed with me, wouldn’t do any of her tricks, and refused to eat her usual food. I was convinced she had cancer or something horrible.”

“That’s it!” Margaret cries. When we all turn and stare at her, she shoots back, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. A great idea—no, make that an
incredible
idea—just popped into my head. Nate, how long are you going to be in town? And Tillie—we’re going to need her.”

“Till Thursday or Friday, probably.”

“Cam, how about you?”

“Sometime next weekend. Depends on … Well, I hope, anyway,” he says with a glance in Leigh Ann’s direction.

Margaret next turns to Livvy and takes a deep
breath. Those two haven’t spoken since that fateful English project, which now seems eons ago.

“Livvy, how’d you like to be part of a little drama I’m putting together?”

“Me? Really? I, um, uh, what do you mean, drama? Like a play?”

“Yeah, kind of,” Margaret answers.

I poke the Brainy One in her side. “What are you up to?”

“Okay, this may take a while to explain. First, we have to …”

When Margaret’s grand scheme is finally clear to everyone, the boys and Livvy make their exits—with, sadly,
both
Tillies. There is a bright spot, however; I get paid for dog-sitting Tillie!

Nate is almost out the door when he remembers. “Ohmigosh! Sophie, your money!” He digs into his wallet and pulls out a thick wad of bills. “Are hundreds okay? I don’t have any small bills. So, let’s see, fifty a day times three weeks, so that’s fifty times twenty-one days—somebody help me out, I’m not that good at math.”

“One thousand and fifty,” Margaret says without hesitation.

“Thanks. Plus an extra hundred for your sneakers and the food you had to buy … Tell you what, let’s make it an even twelve hundred. That okay with you? Sophie? You in there?”

“T-t-twelve hundred dollars?” I stammer. I guess I’ve
been too busy to actually do the calculations myself before now. I was thinking it would be a few hundred dollars, and I was all set to be thrilled with that.

“Is that wrong?” Nate asks. “Did I mess up the math?”

“No, no—it’s just … that’s a
lot
of money.”

“Well, you did me a huge favor,” he says. “You earned it. Just don’t go and blow it all on
books
or something.” He’s grinning; somebody must have told him about my “little problem.”

“Holy crap, St. Pierre,” Becca says. “You’re loaded. If I were you, I wouldn’t tell my parents. They’ll make you put it in the bank or in some stupid college fund.”

“Well, if she doesn’t tell, I will,” Margaret says.

Becca sticks her tongue out at Margaret. “Buzzkill.”

With Mom in hiding in her room with a book and (I suspect) a pair of much-used earplugs, the four Red Blazer Girls get comfortable in my bedroom. I just love it when everybody sleeps over, and with Tillie gone for good, I feel like I really need my best friends around to make me forget how much I miss that mutt. Of course, those twelve hundred smackers won’t hurt, either.

Leigh Ann sits at my desk, checking her email until she’s too distracted by the assortment of strange gifts I’ve received over the past couple weeks to continue.

“What is going on with all this stuff?” she asks. “Have you figured out who’s sending it yet?”

“What? Oh,
that
stuff,” I say with all the nonchalance I can gather. “Um, no. Still working on it.”

“Well, tell us what you have so far,” Leigh Ann says. “We’ve got time.”

“Nah, we have to work on the plan for Wednesday. There’s still lots to do.” I take a notebook and a pen from my desk and pretend to jot down some notes to myself.

My friends? They’re not buying a word of it. When I look up, they’re all staring at me with arms crossed.

“All right. What’s going on?” Leigh Ann insists.

“What?”

“You’re not fooling anyone, Sophie,” right-as-usual Margaret says. “Spill it.”

I really am out of options. If I don’t tell them something, they’ll tickle me or threaten to do something to my beloved books.

“It’s Raf,” I admit.

They are silent for a second as they exchange glances. Finally, Margaret says, “Are you
sure
? This doesn’t really sound like Raf to me. It’s not that he’s not smart enough to do it, I just don’t know how he could pull it off. Like, where did he get the book? And how did he get it into our locker—in the middle of the school day?”

Good point.

“He must have had an accomplice,” I say, locking eyes on Rebecca.

“Hey, why are you pickin’ on me? Margaret is a much more likely suspect. She shares the locker with you, for cryin’ out loud. Plus, she lives right by you, which would explain those packages that showed up at your apartment.”

“Hmmm,” I say. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Me?” Margaret says. “Becca, you’re crazy. You’re always sneaking into our locker. And everyone knows how good you are with locks.”

“That’s true,” says Leigh Ann. “And you and Raf
are
always joking around together.”

“Me and Raf! What about you? You two—”

“Stop!” I shout. “Before somebody says something … This is just stupid. It doesn’t matter. I know where I’m going on Saturday, but I’m not telling
any
of you. You’re just going to have to wait to hear about it.”

When everyone finally accepts that I’m really not going to tell them any more about Saturday’s rendezvous, we finally get back to work on our primary objective, which is to recover the original Pommeroy from the Svindahls. As the RBGDA’s art expert, Rebecca is responsible for learning as much as possible about the Svindahls and their gallery. She goes online and starts snooping around the New York art world for information about the three family members and the artists they represent. According to their website, Gus Olienna has been associated with the gallery for about eight years and is a “modern master of the still life.” Although an extensive biography exists for every other artist whose work is sold by the gallery, with a picture of the artist and a long list of schools, studios, and ateliers where they learned their craft, the bio page for Gus Olienna consists of one sentence: “Gus Olienna studied painting at the
prestigious Eve I. Lebekam Academy of Fine Arts in Paris.”

Becca does a search of his name, but the only place it shows up in the entire Internet universe is on the Svindahl Gallery’s site.

“And when I search for Eve I. Lebekam,” she says, “I get absolutely nothing. No matches. Zero. That’s pretty hard to do in this day and age.”

“Go back to the bio page,” Margaret says. “I want to see something.”

Margaret stares at the page for a few seconds, then smiles. “Oh my, Mr. Olienna. Nicely done. Eve I. Lebekam. Look at it backward.”

“Makebel I. Eve,” Becca says. “So?”

“Make believe,”
Leigh Ann says.

“Your friend Gus is very clever,” Margaret says.

Becca, always on the lookout for a conspiracy, adds, “Or maybe he’s trying to hide something. If they gave a make-believe name for the school, why not him, too? He never really seemed like a Gus to me.”

“You may be onto something, Rebecca,” Margaret says. “I wonder … Hey, what was that Cale guy’s last name? The guy in the picture with Phillip and Svindahl where they’re all wearing their Bramwell ties. It was Winokum, right? The guy who used to go out with Father Julian’s cousin Debbie.”

She taps out “Cale Winokum” and “Gus Olienna” on my computer, and we all gather around the screen.

“What are you thinking, Marg?” I ask.

“If you say the names backward, they’re Mukoniw Elac and Anne Ilosug,” Becca says. “The second one at least sounds like it
could be
a name.”

“Becca, take a good look at that picture,” Margaret says. “Especially Cale. Does he look familiar at all?”

Becca stares at the picture for a few seconds before the corners of her mouth start to turn north.

“So? What do you think?” Margaret asks.

“About what?” I ask, completely in the dark.

“Cale and Gus are the same person,” Becca says. “Take away the beard, give him a good haircut—yep, I’m sure. How did you know, Margaret? You’ve never even seen Gus.”

“Look at the two names again,” Margaret says. “That made me suspicious—and everything else just fell into place.”

Becca, Leigh Ann, and I stare at the two names until Leigh Ann finally sees it. “The vowels! Both names have all five vowels: a, e, i, o, and u. And they’re in order.”

“Yeah, they’re just reversed,” I say. “Why would Cale change his name?”

“A million possible reasons,” Margaret says. “Maybe the Svindahls have some kind of hold on him.”

“This must have something to do with that ‘nasty little man’ that Gus was talking about,” Becca says. “After
class tomorrow, I’m going back to see him—with some tea. In a china cup. Gus is going to tell me the whole story before I leave.”

“Can I come with you?” I ask. “I have swim practice in the morning, but I’ll be done by the time you get out of class. C’mon—I have to meet this guy and see the amazing, magical room where he works. Please?”

“Okay with me,” Becca says. “Now that you’ve got all that cash, you can hang out with me all you want. But just so you know, you’re buying the tea.”

And what a story it is!

It takes several cups of tea and more than an hour, but after we tell him what we have already figured out about him, the Svindahls, and the mistaken Paul Werkman painting, Gus sighs and starts talking.

“Eight years ago, Cale Winokum was just another art school graduate, trying to find his way in the New York art world. But there was one big difference between me and most of the other struggling artists,” he admits. “I was rich. Well, my parents were. After prep school and college, I vowed not to take any more of their money. I was determined to make it on my own. They agreed, except for one thing: they insisted on buying me an apartment. In fact, they bought the loft right above this gallery. That way, they knew I’d be safe, and I would at least have a place to paint until I got my big break. I think being over such a successful gallery seemed like a
good omen to them—which is kind of ironic now, I suppose.”

“Were you working for the Svindahls back then?” I ask.

“Not right away—that came later. I knew young Arthur a little from our school days. We went to Bramwell together. I ran into him one day, and ended up showing some of my work to him and his dad. My portfolio was a real mishmash back then; I was still trying to develop my own style. But the painting that caught Arthur senior’s eye was a copy I had made of a Chardin still life. I can still hear his voice: ‘If you can do this, you can do anything,’ he said. A few months later, he invites me to a party at a friend’s house; he promises me there will be lots of single girls, but the real reason he invites me is a little more complicated.”

“Was that the birthday party where you met Debbie—Father Julian’s cousin?” Becca asks.

Cale smiles, remembering. “That’s right—Debbie. Sweet girl, and a very nice family. Except for her uncle Phillip. He was
not
a nice man. And that woman he—”

“Prunella,” says Becca.

Gus shivers at the mention of her name. (I know exactly how he feels!) “Meanwhile, Arthur points out the real reason for my invitation—a painting hanging over the mantel. It’s a Pommeroy, a very nice example of his work—and Arthur asks if I think I could make him a copy that would be impossible to tell from the original. I
was honest with him; I told him that not only could I do it, I could finish it in a day. That made him very happy, and he brought Phillip over to tell him the news. Phillip didn’t know much about art, but he knew that the Pommeroy was worth some money, and he wanted it for himself. He was willing to pay Arthur to make a copy and then pull a fast one on his own family.”