The Guggenheim Mystery

by Robin Stevens

  ‘Sorry, man, I can’t help you there,’ said Ty, wrinkling up his forehead as he thought hard. ‘Monday I was here from eight until six, working with another member of the crew. Then I went home. Didn’t go near the museum.’

  Salim looked pleased. Kat got out her notebook and wrote in it.

  ‘As for yesterday – well, I was there, but I didn’t see nothing. I was on the ramp on the second level. The lights had gone out there, so I was fixing them. When the alarm went off, I— Man, I froze. Salim, you know I’m no tough guy. My legs went stiff. I was stuck halfway up my ladder, and there was smoke everywhere. I don’t know how long I was there. Then I heard Helen yelling for us all to get out, and I could move again. I got down off that ladder and ran down the ramp.’

  ‘You didn’t run into anyone else on the ramp?’ asked Salim.

  Ty’s frown got bigger. ‘I stuck close to the edge, so I could feel my way down,’ he said. ‘Sandra was standing at the main door, bugging us the way she always does. And I heard Jacob shouting behind me. I don’t know where anyone else was, though. I lost them. I know that your mom was the last one out – I remember that.’

  I thought about this story. It fitted with what I had seen in the Guggenheim, and with when Ty had come out of the museum entrance.

  ‘And you didn’t see anyone set off the smoke bombs?’ asked Kat, her eyebrows pulling together. ‘Maybe carrying a strange parcel or bag that the smoke bombs might have been kept in?’

  Ty shook his head. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘I was focused on what I was doing. I couldn’t figure out what had made the lights go out – still can’t. We’re all due to go back in tomorrow, if the police have cleared out by then.

  ‘Look, there’s not much more I can say. If you’re sure that it wasn’t your mom – well, I get it. But you know who I bet can help? Jacob. He was way up above, working on the fourth level of the ramp – he could look down on the rest of us. I bet he saw something!’

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Kat.

  ‘Well,’ said Ty, and he smiled, for the first time since he had started to talk. ‘We all have second jobs, right? I fix electrics anywhere that’ll have me. Jacob plays in a band.’

  ‘No way!’ said Salim. ‘He never told me that!’

  ‘Oh, just you wait and see,’ said Ty. He bent over his work, beaming at a joke I could not understand.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Zum Schneider

  The pressure in the air was very high. The sun reflected off the pavement and shot into my eyes as Kat zipped open her backpack, put on her sunglasses and tipped her head back to drink from her water bottle. A drop of water escaped and trickled down her cheek as she tilted her head, and she wiped it away. Even in New York, gravity still pulled water droplets, and human beings, down.

  Suddenly I heard music. We followed the sound until we were standing outside a building with a blue-and-white checked flag hanging from its left-hand side.

  ‘This is it!’ said Salim. ‘Zum Schneider. German restaurant and Bavarian Oompah Music venue. How weird!’

  The front door swished open as a man stepped outside and the music blared out with him, along with a thumping like a heartbeat that made my feet wobble on the pavement. The sun was in my eyes, and my ears were full of noise.

  ‘Hrumm,’ I said,

  ‘Ted,’ said Kat. ‘TED! I know you don’t like it, but it’ll be all right. Come on. We just have to go inside for one minute.’

  ‘Actually one minute?’ I asked.

  ‘Actually one minute,’ said Kat. ‘Count, if you like.’

  So I counted.

  One. Two. Three. Salim opened the door, and Kat pushed me forward, and we were in a hot noisy space that smelled like Dad’s beer bottles. ‘Hrumm,’ I said urgently, and my hand shook itself out. Six. Seven. Eight.

  There were people sitting at tables, shouting and clapping and stamping their feet on the floor. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.

  There were five people right in front of us. They were all dressed in blue overalls with embroidered flowers on them, and they were playing shiny gold musical instruments. The loud, brassy music was coming from them. I imagined that I could see the notes floating out of their wide gold mouths. I kept counting. Thirty-five. Thirty-six. Thirty-seven.

  I looked at the musicians and I realized that I knew one of them. The old, white-bearded man with his arms wrapped around a huge gold tuba had been in the Guggenheim the day before. He had been wearing different clothes then, and his face had had a different expression too, but I could still smell the paint coming off him through the beer smell and the music. This was Jacob.

  Salim waved his hands and shouted, going up to the man. I counted. Forty-seven. Forty-eight. Forty-nine.

  The man put down the tuba. His mouth opened in surprise, and he turned and said something to the man next to him. Fifty-six. Fifty-seven.

  Then he was standing up, and walking towards us, flapping his hands, and then the four of us were back outside, and the door closed behind us, and the German music was muffled.

  Sixty. I breathed out.

  The man put his hands on his hips. He was not smiling.

  ‘What the heck are you doing here?’ he asked.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Oompah and Orchestra

  Jacob was angry. I could tell this because, under the wrinkles of his face, his eyes were narrowed and his mouth was small too.

  ‘How did you find me, Salim?’ he asked. His voice was deep and scratchy. ‘No, wait, I know – you’ve been talking to Ty. When I get my hands on him, I swear— Come on, you can’t be here, and you can’t bring other kids here either. We aren’t on museum time now, so I’ve got nothing to do with you. And don’t tease me about what I do.’

  ‘You’re a musician in a German folk band!’ said Salim. His cheeks were twitching and his eyes glittered. ‘I didn’t know!’

  ‘It isn’t funny,’ said Jacob. ‘I knew you’d make it a joke. You and Ty, always teasing me. You shouldn’t hang around with him. I do what I can for money, all right? I’ve got a grandson in second grade and a granddaughter in fifth. That girl! Last month she tells me she wants to be a concert pianist.’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t mean to joke,’ said Salim. ‘I think it’s cool that you’re musical, all right? I just never imagined you as part of a band, especially one like this.’

  ‘You should see my tips,’ said Jacob, and his cheeks wrinkled suddenly. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling my granddaughter. Who wants to play in an orchestra when you could be in an oompah band? Now, who’s this then? Your girlfriend?’

  I was surprised that Jacob didn’t recognize me and Kat. He had been standing next to us at the Guggenheim the day before. But now he was squinting at us, and I wondered if he could not see us properly.

  ‘Ew!’ said Kat, so loudly that it made my ears hum. ‘I’m his cousin, thank you very much, and so’s Ted!’

  ‘So, what you want?’ asked Jacob. ‘I’ve got five minutes’ grace before our next number. Spill.’

  ‘It’s the painting,’ said Salim. ‘In the Black Square.’

  ‘Yeah, it got stolen,’ said Jacob. ‘Nothing to do with me.’ His body had tightened up and his feet stepped back from us.

  ‘Yeah, but someone stole Mum’s credit card and used it to hire the van that helped steal it,’ said Salim. ‘The police have arrested her because they think she did it, but I know she didn’t. So it must have been someone else at the museum.’

  ‘Were you at the Guggenheim on Monday afternoon?’ asked Kat, very quickly. Her eyebrows were lowered again and her eyes were narrowed.

  ‘Me?’ said Jacob. His mouth went down even more, and his wrinkles deepened until they made shadows in his face. Body language is how detectives can tell who is behaving suspiciously. I hoped that Kat and Salim were watching for it. ‘No. And don’t you give me that look, missy. My granddaughter had a concert at school on Monday, and she made me come along and accompany her. I was stuck with a hundred kids and their parents
from one until almost five. Look!’

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled flyer, which he held out to us. It read GREENVIEW ELEMENTARY SCHOOL MUSIC CONCERT. The date at the top was Monday 6 August.

  ‘I didn’t have anything to do with yesterday, either. I was up on the fourth level, with everyone else below me. I just remember looking down and seeing that smoke coming up at me. It was so fast, like a monster. Like something from a movie. I thought I was gonna die. Living around here, you’re always ready for something like that, but having it happen – it was different. I put my hand on the side of the ramp and walked down through the smoke. The feeling when I came out into the sun!’

  He spread his hands out, palms up. I liked the idea that the smoke had been a monster. It made what had happened sound more like a story, or a part of The Odyssey.

  ‘So, no, I didn’t see anything,’ Jacob said. ‘And I don’t want anything to do with this. I can’t help your mom, or you. Why don’t you go pester Helen Wu? She’s at the Museum of Modern Art today. She works repair in lots of different places, and today she’s there.’

  And with that he stuffed the crumpled flyer back in his pocket, turned, and went back inside.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Figure of Speech in a Bun

  ‘So Jacob is ruled out as well,’ said Kat to Salim. She was scribbling in her notebook again. ‘Unless his alibi is a lie! Though that flyer looked real. Ted, what do you think?’

  ‘Hrumm,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘He needs money.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Kat. ‘For his granddaughter!’

  I shook my head no.

  ‘What, Ted?’ asked Kat.

  ‘Jacob’s voice,’ I said. ‘It’s too deep. He couldn’t make himself sound like a woman. And, Kat, he didn’t recognize us, even though he saw us yesterday. I think that he can’t see very well.’

  ‘Ted, that’s good!’ said Salim. ‘Well done! It’s true – Ty’s told me that Helen’s been getting mad at Jacob because his work’s slipping. If he can’t see properly, that would explain it. But if he can’t see properly—’

  ‘There’s no way he could have carried the painting through the museum in the smoke!’ said Kat. ‘He’s small too, and old. It would be too difficult for him. I think we just ruled him out! Amazing!’

  Kat began to smile, and so did Salim. At that moment we were Kat-and-Salim-and-Ted, a real team. It felt good.

  Who could have stolen the painting?

  1. Lionel. (Security guard. The second-last person to leave the museum. Because he is the security guard, he must know how to shut down the burglar alarms and security cameras, and we know they were down yesterday morning.)

  2. Helen. (Head of the maintenance crew. Third last to leave.)

  3. Jacob. (Member of the maintenance crew. Fourth last.)

  4. Ty. (Member of the maintenance crew. Fifth last.)

  5. Lana. (Member of the maintenance crew. Third person out of the museum after us.) Less likely to be her, though we can’t rule her out yet.

  6. Ben. (Member of the maintenance crew. Joint first out of the museum after us. He was also with Rafael. Does this rule him out?) Less likely to be him, though we can’t rule him out yet.

  7. Rafael. (Janitor. Joint first out of the museum after us. He was also with Ben. Does this rule him out?) Less likely to be him, though we can’t rule him out yet either.

  8. The builder, Gabriel. (This is very unlikely. He was working on the outside of the building, and never went inside. Although he might have climbed in through the broken skylight to steal the painting (this is Ted’s idea. We need to test it to see if it is possible). Gabriel was also late to the roll call, which is suspicious.

  Who has been ruled out?

  Aunt Gloria (because she is being framed), Sandra (because she is too small to have carried the painting, and also she was wearing very high heels), the fire crew (because none of them could have been at the Guggenheim on Monday), Ty (because he was not near the museum on Monday afternoon), Jacob (because he could not pretend to be a woman on the telephone; also his eyesight is too bad to have been able to carry the painting through the museum and he has an alibi for Monday afternoon).

  We went back to the subway, and came out in another new part of New York. This one was louder and more full of people than I had seen so far.

  ‘It’s like a river!’ said Kat, pushing the sweaty hair off her forehead. I thought it just looked like a very wide road, with cars and yellow taxis jammed up against each other, honking their horns. People were also rushing down the pavement towards us. They were all in black and grey, with sunglasses on, and they all seemed as though they would run straight into me. I put my hands up over my ears and groaned to keep out the noise. I remembered Odysseus putting wax in his ears so he could not hear the Sirens singing. I took twenty long deep breaths, and then I could move again.

  Salim and Kat stopped at a hot-dog cart on the side of the road. The air around it smelled very strong, and very old. The cart was striped red and yellow, and it was surrounded by five orange traffic cones to stop the traffic coming too close to it. I looked at the cones, and then Salim put a hot dog into my left hand.

  Salim had just ketchup on his hot dog. Mine had nothing on it at all. Kat had mustard and ketchup on hers, but she ate around the bun, in little bites, as though her mouth was too small for it. She squashed the rest of the bun into her palm and threw it into a dustbin.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry, Kat?’ I asked.

  ‘No!’ said Kat, jutting her chin. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  I was still holding my hot dog. I had only taken two bites of it.

  ‘Ted, you know hot dogs aren’t really dogs, right?’ asked Salim.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Hot dog is a figure of speech for a food that is ground-up meat parts in a bun. I am just not very hungry.’

  ‘Ugh, TED!’ shrieked Kat.

  Salim laughed. ‘I’ve missed you, Ted,’ he said. ‘You’re brilliant.’

  What Salim meant was not that I was shiny, but that I was good. And that made me glad, because I was sure now that Salim and I were still friends.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Glass Garden

  The Museum of Modern Art, where Helen Wu, the woman with the ponytail from the Guggenheim maintenance crew, was working, is on West 53rd Street. From the outside it does not look special, like the Guggenheim. It is just a grey glass box shape pushed into a shiny black building, at the bottom of a shiny black skyscraper. I saw the three of us in the black glass as we walked by, Kat glittering and bony, with her hair scraped up on her head, Salim with his green jumper and set face, and me in my grey uniform. I am always surprised when I see myself in a mirror. What is inside my head never fits with what is on the outside of me. I look small in mirrors, and I looked very small here, almost lost among the other tourists, and short next to Kat and Salim. I stared at myself until Kat shouted at me to move.

  We went through a big square hall and up some stairs. There in front of us was a garden inside glass. It did not look as though it belonged there. I imagined someone cutting out a square of museum with a huge sharp knife, and gluing in a square of garden. It was a strange thought, and made me feel as though I was trying to look at two things at once. Salim led us into the garden, and in the middle was a fountain. In front of it was a paving stone with a large crack, surrounded by orange cones, which I knew were code for Be careful. This stone was being fixed, and Helen was fixing it.

  Helen Wu’s hair was in the same thick black ponytail as yesterday and she was wearing overalls. Her tools were piled next to her – boxes of nails and screws and other things I did not know the names for. Her eyes as she turned to look at us were narrowed. There was a red-haired woman beside her, who was shorter and rounder, wearing the same kind of overalls. I thought she looked familiar, and then I realized that this was someone else I knew from the Guggenheim crew: Lana, who had been with Helen yesterday. She looked at us, then at Helen, and stepped backwards. />
  ‘Salim,’ Helen said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘We’ve come about Mum,’ said Salim. I saw Salim’s hands shaking and I had a theory that he was nervous. Perhaps I had this theory because I also felt nervous.

  Helen Wu was standing very upright, with her mouth in a thin line and her arms folded. Her body was saying Be careful, just like the cones. ‘She stole that painting,’ she said.

  ‘No!’ said Salim. ‘It isn’t true.’

  ‘She paid for the removal van that took it away,’ said Helen Wu, raising one black eyebrow.

  ‘Her card paid for it,’ admitted Salim. ‘But she didn’t do it. She’s being framed.’

  ‘Why does everyone know that? About the van?’ Kat asked Helen, sticking out her chin. ‘Did Sandra tell you?’

  ‘Sandra?’ said Helen. ‘Why would she bother to tell us anything? She might act nice to you, but when Gloria’s not around she’s a total—’

  ‘Helen, don’t!’ said Lana behind her, and Helen shut her mouth.

  So Lana and Helen were a team, I thought. They worked together, just the way Salim and Kat and I did.

  And Helen did not appear to like Aunt Gloria or Sandra. That was also a useful thing to have learned.

  ‘Anyway,’ Helen went on, ‘everyone’s talking about it. Someone from the police told one of the 18th Street fire crew that Gloria was about to be arrested, so that means Ben heard about it from them, and told us.’

  I wondered how this could be – but Helen was still talking.

  ‘Satisfied?’ she asked. ‘And yes, I think Gloria did it. She was the last person out of the museum. When the smoke started, I saw her up by the gallery where In the Black Square was. Seems clear to me.’

  She was right about where Aunt Gloria had been standing. She had been there with us when the alarm had gone off. But we knew that, all the same, Aunt Gloria had not done it.