‘We were working on the ramp,’ said Helen. ‘I was cutting a false wall down to size, and Lana was helping.’
‘False wall?’ asked Kat. Kat had forgotten what Aunt Gloria had told Mum on Thursday, but I had not.
‘We do it for most of the exhibitions, to make sure the space fits the paintings,’ said Helen. ‘Your aunt asked for it for a few of the bigger ones. Your aunt asks for a lot of things. And before you ask, Lana and I were together the whole time yesterday, right until we came out of the door. Weren’t we, Lana?’
‘Yes, Helen,’ said Lana. But her arms were wrapped round her stomach, and she was slightly hunched over. Her body and her mouth were not saying the same thing. Was she lying? Was I getting better at knowing when people are not telling the truth?
I thought back to yesterday morning. I remembered the smoke. Lana had come out, then Sandra, then Ty, Jacob, and finally Helen. Helen was lying, and so was Lana. They had not come out together after all.
‘Oh!’ I said loudly. I wanted to tell Salim and Kat what I had discovered. But Salim was shaking his head at me. He did not want me to speak yet.
Kat was staring very hard at Helen Wu. I stared at her too. I saw that a few strands of wiry black hair had come out of Helen’s ponytail, above her left ear. I saw that the collar of her shirt was neatly pressed. But although I had been able to see Lana’s lie, I could not see whatever it was Kat saw.
‘Did you fix anything at the Guggenheim earlier this week?’ Kat asked. ‘On Monday, maybe?’
Helen paused for a moment. ‘Yes, I did. There was a broken drinking fountain on the first floor that day—’ She glared at Lana. ‘Gloria was complaining about it, so Sandra called me to fix it, even though it was my day off. It was a one-person job, and I was done by four. Frankly, I hardly needed to be there. Lana wasn’t with me.’
‘I was … busy,’ said Lana, and she looked away. ‘All day.’
This was very interesting. Helen had been in the museum on Monday. She could have taken Aunt Gloria’s credit card, used it to call Effortless Light Removals and then put it back in Aunt Gloria’s bag. She was a woman, so her voice would sound right.
But although Lana had said she was not at the museum, I was not convinced. She hadn’t explained where she really was, and I thought that was strange.
‘All right,’ said Salim. ‘Thanks, Helen. Thanks, Lana. Come on, Kat, Ted.’ He took Kat by the elbow and led her out of the garden, back into the museum. Salim leaned against the inside of the glass box, as tourists rushed by. ‘What about that?’ he asked.
‘Helen was definitely in the Guggenheim on Monday!’ said Kat. ‘She could easily have stolen Auntie Glo’s credit card, and made the call too. Lana was obviously lying for her about yesterday.’
‘Yes, she was,’ I agreed. ‘They did not come out together. Helen came out much later than Lana did.’
‘Nice memory, Ted!’ said Salim. He held up his hand. I thought carefully, and then I held up my hand as well, and Salim slapped his palm against mine. I was proud of myself.
‘What if— OK, what if Helen stole the painting?’ Kat asked. She opened her notebook and looked at the pages of it. ‘After all, Helen’s story doesn’t make sense. She was below Ty on the ramp, but he came out before her. Isn’t that strange? Why wouldn’t he see her?’
Kat was right.
‘Salim, text Ty!’ said Kat. ‘Ask him whether she was there!’
Salim got out his phone and turned it on again. It buzzed seven times, and Salim made a face. ‘Sandra’s been leaving loads of messages,’ he said. ‘Er, I think we’re going to be in trouble.’
‘Don’t worry about that!’ said Kat. ‘Just text Ty!’
Salim did, his fingers making patterns across the phone keys. I thought about the way that he knew which buttons to press to make the words he wanted. It was another translation, just like English into American or symbols into weather. We waited, then the phone buzzed again.
Salim showed us the text message:
Didnt see H but cant be sure.
So smoky. Why?
‘So she wasn’t on the ramp!’ he said excitedly. ‘That means she might have been in the tower gallery, stealing the painting!’
Salim was making a leap of logic. This is when something is probably true, at least 51 per cent, so someone assumes that it is 100 per cent true.
I said, ‘Hrumm!’ and Kat laughed and said, ‘Ted isn’t sure. Right, Ted? But it’s a good lead. And what about Lana? What she said about Monday was weird too, wasn’t it? Why wouldn’t she tell us where she really was?’
‘It was weird,’ I agreed. ‘What if she did not want to tell us because she was at the Guggenheim?’
Kat and Salim nodded.
‘But she was one of the first people to come out yesterday,’ said Kat, looking at her list. ‘We don’t think she would have had enough time to steal the painting.’
This was a good point.
‘Wait!’ said Salim. ‘What if – what if Lana and Helen were working together? What if they helped each other steal the painting?’
‘Salim!’ said Kat. ‘That’s— It could be! I could see they were good friends, just now.’
I remembered what I had thought earlier, about Helen and Lana being a team. I was pleased that Kat and I had come to the same conclusion.
She scribbled excitedly in her notebook. ‘What if Lana snuck in and stole Auntie Glo’s card while Helen distracted her? And then Helen stole the painting yesterday, and Lana lied to cover it up?’
This was more than a leap of logic. Kat was telling a story.
‘I don’t think we can know that yet, Kat,’ I said.
‘I know, Ted,’ sighed Kat. ‘But we can’t rule it out! We think that one person stole the painting, don’t we? It’d be risky to tell anyone you were going to steal a painting – unless you were good friends, just like Helen and Lana.’
Salim’s phone buzzed. ‘It’s Ty again. He says Good luck,’ said Salim, his lips curving up. ‘All right, Kat, I’ll turn off the phone.’
‘Where do we go next?’ I asked.
‘Union Square,’ said Salim. ‘We’ve got to talk to Ben.’
TWENTY-NINE
Sweet Fourteen
As we sat on the subway, the woman behind us began to talk to her friend.
‘Yeah!’ she said. ‘I know! Marty’s so dumb. I said eighteenth. Eighteenth! Come on, who’d want a Harry Potter cake for their eightieth birthday?’
‘Aw,’ said her friend. ‘I’m sorry.’
Salim’s eyes went wide, and his hands dropped down onto his camera. The train jolted as it came into the 23rd Street station, and the doors clanked open, creating a convection current that sent a rush of cool air out and a rush of hot air in. ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Get up! Get off the train!’
‘Why?’ Kat gasped. But even though her voice wasn’t certain, her body was already moving. She jumped up, her feather earrings dancing and her leopardskin backpack swinging like a deadly weapon. I had to duck to stop it hitting my head.
‘Hey!’ I said. I looked down and saw the dirty linoleum of the train, then a silver gap between the train and the platform, and then the tiles of the platform itself as we leaped out. The train doors closed like pincers biting together.
‘What’s wrong?’ Kat asked Salim.
‘Nothing!’ said Salim. ‘I just had an idea, when that woman said eighteenth. Remember the fire engine from yesterday? It had to come from downtown, because all the closer fire engines were busy, which is why it took a few minutes for them to get to the museum. And remember what Helen said about the fire crew? She said they were from 18th Street – that’s what I just remembered. Well, we should go there now!’
‘Good idea, Salim!’ said Kat.
My heartbeat was fast, but I was not just nervous. I was excited too. This case was not what I had expected. It was an adventure like Odysseus’s, and I realized that I was enjoying it.
The 18th Street fire station was on a
narrow street with very high buildings on each side of the road. In New York, fire stations are not in buildings on their own. They are just built into the bottoms of skyscrapers, because there is no extra room. This fire station was set into the wall, with a concrete ramp down to the dirty road. At the top of the ramp was a big red and silver engine. It didn’t look like a fire engine in London does. Its number plate said SWEET 14 and there was a large red and white 14 on its grille. I could see us reflected in the two large clear windows at the front of the fire engine.
A white man in a blue shirt and grey-and-yellow trousers was wiping down its side. He was moving his arm slowly and carefully, in big arcs. He had big muscles, a shaved head and lots of freckles on his face and arms. He looked up and saw us, and Salim, who was holding up his camera to take a picture. ‘Hey!’ he said, his eyes crinkling. ‘What are you kids doing? You lost?’
‘Actually,’ said Kat, flicking her hair, ‘we’re here to talk to you. We’ve got some questions.’
‘Say that again,’ said the man in his deep voice.
Kat did. I was worried. I thought the man was about to tell us to go away.
But I was wrong. ‘Hey!’ he said again. His eyes widened. ‘Are you from Enguland?’
‘We all are,’ I told him. ‘My sister Kat and I are from London, and Salim is from Manchester, although—’
‘You’re from Lunnon? Hey! I used to live there! I mean, in another life, before you kids were even thought about. But that’s great! I’m Hank Katz, by the way.’
I considered the words in another life. I decided that they must be a figure of speech. Hank Katz did not look like a person who had been reincarnated or brought back from the dead. I also considered the name Hank Katz. It seemed familiar to me, just like this man. But I could not remember why.
‘Hi!’ said Kat.
‘You guys just have the best accent. I always loved the English accent,’ said Hank. Now he was smiling. We had made him happy. This was good from the point of view of our investigation. ‘So, what’s up?’
‘We’re tourists,’ said Kat, putting her hand on Salim’s arm. This seemed to be a signal. Salim looked down at the hand, and then up again at Kat’s face, and did not say anything. ‘We were up by the Guggenheim yesterday, and I think we saw your fire engine! I mean, we were just wandering past today and we recognized its number, so we thought we’d say hi!’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes!’ Kat said.
‘What Kat means is that we’ve come about—’ I said. This time Salim kicked me. I realized then that we were lying, and stopped speaking.
‘You were up at the Guggenheim?’ asked Hank. He frowned. ‘Wait. You’re not something to do with the police, are you?’
‘We’re kids,’ said Kat, her eyes very wide. ‘What do you mean, the police?’
Kat was acting. This was very clever of her. I was glad that Hank hadn’t had a good look at us yesterday, the way the maintenance crew members had. He did not recognize us, or know that we were lying.
‘A painting got stolen yesterday,’ explained Hank. ‘The person who did it’s been arrested now, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. But it was the weirdest thing. We got called because of a fire, but when we went in, there wasn’t one. Just two canisters of smoke, one in the stairwell and one at the bottom of the ramp. I’ve seen that kind before – I’ve used them when I go paintballing. Harmless. Don’t mark anything – just cover everything for ten minutes. We ran around checking the building, and then we came out again. I even stuck my head in the tower gallery, but I never noticed the painting was gone. Feel bad I missed it, you know?’
‘Stuck your head in,’ I repeated.
‘Yeah,’ said Hank. ‘Went to look.’
‘How did you know the painting was kept in the tower gallery? How did you know to call it that? Have you been to the Guggenheim before?’ said Kat, narrowing her eyes.
‘What is this, the third degree?’ asked Hank. ‘My brother Ben, he works there sometimes. That’s how I know all of this stuff. Anyways, the police and the fire department work closely together, so we get to hear a lot.’
I remembered what Helen had said, that Ben had heard about Gloria being arrested from the firefighters. Now we had discovered that Hank and Ben did not just know each other – they were brothers. That was why I had recognized Hank’s last name. I had heard it during the roll call. We thought we could rule out the fire crew, because they could not have been in the Guggenheim on Monday. But what if Ben and Hank were working together, just like Kat had suggested Lana and Helen might be? Brothers were even closer than friends, weren’t they? Hank could not have ordered the removal van using Aunt Gloria’s card, or dropped the smoke bombs, but maybe Ben could. Then, when Hank arrived in his fire engine, he could have stolen the painting. It was an interesting possibility. I was more excited than ever.
‘Hank!’ shouted someone from inside the station, where we could not see.
‘Gotta go,’ said Hank, glancing behind him. ‘You kids clear off, OK? And hey – say hi to Lunnon when you go back there.’
‘We will,’ said Kat, nodding. I thought that she was lying again.
He turned away, and Salim raised his camera and took a picture of Hank’s wide blue back next to the fire engine.
We walked away down the road, and when we came out at the end of it, I turned to Kat. ‘What if Hank and Ben were working together?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Ted, exactly!’ said Kat. She punched me on the arm, but I didn’t mind.
‘And he told us more about the smoke bombs,’ said Salim. ‘We know they’re the kind used for paintballing. What if one of our suspects does paintballing?’
‘That’s not a clue!’ said Kat. ‘It doesn’t matter who does paintballing. You don’t need to do paintballing to find out about something on the internet, and order it.’
Salim’s face crumpled up. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You’re right.’
‘But we’re getting closer!’ I said. ‘There are only a finite number of possibilities left.’
‘Finite!’ repeated Kat. Her mouth went up at one side. ‘Ted, how did I get a brother like you?’
I opened my mouth to explain.
‘Don’t be LITERAL, Ted!’ shrieked Kat. ‘I didn’t mean TELL ME!’
Salim snorted, and put his hand over his mouth. ‘I really am glad you’re here, Ted,’ he said.
Kat opened her notebook and scribbled in it again. We were narrowing down our suspect list. I remembered the equation I had imagined at the beginning of the mystery. We were looking for X, and it seemed as though we were coming close to discovering it.
THIRTY
Scylla and Charybdis
We came out on the northwest corner of Union Square. I noticed that the tilt of the Earth and the position of the sun meant that its light was passing through more air to reach ground level in New York. Each air molecule it bumped against made it scatter more and more, so that by the time it reached our eyes it was red and yellow instead of blue.
Kat raised her hands to her eyes. ‘Look at the sunset!’ she said.
I tilted my neck back down to look at the city around us. The grassy square was to our right, with trees and paths and people jostling each other along them. Hot, dirty smells came up into my nose, and traffic flashed between us and the square, stopping and starting, a circuit breaking and coming together again. I noticed that the traffic was stopping more than it should, and people were leaning out of their cars and waving their hands as their horns blared. We turned through ninety degrees, and that was when I saw the reason for all the horns and shouting. Part of the street, the part under a green sign with white lettering that said UNION SQUARE WEST, was blocked off by bright orange traffic cones. Three people in bright orange suits were crouched around a hole in the ground. I wondered if it was a sinkhole that had opened up under Manhattan.
Salim put his camera up to his eye and took a picture of the men. Then Kat said, ‘Come on!’ She grabbed Salim’s arm and ra
n towards the men. I did not think Kat was being very sensible. She was not obeying the rules of the road, and that was dangerous.
‘Kat!’ I shouted at her, but that word was lost in the honking and other people’s shouts. I squeezed my eyes shut and my hand shook itself out. Everything suddenly felt too loud. I felt like Odysseus again, Odysseus facing the whirlpool Charybdis.
I counted and breathed, and then I opened my eyes again. I could do this. The orange DON’T WALK sign turned white and said WALK, so I walked, ten paces across the road, and came to where Kat and Salim were standing. They were both shouting at the men in orange jumpsuits, because one of them had picked up a heavy drill and was using it. It jolted across the tarmac, shooting noise out into the air.
‘HELLO!’ screamed Kat.
‘BEN!’ shouted Salim. ‘I KNEW YOU’D BE HERE!’
‘SALIM!’ shouted Ben. ‘HEY, GUYS, STOP!’
I looked at Ben and saw that his body was approximately the same size and shape as Hank’s had been, and their faces had the same proportions. He also had freckles across his face and body. It was true: this was Ben, and he was Hank’s brother.
The other men stopped drilling. Ben stepped towards us to talk to us, and turned to Salim. ‘Hey, guys. Salim, I heard your mom got arrested,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, but she didn’t steal the painting,’ said Salim. ‘She didn’t!’ His eyes were suddenly shining. ‘Someone framed her.’
‘That’s not what the police are saying,’ said Ben.
‘Yeah, and that’s what you told your brother, and now everyone thinks it’s true,’ said Kat, folding her arms. ‘We know all about Hank, by the way. You shouldn’t have hidden him.’
Ben’s lips pressed together and turned down. He was puzzled. ‘Yeah, Hank’s my brother. Salim, I told you about Hank!’
‘You never told me what he did!’
‘I’m telling you now,’ said Ben. ‘Hank’s a firefighter. So?’
‘He came to the Guggenheim yesterday,’ said Salim. ‘Why?’
The Guggenheim Mystery Page 10
