The Guggenheim Mystery

by Robin Stevens

  ‘Total coincidence,’ said Ben, shrugging. ‘The 18th Street crew was the nearest free crew when the alarms went off. Look, you coming here accusing us of something?’

  ‘We—’ said Salim. ‘Um – all right, just tell us one thing. What were you doing on Monday?’

  ‘Monday? I was in the Guggenheim that morning, fixing a pipe. Angie had an appointment that afternoon at three, so I left around two to take her there. Helen was there too, she saw me leave, and – yeah, I saw Lana when we got to the hospital. You know about her pop, right?’

  I translated. In New York speak, pop sometimes means dad. Ben’s face was still puzzled, but there was another expression in it too. I could not work out what it was. This was frustrating.

  ‘Oh,’ said Salim. ‘So you were at the hospital all afternoon?’

  Ben nodded his head yes. ‘Look. I didn’t have anything to do with what happened yesterday,’ he said. ‘When the smoke started, it came from right next to me, on the first floor,’ he said. ‘I got confused at first, went around in circles. Then Rafael ran down the side stairs and onto the main floor. He bumped right into me and we got out together. I didn’t see anyone else.’

  This fitted the evidence of my eyes and, if it was true, ruled out both Ben and Rafael as the thief. But I still had questions.

  ‘Who’s Angie?’ I asked. ‘And what was Lana doing in a hospital?’

  ‘Angie’s my wife,’ said Ben. ‘She’s sick.’

  ‘Ted!’ said Salim. ‘Look, I’ll explain later.’

  ‘Salim, it’s OK,’ said Ben. I kept on looking at his face. His mouth was turned down, and so were his eyes. I finally knew what I was seeing. This was sadness. ‘It’s cancer. I have to take Angie for treatment. Lana visits the same hospital because of her pop. He’s got Alzheimer’s, you know? He’s getting worse.’

  ‘We did not know,’ I said.

  This was very important. I realized that this was the thing that Lana had not wanted to say to us – her father was ill. This meant that she had not been in the museum on Monday to steal the credit card from Aunt Gloria’s purse and call the removals company.

  I had one more important question that I needed to ask. ‘What’s in the hole?’ I asked.

  ‘Ted!’ said Salim.

  ‘I’m sorry, he didn’t mean that,’ Kat said to Ben.

  ‘I did!’ I said.

  ‘Water pipes,’ said Ben shortly, his body turning away from us, back to the manhole.

  The drilling started again.

  ‘Oh, Ted!’ hissed Kat. She and Salim were walking away from the hole, and so I had to follow them. ‘Why do you have to be so – you?’

  ‘I can’t be anyone else,’ I said, once we were approximately five metres from the hole. I thought this was a reasonable statement. ‘But this means that Ben did not make the phone call. I think we can rule him and Hank out – if Ben was telling the truth about the hospital.’

  ‘He is,’ said Salim. ‘His wife’s really ill. Ben’s been trying to raise money to pay for her treatment.’

  ‘Why can’t the NHS pay for it?’ I asked.

  ‘Shh, Ted!’ hissed Kat. ‘Don’t be stupid. There isn’t an NHS in America.’

  ‘Everyone pays for their own medical treatment here,’ added Salim. ‘And treatment for cancer – well, that’s expensive.’

  Even though we knew they could not have done it, this would have been a good motive for Ben and Hank: they needed money to help Ben’s wife. They are family, and family means that you do things for each other, even when you are different, like me and Mum and Kat and Dad. We have the same genes, and that is important. It means that we are connected.

  I was so busy thinking about DNA, and feeling sad that we had ruled out Hank and Ben when they had such a good motive, that I forgot to wait for the light. I stepped out into the street, Kat screamed behind me, and something screeeeeched on one side of me. I spun round and saw the yellow nose of a taxi almost against my leg in its grey trousers.

  There was more noise and I looked up to see a woman waving her fist. She had climbed out of the car and was leaning forward, her face screwed up and red. She was very angry.

  ‘What the heck are you doing, kid?’ she screamed, except she used a swear word when she said it. I guessed that because she said kid, she was talking about me.

  My hand began to flap. I did not want to be talking to this woman. ‘Hrumm,’ I said. My throat felt full and my heart was beating very fast.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ screamed the woman. ‘Look at me when I talk to you! I almost hit you! I coulda dented the car! What you got to say?’

  My head went to the side. I turned back to Kat, but that meant I was looking straight into the sun. It burned a red streak into my eyes. I couldn’t see Kat and Salim. The woman was shouting and shouting. In The Odyssey, for his most difficult task, Odysseus had to sail between Scylla – a six-headed sea monster – and Charybdis, a whirlpool. This was the next test on my quest, but I was not ready for it. Odysseus faced Scylla, but I didn’t want to.

  I ran forward, across the road and into Union Square subway station.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Wrong Train

  I was trying to get back to Aunt Gloria’s apartment. Kat doesn’t believe me when I tell her this, but it’s true. I haven’t had enough practice at lying, and anyway this would be a useless lie. I wanted to be as close to Mum as I could, and shut myself in Salim’s room and jump on his bed in circles. I had had enough of adventures and quests.

  I saw the number six of the subway in glowing green above my head, and I knew that was a train that would take me there. I went towards the sign, and that was when things went wrong.

  I am a dyslexic geographer. I have problems understanding left and right. I followed the sign down a set of grey concrete stairs that smelled like the toilets at school. I had my subway pass in my pocket, and I took it out and fed it into the turnstile, and then shoved through and onto the platform. The train came screaming out of the black tunnel, two points of light and then a blur of silver. I got on it. I was breathing very hard and my hand kept shaking itself out. I did not notice that the train I had got on was going the wrong way.

  Then I saw that the numbers were wrong. They were leading me away from the apartment. I closed my eyes and opened them again, but it was still true. I was on the wrong train, in the wrong city, and I did not know what to do.

  ‘Young man,’ said the white woman sitting next to me, pushing her face up close to mine. She had a big nose, and pearls on a string round her neck, and her face was sunken in on itself so I could see all her bones. She was very old. ‘Young man. Are you lost?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Young man,’ said the woman. ‘Look at me. Where are your family?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘You’re not from New York, are you?’ she asked. Her breath smelled like mints and wet coats. ‘No. You’re a tourist. I can tell. And you’ve got yourself separated from your family. Where is home?’

  ‘Rivington Street, in London,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ said the old woman, ‘that isn’t particularly helpful to us today. Where are your family?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, because that was the truth.

  ‘Let me see. What about Times Square?’

  ‘What about Times Square?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s where most tourists end up,’ said the old woman. ‘You ought to go there. Even if your family aren’t there, the information centre will be. They’ll be able to help you get home. You’re a capable young man, aren’t you? You can manage that.’

  One and a half minutes earlier, I would have disagreed with that statement. But hearing the old woman say those words had made them feel correct. That is the way spells work in The Odyssey. Someone says something, and it becomes the truth. And it was true. I had wanted to go to Times Square, and the old woman had reminded me of that.

  ‘I can manage that,’ I repeated.

  ‘Good,’ said th
e old woman. ‘Now, get out here, and follow the signs to the N train. It’s the yellow one. Go north, and get out at 42nd Street. The information centre is on 44th.’

  The doors of the train opened. The woman flapped her hands at me. ‘Go on,’ she said loudly.

  So I stepped out. I was in a station I didn’t know, surrounded by people who were all rushing past me. But then I realized that if I followed them, they would probably take me where I needed to go. So I went down a long corridor that led to a line that was yellow. The people around me shoved my body onto the train and I was carried seven stops. Then the doors of the train swished open, and a voice said, ‘Forty-second Street – Times Square.’ I remembered what the old woman had said. It was time for me to get out.

  THIRTY-TWO

  All the Lights in the Sky

  I was outside, in air that was heavy and warm and made my skin feel tight. It was almost night, and the buildings around me were tall and dark, but the signs hanging from them were bright, flashing every colour.

  People were talking and music was playing and there was so much light, as though all of what was vanishing from the sky was being poured into Times Square. On the building in front of me a long thin golden chip dipped into a tub of ketchup, over and over again. Below that a red neon guitar played itself, but no sound came out. A drink poured out of a can into a red cup, again and again. There was a black sign that said HEROES in huge white letters. The O was a total eclipse, with the moon in front of the sun, but there was a spot of light at the top right of the moon where the sun was coming out again. That was me, I thought. By getting myself to Times Square on my own I was being a hero, just like Odysseus.

  I knew that the old woman had told me to look for Kat and Salim in the information kiosk, but instead I stood and looked and looked. I realized that if I looked up past the people, with my hands over my ears to block out the noise, all I could see were the patterns of the neon signs. The panic I had felt earlier was gone. I was calm.

  As I stared at the billboards, at squares and circles and lines blooming in blue and yellow and red, I realized that they were a bit like the missing painting. They were shapes hanging on a wall as well. Were they priceless too? And if not, what was the difference?

  I was still trying to understand why In the Black Square had been stolen, and now I had time to think. And for some reason what I thought about were hands.

  I saw Salim’s hands taking a photograph of Helen and Lana in the square garden.

  Kat’s hand reaching out to touch Salim’s arm.

  Aunt Gloria’s fingers covering her eyes as she cried.

  My hands putting my Magnum chocolate into Ty’s palms.

  Mum’s hands on my back as she rushed us out of the Guggenheim.

  I imagined another hand, Vasily Kandinsky’s, painting colours onto his canvas almost one hundred years ago. Did he matter more than these billboards, and if so, why? Was it because he was dead? Would Salim’s photographs, and all these signs, be priceless one day, just because the people who had made them were dead too?

  And then I thought about the hands that must have dropped the smoke bombs into the Guggenheim space and pulled In the Black Square off the Guggenheim’s wall. What did those hands look like? And what had they done with the painting?

  THIRTY-THREE

  Red and White and Blue, Part Two

  I watched the drink pour into the cup forty-seven times while I thought. Then someone put their hand on my shoulder.

  This was the eighth time someone had banged against me. I imagined that my molecules and the other person’s molecules had touched each other for a moment, before they bounced away into the rest of the universe. But this time the person did not move away. Instead, they pulled me round towards them.

  I was staring at a sparkly shirt that I knew, and hair chopped into a shaggy cut. Kat’s face was red and patchy, and her eyes were small with tears.

  Her mouth opened wide, and then she was screaming into my face, ‘WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, TED SPARK?’

  That was an easy question to answer. I am bad at directions. But I suspected that was not the answer Kat wanted, so I didn’t say anything.

  Kat burst into tears, and threw her arms round my shoulders. I stared at the red-and-white patterns of light falling on her hair. I saw that Salim was standing behind her, clutching his camera.

  ‘Kat,’ I said. ‘Salim. Thank you for coming to find me.’ I meant it so much that my throat hurt.

  ‘Oh, Ted, I thought I’d lost you!’ said Kat. Tears went spilling out of her eyes again, and her mouth wobbled. ‘But then I thought about the subway station, and I realized that you’d gone the wrong way. When you didn’t come back to Auntie Glo’s apartment, I just had a feeling that you’d ended up here. I thought you’d like the lights. And I remembered how you said …’

  Salim had put his phone up to his ear. ‘We’ve found him,’ he said. ‘He’s in Times Square, just like we thought. Aunt Faith, it’s all right. Tell Mum to stop crying. I can hear her. Mum!’

  ‘Are we going back to Aunt Gloria’s apartment now?’ I asked. ‘Has Aunt Gloria been released by the police?’

  ‘Um, Ted. No,’ said Kat. ‘Auntie Glo’s still being questioned. We had to call Mum and Auntie Glo when you went missing, and they are totally going to kill you next time they see you. You know they thought you’d pulled a Salim? Actually, they were already upset because Sandra told them that we weren’t there this morning when she came to look after us. She’s been searching for us all day. She found me and Salim when we went back to look for you, and she made us go back out to keep hunting. I mean, she didn’t really make us – I would have come anyway.’

  ‘I know you would, Kat,’ I said.

  ‘Ugh, yes, whatever,’ said Kat, her lips twisting. ‘You are so ANNOYING!’

  I didn’t think that Kat meant what she said. I also thought the part about Mum and Aunt Gloria killing me was a figure of speech. I did not want to be killed before we could solve the Guggenheim Mystery. I felt as though what I had thought about in Times Square had been useful. I could not explain it, even to myself, but I was sure that I had had a very important idea.

  Salim made another phone call, to Sandra. Five minutes later, a police car came screeching up to us, making Times Square light up even more in red and white and blue. Sandra jumped out of it.

  Screeching was a good word to use, and not even a figure of speech, because when Sandra came towards us, her blonde hair was down from her bun again and she was shouting.

  ‘HOW DARE YOU!’ she cried. ‘I’ve wasted ALL DAY looking for you!’

  Sandra was a very small person, but at that moment she frightened me. I backed away from her.

  ‘What did you think you were doing?’ snapped Sandra.

  I remembered that we had to keep our quest a secret. ‘I went the wrong way on the subway. I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘We were just being tourists. I wanted to see New York.’

  That was my sixth lie, but Sandra didn’t know that. She breathed deeply through her nose and smoothed down her skirt with her hands. Then she was calm. I couldn’t see anger on her face any more at all.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Get into the car. I’m taking you all back to my apartment.’

  The policeman had got out of the car and was standing in the road next to it, speaking into his walkie-talkie. It had a red light glowing on it, which means that someone was speaking back.

  ‘Situation under control,’ he said. ‘Final missing child located.’

  That was strange to hear. I realized that for a few hours we really had been missing, just like Salim last spring.

  Kat was also on the phone, holding Salim’s mobile up to her ear. ‘MUM!’ she said. ‘Didn’t I tell you? We’re fine, honestly! We promise we’ll be good.’

  Mum should know by now that when Kat says honestly, eighty-seven per cent of the time she is not being honest. I have conducted careful research on this.

  Then we got into the police car. S
andra sat in the front, with the officer, and Kat and Salim and I were in the back.

  I observed how strange police cars are. They have a grille that separates the back seat from the driver, in case a criminal tries to attack them. I sat still and imagined that I was not a hero any more, but a criminal. I wondered if this was how Aunt Gloria had felt when the police arrested her.

  I was still wondering this when the police car arrived at Sandra’s apartment.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Sandra’s Paintings

  I asked Kat why we couldn’t go back to Aunt Gloria’s white apartment. Kat said, ‘The police are still searching it, Ted!’ I imagined police officers going through the rest of my suitcase, looking at my encyclopaedia and unfolding my underwear as they hunted for clues. It felt as though they were turning me inside out. I remembered when Salim disappeared. Then the police had felt sorry for us, and Aunt Gloria had been the victim. Now they thought she was a criminal.

  Sandra’s apartment wasn’t far from Aunt Gloria’s. It was on 94th Street, in another tall building with fire escapes climbing up its outside. Looking at them still made me feel dizzy, as though I was seeing something I shouldn’t be able to. It was like I had X-ray eyes, and I was seeing through the bricks of the building to its skeleton. This is a simile, but an interesting one.

  We climbed up five flights of stairs, Salim dragging his feet. Sandra waited for us at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. Her face was calm again, and as Salim walked past her she patted him on the shoulder.

  We stepped through Sandra’s doorway, and I saw that her apartment was even smaller than Aunt Gloria’s, with the same living-room-kitchen space. Its walls were white too, but they were covered with bright-coloured pictures. For a moment my heart beat irregularly because I recognized them – they were some of the paintings that I had seen in the Guggenheim. What were they doing here?

  ‘Oh!’ said Kat. She had seen them as well.