The Mastermind Plot

by Angie Frazier

  “Maybe … you could help me?” I said in a small, questioning voice.

  She stilled her fidgeting hands. “Me? Why, I don’t know how I could help.”

  “You could tell me what you know about Matthew Leighton.” I knew it was a risk. Uncle Bruce had advised me not to say a word about him, and her spell the evening of the museum concert had given me a fright. But she knew him better than I did. She might have information I could use.

  Grandmother’s reaction was immediate. She tightened her small shoulders, and her blue eyes hardened over with what seemed like a layer of frost.

  “The only thing I know about that man is that he is a disgrace. He’s an unlawful, self-serving rogue, and the people who are tied to him — whether they want to be or not — suffer because of it.”

  My mother must have suffered most of all. How had she handled it when she’d learned what he did for a living? She was so proper and kind and graceful. How could her father be so different from her?

  “I know he’s a thief, and I know I’ve only met him a few times.” My thumb fanned the pages of my notebook as I thought. “But he didn’t strike me as the sort of person who would burn down buildings and put people in harm’s way.”

  He’d even stayed by Grandmother’s side after she’d fainted at the museum — until people started coming toward us. Grandmother despised him, so I was expecting her to reply with a hearty reassurance that he was indeed the sort of person to do those deeds. But instead, she inhaled deeply and held the breath in her lungs a long moment. Thinking.

  She exhaled. “No, he doesn’t, does he? He is a crafty old crook, but nothing more depraved than that.”

  She glanced at the edge of the notebook I was absentmindedly fanning the pages of. “What do you have in there about him?”

  I stilled my thumb. “How do you know I have anything at all?” Grandmother hadn’t ever asked me what my notebook was for, and I hadn’t offered the information.

  She smiled. “You forget, Bruce used to keep notebooks filled with his case studies, too.”

  Yes, I had forgotten. Detective Grogan had mentioned the notebooks the day I’d arrived at the brownstone, as well as something else. “I might have discovered some similarities between the Horne fires and an older case, one that Bruce worked on when he was a rookie.”

  Had he been referring to the Red Herring Heists? If Detective Grogan had found a connection and had managed to find proof … well, it would be a solid motive for the Red Herring mastermind to want to shut him up for good. With a sinking chill, I flipped through the pages of the notebook until I landed on the entry about the strange man who had first suggested to Adele that her father’s precious art was being stolen.

  “Odd smell,” I read aloud, though mostly to myself. “Soap. Musky. Like wood.” My finger stalled underneath that last word. I looked up from the notebook. “Like wood.”

  “What’s that, dear?” Grandmother asked. “Who has an odd smell?”

  The day before, beneath the bridge on Boston Common, my grandfather had had a clean, soapy scent, too, and it had been musky. I remembered thinking it was like a pine tree or balsam. A Christmas smell.

  “Matthew Leighton,” I answered my grandmother, though my mind was already charging ahead.

  Could Adele’s strange man and my grandfather be one and the same? Will had suggested it at Detective Grogan’s burial, but I’d shrugged off the suspicion. Now I wasn’t so sure. If my grandfather had been the one to tell Adele about the art thefts, he most definitely couldn’t be guilty. Why draw attention to the stolen art if he was the one swiping it? I had to tell my uncle. I closed the book, disheartened. As if he’d ever listen to a word I had to say again. I’d thwarted his attempt at capturing Matthew Leighton. I was sure I’d never be forgiven.

  “Well, I’m not sure how he smells is going to help with an investigation,” Grandmother said with a sigh. “But I can understand your wanting to stay and see things through. It’s very … responsible of you, Suzanna. If you wish to stay in Boston, I suppose you may. But I warn you: If your investigating in any way turns hazardous” — Grandmother shook a finger toward me — “I want you to promise me you’ll ask me for help. Is that understood?”

  The carriage arrived outside the academy. I stared at my grandmother, dumbfounded. She hadn’t demanded I stop investigating should it turn hazardous?

  “Well?” she pressed. “Do I have your word?”

  “Y-yes,” I stammered. “Yes, of course.”

  She nodded. “Very well, then. Off you go.”

  I fumbled putting away my notebook and gathering my books, and, still dazed, got out of the carriage. Grandmother gave me a prim wave through the window after the driver closed it. I waved back, still shocked. My grandmother was to be my new ally? I turned to go inside the academy, wondering if the day could possibly turn any more bizarre.

  The morning slugged forward, the clocks stuck in what felt like a timeless abyss. In contrast to stolen masterpieces, fiery blazes, and secret identities, the needlepoint, watercolors, and posture exercises Adele and I were subjected to seemed more like weapons of torture.

  It wasn’t until our early afternoon constitutional stroll that I had the chance to talk to Adele privately. I wanted to ask her to make a run past Mr. Dashner’s frame shop again after dismissal with me. We paired off from the other girls in the academy courtyard. Our shoulders brushed against each other and she gave me a nudge.

  “How did you manage it, Zanna?”

  “Manage what?” I asked. She nudged me again, knocking me off balance and closer to the rim of the stone fountain.

  “Oh, stop! You know exactly what I mean. My father got a message last night from your uncle. How did you convince him that the art might be getting stolen? And do you know who the prime suspect is? My father said they already have one!”

  I choked on a response. I didn’t want to lie to Adele, but I also wasn’t prepared to tell her about my grandfather. He was a thief. I felt a little like how my mother must have: I didn’t want to be associated with something so low.

  “I just told him about Mr. Dashner and the frames,” I answered. Adele slowed her rotation of the fountain.

  “But that was only speculation,” she replied. “We never found any proof. You yourself said your uncle wouldn’t listen to anything but proof.”

  I suddenly wished for a less astute partner. Because that’s what she was, wasn’t she? My partner. And I was hiding something from her.

  “And what happened on the Common yesterday?” Adele asked. “My father said they nearly nabbed the suspect, and that you were there. You and Will.”

  Saying I’d been used as bait would only lead Adele to ask why I might have successfully drawn the suspect out into the open in the first place. But saying my uncle had simply asked me to be there during a sting would have been an outright lie. Adele would never have believed it anyway. I groped for something to say, but came up blank.

  Adele stopped walking. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  I unbuttoned the top clasp of my cloak, hot with nerves. “I wish I could tell you, Adele, but I … I can’t.”

  The frigid glare she’d hit me with my first few days at the academy returned full force. “Can’t or won’t? I thought we were investigating together.”

  I took a step after her. “We are, but —”

  Adele brushed past me. “I get it, Suzanna. Really, I do. You’re just like your uncle and you don’t even know it.”

  The insult hit like a brick. “My uncle?”

  I ignored the girls around us, all stopping to watch our spat. Adele raised her voice just enough so that everyone could listen in easily.

  “There’s only room for one ego around here, isn’t that right?”

  Ego? I didn’t have an out-of-control ego! I just had a gigantic secret.

  “That’s not it at all, Adele.”

  She charged past me again, heading back toward the academy doors. “You’ll find an invitatio
n to my house tonight when you get home. You can ignore it and tell your grandmother I’ve changed my mind.”

  Adele stormed inside, leaving me frazzled by the whirlwind of misunderstanding. I hadn’t even been able to ask her to go with me to Varden Street. It looked like I was on my own after all, just as Adele assumed I wanted it.

  Mon., Sept. 28, 3:30 p.m.: Mr. Dashner’s frame shop finally open. Going in (before I lose what’s left of my nerve).

  I WASN’T THE ONLY PERSON INSIDE MR. Dashner’s shop. Someone I presumed was Mr. Dashner himself and a uniformed police officer were standing in the back of the shop, engaged in a hushed discussion. Unfinished frames hung from pegs on the walls, cloth-draped paintings sat propped against one another on the floor, and a thick metal safe door built into one of the walls was propped open. I hovered near the front door, thinking to slip out quickly, when the officer lifted his head and made eye contact with me.

  I hadn’t seen this officer before, I didn’t think. He didn’t seem to recognize me, either, and went back to writing on a small pad of paper. Mr. Dashner gestured wildly with his hands — both of which were mottled by a bright red rash. He took notice of me.

  “I’ll be with you in a moment, miss,” he said, and then turned back to the officer, saying, “It was the only thing taken. I’m sure of it.”

  The officer nodded, finished writing, and closed up his notebook.

  “I’ll ask around. See if anyone saw something suspicious.”

  Mr. Dashner thanked him, but as he walked the officer to the door, he looked like he might faint. His skin had a yellow pallor and a sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. And peeking out from his band collar was a rash of red boils.

  “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Mr. Dashner said to me once the officer had left. He pulled out a handkerchief and blotted at his forehead.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked.

  “No. I’m afraid it’s not.” He shuffled back toward the shop’s work space, and leaned against the open safe door once he got there. “I’m ruined.”

  I walked after him. “Ruined? How do you mean?”

  He closed the safe door and spun the dial. “I was robbed last night. Someone broke into my safe and took a painting that belongs to one of my most important clients.”

  The smell of glue, paint, and new wood suddenly made my stomach churn. I wanted to ask if the client was Xavier Horne, but couldn’t. If it was, Mr. Dashner would question how I’d guessed right off the top of my head.

  “Was it an expensive painting?” I asked instead.

  Mr. Dashner rubbed his hands together fretfully, then scratched at the bumpy red rash covering them.

  “Yes. Very. A Cézanne.”

  It was Mr. Horne’s painting. Mr. Dashner had told the police officer that nothing else had been taken. So the Cézanne had been the sole object of desire. That painting was the only warehouse-stored artwork that had not been moved to either Dr. Philbrick’s or Detective Grogan’s homes — and now even that was gone. That meant five paintings had been stolen and eleven had been supposedly burned. Sixteen in all. Sixteen.

  Perhaps being inside a frame shop made it easy for me to recall the significance of that number. Signor Periggi had constructed eleven frames for his client, but hadn’t he said that the original order had been for sixteen? Without caring what Mr. Dashner might have thought of it, I brought out my notebook and flipped back to the page with Periggi’s information. Yes, he’d said sedici — sixteen. So eleven frames constructed, and eleven paintings burned. Five frames canceled, and five paintings stolen instead of destroyed. And those five had been removed from the warehouses after the fires. After Periggi had received his original order for a full sixteen.

  It wasn’t a coincidence. I didn’t believe in them. Had the thief hired Signor Periggi to reconstruct the frames, only to then change the order when it became clear they wouldn’t be in the warehouses any longer? But then why had there only been cancellations for the Cézanne, and the four pieces brought to Dr. Philbrick’s? Why hadn’t there been a cancellation for the six destroyed in Detective Grogan’s house fire? Why hadn’t those other places — Dr. Philbrick’s home and Mr. Dashner’s shop — been set ablaze?

  Mr. Dashner grimaced at his hands, still scratching.

  “How did you get the rash?” I asked. He hadn’t yet asked me what I wanted. I would take advantage of his distraction for as long as I could.

  He held them up to inspect the angry red patches, then shoved them into his pockets.

  “I’ve been away in the Berkshires on a fly-fishing trip. I had the misfortune of falling into a patch of poison ivy.” He shook his head and then scratched at one of the many welts on his neck.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, more confused than before. How could he be the culprit if he hadn’t even been in Boston? Unless he’d had a partner in crime.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “May I help you with something?”

  I’d planned on using the “present for my grandmother” story again, but with this new development, I wasn’t sure of the point. It seemed Mr. Dashner had indeed been on holiday, plagued by bad luck and poison ivy, and it did look like he was devastated by the theft.

  “No, it’s nothing. I can come back another time when things are more … settled,” I said, backing up toward the door.

  He didn’t try to stop me. Instead, he mopped his face again with his handkerchief and mumbled to himself as I shut the door behind me. I walked back into the slanting rain to Grandmother’s carriage. Mr. Dashner very well could have been filing a false theft report. He could have had a partner, allowing him to conveniently be in the Berkshires during the last fire. But if there was a connection to the order for sixteen frames from Signor Periggi, that put Mr. Dashner even farther down the possibilities list. Why would a framer hire another framer to construct decoy frames?

  If it wasn’t Dashner, then who was it? I didn’t want to consider Matthew Leighton. Still, it couldn’t be avoided.

  I arrived back at 224 Knight Street and found Grandmother eagerly waiting to tell me that I’d had two invitations arrive during the day. I already knew about the one from Adele. The other was an invitation to a last-minute bon voyage dinner for Hannah Grogan at the Copley Square Hotel that night.

  “Bon voyage? Where is she going?” I gave the rectangular vellum card back to Grandmother as Bertie stripped off my cloak and brought it to dry by the hearth.

  “She has family in Paris who want her to stay with them for the time being.” Grandmother set the invitation on the mantel. “You’re in high demand this evening, it seems. Tell me, which will it be, June Street or the Copley?”

  I hadn’t yet told Grandmother that Adele had disinvited me. I sat heavily on the sofa. Grandmother misinterpreted it.

  “I would imagine you’d rather avoid your uncle,” she said, and took a seat beside me. “I don’t mean to make excuses for his behavior yesterday, but Zanna, Bruce has never lost a partner before. We have to give him a little room for anger.”

  My blood hummed in my veins, ready to boil. “Even if that means letting him arrest the wrong person?”

  He’d done it before, in Loch Harbor when he’d arrested my friend Isaac Quimby based on evidence that had obviously been planted. He’d do it again to close a case to his personal satisfaction. How many other cases had he closed this way? I didn’t want to know.

  “Matthew Leighton should not be here in Boston,” Grandmother said, her voice terse. “He knew to stay away. It was part of their agreement.”

  “And he did stay away. He slipped off the face of the earth for thirteen years. What if he truly has kept his word? What if he makes an honest living now?”

  Grandmother looked at me with plain-as-day pity. First, Adele had rejected me in front of the entire academy, and now Grandmother thought I was naive. I couldn’t handle any more shame. I shot up from the sofa.

  “Maybe I’ll just stay here tonight,” I said.

  Grandmother followed
me and got to her feet. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Zanna. Oh, if only you’d never had to learn about Matthew Leighton at all! I just don’t understand how he knew you were coming. It was as if he knew to expect you.”

  Grandmother’s pale face had turned waxy. She took out her fan and beat the ruffles madly. Spotting the warning signs of another attack, I quickly worked to calm her.

  “I’m not upset, Grandmother. I’m glad I know about him. Just like I’m glad I came to Boston.”

  I hoped it didn’t sound like too much of a sugar coating. But I certainly didn’t want Dr. Philbrick to pay us a visit today. I hadn’t seen him since we’d bumped into each other outside Signor Periggi’s frame shop. My worry for Grandmother came to a halt as I recalled how Dr. Philbrick’s hand had reached out for the knob to Periggi’s shop. Twice.

  I’d passed it off as his being flustered over the memory of Detective Grogan’s burned remains. Dr. Philbrick was an art collector, a friend of Mr. Horne’s, and perhaps a patron of Periggi’s. And not only had four of the (possibly) canceled frames been stolen from his house, but Periggi had said the person who’d ordered the frames had been extremely picky in his orders. Dr. Philbrick fit that bill nicely. Could he have ordered the custom frames?

  The wind from Grandmother’s beating fan brought me back to the parlor.

  “Do you think maybe you could drop me off at Adele’s tonight?”

  I wasn’t sure if going to Adele’s was a good idea, but perhaps I could distract her with my half-formed theories about Dr. Philbrick. Adele had seemed suspicious of him to begin with.

  Grandmother’s fan slowed. “Of course. I’m sure Hannah will understand, and she won’t want for dinner guests. Bruce, Katherine, Will, and a good number of the police force will be there. I daresay Boston will have to be on its best behavior tonight.” She slid her ruffled fan shut. “The police will be quite distracted.”