Framed!

by James Ponti

  He obviously did not know what to make of me.

  “Oh, and another thing,” I said. “The two rooms we saw him in. Rooms in which he spent long periods of time. They’re the same two rooms that just got robbed.”

  That’s when the agent smiled. “Well, now. That does seem interesting.”

  7.

  Seen but Not Heard

  AGENT RIVERS WAS INTRIGUED BY my story of the man in the European shoes. But as far as clues and potential leads went, it was way down the list. It had been two weeks since Margaret and I had seen the man, and the museum was an active crime scene with fresh evidence to be gathered and security footage to be viewed.

  Rivers let me stay because every copyist has to apply for a permit. When there was a free moment, he planned to have someone get the applications so I could look at the ID photos and see if any belonged to the man. Until then I was supposed to sit in the back of the room and wait.

  Silently.

  The silent part was stressed more than once, but I didn’t mind. I had a front row seat to an actual mystery and my father was one of the good guys trying to solve it. It was beyond cool. I listened carefully as they re-created the events of the night.

  “Start at the beginning,” Rivers instructed. “How did someone take three paintings without setting off an alarm?”

  “Our security software is all being updated,” Ms. Miller explained. “Earl was in charge.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “We have fixes every few months, but this is the first major overhaul in years. The entire system had to be taken off-line while it rebooted. That meant we had no cameras, motion sensors, or alarms. We were totally dark.”

  “There are supposed to be countermeasures when you do that,” said the British man.

  “There were,” answered Ms. Miller. “We overlapped shifts so we had extra guards along the perimeter of the building during the upgrade.”

  “And they didn’t see anything?” asked Dad.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “I’m sorry,” interrupted the agent, looking at the British man. “Who are you again?”

  “Oliver Hobbes,” he said. “I’m with the insurance company.”

  “And were you here during the reboot?” he asked.

  “No, they called me after the paintings were found missing,” he said.

  “And when was that?” the agent asked.

  “The system went down at one fifteen and everything was back up and running at one thirty-two,” said Miller. “A custodian noticed a painting was missing and sounded the alarm at one fifty-one.”

  Rivers wrote down the times in a notepad he carried.

  The mention of the custodian reminded me of the scene in the rotunda when we arrived. I scanned the monitors and saw that the police were still questioning the cleaning staff. There were five custodians waiting by the fountain while two others were talking to detectives off to the side. All of them wore matching blue coveralls. Their work carts were lined up in two rows of four on the far wall. I wished the monitors had sound so I could eavesdrop.

  On another pair of monitors I saw the crime scene unit looking for evidence in the rooms that had been burglarized. I was amazed by how meticulously they worked. Then something struck me, and I looked back at the screen showing the rotunda.

  There were two rows of four work carts, which made a total of eight, but there were only seven workers. Someone was missing. I checked the other monitors, looking for anyone else in blue coveralls.

  There were none.

  “Dad,” I blurted out excitedly. “Dad!”

  The conversation at the table stopped abruptly and everyone glared at me.

  “You really need to be quiet, Florian,” my father said impatiently. “We have to focus on this.”

  “One of the custodians is missing,” I said, pointing at the monitor.

  “What do you mean?” asked Agent Rivers.

  “There are eight carts but only seven custodians,” I explained. “Where’d the extra cart come from?”

  The agent walked right up to the monitor and tapped each person on the screen as he counted. Seven. He didn’t say a thing. He just bolted out of the room with Serena and Earl right behind him.

  That left me alone with my father and Hobbes, the insurance agent. Dad came over and sat next to me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I wasn’t supposed to talk, but . . .”

  “It’s okay,” he assured me. “That was great that you noticed it . . . although maybe not so great for them.”

  On the screen we could see Rivers pull the detectives aside and start a heated conversation. Once again I wished there were sound on the monitors.

  “I owe you a huge apology,” Hobbes said as he approached and offered his hand. “I was stressed and upset and I took it out on you. I hope you can forgive me.”

  “Of course,” I said. “It’s pretty crazy having a twelve-year-old interrupt your crime scene. I probably would have reacted the same way.”

  “Oliver Hobbes,” he said as we shook.

  “Florian Bates,” I replied. “You said you work with the insurance company, right?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “The museum called me right after they called your dad.”

  “Oliver and I have crossed paths often,” said my father.

  “Yeah, your father’s one of the best in the business,” he replied. “I was relieved to see that he’s part of the recovery team.”

  Before we could continue the conversation, Agent Rivers and the others returned. “What’s your name?” he asked as he strode back to the main console.

  “Florian Bates,” I replied.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Well, twelve-year-old Florian Bates, you are officially smarter than the detectives of the Metropolitan Police Department. They had no idea they were missing a custodian.” He turned to Ms. Miller. “Can you pull up the security video starting at thirty minutes before the robbery?”

  “Of course.”

  She nodded to Earl, who sat down and started typing. Within seconds the monitors were filled with footage from earlier in the night. The time on the bottom of each image read “12:45.”

  “What are we looking for?” asked Dad.

  “A guilty-looking custodian,” said the agent.

  Even sped up, the footage was incredibly boring.

  We were about halfway through it when Hobbes shook his head and complained, “They’re all the same size. They’re wearing identical uniforms. And they’re looking down, not up at the cameras.”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy,” replied Rivers. “What were those shoes you were talking about?”

  It took me a moment to realize he was asking me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You said he had on a special type of shoe,” he replied. “If he’s our guy, he may have the same shoes on in this picture.”

  I hadn’t even thought about that.

  “Brilliant,” said Oliver. “Check the shoes.”

  For the first time I moved over from the couch and stood next to them, examining each pair of shoes on the screen. First it was exciting. Then it was nerve-racking. And finally, it was embarrassing. We went back and forth over an hour and a half’s worth of security footage and there was no sign of the man in the Europa trainers. I was so certain we’d find him. I was certain I’d be a hero. My clue was a dud.

  “I guess I was wrong,” I said softly.

  “Don’t sweat it,” said the agent as he put a friendly hand on my shoulder. “I still want you to look through the applications to see if you can identify him. You never know how these things come together.”

  I forced a smile and nodded.

  “Look there,” said my dad, pointing at one of the monitors. “Who’s that?”

  The monitor showed the exterior of the building as a man in a blue custodian’s uniform crossed Constitution Avenue and disappeared into the darkness.

&n
bsp; “I think that’s our eighth custodian,” said the agent. “What’s the time?”

  “One forty-three,” answered Earl.

  “What time does the custodial shift end?”

  “Not until four,” he replied.

  Agent Rivers turned the knob to make the video play in reverse and stopped it at the point where we had the best view of the custodian. It still wasn’t much to go by. His back was turned to the camera and he was wearing a baseball cap, so we couldn’t really tell anything about him.

  “So I’ve got a question,” said Rivers. “If that’s our guy leaving the scene, then where are the paintings?”

  8.

  Nightcrawlers

  IT WAS NEARLY FOUR IN the morning but the National Gallery was anything but sleepy. Since the prime suspect left with nothing in his possession, everyone was scouring the building to see if the paintings had been hidden in the museum. Everyone, that is, except for me and Earl.

  We stayed in the security center, where he worked on his computer and I waited for my mom to pick me up. The mystery man in the Europa trainers was now even farther down the list of leads. I was being sent home.

  “Did you have to stay in here just to keep an eye on me?” I asked. “If so, I’m really sorry.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m responsible for the software upgrade and I need to keep an eye on the network while it filters through the entire system. Besides, you shouldn’t apologize for anything. You saved the day.”

  “You think so?”

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  “Thanks, Mr. . . .”

  “No Mr.,” he replied. “Just call me Earl.”

  I smiled. “Okay. Thanks, Earl.”

  “This is some show we’ve got tonight, isn’t it?” he asked, looking at the security monitors.

  On the screens we could see teams of police officers, security guards, and detectives hunting for any place the paintings could be hidden. There were people on ladders poking up into the ceiling tiles. There was a crew taking apart the couches in the galleries. A lot of attention was focused on bathrooms as well as the storage areas not open to the public. Agent Rivers was in charge of it all, and he marched up and down the main hallway giving orders and conferring with my father and Ms. Miller.

  “If he hid the paintings here, that means he has to come back to get them,” I said. “That seems really dangerous.”

  “Maybe not as dangerous as walking across the street with them under his arm,” said Earl. “He’s obviously smart, so he must have figured out some way to get them without getting caught.”

  “And if he’s smart, he must have picked those paintings on purpose,” I reasoned. “Something like that wouldn’t be random.”

  He gave me a look and smiled. “I’ve been thinking the same thing all night.”

  He typed something into the computer and the basic information about each of the three paintings came up on the screen in front of us:

  The Dance Class by Edgar Degas (c. 1873)

  Oil on canvas, 18 3/4˝ x 24 1/2˝

  Gallery 83

  Girl in White by Vincent van Gogh (1890)

  Oil on canvas, 26 1/4˝ x 18 1/16˝

  Gallery 83

  Child with Toys by Auguste Renoir (1895–1896)

  Oil on canvas, 21 3/8˝ x 25 3/4˝

  Gallery 85

  “What do they have in common?” I asked.

  “The Degas and the Renoir are both French Impressionism,” he said. “Girl in White is technically Postimpressionism. But most people don’t notice the difference.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You really know your art.”

  “I’ve spent eight of the last ten years trying to protect every painting in this building,” he said. “After a while you get to know them pretty well.”

  “Why only eight?” I asked.

  “I worked across the street at the National Archives for two years,” he said. “But I missed this place too much and begged Serena for my old job.”

  “Since you know the paintings so well, can you think of why someone would want these three in particular?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. They’re not even the most valuable pieces in the rooms they were in.”

  “According to Mr. Hobbes, they’re worth over sixty-five million dollars,” I said.

  “Don’t get me wrong, they’re incredibly valuable,” he said. “But if you’re going to risk stealing masterpieces, why not take the most valuable or at least the most important works?”

  It was a good point but I reminded myself that monetary value and historical importance were big things, which can be misleading. I thought about the small things. I thought about TOAST.

  I looked at the images on the computer and tried to figure out what small things they had in common. The Renoir was a picture of a young boy and his nanny playing with toys. The Degas showed ballerinas in a dance class. And the Van Gogh had a woman in a dress walking through a field of flowers. No common themes.

  I looked at the years they were painted, their previous owners, and even the frames they were in. They still had nothing in common. I was stumped until I noticed one seemingly insignificant thing.

  “They’re the same size!” I said.

  “What?”

  “They’re all within a couple inches of being the same size,” I said, not sure why it would be important.

  Before I could come up with anything more, my mother arrived. Since she worked at the museum, her security pass let her come right in and pick me up.

  “I can’t believe this really happened,” she said, looking at the monitors as she entered the room.

  “They stole three paintings,” I said. “Renoir, Degas, and Van Gogh.”

  “That’s what your dad told me on the phone,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the monitors. “I just can’t imagine.”

  “Florian was a big help,” Earl said. “I think without him they still wouldn’t have any idea what happened.”

  She smiled. “Well, thank you. But I think it’s time that I take him home so he can get some sleep.”

  “Can’t we stay just a little bit longer?” I asked. “I know you’re just as curious as I am.”

  “That’s not the point,” she said. “They’ve got work to do. I’m sure your dad will fill us in on everything.”

  I said good-bye to Earl and we left. As we rode the elevator, I asked her, “Why would someone steal a painting because of its size instead of its value?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mom. “Maybe the criminal has small walls and there’s not enough room for bigger paintings.”

  We both laughed at this.

  But it kind of made sense. Maybe there was some sort of size limit. I didn’t figure out what it could be until we were in the rotunda and I saw the crime scene unit examining the extra work cart. That’s when I noticed that unlike the others, its trash bag was empty.

  “That’s it!” I said to Mom. “Where’s Dad?”

  “What’s it?”

  “I know where the paintings are.”

  I remembered my father had been walking up and down the main hall with Rivers. I started running toward where I’d seen them last.

  “Wait for me,” called Mom, trying to keep up.

  I found them by the fountain in the East Garden Court. The first one to see me was Agent Rivers. Rather than being angry, he seemed amused.

  “Let me guess?” he said. “You’ve solved the case?”

  “I–I think so,” I stammered, trying to catch my breath.

  This caught him off guard, and I realized he’d been joking.

  “All the paintings are about nineteen by twenty-five inches,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “Why does that matter?”

  “It’s the perfect size to fit in his trash bag. That’s how he went from room to room without anyone noticing. The paintings were in his trash bag on the cart. And that’s how he’s getting them out of the building.”

  “They’re in the trash!�
�� exclaimed Rivers.

  “So he doesn’t have to come back for them,” I responded. “The garbage truck will pick them up for him.”

  “Where’s trash collection?” he asked Ms. Miller.

  “Right this way,” she said, pointing.

  Everyone rushed out to a loading dock, where there were three large Dumpsters, two blue and one green. Even though it was the middle of the night, a truck was backing up to pick up a blue one. It turns out that a lot of the city’s garbage is collected at night, when the tourists and government officials are gone.

  “Stop. Right. Now,” Rivers said, holding up his badge. “Nobody move.”

  A very dedicated team of FBI agents spent the next thirty minutes digging through the Dumpsters and bags of trash while detectives questioned the garbage crew to see if they might be involved. They didn’t find anything until they checked the green recycling Dumpster.

  All three paintings were found tucked in a stack of cardboard boxes that had been folded and bundled together. The size was the key. If they were just a few inches bigger they wouldn’t have fit in the bundler.

  “Twelve-year-old Florian Bates,” Agent Rivers bellowed. “You are not just smarter than the officers of the Metropolitan Police Department. You are smarter than all of us.”

  My mom and dad laughed, but the strangest thing happened. The searchers all turned to me and gave me a round of applause.

  I’d never felt anything like it before.

  9.

  Sunday Sauce

  I WOKE UP WITH MY head at the wrong end of the bed, completely unsure if the “4:15” on my clock was morning or afternoon. It was just like I was in Napoléon’s portrait, only there were no candles to help me solve the mystery. The most disorienting part was the amazing aroma that filled the air. It was the unmistakable, mouthwatering smell of my mom’s Sunday spaghetti sauce. But this was Saturday. Or at least I thought it was. There was a decent chance I’d slept for an entire day. Either that or I was having a smellucination. (Is there such a thing?)

  “Mom?” I called into the kitchen as I walked down the stairs.