Framed!

by James Ponti

  “My family would not accept the relationship. They would not accept an African-American daughter-in-law, an African-American granddaughter. So I had to make a choice. I had to become this man, in exchange for my family looking away from them. I tell you this so you understand how far I will go to protect Margaret. You cannot tell anyone.”

  “Well, then you’re going to have to help me come up with an explanation as to what we’re doing here,” I said. “Because the FBI’s going to want to know how we ended up together.”

  Both of us sat there for a moment, breathing heavily, trying to figure out a solution. I knew the FBI would be there any moment. I pictured my case board in my mind and I drew a line through all the dots. I connected all the small pieces, and then I saw it.

  “I know who did it!” I exclaimed. “I know who stole Woman with a Parasol!”

  “It was not me,” he said.

  “No, it wasn’t,” I said. “You had nothing to do with it. That’s how I know who did it.”

  We could now hear cars arriving outside the barn. It was only a matter of seconds before the agents burst into the barn.

  “You can help me in a way that will help both of us.”

  Nevrescu lay facedown on the ground and put his hands behind his head, so there’d be no trouble when the agents entered.

  “What do I do?” he asked.

  “You get EEL to force Pavel Novak to return to America,” I said. “And you tell everybody that Agent Rivers was not the man at the Romanian embassy. Tell them that you saw a man who looked like him, but that it was someone else. That one’s a deal breaker. You don’t do that and I’ll tell everybody everything. Including Margaret.”

  “You care about her too much to tell her,” he said. “But I still agree.”

  The barn door flew open and a team of federal agents burst in. They wore black riot gear and helmets and had their guns drawn. It was terrifying. In the middle of them all was Agent Rivers.

  “Nicolae Nevrescu, keep your hands behind your head and do not move!” he barked as an agent approached Nevrescu and cuffed him behind his back.

  Rivers walked straight to me.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “Don’t worry, Marcus, I’m fine.”

  He wrapped me in another hug.

  “This is going to have to stop,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I signed up for Art Crime because it was supposed to keep me mellow.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “But we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  After the dust settled (literally) and the scene had been fully secured by the agents, Nicolae, Marcus, and I were all seated around the wooden picnic table, only now it was Nic the Knife, whose hands were tied behind his back.

  “You’re telling me that it was all a misunderstanding?” Rivers asked incredulously after we’d started to fill him in on our version of events.

  “Not all of it,” Nicolae said. “I asked Gregor to get Florian so that I could help explain that I was innocent but willing to help solve the mystery. Gregor mistook the request and was too forceful in the manner in which he got Florian. But he was never in danger. This is a special boy and I would not let anything happen to him.” He looked at me and added, “I will not let anything ever happen to him.”

  I realized that he meant what he was saying. I was important to Margaret; he would never have hurt her by hurting me.

  “But the important thing is that we solved the mystery,” I said. “We know who stole Woman with a Parasol, and Nicolae can help us get Pavel Novak.”

  “Of course,” Nic said. “I have friends in the Czech Republic who owe me a favor. Novak will be on a plane to the United States within three days. I guarantee that he’ll surrender to the authorities.”

  “You know who did it?” Rivers asked me.

  I nodded.

  “Who?”

  “I’ll tell you when we’re alone, but there’s one more thing we have to take care of.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nicolae, do you know this man?” I asked as I pointed at Agent Rivers. “Did you see him two Saturdays ago at the Romanian embassy?”

  Nevrescu gave a performance worthy of an Oscar as he said, “I have never seen this man before in my life. And I would testify to that in any court in the land.”

  29.

  A Tiny Piece of TOAST

  MARCUS AND I RODE ALONG the highway on our way back to Washington. I was still overwhelmed by everything as I looked out at the farms.

  “It’s a lot prettier when you’re not tied up in the back of a truck,” I said.

  “Funny how that works,” he replied.

  “I still can’t believe I pushed my panic button and you came to rescue me in a hybrid. I was expecting something like a helicopter, or at least one of those bulletproof SUVs.”

  “I didn’t come because of the panic button,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you didn’t show up at home, I started looking for you on my own, tracking you with your SmarTrip card,” he explained. “You got everybody else when you pushed the panic button. I was already on my way.”

  “I bet you didn’t even go over the speed limit,” I said.

  “Speed limits are there for a reason,” he said. “Safety’s important.” Then he cracked a smile and added, “Although I may have gone over it, by like forty miles an hour.”

  “Well, thanks,” I said. “You’ve rescued me twice in two weeks. That’s got to be some sort of record.”

  “And you said you were going to tell me who did it,” he reminded me. “So spill.”

  “I need to explain something first. And you have to promise that you won’t tell anyone.”

  “I promise no such thing,” he said.

  “Forty-five minutes ago, I told a very scary man that I wouldn’t tell this to anybody, so I need to make sure it stays a secret. You have to promise.”

  “Let me explain how this works,” Marcus said to me. “If you trust me with a secret, that means you trust my judgment with regard to the information. Not that you get to dictate that judgment for me. If we’re going to work together, we’re going to have to be able to think along those lines.”

  “You still want to work with me?” I asked. “Even after all this?”

  “I know, crazy, isn’t it?”

  “Okay, you don’t have to promise, but please use your best judgment.”

  “Always,” he said.

  “It all starts with Margaret’s soccer game . . .”

  I explained to him all about the search for Margaret’s birth parents and the fact that Nevrescu was her father. When I was done he shook his head in amazement.

  “Wow,” he said. “That’s a secret I can keep. That’s something we need to protect her from.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  “And from that you were able to determine who stole Woman with a Parasol?”

  “Yes, thanks to you.”

  “What did I do?”

  “That day at Quantico you set a trap for me.”

  I reached into the glove compartment and saw that the nail polish was still there. I took it out and held it up for him to see.

  “You left clues like this that were too irresistible for me to ignore,” I said. “Then you told me that my biggest vulnerability was that if someone knew I was on a case, they could set a trap. And that’s exactly what someone did.”

  We continued to drive as I laid it all out for him. . . .

  30.

  The Solution

  I WON’T GET INTO ALL the mushy details, but it was pretty emotional when I got home. At one point I think my mother literally hugged me for thirty consecutive minutes without letting go. After repeated assurances that I was completely fine, she slowly loosened her grip long enough so that we could eat dinner.

  Afterward Margaret came over and we all sat around the front room and ate rocky road ice cream. That’s when I got the text from Marcus.

  “What?” asked Margar
et when she saw my grin.

  “The case is closed,” I declared triumphantly.

  “How?” asked Mom.

  “Did I forget to tell you guys the part where I figured out who stole Woman with a Parasol?”

  “Yes!” exclaimed Margaret.

  “Well, I wanted to wait to make sure I was right,” I said. “And apparently I was, because he’s about to make an arrest.”

  “Who is it?” asked Dad.

  “Let’s turn on the TV, so we can see the press conference,” I said.

  When I turned it on, Oliver Hobbes was on yet another talk show complaining about the FBI and National Gallery. “It’s almost criminal that such cultural treasures are protected so poorly,” he said.

  “Ugh,” said my mom. “I cannot listen to that man say another word. Please shut him up.”

  “Okay,” I said, pressing the mute button.

  “Now tell us everything,” added Margaret. “How did you solve it?”

  “By answering your question,” I told her. “How did Nic the Knife know that I’d be at the soccer game? And the answer is, he didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Dad.

  “He didn’t know I’d be there because he didn’t care,” I said. “It turns out the FBI was wrong about one thing. He did have a relative playing in the game. Some girl on the Capitol Crush was a second niece or something. He was there to see her, not me.”

  “Then why did he kidnap you?” asked my mother.

  “Because he wanted to explain it to me, so that I could explain it to the FBI,” I continued. “You see, once we suspected him, we tried to make the clues fit our suspicions. He kept intersecting the case. Clues kept pointing to him. But once you realize that he’s not involved, then those clues disappear. All except for one.”

  “The auction bids,” said Margaret. “Those all pointed back to Romania.”

  “Yes, they did,” I replied. “And that was the final piece of TOAST. If Nevrescu is innocent, that means the bids are fake. They have to be. It’s the only solution that works.”

  “It’s Oliver Hobbes!” said Margaret.

  I smiled. “You got it. He needed to pin it on somebody, and when Nic the Knife came onto the scene he had the perfect culprit. Nic was already making himself look guilty. All Oliver needed to do was set him up just a little bit more. Since the bidding records he showed us were confidential, he knew we’d never be able to compare them to the originals. All he had to do was leave the clues for us to find.”

  “And once you figured that out . . .” said Margaret.

  “Everything else fell into place,” I said. “When we were looking for an insider, we assumed that meant an employee of the museum, so we didn’t consider him. But as the insurance representative, he knew exactly when the upgrade was going to take place.”

  “What about ArtFest in Budapest?” asked Margaret.

  “He was there too,” I said. “Marcus confirmed it with someone at Interpol. And, Dad, remember how fast you drove to the museum the night the paintings were stolen?”

  Mom shot him a look. “Not too fast,” he said. “But it was an emergency.”

  “But when we got to the security center, Oliver was already there on the telephone,” I pointed out. “How could he beat us? He lives just down the street from us.”

  “He was already nearby waiting for the call,” said Dad.

  “You got it,” I said.

  “Look at him,” Mom said, pointing at Hobbes on the television. “Do you think he has any idea that he’s been discovered?”

  “No,” I said, turning up the volume. “But he’s about to.”

  We watched as Hobbes continued to rant about the FBI, and then in a moment of perfect television, Special Agent Marcus Rivers of the FBI’s Art Crime team walked onto the set during the middle of the broadcast.

  There were a few seconds of confusion, until the interviewer recognized him.

  “Agent Rivers, have you come down here to dispute Mr. Hobbes’s claims?” she asked.

  “No, I haven’t,” he said.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Just doing my job,” he said.

  And he arrested Oliver right there on live television. We all cheered. And when it was over, the interviewer tried to switch sides as though she’d always been a supporter.

  “Great job,” she said, thrusting a microphone into his face. “How did you solve it?”

  He looked right into the camera, winked, and said, “No comment.”

  Two days later Pavel Novak was greeted at Dulles International Airport, where he surrendered to authorities and began talking in exchange for a reduced sentence. He told them that Oliver Hobbes, whom he’d met at ArtFest in Budapest, had approached a Czech crime boss with the idea. Hobbes provided them with the information about the security reset and in return was to receive Woman with a Parasol. The Czechs, meanwhile, were supposed to keep the three paintings that we’d discovered in the recycling Dumpster.

  Armed with this information, the FBI was able to get Hobbes to confess. He had dressed up as the extra custodian, and his plan was to sneak the Monet out of the museum in his car that night. But he was too slow and the police had managed to block the scene before he could escape. So instead, he hid the masterpiece in a secured locker that the insurance company maintained at the museum. Like the first three paintings, it never actually ventured outside of the building. It had been so close to us the entire time we were looking for it.

  Special Agent Marcus Rivers was hailed as a hero, and despite numerous media requests, he granted only one interview.

  It was with Viking Journal, the student newspaper at Alice Deal Middle School.

  31.

  The (Sort Of) Safeway

  MY NAME IS FLORIAN BATES. I’m twelve years old and a seventh grader at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, DC. I’m a consulting detective for the FBI, I’m a rabid fan of the DC Dynamo girls soccer team, and I never leave leftover egg rolls for fear that they’d remain uneaten in the event of a zombie apocalypse.

  I also helped thwart the biggest art heist in US history.

  And nobody knows about it. Well, almost no one.

  And that’s okay because the people who do know are the only ones that matter to me. My parents, who despite taking too many pictures, are pretty great; my FBI handler, who somehow manages to be cool and geeky, old-school and cutting-edge, all at the same time; and my best friend, who’s . . . well . . . who’s the best person I’ve ever known. And it really sucks, because I know the answer to the one question that matters the most to her, and I can’t tell her. I have to lie.

  But other than that, life’s pretty great.

  Margaret and I are walking home from school, and I jokingly nod toward the rear of the Safeway.

  “What do you say?” I ask. “Want to take a shortcut?”

  She gives me a look—that trademark Margaret look—and asks, “Do I have to remind you what Ben Franklin said?”

  “Ben Franklin did not say, ‘Nothing good ever happens when you’re surrounded by Dumpsters.’ I guarantee it.”

  “I’m pretty sure he did,” she replies. “I think it was in Poor Richard’s Almanack.”

  “Ben Franklin was dead long before the Dumpster was even invented. End of story.”

  She flashes a big smile and admits, “Maybe. But it’s still pretty good advice.”

  “I cannot argue with that,” I say, reflecting back on my recent experiences. “I’d have to rate that as ‘very strong’ on the advice meter.”

  “So, what are you going to do now that the case is solved, and you’re back to being a lowly seventh grader again?”

  “Well, seventh grade does have its perks,” I say. “For example, you never get kidnapped in the halls.”

  “You see, and you didn’t like those metal detectors at first, but they keep things safe,” she jokes.

  “And while Florian Bates Investigations is small, we’re hoping to grow,” I continue.
/>   “That’s right, we still have an open case: Hornet’s Nest.”

  The mention of the search for her birth parents fills me with guilt. “I’m really sorry that I haven’t found them yet,” I say, and I mean it. “I know I promised but . . .”

  “It will take as long as it takes,” she says, cutting me off. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s that you’ll find them, Florian. I believe in you. Completely.”

  I’m tempted to tell her everything on the spot. Best friends are truthful with each other, right? But before I can respond, it starts to rain. And not just a little sprinkle but fully drenching rain. I give her a look, and then I look back toward the Safeway.

  “You sure you don’t want to take the shortcut?” I ask. “It’s the fastest way to someplace dry.”

  She weighs her options for a moment and nods, streams of water already running down her face. “But let’s go around that way,” she says, pointing to a slightly different route than I took before.

  “We’ll call that the ‘Sort of’ Safe Way,” I suggest.

  We sprint across the street and I hold up the bottom of the chain link fence so that she can get under it. When she reaches the other side, she does the same for me.

  “If we run into any shady characters, remember to unleash the fury of your kung fu,” I joke.

  We run alongside the line of Dumpsters, trying to use our backpacks to shield us from the rain, and when we turn the corner, we run right up against a black, unmarked van, its engine loudly vibrating, its wipers furiously pumping across the windshield.

  “I don’t believe it!” I say.

  “Oh my God,” says Margaret. “What have I done?”

  The door slides open, and there he is, a massive smile on his face.

  “Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?” says Special Agent Marcus Rivers. “It’s just like Mark Twain said, ‘Nothing good ever happens when you’re surrounded by Dumpsters.’ ”

  “That’s who said it,” says Margaret. “Mark Twain.”

  “It was not Mark Twain!” I protest. “It was Margaret. Margaret made up that quote. Margaret is who said it.”

  “Well,” he says. “Margaret must be pretty smart because it’s good advice.”