Hannah West: Sleuth in Training (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

by Linda Johns

  Mary Perez paused. I knew that meant someone was talking into the little earpiece in her ear, telling her something. Mary told me how hard it is to talk into the camera at the same time as someone is talking into your ear.

  “A large painted canvas wrapped in Kraft paper was delivered to the Von Hiers Gallery just before it was discovered that two Hansen paintings were missing. Since the gallery was not expecting a delivery, the package has been turned over to Seattle police for processing,” Mary said, pausing briefly again as if listening to someone update her.

  “Do you think the mystery package delivered to the gallery might be like the one Dorothy got?” I asked. Mom shushed me so she could keep watching the news.

  Mary resumed talking. “Two days ago, a Hansen was stolen from the Mafune Gallery. And yesterday a privately owned Hansen painting never made it to the delivery destination at Belltown Towers downtown.” Mary paused again, then said, “I’m told that Mimi Hansen herself just arrived at the gallery.”

  The camera shot widened a bit again, and there was Mimi Hansen. It had been only an hour since I’d seen her at Nina’s studio, but she was wearing a completely different getup. She had a monotone thing going on now with a sleeveless gold turtleneck and lots of thick gold chains. Her face and hair kept the golden thing going to the top of her head, making all of her shimmer for the camera.

  “Man, she’s everywhere these days,” I murmured.

  “Ms. Hansen, do you have any insight into why someone would be targeting your work at three separate crime scenes this week?” Mary asked.

  “It’s evident to me that people in Seattle are just now beginning to realize the brilliance of my work,” Mimi said, looking directly into the camera instead of at Mary. She grabbed the KOMO microphone out of Mary’s hands. “I’ve been heralded internationally for the depth and variety of my artistic work and my interpretation of the world around us. No one can imitate my style because no one ever knows what Mimi Hansen will have next month, next week, or even tomorrow. My work in progress is always kept very secretive. I am constantly working, creating my vision. I am, as some say, inimitable. No one can reproduce my extensive body of work. The only option for an artful thief would be … to steal it.” Mimi stopped dramatically. She gazed into the camera and slowly shook her head. “It’s a shame, really. My work inspires so many people, but I didn’t expect it to inspire criminals.”

  “Barf. Could her ego be any bigger?” I asked Owen’s flat-screen TV.

  Mary snatched the microphone out of Mimi’s hands. “That was local artist Mimi Hansen. Two paintings by this prolific artist were stolen just a half hour ago from the Von Hiers Gallery downtown.”

  Mom laughed when Mary said “prolific.” Just because someone—like a writer or an artist—produces a lot, it doesn’t mean that the person is necessarily good. But somehow people seemed to think it was some kind of compliment. I was pretty sure that Mary hadn’t meant it favorably.

  On the TV screen we could see a wider view. Mimi was storming off, shooing away people who tried to talk to her. The camera kept backing up, showing more of the street and the people gathered around the art gallery. Mary did her regular TV-reporter sign-off: “We’ll have an update for you on the eleven-o’clock news. Live from downtown Seattle, this is Mary Perez for KOMO TV. Back to you, Kathy… .”

  And that’s when I saw them: Not one but two Swifty’s bicycle messengers were in the background.

  CHAPTER 13

  “YOU’RE CRAZY,” Lily said into the phone.

  “That’s irrelevant to the case,” I said. “We’ve got to see why bike messengers are swarming all over the Seattle art scene.”

  “Swarming? Listen, Sherlock West, they’re pedaling. That’s what bike messengers do. As the offspring of a messenger, I know these things,” Lily said.

  I’d completely forgotten that Lily’s dad, Dan, had worked his way through graduate school as a bike messenger. He always said it was the greatest job he ever had.

  “Hey, could you ask your dad about it? You know, if any of this seems weird to him?”

  “I can ask him, but Hannah, it might have been a little weird on the weekend, but today’s a regular workday.”

  “Aren’t most offices closed by now? It’s after seven,” I pointed out.

  “Still, it could be just a—” Lily started to say.

  “Don’t say it’s just a coincidence,” I interrupted. Lily was silent. I guess that was exactly what she was going to say. Either that or she was busy swallowing the Cheetos she hoards in her room to make up for her dad’s daily organic dinner specials.

  I knew Lily couldn’t resist the appeal of a real-life mystery any more than she could resist a Miss Marple mystery. She was on the case, as far as I was concerned, and I could count on her. We made plans for her to spend the night at Belltown Towers on Friday.

  “I need to get back to my trig homework. Mrs. Olson is killing me with this endless homework. Night after night after night. She piles it on,” Lily said.

  “Trig? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m practicing what I’m going to say to my parents so they’ll leave me alone and let me read in my room. They’re back on their No TV on Weekdays thing. They’re terribly eager to play a rousing game of gin rummy right now.”

  “Got it,” I said. “Lily, do you even know what ‘trig’ is?”

  “Not exactly. But I think I’ll sound more convincing if I say I have trigonometry to do.”

  Jordan Walsh (or “Enj,” as I’d decided to call her) wasn’t in class the next day. Not that I’m an attendance taker or anything. It’s just that it would be hard not to notice whether the new girl was there or not. It would also be hard not to notice that Zac Mason, Ryan Steinberg, and a few other guys were obviously disappointed by Jordan’s absence. Geesh. You’d think that 51 percent of Chavez Middle School—the 51 percent that was female—was invisible or something, the way the guys were talking about Jordan. Already they were referring to her as J-Dub. Lily and I had been crafty to go for Enj as her code name.

  I rode the school bus home with Lily, but she had to get to a clarinet lesson, so there wasn’t time to hang out with her. I headed to her house anyway. It’s part of my cover. You see, if it seems like I’m just hanging out with my best friend, maybe no one will notice that Mom and I don’t live in that neighborhood anymore. You wouldn’t think anyone would care, but there’s one pesky kid on the block who could blow it for us.

  “Hi, Hannah,” Dira called out to me.

  And that was the kid.

  “Hey, Dira,” I called. Dira’s mom was on the Seattle School Board. She was the one who sponsored the rule that kids needed permanent addresses to attend specific schools. She said that it was so the “poor homeless youth” wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle, but the truth was that she didn’t want homeless kids in class with any of her three precious children. Dira walked like her mom, talked like her mom. She wore khaki pants, a white polo shirt, and a blue jacket with a gold emblem on the chest pocket almost every day. I think it was Dira’s version of an uppity private-school uniform, even though she was in the fourth grade at Olympic View Elementary, the public school up the street. She looked like a junior real-estate agent and miniversion of her mom. It was creepy.

  We were two houses away from Lily’s. I looked at my watch. “Oh, man. If I run now, I can catch the next bus downtown to meet my mom and hang out at the bookstore,” I said to Lily.

  “Okay. Call me when you get back up here to your house,” Lily said. She was using her acting abilities to project her voice so it reached Dira’s precious ears. “Maybe I can come over to your house after dinner,” she added.

  “Great. Gotta go. See you, Dira.” I sprinted back to Eightieth Street just as the Metro bus pulled up. Once again, perfect timing. I jumped on and swiped my Metro pass through the ticket machine.

  It wasn’t until I sat down that I realized I was on the wrong bus.

  It’s not a total disaster to be
on the wrong bus. Like I said, I have schedules and routes memorized for sixteen different buses around Seattle. But it’s kind of a hassle to have to get off and transfer to another bus. Sometimes it even takes two transfers to get back on the right track.

  Turns out I’d jumped onto the 67 instead of the 66. The last stop for the 67 is in the University district, a cool, funky neighborhood by the University of Washington, less than five miles north of downtown.

  I got off on “The Ave,” the main street running north-south in the U-district, and headed toward my next bus stop.

  A cyclist whizzed past me on the sidewalk, almost knocking me out. I saw a flash of the distinctive black-and-purple jersey from Swifty’s Bicycle Messengers.

  The number 48 bus pulled up, but I resisted the urge to get on it, since it would be the wrong bus yet again. It pulled out, and the view across the street opened up just as two women were putting a sign in the window of the Martin Lee Gallery. I read FEATURING NEW WORK BY MIMI HA … The end of the sign had flopped over, so I couldn’t see the end of the name. But it doesn’t take a spry young detective to figure out what it said.

  The number 72 pulled up, rescuing me from the urge to check out the newest Mimi Hansen exhibit.

  CHAPTER 14

  I WAS IN that weird zoning thing that happens when you’re on a bus. You know what I mean? I was staring out the window, but I wasn’t really seeing anything. I was thinking about Mimi Hansen’s paintings, but I wasn’t really thinking.

  The bus stopped in front of a small art gallery on Eastlake Avenue. The name painted on the window read HENNINGS BOVENG GALLERY. I looked through the glass, and my eyes started to glaze over as all the paintings blurred together. Then one caught my attention.

  I snapped out of my trance. I pulled the cord to tell the bus driver I wanted off at the next stop.

  I said a hurried thanks to the driver, jumped down two steps, and raced two blocks back to the gallery, where I’d seen a glimpse of a most interesting painting. In fact, you might say that the painting had an interesting “play of light.” Just like one that James had been working on at Studio 4.

  “May I help you with something?” A man in a black turtleneck and black pants practically jumped on me as I entered the doorway of the gallery. All of Seattle was going crazy with spring fever, and this guy was wearing black from head to toe. Maybe it was a required uniform if you worked in an art gallery.

  “I just wanted to look more closely at that blue painting over there,” I said. “I think a friend of mine did it.”

  Mr. Snotty Art Guy looked at me in disbelief.

  “Well, James isn’t really a good friend of mine or anything. He’s a friend of a friend,” I said.

  “James?” Mr. Snotty Art Guy’s voice went up about half an octave, and he swallowed hard.

  “James shares a studio space with my friend Nina,” I said rather importantly. “I was there yesterday.”

  Mr. Snotty Art Guy walked back to the desk and started moving papers around. “I don’t know this James you mention, but you are welcome to look more closely at the painting as long as you don’t touch it,” he said, his voice a bit too loud for the small gallery. “Although I doubt you are in a buying mood this afternoon, are you?” he added with a bit of a sneer.

  I stood up straight and flipped my hair back over my shoulder. Who was this guy to question my buying ability? Had this guy missed the memo telling him that teens hold important buying power and are the hot, in-demand consumers in the United States? Besides, what if I were as rich as Jordan Walsh, and I could actually buy a painting?

  I wanted to tell this guy a thing or two, but the blues in the painting seemed to be calling me to it, inviting me to spend some time looking at it, just like when I’d first seen it downtown at Nina’s studio. I couldn’t stop looking at it. I stood in front of the painting, twirling a chunk of my hair, a habit I can’t seem to shake. It means I’m thinking, but people always misinterpret it as a sign of nervousness. This time I was totally lost in thought. Lost in the painting.

  “It’s gorgeous! It looks even better out of the studio,” I finally said. “You know,” I added in a haughty whisper, “I was in the studio when this was created. Aren’t there two others in the series?”

  “Yes, there are,” said Mr. Snotty Art Guy, an eyebrow arching up as he looked me up and down. I could tell I had his attention.

  “Do you have the other two? I’d like to see them.” Hey, I had every right to look at art, didn’t I?

  “Yes, miss, right this way,” he said with mock humility. “Please feast your eyes on the Seattle Streetscapes series.”

  He showed me the other two paintings.

  “Oh yes! Magnificent! Truly magnificent,” I said, trying to act like I was some rich art-collector person. “Hmm … that’s rather odd, isn’t it?”

  “What now?” Mr. Snotty Art Guy wasn’t playing along with me. He sounded bored.

  “There’s no signature on these paintings,” I replied.

  “Surely you know all about that, since you seem to think you’re a close personal friend of the artist,” he said with a sneer.

  “I told you, he’s a friend of a friend. James told me he wasn’t ready to sign them,” I said, resorting to my ordinary Hannah West voice.

  “Who’s James? Not that I really care,” he said.

  “Who’s James?” I echoed back. Was this guy a nimrod or what? “James …” I realized I didn’t know his last name. “You know. James. The artist.”

  “James might be an artist, but I assure you that these three paintings are Mimi Hansen originals.”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “Surely an art aficionado like you can recognize a Hansen when you have the rare opportunity to see one,” he said.

  “Yesterday I was in Nina and James’s studio and these paintings were there,” I said.

  “Perhaps this person you call James was holding the paintings for Mimi Hansen,” he said.

  “It didn’t seem like it. He’d just finished them,” I said.

  “Perhaps this James was working on some imitation of the brilliant Mimi Hansen’s work. Perhaps someone of your age cannot tell a fake when she sees it.”

  Mr. Snotty Art Guy was getting snottier by the minute. I cleared my throat.

  “Could you please tell me why Mimi Hansen didn’t sign these paintings?” I asked.

  “She will sign these paintings after they are sold at the Honcho auction this weekend,” he replied.

  “Just like Dorothy Powers’s painting?” I asked.

  “And I suppose you know Dorothy Powers, too?” he asked.

  I don’t think he really wanted an answer. I thanked him for his time and kindness to a young girl interested in art. (I can be snotty, too, Mr. Snotty Art Guy.)

  I walked out of the gallery and SMASH! I rammed right into someone.

  “Gosh, I’m sorry,” I stammered.

  “Watch where you’re going,” snapped a female voice. A vaguely familiar female voice. Jordan Walsh’s voice. Our eyes connected, and I could tell it took her another second to register who she’d collided with.

  “Hey, Jordan,” I said, trying my best to be genuinely friendly. “Do you live around here or something?”

  “No!” she said, as if I’d insulted her. “I live on Capitol Hill now,” she added, a bit more civilly.

  “I’d better get going,” I said. “I live downtown. In Belltown Towers,” I added, trying to one up her.

  I saw a flash in Jordan’s eyes, but I had no idea what she was thinking.

  “See you at school,” she said, still avoiding eye contact.

  “You must be feeling better,” I said, wondering once again why I didn’t stop talking and say good-bye because I had a bus to catch, which I did.

  “What? No. I mean, yes. I mean, I didn’t feel all that great today, but I’m getting better.” I might not know Jordan Walsh very well, but I could tell that this girl was clearly uneasy. And she hadn’t been sick. She was
even blushing as she tried to fabricate a story. Lily always says I have an advantage because my olive-tone skin can hide embarrassment, or at least the blushing that comes with it, better than lots of other people. Jordan had a light golden tan, but the blushing still came through. A taxi driver waiting at the curb honked a horn. Jordan’s blush turned scarlet.

  “There’s my taxi,” she said.

  Taxi? What sixth grader took a taxi? Oh, wait. Maybe a sixth-grade golden girl who just moved from the suburbs. I might not blush easily, but my face is like an open book. I’m sure Jordan could see what I was thinking. “It’s no big deal,” she said. “The taxi, that is. My dad insists on it, even though it’s only about a mile to my mom’s house.” I nodded, like I understood completely about overprotective dads who called taxis to take their daughters twenty blocks.

  Jordan got in the backseat of the yellow cab. I started walking toward the next bus stop, making sure I was looking straight ahead when the taxi passed me so we could both avoid any awkward waving moments.

  Swoosh!

  “What the …” I cried out, flattening myself against a bakery window. Three other pedestrians were nearly knocked over, too.

  “Bikes belong in the street!” one guy yelled out.

  Yep. You guessed it. A bike on the sidewalk. A bike powered by a Swifty’s bike messenger. The same guy I’d seen on the bus and at the Stimson Building, outside Nina’s studio.

  I hopped on the next 72 bus heading downtown. I was supposed to meet Mom at the bookstore. I pulled out my sketch pad and turned to the drawing of the bike messenger.