by Diana Renn
Holding our bouquet of obviously-last-minute flowers, I get out of the car. As I follow my dad to the Yamadas’ front door, I frantically pick the red sticker off the plastic, wishing we had gotten something nicer than discount pink carnations from the nearby Mobil station.
The Yamadas’ house is flat and low, tucked into the hillside, with a wide deck facing the lake. Deep blue tiles shimmer on the roof. The yard resembles a real Japanese garden with pruned shrubs, red maples, winding white-stone pathways, and a miniature stone pagoda. A fountain bubbles up from a pond, where orange koi glide among lily pads.
Kenji greets us at the door. “Please, if you don’t mind.” He gestures to a basket of slippers by the door. “It is a Japanese custom.”
We exchange our shoes for beautiful silk slippers. I choose green ones with a pattern of white cranes. My dad chooses black with red dragons. Then we follow Kenji into a living room. One whole wall is windows, displaying the gray-blue lake. As Mitsue comes forward, it’s like she’s walking out of a painting.
Mitsue greets us warmly, then excuses herself to fix our tea.
Both Kenji and Mitsue act gracious, the perfect hosts. But they look exhausted. I can tell the investigation is taking its toll.
I sit on a long, white leather couch, at the far end from my dad and Kenji. I inspect a collection of framed photos on a table behind the couch: snapshots of Mitsue and Kenji on exotic vacations. One way to hide in the open is to look absorbed in something; my friends and I do this all the time at school. If I’m looking at pictures, I’ll vanish, and my dad and Kenji will talk.
I pick up an old black-and-white picture of two Japanese boys. It’s a formal picture, taken in a studio, with the boys dressed in identical outfits: crisp button-down shirts and pleated pants. The older, bespectacled boy, around twelve years old, smiles with his mouth closed. He faces the camera squarely, but his eyes rest on the younger boy. He looks protective. The little guy, with tousled hair, looks right at the camera with an impish, gap-toothed grin. I’m guessing this is young Kenji and his little brother Tomonori. I stare at Tomonori, trying to find hints of the sadness that would lead him to jump off a subway platform as an adult. I can’t see the shadows. He’s radiant.
“Yeah, so, tomorrow’s my summonsing,” my dad says to Kenji.
I clutch the photo frame.
“Yes. I feel terrible, Glenn, putting you in this awkward position. It is but a formality. You know Mitsue and I have no suspicions about you. Clearly, you were teaching that night, and besides, you are an artist. Artists are not art thieves. The idea of it is absurd.”
“Well, thanks, I appreciate that. Have the detectives talked to anyone else yet?”
“Margo and Julian. They’ve been cleared. The gallery’s security tape proved they were at the gallery at the time, planning the show. And UPS documents proved that Julian signed for a delivery there that evening.”
I know Skye was questioned on Friday, too. It’s all I can do not to speak up and ask what came of that. But my dad beats me to it. “And Skye? They talked to her, I guess?”
“Yes. She is considered a person of interest.”
My dad frowns. “She didn’t do it.”
“This is a sensitive subject. I should not have mentioned it.”
“No, no. I want to know. What are they saying about her?”
“Apparently, there was an incident, three years ago. Skye was questioned about missing art. She was rehousing a client’s collection. A Matisse sketch vanished. It was never recovered.”
My dad chews his lip. “And now they think she’s taken the van Goghs? It’s pure coincidence, Kenji. Skye takes her job very seriously. Besides, she wasn’t anywhere near here on Wednesday evening. She runs at Green Lake every Wednesday, rain or shine.”
Kenji smiles sympathetically. “Yes. I’m sure. But a hazard of running alone is that there is no one to prove you were doing that.”
“She has nothing to do with this. Nothing at all!”
I’m surprised at how passionately my dad is defending Skye, a person he just broke up with.
Kenji strokes his chin. “Her conservation studio has an excellent legal team. I am sure she is well represented and her name will be cleared. And then we’ll be happy to work with her again. I am sorry. I am aware it must be difficult to hear such things about your fiancée.”
“What—what did you say?” my dad asks, echoing my own thought. Fiancée?
“Skye told me your news. Last Monday, when she was here working.”
“But I’m not—we’re not—I never—oh, shoot.” My dad looks really unhappy now. “Look, Skye and I decided to part ways after my show on Thursday. And we weren’t engaged.”
“Oh. So the ring—it wasn’t from you?”
“Ring? What ring?”
“Matcha!” Mitsue sings out as she comes in with a black-and-red tray.
1
0
I want to hear more about the supposed engagement between my dad and Skye. I want to understand why Skye would lie about something like that. But the topic doesn’t come up again. Instead, we sip dark green matcha served in elegant cups with no handles. The tea smells both fresh and earthy and tastes way better than my mom’s bags of Lipton. We eat wagashi, Japanese confections, and Mitsue points out the two layers of gelatin in the small, fish-shaped cakes. Between bites, my dad and Kenji talk about some Seattle construction project, and Mitsue asks me about my work at Jet City Comics.
After tea and wagashi, Mitsue takes me downstairs to see their print collection while my dad and Kenji talk about the mural project. Most people’s basements are pretty junky. Boxes, dusty exercise equipment, the occasional artificial Christmas tree. Not this place. It looks like a real museum archive. The ceiling has recessed lights, and there’s a climate control switch on the wall. Two huge metal tables stacked with flat boxes take up the center of the room. Flat-drawer cabinets line the walls. Horizontal windows, high up by the ceiling, are covered with gray screens to filter out daylight, except for a window at the end. That one’s boarded up.
“That’s where the thief entered and escaped,” Mituse says, following my gaze.
“The thief must be pretty skinny,” I remark. The windows are less than two feet tall.
I step closer to the wall, observing two angry black streaks halfway up.
“And those marks came from hard-soled shoes,” Mitsue explains. “Climbing up.”
The sill doesn’t have a big overhang. “You’d sure need a lot of upper-arm strength to hang on.” I picture Skye’s wiry bicep with the cormorant tattoo. “So did an alarm go off?”
“Yes. The police responded to it, but when they arrived, the thief was already gone.”
“Any witnesses?”
She shakes her head. “Our neighbors did not see or hear a thing. I regret that we lined our garden paths and walkways with all those white stones. No footprints were left behind.”
“What did the thief use to break the glass?”
“A large rock. From our Zen garden out back. Ironically.”
I think of that ugly rock at my dad’s house. He seemed certain there was no connection, but two rocks shattering two windows seems like some kind of link to me.
“Forgive me. I do not wish to frighten you with these details,” Mitsue apologizes. “Let me show you some prints.” From one of the flat boxes, she removes a stack of portfolios.
Brown portfolios! Just like the one I saw peeking out of Skye’s bag!
“We have acquired a great number of Japanese prints from estate sales and print fairs,” Mitsue says, slipping on white gloves. “Eventually, we will transport all of them to Tokyo. These boxes contain ukiyo-e prints, from the 1600s through early 1800s. The other boxes contain shin hanga, or ‘new’ prints, from the early twentieth century. We are going to di
splay some of each in our exhibit next month.”
“Wow. My dad’s paintings are going to be shown in the same room with these?”
“Yes. The exhibit will focus on the influences of Japanese woodblock prints on contemporary artists. Your father has studied some techniques and used them in his paintings.”
“You mean like van Gogh did?”
Mitsue smiles. “Yes, there are similarities. Van Gogh was a great collector and student of ukiyo-e. Japanese prints influenced his perspective, his composition, his color choices, even his brushstrokes. He copied three prints and turned them into paintings. They’re in the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands. In fact, we think the drawings for the Moon Crossing Bridge, and the painting that accompanied them, were intended to be his fourth major work inspired by a Japanese print.”
“Do you have the Hiroshige print that van Gogh studied?”
“We do. Though ours is only in fair condition.”
“I’d love to see it.”
“Of course.” Mitsue goes to a flat-file cabinet, turns a combination lock, and pulls out a drawer. She carries a portfolio to the table, opens it, and reveals the most amazing print.
The bottom third of the long paper shows a narrow bridge. Long canoes, poled by people in pointed hats, drift down a wide river of brilliant blue. Tiny figures wearing kimonos cross the bridge on foot or lean against the railing. In the background, the whole middle section of the print, are lush trees bursting with cherry blossoms. Green rolling hills and blue mountains rise up in the distance. The top third of the print shows a milky-white sky with a band of bright blue. The details blow me away. I learned about printmaking in Studio Art. This all had to be drawn, then cut into wood, then the blocks inked, then the image transferred to paper one color at a time.
While I’m gaping at it, Mitsue opens a cardboard tube and gently shakes out three large, rolled-up papers. “And these are high-quality photocopies of van Gogh’s drawings. We had all three copied for insurance purposes. Sadly, they are all we have now.”
At first, van Gogh’s drawings look less vibrant, compared to the Hiroshige print. They are rough sketches in brown ink on yellowing paper. But as I stare at them, they come to life. The composition is similar to Hiroshige’s: the bridge, the boats, the hills, and the mountains. Yet the pictures are also distinctly van Gogh’s. The lines are heavier, resembling the brushstrokes in his famous paintings. He exaggerated certain details from the Hiroshige print. And all three images show elements of Hiroshige’s print from different angles, as if van Gogh had been working out the best perspective. As if he had been playing the Frame Game.
“That’s amazing,” I say. “They’re copies—but they’re not.”
“That is right,” Mitsue says. “It’s not plagiarism. It’s inspiration. Van Gogh made Hiroshige’s image his own. And he drew these studies to prepare for a painting.”
“My dad draws a lot before he paints, too. Hey, isn’t it weird that the thief didn’t take the Hiroshige print, too?”
“The print is rare but not one of a kind. Multiple copies were made at a time. So I suppose he could find another Hiroshige without too much work.”
I scan the room, taking in all the boxes, portfolios, and flat-file cabinets. “And you’re sure the thief only took the van Gogh drawings?”
“Quite sure. We’ve inventoried everything. He could have helped himself to any number of valuable works—we have drawings by Cézanne and Renoir here, too. But it’s as if he had a need for only the van Gogh drawings. He was very focused.”
So the thief had to be strong enough to hurl a big rock. Small enough to fit through the window. Fearless enough to drop to the floor. Knowledgeable enough about the Yamadas’ collection to go straight for the van Goghs. Strong enough to pull him or herself up the windowsill and outside again. Fast enough to run away while alarms wailed. Smart enough to make a clean getaway.
The face that comes to mind is Skye’s. She’s been associated with a client’s missing art. She knows the Yamadas’ collection. She talked about a cash windfall and some kind of financial deal. She’s strong and agile enough to have pulled off this heist. The picture is coming together. She has to be the thief. And those Japanese guys must have figured out, somehow, that she did it. They’re following her around trying to steal the drawings for themselves. But why?
The only thing clear to me now is that I have to get back to the Seattle Art Museum. I have to find out who Skye talked to there and if she left the portfolio. I’m sure she didn’t hand it in for reward money, or the art would have been returned to the Yamadas by now. She must have an inside connection, her own personal Sockeye, to ferry the stolen art away.
1
1
But Monday morning brings a setback. After our breakfast of champions—cold, stale cereal and microwaved instant coffee—I tell my dad I’m off to the Seattle Art Museum.
He shakes his head. “The museum’s closed on Mondays,” he says as if I should have known that. “All the art museums are. Well, I’m off to my interrogation. Wish me luck.” His voice sounds cheerful, but his face is tight as he walks out the door.
I feel powerless. I know his alibi is sound. But I hate how close he is to all this. I can’t forget about the broken window.
I pick up the phone. Maybe I should call the police now and tell them about my DVD, about the Japanese guys following Skye. That would shine the spotlight on her, and the detectives, with a search warrant, could scour the art museum and interview employees. Then they’d focus on her, not my dad.
I start to dial 911. Then I stop and set the phone down. That call could also cause trouble. Skye looked almost maniacal when we drove away from the art reception the other night. If she was desperate enough to break my dad’s window, who knows how she might react if I ratted her out? Also, all the video shows is a suspicious-sounding phone call, men tailing her, and a portfolio. Not the actual drawings. I need stronger evidence before I make that call.
To calm myself, and to blot out the image of my dad sitting under a dangling bulb in an interrogation room, I focus on Kimono Girl. First, I research cormorants online, copying them into my sketchbook and morphing them into my villain. I learn that they are diving birds who swim deep underwater to fish. Asian cormorants love ayu, a little river fish. My research sparks a story idea, which I storyboard in a two-page spread.
The Cormorant uses Sockeye to help sell stolen art. In thought bubbles, we see her plan gradually taking shape. In bird form, using her beak, she will place the stolen Sunrise Bridge painting in a kayak near the museum she stole it from. Pushing the kayak from beneath, Sockeye will deliver it to her client’s home, a houseboat in Portage Bay. The client will retrieve what looks like a lost kayak, drifting, and take the package into his home. No footprints, no fingerprints, no evidence to capture on security cameras.
The doorbell chimes. My pencil skitters across the page, the strayed mark ruining the panel I was working on. Annoyed, I get up and answer the door.
It’s Skye. Holding a flat box. She narrows her eyes. “Oh. Violet. Hello.”
“Hey.” My mouth is dry.
“Is your dad around?”
I shake my head, then instantly regret it. Now she knows I’m alone.
“I came by to drop off these re-matted prints for the Yamadas. I thought he could give them to Kenji or Mitsue. I’ll just run them up to his studio.”
“I can take them.” Knowing he was going in for questioning today, she might plant incriminating evidence to connect my dad to the heist. As revenge! I position my body to block the doorway.
She brushes right past me and heads upstairs.
I stand at the foot of the stairs, listening as she slides things around in the studio. It sounds like she’s opening and closing drawers.
Five minutes later, she comes downstairs.
&nb
sp; “I’ll tell him you were here,” I say, moving toward the door to lead her out.
She folds her arms. She’s wearing a striped T-shirt today, and I can see her wiry muscles. “Tell me something. Why were you and your friend following me last Friday?”
I freeze.
“Let’s take a walk,” she says.
“No, that’s okay. I’m busy, and my dad will be—”
“We’re walking. Come on.”
I follow her outside. “Where are we going?”
“Away from the house. For all I know there are video cameras wired up somewhere. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust anyone.” She leads me up North 36th Street, all the way to the Aurora Bridge, and the famous Fremont Troll sculpture beneath the bridge. A massive concrete ogre with hubcap eyes, insane hair, and a maniacal smile, crushing a concrete VW bug.
Often, tourists gather there to snap pictures, or kids climb on it, or homeless guys camp out beside it. Right now, mid-morning, the giant troll is alone. Tires hum on the bridge overhead. The Fremont drawbridge clangs as it raises to let boats through the ship canal. Everything sounds precise, almost painful. Are these the last sounds I will hear before I am killed?
Skye crosses her arms and glares at me. “You followed me. You filmed me.”
“I didn’t.”
“You wore a wig. But I remembered your face. I have an eye for details. Who are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re older than you look. Are you a spy? Did some cheapskate private investigator hire you? I mean, how weird is this?” Skye starts pacing. “I go to Glenn’s reception, and you’re there. I run an errand on my lunch break on Friday, and you’re there. I show up at Glenn’s house to return this stuff today, and you’re there. At his house!”
“Where else would I be? I’m supposed to stay there this summer. My mom’s in Italy.” I glance at the Fremont Troll, as if for help. He just leers at me, his hubcap eye winking in the lone beam of sunlight that finds its way under the bridge. “I’m just a high school kid. I swear.”
