“Isn’t there a small country you could annoy right now?”
“Ahh Curial, I’m not here to annoy you. We’ll have plenty of time for that later. Nope, I’m here about the Romanov Dolls.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Hear me out,” said Maurice. “I think there’s still a chance to find them. I’m not sure you’ve looked at every possibility.”
“Forget it, we went through all of this on the plane.”
Maurice smiled. “Are you sure? He handed Curial a yellow folder and he opened it up.
Curial examined the contents. “These are the employee files and interviews from the time of the theft. Come on, we’ve already been over these dozens of times. There’s nothing here. And on the plane ride home…”
“I know: we went through every employee again to see if anybody was related to Markoff.”
“And nothing,” said Curial firmly.
“Nothing, my dear boy”—Maurice pointed at him—“because you think like a boy.”
“I am a boy. So are you.”
“But I’m a mature boy. More of a man really. Evolved is what people tell me.”
Curial threw a pillow and hit Maurice in the head. “And anyways,” Maurice continued, “Mr. Impatient Rich Kid, it is a proven fact that less evolved boys routinely overlook fifty percent of the population.”
“Meaning what?” said Curial.
“Don’t send a boy to do a job only a woman can do.”
“So now you’re a woman?” asked Curial.
“Not me,” said Maurice.
“Then who?”
“Like I said, don’t send a boy to do a job only a woman can do.”
With that, Maurice stepped to the side and smiled. And someone appeared at the door. Someone Curial never expected to see again. She was his age, blonde, and was dressed in a red party dress. Curial shot off the bed.
“Dina?” He said.
Her expression was half excited to see him and half she wanted to punch his lights out.
“To think you could walk away like that with just I’m really sorry?”
“But I, I didn’t know what to do.”
She rolled her eyes then looked at Maurice. “Blockhead.” Then Dina smiled. “But I forgive you…and…well, grandfather told me everything.”
“He told you everything everything?”
“Unlike you, I’m not an idiot. When you and Maurice failed to show up at Koralenko’s house, I knew something was wrong. And in case you didn’t notice, my grandfather had a bullet in him and you left in that totally weird way. First thing my grandfather did was have Koralenko arrested. Second thing he did was go to the hospital. I was with him all night and he finally broke down and told me the truth. It’s not every day you learn your grandfather is a killer.”
“I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that,” said Curial.
“I don’t either,” said Dina. “Anyways, he eventually went to sleep and I had a lot of time alone in the hospital room to think things over. And of course, if Grandfather really had the fake dolls all those years, then the question is—”
“Where are the real Romanov Dolls?” said Curial. “I know, it’s all I can think about.”
“And while you were feeling sorry for yourself on this bed, I was doing something about it. I wondered to myself if Boris Markov had any family. Turns out he had a sister. And do you know where this sister moved to? America. Specifically, New York. Her name? Irene Markov.”
Dina smiled and she and Maurice exchanged a look like they knew a secret.
“Out with it you two,” said Curial.
Maurice folded his arms. “And do you know what makes Irene Markov special?”
“I’m sure hoping you both will tell me.”
“Turns out,” Dina began, “that Irene worked at the MAC when the Romanov Dolls were stolen.”
“What?” said Curial.
“You heard her Curial,” said Maurice. “After Dina gave me the information, I did the search myself and sure enough, Irene Markov definitely worked at the MAC.”
“But that’s not possible, I’ve been over the employee lists dozens of times, there’s no Irene Markov.”
Dina shook her head and sighed. “Boys. Boys always forget that women are routinely forced to change their names.”
“Oh no. Not again,” Curial said while thinking back to Gennady and Valeeni.
“Oh yes,” said Dina.
Maurice grabbed the folder and flipped through to a picture of a woman with dark brown hair, in her early thirties.
Curial scanned her name and looked up. “Irene Johnson. Wait, we already looked at her. Her name’s on that exhibit in the MAC, the one that honors deceased members of the MAC family. She’s the woman who was hit by the bus the day after the heist. Tragic, I’ll give you that. But we looked into it. The death was an accident. Nothing suspicious about it at all.”
“True,” said Maurice. “But listen to this: Irene married Gill Johnson in 1965. Before that, her name, verified by the state of New York, was Irene Markoff.”
Curial looked at Maurice, a wide smile spreading across his face. “How did you figure it out?”
“I’ve spent an exhausting morning with a very large and hairy woman down at the city records office, and she helped me go through every single female employee, just in case.”
“You did?”
Maurice stood on his toes. “Don’t worry Diggs, my shoulders are big enough to carry you. Anyways, Irene and her husband are long gone, but her daughter Maria lives in Brooklyn. I called and she’s expecting you.”
“Me?”
“No Curial, she’s expecting the both of you.” Maurice wagged his finger at Dina and then Curial. “Frankly, I’m exhausted from doing all the work around here. Plus, I need to go steal money from a bunch of rich people who don’t know how to play Three Card Monty. Figured you two lovebirds could handle it from here.”
“But Curial,” Dina said as she wrinkled her nose. “You kinda stink. So first, take a shower, put on your tux, and then meet me outside.”
*-*-*
Thirty minutes later, Mike dropped Curial and Dina off in front of a small home in south Brooklyn.
They walked up the steps and rang the bell. A blond woman in her early fifties answered the door. She looked at Dina, then at Curial, and finally put her hands on her hips. “Did I miss my invite for the prom?”
Dina smiled. “Thank you so much, Maria, for seeing us on such short notice.”
Maria stared at Curial the way he’d been stared at his whole life. “You’re that Diggs kid, aren’t you?”
Curial smiled and extended his hand and she laughed.
“Well, a famous kid and a girl as pretty as you? Not every day I have royalty in my home. Come in. I was wondering if anybody was ever going to talk to me about this.”
“About what?” asked Curial.
The woman led them into her living room and sat down on a comfortable chair. She motioned for them to take the couch. “I may live in a small place in Brooklyn, but I’m no idiot. The Romanov Dolls were stolen when I was nine years old, and all these years I’ve wondered if somebody would find them.”
Curial leaned forward. “Your mom, she died the day after the theft?”
The woman laid her hands in her lap. “We didn’t know about the theft of course. She was on her way to work, bus hit her. Mom didn’t have a chance.”
“I’m very sorry. I—I know what it’s like to lose your mom.”
Maria shook her head gently. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.” She smiled. “It gets easier, I promise.”
Curial didn’t know what to say.
Maria broke the awkward silence. “So, what did you want to know?”
Dina leaned forward. “Your mom’s maiden name, Markoff. That’s Russian.”
“Yeah, she found her way to America, met my dad. She left a brother back in Russia, named Boris. I never knew him. Coincidentally, he died same year she did.”<
br />
Curial and Dina exchanged a look. Curial jumped in. “Do you know anything, anything at all, about what happened to the Romanov Dolls?”
Maria shrugged. “No, but I think my mom knew something about it.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Dina.
“The week before she died, something was wrong. Mom was stressed out, pacing around our home, hadn’t done her hair in days—and my mother always did her hair. So the night before she died, she was rewashing a set of pots and pans for probably the third time when I finally asked her what was wrong. She turned to me and I saw that she had been crying.
“She bent down and ruffled my hair, she told me she loved me… that’s why I’ll never forget this—it was the last time she told me she loved me. She told me she had done something bad and that she had to fix it, or something much worse would happen.
“I didn’t know what any of that meant, but it made me scared. And then, two days later, on the way to work, she was hit by a bus and killed instantly. I think that maybe she was so worried about whatever was going on, she wasn’t paying attention, wasn’t looking where she was going.”
Dina sat up straight. “Maria, what exactly do you think your mother was talking about?”
“I can’t be sure of course. And at the time… Well, I was nine, my mother had just died, and she was my whole world—I didn’t think about it. But as the years went on and the Romanov Dolls stayed missing, I thought about them more. And I’m convinced that they were what mother was talking about.”
Curial checked his watch. “Thank you, Maria, for sharing your story.”
“You think it will help find the dolls?”
He smiled. “I hope.”
They left Miss Johnson’s place and climbed into the back of Mike’s car. Dina looked at Curial. “Well, what do you think?”
“Let’s work it through. Irene Markoff Johnson is helping her brother Boris steal the Romanov Dolls, except at the last minute she’s having second thoughts. She apparently can’t convince her brother not to do it, and she doesn’t want him to get caught. So that night after work, and before Boris comes into the museum…”
“She steals the dolls herself?” Dina suggested.
Curial frowned.
Dina leaned in. “That would explain why she was so jumpy the next day going to work, why she was so distracted.”
Curial was shaking his head. “But it doesn’t fit. She steals them and then… what? She’s just going to put them back? Why take the risk of taking them outside of the museum when…” Curial’s eyes popped and he snapped his fingers.
“What?” said Dina.
Curial took a deep breath as his shoulders shot up. “She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t take them outside of the museum. Could it really be that simple?”
He sat up, his eyes wide. “Mike! Hot dogs for a month if you can get us to the MAC in ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes in this traffic? Can’t be done, sir.”
“Unlimited hot dogs,” said Curial.
“And my wife won’t hear about this?”
“Not a chance.”
“Buckle your seatbelts,” said Mike.
Chapter Thirty-Two – Perfect
While Curial sent a series of texts to Maurice, Mike violated just about every traffic law in New York City—and a few laws of physics—and nine minutes later, Curial and Dina were running up the steps of the MAC. The crowd was streaming in, a good crowd to be sure, but not the crowd that would have been there to see the Egyptian Queen Sefronia’s jewels.
Curial and Dina squeezed through the crowd and Curial spotted Claude across the way, greeting guests. He was smiling, like the pro that he was, but even from across the room, Curial could tell: Claude was putting on a brave face.
He might not have to act brave for long.
Curial ran toward him, the crowd reacting loudly to a thirteen-year-old black kid in a tuxedo running through such a dignified setting.
The always-refined Claude looked horrified. “Mr. Diggs? What on earth?”
Curial was out of breath, more from excitement than from the short sprint. “Claude, you need to come with me right now.”
“Mr. Diggs, I’m sorry but I’m in the middle—”
Curial grabbed his forearm. “Right now!” Curial pulled and Claude gave in, and together they jogged to the newly opened exhibition hall.
“Curial,” Claude whispered, “what is the meaning of this?”
Curial stopped in front of the photo gallery that showed the MAC through the ages.
“My mom told me, more than once, that if only these walls could talk, maybe they’d be able to tell us about what really happened to the Romanov Dolls.”
Claude looked around, clearly embarrassed, as a crowd formed around them. He leaned in, gritting his teeth. “I know what your mom used to say,” he muttered, “but tonight is not the night.”
“I think tonight is the perfect night. And maybe, just maybe, these walls can talk.” Curial stepped forward to a set of pictures. “Claude, you told me that when the dolls were stolen, the MAC was in the middle of its first renovation. You said this picture of the east part of the exhibition wall shows the wall as it existed then. Isn’t that correct?”
“Yes, but—”
“From the file, I read that it was the construction crew who first discovered that the dolls were missing.”
Claude looked around nervously. “Yes, the next morning. They got to work early and then they noticed the missing dolls. But what does this have to do with anything?”
Curial scanned the crowd quickly, and then, spotting someone, hollered out. “Brian!”
A man wearing a brown sports coat and jeans pointed to himself. It was Brian, the man who had been foreman of the construction crew for this latest renovation. Brian walked nervously over.
Claude stepped closer and mumbled under his breath. “Curial, you’re making an incredible scene. What is going on?”
Curial ignored him and took Brian by the arm. “Brian, you see this photo of the east wall of the exhibition hall back in 1970? Can you show me exactly where that is?”
Brian leaned in, took a look at the photo, then popped back up. “Sure.” He walked toward the wall, with Curial and Dina following. In fact, the entire group was following now, not understanding what was going on, but entranced by the scene. “Right here. Instead of covering up everything to make it look new, we’ve kept the old lines so you can see the evolution of the museum through the years.”
Curial looked around. Dina nodded at him and smiled. Claude and the board members of the museum had formed a tight circle around him and it seemed the entire party had now crowded into the exhibition hall to see what was going on.
“Curial, please,” said Claude through gritted teeth. “I don’t know what has come over you, but this, this has to stop.”
“No Claude, we need to tell the truth of what happened so many years ago.” Curial cleared his throat and addressed the gathering crowd.
“As most of you know, my mother loved the Manhattan Art Collective, and she loved the people who gave their lives to it, like Claude Von Kerstens. And, from the time she first saw them when she was a little girl, she loved the Romanov Dolls. She told me about them when I was little; the mystery behind them became the great bedtime story of my youth. My mother died this past year, but she wanted me to keep looking for and thinking about those beautiful dolls.”
Right then, Curial spotted an extremely short Jewish Rabbi walking towards him dragging a ten-pound sledge hammer across the floor. He bumped through a few people and then heaved the sledge over to Curial.
“Thank you Rabbi…”
“Shullman, Rabbi Shullman. One of my best disguises, now defiled since I had to come out of character to obtain this impossibly large hammer. Oy vey, my back is killing me,” said Maurice.
A horrified expression crossed Claude’s face. “And what are you proposing to do with that?”
Curial kept the sledge behind hi
m and raised his finger into the air. “But what if the dolls were never stolen? What if they were going to be stolen, and then somebody—in order to protect the dolls—decided to hide them instead?”
One of the board members stepped forward. It was Chairman Nelson. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about this.” Curial picked up the sledge hammer and, with everything he had, let it fly directly into the wall. There was a loud, thunderous smash as the hammer exploded through the wall. Claude, Nelson, and the rest of the board members covered their faces, but when Curial picked up the sledge again, a couple of the board members rushed forward to stop him.
Dina and Maurice stepped in their way.
“Listen, boys,” said Dina. “No family has given more money and more time and more passion to this museum than the Diggs family.”
One of the board members tried to say something, but Maurice barked something in Yiddish while stomping his boot to the ground.
“Let’s see what this is all about, okay?” said Dina.
Curial continued to let loose on the wall, and after a couple of minutes he had opened up a two-foot by four-foot hole, right where the wall would have extended back in 1970. He finally put down the sledge hammer, looked at Maurice, smiled at Dina and took a deep breath.
Dina put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
Curial climbed into the hole in the wall, getting plaster dust all over his tuxedo, and started looking sideways down the inside of the wall. He pushed his face in deeper; he should have brought a flashlight.
“The boy has gone insane, Claude,” Nelson said. “This is beyond embarrassing.”
Claude snapped back. “For once, Mr. Nelson, step back and shut your mouth.”
Curial was staring into darkness, stretching with his arm, coming up against wood studs, wires, metal and cobwebs, and plaster dust.
And then he hit something. It was smooth and soft like cloth. Like a small pillowcase. His heart raced. He stretched and grabbed hold of it. He grabbed and pulled, and when he got it out of the wall cavity, he held it against his belly. Inside the cloth was something small, hard, and dense.
He turned around and climbed out of the hole in the wall. He looked at Dina, then at Claude. He smiled, and handed the bag to Claude.
Teenage Treasure Hunter Page 17
