Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception (4 page)

Grams has noticed, too. She's looking from Hudson to Diane with a drooping smile, and let me tell you, the air is suddenly charged with all sorts of confusing signals.

Finally Grams clears her throat and says, “Could we offer you a plate?”

“Oh my, no! We had plenty while setting up. And I certainly didn't mean to intrude, I just wanted to share a smile with Samantha.” Then she whispers to me, “It's not every day someone dares to put Tess Winters in her place.”

“What's her problem, anyway?” I whisper back.

“Oh, well, we certainly don't want to get into
that.
” Then she gives Grams a warm smile and says, “Thank you for coming out tonight. If you have any questions about my work, by all means ask.”

“I have a question,” I say, then add, “Uh, but it's not about your work.”

She smiles. “That's all right. What is it?”

I nod over at the scary table. “Why is everyone over there? Who's the guy with the big black bag?”

“Ah,” she says. “Well, we were told that a correspondent from the
Los Angeles Times
promised to show up tonight. I didn't believe he actually would, but it seems I've been proven wrong.”

Hudson says, “The
Los Angeles Times
? Why, that's enormous exposure!”

“Yes,” she says with a smile.

“Shouldn't you be over there? Certainly your work deserves the attention and exposure more than the other two.”

She winks at Hudson and says, “Thank you, but I don't fawn well. I find it … distasteful. Besides, I'm sure he'll make his way over here soon enough.” She smiles at us and says, “Excuse me now, won't you? I should go attend to my guests,” then glides over to where a couple is standing, discussing one of her paintings.

When she's gone, Grams smoothes a nonexistent wrinkle from her skirt and says to Hudson, “I thought you weren't familiar with Ms. Reijden's work.”

“I'm not.”

She levels a look at him. “Yet you think she deserves the exposure more than the other two?”

Her lips are tight.

Her face is flushed.

And believe me, I
do
recognize this look—Grams is
steamed.

Hudson clears his throat. “Well … Just look, Rita. Even from here you can see her work is something real.”

“Hrmph.”

He grabs Grams' hand and pulls her up. “Let's take a look and see if I'm right.”

Now for a minute there I thought Hudson was going to keep right on holding her hand, but Grams shook free, then sniffed and marched over to the installation on her own.

There were only eight paintings on Diane's wall. And they weren't huge. Or trendy. And the signature in the bottom left of every one didn't jump out at you like, Notice ME! They were worked into the painting and, I don't know, quiet.

I went from one painting to the next, to the next. And I found myself moving slower and slower, because the more I looked at them, the more I liked them. They weren't flashy or stunning, they were more moody. And the longer I stood in front of them, the more their mood sort of replaced
my
mood. Kind of edged it out and left itself behind.

One painting titled
Pool of Gold
was of a woman gazing at her hands in her lap. That was it. But the way the light fell across her face and sort of collected in her palms, it looked like she was holding a little dish of liquid gold.

Then there was one that Hudson seemed to like called
Resurrection.
It was a painting of autumn leaves being stirred high in the air—the wind lifting them up, up, up. One tattered leaf was separate from the rest. Higher than the rest. And it seemed to glow orange and gold with
two points like arms, spreading up and out, reaching for the sky.

Another, called
Awakening
, was just a sunlit field of young wild grass with a small tree off to one side. But it made me want to find that place. To sit and listen to the breeze rustle the grass.

But the painting I kept coming back to was of a little girl on her tiptoes, stretching up to whisper in someone's ear. The painting is mostly shadows, so you can't see the face of the person she's whispering to. All you really see is the girl's face and her sparkling brown eyes, lit up by the moon shining through a window.

“
Whispers
, is it?” Hudson said, reading the plaque. “Who do you suppose she's telling secrets to?”

“Her mother,” I answered without thinking, and suddenly there were tears in my eyes.

Now honestly, I was embarrassed. I mean, this was nothing to start
crying
over. So I hadn't seen my mom in a while. So the days of me telling her secrets were long gone. This painting wasn't me
or
my mom. As far as I knew it wasn't anybody real. It was just paint.

But Hudson put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I find them to be very moving, too. It's amazing what she does with light.”

And that's when everything kind of happened at once. I noticed Grams coming toward us from one side, Diane was moving toward us from the other, but just as they're about to reach us, a side door blasts open and the air petrifies with, “FREEZE!”

And standing there, twenty feet from me with the door
wide open and the night sky behind him, is a
bandit.
He's wearing a black mask across his eyes, a faded blue bandana tight across his nose and mouth, a brown cowboy hat crammed down on his head, and jeans that make mine look dressy.

'Course he's also wearing a nylon jacket and running shoes, so he looks a little … goofy. Like he's part Zorro, part Jesse James, and part … Bill Gates?

And everyone in the Vault is sort of going, “Huh?” until he jabs the left pocket of his jacket forward and screams, “I said, FREEZE!”

And this time everyone does, because now it's easy to see—

This bandito's got a gun.

THREE   

“Oh, lord,” Hudson whispers. “Let's just stay calm—see what he wants.”

The Bandit edges our way, shouting, “One move out of any of you and it's curtains, you hear me?” He keeps the gun in his pocket poked up and forward, and when he gets near us he locks eyes with Diane.

Diane wobbles for a moment, then her eyes roll up in her head and down she goes. And while Hudson's busy catching her and easing her to the ground, the Bandit gets busy yanking her paintings off the wall with one hand while he practically jabs a hole in his pocket with his gun hand. “Sit down! All of you! Right where you are! NOW!” Everyone drops to the floor, including me and Grams.

So while the Bandit's yanking down pictures and Hudson's cradling Diane's head in his lap, trying to get her to come to, Grams is flashing between Hudson and the Bandit like she's not sure who's committing the worse crime.

Me, I'm keeping one eye on the Bandit and one on ol' Jojo. He hasn't exactly pounced on his goalpost phone to call 9-1-1, so I'm hoping he's got a hot button for the police. But either Jojo's a really good actor or he
doesn't
have a hot button, because all he's doing is sitting on the floor, shaking in his platform shoes.

So I'm crouched down, thinking
someone's
got to make a move to stop this guy, when I notice a dark spot in the corner of the Bandit's gun pocket.

A dark spot that wasn't there before.

At least I
think
it wasn't there before.

By now the Bandit's got four of Diane's paintings stacked and crammed under his arm, and he's screaming, “I said, SIT DOWN!” across the room. And he's sounding really jacked up and desperate, and I know I shouldn't even be thinking about it, but my mind can't stop asking, Can it be?

Then he starts backing away, poking his pocket across the room, shouting, “Don't move. None of you!” and that's when I know it's true.

I mean, it
must
be true.

Why else would the dark spot on his jacket be
growing
? I didn't have time to talk myself out of it. He was making his getaway and I had to do
some
thing. So before Grams could finish shouting, “Samantha, NO!!!” I was tackling the guy like I played for the 49ers.

I grabbed him around the legs, and the paintings spilled out from under his arm and crashed onto the floor. Trouble is, as he was coming down, his shoe whacked my jaw and snapped my tongue between my teeth. And since it really, really,
really
hurt, well, I let go.

The Bandit rolled away from me and jumped to his feet. His mask stayed on. His bandana stayed on. Even his
hat didn't really come off. It came loose, but the minute he landed he crammed it right back on his head.

But the paintings were scattered, and since he knew I was on to him, he didn't even bother trying to reach them. He just turned around and ran.

I tried yelling, but it came out, “As sas a swurcun!” because my tongue hurt so bad. And everyone was either shrieking or frozen, and no one was understanding me. “A swurcun! As jus a swurcun!” I yelled, but he got away. Just giddy-upped out the side door and into the night.

And
then
, after he's totally gone, someone finally says, “Did she say
squirt
gun?”

I nod my head like crazy and yell, “Id was jusd a squird gun!”

All of a sudden, everyone starts charging everywhere. Miss Kuzkowski and a bunch of other people dash for the exit. Some men go tearing out the side door after the Bandit. Jojo does sort of a flying stumble halfway across the gallery, before fluttering around in a circle and clip-clopping through the archway and out of sight. And Grams, well, she charges me.

And does she say, “Samantha! Are you all right?”

No. She lays into me with, “Child, are you out of your
mind
?”

I flex my tongue from side to side, trying to make it work right. “He only had a squirt gun, Grams.”

“How do you know that? Did you
see
it? Samantha, he could have killed you!”

“It was dripping, Grams.”

She hesitates. “Dripping? Are you sure?”

“Uh-huh.” I look over at Hudson, who's helping Diane into a chair. “I see she's come to.”

“Hrmph.”

“Give him a break, Grams. He's just being chivalrous.”

All of a sudden Jojo's all over me. “Oh! Oh! You plucky little
tiger.
You're all right, aren't you? Please, please, tell me you're all right.”

I laugh and tell him, “I'm fine.”

“And the paintings?” He swoops down on them and checks them over quickly. “Oh, thank heaven! Oh, thank God. It's only the frames. The art is fine. Fine!” He races over to Diane and skids to a halt on one knee in front of her. “Di, darling! Di, they're fine. Perfect! Not a scratch.”

“Joseph,
what
did I tell you about security?”

“But Di, in my wildest
dreams
… !”

All of a sudden the man with the big black bag is there, too, and now he's got a camera with a lens the size of a salad plate hanging around his neck.

Diane asks him, “Did you manage to … did you get any pictures of what just happened?”

“Only one as he was fleeing.”

Diane takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and says, “I don't suppose that'll show us much, do you?”

“No, but it'll still be dynamite in the article!”

“The … the article?” Diane asks.

He puts out a hand and says, “T. William Huffer,
Los Angeles Times.
I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to introduce myself before the … well, that
was
a holdup, wasn't
it?” He turns to Jojo. “What's the condition of the paintings? Were they damaged?”

“No,” Jojo says. “They're perfect. Perfect! One or two may need new frames, but the canvases are fine!”

“Very good. I'll need access to them—I want to photograph the whole collection.” He looks at Diane. “With your permission, of course.” He turns back to Jojo. “And a time to interview her. Can we set that up?”

“Certainly, certainly!”

By now everyone has pretty much congregated around us, including Austin Zuni and Tess Winters. And when Tess hears ol' T. William Huffer say all that about Diane's collection, her big red lips push way out for a minute, and then she says, “So this is how it works, huh?”

Everyone turns to her, and from the look on her face it's easy to see—she's as ticked off as a whacked wasp.

Jojo puts his arm around her and says, “There, there.”

She throws his arm off. “Don't there-there me, Jojo! Can't you see what's happened here?”

No one says a word.

Tess points a bony finger at Diane and screeches, “She set this up!”

“Set this up? Are you
mad
, woman?” All heads whip around to see who's just called the Splotter mad, only I don't need to. I'd recognize Hudson's voice anywhere.

I check Grams, and sure enough, she's steaming like a baked potato.

“You!” Tess snaps at Hudson. “You and that … that ragamuffin girl!” She points at me. “You're part of this whole performance!”

“Plucky tiger” was bad enough, but “ragamuffin girl”? I looked at her and shook my head. “What are you,
jealous
?”

“Of
you
? Ha!”

“No, you sloppy splotter! Of the fact that someone wanted to steal her stuff and not yours!”