The Mistaken Masterpiece (10 page)

“What do you think they could be hiding?” Leigh Ann asks. “In case
what
?”

Father Julian turns his palms upward. “I suppose in case I find the proof they say I need.”

Margaret rubs her temples for a few seconds, deep in thought. “When the artist gave the painting to your great-grandfather, wouldn’t there have been a receipt or a letter or
something
to show what it was and how he got it?”

“We’ve looked everywhere. Nothing. Except these,” Father Julian says. He removes the lid from an old shoe box that is held together with generations of yellowed tape and scoops up a handful of old family snapshots from the hundreds (
thousands
, maybe) inside. A few are in color, but most are black and white, and smaller (about three inches square) than I’m used to seeing.

“These may be our only real hope of proving when the painting was done,” he says. “A lot of these pictures were taken at my great-grandfather’s house in the fifties and sixties. We know that he hung it on the wall above the fireplace right after Pommeroy gave it to him, so it must show up in the background occasionally.”

“Ohhhh. Cool,” Becca says. “So you just have to figure out when those pictures were taken. And hope it’s before 1961.”

“Once again, I think what you meant to say was,
you
need to figure out when those pictures were taken,” Father Julian says with a smile.

“How are we supposed to do that?” Leigh Ann says. “I mean, unless one of them has a guy holding up a sign that says ‘Happy New Year 1961,’ how do you prove when a picture was taken? It’s impossible.”

“
Nothing
is impossible,” Margaret says, flaunting
that determined look that I know so well. She taps the box full of pictures. “The answer is in here. We just have to find it. These pictures are just another kind of code for us to crack. And we’re getting pretty good at that, if I do say so.”

“I like what I’m hearing,” says a cheerful Father Julian. “I had a feeling about you girls the first time I met you.”

He then puts the two baseballs back in the tote bag along with the shoe box full of photographs and hands it to me. “Take good care of these things. They may be our only hope.”

“You can trust me, Father,” I announce confidently. “I never lose anything.”

Tell me I didn’t just say that.

Tillie has another surprise for me when I get home. My favorite shoes—red Chuck Taylors—are in shreds. Bits of canvas and rubber are scattered around the room, and she seems
tremendously
proud of her work. She brings me a piece of shoelace, trying to get me to play tug-of-war.

It’s not that bad, I tell myself; it’s only one pair of shoes. Lesson learned: put shoes in the closet, Sophie.

And then I panic. Mom’s shoes! I race into my parents’ room, terrified of what I’m going to find. But the floor is clean; not a single chewed-up piece of leather in sight. Inside the closet, her prized collection is safe. Whew.

Back in my room, I place Father Julian’s tote bag—the one with the baseballs and the shoe box of pictures—on the highest shelf of the bookcase, away from Tillie the Terrible.

“Tillie, we would
both
be living on the street if you had done anything to Mom’s shoes.”

“What about my shoes?”

I almost jump out of my skin. “Mom! When did you get home?”

“Just now.” She spots the remains of the Chucks. “Oh, Sophie. Your new shoes.”

“Oh, they weren’t that new,” I say. “I’ve had them a few months. And before you panic,
your
shoes are fine. I already checked. You want to come with me? I’m going to take her for a walk right now. Come on. She really is a good dog. She’s just a little … um, she’s still a puppy. I promise to keep all my shoes in my closet from now on. And I’ll pay for my new shoes with the money I’m earning from dog-sitting. I mean, I’ve got to have a pair of Chucks. It’s part of who I am.”

“All right, I could use a good walk. Let me put on some comfortable shoes—and put these
away
. Not that I don’t trust you, Tillie dear.”

When we leave the building, Tillie starts pulling us west toward Central Park.

“I guess we’re going to the park. That okay with you?” I say.

“Perfect. Do you mind going to the Conservatory Garden? I haven’t been by in months. It’s my favorite place.”

A strange thing happens next. We’re walking past a row of beautiful old brownstones on Ninety-fourth Street
when I see Livvy—at least I think it’s Livvy—helping a woman on crutches into the door of an apartment building in the middle of the block. I’m trying desperately to put the brakes on, but it’s like Livvy is holding out a handful of raw hamburger for Tillie, who is doing her finest sled-dog imitation, whining and pulling me in Livvy’s direction. It takes all my strength to hold her back.

“Well, that’s weird,” I say when I finally have the beast under control.

“What’s that, honey?”

“Did you see those people who just went in that building up there—the one with the fence around it? I’m almost positive that was Livvy Klack.”

“The girl from school—the one who broke your nose?”

“That’s her. I must be wrong. It’s probably just someone who looks like her.”

“Does she live in the neighborhood?”

“No, she lives down by the school, like on Sixty-second or Sixty-third.”

When we walk past the front of the building, I catch a glimpse of a curtain in a first-floor window move to the side, but I resist the urge to turn and stare. It’s probably not her, but if it
is
Livvy, I certainly don’t want her to catch me in the act of peeking into windows. I can only imagine how
that
would be interpreted and spread around St. Veronica’s.

But I can’t stop pondering the sheer improbability of
it all: Livvy doing something nice. Again. All right, so maybe
not
making fun of my nose wouldn’t count as being nice for most people, but in Livvy’s case, it’s all relative. After all, I know what she’s capable of.

“She seems like such a sad kid,” Mom says when we get to the corner. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile. Is she like that all the time?”

“Kind of. I mean, I’ve seen her smile and laugh—usually
at
people—but you’re right, most of the time she looks absolutely miserable. She acts like a snob, and I really don’t know why, because she’s not super-rich or anything. Some of her friends are, though, and I think she hates St. V’s because she feels like she ought to be at a ritzy school with them.”

“Well, just remember what our good friend Atticus said: before you criticize someone, walk a mile in her shoes,” Mom reminds me. She introduced Margaret and me to
To Kill a Mockingbird
over the summer, and as part of our exclusive book club, we discussed what the lawyer Atticus Finch meant by those very words. “You don’t know what is going on in her life, so don’t be too hard on her.”

“Don’t be hard on
her
? Mom, this is the girl who sabotaged my English project, totally insulted all my friends,
and
then broke my nose.”

“Accidentally.”

“Humph. Maybe,” I say, even though I have suspected all along that there was nothing intentional about what happened in the pool.

We enter the park near Ninety-sixth Street, and Mom takes a seat for a few minutes on a bench while I run around the ball fields with Tillie, trying to wear her out a little. (Mom warns me that all I’m doing is getting her into tip-top physical condition; there simply is no tiring her out.) There are a few other people with dogs, and I get into a conversation with the owner of two yellow Labs, who shares a valuable piece of information: before nine o’clock in the morning, dogs are allowed to be off-leash in the park. A good long run might be just the thing to burn off some of that extra energy, so I promise Tillie I’ll bring her over on Saturday morning if she’s still with me. Of course, I’ll have to check with Nate, to make sure she won’t take off or something. Losing a big movie star’s beloved dog would probably not be a great career move for me. I shudder, imagining thousands of Nate’s fangirls chasing me through Central Park with pitchforks and torches.

I’m brought back to reality by Tillie, who has stopped in her tracks with ears perked up and head tilted, first to one side, then to the other. Somewhere in the distance, something—something that my inferior human eyes and ears can’t see or hear—has suddenly become
very
interesting to her, and she starts dragging me toward it.

“Whoa, Tillie!” I yell, but she has caught me off balance, and I find myself running with her to keep from falling flat on my face. Which, considering the still-tender state of my nose, is
not
a great option.

“What are you doing?” Mom shouts. “I thought we were going to the garden.”

“I’m … Tillie heard … We’ll be right back,” I call over my shoulder at her.

Once I regain my balance, I know I could stop her—she’s not that big or strong—but I’m intrigued. When we get to the far north end of the ball fields, she stops again, all her senses on high alert. Just when I’m starting to think that whatever she’s chasing is a figment of her imagination, I faintly hear a girl’s voice shouting, “… leeeee … leeeee …”

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I spot a flash of black, as a fugitive dog, dragging its leash, races through the trees and away from the voice as fast as its long legs can carry it.

“Woof!” says Tillie—the first non-howling sound I’ve heard from her. “Woof woof woof.”

“Hey, girl. What’s the matter?” I ask, kneeling down to pet her. “It’s just another dog.” I finally get her to calm down, and we walk back to where Mom is waiting for us.

“What was that all about?” she asks.

“I’m not really sure,” I say. “There was a dog who had gotten away from his owner, and the girl was calling him. Tillie seemed very concerned; she actually barked a few times.”

“She’s an odd dog. I think maybe the life of an actor is not really suited to pet ownership. Speaking of which, have you heard from your actor friend? Do you know
how much longer we’re
—you’re
—going to have Miss Tillie?”

“Not yet. I’ll text him later to find out. I guess I should also ask if she has any other bad habits I should be aware of.”

Like shopping online with Mom’s credit cards. On the other hand, maybe
she
can help me with my Spanish homework.

Now that we’ve finished reading
Great Expectations
in Mr. Eliot’s English class, he has us tackling a bunch of short stories. And I’ll admit that at first I wasn’t too sure how I felt about short stories. No offense to short-story writers and fans, but I’m a
book
person. I just love novels, and the longer the better. Novels that I can get totally
lost
in—know what I mean? There’s nothing like that mixture of excitement and regret when I get to the end of a book and I
almost
can’t bear to turn that last page, just knowing that it’s actually going to be over.

But lately I’m starting to appreciate the art of the short story, too. Right after we officially opened the Red Blazer Girls Detective Agency, Margaret loaned me a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories—sort of a how-to book for wannabe detectives, if ever there was one. I’ve been plowing my way through it, solving the cases along with Holmes and Watson, and you know what? Some days a few pages are just right.

The stories Mr. Eliot is giving us are different, though. We spent a lot of time talking about the conflict and irony in classics like “The Most Dangerous Game” and “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” and today we’re continuing with a
very
short story called “The Interlopers.”

We’ve already had our discussion of the key elements of the story, so at the beginning of class, Mr. Eliot tells each of us to find a partner for an assignment related to the story—and warns us that we have to present our answer to the class before the end of the period. Rebecca’s not in English with us, so Margaret, Leigh Ann, and I look at one another, trying to figure out how to divide three evenly by two.