Finding the Forger (13 page)

But maybe Connie wasn’t thinking that exactly. She leaned into the table and looked intently at Sarah. “If you helped a friend because you thought it would keep him out of trouble, but you weren’t part of the original trouble, that isn’t as bad as being responsible for the trouble itself.”

Okay, I can be dense sometimes, but when it comes to understanding my sister, I’m practically a member of sibling-Mensa. Her compassionate little speech meant only one thing—she thought Sarah was in on it! It was bad enough Hector had betrayed Sarah. Now Connie was piling on the guilty verdict, too.

“Lay off, Connie!” I said. “Sarah didn’t do anything wrong. She
told you—she found it in her car.”

Connie was silent. I tried to stare at her, but the daggers in my eyes didn’t fire.

“I didn’t help anybody do anything wrong!” Sarah said with the indignation of the unfairly accused. “And neither did Hector.” She looked around her as if trying to decide whether to bolt. “And . . . and there’s an easy enough way to prove it. The security camera tapes. Have you looked at them?”

Connie slumped back in her seat. Sarah had hit on something.

“Just got ‘em. But they’ve been looked over already.”

“What about the ones from today?” Sarah asked defiantly.

“I can pick them up tomorrow.”

“That sounds like a good idea, Connie,” I said. “If Hector put the painting in Sarah’s car, it would show up on a security tape—at least it’d show him walking down that corridor with the painting.”

“All right.”

Connie’s “all right” inspired me. I pressed forward. “It’s getting kind of late. If you’re so concerned about your client, shouldn’t you be getting the painting back to her instead of jawboning with us?” Yes, I actually said “jawboning.” I thought it sounded, oh, I don’t know, kind of detective-like.

“You’re right,” said Connie. She reached in her jeans pocket and pulled out a few bills, which she threw on the table like the private investigator she was. Then we all stood and made our way to the door.

Connie drove us home in silence and easily maneuvered into a just-her-car’s-size parking spot not too far from Sarah’s car.

We got out and stood shivering while Sarah went to her car to retrieve the painting.

“You know,” said Connie, watching Sarah thwump the trunk
to open it, “I probably should have—”

“Ohmygod!” Sarah shrieked as the trunk lid popped open. We rushed to see what was the matter. I was thinking “snake!”

Well, just for a nanosecond. Then my real brain kicked in and I mentally finished the sentence that Connie had started—that she should have immediately taken possession of the painting instead of leaving it in Sarah’s car, because . . .

“It’s gone!” Connie stomped her foot and cursed as she looked into the trunk. “And I just called them and told them I had it!” She smacked her head with her hand. “Why couldn’t I have waited? Why? Why? Why?”

That’s what I love about my sister. Like me, she makes mistakes.

She ran out into the middle of the street, looking up and down as if she’d actually see some thief running high-kneed down the asphalt with the painting. She groaned and let loose a cascade of expletives, then looked at us and said “sorry” as if we hadn’t heard those words before. (Had she forgotten what high school is like?)

Pulling a pair of tight leather gloves from her pocket, she quickly put them on and rushed back to the trunk, where she rummaged through the mess that was left.

“Nothing else was taken,” she said more to herself than to us.

“Well, there wasn’t much else but junk,” I volunteered.

“There was this!” Connie dragged out a heavy case.

“My laptop,” Sarah said mournfully.

“You have a laptop?” I asked. I had to share one computer with two siblings, but Sarah had her own laptop? I was getting farther and farther behind in the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses race.

“It’s an old one. Mr. Daniels lets me use it. I put it in the trunk because I didn’t want it sitting out in the open where someone
could see it.”

“And steal it,” Connie added. “But they didn’t steal it. They only took the painting.”

“They were looking for the painting,” I said in a low voice. A shiver coursed up my spine. Someone had followed Sarah. I turned to her. “Who knew you were coming here?”

“I don’t know!” She looked like she was going to cry. “You. Kerrie.”

“What did you tell Kerrie?” I asked.

“That I had something to talk to you about.”

Great! Now Kerrie would be back in her jealous mode.

“Anybody else know where you were?” Connie pressed.

Sarah silently shook her head. While Sarah thought, Connie pulled out her cell phone and handed it to Sarah.

“Call Kerrie and ask if anyone called, asking where you were,” Connie told her.

While Sarah punched in the numbers and did as she was told, Mom appeared on the front steps.

“Why don’t you girls come inside? It’s getting cold out there.”

“We’ll be in in a sec,” I said cheerily. “We’re just making some plans.”

“I can make hot chocolate,” Mom offered.

“No thanks!” I said, so perky that I’m sure I was not only busting the perkometer scale, but practically achieving spontaneous combustion. It was enough to do the trick. Mom closed the door and left us alone. By this time, Sarah was off the phone and clearly uncomfortable.

“Well?” Connie asked.

“Hector called,” she said sadly.

A
FTER SARAH WENT home, Connie and I talked for about a half hour out there on the cold street.

“It doesn’t look good for Hector,” she said, holding her cell phone. I knew what that meant. She was going to call An Authority (either Fawn Dexter or the police) and divulge all—finding the painting in Sarah’s trunk, finding it stolen again, finding out that Hector knew where Sarah was.

“You can’t,” I argued preemptively. “You know they’ll think Sarah did something wrong, too.”

Connie pressed her lips together and folded her arms over her chest.

“You know,” she said, squinting at me, “sometimes people used to being in trouble have a hard time giving up trouble.”

“What?!”

“The lines get blurred. And they never get them straight again.”

“Are you talking about art or about Sarah?” I asked sarcastically.

She harrumphed, which is Balducci for “you know what I mean.”

“I have to tell,” she continued. “I can’t hide what I know.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. Oh yes, I put my hands on my hips. There are some gestures that never go out of style. “You don’t usually tell clients everything until you solve the case. You just want to give up the info on Sarah and Hector to cover your butt for losing the painting!”

“I did not lose the painting. I never had the painting. Sarah had the painting.” But her tone sent a different message. It said “Yes, I lost the painting and I’m toast if they blame me.”

“But once you found the painting, you should have taken custody of it,” I said in that charming
neener-neener-neener
tone known to siblings everywhere. “Immediately.”

“I did have custody of it—in Sarah’s car.” Connie’s voice sounded high and squeaky, which meant I was hitting a bull’s-eye. The only reason she would hand over Sarah and Hector now, without corroborating information, was because it would make her look less foolish.

“And it won’t help, anyway,” I said. “You know they’re going to get mad at you no matter who you betray.”

“I’m not betraying anybody, Bianca! You’re too much! Where do you get this stuff?” she said, flailing her arms in the air, and dropping her cell phone. I scrambled for it and held it tight to my chest.

“Give it over,” she seethed.

“On one condition.”

“Are you nuts? What condition?”

“You don’t call Fawn. You don’t call the police.”

“Bianca!”

“No, listen—you don’t know for sure if that was the missing painting or a fake. You’re not an art expert. So you can tell them
your other call was a big mix-up, but you have some leads to follow and will report soon. Hey, for all we know, the painting in Sarah’s trunk could have been a fake, right? I mean, haven’t you seen ‘The Thomas Crowne Affair,’ the movie where he paints fakes over real paintings and René Russo—”

“Yeah, yeah. I saw it.” Her voice returned to a more normal tone.

“Before you do anything, look at the security tapes from tonight,” I said, and immediately regretted it. What if the security tapes showed Hector carrying a suspicious package and heading for the dumpster door?

From our doorway, an expanding shaft of light appeared. Mom again.

“You girls still out here?” Translation: I can’t enjoy watching television worrying about you two.

“We’re coming in now, Mom,” I said, looking directly at Connie. Translation: do we have a deal or not?

“Yeah, we’ll be right there,” Connie said. As we walked toward the steps, she whispered, “Okay. I want to talk to Kurt about this anyway.”

The next morning, I awoke with an ache. Not a headache or a backache or a neck ache. It was an unfulfilled-desire ache, the kind of dry, choking feeling you get when you’ve kept yourself from doing something you really wanted to do.

I’d really, really wanted to talk to Doug the night before. I’d wanted to spend, oh, maybe a half hour or more on the phone with him (we have a “half hour” rule in our house, but sometimes
Mom’s not paying attention and I go over). And I wanted us to laugh and blab away the way we used to—about school, about our plans, about the Mistletoe Dance, and maybe even about the painting mess with Sarah.

But every time I’d thought of calling him, a switch would go on in my brain immediately cutting off the warm, fuzzy feelings I was having about him and replacing them with dark brooding. Brooding on why he had acted so attentive around Kerrie when I was supposed to be his girl. Brooding on why he’d picked her up first and dropped her off last on Saturday. Brooding about how he’d nearly ruined my Applebee’s dining experience. And brooding as I thought of how I really couldn’t share too much of the Sarah stuff with him or I might get her in trouble.

It was a cycle of despair, let me tell you. First, I’d start resenting him for abandoning me for Kerrie. Then I’d start resenting him for being jealous of Neville when I remained completely true blue to him. Then I’d start thinking that maybe he’s jealous of me and Neville because he’s feeling guilty about him and Kerrie.

Yes, that’s where that brooding road led to—fantasies of unfaithful friends.

To make matters worse, Connie had been on the Internet a lot Sunday evening, looking up some stuff and then talking with Kurt on the phone—she has some cheapo-schmeapo cell plan she’s locked into for a year, so she watches her minutes on that and hogs our phone instead. When I checked messages later, there was no Dougie-gram, which made me even more glum.

So, when I came down for breakfast Monday morning, I was in a crappy mood. Connie and Mom had already left—Mom for her office and Connie to hers. That left Tony and me, and Tony is at his all-time worst when there are no witnesses around.

“C’mon, I have to leave early,” he said, looking at me in my pink terry-cloth robe and curling his upper lip to indicate I looked particularly unattractive that day.