Finding the Forger (20 page)

“People he’s met,” Doug volunteered. “Some of them just recently.”

“See what I mean? He’s lonely. He’s trying just a little too hard. At everything.”

That did the trick. When I sidled up to Doug, he put his arm around me and even kissed me on the top of my head. But now that I had him in sympathetic mode, I decided it was time for me to hurl the accusations at him. Didn’t want the opportunity to go to waste. So I spilled out my own little bag of resentments about how much time and attention he’d been paying to Kerrie lately. I expected a protest and maybe even an argument, and instead got laughter.

“It’s nothing, let me tell you. I just thought you’d be upset if Kerrie was upset. And so I was trying to be nice to your friend.”

“You mean you don’t like Kerrie?”

“I like Kerrie,” he said, “but she’s not my kind of girl.”

“She
is
kind of high-maintenance.”

“I’ll say.”

And then he hugged me tight and all was right with the world.

W
E DIDN’T STAY at the party much longer. Too many people we didn’t know. Too noisy. Too much booze. So I was home well before my curfew but with a far lighter heart. Doug even went out of his way and took Kerrie home first so he and I could share some private moments together on my doorstep before calling it a night.

I was in such a good mood, in fact, that it didn’t even bother me that someone had rearranged the poetry magnets yet again. Now, they read:

Life dreams big and bold

Grab action, sister

Friend flirt totally wild

All right. My bet was on Connie now. “Grab action, sister” seemed like her style.

In the morning, I was ready to tackle a whole new world, and part of that was continuing to plan Kerrie’s birthday party. Now that I knew nothing was up with her and Doug, I could throw myself into that activity full throttle. I started by calling Sarah and asking if she wanted to get together. She said “yes” right away and we made plans to meet at the Enoch Pratt Free Library downtown,
ostensibly to go over a “project.”

There was another reason I wanted to talk with her, though. As I’d fallen asleep the night before, I kept hearing Neville’s voice as he talked to me about his mother’s art. It had been so different—so sad and serious and lonely. Not at all like the chipper Mr.-British-Stud voice he used most of the time. It bothered him big-time that his mother wasn’t getting anywhere with her stuff. And if it bothered him enough, maybe he could be the culprit. The fact that he was the one who came up with the theory of the caper as an act of art vengeance fit in with that. If he was nuts enough to pull this off, he was nuts enough to draw attention to it, to brag about it.

Anyway, I wanted to talk to Sarah about this—see if she observed anything I missed at Neville’s house—and get more info out of her about Hector to help clear his name. Time was running out. I knew my sister, and I knew she’d be making a report to the museum soon. And now that the whole thing had been in the papers, the police were going to get involved. Not good for Hector if he was still the main suspect.

I had Tony drop me off in front of the big box-like library building and looked down Cathedral Street for Sarah. Within a few minutes, her battered blue car came slowly into view. Unlike Doug, she was pretty good at parallel parking and had her car into a metered spot with a few easy turns.

“Hey!” she said when she got out.

“I have a lot to tell you,” I said as she walked over to me. Before we were even in the front door, I’d spilled the beans about Neville, his mother’s art, and my theory. Okay, so it was his theory, but I was telling it, and possession is nine-tenths of the law. Or something like that.

Sarah was a happy camper when she heard my ideas. She said
Hector was getting pretty depressed about the whole thing and was thinking of leaving town.

“But that’ll make him look even more guilty,” I said.

“I know,” she responded. “I keep telling him to hang on.”

I sighed and twisted my mouth to one side as I thought. “I keep thinking about the security tapes,” I told her. “The problem is Hector had access to them. And somebody switched them.”

“Well, other people probably had access to them, too!” Sarah sounded frustrated. She put her keys in her pocket and rocked on her heels. “Fawn has keys to everything. So do a bunch of folks in the museum.”

“Fawn . . . Neville said his dad and Fawn were cozy,” I mused. “Maybe Neville got the keys that way. Have you ever seen him hanging around the office?”

Sarah stared into the sky and did the scrunched-up mouth routine. “No . . . but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have had access. I overheard her making plans to go out with Neville’s dad last week. And I know that Neville’s been checking out Hopkins, which is just around the corner from the museum. And I’ve seen her keys sitting out on the desk more than once. It would be pretty easy to grab them . . .”

“Have they ever been missing? Do you know if she’s ever complained about losing them?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said, her voice getting high and excited. “But I can find out. I can ask her this week.”

“Okay, that’s a good start. If we find out her keys went missing at some point, we know Neville had a chance to grab them when he was there with his dad.”

With that settled, we headed for the library to make other plans.

“Oh, darn,” Sarah said before we went in. “Forgot my notebook—it’s got all the ideas I wrote down for the party. And my notes for my project. It’s in the car.”

I waited for her at the door, but when she got to her car, she didn’t grab the notebook. Instead, she waved me over.

“What?” I asked, rubbing my arms. It was getting colder and I was wearing only a sweater. No way would I wear that fashion mistake parka again—even if I was on the North Pole.

“Neville! I just saw him go by.”

Uh-oh. First Hector, now Neville. I didn’t even need to ask. I hopped into the car as Sarah slid behind the wheel and turned on the engine.

“Get in!” She was already putting the car into gear as I closed my door and started buckling my seat belt.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Following him!” She pointed straight ahead. Neville was driving his father’s big silver Mercedes.

“He’ll see us,” I said, remembering Connie’s previous instructions about needing two cars to do a good surveillance on wheels.

“Nuh-uh. Wait and see.” Sarah let Neville take off down the road. When he was turning onto Mulberry, she took off, not at racing speed, but at a good clip all the same. But it didn’t take long before Neville turned—a wide left onto Charles that almost put him into the left lane facing oncoming traffic. Boy, he still hadn’t gotten used to this driving on the right thing.

Sarah didn’t follow right behind him. Instead, she ducked onto a small street, Hamilton, then wove back onto Charles, then back again. I was getting seasick from all the turns. But darn if she wasn’t good at this—far better than Connie, who was supposed to be the professional. After several loops and turnbacks, it was clear
where Neville was headed— toward the museum!

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I blurted out.

“Yup.” She pressed down on the accelerator and zipped up and over to St. Martin’s Drive, looping behind the Hopkins campus. We couldn’t see Neville’s car any longer, but since we were both sure we knew where he was headed, it didn’t matter.

And sure enough, when we did get to the museum, his car was parked in the lot with no Neville to be seen. Sarah made sure we were out of sight, parking her distinctive blue Olds two blocks from the museum.

“Let me go see what’s happening,” I volunteered.

“Not without me!” She undid her seatbelt at the same time I did, and we exited the car together. First, we walked casually up to the broad steps to the front of the museum. There we stopped. To go farther meant traversing an open sidewalk. If Neville returned, he would see us. There were a few Saturday museum-goers around, but not enough to constitute a crowd in which we could get lost.

“Come on. Let’s make a run for it.” Sarah rushed out into the open, sprinting past the steps. I followed, huffing and puffing when we reached the other side.

“Have you considered going out for track and field?” I said between gulps of breath.

“Shh . . . There he is.” From our hiding place behind some shrubs, she pointed. Neville was coming out of the museum. And in his hand was a flat, dark parcel—just the kind of thing you’d put a painting in. To make matters even more conclusive, he was hurrying, looking both right and left as if afraid of being spotted. The museum parking lot was crowded. Perfect—snatch something when lots of people are around, when guards are keeping an eye on
shady-looking folks. Not folks like Neville, a son of a board member, well-dressed, polite . . .

Okay, I admit it—I was excited. We had him red-handed. Hector was off scot-free now. All we needed to do was get the police involved.

“He’s leaving,” Sarah whispered.

“We should call the police,” I said. “Or at least Connie.”

“Don’t have a phone, do you?” asked Sarah.

“Nope.” We’re a one-cell family, not counting Connie’s business cell phone. And Mom had the Balducci mobile.

“Besides,” Sarah said, “we don’t know what he has. Come on. We’ve to get back to the car.” As soon as we were sure Neville was in his vehicle and not looking, we did the sprint routine again, retracing our steps back to Sarah’s car. In a few seconds, we were on the road again, this time headed toward Charles going north, several blocks behind Neville’s car. It was starting to rain, a soft cold drizzle that blurred the windshield. Sarah’s wipers didn’t do too great a job, either, and they made such a horrible racket I was afraid Neville would look back to see what all the noise was about.

At 39
^th
Street, Neville turned right, heading into the confines of Guilford. He was headed home.

“Maybe we
should
just pull over and call the police now,” Sarah said, biting her lower lip.

“No, you were right before,” I said, my brain cells kicking into gear. “We don’t know for sure what he has. We have to unmask him ourselves. Come on. Just a little while longer.”

Sarah followed at a discreet distance until we turned into a dark, shaded drive. Uh-oh. A private drive. Neville’s drive. Up ahead, Neville’s car disappeared behind lush evergreens. Sarah slowed to a snail’s pace. As we rounded a curve, we saw his house,
big and mansion-like, its black-shuttered windows looking like closed eyes.

“No farther.” Sarah stopped and put the car into reverse. “We’ll go back to the street and do the rest of this on foot.” Looking over her shoulder, she backed the car up the drive.

And backed it. And backed it. Until she came to the wrought iron gate.

Yup. A wrought iron gate. It had been open—obviously—when we followed Neville in. Now it was closed. Must have been one of those automatic gates, and Neville had pushed the button to close it once he was home. We both stared at it in panic.

“What do we do now?” I whispered, as if Neville could hear us.

Speaking of Neville . . .

“Hullo, ladies, nice of you to visit!” He stood, umbrella in hand, right outside my window.

I shrieked. Sarah jumped off her seat.

“Didn’t mean to startle you. Come in, come in. Just having a spot of tea. Join me, why don’t you?” Neville gestured to the house and I looked at Sarah. She shrugged and we both got out.

To stay under the umbrella, we leaned into either side of Neville, and we walked to the huge house like the three stooges.

“Perfect timing, too,” he said with good cheer. “I just bought my father the sweetest gift and I want to show it to you—a signed print! Just picked it up at the museum gift shop! You can tell me what you think.”