Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking (9 page)

“Up there.” Ollie nudged me and pointed next to the door, where an old, stained flag was covered by heavy glass. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking at.

“The top of the flagpole,” Ollie whispered. The room was nearly empty, but being around the art made us talk like we were in a library.

The top of the flagpole was…the top of the flagpole.

“Huh?”

“They took an eagle statue off it.” Ollie showed me the picture in his pamphlet.

“Oh.” That made five paintings and the ku stolen from the Dutch Room, and five sketches and one doohickey stolen from the Short Gallery. Did the numbers mean anything?

“Kinda weird, huh?” Ollie creased the printed theft list in his hands.

“What do you mean?”

“Five paintings from each room, plus one artifact”—of course Ollie knew the word right away—“from each.” I needed to get some of this stuff on paper.

“Totally.” I nudged him and pointed through the door under the flagpole. It opened into a room with a ton of chairs set in rows for sitting and looking at the art. Ollie followed me.

“This is the Tapestry Room,” he said.

It was kind of an obvious name, if you ask me. Giant ruglike tapestries, woven with pictures of knights and unicorns and stuff, hung from the walls. The room was cool and dark. We crashed into chairs at the back, and I unfolded the proof sheet from my back pocket and smoothed it on the chair next to me.

“Is that a
math
problem?” Ollie said. He cocked his head at me.

“Kind of,” I muttered. “It was the only way I could make sense of this stuff.”

Did I have anything new to add? Seeing the place where the art was stolen helped me understand what was taken, but looking at the proof, none of that seemed relevant.

“At least we know how big everything was,” Ollie said.

“Oh. Yeah! I totally didn’t think of that,” I responded. The paintings from the Dutch room were big—poster-sized.

“The landscape one was even painted on wood.” He unfolded the printout again. “And that was big. I wonder if it was heavy?”

“Probably. And anyway, it’s not like they could have
stacked everything up and carried it out in one trip,” I added. “They must have made two trips to carry all of it.” That was something I could put on my proof!

Ollie was flipping through my Boston guidebook, looking for more info on Isabella.

“It says here that she hated change, Moxie, and that she designed the house specifically for her pieces and that’s why she never wanted anything moved. She also was well-known around Boston because she wouldn’t take crap from anyone. People said she used to walk lions down Boylston Street!”

I grunted a response, too busy thinking about the art.

Ollie nudged me. “Sound familiar?”

“Huh?” I turned to him, surprised.

“Let’s just say I think you and Isabella would have gotten along really well,” he said, a mischievous grin on his face.

I considered what he was saying. I could definitely identify with what Isabella was doing when she set up the museum; and…okay…maybe Ollie had a point. Neither of us cared about what other people thought of us.

Isabella and I could have been buddies, maybe, and that made finding the art even more personal.

I pulled a pencil out of my back pocket and scrawled
Art was removed in two trips
in the statements column. Across from it, under reasons, I added
Size of paintings, number of objects stolen.

“So what happens when you get that whole thing filled out—assuming we can do that in ten days?” he asked, surfacing from his reading.

I refolded the paper and stuck it in my pocket. “Well, in
theory
, I’ll know where the paintings are. And then we’ll magically find them!”

I laughed, but we had no choice but to try. Because if I didn’t, The Redhead would go after Nini. Or my mom. Or I’d end up living in New Hampshire. I shivered.

“We
do
have an advantage that no one else has,” Ollie said after a minute.

“What’s that?” I answered, preoccupied with the notion of life in the woods with Putrid Richard and his mustache.

“We know who hid them.”

Our walk to the pizza place over by Fenway Park wasn’t as bouncy or thrill-filled as our trip to the museum. Between the creepy redhead popping up, and seeing the voids left in the museum, I was definitely
not
swinging around light poles. More like trudging through syrup.

“This is serious stuff,” said Ollie quietly. It was the first time either of us had spoken since we left. I grabbed two goopy, cheesy slices of pizza from the guy at the counter and Ollie followed me to a booth.

“No kidding.” Hot cheese burned the roof of my mouth. I chugged from my iced tea bottle and hoped my throat wouldn’t melt.

“Like, really serious.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose. Taking a hint from my scalding experience, Ollie sat and let his slices cool. “Like…I dunno, Moxie…”

There was a slight catch—a splinter, almost—to his voice. My insides jell-ified. Ollie could
not
bail on me! I narrowed my eyes and leaned over our lunch, catching a delicious nose full of garlic, cheese, and tomato sauce. The aroma didn’t quite fit the mood, but whatever.

“You can
not
back out of this, Ollie. Seriously! My family is in danger.
I’m
in danger!”

“Uh…Mox? That’s why I think it’s a good idea to back out. What if you—
we
—get hurt?” He picked at the edge of his napkin, not meeting my eyes.

I slumped in my chair. “I know. This is big-time stuff. But The Redhead hasn’t actually
done
anything to hurt me”—
yet
, I wanted to add, but didn’t—“and if I can find the stuff, everything will be totally fine. They’ll leave me alone.” Even as I said the words, a splinter of my own doubt crept in. Would they
really
leave me alone? “Besides, what else can I do? You heard what she said about my mom and grandmother this morning.”

The question hung there. I was daring Ollie to say the words, and he knew it. He blew out a puff of air and stared me straight in the eyes.

“Go to the police.”

I snorted. “Yeah, right. Tell the police that my grandfather—my Alzheimer’s-suffering, nursing-home-bound grandfather—hid the Gardner art.” I lowered my voice for that last part. “As if. They’d arrest Grumps! It would destroy my family.”

Ollie shifted and tugged his Sox cap lower. He loved Grumps, and my family…right? He wouldn’t want to see them pulled into a big mess…right?

“It’s just…”

I waited. He squirmed, and said something so low, I could barely hear. Our pizza slices had gone from steaming to soggy. “What?” He fidgeted for a minute, and then…

“I’m scared,” he whispered.

Oh.

“Me too,” I said. I hadn’t even really realized it until Ollie said it, but it was true. This was scary. Mega-scary. But I had no choice. Scared or not, I had to find the art. “But I have to do this. If you’re too scared to help me out, that’s okay.” The words were a total lie, and I forced them out like bad-tasting berries, but what could I do? It’s not like I could demand that he help me and put himself in the way of The Redhead.

He looked out the window. I followed his gaze. People were going by, having a normal summer day. There was a tourist family sitting at a table near us (you could tell because they were completely decked out in Boston gear—Sox T-shirts and hats, and the mom was carrying one of those canvas bags with a lobster and
Cape Cod
stenciled on it), and they were all enjoying their lunches like they had nothing to worry about except grease stains.

Ollie sighed. “I’ll stick around,” he said. “But if this gets out of control, you have to promise that we’ll get help.”

I promised him, but as I spoke the words, I knew that if things got out of control, we’d be in no position to help ourselves, let alone
get
help.

After scarfing our cold pizza, Ollie and I headed to the Public Garden for that timed cache as a way to chill. As he pulled his yellow portable GPS out of his shorts pocket and started entering coordinates, his shoulders dropped away from his ears and his tight expression smoothed.

“It’s this way,” called Ollie, taking off over the footbridge. I followed slower, watching the Swan Boats slip in and out of the barred shadow cast by the bridge. Crazy-cool bright orange and red flowers framed both sides of the path. I focused on them, and breathing. I had to clear my head so I could think.

Across the bridge, Ollie was scrabbling at the bottom of a huge tree near the
Make Way for Ducklings
statue. A flock of little kids were perched on the backs of the ducks, moms and dads clicking away on their cameras. The families seemed so normal on the outside; what secrets were
they
hiding?

I shook my head, clearing the creepy thought, then followed the path past the ducklings and around a bend.

“Boo!” came a voice right behind me.

I jumped, then turned and swatted at Ollie.

“Just getting you back from that night in the Arbs,” he said. His face was flushed and sweaty, like he’d been running, but his grin was wide.

“You found it?”

His grin got wider, if that was possible. It made his glasses ride up on his cheeks. He held out a closed fist. “Olly-olly-oxen-free!” he cheered. We high-fived.

“Wait’ll you see what was in the box,” he added. He turned his hand over and opened it.

“That’s it?”

In his palm was one of those green plastic army guys that kids play with. You know—they wear helmets and have that flat piece that connects their feet?

Ollie shook his head like I didn’t have 600 other life-or-death-or-art things on my mind.

“I know this guy! Well, not in real life,” he amended. “He’s GI Goh—one of the best cachers in the city. And he only leaves one army guy in each cache. It means I got here first.”

“Nice!” I high-fived him again. “You are so good at this.”

“I like hunting for stuff. Why’re you over here?” he said. He patted the army guy, then tucked him into the cargo pocket with the GPS and buttoned the flap.

I shrugged. “Just thinking and walking.”

“Back to our real-life treasure hunt, huh?” he said. “I wish he’d left coordinates somewhere, like in a geocache.”

“That’d be so easy!” I laughed at the thought of Grumps plotting his hiding places on graph paper, like one of Ollie’s drawings.

“Well,” he said, “it’s not a crazy idea. I mean, he had to keep track of things somehow, right?”

“Probably.” I sighed and plopped down on a nearby bench. “I just don’t know what to do next to figure it out,” I said.

Okay, I whined.

Tick-tick-tick…

“Bust out that math problem,” Ollie suggested. “Can’t hurt.”

Good point. I tugged the proof out of my back pocket.
Think logically, Moxie.

“We’ve established that a lot of the art was big, probably heavy, and they’d have to take it out of the museum in two trips,” I said.

“The thieves would have had to meet Grumps to give him the stuff,” Ollie added helpfully. “Unless you think they brought it to your house or whatever?”

“No way. Grumps wouldn’t bring anything like that to our house. Too dangerous.” At least, that’s what the Grumps I
thought
I knew would do. But seriously, did I have any idea? I filed that away. We
did
have an awful lot of closets in our house…

“So he would’ve met them somewhere,” said Ollie. “And once he saw the art…”

My brain was finally in gear. “He’d see what he was dealing with and have to figure out where to hide all of it.” I scribbled
Size of pieces determine hiding places
in the statements column, and under reasons, added
Many sizes, shapes, and materials to consider.

“By the next morning, everyone in the city was looking for it,” I mused. “Depending on when the thieves called Grumps—right after the robbery, or the next day—he wouldn’t have much time to plan.”

“Unless he was in on it from the beginning, and already worked out the hiding places.”

“If that’s the case, we’ll
never
find them,” I said. “They could be anywhere in New England.” I groaned.