Noel pulled a book off the shelf. A muscle next to his eye twitched. “Yes. Why? What’s going on?”
She licked her lips. If she continued with this line of questioning, she was going to seem really, really guilty. “I’m just freaked out,” she managed to say. “After all the Ali stuff . . . it’s just hard to talk to more cops.”
Noel slammed his locker shut and touched her arm. “But it’s over. The FBI lady won’t bother you again—she said she was done with me, too. It sucks that we were there when someone died, but it’s not like we killed her.”
Nerves slashed through Aria’s chest. “Uh-huh,” she said weakly.
All of a sudden, she had to get out of here. She kissed him hurriedly. “I’m excited about the decor chairperson thing, really. Thank you so much. But now I have to go.”
It took her only ten minutes to get to her mother’s house, and she tried to keep her mind blank the whole drive home. She barreled up the driveway and jammed her key into the lock. But before she even turned it, the door opened. Usually they locked the dead bolt, too.
“Hello?” Aria called into the hall. No answer. She peeked into the kitchen, the backyard, and then the bedrooms. Her mother, Ella, wasn’t here.
She looked in her bedroom last, and her blood went cold. There, on the bed, lay a piece of paper that hadn’t been there this morning. She snatched it and looked at the words marching across the top of the page. They were in Icelandic. The bottom half of the page had been translated into English: Wanted Reykjavik Man Missing. Murder Suspected.
When Aria saw the face in the photo, she gasped. Olaf.
She swallowed hard and looked at the article. Olaf Gundersson, 21, went missing from his house on the outskirts of Reykjavik on the night of January 4.
That seemed like ages ago. Aria thought back. She had no idea what she was doing January fourth. Lounging around—they’d still been on winter break. Bored without Noel—his family had gone to Switzerland to ski.
She read on. Foul play is suspected, as Mr. Gundersson’s apartment was ransacked and there was blood on the floor. After extensive police questioning, locals said that Mr. Gundersson, who was “a bit of a hermit,” had been in a loud and violent fight the evening before, though they couldn’t identify the other person in the argument.
Mr. Gundersson had been accused of breaking into the Brennan Manor last summer and stealing the Starry Night study painting by Vincent van Gogh, though Mr. Gundersson had claimed in earlier questioning that he did no such thing. A police search of Mr. Gundersson’s home did not turn up the painting, and one theory is that Mr. Gundersson took it with him after the attack. There is a citywide search for both his body and the priceless artwork, though nothing has been recovered yet.
Aria’s head swirled.
Then she noticed the red scrawl at the very bottom of the page. Look in your closet. Someone had drawn a big, bold arrow, as if Aria might not know where her closet was.
Shaking, she turned and stared at her closed closet door. Someone had been in here. They could still be here. Should she call the police? And say . . . what?
She inched over to the closet door and pulled at the knob. Her shirts and dresses swung on hangers. Her shoes rested in shoe trees. But there, on the dusty wood floor, was a rolled-up canvas. Aria’s fingers fumbled with it as she lifted it up and pulled off the rubber band. A familiar painting, now out of its heavy frame, unfurled. There were those iconic swirls and cometlike stars. And there, at the bottom, was a signature that took her breath away: VAN GOGH.
She dropped the painting to the floor. As it bounced on the hardwood, a small slip of paper dislodged from somewhere inside. It landed faceup, so Aria could read exactly what it said without laying a finger on it.
Dear Aria,
Isn’t seeing good art truly liberating?
—A
9
Spencer Was Never One for Rules. . . .
Spencer peeked through the bay window of the model home at Crestview Estates. A stone McMansion loomed over the trees across the street. A mallard waddled in the direction of the water. A car swished past on the road, but it didn’t slow at the house.