Someone behind them called: “Mr. Sigurd! Wait!”
Sig whirled around so fast that Jaime went whipping around with him. A woman in a blue suit brandished a phone. “We may have a situation.”
“Take care of it,” Sig barked.
“It’s a pretty big situation,” she said.
Sig grunted, shoved them into the nearest office, and sat them down in three chairs. “Stay!” he said, as if he were talking to a bunch of puppies. Then he stepped back out into the hallway. Jaime leaned close to the open door to hear.
“This is unacceptable. Where’s everyone going?” Sig said.
“To see Lora Yoshida.”
“Who?”
“The performance artist? She’s staging a flash mob outside on the street. They want to watch.”
“A flash what?”
“A flash mob,” the woman said, overenunciating loudly as if Sig was hard of hearing. “They’re dancing. At least, I think it’s dancing. Or maybe it’s just wiggling? I don’t know. They’re blocking the museum entrance.”
“Super,” said Sig.
Next to Jaime, Tess muttered a series of what-if questions, getting more and more breathless as she talked. What if these guys called the real cops? What if they were arrested? What if they were taken downtown and put in a cage with a bunch of mobsters? What if the mobsters recruited Theo to run numbers for them? What if Theo became the most notorious mobster in the history of the city? What if he were known as Theo “The Hairball” Biedermann? What if rival gangs put out hits on Tess and her mom and dad to get back at Theo, and they were forced into the witness protection program, and had to move to a ranch in New Mexico, where they would raise chickens, cattle, and alpaca?
“Nobody’s joining the mob,” Theo said absently. And then he said, “Wait . . . did you just call me ‘The Hairball’?”
Nine licked frantically at Tess’s fingers.
Footsteps thundered down the hallway. Jaime scooted closer to the open door to see a wave of people—museum employees?—rushing up the stairs.
“This is unacceptable. Where’s everyone going?” Sig said.
“Well, Mr. Sigurd, as I was saying, everyone wants to see Lora Yoshida. She has torches.”
“Torches? Why does she have torches?”
“She’s erected a scale model of the city on the street. They’re supposed to set fire to it. That’s what I meant by ‘situation.’”
“It’s the middle of the day! Why would they set anything on fire?”
“It’s supposed to symbolize the destruction of the city by greedy corporations. Or something like that.”
“How is that art?”
The woman shrugged. “Ask Lora Yoshida.”
“Why don’t they do this stuff downtown and annoy the kooks at the Modern Art Museum?” Like a bull, Sig exhaled loudly through his nose, stormed over to the office. Jaime threw himself back in his chair. Sig barked, “None of you move.” Then he slammed the door.
And locked it.
They stared at the locked door.
Tess stopped muttering her what-if questions. “That can’t be legal.”
“But he did it anyway,” Theo said.
“What are we going to do?” Jaime said.
“Well, we can’t stay here,” said Tess. She rummaged around on the desk and found a paperclip. She straightened it out, jammed it into the lock on the door. In a few seconds, she was easing the door open.
“Do I want to know where you learned that?” Jaime said.
“Our great-aunt Esther,” said Tess. “She was a locksmith.”
“Among other things,” Theo said.
“See anyone?” Jaime said.
Tess shook her head. “No, it looks like they’re all gone.”
They sneaked out into the hallway.
“We should get out of here while they’re distracted,” said Jaime.
“Yeah,” said Theo.
“Totally,” said Tess.
But instead of making their escape from the museum, the three of them turned toward the frosted door of the restoration room. It was now or never; Sig didn’t seem like the kind of man who would forget a face.
Nine chirped softly as they crept down the hall, but if she was trying to tell them they were being stupid, well, they already knew that. Jaime knew that. If they got caught again . . .
But there was no one in the restoration room, either. No one alive, anyway. Faces watched them from all around the room—faces in paintings and in etchings, faces in sculptures.
“How do we know which one it is?” said Tess.
“What’s the guy’s name again?” Jaime said. “The dude in the painting?”
“William Waddell,” Theo said.
Jaime found his phone, searched images. “Got it,” he said. He glanced around the room. “There.” He pointed at a painting in the corner.
They moved closer. The first thing you noticed about the painting was the pale, thin man with the high forehead and the sunken eyes, then the way his black suit was swallowed up by the foliage and the grass around him. Next to him sat a woman in a bright orange dress, a little girl in pink perched at her feet. Two other girls, one standing, one lounging on an elbow, had those odd sorts of faces Jaime had seen on children in other old paintings, tiny middle-aged-lady faces. On the other side of the tall man was a boy in a blue coat, his dark pants also disappearing into the background. Behind the family a large stone house, almost a castle, loomed.
Theo swiped a magnifying glass off the nearest table. “Let’s see if there’s anything hidden in the painting.”
“We have to hurry,” Tess said. “We have no idea how long they’ll be outside.”
“One minute,” Theo said. But it took much longer than a minute to examine the painting, which had all kinds of detail in it—bushes and trees and grass.
“Make sure you check out all the bushes and trees, too. If I wanted to hide some kind of writing or code or whatever in this painting, that’s where I’d put it,” Jaime said.
“I don’t see anything,” said Theo.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not there,” Tess said. “Let’s flip it over.”
Carefully, they lifted the painting and turned it over. If it had once had paper backing, the backing had been removed. There was no writing on the painting.
“Nothing,” Theo said, flipping it back. “Maybe it’s not the painting, exactly. I wonder what that building is, in the background?”
Jaime allowed his eyes to drift over the sunken eyes, the tiny middle-aged-lady faces on the children, the looming castle, the trees, the bushes. Something about the painting called to Jaime, something about the way everyone was posed. Two of the children gazed off in different directions, but the wife and the son looked up at their father, as if waiting for him to speak, while the oldest daughter reclined in the grass and seemed to be staring directly at Jaime, daring him to figure it out. He looked from the reclining girl to the man, who must be William Waddell himself. Then he noticed something sticking out of William’s pocket. Some sort of book or paper.
“Here’s a question,” Jaime said. “If you were going to have your portrait painted, would you stick a random paper in your pocket like that?”