The Mastermind Plot (14 page)

The insult hit like a brick. “My uncle?”

I ignored the girls around us, all stopping to watch our spat. Adele raised her voice just enough so that everyone could listen in easily.

“There's only room for one ego around here, isn't that right?”

Ego? I didn't have an out-of-control ego! I just had a gigantic secret.

“That's not it at all, Adele.”

She charged past me again, heading back toward the academy doors. “You'll find an invitation to my house
tonight when you get home. You can ignore it and tell your grandmother I've changed my mind.”

Adele stormed inside, leaving me frazzled by the whirlwind of misunderstanding. I hadn't even been able to ask her to go with me to Varden Street. It looked like I was on my own after all, just as Adele assumed I wanted it.

I
WASN'T THE ONLY PERSON INSIDE
M
R
.
Dashner's shop. Someone I presumed was Mr. Dashner himself and a uniformed police officer were standing in the back of the shop, engaged in a hushed discussion. Unfinished frames hung from pegs on the walls, cloth-draped paintings sat propped against one another on the floor, and a thick metal safe door built into one of the walls was propped open. I hovered near the front door, thinking to slip out quickly, when the officer lifted his head and made eye contact with me.

I hadn't seen this officer before, I didn't think. He didn't seem to recognize me, either, and went back to writing on a small pad of paper. Mr. Dashner gestured wildly with his hands — both of which were mottled by a bright red rash. He took notice of me.

“I'll be with you in a moment, miss,” he said, and
then turned back to the officer, saying, “It was the only thing taken. I'm sure of it.”

The officer nodded, finished writing, and closed up his notebook.

“I'll ask around. See if anyone saw something suspicious.”

Mr. Dashner thanked him, but as he walked the officer to the door, he looked like he might faint. His skin had a yellow pallor and a sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. And peeking out from his band collar was a rash of red boils.

“I'm sorry to keep you waiting,” Mr. Dashner said to me once the officer had left. He pulled out a handkerchief and blotted at his forehead.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

“No. I'm afraid it's not.” He shuffled back toward the shop's work space, and leaned against the open safe door once he got there. “I'm ruined.”

I walked after him. “Ruined? How do you mean?”

He closed the safe door and spun the dial. “I was robbed last night. Someone broke into my safe and took a painting that belongs to one of my most important clients.”

The smell of glue, paint, and new wood suddenly made my stomach churn. I wanted to ask if the client
was Xavier Horne, but couldn't. If it was, Mr. Dashner would question how I'd guessed right off the top of my head.

“Was it an expensive painting?” I asked instead.

Mr. Dashner rubbed his hands together fretfully, then scratched at the bumpy red rash covering them.

“Yes. Very. A Cézanne.”

It
was
Mr. Horne's painting. Mr. Dashner had told the police officer that nothing else had been taken. So the Cézanne had been the sole object of desire. That painting was the only warehouse-stored artwork that had not been moved to either Dr. Philbrick's or Detective Grogan's homes — and now even that was gone. That meant five paintings had been stolen and eleven had been supposedly burned. Sixteen in all.
Sixteen.

Perhaps being inside a frame shop made it easy for me to recall the significance of that number. Signor Periggi had constructed eleven frames for his client, but hadn't he said that the original order had been for sixteen? Without caring what Mr. Dashner might have thought of it, I brought out my notebook and flipped back to the page with Periggi's information. Yes, he'd said
sedici
— sixteen. So eleven frames constructed, and eleven paintings burned. Five frames canceled, and five paintings stolen instead of destroyed. And those
five had been removed from the warehouses after the fires. After Periggi had received his original order for a full sixteen.

It wasn't a coincidence. I didn't believe in them. Had the thief hired Signor Periggi to reconstruct the frames, only to then change the order when it became clear they wouldn't be in the warehouses any longer? But then why had there only been cancellations for the Cézanne, and the four pieces brought to Dr. Philbrick's? Why hadn't there been a cancellation for the six destroyed in Detective Grogan's house fire? Why hadn't those other places — Dr. Philbrick's home and Mr. Dashner's shop — been set ablaze?

Mr. Dashner grimaced at his hands, still scratching.

“How did you get the rash?” I asked. He hadn't yet asked me what I wanted. I would take advantage of his distraction for as long as I could.

He held them up to inspect the angry red patches, then shoved them into his pockets.

“I've been away in the Berkshires on a fly-fishing trip. I had the misfortune of falling into a patch of poison ivy.” He shook his head and then scratched at one of the many welts on his neck.

“I'm sorry,” I said, more confused than before. How could he be the culprit if he hadn't even been in Boston? Unless he'd had a partner in crime.

“Forgive me,” he said. “May I help you with something?”

I'd planned on using the “present for my grandmother” story again, but with this new development, I wasn't sure of the point. It seemed Mr. Dashner had indeed been on holiday, plagued by bad luck and poison ivy, and it did look like he was devastated by the theft.

“No, it's nothing. I can come back another time when things are more … settled,” I said, backing up toward the door.

He didn't try to stop me. Instead, he mopped his face again with his handkerchief and mumbled to himself as I shut the door behind me. I walked back into the slanting rain to Grandmother's carriage. Mr. Dashner very well
could
have been filing a false theft report. He
could
have had a partner, allowing him to conveniently be in the Berkshires during the last fire. But if there was a connection to the order for sixteen frames from Signor Periggi, that put Mr. Dashner even farther down the possibilities list. Why would a framer hire another framer to construct decoy frames?

If it wasn't Dashner, then who was it? I didn't want to consider Matthew Leighton. Still, it couldn't be avoided.

I arrived back at 224 Knight Street and found
Grandmother eagerly waiting to tell me that I'd had two invitations arrive during the day. I already knew about the one from Adele. The other was an invitation to a last-minute bon voyage dinner for Hannah Grogan at the Copley Square Hotel that night.

“Bon voyage? Where is she going?” I gave the rectangular vellum card back to Grandmother as Bertie stripped off my cloak and brought it to dry by the hearth.

“She has family in Paris who want her to stay with them for the time being.” Grandmother set the invitation on the mantel. “You're in high demand this evening, it seems. Tell me, which will it be, June Street or the Copley?”

I hadn't yet told Grandmother that Adele had
dis
invited me. I sat heavily on the sofa. Grandmother misinterpreted it.

“I would imagine you'd rather avoid your uncle,” she said, and took a seat beside me. “I don't mean to make excuses for his behavior yesterday, but Zanna, Bruce has never lost a partner before. We have to give him a little room for anger.”

My blood hummed in my veins, ready to boil. “Even if that means letting him arrest the wrong person?”

He'd done it before, in Loch Harbor when he'd arrested my friend Isaac Quimby based on evidence that had obviously been planted. He'd do it again to
close a case to his personal satisfaction. How many other cases had he closed this way? I didn't want to know.

“Matthew Leighton should not be here in Boston,” Grandmother said, her voice terse. “He knew to stay away. It was part of their agreement.”

“And he did stay away. He slipped off the face of the earth for thirteen years. What if he truly has kept his word? What if he makes an honest living now?”

Grandmother looked at me with plain-as-day pity. First, Adele had rejected me in front of the entire academy, and now Grandmother thought I was naive. I couldn't handle any more shame. I shot up from the sofa.

“Maybe I'll just stay here tonight,” I said.

Grandmother followed me and got to her feet. “I didn't mean to upset you, Zanna. Oh, if only you'd never had to learn about Matthew Leighton at all! I just don't understand how he knew you were coming. It was as if he knew to expect you.”

Grandmother's pale face had turned waxy. She took out her fan and beat the ruffles madly. Spotting the warning signs of another attack, I quickly worked to calm her.

“I'm not upset, Grandmother. I'm glad I know about him. Just like I'm glad I came to Boston.”

I hoped it didn't sound like too much of a sugar coating. But I certainly didn't want Dr. Philbrick to pay us a visit today. I hadn't seen him since we'd bumped into each other outside Signor Periggi's frame shop. My worry for Grandmother came to a halt as I recalled how Dr. Philbrick's hand had reached out for the knob to Periggi's shop. Twice.

I'd passed it off as his being flustered over the memory of Detective Grogan's burned remains. Dr. Philbrick
was
an art collector, a friend of Mr. Horne's, and perhaps a patron of Periggi's. And not only had four of the (possibly) canceled frames been stolen from his house, but Periggi had said the person who'd ordered the frames had been extremely picky in his orders. Dr. Philbrick fit that bill nicely. Could he have ordered the custom frames?

The wind from Grandmother's beating fan brought me back to the parlor.

“Do you think maybe you could drop me off at Adele's tonight?”

I wasn't sure if going to Adele's was a good idea, but perhaps I could distract her with my half-formed theories about Dr. Philbrick. Adele
had
seemed suspicious of him to begin with.

Grandmother's fan slowed. “Of course. I'm sure Hannah will understand, and she won't want for
dinner guests. Bruce, Katherine, Will, and a good number of the police force will be there. I daresay Boston will have to be on its best behavior tonight.” She slid her ruffled fan shut. “The police will be quite distracted.”

She stood up. “Be ready in an hour. And bring your needlepoint. Perhaps Adele can help you with your stitches.”

She rang for Bertie and shuffled out of the front parlor. I'd make her happy and bring my sad-looking needlepoint. But with these new thoughts regarding Dr. Philbrick, I highly doubted Adele and I would be discussing stitches and thread tonight.

The carriage had barely stopped rolling up to the front steps of Adele's house when I leaped out and started to shut the door behind me.

“It's all right, Grandmother, I can go in alone. You'll be late for dinner as it is.” I felt only slightly guilty that I'd dawdled getting ready just to be sure of it.

“I'll at least wait until the butler sees you in,” she said. Perfect! This way she wouldn't witness Adele's sour expression when she saw that I'd arrived uninvited.

The butler opened the door and I gave Grandmother a pert wave. She waved back, but through the glass I
thought I could see her pursed lips twitched to the side and one of her thin eyebrows arched. She knew I was up to something. Not so perfect.

Still, her carriage drove away and the butler let me in, telling me to wait while he fetched Miss Adele. I shivered with anxiety as I waited, the house feeling big and quiet all around me.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice drifted from the top of the curved stairwell. Adele descended, one hand on the polished railing. “I said you could ignore the invitation.”

I pushed my shoulders back and recalled a Detective Rule about showing unwavering certainty even when in extreme doubt.

“I didn't come to socialize,” I replied, my tone just as frosty as hers. “I came to discuss our
assignment
.”

I hoped she understood my hidden meaning. Her butler stood just off to the side, waiting and listening.

She stopped on the bottom step. “Funny. I thought you said you'd be doing that assignment
solo
.”

The butler flicked his eyes, trained to display only a lack of interest in me.

“I know, but I ended up finding so much information, I thought it might be better if I worked with someone.”

Adele perked at this. “Did you?”

Her butler cleared his throat, apparently tired of our preamble. Honestly, so was I. Talking in code wasn't as fun as I always thought it would be.

“Shall I have Beatrice prepare a second supper to be sent up before I leave for the evening, Miss Adele?”

She waited an uncomfortable moment before replying. “I suppose so. Thank you, Gerald. Good night.” She turned to go back up the steps and said to me from over her shoulder, “Come on, then.”

She led me up to the second floor and down a short hallway.

“Where's your father?” I asked.

Adele hooked a left into a room. “The Copley. Hannah Grogan's having a —”

“Bon voyage dinner. I know. I was invited, too. But I told my grandmother I'd rather come here.”

I followed her into the room. It was perfect: small, filled with books, large windows, and art on the walls and on stands around the room.

Adele got to the point quickly. “So what's this new information you suddenly have the urge to share with me? And it better be something substantial. I'll know if you try to feed me a bunch of fluff.”