I don’t belong here, Amy thought.
A voice rose in her head. Nellie’s voice. C’mon, kiddo. You can do it. You’re rocking the fancy threads. Work it.
Amy smiled, but she felt her heart constrict. She missed Nellie so much.
The clothes helped. Even the ridiculously large purse the saleswoman had insisted she needed. She saw similar purses on the arms of the chic women walking through the doors.
She tried not to wobble in her heels as they walked into the lobby of the auction house. It was a double-height room with ornate moldings and a gleaming floor. Ahead was a grand curving staircase and to their right was a pair of double doors. A petite woman in a black suit and many strands of large pearls welcomed them in German, but when they answered she switched to flawless English. “Welcome. I am Frau Gertler. The auction will begin in ten minutes.” She handed them a catalog. If she wondered what two teenagers were doing at an auction for Old Masters prints and paintings she gave no sign.
Dan moved closer to the woman. “I wonder if I might have a second catalog,” he said. “Papa will be joining us. By the way, those are fabulous pearls. Mummy has a set just like them, but hers are slightly larger.”
Amy nudged him. He was taking this Ian Kabra impersonation way too far. They had to blend in, not call attention to themselves.
“Thank you,” Frau Gertler said, and leaned over to grab another small stack of catalogs.
The double doors to the auction room opened, and they glimpsed a large room with rows of gilt chairs. An empty easel sat on an elevated platform. People were filing in and sitting down.
Amy’s eyes moved around the lobby. She saw now that many doors were tucked away in alcoves and underneath the stairs. Too many. Then she noted one that was marked BUROS. She knew that was German for offices. She nudged Dan and pointed to it with her chin.
A group of people walked in and were greeted by the chic woman in the black suit. While she was occupied, they pretended to stroll and admire the moldings. They backed up against the door marked BUROS.
“There’s a slot for a key card,” Amy murmured. “So I don’t think you can work your lock-picking magic.”
“That’s okay,” Dan said. “I have a key.”
“How did you get that?”
“‘Fabulous pearls. Mummy has a set just like them,’” he mimicked himself as he looked up at the moldings. Dan’s face was set in a look of concentration Amy recognized. “I knew …” She sneaked a look and saw that behind his back Dan was trying to slide the card through the slot. “… if she leaned over … for the rest of the catalogs that I could … slip it out… .”
Amy leaned back. “About a fraction to the left and up an inch,” she muttered.
Dan found the slot and slid the card in. The door opened a crack. With one last glance at the activity in the lobby, they quickly slid inside.
The door clicked shut behind them softly. Amy let out a breath.
“When did you turn into such a criminal? I didn’t even see you move!”
“There’s a fine line between criminality and genius,” Dan said. “That’s what Lightfinger Larry used to say.”
The hallway was carpeted in severe gray. Steel-framed art marched down one wall. The offices on their left all had glass walls. They could hear the murmur of voices from behind a door to the right. Amy put a finger to her lips. They tiptoed down the hallway, slipping past the empty offices. They were lucky that it was a Saturday. The glass walls gave them a sightline into offices that looked like living rooms, with sofas and easy chairs and paintings on the walls. Amy stopped short.
“I think that’s a Rembrandt,” she whispered, pointing at a small dark painting on the wall of the largest office. “Isn’t it amazing?”
“Sorry. Only one art heist a week for me,” Dan said.
They tiptoed past and kept on going. Finally at the end of the hallway, a door on the right was marked REKORDBURO. Amy nodded, and, after listening for a minute, they cautiously pushed it open. The office was empty.
“Whew,” Amy whispered after they closed the door behind them. “Lucky. I think this is where the records are kept.”
Unlike the elegant offices they’d glimpsed, this room was small and cluttered. A small desk with a fax machine was shoved in between a table and the door. The rest of the room was filled with filing cabinets. The old files could be right here.
“I don’t think they would have digitized their transactions from eighty years ago. But they should have dead files.”
Amy peered at the labels on the filing cabinets. “Bingo. These are the records from the 1950s. There are no records for the 1940s … they closed the business during World War Two … so … here!” She stopped before the last filing cabinet. “The records from the 1930s.” She opened the drawer and groaned. “This could take a while. They aren’t filed by the name of the object. It’s by date. We know it’s 1932, but we don’t know what month.” She handed Dan a hanging file. “Let’s get started. We have to get this done before the auction is over so we can leave with the crowd.”
She opened the first file. Records were kept in a tiny, neat handwriting. Amy slumped against the cabinet. “These are in German. Of course they would be.”
“It’s all right,” Dan said. “It will still say ‘de Virga.’”
She and Dan bent over the files. They had to keep the light off, so they used their penlights, flipping through paper after paper. Their eyes almost crossed trying to decipher the thin, spidery handwriting or faint typewriter ink, all written in a language they didn’t know. Occasionally, they would freeze if they heard footsteps outside. Amy’s palms were damp with nerves. If they got caught, what would they say?
Finally, just when wild goose chase was starting to dance around in Amy’s brain, Dan whispered, “Got it.”
He passed over a paper. Amy saw the words de Virga and mappa mundi.
Amy’s heartbeat speeded up. Here it was, the original notes on the auction of the antique map. “I can’t read the rest,” she murmured. “But look – there’s a list of names: ‘Prof. Otto Hummel … Jane Sperling … Marcel Maubert … Reginald Tawnley.’ And there’s a notation next to each name.”
“Doesn’t Ian speak German?” Dan asked. “Maybe we can get a good enough resolution on a photograph to send it to him.”
“Worth a try. And if he can’t translate it, he can find a Cahill who can.” Amy spread the sheet out on the floor and took a photograph with her phone. She e-mailed it to Attleboro.
A loud noise sent them shooting to their feet. Amy looked around wildly, but Dan laughed softly. “It’s just the fax machine,” he said.
“Make it stop,” Amy groaned. “Somebody might come in. We’re overstaying our welcome.”
Dan crept over to the fax machine. “I wonder if it’s somebody bidding on an Old Masterful.” He mimicked a snooty British accent. “ I say, old chap, a million for that drawing of the cow. Make that two million… .”
Amy stared down at the phone, willing it to chime an answer. When she looked up at Dan, he was staring at the fax in his hand.
“I think you’re right about overstaying our welcome,” he said. He walked over and handed her the fax.
INTERPOL MOST WANTED
AMY CAHILL DAN CAHILL
ALERT TO ART DEALERS, MUSEUMS, AUCTION HOUSES
BE ON LOOKOUT FOR TWO SUSPECTS. CONFIRMED THEFT OF CARAVAGGIO MEDUSA FROM UFFIZI. CONSIDERED TO BE PLANNING ADDITIONAL HEISTS IN EUROPE. BELIEVED TO HAVE CROSSED THE ITALIAN/SWISS BORDER. IF SPOTTED, CONTACT INTERPOL NUMBER BELOW.
“It’s from some guy named Milos Vanek,” Dan said. “He’s the detective assigned to our case, I guess.”
“Photos and descriptions,” Amy said, looking at the next sheet. “This is not good.” She stared at the photos on the paper. They were their real passport photos, so they had been taken a few years before. On the fax they were smudged and indistinct. One piece of luck, anyway. “This can’t be the only fax machine in this place. We’d better get out of here.”