The Mystery of the Third Lucretia (7 page)

Then I came up with an idea. I don't want to brag, but I think it was pretty brilliant.

Disguises.

Even after we'd weeded out the clothes Camellia had bought, we still had enough clothes to disguise ourselves as most of the Justin Timberlake fans from an average ninth-grade class. Plus there was that whole three-section bag full of cosmetics.

What's more, Camellia had provided us with the perfect excuse to use them all.

I waited until Lucas had stopped telling Mom about what they had on the McDonald's menu.

“You know, one thing we haven't done yet is to get any pictures of Lucas in those clothes Camellia wanted her to wear. Maybe we should take a couple of outfits along tomorrow, and after we've finished at the British Museum”—I kicked Lucas under the table—“we could go get some shots at Trafalgar Square. We could take the tube and bus back to Robert's when we're done.”

“Sounds okay to me.” Relief, relief, she didn't expect us to stay with her all day long. “But where would you change?”

“We could change in the museum bathroom where we went this afternoon. It's way in the back, in the part of the building where they have classes. We went twice and there wasn't anybody else around either time.” This was absolutely true, and what was
really
great was that this quiet little bathroom was close to the Rembrandt room.

“Well, okay, but you're going to have to make a list of everything you have along so you don't forget anything.”

Lucas hadn't said a word during all of this, but I'd seen by her expression that she'd at least half figured out what I had in mind about the disguises. When mom went off to the restroom, I explained it all.

“Is it brilliant, or what?” I said when I'd finished explaining.

“Definitely brilliant,” she answered.

Then, folding her hands and looking toward heaven, she said, “Blessings upon thee, O Camellia. God, I take back everything bad I've ever said about my mother.”

She looked down, then looked back up again. “Well, maybe not quite everything.”

There was just one more thing that happened in the restaurant that turned out to be important later. Before we left, Celia dropped in to join us, and somebody else took over behind the bar so Robert could come sit at our table.

It's always fun when Robert and Celia are around. Celia's cool, and when we're with her we all like to tease Robert, who teases us right back.

So when Celia saw Robert walking over to our table, she whispered to us, “After a few minutes, ask Robert if he's ever had a part in a movie. And keep asking him until he tells you about his lines.”

A little while after he sat down, Lucas said, sounding casual, “Have you ever been in a movie, Robert?”

“Once,” he said. “Thing called Streets of Fear. Yes, I remember it well. Didn't go very far. Should have done better, what with me having a speaking role.”

“What did you play?” I asked.

“A young tough,” Robert said. “Black leather jacket, a spiderweb tattooed on one cheek.”

“So what did you say in the movie?” Lucas asked.

“I'm not sure I can remember. . . .”

“Oh, Robert,” Celia said, sounding innocent, “I'm sure you can remember all your lines. In fact, Ican even remember all your lines. Why don't you tell these sweet girls?”

“Sweet girls my . . . backside. Bunch of ruddy females,” he muttered, looking at the four of us. “Okay, you want to know my part, I'll tell you. I said, ‘Watchit, Dad.'”

Lucas and I waited. Finally Lucas said, “That's all?”

“Whad'ya mean, that's all? It was an important line, and I delivered it with sensitivity.”

Lucas and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes.

“See, I was this young bast—this young ne'er-do-well racing through the streets of London on a motorcycle, and I ran over an old bloke who couldn't get out of my way, and as he lay dying on the street I looked down on him and said, ‘Watchit, Dad.'”

“Was the man really your dad? In the movie, I mean?” I asked.

“Naaow.” (That's how Robert says no.) “See, in England, young people without manners, like you lot, call older blokes ‘Dad,' the way the posh crowd might call them ‘Sir.'”

I leaned toward him and shoved him with my elbow. “Watchit, Dad,” I said.

“You can't even say it right.” So for a few minutes Robert taught Lucas and me how to say “Watchit, Dad,” as if we were East Enders, with Celia shaking her head the whole time.

“With that phrase and a black leather jacket, you'll pass for a Londoner anytime,” Robert said. “Specially if you hang a ring through your eyebrow.”

As it turned out, two days later, one of us did just that.

The same kind of thing that had happened at the restaurant happened again the next morning. We'd thought being in the British Museum with Mom would be a real bummer, and we just wanted to get it over with. But it turned out to be pretty good.

The big thing was that we were dressed in some of the new clothes Camellia had bought. My outfit was the black skirt and the crinkly white blouse with the big cuffs. Having a new outfit always makes me feel special.

Even Lucas seemed to like wearing her green polka-dot dress. A person couldn't help noticing again that it was a perfect color for her. And because she knew she looked good in it, she looked even better, if you know what I mean.

We were dressed up because we were going to have our pictures taken for the magazine. That meant we also had to get all made up by Mom, and that was also cool. Mom said if she'd thought about having us in the pictures ahead of time, she would have gotten a professional makeup artist, and that would have really been fun, but since they weren't going to be close-up shots, it didn't have to be a perfect job. After Mom was finished with us, we were wearing more makeup than either of us had ever worn in our lives. We even had on eyebrow pencil and lip liner. We both looked very grown-up and sophisticated, or at least I thought so.

The museum itself was another reason why we ended up having a good morning. Of all the museums I've seen so far, the British Museum is my favorite. Lucas loves it, too. They have Viking stuff, ancient jewelry from almost everywhere you can think of, probably the best collection of coins in the whole world, and room after room of things British explorers brought back from Egypt. And that's only about one-millionth of what they have.

That morning it was especially exciting because we were there before opening time and had it all to ourselves.

We had to pose in the big room with the Parthenon Sculptures, which are beautiful statues and wall carvings of gods and goddesses that some English guy took away from the ruins of a famous temple in Athens, Greece. Mom especially wanted to write a story about it because I guess the Greeks want all the statues back, and there's a big fight about it.

It's funny how being almost alone in that room made me feel. When I'd been crowded in there with enough tourists to about populate the entire state of Ohio, the statues and carvings were just interesting things to look at for a while before we went into another room to look at a few more things.

But now that there were way more gods and goddesses than there were people, the statues seemed different. All of a sudden I realized they'd been around for centuries and centuries, and they'd still be there after I died, and after my children and grandchildren and great-great-great-grandchildren died. They're permanent, and we're all only temporary. It was a weird feeling, but it made me glad I'd decided to be an archeologist when I grow up. Uncle Geoff says that's the kind of feeling he gets when he finds something old, and that's what archeology is all about.

Anyway, we posed for a while, which was mostly boring and made us feel silly, especially when ten o'clock came and tourists started pouring into the room. Then we went through the museum with just Mom and the photographer and pointed out our other favorite things. Every place we went, we had to say why we liked what we were showing them, and Mom recorded what we said and took notes to use when she wrote the article.

Then it was lunchtime. And finally, at exactly 1:50, we were free.

We didn't waste any time. We grabbed the bags we'd packed with our extra clothes, raced across this little park to the tube station, hopped on the next train, and ended up at the entrance to the National Gallery at 2:19. We'd probably set a new speed record.

 

 

We were feeling really good about this until we walked into the museum. That's where the problems started.

First a guard stopped us and wouldn't let us in with our backpacks. They want everybody to leave their big bags in the cloakroom before they go in to see the paintings.

I'd never thought of that, and I thought this meant we were completely meeped. But leave it to Lucas. She said, “We're here to take a class. I think we came in the wrong door. You can look—all we have in our bags is clothes. It's a class in fashion drawing.” She gestured with her head to where I was standing. “I'm going to draw her in some different outfits, and she's going to draw me.”

I held my breath. But the guard said, “I'll take a look, if you don't mind.”

He opened both bags, dug around, and finally came up with the expensive digital camera Lucas's parents had given her for the trip. “No cameras.”

Lucas and I looked at each other. We were going to use it to take pictures of Gallery Guy and whatever he was doing. There went our entire plan.

The guard must have thought we were upset because we didn't know what to do with our camera while we were in class. “You can still go in,” he said. “Put your clothing in one of your bags and I'll let you take that one in. But you'll have to put the camera in the other bag and leave it in the cloakroom.”

“Okay.” Lucas sounded as discouraged as I felt.

“You know where you're going when you're done checking your bag?”

We nodded.

“Next time, use the education entrance around the other side. More convenient for you.”

“I can't believe you got by with that,” I said when we left the guard. “How did you know they'd be giving classes in fashion drawing?”

“I didn't.” Lucas flopped her backpack onto an empty bench and sat down next to it. “I just figured the guards are in a different department from education, and they probably wouldn't know anything about the classes. Basically we lucked out.” Nerves of steel, I tell you.

“What are we going to do without the camera?” She looked at me and I looked at her. For once she didn't have a suggestion.

I sighed. “I guess we'll think of something.”

 

 

Eventually we got to the deserted women's room practically just downstairs from the Rembrandt room. There wasn't much counter space, so we piled our stuff in one of the sinks. “How different do you think I look?” Lucas said. We were excited again, and this was maybe the seventeenth time one of us had said this.

The day before, when we'd first visited the Rembrandt room, Lucas and I had both been wearing jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts. Lucas had been wearing her glasses—surprise, surprise—and had her hair up in a scrunchy. She'd looked fourteen. Now, in her dress, her contacts, and all the makeup, I thought she looked eighteen, at least. Maybe even twenty.

“You know, the good thing about that dress,” I said, not actually answering her question, because I'd already answered it a bunch of times that day, “is that it makes you look all feminine and, uh . . .”

“Kind of harmless, you mean.”

“Right. Now if you can just keep your eyes closed, so Gallery Guy doesn't see that you're really a lion inside.”

“Just call me Simba.
Rrrraaah
.”

“Simba needs some blush.”

“I think I look way younger than you,” Lucas said while she put blush on her cheeks with the big, expensive brush Camellia had sent along. “I can't believe how old you look.”

I'd pulled my hair back into a smooth ponytail and put on some little pearl earrings.

Lucas said, “You look like a girl who just graduated from college and has her first job in some ritzy company.”

“Do you think Gallery Guy will think I look like somebody who has a job, or will he just think I look like a fourteen-year-old wearing too much makeup?”

“With any luck he won't notice you. Don't be nervous. What's he going to do if he does notice us? Track us out of the museum and push us in front of a bus?”

She meant it to sound sarcastic. But when she said it, I suddenly felt afraid. Maybe it was a premonition.

There Gallery Guy was, sitting where he'd been sitting the day before, bent over whatever he was copying from Belshazzar's Feast but looking around him every once in a while like it was the most natural thing in the world. There Lucas and I were in the doorway between Gallery 23, what we called the Rembrandt room, and Gallery 24.

A few minutes before, Lucas had figured out what we could use to substitute for the camera, and now we were totally prepared, with our new clothes and makeup and hairdos making us look nothing like we'd looked the day before.

And there, standing almost directly across from us between the Rembrandt room and the entrance to Gallery 22, was the guard, Bert. We found out the next day that that was his name, when one of the other guards walked by him and said, “Afternoon, Bert.” But I might as well call him by his name right to begin with.