Read Online The Mystery of the Third Lucretia by Susan Runholt - Free Book Online Page A

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.”
    â€œDo 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?”
    â€œWith 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.

14
    Bert
    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.
    Belshazzar’s Feast was at one end of the room. Gallery Guy was back and off to the left of center if you were looking at the painting. There was a bench smack in the middle of everything, and both the exit doors were close to the other end of the room. So with people coming and going the way they do in art galleries, we thought we’d go through the Rembrandt room over and over again as long as Gallery Guy didn’t turn around and notice us, and as long as we managed to fool Bert.
    Were we going to be able to do it? I wasn’t sure. My heart was pounding so hard I wondered if the two guys could hear it.
    If you were a complete stranger and didn’t know anything about who Lucas and I and the other people were, this is what you would have seen if you’d been there that afternoon.
    About a quarter past three, a young woman walked into Gallery 23. She had curly, strawberry blond hair, and was wearing a green polka-dot dress and green shoes. She didn’t use the entrance where the museum guard was standing. Instead she came in from the door on the other side of the room.
    She was studying a copy of A Room-to-Room Guide to the National Gallery that she’d bought in the gift shop, and when she came through the door her head was down as if she was busy reading. As she walked by the first few pictures, she made little notes in the book with a pencil.
    The guard never saw the face of the young woman in the green dress because somehow she always managed to have her back to him or her head down in her book. And she didn’t seem to have the slightest interest in the paintings hanging near where he was standing.
    Just outside the same entrance the girl in green had used was another young woman. She was standing where she couldn’t be seen either by the man guarding the Rembrandt room or by the man who was busy copying one of Rembrandt’s paintings. She had dark hair, wore a black skirt and crinkly white shirt, and was watching the first young woman carefully.
    She noticed that the young woman in green stood for a long time in front of a painting called Belshazzar’s Feast and slightly behind a man painting at an easel. And though the head of the girl in green was lowered as if she was really interested in her