34
Surprise Inside!
At 1:30, Aria paced back and forth inside her mom’s house, the news blaring on the television. She checked her phone at 1:31 and 10 seconds, and then 24 seconds, and then 45. Nothing from Noel. She peered out the window for the zillionth time, but of course Noel wasn’t walking up the front steps. She’d already cruised around Rosewood and Hollis, as if he’d just be strolling up and down Lancaster Avenue or walking on the Hollis Great Lawn without a care in the world.
He’s with Ali now, she thought. But something in her brain still fought against it. Noel loved her. She could feel it. When he said he loved Ali last night, he’d been confused. He was holding on to something that wasn’t there, just like Emily had. He hadn’t helped her. He hadn’t colluded with her. This was a mistake.
But he admitted it, she thought. He’s lied and cheated and killed for her. Facts are facts.
She picked up an Icelandic horse–shaped paperweight from the end table and considered hurling it at the TV screen, but suddenly something caught her eye. Multiple hoaxes in art theft case, said a headline.
Horrifyingly, The Starry Night appeared on the screen. “There has been a frantic search to recover the study for The Starry Night, which was stolen from a chateau outside Reykjavik, Iceland, last year,” said a reporter. “Baroness Brennan, who is handling the estate while Baron Brennan recovers from a long illness, recently had the painting insured for twenty million dollars, and thankfully, the insurance company won’t have to pay out. The painting was recovered about an hour ago, and we’re just getting news of it now.”
The paperweight dropped into Aria’s lap. Her mouth went dry.
A shot of a few men wearing police uniforms walking into a quintessential Reykjavik row house appeared on the screen. “Even though there were rumors that the painting had made it to the United States, authorities tracked down the study in a basement in Reykjavik. Baroness Brennan identified it immediately, and the painting is now safe and sound back in her home.”
The image on the screen switched to a gray-haired woman in a fur coat standing in front of the very chateau Aria had broken into. Aria leaned forward as if sitting closer to the TV would reveal a different picture. If the study painting had been recovered in Iceland, then what was the painting in her closet?
She ran upstairs, pulled open her closet door, and unfurled the canvas. The Van Gogh stars twinkled. The drip-castle spires made dark shapes against the bright sky. It looked just like the study painting she’d seen on TV. Then she grabbed the Van Gogh art book she’d brought home from the library to use for the prom decorations and opened to the Starry Night spread. As she compared the two side-by-side, the colors in Aria’s painting suddenly looked a little . . . different. The whirls weren’t as whirly. The brushstrokes were choppier, less calculated. From afar, glanced at quickly, it looked utterly believable, but up close, it was kind of a mess.
The painting was a fake. Aria wasn’t going to get in trouble for it. Fuji couldn’t arrest her. It was possible Fuji wasn’t even after her now that the real painting had been found. A had done all this to scare her.
What other lies had A been telling?
Aria headed back downstairs in a daze, eager to call the others and tell them the news. Something else on TV caught her eye. She looked up, her heart in her throat once more. Was that Olaf?
The anchor’s face was large on the screen. “The painting was among an older woman’s things, though she has no memory of how it might have gotten there. Ms. Greta Eggertsdottir, age sixty-six, is a landlord, and says she has many tenants going in and out of the row house on a monthly basis, so it’s probable one of them brought the painting and left it in the basement. When shown a picture of Olaf Gundersson, the alleged thief who stole it from Baroness Brennan’s estate, Ms. Eggertsdottir was quite sure she recognized him. Mr. Gundersson was reported missing after an alleged attack in January, though authorities now believe that might have been a hoax. The hunt is on for Mr. Gundersson, but there are no leads so far as to where he might be.”
Aria sank down to the couch. This story was getting more and more bizarre. So Olaf had faked his attack? It made sense, sort of—maybe he’d realized the cops were on to him and needed a way to escape. And maybe A saw the article and pounced on the opportunity, never trekking to Iceland and stealing the painting at all. It had been a lucky break for A . . . though not for Aria.
Her phone bleated. She squealed and stared at the screen. Hanna. “Did you just see the news?” Aria cried.
“No . . .” There was a swishing sound on the other end; it sounded like Hanna was driving. “But you’ve got to meet me. Something weird is going on.”
“Something weird is definitely going on.” Aria gripped the phone hard. “That painting from Iceland is a fake—which means the police have nothing on us. And even weirder? Olaf isn’t dead. He faked the whole attack. I just saw it all on CNN.”
The line crackled. “Huh,” Hanna said. “So you think A just caught wind of the story, used it to her advantage, and forged the painting?”
“Yeah.” Aria stared blankly out the window at the birdhouse her mom had carved last year. “It means we can go to the police right this second and not worry about being in trouble. Even if A brings up Jamaica, we still wouldn’t be punished in the same way we would have been if the painting was a real Van Gogh.” She cleared her throat, feeling a pull in her chest. “Not that I want to go to the police.” She couldn’t bear the thought of the police going after Noel. Or maybe she could. She didn’t know.