Chapter 12
12
The key has weight and shape, and when I bring it to my nose, I smell rusty metal. I want to laugh in amazement, cackle with glee.
I have officially blown my own mind.
Yes, I’ve put things back into their frames. But I just took an idea and made it into a thing.
A thing I need to put to use before the forger-slash-shopkeeper comes back.
Sophie’s already at the door, gesturing for me to hurry. I fit the key into the lock, and it works perfectly.
The backroom is dim but not dark, and Sophie closes the door once we’re inside. I tuck the key into my pocket and take a look around.
The room is the size of a large closet, and the faint light comes from atop a desk with a vintage green-shaded banker’s lamp that could have come from a vendor in the store. The large ornate wooden desk stands proud against one wall. A cabinet is wedged into the corner.
Sophie is off and running, foraging through papers, wax seals from various art galleries, stationery from state-run museums, invoices of sales. All the tricks of the forging trade are here. One of the drawers is full of stuff to make the papers look older, like they have a history. At least convincing enough to fool the eye.
“Floppy Hair just picked up the documents today,” says Sophie. “There has to be some evidence of what they were doing.” She stops rooting around and looks at me expectantly. “Hello? We don’t have all day. Try the trash can.”
I stoop to pick through the trash. One minute I’m creating a key from paper and pencil, and now I’m pawing through someone’s litter. “Nothing here but a few apple cores and some rubber bands.”
“There has to be something. A slip of paper, a practiced signature . . . You saw the finished documents, Julien. Find something that looks like a first draft.”
I rifle faster through the papers on the desk, then the papers in the drawers, then the papers in the filing cabinet. Nothing.
Then I catch a glimpse—a bit of paleness in the shadows. A handful of pages have slipped into the steep valley between the desk and the filing cabinet. I slide my hand along the desk legs, grab the pages, and pull them out. They’re rough copies of fakes, first attempts at forged documents. My heart springs like a jack-in-the-box.
Because this is the evidence, the proof that Max, the street artist and, it seems, the host to Renoir’s restless spirit, presented nothing but fake documents to the museum. He has no claim on the Woman Wandering in the Irises .
Sophie cocks her head like a dog alerting to a sound. Then she hisses, “Hide the papers. Put them in your trousers or something.”
“Why don’t I just put them in my bag?”
“Because someone could ask to search your bag.” She goes soundlessly to the door. “Just hurry. And think of a good lie while you’re at it.”
She opens the door while I still have my hand down the front of my jeans, making sure the folded papers won’t go anywhere awkward. “Hey!” I whisper.
“Hurry!” she hisses back.
I do, leaving the office and clicking the door shut behind me. I walk past old phonographs and stiff ballet slippers into the main path through the store, where I come face-to-face with one of the most cunning art forgers in the world.