10

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Salem suddenly became aware that Dr. Keller, the Mia staff member, and Bel were all watching her. Dr. Keller’s brow furrowed, his body language saying that he didn’t want to leave but was forced to. “If you don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Salem said. “Thanks for your help.”

He seemed poised to add something but unsure how to word it. Finally, duty winning out, he turned and hurried through the exhibit doorway.

Salem and Bel returned their attention to the painting.

A small group had gathered behind them to admire the Gentileschi, murmuring about the grand drama of it, the beauty, the violence. Bel leaned closer to Salem. “You move to one side, I’ll go to the other. Check for notes Vida may have hidden on it as best as you can, okay?”

Both women stepped back a few feet, and as surreptitiously as possible they eyeballed the back rim of the frame in the three inches between the wood and the wall.

Nothing jumped out.

They returned to front of the painting. Tension made Salem’s hands clammy.

“You think there’s a secret panel in the frame and that’s what Vida sent us to find?” Bel asked.

Salem crossed her arms, analyzing the gilt of the simple beveled mount. Before his death, her father had taught her everything a person could know about concealing drawers and compartments in wood. Looking back, it seemed a weird specialty for a carpenter, but her puzzling mind had loved it. She knew that if a craftsperson had hidden something in the Gentileschi frame, it would be nearly impossible to locate it without physically touching the wood.

“If there is, we’re screwed. I imagine they don’t look lightly on patrons groping the art.”

“So now what?”

“I don’t know.” Salem uncrossed her arms in frustration and felt something odd in her pocket. She reached in, tugged out the ancient spectacles.

Bel spotted what she was doing. Her face reflected an array of emotions, from amusement to desperation. “You’re going to put them on?”

“I guess,” Salem said, sliding them onto her face. “They were in the box with the note that directed us here. Nothing to lose, right?”

Bel wrinkled her nose. “You look like a super-fan in line for the latest Harry Potter movie.”

The glasses pinched Salem’s nose, and the scratches on the lens were so profound as to render them nearly blinders. Yet, her mother had left them in the balsa box for a reason. Salem blinked myopically. “I’m hoping they’re like those 3D glasses that came in our Count Chocula. Remember?”

“I remember they were supposed to let us read a secret code on the cereal box.” Bel’s brow was creased. “Mine never worked.”

“Mine either, actually.” With great effort, Salem restrained herself from glancing around to see what stares the glasses were drawing. Instead, she walked forward and peered at the lower edge of the Gentileschi, her nose almost touching it. The painting was darker than it appeared in photographs and flat, the oil paint hardly built up at all. She began systematically scanning every square inch of the canvas from left to right.

Bel stood next to her. “I will kick the ass of anyone who makes fun of you,” she hissed.

Salem’s lips twitched. She and Bel were still friends, but she worried that that had grown to mean something different, less potent, with Bel in Chicago. For all of today’s trauma, it was nice to have Bel back as her bodyguard.

After her first complete pass, Salem risked a peek behind her. People were staring. She certainly was doing a passable impression of the world’s biggest dork, swaying from side to side, nose-to-canvas, wearing a rusty pair of Coke-bottle, Ben Franklin glasses. It wouldn’t be long until security guards were called. She returned her focus to the painting and sped up her pace.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bel’s clenched hands.

Left to right. Right to left. Left to right. Right to left.

It was difficult to make out anything through the scratched lens.

Still, she continued, moving as if mounted on the track of a giant typewriter, methodically scouring the canvas’s surface. She reached the first ribbon of Holofernes’s blood on the bed, so vivid that it blazed copper even through the brutalized glasses.

She stopped—she’d spotted something. “Bel!”

“What?” Bel swiveled.

Salem peered closer. “Nothing.” She released her breath. “I thought I saw some sort of symbol. It was just a paint smudge.”

She returned to her rhythmic searching. A loud muttering erupted near the entrance, followed by silence, then more talking. A nearby walkie-talkie squawked. Salem kept surveying the painting, moving even faster if such a thing was possible.

She was operating so quickly, her heartbeat so loud, that she almost missed it.

She returned to the fringe of the blanket beneath Holofernes’s bleeding head, her pulse quickening. Had she imagined something again?

She peered closer, tipping her head. Her breath caught.

She hadn’t imagined it.

Words.

She yanked the glasses off of her face.

The words disappeared.

She slid them back on, and the words reappeared.

“Oh my god.”

Clancy Johnson studied the artwork at the far end of the Target Gallery. According to the placard, he was looking at Hildegard of Bingen’s manuscript illustration of the universe, created circa 1140–50. It reminded him of a Persian rug with a fiery vagina drawn on it.

It wasn’t really to his taste.

He’d chosen the position because it allowed him to watch the women without appearing to do so. They’d been staring at the gruesome beheading painting as if it, rather than the hoo-ha-on-a-rug, held the secrets of creation. Then the dark-haired woman, Salem Wiley, had stuck on those weird little glasses. He didn’t know how he was going to explain those.

He was unsurprised when the security guards showed up. The only question was how long until they kicked the girls out. The two stood out like sore thumbs, their agitation and fear emanating off of them like the stink clouds that followed cartoon skunks. Pepé Le Pew. Now that was some art Clancy could get behind.

He ran his hand over his thinning hair. He couldn’t blame the girls for their state, given what they’d been through in the last eight hours. Even their driving from Grace Odegaard’s apartment to the Art Institute had been erratic. He pressed the ear bud more firmly into place. It was a small bit of luck that the SIGINT materials he’d packed were identical to the audio guide headphones handed out with the exhibit.

Except his magnified sound.

He smiled as he picked up Salem Wiley’s voice.