12

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Fear. If her dad had been right, that’s what had motivated her mother to hide her instructions in a cipher, which led Salem to this message hidden in Judith Slaying Holofernes.

But what level of fear would send her mom to these lengths?

“Amazing!” Bel barked.

Salem snapped her mouth shut, puzzled. Then, she caught the shadow of the security guard closing in on them. She yanked off the glasses and stuffed them in her pocket.

“It really is!” Salem nodded energetically. If they hadn’t been drawing attention before, they certainly were now. “A real work of art, this Gentileschi. Ladies are doing it for themselves.”

Bel grabbed her arm and steered her toward the door, marching right through the guards. They didn’t speak again until they reached the bathroom.

Bel spun her around. “What did you see?” she demanded.

Salem pointed at the glasses in her pocket, her voice disbelieving. “The spectacles must be some kind of moiré device. They showed up a pattern in the blanket’s fringe.”

“Moray device? Like the eel?” Bel stepped away to peek under the stalls. Finding them all empty, she pulled Salem away from the door.

“Close—moiré. I know it from math, but the principle works on cloth, or canvas, I suppose.”

Bel waited, eyes trained over Salem’s shoulder, toward the entrance. At 5'11", she was over half a foot taller than Salem and nearly the same weight. She carried hers lightly, on the balls of her feet, ready to pounce on anyone who entered.

Salem massaged her nose where the glasses had left a mark. “It’s when you have one lined pattern, and then you slightly rotate a second lined pattern on top of it. If you have something that mimics the initial lined pattern, like etched glass”—she tugged the glasses out of her pocket and held them up—“it essentially renders the first pattern invisible. Only the lines of the second pattern can be seen. They can be shapes or words.”

“And in this case … ”

“Words!” Salem said triumphantly.

Bel was used to how Salem’s brain worked. “And they said … ?”

“I could only read a little bit at a time, but I think I got it all before the security guard came over.” Salem spoke the words into her phone loud enough for Bel to hear. “We need a translation of Il cuore della prima chiesa nel nuovo mondo.”

“Is that Italian?” Bel asked. “What’s it mean?”

Siri’s robotic voice answered: “The heart of the first church in the new world.”