Finding the Forger Read Free

dream, right?
    Sarah grimaced, looked at her watch, sighed heavily, and looked like she was going to clam up.
    “C’mon,” I urged. “Something’s bugging you.”
    She swooped her hand toward the museum. “I told you. Something weird’s going on. My boss has been talking to a private detective agency . . . about hiring them.”
    “What for?”
    “I don’t know!”
    “Something else is bugging you. What is it?”
    Sarah looked at the door Hector had gone through.
    “I’ve overheard Fawn saying things about Hector.”
    “So?” Was I good at interrogating or what?
    “Bad things, I think.” Sarah chewed on her fingernail. “Like ‘he’s the only one who’s been around each time.’”
    “Each time what? ”
    “I don’t know!”
    Before I could ask more questions, a door opened behind her and several police officers wandered out.
    “I’ll talk to you later,” Sarah said, then disappeared into the building.
    With that unsatisfying conversation bumping around in my head, I caught the bus on Charles Street for Kerrie’s. By now, my irritation-meter was in the red zone. Sarah and I hadn’t planned much of the party, so it was a mostly wasted half hour. She’d hinted at a museum mystery, but left important details out. And now I was headed to Kerrie’s to give her equal time, when I had other, better things to do.
    Things like Christmas shopping.
    Specifically, I needed to get started on finding a gift for Doug. This would be our first Christmas as boyfriend/girlfriend, and the gift-giving scene is fraught with peril. Buy something too expensive and it looks like you’re trying to ratchet up the relationship too fast. Buy something too small and it looks like you don’t care enough. Plus, it’s hard to buy for boys to begin with. It could take weeks of shopping to get the right thing. I was already behind schedule.
    Speaking of shopping, the Dougster himself had told me after school he was headed to the mall with his mom tomorrow afternoon. That had sounded promising, and I had immediately imagined him looking at an expensive but significant piece of jewelry, or some rare perfume, or a watch, a silk scarf, a CD of love songs—and I hadn’t even begun concocting a plan for dropping hints. Butthen he’d told me he “needed some new clothes” and my hopes hit the floor with a thunderous splat.
    Luckily, I managed to snag a bus right away and landed on Kerrie’s doorstep exactly two minutes before our appointed meeting time. Her mood was considerably lighter than it had been at school earlier, which I attributed to the fact that she had the house, and me, to herself.
    Her house was in Fells Point, an area of town near the Harbor that was undergoing some urban renewal. Since her father was a lawyer and her mother a doctor, Kerrie’s house always looked . . . well, like two well-compensated professionals paid the bills.
    “I have a fantastic idea for your hair!” Kerrie shouted, brush in hand.
    Warning bells should have gone off then and there. Since when does any good come from those words—“I have a fantastic idea for your hair”? But who was I to stand in the way of friendship? Kerrie needed coddling and my hair would have to do.
    “I stopped by the drugstore on the way home,” she said, leading me upstairs. “And I got something for you.”
    The “something” turned out to be a permanent wave kit. You see, Kerrie had done my hair in some wavy style for her Halloween party, when I’d come as a flapper (costume provided by her, of course). Normally, my hair is straight as a stick and just as boring, but she had managed, through the skillful use of pin-curls and hair-spray, to turn it into a waving, curling mass of seduction.
    “I don’t know, Ker,” I said, looking at the box on her bed and removing my backpack. “That’s a perm.”
    “No, it’s not,” she said huffily. She grabbed the box and read the label. “It’s a hair curling and wave set.”
    “Same thing. Chemicals.