Hidden Pictures Read online

  The three of us stood outside Emily’s door and I knocked on it. Emily had said I could stop by if I ever had any more questions for her. But I was fairly certain she hadn’t meant I could stop by this early in the morning. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet, and I wasn’t sure if she would be awake.

  To my surprise, the door opened and revealed that Emily was fully dressed. She looked nervous as she peeked out the door. But when she saw us, she breathed what appeared to be a sigh of relief.

  “Nancy!” she said, her shoulders slumping. “Sorry, I was expecting… Never mind.” She shook her head. “Come in, come in. Quickly.”

  Emily gestured us all inside. In a direct contrast to how sleepy Bess and George were, Emily seemed to be full of energy. As soon as we were all in the room, she began rushing around the small space. It took me a moment to realize that the room wasn’t just messy like it had been last time. This time, Emily was quickly packing.

  “Are you leaving?” I asked her.

  I stood in the middle of the room as Emily bustled around me. Bess and George found the only chair not covered in clothing, a cushioned one just underneath the window, and they both slumped down into it. They were practically sitting on top of each other, and they appeared to be half-asleep within seconds.

  “Well,” said Emily. “Yes. I’m leaving. Honestly, Nancy, I thought you were the police a few seconds ago, and I really can’t talk to them.”

  “Emily, wait,” I said. “Why can’t you talk to the police?”

  For a moment I wondered if Emily could be the one behind everything, the one telling Grace and Jacob what to do. But really, it just didn’t seem likely. Emily had already offered me so much information about the case and had said she’d be happy to talk to me whenever. She seemed as though she had enjoyed all the attention she’d been receiving this week, but she just didn’t seem malicious enough to stage a kidnapping and frame an innocent person.

  “There’s someone else involved in all this,” she said. Her eyes widened, as if she was surprised by her own admission. “They’d be so mad at me if I said anything. They’re already mad about Grace and Jacob getting caught by the police.”

  I felt a jolt of adrenaline running through me. I had been right about another person being involved, and Emily knew just who that other person was.

  “Emily,” I said, trying to keep my voice as steady as possible. “Who would be mad at you if you said anything to the police?”

  Emily hadn’t stopped moving since Bess, George, and I had entered the room. Now she was nearly finished packing. She looked at me as she was zipping up her suitcase and said, “No way. Sorry, Nancy, but I can’t tell you that.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do. Emily was the only lead I had, and I had no idea how to convince her to tell me anything. Perhaps Emily was actually a fairly decent person who’d gotten wrapped up in something not very decent at all.

  “Emily, please,” I said. “This is really important.” Then I remembered why she was even part of the recent events. “Jacob’s your boyfriend,” I said. “He and Grace are going to be blamed for all this unless I can figure out who else is behind those photographs.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. “Jacob is not my boyfriend,” she said. “We just go to school together. I guess the original plan was only to have Grace go missing. They thought the police would shut down the exhibit immediately. But the police just thought it was a hoax, and no one in town really cared because Grace hadn’t been here for that long and no one knew anything about her. It was easy for everyone to believe that she had just gone back to where she came from. So Jacob was going to pretend to go missing too. He hoped it would scare more people in town if they thought the curse could apply to anyone who even went near the photographs, not just the people involved in displaying them. And this time they also wanted someone to hype everyone up about it.”

  “And that’s where you came in,” I supplied.

  Emily nodded. “I’m a theater major. They needed someone who could act scared and hopefully frighten everyone in town enough that the police would be forced to act as soon as possible.”

  “Emily, why would you go along with this?” I asked. “It seems like a huge risk for you.”

  “Jacob said he could pay me,” said Emily, shrugging. “He said something about a will, and that he would have plenty of money once this was all done. I have student loans to think about, and this is sort of an acting gig, so I said yes.”

  “A will? Whose will?”

  Emily pulled her suitcase down from where it had been resting on her bed. Her hand was wrapped around the handle, and she was just about ready to leave the room and end our conversation.

  “I really can’t say anything,” she said, shaking her head. She actually did look sorry about it. “But I can give you a hint.”

  At this point, I was willing to take anything I could get. “Of course,” I said. “Anything.”

  Emily looked around, as if there was someone who could possibly overhear us. I wasn’t even sure if Bess and George were listening to us at this point, they were both so out of it.

  “The person who set all this up, they wrote their name down somewhere,” said Emily. “It’s the only trail that they’ve left, that I know of anyway.”

  “They wrote their name down?” I clarified. “Where?”

  “Have you been to the local arts and crafts store here in town?” Emily asked. “It’s run by a woman named Mrs. Park.”

  “Actually, yes,” I said, surprised at the coincidence.

  “Well, the person behind all this did a project at that store,” said Emily. “And you have to sign your name in order to make anything there. So they did.”

  At first I didn’t say anything. If Emily didn’t sound so serious while she was telling me all this, I would have thought she was joking. What did Mrs. Park and the local arts and crafts store have to do with a fake kidnapping? It just didn’t seem possible.

  Emily must have sensed my hesitation, because she began repeating herself. “Seriously, Nancy,” she said. “The arts and crafts store. Go talk to Mrs. Park. It’s really important.”

  I nodded once, to let Emily know that I believed her. I was still confused by the whole thing, but she seemed so earnest, and I wanted to convey that I did, in fact, trust her.

  “Thank you, Emily,” I said. “Really, you’ve been a big help.”

  She gave me a brief smile before pulling up the handle on her rolling suitcase. “Bye, Nancy,” she said as she walked out the door and into the hallway. “Good luck.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Hiding in Plain Sight

  AFTER EMILY HAD HURRIED AWAY down the stairs, I gently shook Bess and George awake. I told them what Emily had said, and that we had to go visit Mrs. Park and her store immediately.

  George yawned loudly and Bess shook her head.

  “Nancy, nothing in this town opens until at least nine o’clock,” said Bess. “There’s no way the arts and crafts store is open yet.”

  “Yeah,” said George. “And anyway, we all need to sleep.”

  As much as I wanted to figure out what Emily had been trying to tell me, it was pretty difficult to argue with either of them. The store probably wasn’t open yet, and I had already made Bess and George stay awake for far too long.

  “Okay, you’re both right,” I said. I held out my hands and helped them to their feet. “Let’s go back to our room. You’ve both earned a long nap.”

  Bess smiled at me gratefully. George had already trudged past me, well on her way toward her bed.

  Back in our room on the third floor, Bess and George fell into their beds without even changing their clothes. They were both asleep almost immediately, and the sound of George softly snoring filled the room.

  I lay down on my bed and tried to sleep as well, but I just couldn’t manage it. I couldn’t talk to Mrs. Park yet, or ask to see her records, but I could go through every other piece of information I had.

  I also still had Rile
y’s camera. I had taken it off when we entered our hotel room, and now it was resting on my stomach. I kept turning it over and over in my hands, wishing that the camera were digital. If it were, then I would already be able to see all the photographs I had taken at the museum. I wanted to scan them for any potential clues I had missed in the moment.

  I set Riley’s camera on the nightstand next to me. There really wasn’t any use in just holding it and wishing I could see the images inside.

  Instead I pulled out my cell phone. I still didn’t have any service, so I couldn’t do any research on the Internet. I flipped through some of my old messages. I had forgotten about everything George had sent to me yesterday morning, when we were in the local coffee shop. I opened up the files one by one, until I came to the photograph of a young Christopher DeSantos and a young Terry Lawrence, posing with their arms around each other’s shoulders.

  Now that the image was on my phone, I could zoom in and peer at all the details I hadn’t been able to see before. I remembered what Beverly had told me, that she had kept some of her grandfather’s trinkets and souvenirs from his travels. She had said that it helped her feel closer to him. Both he and Terry Lawrence were covered in pieces of jewelry and other objects that could be considered trinkets. As I focused in on Christopher DeSantos, I couldn’t help but wonder which of these items Beverly still owned.

  I swiped over to look more closely at Terry Lawrence. He had on a beaded necklace and that triangle-shaped earring I had noticed the first time I glanced at this photograph. I zoomed in as far as I could on his earring….

  I sat up and gasped. Quickly I began shaking Bess and George awake. They had only been asleep for a couple of hours, and I did feel bad about waking them up so soon. But this was just too important to wait.

  The more I shook George’s shoulder, the more she buried her face into her pillow and pretended to ignore me.

  Bess, on the other hand, managed to sit up slowly. She stretched and said, “What’s going on, Nancy?”

  “We have to go see Mrs. Park at the arts and crafts store,” I said. “Now.”

  “But why?” mumbled George, her voice muffled by the pillow.

  “I think I’ve just figured this whole thing out,” I said. “But we have to talk to Mrs. Park to be absolutely sure.”

  * * *

  After a little more coaxing, I managed to get both Bess and George awake and out the door. By the time we reached Mrs. Park’s store, she was only just opening up for the day. I watched as she bent down to prop her front door open.

  “Mrs. Park!” I called from a little ways down the street. I jogged in her direction. Bess and George, who were now much more awake and starting to grow more and more curious about what exactly I had figured out, followed closely behind.

  “Oh, hello, girls,” said Mrs. Park from behind her large glasses. “Are you here to do a project today?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “Actually, I was wondering if we could speak a bit more privately. Inside, maybe?”

  Mrs. Park seemed a little confused by this request. “Well, sure, dear,” she said anyway, turning around and walking toward her front counter. Once she reached it, she turned back around to face us and said, “What can I do for you three?”

  I wasn’t really sure what to ask. Emily had said that Mrs. Park kept records of anyone who had made a project at her store. But I was also sure that those records wouldn’t be available for just anyone to look through.

  In the end, I decided the best thing to do was just to dive in. After all, Mrs. Park had told us where Beverly DeSantos lived. It was possible she would be willing to share this information with us as well.

  “Mrs. Park,” I said, “I was wondering if we could take a look at your records. We need to find the name of someone who once made a project here. It’s very important.” At the last minute, I also decided to add, “It’s to help Beverly DeSantos.”

  Mrs. Park scrunched up her face and shook her head. “Of course I’d want to help Beverly,” she said. “But I think I’d feel strange just handing over the names of my customers like that. You understand.”

  “Please, Mrs. Park,” I tried again. “You’re the only one who can help us.”

  Mrs. Park was firm in her answer. “I just don’t think it would be right,” she said. “Sorry, dear.” She patted my shoulder kindly, sat down, and began shuffling through some of the papers lying around her work space.

  I let out a deep breath and turned back to Bess and George, feeling defeated.

  “All right, Nancy,” said Bess. “Now you have to tell us. What’s going on?”

  “Yeah,” said George. “And why couldn’t we have kept sleeping for a few more hours?”

  I nodded. My friends were right: they deserved to know what was going on.

  First I walked over to the dog plates hanging on Mrs. Park’s wall. “Emily said this store was important, right?” I began. “And that whoever was behind this did a project here. Well, I actually think they did three projects here.”

  Bess and George stepped closer and looked at the plates. For a moment, they didn’t seem to understand what I was trying to tell them. But eventually Bess’s eyes lit up.

  “Oh!” said Bess. “You think that whoever is behind this imprinted the modern-day images onto the DeSantos photographs in the same way Mrs. Park makes her plates.”

  “Exactly,” I said. George stepped forward and ran her fingers over the images on the plates as I explained a bit more. “I looked it up, and it’s an easy enough process. You just cover the photograph with a certain type of glue, and the image transfers to the glue. When it dries, you carefully remove any paper on the back of the photo, and you have what’s essentially a decal, which you can stick on any surface.”

  “But Nancy,” said George, “how would anyone manage to sneak one of the DeSantos photographs out of the museum? Wouldn’t Susan notice that a piece of her exhibit was missing? Or wouldn’t Mrs. Park realize there was a priceless piece of art in her store?”

  The three of us looked in Mrs. Park’s direction. She had lifted up her glasses and was squinting at a piece of paper in her hands. She was clearly having trouble seeing it well enough to actually read it.

  “Okay, maybe she wouldn’t have noticed,” conceded George. “But still, getting one of those photographs out of the museum would be really difficult.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think the photographs ever left the museum,” I said. “Whoever did all this could have just stuck the picture of me or Grace or Jacob on any piece of glass. As long as it was the same size as the photograph’s picture frame, they could just sneak into the museum at night and switch out the pieces of glass.”

  “Isn’t there a lock on each of the picture frames, though?” asked Bess. “How would whoever was doing this know those combinations?”

  “My guess is the combination on the picture frames is the same one Susan uses for the museum’s doors,” I said. “Whoever knew that combination could mess with any of the photographs they wanted.”

  “So it has to be someone with that combination,” said George. “It has to be Susan, Beverly DeSantos, or Grace. But how do we know which one?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I don’t think it was any of them. Grace knew the combination, so she could have just told whoever she was working with.”

  “So it could still be anyone,” said George, looking frustrated.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think I know who it is. And it was something Bess said that first made me suspicious of this person.”

  “Me?” said Bess. “What did I say?”

  “Remember last night, when we were in the museum and you and I were looking at that photograph of a bird about to take flight?”

  Bess nodded.

  “You told me that Lucas said that photograph was a moment of pure luck,” I continued. “I suppose he could have just read that somewhere, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he had learned it somewhere else. And then, while you w
ere both sleeping, I looked at that old photograph of Terry Lawrence and Christopher DeSantos. The one you found, George, before their big falling-out. And look…”

  I pulled out my phone and quickly found the image I was talking about. I once again zoomed in as much as possible on Terry Lawrence and his triangle-shaped earring.

  “Look familiar?” I asked them.

  At first Bess just shook her head. George looked similarly stumped by my question. But then Bess’s jaw dropped open and she said, “His earring is a shark tooth!”

  I smiled at her. “Exactly,” I said.

  “A shark tooth?” asked George, grabbing my phone and bringing it as close to her face as she could manage. “What does that mean? What am I missing here?”

  “Not just any shark tooth,” I said. “It’s one we’ve all seen before. Because now, Lucas wears it as a necklace.”

  George looked up, eyes wide, from where she was staring at my phone.

  “When I visited Beverly DeSantos,” I continued, “she told me that she keeps trinkets from her grandfather in order to feel closer to him. What if Lucas does the same thing?”

  “Because Lucas is Terry Lawrence’s grandson?” asked Bess tentatively.

  I nodded, glad that my friends were thinking along the same lines that I was. “Remember that obituary we read for Terry Lawrence?” I said. “It said he had three grandchildren.”

  “Lucas, Grace, and Jacob,” said George slowly. “You’re saying that they planned this whole thing together because they’re Terry Lawrence’s grandchildren?”

  “I think so,” I said. “Emily told us that Jacob said he could pay her once this was all over, with the money he would get from someone’s will. Maybe there was something in Terry Lawrence’s will about keeping the idea of the curse alive.”

  “Plus,” said Bess, “Lucas was the only one here in town who immediately knew who you were, Nancy. He said that he’d read about you solving cases before. So he probably knew that you were here to solve this case from the moment he saw you. It could explain why he was so eager to be friends with us.”