Wanted: VanGogh's Sketchbook

Lilly, fumbled for her keys to lock her apt. door as she rushed to leave. She didn’t want to be late, as she had been working at the Hanaford Museum in New York in the conservation department.

She shared an apt. with, Jasmine, her college roommate who was sleeping in.

When she arrived to work, she walked briskly to the elevator on the first floor of the museum to take it down to the basement.

“Good morning, Miss Lilly” her friend Lorenzo said cheerfully. They had hit it off her first day. He worked in the curatorial department as an assistant.

“Good morning, Lorenzo, how was your weekend?” They chatted as they rode the elevator together.

“See you at lunch?” He asked, walking the opposite direction down the long hallway.

“Sure thing” she smiled, grateful to have the camaraderie in the serious environment.

She hung up her coat and placed her bag and purse in her metal locker.

“Good morning, Lilly. Let’s get started, as we have a lot of work to do before the exhibit opens next month” her manager said in a strong German accent.

“Yes, Ms. Haas.” She followed Julia in to the climate controlled room. Julia used her badge to enter the room. A door buzzed open and they both went it. It felt cooler, but perhaps because it was colder outside.

“Ms. Haas, do you mind if I go back to my locker and get my sweater. It seems a bit cooler than usual.”

“Sure, but don’t bummeln.” Which Lily had learned meant dilly dally.

Lilly briskly went back to her locker and remembered she had checked out several sketchbooks over the weekend she needed to return. The basement had multiple rooms of master artist artifacts and one room solely for their sketchbooks.

Lilly grabbed the two sketch books and went to the sketch room to return them on the shelves. That’s weird, she thought. The notebook on the shelf next to hers didn’t have a catalog number on it. It was a little black book. She opened it and there were no sketches in it. Did someone switch out the original and place this one in its place? Security was fairly strong in the museum but it would be easy to sneak out. There weren’t any cameras in the sketch room. It wasn’t in the budget to have cameras in each room.

Her mind started racing. She would come back over her lunch hour and ask the staff questions. She wanted to stay longer but Julia had asked her not to waste time.

She helped Ms. Haas uncover the piece they were working on. The exhibit would be works that had been recovered and reclaimed from theft, including Wrestlers, by Van Gogh, which was discovered in an underpainting. Their task was to uncover the top painting to reveal the Wrestler.

Lilly grabbed her tools and started gently scratching away but couldn’t stop thinking about the missing sketch book. Would someone steal a sketchbook for money? She couldn’t fathom stealing an artifact, something so precious and valuable to the art world.

The morning passed quickly and it was soon lunch time. She texted Lorenzo and asked him to meet her in the sketch room.

She tugged at his arm and brought him to the shelf and pointed at the black book.

“And?” He didn’t get what she was looking at.

“The book has no catalog number. Someone has switched out the original for this blank sketch book”.

“It could be an easy mistake” he shrugged it off in his usual laid back manner.

“No, I don’t think it is”.

“Ok. How can I help?” He asked, pulling a snack bar out of his pant pocket. He had one for Lilly too.

“Oh thank you, Lorenzo. You won’t regret this, really. Let’s get started. So we know the books can only be checked out for 48 hours. And it’s possible that it’s someone from inside the Museum, since you have to have a badge”.

They walked around the room to look for anything out of place. Still no staff was in the room.

“Lorenzo, have you seen Astor? She’s the employee usually here on Mondays”. He shook his head as he looked around the room for her.

They were running out of time, as they only had an hour for her lunch.

“Are you free tonight? We could investigate more after work”

He agreed and they both went back to their own work. Her heart was racing with anticipation of looking for the missing book. She tried to hold her hand steady while scratching the surface of the painting.

“Careful Miss Lancaster, you’re scratching too hard” Julia chided.

Lilly slowed down but was anxious for the work day to be over so she could return to the sketch room.

The analog clock on the wall finally turned 5:00.

“Goodnight, Ms. Haas”. Lilly said as Julia left. She watched her walk down the hallway and chat with someone else before getting on the elevator.

Lilly hasted toward the glass door and swiped her badge. Lorenzo was waiting for her outside of the sketch room.

Lilly and Lorenzo didn’t see any other clues, so they decided to go back to Lillian’s apartment and brainstorm. She knew Jasmine worked late on Mondays so they would be able to talk freely about the incident.

“So let’s start with what we do know.”

“Which isn’t very much.” Lorenzo said, in almost self-defeat.

Lily reviewed the days events. She remembered there was a flier on the bulletin board outside of the security office window when she walked past it. The security office was asking for donations to raise money for Marion, Milton’s wife, as she was needing a heart transplant. He was the head of security.

“So maybe he arranged to have the book stolen to get money for his wife”. Lilly announced, sounding like it was from left field, but the more she thought about it, the more it could be plausible.

“Lilly, you’ve been reading too many crime books” Lorenzo said, shaking his head.

“You’re good at computers, right?” Lilly asked him.

“Yes, whhy?” Lorenzo asked, dragging out the why.

“Would you be able to sign in to Milton’s computer and see what websites he’s been searching? That may lead us to the thief”.

Lorenzo was reluctant, she could tell.

“We don’t have time to spare my friend.” She grabbed her laptop and brought it out to him. She knew some about computers but not to the extent of Lorenzo.

“Wait a minute. This doesn’t look right”. He leaned in closer to the laptop to make sure he was reading correctly. He found an art black market website in Milton’s search history. It was a password protected website.

“What would be his password?” They tried several logins and Lilly remembered the flier at the museum.

“Try Marion” he typed Milton’s wife’s name and they got in to the website.

He brought up the website and there in front of them: “Wanted: Van Gogh’s sketch book,” posted by a VanDam, which they assumed was a username.

“We’re on to something!” Lilly said excitedly. They read through the website and read that Milton had responded to the posting that he had the sketchbook. VanDam would give him money for the book.

“Let’s meet tonight and we’ll do the handoff” VanDam wrote. The security guard agreed to meet with him or her. They agreed that the exchange would take place at midnight at the 5th Ave. Presbyterian Church.

Lorenzo was shaking but excited.

“Could you call your brother and he could meet us?” Lorenzo’s brother, Marco, was a police officer.

“I’ll try calling him. But I don’t want to cost him his job, if this ends up being a random goose chase.”

“He won’t. I promise.” Lilly assured her friend.

“Ok. He’s up for it.”

“Come on. We need to hurry because Jasmine will be home soon and I don’t want to involve her”.

“Oh, so it’s ok to have your other friend involved” he said, half kidding.

Marco was going to meet them half an hour before the handoff.

11:00 p.m. came and they took the subway to the scandalous rendezvous.

She tried the church door and it was unlocked and they slowly opened the large wooden door, hoping no one would be inside. Marco arrived shortly after.

“Hey you guys. You better be right on this, as I’m stretching out my neck on this one” he said in a thick Italian accent.

“I know. And we owe you big time. Thank you for meeting us here”. Lilly said sincerely.

Lilly and Lorenzo snuck to the side of the pews behind scaffolding, as the church must have been doing a renovation. It was dark except a low light overhead, lighting the entryway and the wooden pews.

“I’ll wait here with you both until we see them come in. After the exchange, I’ll run out to to arrest them”.

They got in their positions and waited until midnight. The front door creeped open and a man in black with broad shoulders and fairly tall walked to the front of the pews. He knelt below the alter to give the impression he was praying.

The church door opened again and it was a smaller frame person dressed in black as well. The smaller person walked to the front of the pews as well and kneeled down beside the man. The man handed over a small brown package to the other person, while the other reciprocated and gave him a small dark duffle bag as they continued kneeling.

Marco accidentally bumped in to the scaffolding, making a loud noise. Both of the visitors looked back and Marco held out his gun.

The man and the smaller visitor slowly turned around toward Marco, eyes wide as they held up their hands.

They both had masks on so they couldn’t tell who they were.

“Freeze! No one move and no one gets hurt” Marco yelled.

“Remove your masks!”

The man slowly removed his mask first and it was indeed Milton. They knew it! Then the small framed stranger removed the mask. It looked like Jasmine! What?? Lilly couldn’t believe her eyes. She was going to shriek but Lorenzo covered her mouth and mouthed “nooooo”.

Marco held his gun at them both as he radioed back up.

“This is all a misunderstanding. My friend and I here were just making an innocent exchange”.

“Drop the bag” Marco commanded.

When the brown package fell, the little black book fell out of it.

The police arrived shortly and arrested both of them. One of them bent over to unzip the black duffle bag and it was full of money.

Lilly peered from behind the scaffolding and Jasmine looked back, seeing her. A tear slowly fell down Lilly’s cheek, not believing her friend. She knew she worked in the art world as well, but Lilly never suspected it was in the art underworld.

The next work day, Ms. Claire Hansley, the Director of the museum called them both to her office.

“Though I don’t condone the method you both used for solving this mystery, I admire your courage for trying to recover something precious that belongs to the Museum. I understand you’ll be sentenced in court and could be fined for your discovery method.” She looked at both of them, before she continued.

“The museum is offering you $20,000, $10,000 each, as reward money. The museum should be getting a recovery check from the police station within the next couple of months.” They couldn’t believe it.

“Oh thank you, Ms. Hansley!"

“And we won’t want to hear of this ever happening again, are we in an agreement?” She said sternly, again looking at both of them. They both nodded.

“We promise you. This is a once in a lifetime antic and we won’t participate in any more investigations…unless there is another theft, of course”.