The Pearl Earring, Page 2

  “Me?!” Lily stared at her name written in elegant cursive above Amy’s address: Lillian Powers. The return address was to a Daniella Artel.

  “Is it from someone you know?” Amy asked as she unlocked the apartment door.

  “No.”

  Lily sat on the couch and unsealed the paper, then opened the top of the brown cardboard box. Sliding out the contents, Lily was amazed. It was the portrait of Julia, the girl from the 1920s, that they’d seen in the Haunted Museum just before. The girl’s dark eyes looked into Lily’s, and Lily felt connected to her in some strange way. “How weird,” she said quietly.

  “That is strange,” Amy agreed, settling on the couch beside Lily. Picking up the torn wrapping, she checked the return address. “Leonard Street,” she read. “This woman lives way downtown on the West Side. Is there any note?”

  When Lily upended the empty box, a small envelope fluttered out among the packing peanuts. Lily quickly tore it open:

  Dear Lillian,

  I was in the Haunted Museum today and saw you admiring my paintings; this one in particular. Should you like to come by someday to see my studio, it would be my pleasure to show you around. No need to call. Stop by anytime. In the meantime please accept this gift from one art lover to another.

  Daniella

  “Whoa!” Lily shouted excitedly. “How cool is this?!” She held up the letter for Amy to read. “I’d love to meet Daniella,” she said to her aunt. “Can we go?”

  “Hold on a minute,” Amy objected. “I’m not sure I like this. How did she find my apartment? Who told her your real name? Why is she so interested in a total stranger?”

  “Uh … um …,” Lily stammered, trying to come up with answers. “She heard you call me Lily and just figured it was short for Lillian?”

  “And my address?” Amy pressed.

  Lily’s eyes narrowed in thought. “I don’t know!” Then she spied a white envelope among the packing materials and bent to pick it up. “It looks like a bill,” she said, handing the envelope to Amy.

  “How did that get there?” Amy asked. “It was in my bag.”

  “It must have fallen out.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  “See?” Lily said. “If she found this on the floor it wouldn’t have been too hard to find us. Let’s go over there. Please?!”

  Amy took her laptop from a shelf and sat on the couch, opening it. Then she slapped the arm of the couch, sighing heavily with frustration. “No Internet! I nearly forgot! I wanted to search for her online. This is the big bad city, kiddo. There are a lot of great people here, but a lot of oddballs, too. You have to be careful.”

  “I bet she’s not an oddball,” Lily said. “She’s an artist.”

  “This Daniella could be anyone,” Amy went on. “It might not even be a woman. It’s best to be careful.”

  Lily slumped into the couch, disappointed. “I know,” she muttered. “It just seemed like it would be such a cool adventure — to meet a famous artist in the city on my first day here. But I guess you’re right. We should forget it.”

  Lily stared at the afternoon sun filtering in through Amy’s drawn shade. Outside, the traffic droned steadily, interrupted by intervals of honking horns or emergency sirens. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead. She noticed electric fans but no air conditioner.

  “Oh, cheer up!” Amy said, getting up to turn on a fan. “On Monday I’ll check her out while I’m at work and if this woman sounds legit, I’ll go over there with you. Okay?”

  Amy seemed to be weakening and that encouraged Lily. “Why don’t we go to the library tomorrow? They have computers and Internet there, don’t they?”

  “All right, Little Miss Persistent,” Amy agreed. “We’ll go tomorrow. And find out who this mysterious Daniella Artel turns out to be.”

  LATER THAT night, after a dinner of order-in pizza and a game of Monopoly that went on for two hours, Amy pulled out the convertible sofa in her small living room and made Lily comfortable with a sheet and pillow. “Want the window open or closed?” Amy asked.

  That was a tough question. If the window was shut it would block the horns and traffic and city rumble from outside. But if she left it open, she might catch a breeze — and it was really hot out, even with the fan going. “Open,” Lily decided.

  Amy said good night and went into her bedroom. Lily sat on the pull-out bed, looking at the painting of Julia. She decided that Julia was someone she would have liked if she’d known her. Julia wasn’t exactly smiling — none of the portraits featured smiling girls — but there was a look of merry mischief in her shining eyes. Lily thought she seemed full of fun. Lily could imagine Julia joining her other friends for a slumber party giggling over a prank phone call or rolling with laughter at a downloaded comedy.

  With a yawn, Lily leaned the portrait at the side of the couch and pulled up the sheet. Even though she thought the noise from the busy city street would keep her up all night, it wasn’t long before she drifted off.

  Almost right away, Lily dreamed she was wandering through an apartment building down a long hallway of closed doors. The corridor never turned or ended, but kept going and going. There wasn’t any stairway. There was no elevator, not even an exit sign. How did the tenants get to their apartments? How did they leave? The hall seemed never-ending.

  Lily knocked on a door. No one answered. She tried door after door. Finally a woman’s voice replied warmly, “Who is it?”

  “Can you help me?” Lily spoke to the closed door. “How do I get out of here?”

  “One moment, dear,” the woman behind the door said as she undid the locks on her side.

  The door slowly creaked open a crack.

  “Oh, thank you so much,” Lily spoke with a rush of relief. “I was afraid no one would be home to help —” Lily froze as the door opened fully to reveal a very tall ax-wielding man in an executioner’s hood. With a maniacal chortle he lunged from the doorway, his ax high over his head, about to strike.

  Lily awoke with a jolt. Her heart hammered frantically and she struggled to breathe. Sweat covered her forehead and cheeks.

  “It was a dream,” she gasped. “Just a dream.”

  Lily quickly checked Amy’s door, uncertain if she’d cried out in her sleep and awakened her aunt. But Amy’s light didn’t turn on and Lily was relieved. She was glad she wouldn’t have to admit that the Haunted Museum had given her nightmares, after all.

  The next time Lily awoke it was still dark, but the first light of dawn had lightened the sky. Why was she awake?

  Then she heard it.

  Someone was crying.

  It was a soft feminine whimpering, hopeless and sad, and its sound brought a lump to Lily’s throat. What was making this person so terribly unhappy?

  Tossing off her sheet, she crossed the room. “Aunt Amy?” she whispered, tapping lightly on the bedroom door. “Aunt Amy, are you all right?”

  When Amy didn’t answer, Lily cracked open the door. In the dim light from the streetlamps outside, she saw that Amy slept soundly. Gently shutting the door, Lily listened as the crying continued.

  Was it someone in the next apartment? Could the walls be that thin?

  Lily put her ear to the one wall that adjoined another apartment. The sound didn’t seem to be coming from there. Not from the hallway, either.

  But someone was crying. Lily could hear the gentle sobs as she sat on her sofa bed to listen intently. Tilting her head to one side, she paid attention to the direction of the crying.

  Suddenly she turned to the painting of Julia, still propped up against the side of the bed. The sound of soft sobbing was definitely coming from there.

  But how could that be?

  With a trembling hand, Lily leaned down to touch the frame. As she lifted it, the crying became louder.

  Lily inhaled slowly and her breath caught, too frightened to exhale. This couldn’t be real.

  Forcing herself to be brave, Lily turned the portrait.


  The expression on Julia’s face was now twisted in sorrow. In the changed painting, the girl’s delicate hand cradled her tear-stained cheek.

  Lily dared to touch the painting, only to recoil in surprise. Her fingers were wet!

  But not with paint. Lily’s fingers had been dampened with Julia’s tears.

  The sobbing grew louder, more sorrowful.

  “Aunt Amy!” Lily shouted. “Come quick!”

  There was a rustle as her aunt climbed out of bed and opened the door, and then Amy was beside her. “This painting is crying,” Lily told her, pushing the portrait toward her.

  Smiling, Amy gave Lily a quick hug. “I told you that place would give you nightmares,” she said.

  Lily looked at the painting once more. It was completely dry, and Julia had returned to exactly the same position she’d been in when the portrait arrived.

  ON SUNDAY just after one in the afternoon, Lily and Amy took the subway uptown. They were soon climbing the wide stairs leading to the front of the main branch of the New York City Public Library. On either side of them the library’s famous stone lions sat in regal splendor. Normally Lily would have been excited to see them for real, but this afternoon her mind was on other things.

  Or one thing: the painting.

  “I just wish I’d used my phone to take a picture of Julia,” Lily said. “But I was too scared to think of it.”

  “I wish you had, too,” Amy told her. “Then you’d see that there is nothing strange about that painting and you’d stop obsessing about it!”

  “I’m not obsessing,” Lily insisted, snapping her beaded bracelet with her name spelled out in black and silver beads. That wasn’t exactly true — the Julia painting was the only thing she’d thought about since the event. But still … how could she think of anything else? “And isn’t a painting that cries strange? Where else could the sound have come from?”

  “Someone in the building had the TV on and was watching a sad movie,” Amy suggested.

  “Then why were my fingers wet?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there’s a leak in the ceiling.”

  When they entered the building, Lily forgot about the crying portrait long enough to marvel at the grandeur of the library, from the high ceilings and rich wood, to the marble floors and staircases. “This is amazing,” she whispered. “It’s gigantic!”

  “It is,” Amy agreed while the security guard examined the insides of her bag. “This is one of my favorite places in the city. It’s so … old.”

  “And beautiful,” Lily added.

  Amy knew the library well and easily found her way to a computer. In minutes she was searching the name Daniella Artel.

  “Here she is,” Amy said as soon as the search engine yielded three results.

  The first result was an article about an art gallery exhibit in downtown Manhattan. The work displayed was by portrait artist Daniella Artel. The article gave the time and location, but the show was no longer running.

  The second result was a course listing at the Artists Guild in midtown Manhattan. Daniella Artel was teaching a course called “The Power of Portraiture.”

  The third result was an entry in Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. “My language arts teacher won’t let us use Wiki,” Lily noted. “She says it’s unreliable because anyone can write stuff in it.”

  “I know, my teachers said that, too,” Amy replied as she continued to access the website. “But it’s still a good jumping-off point, especially the citations at the bottom, and I like to use it, anyway.”

  Daniella Artel’s entry included a photo of a middle-aged woman with blond hair cut to her shoulders. “She was probably pretty when she was younger,” Amy remarked.

  Lily studied the photo, trying to imagine the lined face without the creases and sagging skin. Intense blue-gray eyes still sparked under the woman’s lids. “Yeah. I bet you’re right,” Lily said.

  “Okay, it says she’s an American portrait artist. Date of birth unknown but she’s from Arkham, Massachusetts. Studied somewhere in Paris … moved to Prague, then to Amsterdam … blah, blah, blah.”

  With Lily peering over her shoulder, Amy hit more keys. She found another site that listed Daniella Artel as a new designer in a famous Parisian fashion house. The date was 1990. The next mention of the woman was when she became an adjunct professor of art at an Italian university in 2005. Still another site contained short biographies of outstanding personalities in contemporary art.

  Amy read silently for another minute. “Okay! This is it! Here we go.”

  “Did you find something good?” Lily asked.

  Amy nodded. “Listen to this. Daniella Artel is related to the artist known as Dolores Agonie. Dolores Agonie is thought to be a pseudonym for —”

  “A what?”

  “A fake name,” Amy explained. “Artists and writers sometimes use them.”

  “Oh. Like Mark Twain’s real name was Samuel Clemens?”

  “Exactly,” Amy confirmed. “So anyway … Dolores Agonie is a name used by certain portrait artists through the centuries. They think that all the artists who signed their paintings of young girls with that name were related to each other. It says here that Daniella Artel owns the five existing Dolores Agonie portraits.” Amy looked up from her reading. “She must be the person who inherited the collection they found in that attic.”

  “I thought that the Haunted Museum bought it,” Lily said.

  “No. It says here that Daniella Artel occasionally lends the portraits to museums and galleries for special showings. She must have loaned them to the Haunted Museum for their Sinister Portraits show.”

  Amy and Lily stared at each other for a moment. It seemed like they’d uncovered important information, but what did it mean?

  “It sounds like Daniella Artel is totally legit,” Lily said. That was what it meant.

  “I guess so,” Amy agreed as she exited the website, though she still sounded uncertain.

  “So, can we go visit her?”

  Amy nodded. “I don’t see why not.”

  “Awesome,” Lily said, smiling. “Let’s go.”

  THE BUILDING where Daniella Artel lived was so old it had no speaker or bells. And no elevator, either. Checking the mailboxes revealed that D. Artel lived on the sixth floor.

  The front lobby was dim, and very quiet. A faded rug was frayed at its edges. Small hexagrams of blue tile on the walls seemed to sweat in the airless heat.

  As Lily and Amy ascended the winding staircase, all the doors were closed. It was as though no one in the building was home. Lily’s shoulders tightened as the silent row of closed doors reminded her of her nightmare from the night before.

  On the third floor, Amy stopped, panting lightly from the climb. “Could it be any hotter?” she complained.

  “I hope not,” Lily replied, holding her long hair up off her neck.

  On the fifth floor a door was open, revealing a small apartment. Colorful and elaborate print tapestries of varying designs hung on the walls and were draped on the ceiling. The furniture consisted only of some large cushions and a round, low coffee table.

  Amy passed it by with hardly a glance, but Lily was fascinated and lingered in front of the doorway.

  The smell of some kind of incense and the sound of soft Indian music drifted into the hall from inside the apartment.

  Lily saw that cards were spread out on the table. They weren’t playing cards, but something else.

  A young woman stepped into the room from a back bedroom. Lily guessed that she was still in her late teens. She wore a white tank top and denim shorts. Her short, black curly hair was held back from her face with a bright red head wrap. Her dark eyes brightened when she noticed Lily standing in the hallway. “Hi,” she said. “Have you come for a reading?”

  “A reading?” Lily asked. “No. What kind of reading?”

  The young woman gestured with her hand toward the table. “A tarot card reading? I read palms, too. Is there a spirit you�
��d like to contact?”

  “No. I was just admiring your apartment.”

  The woman smiled and came to the door. “Nice to meet you. My name’s Audreen Santos. I’m a medium, a spirit channeler.”

  “Hi, I’m —” Lily began to introduce herself.

  Audreen cut Lily short with a raised palm. “Let me guess.”

  “All right.”

  “Your name is a flower.”

  “Yes!”

  “A lily.”

  “Wow! Yeah! How did you ever guess that?”

  Audreen Santos smiled lightly. “Lilies are flowers sent when people die.”

  Lily didn’t like the sound of that.

  Audreen suddenly gripped her arm. “In fact, I see spirits of the dead around you right now. You must be very careful.”

  Despite the heat, Lily felt a sudden coldness wash over her.

  “Spirits of the dead?” Lily asked fearfully.

  Audreen’s face was serious as she nodded. “Ghosts.”

  Spirits? Ghosts? Around her? “Why are they around me?” Lily asked.

  Audreen squinted with concentration, tilting her head. “I don’t know. They want to talk to you, not to me.”

  Prickles of fear crept up Lily’s spine. “I don’t want to talk to them.”

  “They might have something urgent to tell you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Come inside and I’ll try to connect you with them,” Audreen offered.

  “Lily, come on!” Amy called from up ahead. “Where are you?”

  “I’m coming!” Lily shouted back.

  “But the spirits,” Audreen reminded Lily.

  “I’m sorry,” Lily said, backing away from the door. “My aunt’s calling. I have to go. It was nice meeting you.”

  “You, too,” Audreen replied. “Be careful, okay?”

  “Careful of what?”

  “That’s what I want to ask the spirits. Are you sure you can’t stay?”