“Yes, but what truth is that?” I pressed. “You talk about truth and revolution all the time, but I don’t know what that actually means. What do you want your art to be? Because destroying someone else’s sculpture isn’t a good look.”

“Ha! By destroying Mona Pearl’s fake, I will be more of an original than she could ever be!”

“Actually,” George interrupted, “destroying art isn’t all that original. In the 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg erased one of Willem de Kooning’s drawings and called that art. In the 1990s, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei took photographs of himself dropping and breaking a two-thousand-year-old urn from the Han Dynasty.”

Sven glared at her.

“I hate art history,” he grumbled.

“So let’s have it, Sven. The truth,” I said, crossing my arms. “We can wait.”

“You really want to know?” Sven asked.

“I really do,” I said gently. “This isn’t about revolution at all, is it?”

“No,” he said glumly, sitting down on top of the boulder with the statue wrapped securely in his arms. “It’s about Mona Pearl.”

“It’s okay. You can tell me,” I said, tiptoeing closer.

Sven heaved a dramatic sigh. “It’s hard, being a lone genius. I know that I intimidate people. But I don’t want to be alone. All my life, I’ve wished for nothing more than a good collaborator. The only person I ever thought was worthy, the only person whose talent matched—even outweighed—mine, didn’t want me. She went away to the big city and found someone she liked better. And then she had the nerve to come back to River Heights to show off that perfect partnership right in front of me. And in my mother’s gallery, where I was supposed to be the star! I couldn’t stand it.”

“Wait a second. Angelica Velvet is your mother?” I said, stunned. I took the opportunity to plop down next to Sven on the boulder, which was not very comfortable.

“No way,” said Bess. “Last week you called her ‘the establishment’!”

“She is,” said Sven matter-of-factly. “But she promised to help me out. I’ve been spending a lot of cash on old TV sets. I may be broke, but at least I’ve got the key to the hottest gallery in River Heights.” Holding the statue with one arm, he reached into the neck of his leotard, pulled out a string, and dangled a large silver key before my eyes. “Literally.”

So Angelica Velvet had given Sven access to the gallery before the show. If she knew about the theft, she certainly wasn’t going to report her own son. That explained why she was so quick to blame Mona Pearl and Diana Yip for their failed performance, and also why she was so cagey when we met at the entrance to the Strickland mansion. Goodness, was everyone in the art world secretly related?

“It’s not fashionable to talk about taking your parents’ money, but lots of artists—the successful ones, usually—have a little help. My mom wants me to make a name for myself. It’s a lot of pressure sometimes,” Sven said. He gave a little shrug of his shiny shoulders.