by Gloria Repp
“Will you be okay by yourself?”
She nodded, not letting herself think, and turned to face The Spill once more.
Robert’s voice followed her. “I’ll be there soon as—” The rest of his words were torn away by the wind.
Hurry! She told herself. Be careful!
If only she’d thought to ask more questions when she took that phone call! She shook off her regrets and concentrated on the rocks under her feet.
Jump. Crawl. Step down. Step up. Scramble. The Spill seemed a mile wide.
She slid all the way down the side of a huge boulder, ended in a heap on the sand, and crouched there, panting.
These rocks were bad enough, but what would she find at the house?
Fear clutched at her, so cold she could hardly move.
“Lord,” she whispered, “I need You! Make me strong for this—and whatever else happens.”
She wiped the salt spray out of her eyes and pulled herself up onto the next boulder with fresh courage. The wind tore at her hair and her jacket, but she hunched herself against it and kept going.
Finally she was out of The Spill and trotting along the beach. As she neared the house, she tried to plan.
First, make sure the safe was untouched, but what if the thief had already been there?
What about Aunt Myra?
She began to run.
At last she reached the front door—unlocked!—and raced upstairs. The door to her uncle’s study stood open. With rising dread, she looked for the safe.
A picture hung crookedly on the wall, and behind it, she found the safe. It was open. Empty.
Sick at heart, she sank into the chair at her uncle’s desk. The black argillite box stood there, its brass lock twisted and broken. With shaking fingers she lifted the lid. The box, too, was empty.
Secrets
A dog was barking, full-throated and savage.
Siem—go find him!
She dragged herself out of the chair, and a woman’s feeble cry startled her. “Julie, is that you?”
Aunt Myra! What had happened to her?
She ran downstairs to the hall, where her aunt stood, pale and bewildered. She took her aunt’s frail hand and tried to speak soothingly. “Come, Aunt Myra. You should be in bed.” She led her aunt up the stairs.
“Oh, Julie, I think someone was here,” Aunt Myra said. “But I couldn’t wake up . . . those pills . . .”
“It’s going to be all right,” she said, hoping her aunt wouldn’t ask about the furious barking that went on and on.
She tucked a blanket around her aunt’s thin shoulders. “You rest while I go check on something, and then I’ll come back and make you a cup of tea.”
Her aunt’s eyes closed obediently. “I’m glad you’re here,” she murmured.
As she ran out of the house, she fought back her growing panic. This—nightmare—was happening because of the phone call. Her fault.
She headed for Siem, who was still barking that terrifying bark and lunging against the rope that tied him to a tree. As soon as he saw her, he quieted, wriggling all over as she pulled a choking loop off his neck.
“Who did this to you, poor guy?”
As if in answer to her question, she heard the stutter of a boat’s engine. Of course the thief had come by boat. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She’d just missed him.
“Come on, Siem!” She flung herself down the path to the dock. The boat’s engine roared, and its throbbing seemed to fill her ears.
The engine sound steadied to a mutter that quickly faded until all she could hear was her own gasping breaths and the sound of her feet, pounding on the boards of the dock.
She stopped at the end and peered across the water, but it lay glimmering and empty under the setting sun. Too late. Defeat settled like a stone in her stomach.
Someone had taken Uncle Nate’s papers, and now he had escaped.
Siem stood beside her, growls rumbling deep in his throat. He grew still, ears pricked forward, listening. Julie held her breath and listened too, watching as the dog’s tail began to swing from side to side.
Then she heard it, the purr of another, larger boat. It was Uncle Nate’s cabin cruiser. Part of her wanted to shout with relief that he was safely back. And part of her wanted to crawl behind a tree and hide.
She waited as he maneuvered the boat to the dock and tied it up.
From the stern set of his mouth, she knew he hadn’t found Karin. He glanced at her as he strode across the dock, and his voice was curt. “Karin wasn’t in Chemainus. Neither were the other kids. What was Vivian Taylor doing here while I was away?”
She stared at him. “Vivian Taylor?”
“Saw her leaving in a boat, just as I came around the point. I’d recognize that hair of hers a mile off.”
Julie’s mind raced. Vivian Taylor in the boat? Could she have been the one who’d broken into Uncle Nate’s study? The woman knew a lot about Indian art . . .
She clutched at her uncle’s arm in dismay. “If Vivian Taylor was in that boat, then she’s the one who did it.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Robert trotting down the beach.
“What do you mean?” her uncle said.
“Someone broke into your study while you were gone,” she said. “I followed the thief to the dock just before you arrived. It’s got to be Vivian Taylor.”
She appealed to Robert as he joined them. “It fits, doesn’t it? She could’ve figured out those crests.”
“Robert, take my boat,” Uncle Nate said, holding out a key. “Follow her. She was heading around the east point. Make sure she doesn’t leave the island.”
Robert nodded and sprinted to the boat.
Julie tried to explain. “Robert said he heard the kids change their plans, and we realized that the phone call must have been a trick. So I got back here as fast as I could. Aunt Myra’s all right—she slept through the whole thing, but . . .” She ran out of words and her uncle turned wearily away.
They walked silently up the path to the house. She peered at her uncle’s face, but she couldn’t see his expression in the fading light. The wind had dropped, and the tree branches hung black against the sunset.
When her uncle spoke, it was in his usual calm voice. “Did you get the sea-otter bank to Paul all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “He was going to come back with me, but he hurt his knee on the way and Robert stayed to help him.”
She paused, still worried about the old man. “Somehow the wolf totem pole turned up in Robert’s cave, but it was cracked, and he found that paper in it. Was it the combination to your safe?”
“You figured that out too?”
“We thought it must be important if someone had stolen it. I still don’t understand how Vivian Taylor knew to steal that one, with so many pieces in your collection.”
Her uncle didn’t reply. He was probably so upset about the whole thing that he didn’t want to puzzle over the details. She matched her steps to his long strides, wondering whether Robert had been able to catch up with Vivian Taylor.
Light shone from the kitchen windows. Inside, Karin and Stan were busily making sandwiches, but her uncle didn’t stop. He walked quickly through the kitchen and up the stairs.
Stan grinned at her. “Hi! We just got back. Looks like you’ve been out, too.”
Julie couldn’t return his cheerful greeting. “Is Aunt Myra still in bed?”
At Karin’s nod, she remembered the cup of tea she’d promised her aunt. It seemed hours ago.
She filled the kettle with water, and Stan kept talking as Uncle Nate walked back into the kitchen. “We sure were glad we decided to go to Saltspring. You should see how they’ve fixed up the roads over there.”
Julie looked at her uncle, who seemed to be absorbed in slicing cheese for his sandwich.
“Tell them,” he finally said.
“We thought you’d gone to Chemainus,” Julie said. “We . . . we got a phone call from Chemainus about Karin.”
“Someone said you were hurt in an accident over there.”
“Didn’t Miss Taylor tell you we’d changed our plans?” Karin asked. “She was so nice, she even suggested it. She said she wanted to come back and see Aunt Myra anyway.”
“She came,” Uncle Nate said. “After I left to go and see what had happened to you in Chemainus. Apparently that’s when she robbed my study.”
Karin turned pale under her tan. “Robbed?” Her voice shook. “And you—you left your work to come and see about me?”
Uncle Nate stepped toward her. “What else would I do?” he said in a low voice. “Don’t you think I care?”
“Well . . . I just thought . . .” She looked away from him, her face crumpling, and Uncle Nate put his arms around her.
Julie threw a glance at Stan and they left the kitchen, closing the door behind them.
In the library, she gazed miserably at the sea-otter photos and finally muttered, “It’s terrible to think that Vivian Taylor would break into Uncle Nate’s study.”
“I can’t believe it!” Stan’s face had turned red.
Julie glanced at him in surprise. “It must have been her. Because Uncle Nate saw her leaving in the boat. Siem tracked her down to the boat dock. And she would’ve been able to figure out the code.”
She paused. “I wonder how she got the code in the first place?”
She looked at Stan, but he sat with his head in his hands.
He raised his head at the sound of the kitchen door opening, and she was startled to see the panic in his eyes.
When Uncle Nate and Karin came into the library, Karin was clinging to her father’s hand, and tears glittered on her eyelashes.
At last she spoke in a ragged voice. “I guess I’d better tell you too. I took the wolf totem pole. I . . . I wanted to get Robert in trouble, so I persuaded Stan to put it in Robert’s cave.”
Stan hunched lower in his chair. He interrupted in a muffled voice. “Wait, I’ve got to explain something. Miss Taylor, she told me she needed help with research she’s doing on Bartlett Island, so I’ve been working for her, digging up historical stuff, and helping her meet people.”
He looked up at Julie’s uncle. “I never dreamed she was a thief.”
Uncle Nate said nothing, so Stan went on. “She’d seen a wolf totem on your shelf and wanted to take a photo—the notches fascinated her—and I told Karin about it.”
He licked his dry lips. “I guess that gave Karin the idea of which one to take. So then I was crazy enough to agree to put it in Robert’s cave, but first I showed it to Miss Taylor. Next thing I knew, she’d dropped it—by accident—she said. She took out the paper and copied down those pictures for her article.
Karin sniffled and asked, “Where is that woman now? Did she get away?”
“Robert will take care of her until I get there,” Uncle Nate said.
Something was still puzzling Julie. “Did Vivian Taylor poison Siem too?”
“It wasn’t poison, she told me.” Stan took a deep breath and then another. “She wanted to get some nighttime photos of the house and she knew the dog would make an uproar, so she gave me some stuff to feed him.”
He ran a hand through his rumpled hair and groaned. “She said it would just make him sleepy but she must have figured the dosage wrong. I guess she wanted to check the layout of the place. I should never have believed her.”
In the painful silence that followed Stan’s rush of words, Julie heard the teakettle whistling in the kitchen. “I’ve got to make some tea for Aunt Myra,” she said. “Does anyone want something hot? Maybe a cup of cocoa?”
But Stan’s eyes were fixed on Karin. “Tell them the rest,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Karin covered her face with her hands, then jerked them down and straightened up. “The raven club was my fault too. I was just showing it to Stan, and we got to kidding around, and it fell.”
She lowered her gaze to the floor. “I was so scared!” she muttered. “I was afraid to tell you. I was going to get the Old One to fix it for me, so I could put it back. But I was afraid of him too.”
She glanced at Julie, looking almost regretful. “That’s why I got so mad when Robert took you to see him. I’d missed my chance of getting it fixed.”
Before anyone else could speak, Aunt Myra’s plaintive voice floated down the stairs. “Who’s there? Julie, are you back?”
Julie stirred. “I’ve got to get her tea.”
“Let me get it,” Karin said. “I’ll take it up to her.” She headed into the kitchen.
Stan unfolded his long frame from the chair. “My parents will be wondering about me. I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused, Dr. Fletcher. Do you want me to go with you to the police, or something?”
Uncle Nate’s voice was grave. “I’m sure your testimony will be useful, Stan. I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks.” He looked relieved. “Bye, Julie. Tell Karin I had to leave.”
Julie followed him to the door, and after he’d gone, walked slowly down the steps to the beach with Siem close behind.
At last the tangle of events had been explained, but she couldn’t shake off her sense of failure.
The drug company was going to get that precious information. It wouldn’t matter whether Robert caught up with her. The woman had probably made a copy and hidden it somehow.
She sank onto a driftwood log and clasped her arms around her knees, hugging them for comfort. Nearby, the sea whispered, smooth and dark. Siem pressed up against her as if he knew how she felt, and she stroked his silky ears.
I will never leave thee nor forsake thee, she reminded herself. She’d asked the Lord to help her, and she’d felt Him there, all through this horrible afternoon. It wasn’t His fault she’d been so dumb about the phone call.
When she went to camp, He’d still be with her, as He promised.
And this fall, when she went home to face her stepmom, He’d be there too. She could learn how to get along with her family.
Siem’s tail switched back and forth at the sound of brisk footfalls on the steps.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Uncle Nate said, and sat down beside her. “I wanted to thank you for your help this afternoon.”
“My help?”
He nodded. “You were kind enough to take my latest passcode over to Paul,” he said. “Since you have a key to the otter bank, I put the passcode inside. That way he’d have it in case something happened to me.”
Julie looked at him in amazement.
“Let me explain,” he said. “When I finish each section of my work, I upload it to a secure website and devise a new passcode. Usually, I take it to Paul myself—e-mail isn’t good for secrets—and he makes sure it gets to the right person.”
He smiled. “But I keep counterfeit papers in the box on my desk and in my safe. The information is designed to confuse anyone who tries to rob me. Like Vivian Taylor.
Julie found her voice. “That’s the best idea I ever heard of! I wondered why you went to visit him at night.”
Uncle Nate smiled again—that was twice in a row—and she smiled back.
“It’s a good cover, isn’t it?” he said. “Who’d ever think an old Indian shaman would be connected with my research? And it’s kind of fun making up codes with the Indian crests.”
He reached down to pat Siem, and the dog thumped his tail. “I suspected that the phone call might be a trick, but I couldn’t be sure—even if I’d talked to her myself. With the passcode safe in Paul’s hands, I didn’t have to worry. I was glad you were here and that I could trust you.”
He glanced sideways at her, still smiling. “After Paul met you, he told me to depend on you if something came up. He’s a pretty good judge of character.”
Julie felt a flicker of warmth growing inside her.
Her uncle sighed. “The next segment of my work will be less urgent. Less demanding. I n
eed to spend more time with my family.”
He put a hand on Julie’s shoulder. “Your father’s going to be proud of you when he gets here tomorrow. But there’s one thing I must discuss with him.”
“What?”
“A bicycle. You can’t spend the whole summer on this island without a bicycle, eh?”
Her heart began to sing. He said the whole summer.
Uncle Nate stood up. “I’m going to see what has to be done about Vivian Taylor. Then I’d better stop over and check on Paul’s knee.” He smiled at her and disappeared into the twilight.
“The whole summer.” She had to say it aloud.
She felt for the little sea otter that hung from her neck and polished its sleek body on her sleeve. All this time, it had been part of a secret she’d never dreamed possible.
Silly tears pricked behind her eyelids as she thought about tomorrow. She’d see Dad again!
She hugged Siem, resting her face against his warm, furry neck. She could tell Dad what a wonderful summer she was going to have on Bartlett Island, with Siem, and Robert, and Stan . . . and Karin?
What about Karin?
Down the beach, she caught sight of Karin’s brooding figure at the edge of the sea. She couldn’t expect her cousin to be much of a friend— not yet—until the Lord changed her from the inside.
She bent to whisper in Siem’s ear. “He’s changing me, you know. I’ll write to Melissa, and we’ll pray for her.”
Siem wagged his tail, and a minute later he wagged it again as Karin strolled over to sit beside them.
Julie sensed that her cousin wouldn’t feel like talking, so she sat with a hand on Siem’s neck and looked for the first stars of evening.
But then she had to give the big black dog another hug. This summer was going to be an adventure, with Siem and her new friends . . . and Karin.
Author’s Note
This is one of my favorite books, partly because I feel the same as Julie about rocky Canadian islands with tide pools, delicious berries, and Indian lore. My family had a cabin on Thetis Island, near Vancouver Island, B.C., and we spent summers there during my early teen years.
