A Whisper of Danger

by Catherine Palmer

  Zanzibar had changed Splint’s mom. As he bobbed in the water, he could see the difference written all over her face. While Rick worked to fasten the weight belt around her waist, she was laughing out loud. No, she was giggling. Giggling! Splint didn’t think he’d ever heard his mom giggle. She seemed to be smiling an awful lot the last day or so. She sort of bounced when she walked, too. And the way she flipped her hair behind her ear and tilted her head to the side when she looked at Rick . . . weird.

  “You’re sure there aren’t any sharks down there?” she was asking him.

  “Positive.”

  “What about eels?”

  “Just a few sea slugs.”

  She laughed at that, as though it was the funniest thing in the world. Who could figure? Splint was grateful when Rick finally went into the water. Splint’s mom slipped off the dive platform and took Rick’s hand. There were more instructions, more giggles, and finally it was time to go down.

  Gripping the breathing tube in his mouth, Splint allowed the weight belt to slowly pull him farther and farther under the water. Finally he understood what it would be like to be a fish. Such freedom! He could swim all over the place without having to come up for air. As they descended, Rick motioned Splint to grab his nose and blow hard in order to ease the pressure in his ears. Rick was amazing. He knew everything!

  A vision of magic unfolded before Splint’s eyes as he drifted down. He could see the anchor rope and air hoses running from the Sea Star to the ocean floor. Fish swam past him—angel fish dressed in black-and-white stripes, tiny fluorescent bluefish that swam in quick darting schools, and countless other unnamed species arrayed in shades of orange, blue, yellow, and red. Splint couldn’t wait to look them up in his encyclopedia of sea life.

  And then the wreck materialized before him. At first, it was a huge disappointment. There were a few spongy-looking timbers that had been mostly eaten up by worms. Some hunks of coral lay scattered at one end. Three large holes had been dug, but they were empty. And that was it. Sure didn’t look like a sunken galleon to Splint. You couldn’t swim in and out of portholes or climb undersea staircases or anything.

  But then Rick drifted over and took Splint’s hand. He pointed out the gridwork of chains that had been laid over the wreck. Then he showed Splint a large stiff plastic sheet onto which the grid had been drawn. Four stones held it pinned to the sand. Rick took a black crayon from under a chunk of coral and carefully marked and labeled the place where the biscuit of silver coins had been found.

  After that, the time flew. Rick showed Splint and his mom where the coins had been found on the actual wreck. Then he taught them how to fan the sand away with their hands and search for more biscuits. After a while, one of the other divers brought over a big tube that looked like the end of a vacuum cleaner. Sure enough, the thing sucked up sand like nobody’s business! Whoa! Anything of any size was uncovered in the blink of an eye.

  While his mom did a little exploring, Splint got to work the wreck with Rick. They searched all around a pile of rounded stones, vacuuming everything with meticulous care. Splint loved the feel of his fingers working slowly over the rocks, turning them this way and that, gently searching for anything of significance. He watched Rick and copied the way the scientist picked things up and looked them over before setting them down in the exact place he’d found them.

  Sure was different from Hunky. Twenty feet away, he and his men were attacking a hole they’d dug with the vacuum, going at it like demons. Sand drifted all around them like a mist, making the water murky and unpleasant. They were chopping at blobs of sea grass with big long knives, carving crevices into which they dipped and dipped, looking for treasure. Splint decided he liked Rick’s scientific methods a whole lot better. When he grew up, he wanted to be just like Rick. A marine archaeologist.

  He and Rick had just uncovered a big hunk of conglomerate when Splint’s mom swam over holding something in her arms. You’d have thought Rick had been shot. He jerked toward her, took the thing, and cradled it carefully. Pointing at it, he gave Splint the thumbs-up sign about ten times, and then he spat out his breathing gear and planted a great big kiss on Splint’s mom’s cheek.

  It was the second time he’d done that. Splint was beginning to think he ought to keep count.

  In no time flat, everybody was floating up toward the boat. The minute Rick’s head burst out of the water, he yanked off his mask.

  “Wahoo! You did it, Jessie!” he shouted.

  “What did I find? Isn’t it some kind of a vase?”

  “Aye, that it is, Ms. Thornton,” Hunky shouted as he paddled toward the boat. “’Tis a porcelain urn, Chinese in origin. What dynasty, Mr. Scientist?”

  “K’ang-Hsi.”

  “Worth a small fortune, if I’m correct. And it looks to be perfect!”

  “But there’s a small chip—”

  “A small chip, she says. My dear lady, in this business, anything 80 percent intact is considered perfect. If we’ve only got half the piece, we call it almost whole. And if it’s at least recognizable, it’s termed as almost intact. This is a treasure. A true treasure!”

  “Yay, Mom!” Splint crowed. He had had no idea his mom was so cool. She had found a treasure, and she’d only been in the water once!

  “The urn is worth more than Hunky knows,” Rick said as they climbed aboard one by one. “K’ang-Hsi was emperor of China from 1661 to 1722. That gives us a definitive bottom line on dating the wreck. Plus, we know that Spain was a primary importer of this kind of porcelain. Since Spain had little to do with Zanzibar, we can deduce that this china was probably carried on board a Portuguese ship. We also know that in 1832, Seyyid Said bin Sultan moved his capital to Zanzibar from Muscat. So that establishes Arab dominance on the island. And we’ve got a padlock that’s dated in the 1800s.”

  “What are you saying, McTaggart?” Hunky demanded.

  “I’m saying that I calculate we’ve found ourselves a Portuguese bark that wrecked sometime in the early 1800s. If we search the records, we might find out exactly which one it is. And that’ll tell us what we can expect to find on board.”

  “Well, I’ll be a tongue-tied Scotsman. Do you mean to tell me that our reluctant Ms. America has not only dated our shipwreck but she’s discovered its nationality, too?”

  Splint looked around at his mother. As usual, she was paying no attention to the scientific discussions that so fascinated her son. In fact, she had scrounged a pad of paper and a pencil, and she was sketching the K’ang-Hsi urn. Leave it to her to start drawing! And right after she’d made the best discovery of the whole adventure.

  He squatted down beside the saltwater tank to watch Hunky hammering on the newest chunk of conglomerate. If only his mom would let him, Splint knew he could become a valuable part of this diving team. After all, he’d only been on board one afternoon, and he already could man the air hoses, break conglomerate, dive with the breathing gear, and work the vacuum. He could help a lot! Maybe he’d even find the biggest treasure of all.

  Of course, his mom probably wouldn’t let him on the boat again. Not after he’d disobeyed her like that. Splint looked over to where she was sketching. Rick McTaggart had sat down right beside her, and the two of them were going over her sketch. They kept pointing to this and that, their fingers touching. And then they would say stuff while they looked straight into each other’s eyes. It was the weirdest thing.

  Splint couldn’t stop watching them, even when Hunky began to exclaim about something he’d found in the conglomerate. Splint just kept staring and staring at his mom and Rick McTaggart. And the more he stared, the more he realized how comfortable they were with each other. Like they knew things only the two of them shared. Like they understood each other without even talking. Like they fit together.

  Right at that moment, Splint suddenly thought about how strange it was that his mom had auburn hair, but he himself had brown hair . . . the exact color of Rick’s. His mom had a triangle-shaped face with hig
h cheekbones, but Splint had a square face with a strong jawline . . . exactly like Rick’s. And his mom had pale, creamy skin that burned to a crisp, but Splint had olive skin that tanned easily . . . just like Rick’s.

  Then he looked at his mom’s toes. And then at Rick’s. Splint had Rick’s feet. Splint had Rick’s hands. Splint had Rick’s teeth and smile and ears and shoulders.

  “Mom!” he shouted.

  She glanced up, her eyes suddenly filled with concern. “What is it, honey? What’s wrong?”

  Splint stared at her. “Nothing.”

  “You sure?”

  “Nothing.”

  He needed time to think this over. If his deductions were correct, he had just stumbled on the grandest, most glorious, most splendid treasure of all.

  Rick McTaggart was his father.

  ELEVEN

  Jess decided she had to restore normalcy to her life. Things had gotten out of perspective. Confusing. Disordered. Cloudy. She wanted to put the controls back into her own hands. She needed time to sort through her priorities. She needed distance from Rick McTaggart.

  For nearly a week, Jess kept Splinter busy around the house. In the mornings he played with Hannah, and in the afternoons he and his mom went for walks, read books, and sketched together. Miriamu worked in the kitchen, as usual. Solomon, who had somehow managed to hang the car engine from the limb of a Red Hot Poker tree, tinkered with pistons and gaskets when he wasn’t tending the yard. After the trauma of the encounter with Giles Knox and the adventure on the treasure ship, life began to feel almost calm.

  Jess received a large royalty check for her work on the first eight Kima the Monkey books. She was relieved to be able to pay Miriamu, Solomon, and Hannah. Day by day, the illustrations for her ninth book began to come together. With the familiar figure of Kima the Monkey dancing around the pages, Jess finally captured the personality of this installment’s star, the irritable and impatient impala.

  Long, lyre-shaped black horns made the antelope a beautiful creature. Her seductive brown eyes had a delicate streak of white above and gentle tan shading below. Two white patches on her face—one beneath the nostrils and above the mouth, the other under her lower lip—gave Impala the look of a lovely, pouty queen. Jess had no trouble transforming the natural beauty and grace of the antelope into an appealing but exasperating character.

  Splinter loved to read aloud lines from James Perrott’s rollicking text, and he enjoyed helping his mother plan the painting that would accompany the words. As long as Jess could remember, her son had dawdled at her side while she sketched and illustrated. In fact, Splint provided her with a strong dose of inspiration. She had never mentioned it to anyone, but the little monkey in her award-winning books shared many traits with a certain overactive, impish, and excitable boy.

  “Let me decide where to put Impala on the next page,” Splint begged one afternoon as he lounged, feet up on the table, in Jess’s studio. “I’ll remember what you told me about design and balance.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll close my eyes and listen while you read the words. Remember, on this page the monkey is doing most of the talking. Actually, he’s scolding Impala, so we want to put Kima in the dominant position on the page.”

  “Here’s what Kima says.” Splint cleared his throat and held up the page of manuscript.

  “‘You fuss and gripe and irritate.

  You scold and push and never wait.

  And that is why, my dear Impala,

  No one’s coming to your birthday gala.’

  Kima finished and sat down.

  He watched Impala start to frown.

  But then that frown turned into tears—

  A thing no one had seen in years!”

  “Poor Impala,” Jess said. “She’s crying. Maybe Kima shouldn’t have been quite so blunt with her.”

  “You’re wrong, Mom. All the animals were talking about Impala behind her back, saying how grumpy and irritable she always acted. And none of them were planning to go to her birthday party. Kima did the right thing to just go right up to Impala and tell her the truth. People ought to tell the truth. You’ve always said that, Mom.”

  Jess studied her son. Splint had been trying so hard to please her and to obey the rules she had set for him. He hadn’t complained once about his five-day suspension from all beach activities, even though she knew he was aching to get back to the sand and water. He had missed Rick and Hunky so much. . . . He talked of little else but the wreck, yet he hadn’t laid eyes on the crew since the day of his escapade.

  Although Jess had seen the men come and go each day, she had made it a point not to go down and talk with anyone. Rick’s obvious interest in her, the fun they had shared in the water, and the instinctive trust she had placed in him all scared her half to death. He was beckoning her back to him. Calling her. Setting out lure after lure. Reeling her in so slowly she hadn’t noticed she’d been hooked.

  And Splinter? He’d already been landed. The boy could not have adored anyone more than he did Rick. The man was his idol.

  “Don’t you think I’m right, Mom?” he asked. “Don’t you think we should always tell the truth? Even if it might hurt?”

  Jess shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I think . . . I think Kima did the right thing to tell Impala why none of the other animals were planning to show up at her birthday party. James Perrott wants children to understand that in order to have friends, you have to be friendly.”

  “But don’t you think there’s another message in the story, Mom? It’s not only what Impala’s learning that’s important. It’s what Kima showed by his actions in going straight to Impala with the reality of the situation. I think James Perrott is trying to teach kids that even though the facts might hurt a little at first, it’s usually better in the long run to tell the whole truth.”

  “I guess you’re right. That’s probably a theme in this book.” She selected a charcoal pencil. “So where do you think we ought to put Impala? And do you think Kima should be in a tree or on the ground when he’s confronting Impala?”

  “Mom, do you always tell me the truth?”

  “What a thing to ask, honey. I’m your mother. Do you think I would ever lie to you?”

  “Well . . .” He rolled her wad of moldable eraser between his fingers. “I’ve been wondering about my dad.”

  An icy curl slid through her stomach. “Splint, I told you a long time ago about what happened between your father and me. Did you think I was lying to you?”

  He shrugged one shoulder, his focus still fastened on the eraser. “I guess not.”

  “No, Splint, I did not lie. Listen, if it will make you feel better, I’ll tell you the story again. Your father and I met when we were both very young. Too young, really. I was only eighteen, you know.”

  “So are you saying it was all a big mistake?”

  Jess thought for a moment. She had discovered she had to listen very carefully to her son. Often his questions had several layers of significance. If she wasn’t sensitive in her responses, he sometimes drew inaccurate conclusions.

  “You weren’t a mistake, Splint,” she said finally. “You were a gift to me. My treasure. But your father and I were probably much too young when we got married. We couldn’t figure out how to work through our problems— and you know every relationship has some problems, no matter how right it is. When your father decided to leave our marriage, I was pregnant with you. We lived in Dar es Salaam, and Mama Hannah helped us by taking care of you while I studied art with Dr. bin Yusuf. Then you and I moved to London where we lived until now. Okay, sweetheart? That’s the story.”

  It sounded so simple—too simple. For years, that story had been enough for the boy. Now? Now, her fingers were trembling as she sharpened her pencil. She couldn’t make herself look at her son. Was she lying to him? Was it wrong not to tell him about Rick?

  “I was just wondering,” he began. “Wondering about something . . .”

  Jess closed her eyes and took a
deep breath. “What, Splint?”

  “Well . . . what did my father look like?”

  “Oh, he was sort of tall, I guess.” She gave a casual shrug, but her insides were experiencing an earthquake that could knock the top off the Richter scale. “He had brownish hair. There was nothing very unusual or specific about him. Not anything you’d really notice. But he was nice looking, of course.”

  “Do I look like him?”

  “Maybe a little. But you have my eyes.”

  “What color were my father’s eyes?”

  Her pencil made a wobbly squiggle across her sketch pad. “I guess they were sort of bluish.”

  “Bluish?”

  “Okay, they were blue.”

  “Could you draw a picture of him?”

  “Splint, honey, I’m . . . I’m much better with animals, you know. I doubt I could draw anything that looked like your father. Remember the time I tried to do an illustration for that runners’ magazine? You told me the man looked like he had frog’s legs. And then I worked on that picture of Old Mother Hubbard, and you said—”

  “Mom, have you looked for my father since you came back to Africa?”

  She was silent, trying to calm her heart. “No, honey. I haven’t looked for him.”

  “Why not? Don’t you want to see him again? Don’t you want to find out what he’s doing these days? Don’t you think he might want to meet me?”

  “Splint . . . the past is . . . well, it all happened a long time ago. I have a new life now. Things are very different.”

  “Yeah, but what about my life? What if I wanted to meet my dad and get to know him? Didn’t you ever think about that?”

  “Of course I’ve thought about that, but, Splinter—”