“Jimmy and me got our Extra Credit Pirate Report. It’s based on a library book,” Jake said, and we gasped. Exum boys are to library as vampires are to sunlight.
Miss Retzyl’s color came back, sort of. “Go ahead, boys.”
Jimmy pulled a shaggy black beard from inside his coat and hooked it over his ears. Jake unfolded a paper and read: “People used to be short like Dale, but Blackbeard was a giant. He stood six and a half feet tall with black flashing eyes. Blackbeard tied slow-burning fuses in his beard to terrify enemies and light bombs.”
Jimmy tugged matches from his pocket.
“No fire,” Miss Retzyl said, snatching the matches so fast, her hand blurred.
“Blackbeard smelled like gunpowder,” Jake continued. “In his free time he enjoyed blowing off his friends’ kneecaps, taking hostages, and sinking ships—even his own. His famous friends included Israel Hands, Anne Bonney, and Stede Bonnet.”
Jimmy stepped up. “Mama’s tall. Her back hurts if she bends over. This tells us tall pirates like Blackbeard buried their treasure shallow.”
“Ridiculous,” Attila snapped. “Blackbeard was management. He wouldn’t bury his own treasure, he’d make underlings do it.”
He ignored her. “Jake and me specialize in shallow digging. If we can dig in your yard, let us know.” They bowed and we applauded them to their seats.
“Ten points for using the library, boys,” Miss Retzyl said. “I believe that’s a first.”
“Ten points?” Attila gasped. “For that?”
“We start where we are,” Miss Retzyl said, very Zen. “Take out your math books,” she added as Harm sauntered to the pencil sharpener. I took out my book and turned off my brain. On his way to his seat, Harm dropped a note on my desk. Gabriel alert. Sharpen your pencil. Now.
I snapped my pencil lead and headed for the window. I cranked the sharpener and watched Gabriel strain to push a heavy metal contraption across the schoolyard.
“Mo,” Miss Retzyl said, “sit down. You’ll sharpen that pencil to a nub.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said. “Thank you for that intervention. Over-sharpening is a terrible habit, hard to admit, harder to break. Gabriel’s up to no good by the monkey bars.”
“He is not,” Attila said. “He’s using a very expensive Ground Penetrating Radar to check for pirate things. They’re unlikely on this side of the river, but it never hurts to look. We’ve already found a sword across the river. We’re having it appraised.”
“A sword?” Thes croaked, rising to peer out the window.
The class rumbled.
“Settle down,” Miss Retzyl said, strolling over to me.
We stood side by side, watching Gabriel pluck something from the dirt and drop it in his collection bag. He leaned against the heavy machine and pressed on.
I smiled up at her. “Do you ever feel like we’re equals from a past life and so it’s odd that you’re now the teacher and I’m a mere student?” I asked, my voice low.
“No,” she said. “Go to the office and call Detective Starr. We’re being robbed.”
* * *
An hour later, Attila slammed her Mean Cuisine onto the table next to ours. “Calling Starr was wrong. My parents pay taxes. Gabriel can take things off public land if we say so.”
Sal slipped in by Dale. “Public land belongs to everyone, Anna. That’s why he can’t take things. It’s stealing from all of us. It seems like he’d know that.” She smiled at Dale. “Mama says thank you for the fresh eggs.”
Dale blushed. “You’re welcome,” he said. “The chickens are laying good now that the coyotes aren’t howling so close. Coyotes sing like police sirens, only glittery and dangerous as knives. I couldn’t lay an egg either, if they were howling around me.”
Sal nibbled her sandwich. “I’d love to hear them sometime.”
“Sometime later,” I said. Too late.
Dale threw his head back and yodeled like a fleet of police cars. The lunchroom went silent. Jake and Jimmy jumped up and ran for the door.
“Impressive,” Sal said, scooting closer to Dale.
“Stupid,” Attila muttered as the lunchroom chatter picked up again.
“Sal,” Harm whispered, out of Attila range, “can you and Skeeter meet with us this afternoon? If Gabriel’s already finding artifacts, we need to step up our game. We could use your research skills and your fashion sense. We have two trunks full of clues.”
“Will you be there, Dale?” she asked, and he nodded. “I’ll check our schedule and let you know, Harm.”
* * *
Skeeter and Sal couldn’t work us in until Thursday. We spent the next afternoons plastering the town with flyers, and combing the last of the attic crud for clues. When we finally stepped into the attic Thursday, to set up for our meeting, it was like stepping into a deep freeze.
“Oh no, I forgot to close the window,” Dale said, running to the gable. “And it rained.” He touched the plaster beneath the window. “This wall’s soaked!”
“Ruined!” Mrs. Little shrieked behind me and we jumped like cats. “I told you not to leave the windows open!”
I wheeled to face her, but Dale went statue-still. He’s not good with authority figures.
“Unless I’m wrong, Anna Celeste left that window open,” I said, luring Mrs. Little’s attention from Dale. I stepped to my right. She turned with me, her gaze glued to mine.
I stepped right again. She turned with me, putting Dale behind her.
Dale sprang to the window, grabbed the crosspiece, and tugged. The rain-swollen window stuck fast. He lifted his feet and bounced by his fingertips, his face going red as Harm slipped up the stairs and bounded over to help him.
Miss Lana says when in doubt, compliment.
“I love what you’ve done with your hair,” I said. “Taxidermy skills are hard to translate to the human experience, but somehow you’ve managed.” The window screamed down, and Mrs. Little whirled to face the boys.
Behind them, the soggy plaster beneath the window slowly bulged. It did a slow-motion backflip off the wall and thudded to the floor at their heels.
“There,” I said, very smooth. “That couldn’t have worked out better. May we show you out?” I asked, taking Mrs. Little’s elbow.
“Unhand me,” she snarled, and slammed her cane against the quilts covering the third trunk.
Something clicked.
“What was that?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” we chorused.
“Fix that wall or pay for it,” she snapped. “I came up to say the mayor and I leave tomorrow for the Thorny Plant Convention. Here’s the house key,” she said, forking it over. “And if anything’s amiss when we return . . .”
“We know,” I said as she clunked downstairs. “We’ll rue the day we met you.”
She slammed the door at the bottom of the stairs.
“Why did we take her case?” Dale muttered as Harm and I tore for the pile of quilts covering the third trunk—and that mysterious click.
“Why did you take my case? Greed!” Mrs. Little shouted from downstairs. “Harm needs money. Red’s broke. And you have guests. Tall girl, short girl.”
“Skeeter and Sal,” Harm said, dropping the quilts back in place and turning our radio on.
The puzzling click would have to wait.
“Good news, Mo,” Skeeter said, walking in. “Your sweater’s at the lab. Mother’s cousin was airlifted to Charlotte this morning for surgery. No charge for the upgrade. But you’re on the clock starting . . . now,” she said, glancing at her watch.
“We’ll be brief,” Harm said, noting the time. “Dale?”
Dale swaggered over, grabbed the quilt on the first trunk, and swept it away. “Pesto!”
“You mean presto, Dale,” Sal said as he opened the trunk. She peered in and caught he
r breath. “A calico dress—real calico,” she said, lifting out a dress and examining the tiny flowers woven into the fabric. “The stitching is beautiful.” She draped the long skirt over the trunk and gasped. “Someone snipped a square from this skirt! That’s criminal . . . Ouch!” she cried, pulling her hand back and slipping her finger into her mouth. “Straight pins,” she murmured. “Odd ones, made of brass. Hope they’re not cursed.”
She dipped in again. “A bonnet. Gloves. . . . A tapestry purse!” She wrinkled her nose. “It smells funny.”
“That’s gunpowder,” Dale said as she unwrapped the portrait.
“This woman looks familiar,” Sal said, studying the painting as Dale opened the second trunk. Sal peeked in. “Homespun britches, tools . . . One shoe? And the sole’s tacked on—that’s Colonial technology.” She looked at us, her eyes glowing. “I’d love to price these things for you.”
“Skeeter, we need your internet skills too,” Harm said.
“To track down that Ugly Trim sign,” Skeeter guessed, and he nodded.
“You’ll want our consultant bundle, Desperados,” Sal said. “It gives you access to Skeeter’s research skills, my business and fashion genius, and our complete confidentiality package. I suggest it because Gabriel has top-of-the-line equipment and connections and Anna Celeste’s nose for gold. And you’ve got . . . us.”
Sal has a depressing way with summary. I nodded.
“Excuse us while we confer,” she said, and they stepped away to whisper.
Dale edged over. “How much money do we have?”
“Not counting the cash we have to give back if we can’t find the treasure and subtracting repairs to the plaster wall we just ruined?” I asked. “About minus fifteen dollars.” I gave Sal a smile. “Feel free to pro bono us. We send a lot of business your way.”
“I’m sorry, Mo, but curses drive our cost up,” she said. “We’ll do it for ten percent.”
Dale whistled. “So if we find a billion-dollar treasure, we give you . . .”
We waited. Math is to Dale as water is to evaporated.
“A lot,” he concluded.
“That’s if you find the treasure,” Sal said. “If you don’t, ten percent of nothing is zip.”
“Deal,” I said, and they headed downstairs.
Harm zipped to the quilts hiding the third trunk. “The click,” he said. We dragged the quilts away, lifted the lid, and tapped along the floor and walls. A wall panel swung open.
A small book belly-flopped onto the trunk’s floor.
“Lavender and me talked about it, and I don’t believe in curses,” Dale said, backing away. “But you open it, Mo. Just in case. Out of the three of us, the devil would be most worried about going toe to toe with you.”
I hesitated. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to say.
“Thank you,” I replied, and opened the book. “Mary’s handwriting,” I reported, and read: “Blackbeard’s curse is a shark. It circles back. Love, Mary.” I thumbed through the pages—all of them blank.
Dead center of the volume, Mary had pressed a daisy.
I read the words beneath its withered petals. “A rose by any other name smells as sweet. William Shakespeare.”
“What the devil does a daisy have to do with Blackbeard?” Harm muttered.
“Is my wall fixed?” Mrs. Little bellowed from below.
“We’re working on it, Mrs. Little,” I shouted. “Don’t worry, we’re handy.”
Harm felt the plaster beneath the window. “This wall has to dry before we can repair it.” He tossed a chunk of plaster to me. “Think fast, LoBeau.” I snagged the plaster with my left and flipped it into my right.
“Mo would have made Little League MVP,” Dale said, “only she got excommunicated for trying to curveball Attila to death.”
The plaster had landed upside down in my hand. I stared at the faint purple hieroglyphs covering the back of the plaster—squiggles, lines, triangles. “What’s this? Code? Or . . .” I knelt and peeled a chunk of damp plaster from the wall.
Behind it lay a thin ghost of white paper, its ink pulled away by the plaster.
“Mary’s clue,” I said, my heart pounding. “She plastered it inside this wall. We found it! The treasure’s practically ours!”
Chapter Eleven
She’s Coming Here?
Twenty minutes later we muscled our bucket of clues up Harm’s back steps onto his porch.
“Wow,” Dale said, staring at a shelf over the washing machine. “That’s a lot of money jars.” True. Beside the dented cans and off-brand laundry detergent sat six soil-caked Mason jars, all of them empty.
“Withdrawals from the First Bank of Gramps,” Harm said. “Life’s expensive. Christmas, repairs, plumbing . . .”
“How many more jars are buried out there?” I asked, looking to the woods.
“Maybe ten,” he said, heading into the kitchen. “A couple of these came up empty.”
Harm’s mom, I thought. Kat has access to a metal detector, and she’d know Mr. Red’s banking habits. I looked away, ashamed of thinking bad of her.
Harm dropped the heavy bucket by the kitchen table and opened the yellow checked curtains. Outside, Mr. Red rounded the side of the shed, holding a Y-shaped branch in front of him, one branch of the Y in each hand.
“He’s dowsing for water,” Dale said before I could ask. “Still looking for those leaky pipes. Daddy used to dowse too.” The branch tip bobbled, and dipped hard. Mr. Red marked his spot. “Like Tinks said, crazy ain’t crazy if it works.”
Harm opened the fridge. “If we eat supper now, we can take our time putting our plaster puzzle together.”
“I’ll call the Colonel,” I said, darting to the phone.
He picked up on the second ring. “The Colonel. Speak to me.”
“I’m invited for supper at Harm’s,” I said, and whispered, “We found a mega-clue.”
I could hear his quick nod. “Hang on a second, Tinks,” he said. And then to me, his voice low: “Right-o, Soldier. Supper and a mega-clue. Rose happens to be here. I’ll tell her too. Be home by eight.”
He hung up. The Colonel hates long good-byes.
We had the table set in two shakes. Harm went to the back door: “Gramps! Supper!”
Mr. Red sauntered in. Lately he’s been combing his white hair up in front. “You look nice,” I told him, and he winked. Him and Harm wink identical.
“Hope Lacy thinks so too,” he said, rolling his shirtsleeves and reaching for the soap. He staggered back, yelping in pain. “Dang it,” he said as a bloody knife clattered to the floor. He bent forward and squeezed his hand.
“Gramps!” Harm grabbed Mr. Red’s hand and jerked the faucet wide open. The old spigot spit like a cat and water dribbled over Mr. Red’s hand.
“Get the bandages out of the bathroom, Mo,” Harm said. “Run!”
* * *
“Maybe we are cursed,” Harm said after supper. He smiled and made his voice spooky. “Leaky pipes, spitting water, cold showers instead of hot . . .”
I laughed and studied the odd-shaped chunks of plaster on the table. “Let’s do this like a jigsaw puzzle,” I said. “Turn the purple marks up. We’ll start with the pieces that show the edges of Mary’s paper. You can see where the plaster overlapped the paper’s edges, if you look.”
Harm grabbed a cookie sheet. “Maybe we can frame it.”
We worked near an hour, matching faint purple lines. The edges took shape, and we worked inward, toward the heart of the puzzle.
We added pieces, shuffling and turning them. “This wavy line could be a river—only not our river, it curves the wrong way,” Harm said, frowning. “These purple triangles could be rooftops, but not Tupelo Landing’s: They’re on the wrong side of the river.”
“And what’s wrong with that corner?” Dal
e asked, hovering over the puzzle. “Looks like a shark bite—jagged around the edges, like teeth prints.”
Mr. Red padded in, headed for the tea pitcher. “Hold it, Gramps,” Harm said, hopping up. “Your hand might start bleeding again. Hey, you know this river?” he asked, pouring the tea.
Mr. Red studied our map. “Nope, but whoever drew it didn’t like you very much. That purple ink’s poisonberry ink. Myrt Little used to make it in high school—family recipe. Touch it to your lips or let it stay on your skin and you’ll be sick as a dog.”
“Poisonberry?” Dale gasped, jumping away from the map.
We bolted for sink and soap.
I washed up, and turned to find Mr. Red studying the map. I went subtle. “Hunting treasure with a poison maker like Mrs. Little must have been . . .”
“Miserable,” Mr. Red said. “I only put up with her because I was trying to catch Lacy’s eye. Of course, Lacy was too rich and I was too . . .”
“Good-looking,” I said, and he laughed the way Harm laughs.
“Do you have plastic wrap?” Dale asked, and Harm opened a cabinet door. Inside, everything stood at attention—Harm’s work. Mr. Red’s more a Leaning Tower of Dishes man.
“Let’s wrap the puzzle up, to keep the poison away.”
Dale is to plastic wrap as Houdini is to straitjacket. He always gets out of it, but it takes time and death-defying struggle. As he battled the wrap, I spotted a spare piece of plaster under the table. I tore off a ribbon of plastic and wrapped it. “Here’s the map’s north point and a bunch of squiggles,” I said, and nudged it into place.
Dale frowned. “That N is like my second-grade N. Backwards.” His eyes went wide. “Your room, Harm,” he said. He grabbed the map and zipped down the hall.
I stepped into Harm’s room—a first—and took a look around.
It runs opposite Dale’s boy pit. His trim single bed sits beneath the room’s lone window, his blue-plaid bedspread tucked in neat.
The Law of Finders Keepers Page 8
