The Secret Box

by Whitaker Ringwald

“Don’t you remember? Two years ago, when my nosebleeds got bad, Dad took me to DC to see a specialist. We had some extra time so we visited the memorial.” Then he pulled a five-dollar bill out of his wallet. “You might recognize the memorial because it’s on our money. See?”

  “The Lincoln Memorial is in Washington, DC?” I asked. Ethan nodded. “You know, last night, Mom told me that I’d visited DC when I was a baby. This photo must have been taken during that trip.” I searched the photo for clues. A group of tourists stood at the memorial’s entrance, old-fashioned cameras hanging around their necks. Mom wasn’t in the picture so maybe she’d been the one taking it. “This must have been before the family got mad at Juniper.”

  “Here’s another photo,” Ethan said, picking a black frame off a pile of papers. A younger Juniper stood in some kind of ruin, surrounded by crumbling stone walls and broken pillars. She wore her hair in the same long braids. She was dressed in a khaki shirt and shorts, with a blue bandana around her neck.

  “She looks like an extra in that movie Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Tyler said.

  “Hey, here’s a diploma.” Ethan pointed to a frame that hung lopsided on the wall. “Master of science in archaeology.”

  “She’s an archaeologist?” I smiled, imagining all the exciting things my great-aunt must have done in her life, like finding a Pharaoh’s tomb or digging up a pirate treasure or discovering a lost city near the Amazon. “Wow. I bet she’s been all over the world.”

  “From the American University in Athens, awarded to Juniper Jacqueline Vandegrift,” he read.

  Did I hear correctly? “Hey, wait. I’m named after her?” Not only had we taken a trip to DC with her, but my mother had named me in her honor. This was clear evidence that Juniper had once been loved by my family. Why had that changed?

  For the next fifteen minutes or so, we went through the office, looking at photos and documents. There were pictures of Juniper at excavation sites, wielding a shovel and pick, holding fragments of pottery. Sometimes she was in a group, sometimes alone. Locations were scrawled along the bottom of the photos. The Palace of Knossos on Crete. The Agora in Athens. The Temple of Zeus on Mt. Lykaion.

  I realized that I’d broken my fingerprint rule. So had Ethan. And Tyler, with his rapid-fire gaming fingers, was touching stuff, too. Maybe it didn’t matter, now that we knew for sure that this was our great-aunt’s house. But there was still a possibility that the place had been robbed and the police would want to dust for prints. I was about to ask Ethan for more tissues, when a newspaper clipping caught my eye.

  Mysterious Illness at Excavation Site, the headline read. The article’s black-and-white photo showed a man lying on a stretcher. “Hey, listen to this.” I read it out loud:

  A mysterious illness hit workers at an excavation site on the island of Kassos. The twelve-member team reported no unusual symptoms until Monday morning when, at the same moment, everyone was suddenly struck with overwhelming fatigue and dark thoughts. One person was not affected, however, and radioed for medical help. All team members were flown to Athens, where doctors were baffled. “We cannot explain the symptoms,” Dr. Farouk, head of exotic diseases, said. “They are awake but seem uninterested in conversation or food, as if they’ve retreated into their own minds. The prognosis is uncertain.” The unaffected team member, a woman who refused to give her name, disappeared before being interviewed.

  The excavation was funded by an anonymous company but no further information was available.

  “Weird,” I said, staring at the man on the stretcher. His eyes were wide open, his face expressionless. He looked like he was under some sort of spell. The whole thing struck me as creepy.

  Ethan held up another photo. “Look at this.” I peered over his shoulder. A man and a woman stood on either side of Juniper. The man had a thin mustache and a beak-like nose. He held a shovel. The woman had ebony skin and was very tall. She also held a shovel. Like Juniper, they were dressed in safari-type clothing. A shiver ran up my spine.

  “The Hatmakers,” Ethan and I said at the same time.

  Tyler, who’d been looking at some kind of fossil, did a double take. “Hatmakers? Are you talking about the people who broke my car window? Let me see that.” He snatched the photo from Ethan’s hands. “I thought you said they were old.”

  “They are old,” Ethan said. “That photo must have been taken a long time ago.”

  “Camels in the desert,” Tyler said, reading the handwriting along the bottom of the photo. “Camels in the desert? I don’t get it. There aren’t any camels in this photo.”

  It wasn’t the missing camels that surprised me. What I noticed was that the Hatmakers each had an arm wrapped around Juniper’s waist, as if they were . . . “It looks like they’re friends,” I said. “The Hatmakers and Juniper are friends. Look how happy they are.” They were smiling as if they’d won the lottery.

  I sat in the desk chair, trying to piece together the facts. “Juniper and the Hatmakers know each other. It looks like they worked together. And the Hatmakers stole the puzzle box, which was sent to me by Juniper.” The pieces began to fall into place. A black Jaguar had pulled up alongside us shortly after leaving Chatham, New Jersey. “They weren’t out for a nice drive and just happened to run into us at the gas station. They followed us. They wanted the box.”

  “You think the Hatmakers came here looking for the box?” Ethan asked. “You think they’re the ones who made this mess?”

  “It makes sense,” I said, slowly nodding.

  “So if they came here, but didn’t find the box, how did they figure out you had it?”

  “This,” Tyler said. He picked up a UPS delivery receipt that clearly showed my address. The date of delivery was my birthday.

  “Uh . . . let me get this straight.” Ethan sat on the edge of the desk. “They ransacked Juniper’s house, followed us to the gas station, and broke Tyler’s window, just so they could get that metal box.” He paused. “That must mean—”

  “That there is something inside.” I leaped to my feet, excitement dancing down my legs. “Don’t you see, this is proof that the box holds something amazing. The Hatmakers are archaeologists, just like Juniper. She must have found something and whatever it is, they want it. They want it bad.” I couldn’t believe this was happening. Finally, an adventure for Jax Malone. “This is like a movie.”

  “Well, it’s not a movie,” Ethan pointed out. “The Hatmakers are real. And we should call the police and turn them in.” He was being his usual self. Oh why couldn’t he just get caught up in the excitement of the moment? Why did he always have to be so cautious?

  “What do you think is inside my box?” I wondered dreamily.

  Tyler picked up a glass paperweight and held it up to the window. As he spun it, mini rainbows reflected onto the walls. “In Space Quest X, deep inside the volcanic cave of the Moon of Serenity, lies the Box of Banishment. And inside the box is a wormhole that leads into another dimension. There are players who would literally kill to get that box. Only two have managed—a guy from Korea and a kid from New Zealand.”

  “The Box of Banishment?” Ethan groaned. “Tyler, this isn’t Space Quest X. This is the real world.”

  “I know this is the real world. I’m not confused about which dimension I’m currently inhabiting. Jeez.” Tyler rolled his eyes. “I’m just saying that there are lots of quests where a box holds an amazing prize. The Ark of the Covenant, for example. The ark was basically a really large golden box that contained the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments. Of course there’s Pandora’s box, which contained evil, and then there are all the pirate stories about treasure chests—those are boxes too. And . . .” He set the paperweight back on the desk. “But that doesn’t matter because our box is long gone. And no box means no prize. Quest terminated. I’m gonna go home and work with Walker on the game.” He headed out the office door, car keys dangling from his fingers. “But first, I’m thirsty.”

  Go home? “Wait, Ty
ler,” I called as Ethan and I followed.

  “We should at least call the police,” Ethan said.

  “This entire day has been a colossal waste.” Tyler headed into the kitchen. “A black hole of time suck, that’s what it’s been.” He grabbed a cup off a shelf, then filled it at the sink. Like the other rooms, the kitchen had been searched. The cupboard drawers and oven had been left open. Silverware lay scattered.

  “But we can still find my . . . I mean, our box,” I insisted. I wished I’d never agreed to share it with Tyler, but a deal was a deal. And I still needed his help, and his car. “Come on. Don’t give up. Think about the quest for that other box you mentioned . . . the Ark of the Cover.”

  “Ark of the Covenant,” Tyler corrected. “Jeez.”

  “Yeah, that thing.” I’d never read the story so I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was talking about. But I refused to let this adventure come to a big disappointing ending! Using my best persuasive voice, and trying not to fidget too much, I said, “They wanted the Ark and so they went and got it, right? They did whatever it took. They didn’t give up.”

  “Well, they should have,” Tyler said. “Because they ended up being visited by a plague of rats, boils, and hemorrhoids.”

  Rats, boils, and hemorrhoids? Who wrote a weird story like that?

  As Tyler gulped with all the delicacy of a wild boar, Ethan stood quietly in the corner. He had his phone in hand, waiting for someone to say it was okay to call the police. “Tyler,” I pleaded. “Please don’t go home yet. If we find Juniper, then she’ll tell us the right spot where the box opens. And then we can go to the right spot, find the Hatmakers, and get the box back.” It wasn’t a ridiculous plan. It made total sense. Didn’t it?

  “Uh, guys,” Ethan said as he pointed to the kitchen floor. “Is that what I think it is?”

  I looked down. My stomach went queasy. A red splotch lay on the floor.

  “Is that . . . ?” I cringed. “Is that blood?”

  15

  Jax

  It didn’t matter if it was or wasn’t blood, just the thought made my stomach churn. It was embarrassing, really. Why did I always react that way? I was brave about most everything else.

  The splotch was the size of a quarter. Another lay about a foot away. A third splotch was spread thin by a shoe’s imprint.

  Tyler put the cup in the sink, then crouched next to the first splotch. “It looks like ketchup,” he said.

  I didn’t want to get close to it. “How do we tell?” I asked.

  “Well, blood has a metallic taste and ketchup is sweet,” he said.

  “Taste?” I felt a gag coming on.

  Ethan gasped. “Are you insane? You can’t taste someone else’s blood. Blood carries pathogens.”

  “I wasn’t going to taste it,” Tyler said. “I’m not batcrap crazy. I was going to get one of you to taste it.” He opened the refrigerator. “FYI, there’s no ketchup in here.”

  My heart thudded. Blood on the floor and no great-aunt to be found. “How long do you think it’s been here?” I asked.

  “It’s dry, so it’s not fresh,” Ethan said. “Dad would be able to do an analysis.”

  “Do not call your dad,” I said. Sure, Uncle Phil had his own laboratory and all sorts of equipment, but calling him would be just as bad as calling my mom. Our “quest” would be over.

  Then a horrid thought crept into my mind. “If the Hatmakers broke in and were searching the place, and if Juniper interrupted them, or tried to stop them . . .” I swallowed hard. “Do you think they hurt her?”

  We stood in silence for a moment. Then Tyler launched into a wild explanation. “What if the Hatmakers sneaked up on Juniper and whacked her on the head, just like in the movies? Then Juniper crumpled to the floor like a rag doll. The drops of blood trickled from her temple as they dragged her away.”

  “Uh . . .” Ethan’s voice cracked. “Now I’m definitely calling the police.”

  “Wait,” I said. “We don’t know for sure that she’s hurt. Let’s just see if we can figure out what happened.” Ethan frowned, then put his phone away. I looked around the kitchen. An open loaf of bread sat on the counter, along with a block of cheddar cheese. “What if she was about to make a sandwich and she cut herself?” The footprint pointed toward the back kitchen door. “Then she walked outside because she needed to get a bandage at the drugstore. Or she needed to go to the clinic to get stitches. That would explain the drops and the footprint.”

  Tyler stood next to the print. “Well, your hypothesis works if our great-aunt is some kind of behemoth. I wear a size twelve and this print is bigger.”

  She didn’t look like a behemoth in the photos. In fact, she was short compared to both Hatmakers.

  Stepping carefully over the print, I peered out the kitchen door. Parking spots lined the alleyway behind the row houses. A blue car was parked right outside. “Where are you going?” Ethan asked as I turned the knob.

  “I want to see if that’s Juniper’s car.”

  It was a little two-door car, a hybrid. A bill from the power company sat on the front seat, addressed to Occupant. A safari hat sat on the backseat, along with a green bandana. Like me with my purple coat, Juniper seemed to have a signature look. “It’s her car,” I announced as I hurried back into the kitchen. “So where is she?”

  “Maybe she went for a walk,” Ethan said.

  “Why would she go for a walk if she’s dripping blood?” Tyler reached his hand into the bread bag and pulled out two slices. “That seems stupid.” He shoved them into his mouth.

  A new idea took shape. “What if the blood doesn’t belong to Juniper?” I said. “If the Hatmakers made this mess, then maybe one of them got cut during the rampage and Mr. Hatmaker left that footprint on his way out.”

  “Or . . .” Tyler swallowed. “Maybe they didn’t knock her over the head. Maybe they stabbed her and carried her dead body out the back door.”

  “Dead body?” Ethan said.

  “Yeah.” He reached for more bread. “And then they dumped the body in the river.”

  Ethan pulled out his phone real quick, like a Wild West sheriff drawing a gun. Before he could dial, I yanked it from his hand. “Just wait,” I said. The last thing we needed was for Ethan to freak out and call the police. I’d promised Mom no trouble. Okay, so maybe I was more worried about myself than about Ethan and Tyler, but they hadn’t been caught shoplifting a candy bar, so their parents weren’t prepared to ground them for life if they made one more mistake. I glared at Tyler. “You are not helping. Ethan and I are trying to come up with real scenarios. We have no proof that she’s been stabbed or that she’s dead.”

  “We have no proof she’s alive, either,” Tyler retorted, then he bit off a chunk of cheese.

  My stomach growled but I ignored it. “Look,” I said, “we don’t even know if she’s missing. She erased herself from the internet, remember? She doesn’t want to be found. Let’s ask around and see if the neighbors know anything.”

  So we knocked on some of the row-house doors. A woman with a big birthmark on her face answered. She didn’t know Juniper personally but she’d seen her. Juniper had lived there for a few weeks but they’d never spoken. The man who’d been mowing the lawn said he’d seen the old lady who lived in the last house but he didn’t know her name. She always kept her curtains closed. “She’s real private,” he told us. Ethan called the local hospital but no one named Juniper Vandegrift had been admitted.

  After much begging and pleading on my part, I convinced Tyler to give me a bit more time before we headed home. Also, I promised him another Starbucks card even though I had no idea how I was going to pay for it. So we went back to Juniper’s office to see if we could find more clues. I picked up the photo of the Hatmakers with their arms around Juniper, big smiles on their faces. The Camels in the desert. Something about it was bugging me. Why give a photo a label about camels if there are no camels? “The Camels in the desert. The Camels in the desert
. Wait a minute. Camels is capitalized!” That changed everything. I found an address book peeking out from beneath a pile of papers.

  “You think that’s their name?” Ethan asked.

  “It could be,” I said as I flipped through the pages. “Now that I think about it, Hatmaker sounds totally fake. Hello? Here it is! Martha and George Camel. Remember? He called her Martha. Oh but wait, there are two addresses. The first is in Greece, the second is in London. No phone numbers for either one.”

  “Martha and George Camel,” Ethan said. He searched on his phone. “Uh . . . they have a bunch of hits. They’re listed as members of the International Society of Archaeologists and they graduated from the American University in Athens, same as Juniper. There are some articles that George wrote about Greek history. The British Museum gave him some sort of award.” Ethan’s fingers danced across the screen, jumping from site to site. His fingers stopped. “Listen to this. According to another article, the Camels were involved in a mysterious incident at an archaeological site where they were both struck by an unknown illness.”

  “Struck by an unknown illness?” I grabbed the newspaper article and looked at the photo of the man on the stretcher. It was difficult to tell, but there was a slight resemblance to the old man who’d tried to buy my box at the fruit stand. He had the same long nose.

  “Martha Camel owned an auction house in London where she specialized in ancient artifacts,” Ethan said, still searching on his phone. “There’s an article in the London Times. The auction house closed after a scandal. Looks like she sold something she wasn’t supposed to sell. They disappeared and haven’t been seen since.”

  “Until they busted my car window,” Tyler said as he shoved another piece of bread into his mouth.

  I searched through the address book again and found a sticky note inside the front cover. Written in the handwriting I was starting to recognize were the initials M. & G. C., followed by an address for the Sunny Days Motel. “M. and G. C.—Martha and George Camel!” I handed the note to Ethan. “Where is this place?”