Case Closed #4, page 11
“Frank, you’re in first grade.”
“I know that. I went pro last year. Now GRAPE ME!”
“What?”
“I want you to put a grape in my mouth.”
“And where am I supposed to get grapes?”
“Fine,” Frank says, pouty. “Chip me!”
I feed him a chip, and he begins to mold the clay.
“Is there something we can do to help?” I ask, after a half hour of him still playing around with clay.
“Why don’t we string the jewels, Carlos?” Eliza says. “With the gems we bought, we have enough to do twenty-three beads on each side. The pattern should be blue, green, green, red. I’ll string this side. You pick up the pattern on the twenty-fourth bead in the sequence.”
“Okay?” I say. “Which color should that be?”
Frank smashes the clay with his fist.
“Frankie, no! That snake was looking really good.”
“No, no!” he says. “It looked like a worm. I am going for snake.”
“Um . . . Eliza?”
“Can you figure it out, Carlos? Sometimes Frank has meltdowns when his vision doesn’t match the final product, and I need to calm him down.”
* * *
TO START WITH A BLUE GEM, CLICK HERE.
TO START WITH A GREEN GEM, CLICK HERE.
TO START WITH A RED GEM, CLICK HERE.
* * *
WE HAVE TO ambush whoever is in this tunnel. We absolutely cannot risk them running away. I turn off my phone light, and all we can see is the glow from their lantern.
“Frank,” I whisper, quieter than a spider descending on its prey. “If you want to sneak attack, you have to be silent. The quieter you are, the better your sneak attack will be.”
Frank nods. He doesn’t say anything, which is honestly a marvel.
We tiptoe forward. I don’t even hear us—that’s how quiet we are. The person ahead definitely hasn’t noticed us. It’s not until we’re ten feet away that I can tell who it is, and what they’re doing: it’s Zip, setting up a tripod.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
Zip jumps and turns around. “You scared me!” They hold a hand over their heart. “I’m setting up my 3D laser!”
“To take pictures of the treasure?”
Zip laughs lightly. “No, it’s to take scans of the tunnels. It’s my job to make maps.”
“Are you supposed to be in here alone?” I ask. I thought the whole team was supposed to go into the tunnels together. Everyone or no one.
“You think I’d really stop everyone from doing their work, just to watch me scan the catacombs with a laser? You know Nadira would panic if I threw her off schedule.”
Hmmm . . . Zip’s story does seem convincing.
“Let’s say I believe you,” I say.
“Why wouldn’t you believe me?” Zip says. “I’m just here doing my job. Look, I’m the least suspicious person on the team. Ask me anything! I’m an open book.”
* * *
TO ASK ZIP WHO THEY SUSPECT, CLICK HERE.
TO ASK ZIP ABOUT THEIR JOB, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I JUST DON’T feel like talking with Eliza right now. “Frank, let’s explore together.”
“WOOHOO!”
Eliza looks disappointed, but she veers to the left side of the catacombs with Mom. Frank and I move through the tunnels, shining our flashlights across the cracked stone. I accidentally let my light fall, and I jump a mile.
There’s a skeleton. A human one.
“COOL!” Frank says, gravitating toward it.
“Don’t touch it, Frank!”
“But you let me get away with the most stuff!” he says with a pout. “You’re my favorite.” He blinks at me innocently.
Ugh. How can I say no? I’m his favorite!
He yanks on the skeleton.
BOOM!
Thick wooden spikes rain down around us, and we’re caught in a booby-trapped cage with the creepy skeleton. No matter how hard we kick the beams, they just won’t budge.
I really messed up, no bones about it.
CASE CLOSED.
“A FEW SLIDES?” I say to Professor Worthington. “Okay, sure, I’d love to see what else you have to say about Harmonia!”
The professor digs into his bag and sets up his tablet. “The story of Harmonia,” he begins grandly, “actually starts five thousand years before she was born. I will commence by taking you through the detailed history of ancient—”
“Um, Professor?” Eliza interrupts. “How many slides are there?”
“Six hundred forty-three.”
That’s a few? We can’t stay and listen to all that! “I’m sorry, but we have to—”
“Excuse me!” Professor Worthington says sharply. “It’s extremely rude to talk during a professor’s lecture. If you don’t hush, I’m going to have to fail you.”
“Fail?” Eliza squeaks.
“But we’re not even in your class!”
“I will call every educator you have, and you’ll receive a failing mark in every class in every grade if you talk again before my lecture concludes. Now. Where was I? Ah, yes. The story of Harmonia actually starts five thousand years before she was born. . . .”
CASE CLOSED.
NO MATTER HOW hard I try, I just can’t figure out my way through this labyrinth. Now I know why it’s famous for being unsolvable.
“Eliza, can you help?”
“I think if we go—yes! I think this’ll work!” She traces a path that we should take through the labyrinth, once we go down the stairs.
“And now that we have our path,” she says, “all we have to do is keep track of the ancient Greek numbers as we pass them.”
* * *
ADD UP THE NUMBERS YOU PASS THROUGH.
IF YOU THINK THE SOLUTION IS 244, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE SOLUTION IS 234, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“SO, MR. LEECH . . . you didn’t steal the artifacts because someone else did it first. Who beat you to the punch?”
Richard Leech scowls. “Who even knows? I thought it was your job to figure that out.”
“We’re working on it.”
“And?” he says curtly. “What have you come up with?”
Frank pokes him in the stomach. “You! GUILTY!”
Leech frowns. “You’re telling me I’m the only person you suspect? That can’t be true.”
I think long and hard. And then . . . ideas formulate. There’s Smarty Marty, who is so eager to prove herself. Would staging a crime, then solving the crime, give her the praise and promotion she so desperately wants? And there’s Zip, who has messed up five times on the same job, who looked pretty pleased with themself as they walked back to the tent.
We haven’t even begun to dig into the professor or the doctor.
And there’s Nadira Nadeem, whose flashlight we found near the catacombs, who was so effective in pointing us to Zip and Leech as suspects yesterday. Was that to keep us from investigating her? Was there more to Orlando Bones’s hesitance when he didn’t want her in the interrogation room?
“Actually, I have an idea.”
“Me too,” Eliza says.
“Zip!” I say, as she says, “Smarty!”
Two seconds later, Frank yells, “Frank!”
We stare at him.
“What? I just want to be included!”
I sigh as I turn back to Eliza. “We’re really off sync today.”
“You mean out of sync,” she says quietly, correcting me.
Usually I would smile, but now I just feel tired. “So what do we do? Another coin toss?”
Eliza thinks for a moment. “Smarty and Zip work in the same tent. We’ll go there and take an investigative opportunity as it arises.”
“Can I have my phone back?” Leech complains.
“No,” I say. “It’s proof of your crimes.”
“Hey—I didn’t do any crimes. Thinking about stealing artifacts is not a crime.”
I pocket the phone. He lunges at me. His hands close around the phone and we wrestle with it, but then Frank jumps into the fray, grabs Leech’s phone, and puts it straight into his mouth.
“FRANK!” Eliza shrieks. “Spit that out! It has germs!”
Frank smiles and pulls it out of his mouth, making sure to leave it drenched in saliva. “Still want it?”
“Yes.”
“TOO BAD!” Frank shouts, running down the hill with his arms and legs flailing. “Last one back is a rotten egg!”
We run after Frank, leaving Richard Leech baffled and furious on the hillside. We finally catch up to Frank by the work tent, and he is grinning. “Rotten egg, rotten egg!”
I sigh. But at least Frank led us right where we needed to go.
We walk inside. In the back, Smarty Marty has her headphones on, and she is rocking out as she works. Closer to the front of the tent, Zip’s workspace is empty, except for maps and diagrams lying on the table.
I want to look at Zip’s maps. But . . . who knows how much time we’ll have before Zip returns? And Smarty Marty is right here. If she catches us snooping through Zip’s things, we’re done. We would have to be extra sneaky, and . . .
I look at Frank, who is moving closer to Zip’s spinny chair. Trusting Frank to keep quiet might be a losing battle. Is it worth trying? As Bones would say, high risk, high reward? Or should we play it safe and interrogate Smarty Marty?
* * *
TO EXAMINE ZIP’S WORKSPACE, CLICK HERE.
TO INTERRUPT SMARTY MARTY, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I CAN’T EVEN believe I’m saying this, but I’m going to ask Frank for a hint.
“Frank, can you help me?”
“The long bone’s connected to the . . . short bone. The short bone’s connected to the . . . ear bone,” he sings.
“Ears don’t have bones,” I say.
“The ear bone’s connected to the . . . cheekbone!”
“Never mind, I’ll do it myself,” I grumble.
“The femur’s connected to the . . . lemur! Okay, fine, I’ll do it!”
He runs over to the chart, and I follow. I read out some of the harder clues to him, and he finds the bones on Dr. Mandible’s poster. Then he spells the letters back to me. We’re not half bad!
But we only get four done before he gets bored. Oh, well. At least I got his help with some of these. That’s better than nothing, which is what I’m getting from Eliza!
On the spine
Upper arm
Hip
Longest
Part of shin
On the face
Calf
Part of forearm
Collarbone
Fingers and toes
* * *
IF YOU THINK THE SOLUTION IS 35, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE SOLUTION IS 25, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I DON’T WANT to disappoint Eliza, but . . . I’d be disappointing myself if I didn’t follow my own hunches.
“Eliza,” I say, looking down at my shoes, “I think we should confront Nadira.”
“Fine,” she says coolly. “Lead the way.”
We walk until we find Nadira, back at her desk. She looks up in surprise as we approach.
“I wish I could talk to you, detectives,” she says, “but I’m totally swamped. I’ve got three meetings this afternoon, and I’ve got about seventy emails to answer. Plus we’re taking Zip’s map for a—”
I slam the flashlight on her desk. “Explain this,” I say.
She looks confused. “It’s called a flashlight?”
“I know that! But it’s your flashlight.” I show her the NN on the bottom.
She opens her desk drawer and pulls out a flashlight with no initials on it. “This is mine. I don’t know whose that is.”
“See?” Eliza says angrily. “Told you.”
“You believe her, Eliza? She’s a suspect!”
“Because it makes sense. I told you this was a foolish plan!”
“Foolish!” I say furiously. “Because you’re the only one who can have thoughtful plans?”
“I never said that!” she roars.
Nadira stands up. “You know what? I’m not sure what is going on between you two, but this is completely unprofessional behavior. When Mr. Bones said he was hiring child detectives, I didn’t argue because I thought he knew what he was doing. But now I see that it was a mistake to hire people who are so . . . immature. Since Mr. Bones is out for the moment, I am in charge. And I think it’s best you leave.”
She snatches our badges from our backpacks. Security escorts us off the dig. And just like that, we lost this case in the speed of (flash)light.
CASE CLOSED.
NADIRA CAN HELP us translate the message in Greek. I know she can. “Ms. Nadeem,” I say breathlessly, reaching into my pocket.
“Carlos?” Eliza warns.
“It’s okay, Eliza,” I say, pulling out my phone. I pull up the picture. “Ms. Nadeem, can you translate something for us?”
Nadira and Bones both crowd around the phone.
“Lady luck!” Bones says excitedly. He’s like a puppy. “We hit the jackpot! You found this in there? I knew you were a good bet!”
Nadira zooms in closer to get a better look at the words. “We’ve never seen anything like this in there. Where was this message?”
“On the wall. Obviously,” Frank says. So sassy!
Nadira mutters to herself for a minute as she puzzles it out. She clears her throat.
“Once from the gods, to the gods again. Return the gift. This is not the end but the key to greater things.”
My heart thuds. Of course the message is about the necklace. But . . . is it saying what I think it’s saying? This is not the end but the key to greater things? The necklace isn’t the endgame. There’s more treasure to find. Greater treasure. But what could that possibly be?
“Well? What does it mean?” Bones says eagerly, looking back and forth between me, Eliza, Frank, and Mom.
“Heck if I know,” I say with a shrug, but that’s a lie. And judging from the flush in Eliza’s face, she also recognizes that the message is significant.
Orlando Bones adjusts his fedora. He looks at us seriously. “I have to ask. Do you know where the Necklace of Harmonia is?”
My stomach flips. We can’t give up the necklace—not until we know what this greater thing is. How do I get out of answering?
* * *
TO PRETEND TO FAINT, CLICK HERE.
TO STOMP ON BONES’S FOOT, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“YOU SAID YOU saw the tunnels?” I ask the professor.
“Oh yes,” he says. “Dark, tiny things. I couldn’t even fit. You three will do fine, but you”—he points at Mom—“might not.”
Mom is small for an adult. How tiny are these tunnels anyway?
“Don’t forget a flashlight,” Professor Worthington says.
“If they’re as small as you say, you must not have gone very far into the catacombs. Why are you so sure the necklace is there?”
“The imagery of the serpents. It ties Harmonia, the necklace, and the entranceway together.”
“And Medusa,” Eliza says.
“There are many serpents in Greek mythology, but only one that forms a necklace. If I had any doubt that the catacombs were connected to that fateful necklace, it was immediately quelled when we found that disk.”
* * *
TO ASK THE PROFESSOR ABOUT THE DISK, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I HOLD THE hammer, swing it over my shoulder, and smash the necklace.
Crunch!
It’s in actual pieces. But I hear a click! from the back wall of the cave. We’ve clearly activated something.
“COOL!” Frank says. “Let me try!”
I hold the hammer away from him. But he keeps trying to swipe it. “Frank, no! Stop! We have to—”
“Hello there,” says a voice from the mouth of the cave.
“Mom?” No, it’s not Mom. The person is in shadow, so I can’t see who it is, but the person is too tall and too muscular to be Mom. I don’t know who it is—not for sure, anyway—until I see him take off a hat. A fedora.
“Orlando Bones!”
“What are you doing here?” Eliza asks.
“Collecting the necklace,” he says cheerfully. “For the dig, of course. Thank you for retrieving it. Now give it here.”
I’m so confused. What is he doing here—four and a half hours away from the dig? Was he the one following us in that silver car? But . . .
“How did you find us?”
He continues smiling, and shivers go up my spine. “When we get back to the dig, I’ll cash you out,” Bones says. “In fact, I’ll sweeten the pot if you just hand the necklace over. . . .”
He doesn’t realize we’ve already smashed it to pieces.
Everything about this is wrong. Bones being here is wrong. And suddenly, understanding zaps into my brain, like a lightning bolt from Zeus. “You’re the artifact thief. And the wannabe necklace thief.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“But how, Mr. Bones?” Eliza asks. “Why?”
Finally, finally, his smile slips. “I bet the farm on you, and you failed me! I gave you simple directions. Go into the tunnel, retrieve the necklace. That’s it. That’s all I needed you to do.”
“You hired us . . . to steal it for you?” Eliza says, aghast. “You wanted us to do your dirty work? You wanted to make us felons?”
“But why? For what reason?”
“For the money, okay?” he growls. “For the riches. For the chance to pay off my gambling debts.” He laughs humorlessly. “It was either rob a bank or swipe a necklace that’s been lost for millennia. I thought the odds were good that you’d be able to get it for me, since the catacombs are tiny. And the odds were even better that you’d give it to me right away, since you’re just kids.”
“I know that. I went pro last year. Now GRAPE ME!”
“What?”
“I want you to put a grape in my mouth.”
“And where am I supposed to get grapes?”
“Fine,” Frank says, pouty. “Chip me!”
I feed him a chip, and he begins to mold the clay.
“Is there something we can do to help?” I ask, after a half hour of him still playing around with clay.
“Why don’t we string the jewels, Carlos?” Eliza says. “With the gems we bought, we have enough to do twenty-three beads on each side. The pattern should be blue, green, green, red. I’ll string this side. You pick up the pattern on the twenty-fourth bead in the sequence.”
“Okay?” I say. “Which color should that be?”
Frank smashes the clay with his fist.
“Frankie, no! That snake was looking really good.”
“No, no!” he says. “It looked like a worm. I am going for snake.”
“Um . . . Eliza?”
“Can you figure it out, Carlos? Sometimes Frank has meltdowns when his vision doesn’t match the final product, and I need to calm him down.”
* * *
TO START WITH A BLUE GEM, CLICK HERE.
TO START WITH A GREEN GEM, CLICK HERE.
TO START WITH A RED GEM, CLICK HERE.
* * *
WE HAVE TO ambush whoever is in this tunnel. We absolutely cannot risk them running away. I turn off my phone light, and all we can see is the glow from their lantern.
“Frank,” I whisper, quieter than a spider descending on its prey. “If you want to sneak attack, you have to be silent. The quieter you are, the better your sneak attack will be.”
Frank nods. He doesn’t say anything, which is honestly a marvel.
We tiptoe forward. I don’t even hear us—that’s how quiet we are. The person ahead definitely hasn’t noticed us. It’s not until we’re ten feet away that I can tell who it is, and what they’re doing: it’s Zip, setting up a tripod.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
Zip jumps and turns around. “You scared me!” They hold a hand over their heart. “I’m setting up my 3D laser!”
“To take pictures of the treasure?”
Zip laughs lightly. “No, it’s to take scans of the tunnels. It’s my job to make maps.”
“Are you supposed to be in here alone?” I ask. I thought the whole team was supposed to go into the tunnels together. Everyone or no one.
“You think I’d really stop everyone from doing their work, just to watch me scan the catacombs with a laser? You know Nadira would panic if I threw her off schedule.”
Hmmm . . . Zip’s story does seem convincing.
“Let’s say I believe you,” I say.
“Why wouldn’t you believe me?” Zip says. “I’m just here doing my job. Look, I’m the least suspicious person on the team. Ask me anything! I’m an open book.”
* * *
TO ASK ZIP WHO THEY SUSPECT, CLICK HERE.
TO ASK ZIP ABOUT THEIR JOB, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I JUST DON’T feel like talking with Eliza right now. “Frank, let’s explore together.”
“WOOHOO!”
Eliza looks disappointed, but she veers to the left side of the catacombs with Mom. Frank and I move through the tunnels, shining our flashlights across the cracked stone. I accidentally let my light fall, and I jump a mile.
There’s a skeleton. A human one.
“COOL!” Frank says, gravitating toward it.
“Don’t touch it, Frank!”
“But you let me get away with the most stuff!” he says with a pout. “You’re my favorite.” He blinks at me innocently.
Ugh. How can I say no? I’m his favorite!
He yanks on the skeleton.
BOOM!
Thick wooden spikes rain down around us, and we’re caught in a booby-trapped cage with the creepy skeleton. No matter how hard we kick the beams, they just won’t budge.
I really messed up, no bones about it.
CASE CLOSED.
“A FEW SLIDES?” I say to Professor Worthington. “Okay, sure, I’d love to see what else you have to say about Harmonia!”
The professor digs into his bag and sets up his tablet. “The story of Harmonia,” he begins grandly, “actually starts five thousand years before she was born. I will commence by taking you through the detailed history of ancient—”
“Um, Professor?” Eliza interrupts. “How many slides are there?”
“Six hundred forty-three.”
That’s a few? We can’t stay and listen to all that! “I’m sorry, but we have to—”
“Excuse me!” Professor Worthington says sharply. “It’s extremely rude to talk during a professor’s lecture. If you don’t hush, I’m going to have to fail you.”
“Fail?” Eliza squeaks.
“But we’re not even in your class!”
“I will call every educator you have, and you’ll receive a failing mark in every class in every grade if you talk again before my lecture concludes. Now. Where was I? Ah, yes. The story of Harmonia actually starts five thousand years before she was born. . . .”
CASE CLOSED.
NO MATTER HOW hard I try, I just can’t figure out my way through this labyrinth. Now I know why it’s famous for being unsolvable.
“Eliza, can you help?”
“I think if we go—yes! I think this’ll work!” She traces a path that we should take through the labyrinth, once we go down the stairs.
“And now that we have our path,” she says, “all we have to do is keep track of the ancient Greek numbers as we pass them.”
* * *
ADD UP THE NUMBERS YOU PASS THROUGH.
IF YOU THINK THE SOLUTION IS 244, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE SOLUTION IS 234, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“SO, MR. LEECH . . . you didn’t steal the artifacts because someone else did it first. Who beat you to the punch?”
Richard Leech scowls. “Who even knows? I thought it was your job to figure that out.”
“We’re working on it.”
“And?” he says curtly. “What have you come up with?”
Frank pokes him in the stomach. “You! GUILTY!”
Leech frowns. “You’re telling me I’m the only person you suspect? That can’t be true.”
I think long and hard. And then . . . ideas formulate. There’s Smarty Marty, who is so eager to prove herself. Would staging a crime, then solving the crime, give her the praise and promotion she so desperately wants? And there’s Zip, who has messed up five times on the same job, who looked pretty pleased with themself as they walked back to the tent.
We haven’t even begun to dig into the professor or the doctor.
And there’s Nadira Nadeem, whose flashlight we found near the catacombs, who was so effective in pointing us to Zip and Leech as suspects yesterday. Was that to keep us from investigating her? Was there more to Orlando Bones’s hesitance when he didn’t want her in the interrogation room?
“Actually, I have an idea.”
“Me too,” Eliza says.
“Zip!” I say, as she says, “Smarty!”
Two seconds later, Frank yells, “Frank!”
We stare at him.
“What? I just want to be included!”
I sigh as I turn back to Eliza. “We’re really off sync today.”
“You mean out of sync,” she says quietly, correcting me.
Usually I would smile, but now I just feel tired. “So what do we do? Another coin toss?”
Eliza thinks for a moment. “Smarty and Zip work in the same tent. We’ll go there and take an investigative opportunity as it arises.”
“Can I have my phone back?” Leech complains.
“No,” I say. “It’s proof of your crimes.”
“Hey—I didn’t do any crimes. Thinking about stealing artifacts is not a crime.”
I pocket the phone. He lunges at me. His hands close around the phone and we wrestle with it, but then Frank jumps into the fray, grabs Leech’s phone, and puts it straight into his mouth.
“FRANK!” Eliza shrieks. “Spit that out! It has germs!”
Frank smiles and pulls it out of his mouth, making sure to leave it drenched in saliva. “Still want it?”
“Yes.”
“TOO BAD!” Frank shouts, running down the hill with his arms and legs flailing. “Last one back is a rotten egg!”
We run after Frank, leaving Richard Leech baffled and furious on the hillside. We finally catch up to Frank by the work tent, and he is grinning. “Rotten egg, rotten egg!”
I sigh. But at least Frank led us right where we needed to go.
We walk inside. In the back, Smarty Marty has her headphones on, and she is rocking out as she works. Closer to the front of the tent, Zip’s workspace is empty, except for maps and diagrams lying on the table.
I want to look at Zip’s maps. But . . . who knows how much time we’ll have before Zip returns? And Smarty Marty is right here. If she catches us snooping through Zip’s things, we’re done. We would have to be extra sneaky, and . . .
I look at Frank, who is moving closer to Zip’s spinny chair. Trusting Frank to keep quiet might be a losing battle. Is it worth trying? As Bones would say, high risk, high reward? Or should we play it safe and interrogate Smarty Marty?
* * *
TO EXAMINE ZIP’S WORKSPACE, CLICK HERE.
TO INTERRUPT SMARTY MARTY, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I CAN’T EVEN believe I’m saying this, but I’m going to ask Frank for a hint.
“Frank, can you help me?”
“The long bone’s connected to the . . . short bone. The short bone’s connected to the . . . ear bone,” he sings.
“Ears don’t have bones,” I say.
“The ear bone’s connected to the . . . cheekbone!”
“Never mind, I’ll do it myself,” I grumble.
“The femur’s connected to the . . . lemur! Okay, fine, I’ll do it!”
He runs over to the chart, and I follow. I read out some of the harder clues to him, and he finds the bones on Dr. Mandible’s poster. Then he spells the letters back to me. We’re not half bad!
But we only get four done before he gets bored. Oh, well. At least I got his help with some of these. That’s better than nothing, which is what I’m getting from Eliza!
On the spine
Upper arm
Hip
Longest
Part of shin
On the face
Calf
Part of forearm
Collarbone
Fingers and toes
* * *
IF YOU THINK THE SOLUTION IS 35, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE SOLUTION IS 25, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I DON’T WANT to disappoint Eliza, but . . . I’d be disappointing myself if I didn’t follow my own hunches.
“Eliza,” I say, looking down at my shoes, “I think we should confront Nadira.”
“Fine,” she says coolly. “Lead the way.”
We walk until we find Nadira, back at her desk. She looks up in surprise as we approach.
“I wish I could talk to you, detectives,” she says, “but I’m totally swamped. I’ve got three meetings this afternoon, and I’ve got about seventy emails to answer. Plus we’re taking Zip’s map for a—”
I slam the flashlight on her desk. “Explain this,” I say.
She looks confused. “It’s called a flashlight?”
“I know that! But it’s your flashlight.” I show her the NN on the bottom.
She opens her desk drawer and pulls out a flashlight with no initials on it. “This is mine. I don’t know whose that is.”
“See?” Eliza says angrily. “Told you.”
“You believe her, Eliza? She’s a suspect!”
“Because it makes sense. I told you this was a foolish plan!”
“Foolish!” I say furiously. “Because you’re the only one who can have thoughtful plans?”
“I never said that!” she roars.
Nadira stands up. “You know what? I’m not sure what is going on between you two, but this is completely unprofessional behavior. When Mr. Bones said he was hiring child detectives, I didn’t argue because I thought he knew what he was doing. But now I see that it was a mistake to hire people who are so . . . immature. Since Mr. Bones is out for the moment, I am in charge. And I think it’s best you leave.”
She snatches our badges from our backpacks. Security escorts us off the dig. And just like that, we lost this case in the speed of (flash)light.
CASE CLOSED.
NADIRA CAN HELP us translate the message in Greek. I know she can. “Ms. Nadeem,” I say breathlessly, reaching into my pocket.
“Carlos?” Eliza warns.
“It’s okay, Eliza,” I say, pulling out my phone. I pull up the picture. “Ms. Nadeem, can you translate something for us?”
Nadira and Bones both crowd around the phone.
“Lady luck!” Bones says excitedly. He’s like a puppy. “We hit the jackpot! You found this in there? I knew you were a good bet!”
Nadira zooms in closer to get a better look at the words. “We’ve never seen anything like this in there. Where was this message?”
“On the wall. Obviously,” Frank says. So sassy!
Nadira mutters to herself for a minute as she puzzles it out. She clears her throat.
“Once from the gods, to the gods again. Return the gift. This is not the end but the key to greater things.”
My heart thuds. Of course the message is about the necklace. But . . . is it saying what I think it’s saying? This is not the end but the key to greater things? The necklace isn’t the endgame. There’s more treasure to find. Greater treasure. But what could that possibly be?
“Well? What does it mean?” Bones says eagerly, looking back and forth between me, Eliza, Frank, and Mom.
“Heck if I know,” I say with a shrug, but that’s a lie. And judging from the flush in Eliza’s face, she also recognizes that the message is significant.
Orlando Bones adjusts his fedora. He looks at us seriously. “I have to ask. Do you know where the Necklace of Harmonia is?”
My stomach flips. We can’t give up the necklace—not until we know what this greater thing is. How do I get out of answering?
* * *
TO PRETEND TO FAINT, CLICK HERE.
TO STOMP ON BONES’S FOOT, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“YOU SAID YOU saw the tunnels?” I ask the professor.
“Oh yes,” he says. “Dark, tiny things. I couldn’t even fit. You three will do fine, but you”—he points at Mom—“might not.”
Mom is small for an adult. How tiny are these tunnels anyway?
“Don’t forget a flashlight,” Professor Worthington says.
“If they’re as small as you say, you must not have gone very far into the catacombs. Why are you so sure the necklace is there?”
“The imagery of the serpents. It ties Harmonia, the necklace, and the entranceway together.”
“And Medusa,” Eliza says.
“There are many serpents in Greek mythology, but only one that forms a necklace. If I had any doubt that the catacombs were connected to that fateful necklace, it was immediately quelled when we found that disk.”
* * *
TO ASK THE PROFESSOR ABOUT THE DISK, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I HOLD THE hammer, swing it over my shoulder, and smash the necklace.
Crunch!
It’s in actual pieces. But I hear a click! from the back wall of the cave. We’ve clearly activated something.
“COOL!” Frank says. “Let me try!”
I hold the hammer away from him. But he keeps trying to swipe it. “Frank, no! Stop! We have to—”
“Hello there,” says a voice from the mouth of the cave.
“Mom?” No, it’s not Mom. The person is in shadow, so I can’t see who it is, but the person is too tall and too muscular to be Mom. I don’t know who it is—not for sure, anyway—until I see him take off a hat. A fedora.
“Orlando Bones!”
“What are you doing here?” Eliza asks.
“Collecting the necklace,” he says cheerfully. “For the dig, of course. Thank you for retrieving it. Now give it here.”
I’m so confused. What is he doing here—four and a half hours away from the dig? Was he the one following us in that silver car? But . . .
“How did you find us?”
He continues smiling, and shivers go up my spine. “When we get back to the dig, I’ll cash you out,” Bones says. “In fact, I’ll sweeten the pot if you just hand the necklace over. . . .”
He doesn’t realize we’ve already smashed it to pieces.
Everything about this is wrong. Bones being here is wrong. And suddenly, understanding zaps into my brain, like a lightning bolt from Zeus. “You’re the artifact thief. And the wannabe necklace thief.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“But how, Mr. Bones?” Eliza asks. “Why?”
Finally, finally, his smile slips. “I bet the farm on you, and you failed me! I gave you simple directions. Go into the tunnel, retrieve the necklace. That’s it. That’s all I needed you to do.”
“You hired us . . . to steal it for you?” Eliza says, aghast. “You wanted us to do your dirty work? You wanted to make us felons?”
“But why? For what reason?”
“For the money, okay?” he growls. “For the riches. For the chance to pay off my gambling debts.” He laughs humorlessly. “It was either rob a bank or swipe a necklace that’s been lost for millennia. I thought the odds were good that you’d be able to get it for me, since the catacombs are tiny. And the odds were even better that you’d give it to me right away, since you’re just kids.”
