Case Closed #4, page 21
The serpents coil up my legs. Maybe I could fight one snake, but I can’t fight hundreds. I see the flash of white fangs, and I know . . . we’re hisssssstory.
CASE CLOSED.
I KNOW WE didn’t get to talk to Nadira Nadeem earlier, when we dismissed her from our initial conversation with Orlando Bones. But she’s so nice. Now I’m wondering if she has ideas about where the real artifacts could be.
“So . . . if you’re not selling artifacts from the dig, then do you have any idea where the real artifacts might be?”
She purses her glossed lips. “If I knew that, then we wouldn’t have had to hire you.”
“So you don’t have any suspicions?” Eliza asks.
“I’d assume, at this point, you probably have more leads and more suspicions than I do.”
I think she’s probably right about that. Even Nadira isn’t cleared from my suspect list yet. At least not until we further understand what the items are that she’s making bank on . . . and why exactly she’s selling them.
* * *
TO ASK NADIRA WHY SHE’S SELLING THE ITEMS, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“WE SHOULD CHECK out Nadira Nadeem’s workspace,” I say. “After all, Orlando Bones didn’t trust her enough to include her in our intro chat. Maybe we can figure out why he’s suspicious of her.”
Her desk is organized, maybe even more so than Eliza’s desk at school, which is saying something. Frank sits down at Nadira’s swivel chair and shakes her mouse to wake up her computer. Locked, unfortunately. I open her desk drawer. Inside, there are all sorts of color-coded calendars and schedules.
Eliza picks ups a calendar and flips through it.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding out when she’ll be back—seems like we have thirty minutes until her meeting with Professor Worthington is over. And I’m also, even more importantly, seeing if maybe she wrote down a password for her computer.”
“Um, don’t you think someone this organized has a clean uncluttered brain that can remember all her passwords?”
Eliza shakes her head. “Actually, I think exactly the opposite. We know Nadira is smart—she speaks more than one language. And we know she’s detail oriented. Someone that methodical would know that it’s unsafe to have the same password for all your devices. Therefore, she probably has too many passwords to remember.” She continues flipping through the calendar. Eventually, she hums.
“What did you find?”
“Was it a lollipop?” Frank asks.
I roll my eyes. “Give it a rest with the lollipops, Frank.”
“Pshhh. You’re a lollipoop.”
“If you two are finished,” Eliza says. “It seems like Nadira has a few different passwords written down.”
“Great!” I say. “Let’s try them all.”
“We probably shouldn’t. Sometimes electronic devices are programmed to lock you out if you guess the wrong password too many times. We need to figure out which of these seven passwords is the right one.”
“How do we do that?”
“Take a look at this,” Eliza says, excitedly showing me the page in Nadira’s calendar. I’m glad to see her enthusiasm for puzzles is back . . . but maybe it’s because she found this one.
“So her code changes each day?” I say.
“What’s today?” Frank asks.
“Thursday.”
* * *
IF YOU THINK THE SOLUTION IS SATURDAY, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE SOLUTION IS SUNDAY, CLICK HERE.
TO ASK ELIZA FOR A HINT, CLICK HERE.
* * *
WE NEED TO steer Bones to the excavation pit! I flank his left side, and Eliza and Frank follow me. With our bodies between him and the parking lot, Bones starts veering to the right, weaving between columns and people. And there are so many people. I don’t think a single archaeologist is in the pit during lunch hour.
“Out of my way!” he growls as he turns back to look at us. He keeps glancing over his shoulder.
I can use this!
“Mr. Bones,” I shout, “you should look at the necklace!”
“Huh?”
“Trust us.”
He continues to run, gazing between the bag and us—not looking where he’s going. Not paying attention to the hole up ahead.
“Look out!” one of the archaeologists calls.
“Why? Aaaaaaaugh!” Orlando Bones yowls as he falls into the pit.
“Quick! Grab the ladder!” Eliza shouts.
We yank the ladder up and pull it out of the pit before Bones even gets to his feet.
“LET ME OUT OF HERE!” he bellows, trying to claw up the sides of the pit. But it’s useless.
Then, suddenly, he seems to remember the catacombs, and he makes a mad dash for the entranceway. Which makes no sense to me because there’s only one entrance, which is also the exit. Maybe he wants to hide down there, but if he stays there too long, well . . . I guess the catacombs will live up to their name.
We run around the perimeter. Bones is halfway across the covered pit. I wait until he’s just a few feet away from the archway before calling out, “Aren’t you going to look at our necklace?”
“My necklace,” he growls.
“Actually, it’s MY necklace!” Frank says proudly.
“What?” Bones kneels in the dirt, zips open my bag, and reaches in. “No. No. This can’t be! Impossible!” He pulls out the necklace. During the chase, the clay crumbled into several parts and some of the jewels popped off.
“Rest in pieces,” Frank says dramatically.
Eliza puts a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “The forgery had a good life. You did well, Frankie.”
“I think you mean I did good.”
“I most certainly did not!” she says.
Bones looks up at us, red-faced and livid. “You—this is all your fault! Why couldn’t you just go into the catacombs? Why couldn’t you do the one thing I hired you to do?”
“You hired us to find missing artifacts,” Eliza says.
“No, I hired you to go into the catacombs! I went as far as I could, alone, by myself. But there’s a spot at the end, only big enough for a child. And I thought, what child could I get to go in there? Who would be up for the danger? Who would hand deliver the Necklace of Harmonia to me?”
“So you hired us?”
“I came across an article about a case you solved back in the States—with a missing actress. And the more I researched you, the more I thought, They’d be perfect. My next move was to steal some artifacts so I could justify hiring you. Then I bought your tickets out here.”
“But we weren’t as easily manipulated as you thought we’d be,” Eliza says.
“You kept messing up my plans,” he says, shaking with anger. “All three of you. When you arrived, I would have wagered anything that it’d be easy to get you to take the bait. All I had to do was pique your curiosity with the catacombs and the treasure, and I’d be headed for a payday. But nooooo, you had to invite Nadira into our first conversation, and she would not let me talk about the tunnels! Then, when you still had no interest in exploring them, I kidnapped your mom, thinking that of course you would retrieve her. Am I really to believe you didn’t go searching for your own mother?”
“We didn’t believe for one second that she was in the catacombs,” I say. “Where is she?”
Bones hesitates for a moment. He knows this is his last bargaining chip. “Get me out of here, and I’ll pony up the info.”
It’s tempting. Really tempting. But . . .
“No,” I say. “We found the artifacts without your help. We can find her too.”
“You kids are relentless,” Bones says, slumping to the ground. He puts his cheek on the dirt and begins to moan. And finally the rest of the task force catches up.
“Now, now, Mr. Bones,” Nadira Nadeem says. “It doesn’t do to carry on like this.”
He wails in response.
“We’ve called the police, sir,” Smarty says. “They’re on their way. Now that a position is opening on the special task force, do you think you could write a letter of recommendation for me? For your job?”
Bones groans.
At last I hear sirens in the distance, and that is when Orlando Bones finally accepts that there’s no way out of this. “Okay, kids,” he says. “Your mom is on my boat, docked in the Gulf of Corinth. You beat me. You win. And winner takes all.”
Two hours later, we’re sitting at the dig.
Smarty took us to retrieve Mom, which would have been a nicer gesture if she didn’t spend the whole ride bragging to us about how she could have found the artifacts in half the time, if only she had been given our resources.
I had expected to find Mom weak or in trouble, but she was as lively as ever. She had chewed through her duct tape binding and had unlocked the door of the cabin, even while still tied to a chair. If she had a few more hours, I’m pretty confident she would have busted herself out of there.
She is, after all, a Serrano. Resourcefulness is in our blood.
When we got back to the dig, we each gave statements to the officers there. And since we are minors, Mom sat in on each one. Eventually she pieced the story together from hearing three accounts.
And now we’re sitting on the edge of the pit, drinking coffee (Mom) and eating cookies (the rest of us), while Mom confirms that we truly did not go into the tunnels after she left.
“But really?” Mom says.
“Yes, really!”
“And you didn’t even peek in there?”
“Nope,” I say.
“I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe you actually listened to me when I said something was too dangerous! I’ve never been more proud!”
“Of course we listen to you!”
“You did excellent work,” Mom says. “You three should be so happy with yourselves right now.”
I bite into another cookie, but it doesn’t make me feel any less glum. “Mom, how can I feel happy right now? If the person who hires us is the culprit, I assume that means we don’t get paid.”
“What about the necklace?” Frank says. “We can be paid in treasure!”
Eliza shakes her head. “They can’t give us the necklace. We’re the only ones who can fit in the tunnels once we get farther into the catacombs, apparently.”
“So let’s do it! Now! Hurry up! Faster!” Frank folds his arms. “Why are you all still sitting there?”
“Because,” I say, “we did the job we were hired to do. We uncovered an artifact thief. We returned the artifacts. Nadira was right—the catacombs were never relevant to our job.”
“But treasure,” Frank insists.
“That is a mystery that the catacombs are going to keep.”
“I think that’s very wise of you, mijo,” Mom says, hugging me close. She ruffles my hair. “Just look at you three—growing up right before my very eyes. So very responsible!”
“Am not, am not, am not!” Frank insists, and to prove it, he slips down the ladder into the excavation pit and starts running toward the doorway to the catacombs.
“FRANK, NO!” Mom hollers, climbing into the hole after him.
Eliza chuckles. And a rush of warmth floods me. I couldn’t have done any of this without Eliza—I never would have come up with this brilliant forgery plan. I would have had us roaming aimlessly in those dangerous and deadly catacombs.
I feel like I’m finally seeing her, not just for her brain but for everything she brings to the table. For her logic and calm. For her cunning plans. For the way she makes decisions driven by facts and evidence. Going forward, this is how we have to be. Perfect equals compromising, communicating, and working in tandem.
“You can’t get me! Neener neener!” Frank shrieks as he runs in circles around the perimeter. Poor Mom is very winded.
“Some things never change,” Eliza says.
I grin. “And some things do.”
CASE CLOSED.
“SLOW DOWN, MOM! If you get next to them, we can see who it is.”
Mom gently puts her foot on the brakes. We coast slowly as the other car speeds up. We’re neck and neck—I look to the left, and . . .
Nothing.
The windows on the sides are tinted too. We have no idea who’s following us.
“We can’t see in!” Eliza says, disappointed.
It has to be somebody from the dig, right? Nadira, Bones, Smarty, Professor Worthington—all of them knew we had found something. Or knew, at least, that we were leaving the dig.
The silver car speeds up. They drive away, leaving us in the dust. I relax against the car seat and breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe it was all in my head. . . .
I don’t remember falling asleep, but Mom is shaking me awake. “Get up, Carlos. We’re here.”
I open my eyes. A ridiculously tall mountain is looming above me. I can’t even see the top. The peak is hidden in the clouds.
I gulp. “We’re really going to climb that thing?”
“We’re going to have to,” Eliza says solemnly.
I grab the Necklace of Harmonia from up front. Now that I have the chance to look at it up close, I can see it’s exactly how Professor Worthington described it: two snakes wrapped around each other with their mouths making a clasp and lots of glittering jewels. I slip it into my backpack for safekeeping.
We start up the path, our backpacks stuffed with the water bottles and granola bars Mom bought and the emergency first-aid kit from the car. There are a few serious hikers who pass us. No one could mistake us for serious hikers. But we have a quest. We have to keep going.
Rock after rock after rock. I start to remember why I’m not really an outdoors person. This is tedious, I’m tired, and we’re not even halfway up.
“I bet I can beat you to the top!” Frank says.
“I bet you can too,” I say.
We walk, we climb, we groan, we sweat. Finally I feel like we’re making some progress. Still not even close to the top, but we’re up pretty high now. The view is incredible—the valley stretches on for ages.
I turn back to the mountain. We’ve reached a pass where the climb is literally a rocky stairway to the sky. The stones are uneven. I really, really hope we don’t fall. We just have to be slow and careful.
I put my hand on a rock, to climb up. But I see something that stops me dead in my tracks. On the rock I’m touching, someone has etched a drawing into the stone: two snakes intertwined. In exactly the same shape as the snakes entwined on the Necklace of Harmonia. I step closer to the snakes. It’s subtle, but instead of forking, their tongues make the shape of an arrow.
To the left, there’s a very narrow cliff ledge. I’m certain—more certain than anything in my life—that we have to take it.
“This way!” I say, edging off the path. The ledge is frightening. There’s no railing, and one wrong step off the shelf could send us plummeting down. We shuffle sideways. Very slowly. And just when I start to wonder if I made a bad call, I see another snake. It’s pointing around the bend.
“Just a little farther,” I say encouragingly.
“Carlos, I hate you right now,” Eliza whimpers.
“MOM?” I call. She is far behind us. A snail could go faster on this ledge.
“I’m okay!” she yells. “Keep going! I’ll catch up!”
Okay. We keep going until the ledge becomes a wider platform that leads to a cave. But for the cave, we need our flashlights. We dig them out of Eliza’s backpack and click them on.
The cave is shallow. There’s a whole bunch of tiles of different shapes on the back wall, and underneath, a stockpile of items: a seashell, a hammer, metal lightning bolt, a golden wheat stalk, a trident, a lyre, a sword, a tiara, a staff, a bow and arrow, and a helmet.
But what catches my eye is a rock in the center of the cave. It has a circle on it, surrounded by a triangle. At each point of the triangle is a carving of a different animal: a vulture, a donkey, and a dove.
I pull the Necklace of Harmonia out of my bag and rest on the circle. The pendant fits perfectly, like it was made to sit there. But . . . nothing happens.
“Is something supposed to happen?” I ask Eliza.
“I don’t think we’re done yet,” she says. “We did the circle part—putting the necklace in its proper place—but I feel like we’re missing the triangle part.”
“So we have to find a vulture, a donkey, and a dove?”
Eliza reaches into her backpack and pulls out a book. She thumbs through the pages until she gets to a spread about the Greek gods. She shows me the page. “Look! A vulture is the symbol of the god Ares—Harmonia’s real father. A donkey is the symbol of Hephaestus—spurned lover and maker of the cursed necklace. And a dove symbolizes Aphrodite—Harmonia’s mother, Ares’s lover, and Hephaestus’s wife.”
“This is their love triangle.”
I think for a moment, then I shine my flashlight on the wall, where Frank is drawing weird S symbols with a piece of chalk he found. “I didn’t do it!” he says guiltily.
But actually . . . I think Frank’s on to something. There’s something about these triangle wall tiles . . . some sort of message they’re trying to tell me. I grab the chalk from him and start shading only the triangles.
* * *
IF YOU THINK THE NUMBER OF TRIANGLES IS 39, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE NUMBER OF TRIANGLES IS 35, CLICK HERE.
* * *
WE NEED TO get the maps from Zip. And if Zip isn’t going to share the maps, then we’re just going to have to steal them.
We sneak into the work tent. Zip is at the computer, with the light of it glowing on their face. We have to be sneaky . . . we have to be fast.
I tiptoe behind Zip’s chair. The real maps have to be around here somewhere—but I don’t know which ones they are, so I grab them all.
“Hey!” Zip says, turning around.
I race out of the tent with all the maps in hand. I did it—mission successful!
