Finding Fortune (15 page)

“Hey there, Ren,” Rick said warily. “How's it goin'?”

“Fine,” I told him. I marched to the edge of the top step. Poor Chauncey was whimpering, waiting for me to come down and greet him properly, but I stayed firmly rooted to my perch. “Mom, I forgot to ask you if I can go back to help in the museum tomorrow. Can I?”

“Two days in a row?” Mom asked. “And we've got church in the morning. Isn't volunteering at the school once a week enough?”

“Hildy needs all the extra help she can get. I could go right after church,” I said, firing my words out like bullets. “Nora can take me. Or I can ride my bike.”

Mom slapped at a mosquito. “Oh, all right,” she said in a weary voice. “You can go.”

“Thank you,” I answered primly. Then I sat myself down on the top step and waited until Rick gave up and said good night.

 

EIGHTEEN

HUGH WAS ON THE FRONT STEPS
of the school when I rattled up on my bike on Sunday afternoon. “I didn't think you were coming,” he said as he trotted out on the walkway to greet me. An old army canteen swung from a strap around his neck.

I lurched off my bike and pushed the kickstand down. “Can I have a drink of that?” I motioned to Hugh's canteen. It had been blazing hot on the way over, with heat waves shimmering up from the pavement and crickets batting against my legs. I hadn't even bothered asking Mom or Nora for a ride. As soon as we got home from church, Mom had buried her nose in her first responder textbook and Nora had shut herself in her room to call Alain.

“You got here just in time,” Hugh told me as I swallowed a few gulps of his lukewarm water. “Mine says it's too hot to do anything so she's taking a nap. And Hildy took Tucker to lunch and a movie in Bellefield.”

I handed his canteen back and checked the parking lot. The Mayor's truck was gone. “Where're Garrett and the sisters?”

“The sisters are in their room and Garrett's out back.”

“I see you got the paint off,” I said as Hugh looped the canteen strap over his neck again. “Garrett must have forgiven you.”

“Yeah, he even let me help him spray the last section of the path this morning. Then I told him I had to go because you were coming over. But I didn't say anything about the pearls,” he added quickly.

“Great. So how long do you think we've got before Mine wakes up and starts looking for you?”

“Maybe an hour or two. She's got both our fans pointed on her.”

Hugh's voice grew hushed when we stepped inside the foyer. “So where do we start?” he asked.

Good question. I'd been thinking about it all night. It didn't make sense to start searching the school completely from scratch—top to bottom, room to room. Combing through thirty-two rooms plus closets would take forever, and Tucker would start getting suspicious if I sneaked out of the museum too often for our investigations. We had to use every minute wisely.

I slid my backpack off my shoulders. “Remember in Tom's letter—how he wrote that Bonny was the one who had given him the idea for the hiding place? He said something like ‘there it was, right under Bonny's nose.' Obviously Mr. Bonnycastle is the key to the mystery. So I think we should start with all of his old hangouts.” I reached into the front pocket of my backpack and pulled out an index card with a flourish.

Hugh's face brightened. “Hey, you copied me.”

“Yep. I decided to try your approach and write down all the stuff Hildy told me about Mr. Bonnycastle yesterday. Turns out she gave me some good clues for deciding where we should look first.” I wagged the card in the air. “So this is the list I came up with.”

Hugh plucked the card out of my hand and read what I had written. His expression turned squeamish. “You want to start with the boiler room?”

I nodded. “Hildy said Bonny was good at fixing things and supposedly he was the only one who knew how to keep the boiler running. So maybe he was working on it when Tom came to see him that day. Makes sense, right? The basement would be the perfect place for hiding a box of pearls.”

“But Hildy was down there an awful long time. Don't you think she would've found the box already if Tom had hidden it there?”

“I bet she missed a bunch of spots. Hildy's pretty spry, but she can't exactly get down on her hands and knees or squeeze into tight places like we can.” I reached in my backpack again and brought out a flashlight for Hugh and then one for me. Hugh solemnly clicked his on and off to see if it was working. I clicked mine on too and waved the beam over the walls of the entrance hall, letting it land on the old school banner that hung above the trophy case. “That's what we are, Hugh,” I said. “Fortune Hunters.”

“Fortune Hunters,” he repeated, testing the name under his breath. His mouth twitched up in a smile.

*   *   *

Even in the daytime, the school's basement was much creepier than I had imagined it would be. It felt like a dungeon. The floor joists over our heads were shrouded in spiderwebs and the dank smell that I had caught whiffs of upstairs seemed to ooze from every crevice in the cellar's clammy stone walls. Hugh and I stood for a minute at the bottom of the stairs, getting our bearings and aiming our flashlights into the darkest corners. There was no other light besides a bare bulb that hung down between the beams at the center of the main room. The furnace sat like a huge sleeping monster just beyond the bulb's pale glow.

“What's back there?” I whispered, nodding toward a narrow passageway on the other side of the boiler.

I could almost see Hugh gulp. “More rooms,” he said. “But I'm not too sure what's in them. I was worried Hildy would catch me if I followed her too close down here so I didn't go much past that doorway.”

We started with the furnace, sticking together as we peered into the hidden spaces behind the soot-covered valves and rusted pipes. Then I turned toward the cluttered rows of storage shelves that stretched along the entire length of the opposite wall. “We've got to split up a little so we can cover more ground,” I told Hugh. “You take that end and I'll take the other.”

I should have remembered to bring work gloves along with the flashlights. The shelves were sprinkled with mouse poop, and it was disgusting picking through the jumble of dusty paint cans, grimy rags, and broken tools, not knowing exactly what my hand might land on next.

“Hugh, maybe this isn't such a good plan after all,” I said after another five minutes of searching. I plucked a stray cobweb off my T-shirt and scraped my fingers through my ponytail, feeling for more. “It's like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“What?” Hugh squeaked. “We just got started. Come on.” His canteen clunked against his side as he grabbed my hand and began dragging me toward the far reaches of the basement. “You're the one who said we're the Fortune Hunters, remember?”

“Me and my bright ideas,” I muttered.

We both stopped at the entrance to the back passageway. There was a light switch mounted on the wall nearby, but when I flipped it up and down nothing happened.

“Fortune Hunters,” Hugh chanted, pointing his flashlight into the gloom. We huddled closer and shuffled forward.

“See?” Hugh chirped once we had edged into the first room along the narrow corridor. “This isn't so bad.” The floor was piled with old textbooks. We poked around for a while, cracking open a few covers that had grown soft and moldy with age.

The next room seemed pretty harmless too—even empty. But then my light skimmed across a grim face in the corner and I snatched at Hugh's arm.

“What's wrong?” he yelped.

“Over there!”

Hugh swung his flashlight around, and I uncurled my fingers from his skinny bicep. “Oh,” I croaked, letting out a sheepish laugh. “Sorry about that.” A row of presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln—stared back at us. Their forgotten portraits sat on a shelf, propped against the wall in cracked and dusty frames. “Poor guys,” I said. “I bet they never thought they'd end up in a place like this.”

I felt a little bolder as we stepped into the passageway again. We only had one more room to go. This time I went in first and breathed a sigh of thanks when I tried the switch by the door and the light flickered on, revealing a room full of cardboard boxes. Hugh pushed past me and began lifting the sagging lids. “Cool!” he cried. The boxes were stuffed with retired uniforms—football jerseys in faded green and gold, old-fashioned one-piece gym suits, moth-eaten cheerleader sweaters. Hugh dug deep into a box of marching-band uniforms and pulled out a tall fuzzy hat. I couldn't help snickering when he put it on and started high-stepping around the edges of the room. The hat was way too big for him and it had a droopy green plume that flopped around like a dying bird. But in the next instant, my laugh turned into a shriek.

Hugh wheeled around and his hat banged to the floor. “What now?”

I stabbed my finger at the doorway. “I saw something move out there.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know,” I whimpered. “Who cares? Let's get out of here.”

This time Hugh didn't try to argue. I snapped off the switch by the door and we both bolted for the stairs. But as we scurried along the passageway, it happened again. I jerked back in terror and let out another screech.

“Stop doing that!”
Hugh yelled as he stumbled into me, losing his grip on his flashlight.

“I can't!”
I yelled back. “Something brushed against my leg!”

Hugh was bending down, scrabbling for his light. “Wait for me!” he cried as I took off running. “Ren! Wait!”

Halfway across the boiler room, I forced myself to stop and look over my shoulder.
Why wasn't he coming?
“Hugh?” I called in a trembling voice.

“Shhhh,” I heard him say. I backtracked a few steps and found Hugh frozen in the passageway. He had trained his light on some paint cans that were stacked at the end of the corridor outside the uniform room. I stared at the circle of light on the stone wall, clenching every muscle. It took my last shred of willpower to keep from screaming again when a pair of glowing gold eyes appeared.

Hugh started to giggle. “It's Flam!”

“Jeez,” I gasped, my shoulders slumping with relief as the creature slunk into view.

“I should have known,” Hugh said. “Whenever they get loose, they sneak down here to hunt mice.”

Flam sat coolly regarding us. “How do you know which one's which?” I asked.

“Flam's got more spots than Flim.”

“Hey,” I whispered. “Do you think we can catch him? Hildy said Mr. Bonnycastle loved playing the piano, so the music room's next on my list. If we bring Flam back, maybe the sisters will invite us in and we can take a look around.”

“I don't know,” Hugh said. “Those cats aren't very friendly. Whenever I try to pet them, they run away.”

I eyed Flam's tail flicking back and forth. “We're going to need some bait. Have you got any tuna fish upstairs? Or what about a bowl of milk?”

While Hugh went sprinting off to the kitchen, I stood on the stairs guarding the escape route. It took Hugh forever to come back. I flung my hands up in exasperation when I saw what he was carrying—a dish full of Lucky Charms smeared with peanut butter.

“Well, sorr-eeee,” Hugh huffed. “I couldn't get the can opener to work, and milk's hard to carry without spilling. Besides, milk's boring. If I were a cat, this is what I'd want.”

Hugh sneaked down to set the plate on the floor, a few feet from the stairs. Then we sat on the bottom step to wait. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” I trilled softly. We'd never owned any cats, so I had no idea how to go about catching one. But I was pretty sure dry cereal—even “magically delicious” cereal—wasn't the answer.

“Meow,” Hugh called in a screechy voice. “Me-owww.” I choked back a laugh. It was the worst impression of a cat I had ever heard. But incredibly, seconds later, Flam came padding around the corner of the furnace.

“Don't … move,” Hugh ordered under his breath, and soon the cat was happily crouched over the plate, lapping at the lumps of peanut butter.

“What do we do now?” I whispered.

Hugh didn't answer. He rose from the steps in slow motion and edged closer and closer. Then, just when I thought Flam might dart away, he swooped down and snatched the cat up in his arms. “Hugh!” I cried as I jumped to my feet. “That was amazing!”

Flam had taken the bait. Now we'd have to see if the sisters would too.

 

NINETEEN

FLAM WAS HISSING MAD
by the time Colette finally opened the door to the old music room. “Oh, Flam,” she gushed. “Mind your manners. Is that any way to thank Hugh for bringing you home?” Like before when I had stood at the sisters' threshold, a gust of flowery smells swept into the hallway as Colette cracked the door wider and reached for her pet. “Here I'll take him—”

But Hugh kept squeezing Flam's grumpy face into the crook of his neck. He stood on his tiptoes, trying to see past Colette. “Are you making soap today?” he asked. “Can Ren and I come in and watch? Ren's always wanted to know how to make soap, haven't you, Ren?”

I nodded my head up and down, pasting on a hopeful smile. Colette looked startled. She hadn't seen me since the night Mom had stormed the school. “Well, I—I don't know,” she faltered. “I—” She glanced in dismay at her struggling cat and then at me again.

Clarissa's voice suddenly erupted from around the corner. “Good grief, Colette! Let those kids in and shut the door before Flim gets loose too.” Colette gave a prim nod and motioned us inside. As soon as we crossed the threshold, Flam shot out of Hugh's grasp and dashed toward a tall round contraption that stood next to the cat's climbing structure near the piano.