Finding Fortune (7 page)

I was barely listening as he rattled on about the experiments he wanted to try. Another
no
was scrawled across the board at the front of the room, which didn't make sense considering there was a big black stain on the ceiling nearby and a cluster of buckets positioned underneath.

“That's a pretty bad leak,” I said.

Hugh came to stand beside me. “Yeah, it happened during that giant storm we had last week. Garrett tried to fix it but he couldn't. He says we've got to call a roofer.”

I pointed at the blackboard. “So why'd he write
no
on the board if this room still needs repairs?”

“What do you mean? Garrett didn't do that. Hildy did.”

“But Hildy said Garrett's the one who writes on the boards.”

Hugh pursed his lips together, then hurried over to peek out the doorway and check in both directions. He motioned me closer. “That's what I was telling you about—all the weird stuff going on around here. Hildy's been looking for something. She searches at night when she thinks everybody's asleep. And whenever she's done with one room and hasn't found anything, she writes
no
on the board and goes to the next one.”

“What's she looking for?” I whispered.

“I'm not sure. But she started up on the third floor. By the time Mine and I moved in, she was almost finished up there and then she did the second floor. She finally got all the way down to the basement a few nights ago, and I think she must have found something because she hasn't been out looking ever since.”

“Well?” I stared at him. “What was it?”

“I told you.” Hugh bounced on his toes in frustration. “I don't know. It was really creepy and dark down there, with lots of corners so I could barely see.” Then he stopped, peering at me. “But I know how we can figure it out. You want to help me?”

I crossed my arms, trying to imagine what I might be getting myself into this time. “It depends. Does it involve anything dangerous? Like wasps or heights?”

“Nope.” Hugh shook his head back and forth. “Nothing dangerous.”

“Will we be breaking any rules?”

He squinted, considering. “I don't think so.”

“That doesn't sound very convincing.”

But before I could ask any more questions, Hugh was dashing down the hall. “Come on,” he cried over his shoulder. “We've got to hurry before Mine gets back.”

So much for staying out of trouble.

 

EIGHT

HUGH SLIPPED THROUGH THE DOOR
of the principal's office first. I hung back in the main office a little longer, glancing at the spot behind the long wooden counter where the school secretary would have sat. The rows of mail cubbies covering the wall nearby were still labeled with the names of all the teachers in alphabetical order. Miss Atkinson … Mr. Barbour … A flurry of butterflies rose in my chest. According to Hugh, the principal's office wasn't off-limits. But for some reason he had wanted to make sure Hildy was occupied in another part of the school before we went inside. It only took us a few minutes to track her down. When we looked in the gym, we spotted her deep in conversation with the Mayor. So the coast was still clear, at least for a little while.

I checked over my shoulder one last time and stepped through the doorway. Hugh was standing behind a massive metal desk in the middle of the stuffy room. A window faced out to the front of the school, but it was shut tight, with a sprinkle of dead flies scattered along the sill.

“Okay, let's have it,” I said. I could almost taste the mildew rising up from the worn gold carpet. “What're we doing here?”

Hugh opened the top drawer of the desk. “I wanted to show you this.”

I walked over to see what he was pointing at. “You wanted to show me a bunch of old thumbtacks?”

“No,
this
.” He pushed the tacks and paper clips aside and tapped his finger on a small square of paper taped to the bottom of the shallow drawer.

I leaned closer. There were three numbers written on the square: 5/10/62.

“It looks like a date,” I said. “May tenth, nineteen sixty-two. Maybe it's for something special the principal didn't want to forget, like a birthday or an anniversary.”

“Oh.” Hugh sounded disappointed. “I thought it might be a combination.”

I hesitated. “Well, it could be, I guess. You mean like a combination for a locker?”

“Not a locker. A
safe
.”

“A safe? What safe?”

Hugh squeezed past me and hurried over to a closet door. “It's in here,” he said in a hushed voice. I crossed the room and craned my neck to see around him as he stepped into the closet and reached up to pull a string dangling from the ceiling. A lightbulb flashed on with a pop, illuminating a cramped space lined with empty shelves on either side, and just like Hugh said, an old-timey safe sitting on top of another row of deep shelves on the back wall.

“Do you think you can open it?” he asked. “I'm not tall enough. The other day I got the chair from the office to stand on, but I still couldn't get it to work. I must not be doing it right.”

“Wait, Hugh,” I said. “This is crazy. You told me we weren't going to break any rules.”

“But it's not like we're going to steal anything. I just want to take a quick look. It's the only way we can figure it out,” he rushed on. “See, Hildy comes in the principal's office every night before she goes out searching. And sometimes she comes back again right before she goes to bed. After she went in the basement, she stayed in here for a really long time. I think she was locking whatever she found inside that safe!”

“But what if she catches us?”

“She won't. She won't even know we were here. Come on,” Hugh pleaded. “You're the only one who can help me.”

“Oh, all right,” I said, scraping my sweaty hair back from my face. “I'll try. But only if you stand out there and warn me if you hear somebody coming.”

“Aye, aye!” Hugh saluted me and marched over to plant himself a few feet outside the closet.

I approached the safe and stood on my tiptoes to study the dial. Just last week my whole sixth-grade class had trooped down the street to the junior high to take a tour and practice opening lockers. I had opened mine on my very first try. But this dial was lots different from the one I had practiced on, and there was a brass lever next to it, instead of a skinny silver latch underneath.

“Five … ten … sixty-two,” Hugh reminded me from the doorway.

I reached up, grasped the knob, and spun it around three times.

“Aren't you going to blow on your fingers first?” Hugh asked.

“Shush. Let me concentrate.”

“Sorry. That's what I saw a guy do in a movie once and it worked for him.”

“Five,” I breathed. “Ten … sixty-two…” I bit down on my lip as I gripped the lever and tried twisting it left, then right. It wouldn't budge.

Hugh had stepped back inside the closet. “Try again,” he said.

I let my arms dangle helplessly at my sides. “This is silly. It's not going to work.”

“Pleeeease,” he begged. “Just once more, and then we'll leave, I promise.”

“One more try,” I said. “And that's it!”

This time I wasn't even pretending to be precise as I spun the dial clockwise and counterclockwise and back again, so I was shocked when I grabbed the lever and it turned with a satisfying click.

Hugh wedged in beside me as I pulled the door open. “You did it!” he cried. I grasped the inside edge of the safe and stretched as tall as I could, straining to see all the way to the back of the steel compartment.

“Well?” Hugh demanded. “What's in there?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It's empty.”

“No way.” He pushed in front of me. “Lift me up.”

This was getting ridiculous. I had never met such a stubborn kid. I grabbed Hugh under his armpits and with a loud grunt hoisted him high enough to peer inside. He reached his arm into the safe and snatched at something.

“I told you!” Hugh crowed as I bumped him back onto the floor. He whirled around, waving an envelope in my face. “I told you it wasn't empty.”

I don't know what I'd been expecting—a bag full of jewels maybe or a few stacks of hundred-dollar bills—but definitely something more than an old letter. Hugh examined the front of the envelope. “Here,” he said, thrusting it toward me. “I'm not very good at reading other people's writing.”

“Let's go out to the office where we can see better,” I said.

Hugh watched my every move as I hurried to the window and held the envelope up to the sunlight. There were some foreign-looking stamps on the front, but no return address. “It's written to Miss Hildy Larson. Care of Mr. Jonathan Bonnycastle at the Fortune Consolidated School,” I told Hugh, starting to catch a tingle of his excitement. “Hey, that's the teacher Hildy was telling me about.” Fortunately the seal on the envelope had already been broken. I carefully opened the flap and pulled out a folded piece of tissue-thin paper. The handwriting inside was small and precise, penned in blue ink.

I glanced down at the signature at the bottom of the page.
Tom
. “It's from Hildy's brother,” I said breathlessly. “She was talking about him this morning too.”

Hugh gave an impatient little hop. “What's it say?”

I began reading out loud.

Dear Sis,

Please don't read any further unless you're alone.

I stopped. I'd let an eight-year-old talk me into sneaking inside the principal's office, cracking a safe, and
now this
? “Hugh,” I said queasily. “Maybe we shouldn't—”

“Keep going!” Hugh cried.

I let out a noisy sigh and kept going.

Our battalion is moving soon, so I'm rushing to get this posted. I may not be able to write again for a while.

I know Pop must have discovered his missing box by now. He's probably been beside himself trying to track down the culprit, right? Well, Sis, I have a confession to make. It wasn't a gang of thieves who stole Pop's treasure, or a hobo, or any other crazy notion he may have dreamed up. It was me—his own son.

I'm sorry, Hildy, but I had to! Before he frittered away the last thing he owned that was worth anything. I wanted there to be something left for you, just in case this war drags on, God forbid, and gets the best of yours truly.

You're probably wondering why I didn't just tell you all this before I shipped out. To be honest, I was worried you would be too softhearted to stand all of Pop's grieving and keep the secret safe. I knew it would be better to wait and tell you once the dust settled and once he'd had a little time to accept his loss.

It took ages for me to come up with a hiding place that Pop wouldn't find. Turns out Bonnycastle's the one who gave me the idea. Before I left, I stopped by FCS to say goodbye and suddenly, there it was, the best hiding place ever, right under good ole Bonny's nose!

I haven't shared any of this messy business with Bonny by the way. He doesn't know a thing about the treasure or that he's the one who gave me the bright idea about where to stash it. All I told him is that I would be writing to you under his care—an important letter about family finances that I didn't want Pop to see—and he said he'd be glad to deliver my letter to you whenever it arrived.

Once you read this, ask Bonny what he was doing when I came to say goodbye. Then you'll know exactly where to look for the box. Keep your nest egg there as long as you can, Hildy, and mum's the word!! I'll sleep better tonight knowing our fortune's safe and sound, waiting for you when you need it.

Your loving brother, Tom

I blinked down at Tom's signature, trying not to think about Dad again. “Poor Hildy,” I whispered. “She told me her brother died in the Korean War. This might have been the last letter he wrote before he was killed.”

“But I don't get it!” Hugh burst out. He scrubbed his hands through his hair until it was sticking up like dandelion fluff. “Her brother says he hid a box, but what was in it? We still don't know what Hildy's looking for.”

I stared at the piece of stationery in my hands. “Yeah, but Hildy knows. And this letter must be her only key to finding the missing treasure. I bet that's why she locked the letter in the safe and why she keeps coming in here at night to study it for clues.” I scanned the last two paragraphs. “So Tom and Mr. Bonnycastle must have been good friends. Tom says that he stopped by FCS—that's short for Fortune Consolidated School—to say goodbye. ‘
And suddenly, there it was,
'” I recited again, “‘
the best hiding place ever, right under good ole Bonny's nose
.'”

I turned back to the office and leaned against the windowsill. “So according to this letter, the treasure's got to be here somewhere. But what about all of those
no
s Hildy wrote on the blackboards? It sounds like she searched the whole school and once she got to the basement, she gave up. I don't think she found anything down there. Otherwise the box would be in the safe too, right? And she wouldn't be worrying about stuff like electric bills.”

“But she can't give up yet!” Hugh said. He dug in the side pocket of his shorts for his index card and fished the pencil from behind his ear. “We should be taking notes. So we can help her solve the mystery.” Then before I could stop him, he plunked himself down on the swivel chair next to the desk and started writing.

I groaned under my breath and glanced down at the letter again. There was a date at the top that I hadn't noticed before. June 30, 1950—the same year Hildy had graduated from high school and the very same month she had been crowned Fortune's button queen.
When had Tom been killed?
I wondered. Hildy had looked so carefree in her parade picture, smiling and waving to the crowd. I was sure it must have been taken before she found out her brother was gone forever.