The Case of the Missing Deed (2 page)

“But I can’t find it! I can’t remember where it is!” Grandma burst into tears again.

Eve and Aunt Meg both started patting their mother on the back.

Sniffling, Grandma wiped her eyes. “The crazy thing is, Sam told me where it was, before he died. He was sure something bad was going to happen with the mine and that we’d need to fight for our land. So he sat me down and said, ‘Lil, you’ve got to remember this: the deed is …’ ”

She shook her head. “But he was so sick at the time, and I was so worn-out from taking care of him, and I had a million things on my mind – and it didn’t sink in. It just went in one ear and out the other. I’ve wracked my brain. I’ve thought and thought. But I can’t remember. And I’m so afraid of losing the cottage!” She put her face in her hands.

“I don’t understand,” Charlie said, sounding puzzled. “Wouldn’t the deed be in a safety deposit box in a bank? That’s the logical place to keep important papers like that.”

Eve, Aunt Meg, and Uncle Tony all exchanged looks.

“Ah, but Sam wasn’t logical when it came to that sort of thing,” Uncle Tony said. “Didn’t like to keep documents in the bank.”

“Why not?” Charlie asked.

Eve shrugged. “Who knows? He was a brilliant man, but when it came to things like this, he was … odd, shall we say.” She smiled fondly.

“He used to say, ‘Who knows who’s snooping around those boxes?’ ” Aunt Meg added. “So he hid important papers all over the place.”

“Birth certificates in the freezer,” Sébastien said.

“Our marriage certificate under a loose floorboard,” Grandma added with a sniffle. “An insurance policy inside a broken toaster. Or was it a stereo?”

“I thought it was that old blender,” Eve replied, and everybody laughed.

“And then he made up clues to tell you where everything was and hid them in places where he knew you’d find them,” Uncle Tony added. “Like,
Brrr!
It was freezing the day you were born, to hint that the birth certificate was in the freezer.”

Charlie shook his head. “He sounds like a real eccentric.”

“The most wonderful eccentric who ever lived,” Grandma said, managing a smile. “But what am I going to do? I can’t lose this place. Sam would die if he knew.” As if hearing what she’d just said, she burst out laughing, then back into tears again.

Uncle Tony reached over and placed his big hand on Grandma’s arm. “Don’t worry, Lily. You won’t lose it. We’ll find the deed. We’ll tear the house apart if we have to.”

“But I already have!” Grandma said. “I’ve gone through every room, every drawer, every cupboard. It’s not there. It’s not anywhere.”

“It has to be somewhere,” Uncle Tony said. “It can’t have disappeared.”

“And now you’ve got us,” Alex added. “More eyes and hands. Come on, everybody, let’s look!”

“That’s the spirit,” Aunt Meg said, jumping up. “We’ll split up and search. Tony and I’ll take the kitchen.”

“Charlie and I’ll take the living room,” Eve said.

“I’ll search Grandpa’s study,” Sébastien offered, starting up the stairs. “And you can help, Alex. Come on.”

“I’ll do Grandma’s studio,” Olivia said. “Grandma, you come with me.”

“But I’ve already looked in there.”

“But I can climb up on the drafting table and look on top of the cupboards,” Olivia said. “Bet you didn’t do that, did you?”

Geneviève turned to Claire. “Guess we’re doing the bedrooms.”

Sighing, Claire followed her sister up the stairs. “How come I never get to pick first? Just because I’m only nine and I’m the baby of the family–”

Eve lightly swatted her on the bottom. “Oh, poor Claire. Bring out the violins.”

At first there was an excited hum as everyone scattered throughout the cottage.

In the kitchen, Aunt Meg and Uncle Tony emptied cupboards, clattering baking pans and soup pots and mixing bowls onto the counters, then putting them back. They went through every napkin, placemat, dish towel, and tablecloth. They even took Grandma’s entire recipe collection – a grab bag of notebooks, file boxes, cookbooks, and scraps torn from magazines, all scrawled with handwritten scribbles, dotted
with sticky notes, and splattered with food stains – from the pantry shelves and rifled through them to see if anything resembling a deed fell out.

Upstairs, Claire looked under Grandma’s pillows, felt under her mattress, and got down on the floor to peer under the bed. Straightening up, she saw that her sister was sitting on a chair, hunched over her cell phone.

“Gen?”

No response.

“Gen!”

“What?” Geneviève looked up. A flush spread over her face.

“What’re you doing?” Claire asked. “We’re supposed to be looking for Grandma’s deed.”

“I know, but–”

“Don’t you care?”

“Of course I do!” Geneviève snapped. And she did, she really did, she thought, shutting her phone with a sigh. It was just that all her friends were back home, swimming, riding bikes, getting ice cream, flirting. And here she was, a ferry ride away and completely out of reach, missing it all.

But still, she had to do her part to help Grandma. And she wanted to. The possibility of Grandma losing the cottage was just too awful to think about. She put down her phone and helped Claire go through the dresser drawers. No sign of a piece of paper.

“Hey, Gen, look at this,” Claire said with a giggle, pointing to Grandma’s old-fashioned bras and roll-up stockings.

“Sex-y!” Geneviève said with a laugh.

Still giggling, Claire opened another drawer – and froze when she saw that it was empty. Grandpa’s drawer. She leaned down and sniffed. It still smelled like him: a mix of his minty aftershave and the old, threadbare shirts he’d refused to get rid of, giving off scents of salt and sea. Claire teared up. Geneviève threw her arms around her sister.

In the study, Alex went to Grandpa’s big oak desk and pored through envelopes and stamps, pens and erasers and calculators. “I’m sure we’ll find it in here. After all, this is where Grandpa kept all his important stuff, right, Seb?”

“Right,” Sébastien said, scanning the room. Where would Grandpa hide such an important paper? His eyes lit on the bookshelf. Of course. Grandpa loved books, all kinds, especially those that he kept in his study: there were math books – Grandpa had been a math teacher on the mainland before he and Grandma retired to Otter Island – books of riddles and word puzzles, and spy books full of mysteries and ciphers. Energetically, Sébastien started taking the books off the shelf, one at a time, shaking them and putting them back. He remembered the fun he and Grandpa had had together, solving complicated math problems, trying to stump each other with riddles, racing to unscramble secret codes.

Book after book. Nothing.

In the studio, Olivia flipped through stacks of canvases and crawled into lower cupboards, peering into their back corners. She even took down the framed paintings hanging on the
walls and looked on their back surfaces. “That’s where they hide secret messages in the movies, you know, Grandma,” she said. But nothing was taped to the back of any of them.

At first Grandma helped, emptying the turpentine cupboard and going through her drawers of oil paints. Olivia climbed up on the drafting table and checked the tops of the cupboards. After a while Grandma sat down, chin in hand. Olivia kept looking.

Eve and Charlie looked under couch cushions, peered beneath the stereo, and rifled through shelves of records and CDs in the living room. Eve turned to the two easy chairs that sat in front of the big bay window overlooking the sea. She sighed. “I can just see my parents sitting in those chairs. They must’ve spent years in them.”

Charlie put his arm around her. “I don’t blame them, with this view.” Beyond the deck, with its glider and Adirondack chairs, the lawn sloped down to meet the beach. The dock jutted out into the water, with a small boat shed off to the side. On the horizon, a sailboat scudded by, its sails stiff in the breeze, and the ferry could just be seen rounding the curve, heading toward the east side of the island.

Charlie opened the cupboards beneath the bay window. “What’s this?” he asked. Instead of books or keepsakes, which he’d expected to find, the space was filled with what looked like old wooden boards, standing vertically, weathered and gray.

“Oh, that,” Eve said with a laugh. “That’s the old wall.”

“The what?”

She knelt and stroked the weathered wood. “When my parents first came to Otter Island and found this property, the cottage was a wreck. They tore down most of it, but kept this one section of the wall and built around it.”

“Why?”

Eve smiled. “Because this was where they fell in love with the place. Dad wanted to keep a little bit of it alive.”

Charlie shook his head. “What a character. I wish I’d gotten to know him better.”

“So do I.”

They stood for a moment, then Charlie shut the cupboard doors.