Chapter 4 #2
“Actually, turns out he may have caught a couple guys breaking in and scared them off.”
Her eyes widened. “What? Who?”
“Seb said it was two men on motorcycles. They didn’t take anything. Just broke a lot of stuff.” I’d already given her a rundown
of the broken things when I left her the frantic voicemail. “So, anyway. Feels great to come home and be on edge in my own
house.”
“So fucking sorry,” she said, slinging her good arm around my shoulders. Which felt nice. Reassuring. Like old times. “If
they were local, we’ll find them. What can I do to help?”
There was nothing to be done, but everything seemed fractionally better now that I’d shared it with her and knew that the
two of us were okay. I still had Wyrd Jack’s wedding certificate cipher on the brain and started to tell her about it, but
one of the boys in her class waved at her. “Ms. Neely? Are we going out in the water today? If not, I’m calling my mama to
pick me up.”
“Fuck,” Jazmine whispered. “I gotta go, Paige. I can’t have these demons reporting me to their parents again.”
I sure was glad this was her job and not mine. “Call me later, okay? I’ve got something intriguing that might be of interest to a former Wag.”
“Wag business? All right, then. For sure,” she assured me, eyes brightening. “Speaking of, we really do need a proper Wags
catch-up. Benny wants to see you, too.”
I hadn’t seen Benny since the funeral. Back when we were kids, hunting for Wyrd Jack’s treasure, it had been Benny’s idea
to call us the Scallywags before we shortened it to the Wags. Him, Seb, Jazmine, and I spent every summer together until Seb
began pulling away. However, Benny and Seb continued talking—long after Jaz and I had given up on Seb. In fact, if Benny hadn’t
been with Seb on his seventeenth birthday, Seb might’ve never been sent away to boot camp.
That was then, and this is now. I really hadn’t thought much about Benny when I was at Harvard this year, but it would be nice to see him again.
Maybe he and Jaz would like a crack at deciphering the Morse code numbers . . .
After leaving Jazmine and her class on the beach, I walked back up to the parking lot and got the Corvair started again—only
two tries!—so I went ahead and drove across town to the grocery store locals used, an ancient Meijer that always smelled of
boiled shrimp. But its prices were a billion times better than the Haven Gourmet Market, where all the tourists bought overpriced
cheese and wine. I picked up the basics: toilet paper, Cokes, and sandwich-making stuff. Then I went through the Grind-and-Shine
Coffee Hut drive-through and got my favorite order since I’d been ten years old, and the most iconic drink in town: iced white
chocolate mocha. I like mine with a splash of coconut milk.
Taking long, pleasurable sips from an oversized cup, I got back on Harbor Drive, intending to cruise through town at my own pace, see what I could see. Maybe go inspect the area downtown where the gold bar was found in the sewer.
But I only made it to the next red light when white smoke started seeping out from beneath the Corvair’s hood. “Shit! Shit!”
I said.
The car had done this once before, a couple years ago, but I hadn’t paid much attention to the cause. Nana simply took it
into a repair shop and got it fixed.
I didn’t have auto-repair money left in the bank account. I barely had iced-white-chocolate-mocha money. And I needed to make what little I did have stretch through the next school year.
The only thing I remembered about the last time this happened was that Nana drove the car like this for a couple days. So,
not knowing what else to do, I drove the smoking car back to the cottage, utterly embarrassed that everyone I passed gave
me dirty looks. When I finally got it parked and the engine shut off, the smoke was so thick, I had to wave it away to find
my way out of the garage.
That could not be good.
“Dammit!” I coughed outside the garage as a strange car pulled into the driveway.
An ugly brown Ford Bronco with fat roll bars on the top and a big rusted dent in the driver’s door. It was possibly the dirtiest
car I’d ever seen, with giant wheels covered in dried mud.
The dented door swung open, and Seb jumped out, followed by his dog.
“Hey!” Dressed in khaki shorts and a bright aqua polo shirt with Neely Marina embroidered on the front, Seb waved away smoke as he approached. “Was coming out here and spotted you driving past McDonald’s. What’s going on?”
I was honestly relieved to see him. “Started smoking when I was in town to see Jazmine. No idea why, but this happened once
before but I don’t remember the cause. What causes white smoke?”
“Could be a lot of things: a seal, or a gasket. Based on where the smoke was coming from when I was driving behind you, I’d
guess it was the O-rings.”
He’d always been good with cars. “Is that O-expensive?”
“Not if you do it yourself,” he said with a little smile. “Would take three or four hours, probably. I could try if you want?”
It was hard to be mad at him when he was being so nice. “Are you serious? God, Seb. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Can’t guarantee that’s your issue until I get under the hood. Could look at it tomorrow, maybe? I’ve got to work today,”
he said, gesturing toward his marina polo.
“Of course, yes. Tomorrow is perfect.” I already felt the relief of my panic subsiding, but it was mixed with other feelings
I couldn’t quite identify. I guess it was just strange to rely on Seb, of all people, for something I needed.
He glanced at his phone. “Speaking of work . . . Only got a few minutes.”
“Your eye is looking a little purple around the edges today,” I noted. “No broken nose, so I guess that means you didn’t return
to the bonfire fight.”
“This right here,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face, “is called superior healing genes. Besides, Pretty Paul
is a prick. I don’t need to fight him again.”
“Why were you fighting him to begin with?” The boy you abandoned all your friends for, so you could run around town together, wreaking havoc. “I thought you were best of buds.”
“You and I were best of buds, once,” he pointed out. “Things change.”
Yes, they certainly did. “Sometimes a bud gets tired of helping another bud who is intent on following a path of self-destruction, especially when he’s trying to take
her down with him and doesn’t care if he lives or dies.”
He nodded slowly, crossing his arms over his chest. “Completely understandable. Especially when she’s smart enough to have
whatever future she wants, and he has . . . none.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. He’d always had a way of pretending like he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself while low-key
wallowing in self-pity.
I’d done plenty of my own wallowing over the years. When he left his friends for the company of Paul, I thought I’d never
get over it and felt his absence like a phantom limb. I had to tell myself the same thing every day for months and months:
my boy was gone, and he wasn’t coming back.
Guess I was wrong, because here he was, standing next to me like the past few years had just been a terrible fever dream.
“Anyway, the past is the past, dusty and forgotten,” he said, waving dismissively. “I only care about the present, and presently
Pretty Paul is under the impression that I’m to blame for his bad luck because he lost something that he wrongly assumed belonged
to him.”
“And might that be because you stole something that belongs to him?” If it wasn’t nailed down, he would take it, just because. Dollar store candy. Silverware
from restaurants. Cars.
Seb put the “maniac” in “klepto.”
“Maybe. What really is property, anyway? Can one human being really own anything?” he mused, giving me a lopsided smile. “Anyway, Paul and I haven’t been on friendly terms since I got back. Guess our overall life philosophies don’t jibe so well anymore.” He shrugged as if he couldn’t care less.
There was probably more to that story. Always was, when Seb was involved. Maybe I should be wondering if Pretty Paul Vanderburg
and his gang of misfits were involved in my cottage break-in. When I found Seb on the beach at the bonfire and mentioned the
Vanderburgs, Seb didn’t seem to think they had anything to do with it.
Is he lying?
“Why are you here, anyway?” I asked as his dog snuffled its nose under my hand. Apparently no one gave Punkin the notice that
I don’t get along with her kind. I pulled my hand back and grimaced.
“So you can thank me.”
I arched a brow. “For all the ten-cent recycling deposits I’m going to collect when I take your empty glass beer bottles down
to the grocery store?”
“Hey, don’t knock free money,” he said with a little wink. “But this might be a little better.”
“What might be?”
“Solved the cipher.”
My heart picked up speed. “What? How? You can’t solve a book cipher without the key text, and we don’t know what the key text
is.”
“Don’t we?”
Oh, the way he lit up. He could barely contain himself, rocking on his toes.
“Seb Jansen, if you don’t spill it, I’m going to strangle you slowly.”
“Promises, promises.” He gestured with his hand, urging me to follow him to the cottage’s front window, where he tapped on
the glass and pointed. “Was right there the whole time.”
I peered through the glass to see where he was pointing.
A copy of Wyrd Jack’s “Prison Poem” had been written in fine calligraphy by one of Nana’s old friends and was framed under
glass, hanging on the wall near the living room fireplace.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “You’re lying—there’s no way.”
“Keep telling yourself that. Sometimes this mind of mine isn’t completely useless.”
I rushed to unlock the cottage, and when I got inside, pulling out the envelope scrawled with numbers, I could hear Seb and
Punkin come in behind me as I made a beeline for the framed poem.
“Okay, so three numbers in the cipher coordinate to—”
“Line number, word number, letter number,” he supplied helpfully.
The first numbers I’d written down last night were three, eighteen, and four. I found the third line, eighteenth word, fourth
letter.
“‘D,’” I said excitedly. “Oh wow, okay, okay. I probably should write this down.”
“Don’t bother. ‘Drop anchor at Pinemoon Cave.’”
I swung around. “What?”
“The cipher. ‘Drop anchor at Pinemoon Cave.’ Sorry to spoil your fun, but I gotta get to work.”
Pinemoon Cave? Childhood memories flooded my head. That cave was on a tiny island in the middle of the Little River. Where the Wags treasure-hunting crew would meet up when we were kids.
The only way there was by water. Back in the day, the Wags would use canoes to get there.
He stuck his hand in his pocket and jingled coins. “I see the wheels turning, Professor Paige. If you’re thinking about finding
a way to get out to the cave alone, you should know that I’ve already talked to Benny. He’s getting the canoes out of storage.”
Dammit.
“I’ll swing by here tomorrow morning in my trusty Speed Buggy and pick you up,” he told me, gesturing out the front window
toward his dented Bronco. “You might want to tell Jazmine to come along. If she finds out we’ve been hunting treasure without
her, she’ll be pissed that we didn’t call.”
“But—”
“See you tomorrow, Paige. I’ll take a look at your car then, too.”
He saluted me, winking, and exited through the front door with his dog.
Leaving me astonished, with more questions than answers.