Dan beamed back at him. "Lester, you rock!"
Lester laughed. "Thanks. But reggae is more my style."
"Okay," Dan said cheerfully. "Lester, you reggae!"
In the car, as they neared the oceanfront on the other
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side of the peninsula, Amy marveled for the hundredth time at the color of the sea.
"Az-tur-pea-lean," she whispered again.
Then she blinked.
Amy took the magnifying glass and the little gold strip out of her backpack.
"What?" Dan said. "Did we miss something?"
Amy's eyes were glowing. "I got it!" she said. "It's not words at all. It's sort of--it's like abbreviations." She scrabbled around in her pack again and took out a pen and her little notepad.
"Look," she said as she wrote.
EKTOMALUJA EK - Ekaterina TOMA - Tomas LU - Lucian JA - Janus
"Cool!" Dan said. "That's gotta be it!" Then his face fell. "But it's the same old problem. Even if we figured out what it says, we don't know what to do with it." He smacked one fist into the other palm in frustration. "It's so annoying!"
Amy put the strip of gold away again. "I know," she said, "but two steps forward, one step back--that's still progress."
Dan refused to be soothed. "NO steps back would be better," he muttered.
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The Port Royal excavation site was an archaeological dig, not a tourist attraction. The work was mostly being done in a Quonset hut not far from the main pier.
Lester ushered them inside the hut. It was a single huge space. Long tables lined both side walls. Along the back wall were desks and computers. There were half a dozen people in the room, working at the tables or on the computers. Down the middle of the floor, there were crates full of mysterious objects and piles of stuff on top of and under tarps. It was impossible to tell what the "stuff" was; everything seemed to be encrusted with the same shade of brownish grayish green.
Amy felt a little thrill run through her. Those colors--rust and barnacles and algae--meant everything in those piles had come from beneath the surface of the ocean. From the Sunken City, or from ships ...
"This project is to excavate five buildings that were buried in quicksand and have been remarkably well preserved," Lester said. "On the walls, you'll see architectural drawings of what the houses used to look like."
"Is any of the stuff here from pirate ships?" Amy asked.
"It's possible," Lester said. "The ships themselves, we're not working on those. That's being done by private salvage companies. But Port Royal was a pirate haven for many years. We might never know for sure,
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but the artifacts we're finding in these buildings--it's very likely that some of them were once in pirate hands."
Amy gave Dan a meaningful glance. Something Anne Bonny had touched could be in this very room.
"Go ahead and look around," Lester said. "Please don't touch anything, but I'll be happy to answer your questions. On this side"--he pointed to the left wall--"they're restoring the larger items and on the right, the smaller ones."
Amy and Dan headed for the right side of the hut. Three people were working at the long tables, using a variety of tools. Some looked like dentists' implements--delicate scrapers and picks. There were magnifying glasses and jewelers' loupes and even a microscope. There were all sizes of brushes, too, from the kind you would use to wash dishes to the finest of paintbrushes.
One woman was working on what looked like a large bowl. Another had a very dirty-looking set of silverware in front of her. Amy walked slowly down the length of the room, pausing now and then to watch the work. It was painstaking, she could tell; it probably took days to clean a single fork.
"We use mechanical methods of cleaning first," Lester explained, "meaning that we try to clean the objects by hand. If something really can't be cleaned that way, they'll use chemicals. But that's much riskier. When you can't tell for certain what something's made
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of, you don't know how it will react if you put it into a chemical bath. So that's a last resort, and they do that at the university. We only do mechanical cleaning here."
Amy made her way to the last two tables. One table held objects that had already been cleaned. Each one was encased in a plastic zipper bag with a numbered label. On the other table were objects that would need a chemical bath. They were still crusty.
Amy looked over the cleaned items. Most of them seemed to be broken bits of pottery. One bag held a ceramic jug missing several pieces. A fancy silver box was carved all over with squiggly designs. Two pewter plates looked almost undamaged. There were several glass bottles, a bunch of clay pipes, and at least a dozen spoons, too, each in its own bag.
Dan was now standing beside her. "I don't know how we'll ever find it," he said.
"Especially when we don't know what 'it' is."
He waved hopelessly at the piles in the middle of the room. Then his arm stopped in mid-wave.
"Wait," he said, "we don't know what it is, but we do know something about it. Maybe we should look for bears and wolves and snakes, things like that."
Amy stood very still for a moment. Dan's words had triggered a thought, and she moved her gaze from the spoons to the silver box.
It was carved everywhere, not just on the top but on the sides, too. The carvings seemed completely random. They weren't wolves or bears, of course--that
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would be too easy. They were just squiggles and loops with uncarved recesses here and there in no discernible pattern.
"Dan," she whispered. "That box--see the empty space along the side?"
Dan looked where she was pointing. "Am I crazy--"
"Yes," Dan said immediately, "I've been telling you that for years."
But Amy didn't feel like joking around. "That uncarved space," she said slowly, "it's like a rectangle, but the corners are rounded. I think it's the exact size and shape of this." And she tapped the dragon medallion at the center of her necklace.
Dan looked back and forth between the necklace and the box. Then he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again he said, "There was a carved box listed on that manifest," he said.
"There was?" Amy said, her voice pitched high in both amazement at his memory--yet again--and the hope that they were on to something.
"We need to get a closer look at it," Dan said.
He went to fetch Lester, who was chatting with Nellie. The three of them walked toward Amy.
"Sure," Lester was saying. "I can take it out of the bag for you, but I can't let you touch it."
He slid the box out of its plastic protection. It was the size and shape of half a shoe box. "Interesting that you should ask about this," he said. "It's the only piece
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here that wasn't actually excavated from the ruins."
"Then where'd it come from?" Amy asked.
"An anonymous donor," Lester said. "It came with a letter stating that the box was a family heirloom from Port Royal--a family that had survived the earthquake. The donor felt it should be displayed with the artifacts from the dig."
He gave it a very gentle shake, and they all heard a faint noise. "The letter also said that no one had ever been able to open it. There's something inside, but we might never find out what it is. We've tried x-raying it, but it's apparently lined with lead. And we wouldn't destroy an artifact like this to get at what's inside. Have you ever seen those Chinese puzzle boxes?"
"I have," Nellie said. "They're really cool."
"Right," Lester agreed. "They're usually made of wood, with sliding panels. There's no lock, but the box won't open unless you slide the panels in exactly the right order. This seems to be something like that, except it doesn't have any panels, and so far we haven't been able to figure it out."
He held up the box so they could see it on all sides.
Amy and Dan both began a thorough inspection. In less than five seconds, Dan glanced at Amy with hi
s eyes blazing. She stepped toward him immediately.
On the opposite side of the box from the medallion-shaped space, the carvings meandered randomly. But there was another empty space that Amy knew on sight was what had caught Dan's eye. You would
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never have noticed it if you didn't know what you were looking for.
It was the exact size and shape of the bear claw.
And sure enough, on the third side of the box, they found two snake-shaped squiggles, and on the fourth, an elongated triangle the same size as the wolf fang.
"Excuse us," Amy mumbled, and dragged Dan away several steps.
"Anonymous donor, gimme a break," he whispered excitedly. "It was a Cahill for sure!"
"That's probably how the box is rigged," Amy said, just as excited. "Put all four icons in place and the box opens! That's gotta be it!"
"We have to get hold of that box," Dan said.
"But how?" Amy had already started thinking about this as soon as she saw the bear-claw shape. "Even if we could steal it, that would be a horrible thing to do to Lester. He might even lose his job!"
"Of course we don't want to steal it," Dan said, "but it might be our only option."
"Excuse me?"
Amy turned, startled. She hadn't noticed that Nellie was standing close enough to eavesdrop.
"You're not stealing anything," Nellie said. "Not from this place."
Amy clenched her fists. "This doesn't concern you," she said.
Nellie looked at her coolly. "We'll see about that," she said, and stalked off.
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CHAPTER 15
* * *
"Lester, can I talk to you for a minute?"
Nellie approached the table. Lester was putting the box down carefully on top of its plastic bag.
"Sure," he said. "What's up?"
Nellie touched the snake nose ring. Everything was so complicated ... how could she possibly explain it all to him? Where should she start?
At the beginning, of course. With Grace. Everything started with Grace.
"Grace was really interested in this project, wasn't she?" Nellie said.
"Oh, yah," Lester said with a smile. "She was interested in everything about old Jamaica. I remember the time she was here, when I was just a little kid. She'd ask my Granma about all the old stories, and Granma would tell her, and I'd sit there listening. It's probably what made me want to study history."
"Did she know you were working on the project?"
"Oh, sure. She's the one who got me the job. She found out that a university in the States was teaming
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up with the Jamaican Historical Society to excavate the site. She gave a big donation and"--another smile--"got me an interview to be a researcher here. So now I work full time at the Archives and do consulting work on the project."
Nellie nodded. Grace the mastermind at work again.
Lester frowned. "She used to check in with me from time to time, ask how the project was going, if we'd found anything interesting. I hadn't heard from her in a few months. I should have gotten in touch myself."
He looked sad. They were both quiet for a moment, remembering Grace.
Nellie touched his arm. "Lester, I think we know something about Grace that you might not," she said. "Grace was interested in this project for a specific reason. There was something she was hoping to find."
Lester looked at her curiously. "What, exactly?"
"This is going to sound crazy," Nellie said, "but we're not sure if she actually knew what she was looking for. All we know is, she had come across bits and pieces of it over the years. And she died before she could finish her search, so Amy and Dan are trying to finish it for her. And me, too."
Lester seemed a little bemused now, but not alarmed. "Okay, I'm still with you," he said.
Nellie took a deep breath. "It was really important to Grace," she said. "And also secret--she wanted as few people as possible to know about it. So what it
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comes down to is this: We need that box." She nodded toward the table. "We think that's what Grace was looking for. We need to take it with us"--she raised her hand to stop Lester from objecting--"but we want to make a deal."
She rushed on before Lester could say anything. "We think we have at least part of what's needed to open it. You let us take the box to see if we can open it. Then when we're done with it, we give it back to you with the secret of how to open it."
She locked eyes with him.
He has to say yes, he just has to. If not, the people she was working for would be extremely displeased.
And they were no fun when they were displeased.
Lester looked at the box on the table. Then he glanced toward the back of the hut, at one of his colleagues working on a computer. Probably his boss. He looked at the box again, and finally at Nellie.
She waited in silence for what felt like hours.
"Okay, here's my deal," he said at last. "Grace meant the world to me and Granma. Before you showed up, I'd have said there was nothing I wouldn't do for her."
He shook his head. "I'd have been wrong. I can't do it--I can't let you take it. Not just because I'd lose my job. But because it goes against every principle of good historianship. You think you have a good reason for taking it. So does every other person or group or government in the world who's ever taken artifacts away from where they belong."
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"But we'd return it! I swear!"
Nellie crossed her fingers surreptitiously, praying that what she said was true.
"It's not that I don't trust you," Lester said. "Really, I don't even know you. The fact that you knew Grace, and they're her grandchildren--I wish that could be enough. But it's not. I'm sorry."
Nellie's heart sank to the pit of her stomach. They'd have to steal the box, and if they could manage to pull that off, then Lester, who had been so nice, would hate them, and Miss Alice would hate them, too. ...
Lester was staring at her so hard he was almost glaring. She held his gaze, not daring to blink or breathe, hoping her expression didn't give away that she was already trying to figure out how to steal the box.
After a long moment, he seemed to make up his mind and eased off on the laser-beam stare.
"You can't take the box," he said flatly, "but I can. I can say I want to do some research on it, and they'll let me take it off the site. So here's how it goes down. Whatever you need to do with the box, you do it with me there. That's nonnegotiable."
Nellie flung her arms around his neck. Not like she had to force herself--he was, after all, very ...
"Thanks a million, Lester! You won't regret it, I promise!"
Her ebullient response drew Dan and Amy over. Nellie gave them a thumbs-up.
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"YESSSS!" Dan said, and made a valiant attempt to moonwalk.
Nellie raised her eyebrows at Amy, who was smiling at Lester. She caught Nellie's glance and shrugged in return.
Jeez, she's a tough nut, Nellie thought. I might be making progress with Dan, but she's a different animal altogether. ...
Grinning sheepishly, Lester disentangled himself from Nellie's embrace. He picked up the box and put it back in its plastic bag.
"I'll go talk to the boss," he said. "I'll meet you guys outside."
Outside the hut, the weather was changing. The sun was an angry orange ball, fighting against a huge pile of purple clouds. The wind rustled the fronds of the palm trees with an ominous whispering sound.
Amy rubbed her bare arms. The air was warm and humid, but the wind had a cool edge to it.
"Feels like a storm coming," Nellie said.
But Amy couldn't keep her mind on the weather for long. She fingered the dragon medallion. "I'll have to cut it off," she said, saddened by the idea. Maybe Grace was always an evil Madrigal, she thought, but I loved the necklace before I knew any of that.
"We'll probably only need it to get the box open," Dan said. "After that, maybe you ca
n have the necklace put back together."
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"Um, that might be a problem," Nellie said. "To get Lester to give us the box, I told him we might be able to open it, and we'd give it back to him with the secret of how it opens."
"That's still okay," Dan said. "Telling him how to open it doesn't mean we have to give him all the stuff for it."
Amy looked dubious. "I don't know," she said. "What good is knowing how to open it if you can't actually open it?"
"Maybe they can have reproductions made of the medallion and the other stuff," Dan persisted.
Amy looked at him fondly. He understood how much Grace's necklace meant to her.
Just then, Lester came out of the hut. He was carrying a canvas-wrapped parcel.
The box. Amy felt a tingle of anticipation run down her spine.
"Okay, where should we do this?" Lester asked.
Amy thought for a moment. "Nellie, how about if we check in to a hotel? That would give us some ... privacy."
"The Royal Harbour Hotel is right on the water," Lester said. "It's probably the nicest place in Port Royal, and it's just up the road."
"You guys walk," Nellie said. "I'll get the car and drive there with our bags."
The wind was getting stronger. It whipped Amy's hair into her eyes; she finally ended up holding it back with one hand.
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They got to the hotel and waited just inside the entry. As Nellie pulled up a few minutes later, big slow blobs of rain began to fall. Amy and Dan rushed to help bring in the bags, including Saladin's carrier. He was making it very clear that he had not appreciated being left alone in the car. Dan took him out of the carrier and began petting him. Saladin gave a last huffy mrrp, but settled down in Dan's arms.
As Nellie checked in, Lester wandered over to the windows on the other side of the lobby. The view looked out toward the ocean, past a terraced restaurant that was roofed with palm fronds but otherwise open-air.