Caching In (3 page)

Dear Geocacher,

I trust I have your attention. The fact that you are reading this letter means you found the first cache at the cemetery and decoded the clues in the obituary. The reward for your sleuthing is this fifty-dollar bill. You can take it and quit, or you can continue with the hunt. I promise it will be worth your while.

However, the challenge I extend to you is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for lazy thinkers. From here on out, there's no more
GPS
. You're going to have to use your geo-senses. If you're clever enough, resourceful enough and daring enough, you won't be disappointed.

You will have three days to find two more caches and present yourself at the finish line. Three days—that's all. After that, the game is over. The clock is ticking. Good luck.

“It sounds like
Mission Impossible
,” I say.

“Yeah, it does,” Chris agrees. “Let's hope the fifty doesn't self-destruct.”

We both grin. Then I nod toward the letter. “So what's our mission?”

Chris starts to read again.

Follow the marathon man. Hurry northwest before flying south. Remember, this isn't a picnic. Billy loves Sara. Be prepared for danger and be on edge. Good luck finding your nest egg.

“That's the clue?”

Chris shrugs. “Apparently. What do you think it means?”

“Absolutely nothing!” I hoot. “It's just a bunch of goofy sentences strung together. Whoever wrote that is messing with our heads.”

“Maybe not. We didn't see the clue in the obituary right away either. Besides, if the puzzle was easy to figure out, it wouldn't be a challenge.”

“Oh, this is a challenge, all right.”

“Don't give up before we've even started.” Chris taps the fifty-dollar bill. “If we find the next cache, there could be more money. Maybe a freakin' truckload of money. Do you want someone else to get it?”

“Okay, fine,” I concede. “I guess we don't have anything to lose. The fifty bucks is ours to keep no matter what.”

Chris grins and slaps me on the back. “Exactly.” Then his face gets serious again. “So let's start with
marathon man
. What do you think that means?”

“It's an old movie,” I say, without even having to think. When Chris eyeballs me like I'm missing a few brain cells, I add, “My parents have the
DVD
.”

“What's it about?”

“Just because it's in my house doesn't mean I've watched it.”

Chris nods. “Right. So what other possibilities are there? Maybe there's a real-life marathon man.” Suddenly his eyes light up like someone has flipped on a switch in his head. “What about that Simon Whitfield guy? He came to our school. Remember? He's a marathon man, isn't he? And he lives in Victoria.”

I shake my head. “He's a triathlete. It's not the same thing.”

Chris frowns. “Too bad. I thought I was on to something.” He sighs. “Never mind. It doesn't matter. We'll figure it out. So what about the
Hurry northwest before flying south
? I'm thinking that's gotta be directions.”

“Yeah, probably. But northwest from where? And when are we supposed to head south?”

Chris's eyes narrow. “I bet you anything there's a trick in there. The person who hid the caches doesn't waste words. They all mean something. So
Hurry
and
fly
are probably part of the clue too.”

“Brilliant deduction,” I say. “But that doesn't get us any closer to figuring out the clue. The only part that makes any sense at all is the bit about this not being a picnic. No kidding! But who the heck are Billy and Sara? And what do they have to do with the search?”

Chris shakes his head. “I don't know. But I have a feeling this cache isn't going to be easy to get to, even when we figure out where it is.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The letter says we have to be daring, it says the search isn't going to be a picnic, and it stresses that it's dangerous.”

“So do you still want to do it?” I say.

“Oh yeah! This is the most fun I've had all year! And if there's money to be had, even better. Bring it on, man.”

“
If
there's money. All the letter says is that finding the other two caches will be worth our while. It doesn't say we're going to get money. We're just assuming we will because of the fifty-dollar bill.”

“Not only that,” Chris argues. “The letter says
Good luck finding your nest egg.
A nest egg is a person's savings.”

“Maybe,” I say, “or maybe it means the next cache is going to be an egg again, and it's going to be hidden in a nest.”

Chris frowns. “Don't be so negative. Are you with me on this thing or aren't you?”

I frown back. “Of course I am. I'm just saying we shouldn't jump to conclusions. Until we decipher the clues, our search isn't going anywhere. And so far we've got nothing.”

Chris waves away my concerns. “Don't worry. We'll figure it out.”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, right. And what about this cache?” I wave the metal tube. “We have to put it back.” Noting the horrified look on Chris's face, I add, “Without the money.”

“Why bother? Do you really think anyone else is going to come looking for it? And even if they do, what are they going to think when there's no fifty bucks attached?”

“To tell you the truth, I don't care. I just think we should stick to the geocaching rules.” I can tell Chris is getting ready to protest, but I don't give him the chance. “I wouldn't feel right if we took the cache with us—and neither would you. You're the one who's always going on about following the rules. That shouldn't change just because there could be money involved. So just take a picture of the letter, and boost me back up to the knothole.”

Chapter Five

When he gets home, Chris sends me a copy of the clue from his phone, and right after supper I go to my room to try to decipher it. Yeah, right! I can't make any sense of the words no matter how hard I stare at them. At first that only frustrates me, but after a while I start to panic. Chris and I have three days to find the other two caches. Two of those days are going to be eaten up by school, so there isn't much time.

Then I have a thought. How would the person who wrote the letter know when Chris and I found the cache? How could he or she know when to start counting down the days? Someone had to have been at the hospital watching us. Either that or… I turn on my computer and navigate to the geocaching website. Maybe there was a time limit on this cache that I didn't notice this morning. I follow the chain of links to the listing.

Except, there is no listing.

I scroll through all the posts. I check the other categories too. Nothing. The listing has vanished. How can that be? It was brand-new this morning.

I scowl at the computer screen like
it
somehow made the listing disappear. The longitude and latitude coordinates
were
there. I didn't imagine them. I got them from the website, and they led to the cache in the cemetery. And the clues in that cache took us to the one at the hospital. Both caches were very real. So was the fifty-dollar bill.

None of this is making any sense. A listing goes up and comes down on the very same day. Who would do that? And why? It was up for such a short time, Chris and I are probably the only ones who had a chance to look for the caches.

Ding, ding, ding!
Suddenly, bells start ringing in my brain.

I smack my forehead with the heel of my hand. Of course! Maybe Chris and I are the only ones who are
supposed
to look for the caches. I don't mean that they were hidden especially for us. But maybe they were only meant to be found once, which means Chris and I are probably the only ones in the hunt.

At first I like that idea. If there's no competition, the fifty dollars is ours, and so is anything else we find. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like a fish on a hook. Chris and I are playing this game blind. Who knows where this chase is going to take us? We could be getting sucked in royally.

Acting on a hunch, I tear out to the carport and hop onto my bike. In ten minutes, I'm back at the cemetery. I stash my bike behind a bush and head up the path toward the spot where Chris and I found the first cache. But as I approach it, I see someone kneeling by the grave. I duck behind the same tree we hid behind earlier.

I wait for my heart to start beating normally again, and then I peer around the tree trunk. It's a woman crouched by the grave, and she's all covered up.

Even though it's a warm May evening, she's in baggy sweats. She's wearing a hat and sunglasses too. The only part of her that's showing is her hands.

She's digging into the bouquet. When she lifts her head and glances around, I pull back behind the tree. Once again my heart is pounding in my chest.

When I think it's safe, I poke my head out on the other side of the tree. The woman is still kneeling. I can see the cache in her hands. Did she discover it by accident? Or did she come looking for it? Maybe she hid it, and now that the listing has been withdrawn, she has come to take it away.

I watch her open the yellow-and-white box. The first thing she pulls out is the ticket stub to the dance. She stares at it for a few seconds before flipping it over. Finally, she stuffs it into a jacket pocket and fishes out the obituary. She sits down on the grass and reads it. She's facing me, and even though she's wearing sunglasses, I can tell she's frowning.

She must sit there, staring at the obituary, for a good five minutes. Finally, her face relaxes, and she sticks the obituary and box into her pocket and pushes herself to her feet. Then she smiles, pats the headstone and heads off down the path.

I wait until I figure she's good and gone before I leave my hiding spot. I go to the grave. I don't know why. There's nothing it can tell me now.

I check out the bouquet. With the cache gone, it's just a bunch of flowers and ribbons, and the grave is just a grave. It's like a hot link in a computer game that goes dead once you've found what you need.

I stand up, but instead of heading back to my bike, I start down the path the woman took. It's empty, but I can see a car parked on the road below. And then I blink, and the woman walks out of the trees and back onto the trail.

I stop breathing. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her turn in my direction. But that's all I see, because I'm already tearing back to my bike.

“Who was it?” Chris asks when I call to tell him what happened.

“I don't know!” I shout into the phone. I'm still rattled by the thought that the woman might have seen my face.

“It was a lady. That's all I can tell you.”

“Old? Young? Fat? Skinny?”

“All of the above. None of the above. I don't know. She was wearing a sweat suit, a hat and dark glasses.”

“It was probably the bride. If anybody knew there was a cache in the bouquet, it would be her.”

“I guess,” I say. “But what do you think about the listing being pulled from the website?”

“I think it's great!” Chris says. “If there's no competition, our chances of winning are excellent.”

“Competition or not, we're not going to win if we can't figure out the clues,” I remind him.

“No problem,” Chris drawls. I can't believe how confident he sounds.

“I hope that means you've had better luck figuring out the clues than I have,” I say.

“Not all of them,” he admits, though he still sounds pretty smug. “But enough to get us going. And I'm pretty sure the rest of it will start to make sense as we go along.”

“Explain, please,” I say as my hopes start to rise again.

Chris chuckles. “Let's just say that tomorrow is going to be a long day. Pack a lunch and make sure your bike is ready for a good ride. I'll be at your house at nine sharp.”

“Why? What are we—” I begin, but Chris has already hung up.

Chapter Six

“The Sooke Potholes! Are you crazy? Do you know how far that is?”

Chris shrugs. “That depends on where you start and what route you take.”

I wheel my bike out of the carport. “Well, we're obviously starting here, so no matter what route we take, Sooke is a long way.”

“True, but we're not traveling by road. We're going to go as the crow flies.” He snickers. “Well, more like as the goose flies.”

I glare at him. “You're starting to sound like that stupid letter. Crow flies, goose flies. Why not horseflies? What the heck are you talking about?”

Chris laughs again. “Relax, Eric. It's a play on words—like in the letter. Whoever wrote those clues likes double meanings. You know—to get us thinking one thing when we should be thinking something else. But I'm starting to catch on.”

“Well, I'm not. So help me out. And start at the beginning.”

Chris nods. “Okay. Yesterday, when I got home, I started thinking about the clues in both caches. The first one was connected to Richard Carlisle—that dead guy in the cemetery. It made me wonder if the second one was too. So I looked him up on the Internet.”

In my mind, I kick myself for not thinking to do the same thing. But all I say out loud is, “So what did you find?”

“Mostly information about his business, but also that he was a big humanitarian. He gave money to all kinds of charities, sponsored kids in Third World countries, stuff like that. His wife died a few years ago. His only living relative is his daughter, Jane. I'm thinking she was the bride we saw at the cemetery. I also found out that Carlisle was an outdoorsy guy who spent a lot of summers hiking and camping in the Sooke River Canyon. He was a distance runner too. He ran the Victoria Marathon every year, right up to the time he got sick. And his favorite training route was the Galloping Goose Trail.” Chris wiggles his eyebrows. “Are you starting to get the picture?”