The Secret Box (8 page)

“That would explain the unlocked door,” Jax said. Then she lowered her voice and grabbed my arm. “Do you think they're still here?”

My heart skipped a beat.

We stood frozen, listening. The lawn mower hummed in the distance but no sounds came from within the house. I opened my phone, prepared to dial 911 just in case. Jax grabbed a poker from the fireplace. “What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Come on, let's search the rooms.”

Against my better judgment, which was nothing new these days, I followed her into the only bedroom. The bed had been taken apart, the dresser drawers overturned. There were a few pieces of clothes on the carpet, a pair of shoes, and a plain black suitcase. The bathroom had also been searched, but the only toiletries were a toothbrush, toothpaste, and some shampoo. Then, we found the office.

This room was crammed with personal stuff, like photos and knickknacks. Papers and files lay all over the place, as if a mini twister had hit. After setting the poker aside, Jax reached for a broken picture frame. “I thought you were worried about fingerprints,” I said, handing her a clean tissue from my pocket.

“Oh, right. Thanks.” Using the tissue, she picked up the frame. “Hey, I think this is me. I recognize the hat.” Behind a sheet of broken glass, the frame held a photo of a woman and a baby. The baby wore a knit cap with a daisy on the front. The woman was middle-aged, with straw-colored hair that hung in two long braids. She was smiling at the baby. Scrawled in black pen along the bottom of the photo were the words
Jax and Me.
“Do you think that's Juniper?”

“Maybe. She looks a bit like your mom,” I realized. Then I froze.

Jax gasped. She dropped the frame and grabbed the fireplace poker. We both whipped around and faced the office door.

Someone was walking through the house.

14
Jax

I
gripped the fireplace poker in both hands, aiming it at the doorway. The robber had returned, or maybe he'd never left. Maybe he'd been hiding in the closet and as soon as he figured out we were kids, he decided to deal with us.

Ethan was probably thinking the same thing because he grabbed a book and held it like he was going to throw it. Then he must have decided that a book made a terrible weapon, because he pulled his Swiss army knife from his pocket. As the footsteps closed in, we huddled side by side like two raccoons caught in headlights. Someone appeared in the doorway. I lunged.

“Hey! What's your problem?” Tyler cried, ducking as I swung. “You almost poked out my eye. Are you trying to turn me into a Cyclops?”

My arms fell to my sides. “Don't do that,” I said between clenched teeth.

“Do what?”

“Sneak up on us. I almost peed my pants.” I set the poker on the desk. Ethan stood frozen, the knife still clenched in his hands.

“Are you going to stab me with that toothpick?” Tyler asked him, arching one of his eyebrows. I'd tried to teach myself how to raise one eyebrow, practicing in the mirror until my forehead had started to throb. Tyler looked devilish when he did it. When I tried, it always looked like I was holding back a fart.

“Don't tempt me,” Ethan said, then he put the knife away.

“So what's going on?” Tyler asked. “Why's everything on the floor?”

“Someone broke in and robbed the place,” I told him. “Either that or our great-aunt is a slob. She's not here so we can't ask.”

“If she's not here, how'd you get in?”

“The door was unlocked.” My attention was drawn back to the photo labeled
Jax and Me
. Tyler was the only one of us old enough to remember our great-aunt so he might recognize her. “Is this Juniper?” I asked.

He picked up the photo. “Yeah, I think so. I remember those long braids.”

I took in more details. Juniper was holding me and smiling into the camera. Her face was tan and weathered from the sun. She had a big, broad smile and a gap in her front teeth. A bright red bandana wound around her neck. “The building behind us looks old,” I said, pointing to a white building with columns. “Do you think this photo was taken in Greece?”

“That's the Lincoln Memorial,” Ethan said.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Don't you remember? Two years ago, when my nosebleeds got bad, Dad took me to DC to see a specialist. We had some extra time so we visited the memorial.” Then he pulled a five-dollar bill out of his wallet. “You might recognize the memorial because it's on our money. See?”

“The Lincoln Memorial is in Washington, DC?” I asked. Ethan nodded. “You know, last night, Mom told me that I'd visited DC when I was a baby. This photo must have been taken during that trip.” I searched the photo for clues. A group of tourists stood at the memorial's entrance, old-fashioned cameras hanging around their necks. Mom wasn't in the picture so maybe she'd been the one taking it. “This must have been before the family got mad at Juniper.”

“Here's another photo,” Ethan said, picking a black frame off a pile of papers. A younger Juniper stood in some kind of ruin, surrounded by crumbling stone walls and broken pillars. She wore her hair in the same long braids. She was dressed in a khaki shirt and shorts, with a blue bandana around her neck.

“She looks like an extra in that movie
Raiders of the Lost Ark
,” Tyler said.

“Hey, here's a diploma.” Ethan pointed to a frame that hung lopsided on the wall. “Master of science in archaeology.”

“She's an archaeologist?” I smiled, imagining all the exciting things my great-aunt must have done in her life, like finding a Pharaoh's tomb or digging up a pirate treasure or discovering a lost city near the Amazon. “Wow. I bet she's been all over the world.”

“From the American University in Athens, awarded to Juniper Jacqueline Vandegrift,” he read.

Did I hear correctly? “Hey, wait. I'm named after her?” Not only had we taken a trip to DC with her, but my mother had named me in her honor. This was clear evidence that Juniper had once been loved by my family. Why had that changed?

For the next fifteen minutes or so, we went through the office, looking at photos and documents. There were pictures of Juniper at excavation sites, wielding a shovel and pick, holding fragments of pottery. Sometimes she was in a group, sometimes alone. Locations were scrawled along the bottom of the photos.
The Palace of Knossos on Crete. The Agora in Athens. The Temple of Zeus on Mt. Lykaion
.

I realized that I'd broken my fingerprint rule. So had Ethan. And Tyler, with his rapid-fire gaming fingers, was touching stuff, too. Maybe it didn't matter, now that we knew for sure that this was our great-aunt's house. But there was still a possibility that the place had been robbed and the police would want to dust for prints. I was about to ask Ethan for more tissues, when a newspaper clipping caught my eye.

Mysterious Illness at Excavation Site,
the headline read. The article's black-and-white photo showed a man lying on a stretcher. “Hey, listen to this.” I read it out loud:

 

A mysterious illness hit workers at an excavation site on the island of Kassos. The twelve-member team reported no unusual symptoms until Monday morning when, at the same moment, everyone was suddenly struck with overwhelming fatigue and dark thoughts. One person was not affected, however, and radioed for medical help. All team members were flown to Athens, where doctors were baffled. “We cannot explain the symptoms,” Dr. Farouk, head of exotic diseases, said. “They are awake but seem uninterested in conversation or food, as if they've retreated into their own minds. The prognosis is uncertain.” The unaffected team member, a woman who refused to give her name, disappeared before being interviewed.

The excavation was funded by an anonymous company but no further information was available.

 

“Weird,” I said, staring at the man on the stretcher. His eyes were wide open, his face expressionless. He looked like he was under some sort of spell. The whole thing struck me as creepy.

Ethan held up another photo. “Look at this.” I peered over his shoulder. A man and a woman stood on either side of Juniper. The man had a thin mustache and a beak-like nose. He held a shovel. The woman had ebony skin and was very tall. She also held a shovel. Like Juniper, they were dressed in safari-type clothing. A shiver ran up my spine.

“The Hatmakers,” Ethan and I said at the same time.

Tyler, who'd been looking at some kind of fossil, did a double take. “Hatmakers? Are you talking about the people who broke my car window? Let me see that.” He snatched the photo from Ethan's hands. “I thought you said they were old.”

“They
are
old,” Ethan said. “That photo must have been taken a long time ago.”

“Camels in the desert,” Tyler said, reading the handwriting along the bottom of the photo. “Camels in the desert? I don't get it. There aren't any camels in this photo.”

It wasn't the missing camels that surprised me. What I noticed was that the Hatmakers each had an arm wrapped around Juniper's waist, as if they were . . . “It looks like they're friends,” I said. “The Hatmakers and Juniper are friends. Look how happy they are.” They were smiling as if they'd won the lottery.

I sat in the desk chair, trying to piece together the facts. “Juniper and the Hatmakers know each other. It looks like they worked together. And the Hatmakers stole the puzzle box, which was sent to me by Juniper.” The pieces began to fall into place. A black Jaguar had pulled up alongside us shortly after leaving Chatham, New Jersey. “They weren't out for a nice drive and just happened to run into us at the gas station. They followed us. They wanted the box.”

“You think the Hatmakers came here looking for the box?” Ethan asked. “You think they're the ones who made this mess?”

“It makes sense,” I said, slowly nodding.

“So if they came here, but didn't find the box, how did they figure out you had it?”

“This,” Tyler said. He picked up a UPS delivery receipt that clearly showed my address. The date of delivery was my birthday.

“Uh . . . let me get this straight.” Ethan sat on the edge of the desk. “They ransacked Juniper's house, followed us to the gas station, and broke Tyler's window, just so they could get that metal box.” He paused. “That must mean—”

“That there
is
something inside.” I leaped to my feet, excitement dancing down my legs. “Don't you see, this is proof that the box holds something amazing. The Hatmakers are archaeologists, just like Juniper. She must have found something and whatever it is, they want it. They want it
bad
.” I couldn't believe this was happening. Finally, an adventure for Jax Malone. “This is like a movie.”

“Well, it's not a movie,” Ethan pointed out. “The Hatmakers are real. And we should call the police and turn them in.” He was being his usual self. Oh why couldn't he just get caught up in the excitement of the moment? Why did he always have to be so cautious?

“What do you think is inside my box?” I wondered dreamily.

Tyler picked up a glass paperweight and held it up to the window. As he spun it, mini rainbows reflected onto the walls. “In Space Quest X, deep inside the volcanic cave of the Moon of Serenity, lies the Box of Banishment. And inside the box is a wormhole that leads into another dimension. There are players who would literally kill to get that box. Only two have managed—a guy from Korea and a kid from New Zealand.”

“The Box of Banishment?” Ethan groaned. “Tyler, this isn't Space Quest X. This is the
real
world.”

“I know this is the
real
world. I'm not confused about which dimension I'm currently inhabiting. Jeez.” Tyler rolled his eyes. “I'm just saying that there are lots of quests where a box holds an amazing prize. The Ark of the Covenant, for example. The ark was basically a really large golden box that contained the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments. Of course there's Pandora's box, which contained evil, and then there are all the pirate stories about treasure chests—those are boxes too. And . . .” He set the paperweight back on the desk. “But that doesn't matter because our box is long gone. And no box means no prize. Quest terminated. I'm gonna go home and work with Walker on the game.” He headed out the office door, car keys dangling from his fingers. “But first, I'm thirsty.”

Go home? “Wait, Tyler,” I called as Ethan and I followed.

“We should at least call the police,” Ethan said.

“This entire day has been a colossal waste.” Tyler headed into the kitchen. “A black hole of time suck, that's what it's been.” He grabbed a cup off a shelf, then filled it at the sink. Like the other rooms, the kitchen had been searched. The cupboard drawers and oven had been left open. Silverware lay scattered.

“But we can still find my . . . I mean,
our
box,” I insisted. I wished I'd never agreed to share it with Tyler, but a deal was a deal. And I still needed his help,
and
his car. “Come on. Don't give up. Think about the quest for that other box you mentioned . . . the Ark of the Cover.”

“Ark of the Covenant,” Tyler corrected. “Jeez.”

“Yeah, that thing.” I'd never read the story so I didn't have the slightest clue what I was talking about. But I refused to let this adventure come to a big disappointing ending! Using my best persuasive voice, and trying not to fidget too much, I said, “They wanted the Ark and so they went and got it, right? They did whatever it took. They didn't give up.”

“Well, they should have,” Tyler said. “Because they ended up being visited by a plague of rats, boils, and hemorrhoids.”

Rats, boils, and hemorrhoids? Who wrote a weird story like that?

As Tyler gulped with all the delicacy of a wild boar, Ethan stood quietly in the corner. He had his phone in hand, waiting for someone to say it was okay to call the police. “Tyler,” I pleaded. “Please don't go home yet. If we find Juniper, then she'll tell us the right spot where the box opens. And then we can go to the right spot, find the Hatmakers, and get the box back.” It wasn't a ridiculous plan. It made total sense. Didn't it?

“Uh, guys,” Ethan said as he pointed to the kitchen floor. “Is that what I think it is?”

I looked down. My stomach went queasy. A red splotch lay on the floor.

“Is that . . . ?” I cringed. “Is that
blood
?”