The Secret Cellar (17 page)

“Hey! Not funny,” I say.

“Like a piece of poster board,” says Margaret. “It needs to be white.”

Becca’s mouth starts to open: she is grinning like a demon.

“Don’t say it, Becca,” I warn.

“I have one of those posters from the auction upstairs,” says Shelley. “The back is plain white. Will that work?”

Margaret nods. “Perfect.”

Shelley runs upstairs and returns with the poster in seconds; she’s as excited as the rest of us to see what Margaret has discovered.

Margaret holds the poster about a foot away from the hole in the wall. “Sophie and Becca, you two hold it just like this,” she orders. “Now, Shelley, turn the lights off again. Please.”

As the lights in the room go out, an illuminated circle appears on the paper between Becca and me.

“Whoa,” says Becca. “It’s like a projector.… Hey, there’s something there.”

“Start moving the paper away from the wall … slowly!” says Margaret. “Stop. Back up an inch. Perfect.”

“It’s writing,” Leigh Ann says, “but it’s upside down.”

“I don’t understand,” admits Shelley. “What is going on? Is that a projector?”

“Sort of,” answers Margaret. “Did you ever use a pinhole camera?”

“Sure, when I was a kid. My dad helped me make one.”

“Well, that’s essentially what this is,” says Margaret. “Just a slightly bigger version. The image must be on the back wall of the compartment, and when you turn the light on, it projects it through the pinhole. So simple. The answer is revealed to us, just like the
View of Delft
was for Vermeer.”

“What does it say?” Shelley asks.

Margaret takes a pen from her pocket and carefully traces the letters. “Okay, that’s it. Let’s turn the lights back on.”

Becca “translates” the upside-down printing:

“But … isn’t it supposed to tell us who the Muse is?” I ask. “Wasn’t that the whole point?”

Margaret scrunches up her face as she stares at the message. “Um … yes … I thought so, anyway.”

“You guys aren’t going to believe this, but I totally know who it is,” gushes Leigh Ann. “It just has to be Terpsichore.”

“Who?” Becca asks. “Turpentine?”

“Terpsichore,” Leigh Ann repeats.

I check out the floor medallions of the nine Muses, and there she is, in one of the corner positions. “How are you so sure it’s her? Why not … Euterpe? Or Pol-y-hym-ni-a?”

“Because Terpsichore is the Muse of dancers. My teacher talks about her all the time. In fact, technically, dancers are called terpsichoreans. It’s kind of strange, though, because I’ve never seen a picture of her actually dancing. She’s always sitting down playing one of those miniature harp things. I forget what it’s called.”

“Ohhh, I remember her,” says Margaret. “You’re right. It’s a lyre, but it does look a little like a harp. I think she’s also the mother of the Sirens, those women in
The Odyssey
who sing the beautiful song and lure sailors to their death.”

“What about the second line?” I ask. “What does that mean?”

Margaret glances at the poem. “ ‘Against the clock’ … It sounds like we have to hurry. Like it’s a race against the clock.”

Leigh Ann shakes her head. “Or maybe it means to turn her medallion counterclockwise. You know, against the clock.”

Margaret claps her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Duh! Of course! Leigh Ann, you’re brilliant!”

Leigh Ann’s face lights up. “You mean I’m really right?”

“I guess we’ll find out when we try to open the lock.”

Becca slaps Leigh Ann on the back. “Very nice job, Jaimes. I knew you had it in you. Even if you are from Queens.”

“Gee, thanks,” Leigh Ann says.

Margaret turns to Shelley. “That’s two out of three. Julius Caesar and Terpsichore. One more, and we can open this crazy lock … and find out what Mr. Dedmann was hiding.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” says Shelley. “And if you girls will excuse me, I need to make a call. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait a second,” says Becca as Shelley disappears up the stairs. “We have the first two, right? Caesar and Terpsidancer. Can’t we just do those two and then try all the planets, one by one? There’s only nine.”

“Actually, eight,” says Margaret. “Pluto’s not considered a true planet anymore. I guess it still was when he put the floor in, though.”

“Who cares about Pluto? What about my idea?” Becca asks.

“Nice try,” Margaret says, “but it won’t work. We can’t turn any of the medallions until we get that walking stick. Remember? It’s the key.”

“Duh!” says Becca. “Forgot about that.”

“It’s getting late, so let’s get to work on the third clue,” I say.

Leigh Ann reads the next lines of the poem aloud:

“So, I think we can assume that the old man in the poem is Dedmann,” says Margaret. “His past is hidden somewhere in plain sight.”

“Beneath the signs,” I add. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Margaret taps me on the shoulder and points at the ceiling, where the twelve constellations of the zodiac, made up of gold-leaf stars, glitter between the planets.

“Ohhh. I get it. Capricorn. Aquarius. Gemini. The signs of the zodiac.”

“So, if it’s beneath the signs, it must be hidden in the floor,” Becca deduces.

Margaret says nothing, but moves to the round table, where she stands, bent over the glossy surface of the Milky Way galaxy. A smile creeps across her face as she turns back to us.

“Look to the stars,” she says. “The answer is in the stars. This table … The Milky Way has something to do with it. I know it.”

I look at Becca and Leigh Ann as my arms break out in blueberry-size goose bumps. “Did she just say what I think she said?”

“The answer is in the stars,” says Becca. “Just like Madame Zurandot said. Man, that is faa-reaky.”

Margaret? Well, let’s say she is unimpressed.

“You guys are the biggest suckers. Do you know how many people—this very second—are saying something like ‘The answer is in the stars’? Thousands. Millions, probably, if you count other languages. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a coincidence, that’s all. Now get over here and check this table out … every square inch of it.”

“Don’t forget the last line,” Leigh Ann says before crawling underneath the table. “About looking with eyes like Mars. Wasn’t he the god of war? What was special about his eyes?”

“Nothing that I can remember,” I say. “But you never know with mythology. There are so many stories
that it’s impossible to keep them all straight. I’ll volunteer to do some research.”

“And I need to learn more about the Milky Way,” says Margaret.

“It looks like a satellite picture of a hurricane,” says Becca. “There’s the eye, and then these big swirls.” She leans over until her face is almost against the polished surface. “I wonder how long it took somebody to do this. It’s amazing. There are thousands of stars. They must have used a toothpick to make each one.”

“And the colors are right, too,” Margaret adds. “White, yellow, blue, orange, and red … Those are the colors of stars.”

“Any luck?” Shelley asks, returning from upstairs.

“Not yet,” says Margaret. “But we’re working on it.”

“Well, I hate to interrupt your progress, but I have to run across town to see my grandmother. I wouldn’t do it now, with all this going on, but it’s her birthday, and—”

“It’s okay,” says Margaret. “Sophie, you remembered your camera, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. Charged and ready.” I take it from my backpack and wipe it clean. “What do you want a picture of?”

“I want some close-ups of the tabletop, different sections. Get nice and close so we can see individual stars.”

I move around the table, snapping away, and then, with Shelley looking on nervously, I climb on top so I
can position myself directly over the center of the galaxy. When I finish there, I hop off the table and wander down the center of the room, taking pictures of the ceiling.

“Just in case,” I say.

It’s just Mom and me for dinner, so we decide to make it a soup and salad night. I make the salad Dad taught me—a true bistro salad, he calls it, with escarole and walnuts and Gruyère cheese. Easy, and infinitely yummy, if I do say so myself. Meanwhile, Mom throws together one of her specialities, this rich, creamy, mushroom soup that she makes using three different kinds of mushrooms. Confession time: I used to hate mushrooms until I tasted this soup. Now I beg her to make it for me at least once a month.

Margaret calls just as I’m slurping up the last bit from my bowl. There’s a family rule in the St. Pierre home: we don’t answer the phone at dinnertime. You have to remember, the French have a different relationship with food than most people. To my dad, having a phone ring during dinner is like hearing one in church, or the theater.

“Oops, sorry, Mom,” I say. “Forgot to turn it off. Oh, it’s Margaret.”

“That’s okay, you can take it,” she says. “It’s an easy cleanup. Go.”

I half expect Margaret to tell me she has solved the third clue, but she hasn’t even focused her brainpower on that problem yet, I learn.

“We have a bigger problem,” she says. “It’s that darn walking stick. I guess it was wishful thinking, but I was just going along, figuring that if we had the combination … well, we could basically use anything to spin the center of those three medallions. But I took a closer look today, and now I’m positive: we have to have Dedmann’s walking stick; there’s no two ways about it. It really does work like a key.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, those holes in the center of the medallions are a lot more complicated than I thought. Inside each one there are a bunch of different-shaped … buttons, I guess you’d call them, sticking out. Some of them are solid, but some of them move. They push in so they’re perfectly flush with the rest of the socket.”

“Wait, I’m confused.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll show you what I mean the next time we’re in there. But we need that walking stick. Otherwise, it’s like trying to jam the wrong key into a lock. Unless it drops in perfectly and pushes in all the right buttons, we won’t be able to turn it. You see what I mean?”

“Sort of. I believe you, though. So how do we get the stick?” I know what Margaret is going to say the moment those words leave my lips.

“I have a plan.”

I smile to myself. Do I know my best friend or what?

“You always do,” I say.

Dad gets home really late from the restaurant, but he leaves a killer gift for me on the kitchen table: a box of six
pains au chocolat
. I do a happy dance around the kitchen as I wolf one down. And then there were five.