A Whisper of Danger (23 page)

Splint was surprised Rick didn’t just dive in and leave her on the boat. Hunky Wallace already had. If he didn’t think his mom would have a cow about it, Splint would have followed the treasure hunter straight down to the sunken ship. But what chance did a guy have to be bold when his mother was always hanging around nitpicking over this and that? All the same, he knew he should be thankful to get to explore the wreck at all. If his mom had followed her normal pattern, he’d be in his room right this minute, grounded for the rest of his life.

Zanzibar had changed Splint’s mom. As he bobbed in the water, he could see the difference written all over her face. While Rick worked to fasten the weight belt around her waist, she was laughing out loud. No, she was giggling. Giggling! Splint didn’t think he’d ever heard his mom giggle. She seemed to be smiling an awful lot the last day or so. She sort of bounced when she walked, too. And the way she flipped her hair behind her ear and tilted her head to the side when she looked at Rick . . . weird.

“You’re sure there aren’t any sharks down there?” she was asking him.

“Positive.”

“What about eels?”

“Just a few sea slugs.”

She laughed at that, as though it was the funniest thing in the world. Who could figure? Splint was grateful when Rick finally went into the water. Splint’s mom slipped off the dive platform and took Rick’s hand. There were more instructions, more giggles, and finally it was time to go down.

Gripping the breathing tube in his mouth, Splint allowed the weight belt to slowly pull him farther and farther under the water. Finally he understood what it would be like to be a fish. Such freedom! He could swim all over the place without having to come up for air. As they descended, Rick motioned Splint to grab his nose and blow hard in order to ease the pressure in his ears. Rick was amazing. He knew everything!

A vision of magic unfolded before Splint’s eyes as he drifted down. He could see the anchor rope and air hoses running from the
Sea Star
to the ocean floor. Fish swam past him—angel fish dressed in black-and-white stripes, tiny fluorescent bluefish that swam in quick darting schools, and countless other unnamed species arrayed in shades of orange, blue, yellow, and red. Splint couldn’t wait to look them up in his encyclopedia of sea life.

And then the wreck materialized before him. At first, it was a huge disappointment. There were a few spongy-looking timbers that had been mostly eaten up by worms. Some hunks of coral lay scattered at one end. Three large holes had been dug, but they were empty. And that was it. Sure didn’t look like a sunken galleon to Splint. You couldn’t swim in and out of portholes or climb undersea staircases or anything.

But then Rick drifted over and took Splint’s hand. He pointed out the gridwork of chains that had been laid over the wreck. Then he showed Splint a large stiff plastic sheet onto which the grid had been drawn. Four stones held it pinned to the sand. Rick took a black crayon from under a chunk of coral and carefully marked and labeled the place where the biscuit of silver coins had been found.

After that, the time flew. Rick showed Splint and his mom where the coins had been found on the actual wreck. Then he taught them how to fan the sand away with their hands and search for more biscuits. After a while, one of the other divers brought over a big tube that looked like the end of a vacuum cleaner. Sure enough, the thing sucked up sand like nobody’s business! Whoa! Anything of any size was uncovered in the blink of an eye.

While his mom did a little exploring, Splint got to work the wreck with Rick. They searched all around a pile of rounded stones, vacuuming everything with meticulous care. Splint loved the feel of his fingers working slowly over the rocks, turning them this way and that, gently searching for anything of significance. He watched Rick and copied the way the scientist picked things up and looked them over before setting them down in the exact place he’d found them.

Sure was different from Hunky. Twenty feet away, he and his men were attacking a hole they’d dug with the vacuum, going at it like demons. Sand drifted all around them like a mist, making the water murky and unpleasant. They were chopping at blobs of sea grass with big long knives, carving crevices into which they dipped and dipped, looking for treasure. Splint decided he liked Rick’s scientific methods a whole lot better. When he grew up, he wanted to be just like Rick. A marine archaeologist.

He and Rick had just uncovered a big hunk of conglomerate when Splint’s mom swam over holding something in her arms. You’d have thought Rick had been shot. He jerked toward her, took the thing, and cradled it carefully. Pointing at it, he gave Splint the thumbs-up sign about ten times, and then he spat out his breathing gear and planted a great big kiss on Splint’s mom’s cheek.

It was the second time he’d done that. Splint was beginning to think he ought to keep count.

In no time flat, everybody was floating up toward the boat. The minute Rick’s head burst out of the water, he yanked off his mask.

“Wahoo! You did it, Jessie!” he shouted.

“What did I find? Isn’t it some kind of a vase?”

“Aye, that it is, Ms. Thornton,” Hunky shouted as he paddled toward the boat. “’Tis a porcelain urn, Chinese in origin. What dynasty, Mr. Scientist?”

“K’ang-Hsi.”

“Worth a small fortune, if I’m correct. And it looks to be perfect!”

“But there’s a small chip—”

“A small chip, she says. My dear lady, in this business, anything 80 percent intact is considered perfect. If we’ve only got half the piece, we call it almost whole. And if it’s at least recognizable, it’s termed as almost intact. This is a treasure. A true treasure!”

“Yay, Mom!” Splint crowed. He had had no idea his mom was so cool. She had found a treasure, and she’d only been in the water once!

“The urn is worth more than Hunky knows,” Rick said as they climbed aboard one by one. “K’ang-Hsi was emperor of China from 1661 to 1722. That gives us a definitive bottom line on dating the wreck. Plus, we know that Spain was a primary importer of this kind of porcelain. Since Spain had little to do with Zanzibar, we can deduce that this china was probably carried on board a Portuguese ship. We also know that in 1832, Seyyid Said bin Sultan moved his capital to Zanzibar from Muscat. So that establishes Arab dominance on the island. And we’ve got a padlock that’s dated in the 1800s.”

“What are you saying, McTaggart?” Hunky demanded.

“I’m saying that I calculate we’ve found ourselves a Portuguese bark that wrecked sometime in the early 1800s. If we search the records, we might find out exactly which one it is. And that’ll tell us what we can expect to find on board.”

“Well, I’ll be a tongue-tied Scotsman. Do you mean to tell me that our reluctant Ms. America has not only dated our shipwreck but she’s discovered its nationality, too?”

Splint looked around at his mother. As usual, she was paying no attention to the scientific discussions that so fascinated her son. In fact, she had scrounged a pad of paper and a pencil, and she was sketching the K’ang-Hsi urn. Leave it to her to start drawing! And right after she’d made the best discovery of the whole adventure.

He squatted down beside the saltwater tank to watch Hunky hammering on the newest chunk of conglomerate. If only his mom would let him, Splint knew he could become a valuable part of this diving team. After all, he’d only been on board one afternoon, and he already could man the air hoses, break conglomerate, dive with the breathing gear, and work the vacuum. He could help a lot! Maybe he’d even find the biggest treasure of all.

Of course, his mom probably wouldn’t let him on the boat again. Not after he’d disobeyed her like that. Splint looked over to where she was sketching. Rick McTaggart had sat down right beside her, and the two of them were going over her sketch. They kept pointing to this and that, their fingers touching. And then they would say stuff while they looked straight into each other’s eyes. It was the weirdest thing.

Splint couldn’t stop watching them, even when Hunky began to exclaim about something he’d found in the conglomerate. Splint just kept staring and staring at his mom and Rick McTaggart. And the more he stared, the more he realized how comfortable they were with each other. Like they knew things only the two of them shared. Like they understood each other without even talking. Like they fit together.

Right at that moment, Splint suddenly thought about how strange it was that his mom had auburn hair, but he himself had brown hair . . . the exact color of Rick’s. His mom had a triangle-shaped face with high cheekbones, but Splint had a square face with a strong jawline . . . exactly like Rick’s. And his mom had pale, creamy skin that burned to a crisp, but Splint had olive skin that tanned easily . . . just like Rick’s.

Then he looked at his mom’s toes. And then at Rick’s. Splint had Rick’s feet. Splint had Rick’s hands. Splint had Rick’s teeth and smile and ears and shoulders.

“Mom!” he shouted.

She glanced up, her eyes suddenly filled with concern. “What is it, honey? What’s wrong?”

Splint stared at her. “Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Nothing.”

He needed time to think this over. If his deductions were correct, he had just stumbled on the grandest, most glorious, most splendid treasure of all.

Rick McTaggart was his father.

E
LEVEN

Jess decided she had to restore normalcy to her life. Things had gotten out of perspective. Confusing. Disordered. Cloudy. She wanted to put the controls back into her own hands. She needed time to sort through her priorities. She needed distance from Rick McTaggart.

For nearly a week, Jess kept Splinter busy around the house. In the mornings he played with Hannah, and in the afternoons he and his mom went for walks, read books, and sketched together. Miriamu worked in the kitchen, as usual. Solomon, who had somehow managed to hang the car engine from the limb of a Red Hot Poker tree, tinkered with pistons and gaskets when he wasn’t tending the yard. After the trauma of the encounter with Giles Knox and the adventure on the treasure ship, life began to feel almost calm.

Jess received a large royalty check for her work on the first eight Kima the Monkey books. She was relieved to be able to pay Miriamu, Solomon, and Hannah. Day by day, the illustrations for her ninth book began to come together. With the familiar figure of Kima the Monkey dancing around the pages, Jess finally captured the personality of this installment’s star, the irritable and impatient impala.

Long, lyre-shaped black horns made the antelope a beautiful creature. Her seductive brown eyes had a delicate streak of white above and gentle tan shading below. Two white patches on her face—one beneath the nostrils and above the mouth, the other under her lower lip—gave Impala the look of a lovely, pouty queen. Jess had no trouble transforming the natural beauty and grace of the antelope into an appealing but exasperating character.

Splinter loved to read aloud lines from James Perrott’s rollicking text, and he enjoyed helping his mother plan the painting that would accompany the words. As long as Jess could remember, her son had dawdled at her side while she sketched and illustrated. In fact, Splint provided her with a strong dose of inspiration. She had never mentioned it to anyone, but the little monkey in her award-winning books shared many traits with a certain overactive, impish, and excitable boy.

“Let me decide where to put Impala on the next page,” Splint begged one afternoon as he lounged, feet up on the table, in Jess’s studio. “I’ll remember what you told me about design and balance.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll close my eyes and listen while you read the words. Remember, on this page the monkey is doing most of the talking. Actually, he’s scolding Impala, so we want to put Kima in the dominant position on the page.”

“Here’s what Kima says.” Splint cleared his throat and held up the page of manuscript.

“‘You fuss and gripe and irritate.
You scold and push and never wait.
And that is why, my dear Impala,
No one’s coming to your birthday gala.’

Kima finished and sat down.
He watched Impala start to frown.
But then that frown turned into tears—
A thing no one had seen in years!”

“Poor Impala,” Jess said. “She’s crying. Maybe Kima shouldn’t have been quite so blunt with her.”

“You’re wrong, Mom. All the animals were talking about Impala behind her back, saying how grumpy and irritable she always acted. And none of them were planning to go to her birthday party. Kima did the right thing to just go right up to Impala and tell her the truth. People ought to tell the truth. You’ve always said that, Mom.”