Book Scavenger (18 page)

“A printing company?” James said. “That makes sense, with Mr. Griswold being a publisher and all.”

“But the street address isn't right,” Emily pointed out. “The Black Cat shared the building, but its address was 710. That one's 708.”

James peered inside the street-level windows for 710. A group of four sat on the other side, looking at menus.

“Another restaurant?” he said, disappointed.

Emily tugged on the straps of her backpack and assessed the building and street. There was nothing Emily could see to identify this building as the former home of the Black Cat café, but the address matched what they'd found online, so it must be the right place. It was only a matter of deciphering what they needed to find.

Through her years of using Book Scavenger, she'd become accustomed to keeping an eye out for the odd detail. Clues and riddles could take you only so far, like how the clue for the book she and James first hunted took them to the pier at the Ferry Building. After that it was a matter of sleuthing—investigating crevices that would be a convenient place to hide a book-shaped object, observing a pile of freshly dug dirt, or noticing something out of place.

Emily scanned planters filled with flowers, two metal café tables, a sidewalk spotted with blackened remains of chewing gum, a flyer posted to the tree in front of the building, a parking meter decorated with orange and black. She was debating whether to pretend to have left something in the restaurant again or be direct and say they were on a scavenger hunt, when a breeze rustled the flyer tacked to the tree. A brand-new-looking flyer with a photo of … a cat? Emily went closer for a better look. A photo of a
black
cat.

“Check this out, James!”

Written in all caps in thick black marker under the photo was the following message:

LOOKING FOR A BLACK CAT?
CALL SAMUEL

The bottom of the page was cut into fringe with a number printed on each tab:

(978) 067-9722 x649

“This has to be it!” Emily exclaimed. The flyer was crisp and all the numbered tags remained intact. Emily tore off a strip, and they headed back to their building as fast as they could go.

They raced up the stairs to James's apartment and kicked off their shoes. James grabbed the cordless phone from its stand on a side table.

“Read me the number.”

The phone beeped with every number James punched. Before she got halfway through, Emily heard a recorded voice speak.

“Who is it?” she asked.

James frowned. The recorded message repeated.

“It says we've typed too few digits. Try again,” he said.

Emily repeated the numbers, but once again the recording came on halfway through the call.

“It must be because of the zero. I've never seen a phone number start with a zero,” she said.

“Maybe it's not supposed to be a phone number. Maybe it means something else. A math equation? A cipher?”

Emily went to grab her notebook from her backpack when she saw the time on the Lees' grandfather clock. She groaned.

“I have to go. But we can work on this at lunch tomorrow.”

“We were going to work on Mr. Quisling's challenge, remember?”

The sharpness of James's tone made Emily feel a twinge of guilt that, no, she hadn't remembered.

“Of course I remember,” she fibbed. “We'll work on them both.”

 

CHAPTER

23

EMILY CONTINUED
to puzzle over the number clue Friday and throughout the weekend. By Sunday morning, her attempts to make sense of it had amounted to nothing. And always floating around was James's question about whether the game had actually been finished before Mr. Griswold was attacked. The Black Cat clue
had
led them somewhere after all, but what if this number was now a dead end?

It didn't help that the last time she'd checked the Book Scavenger forums, rumors were swirling that Mr. Griswold wasn't doing well. One user, Captain-Overpants, claimed to work in Mr. Griswold's hospital and said that Mr. Griswold was still in a coma and had been secretly moved to hospice care because he was dying. But then someone asked CaptainOverpants if he could verify his claim and he said no, and then a bunch of people started jumping on him for fanning the flames of rumors. The whole exchange was exhausting to follow. Emily clicked out of the forums and decided no news was just that—no news—and she wouldn't let any rumors get to her before she heard something real.

But that was easier said than done. She couldn't shake her worry that Mr. Griswold might not recover and that she could lose not only Mr. Griswold, but Book Scavenger, too.

That afternoon, her family was going to an outdoor concert at Golden Gate Park, which sounded like the perfect opportunity to get her mind off Mr. Griswold and his game. It also seemed an ideal time to hide a book for Book Scavenger. James's dad was in town that weekend, so Emily would be a solo scavenger. Funny how only two weeks ago she would have preferred it that way.

To get an idea of where she might hide a book, Emily did an online search for images of the music concourse and discovered there would be a fountain. She had once found a copy of
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library
hidden in an aquarium at her previous doctor's office, and ever since she had wanted to hide one underwater. This looked like the perfect opportunity. All she needed to do was pick a book and seal it in a waterproof bag. She'd saved the Book Scavenger sack the aquarium hider had used. You could buy them through the website, and this one was printed to look like the interior of an aquarium with its teal color and pieces of coral. (Personally, Emily would have chosen the bag printed to make the book look like a treasure chest.) The aquarium camouflage in a fountain wasn't ideal, but it would work.

Now to decide which book to hide.

It was always difficult to choose which of her books to give away. Her most favorites were marked up with hearts and exclamation marks and other reading notes in the margins, so she would never part with those. But she collected copies of those favorite books to give away. Rummaging through her hideable book collection, she decided on
The Westing Game
.

When the Cranes left for the concert, a murky white washed the sky. There were no views of the bay on this overcast day. They walked past the street Emily's school was on and then walked farther, stopping at a small market/deli to pick up sandwiches, and then walked farther until they finally reached where her dad had last found street parking for Sal.

“We should have just walked to the park,” Matthew said as he climbed into the back. “We're practically there.”

“Only in San Francisco!” their dad replied.

Emily sat in the middle of the van and flipped open
The Westing Game
. She was in the middle of rereading the bit where Turtle sneaks into the mansion on Halloween when Matthew bellowed, “Look! Looklooklooklooklook.” He pounded his index finger against the glass with every “look.”

He'd startled Emily so much she'd almost dropped her book. She scanned the street trying to figure out what had gotten him so worked up. There was a bland brick building that looked more like a bank than anything else until she noticed the lit-up marquee that read
THE FILLMORE
.

“I'll see
you
in a week,” Matthew said to the building as they drove by. Matthew had found a group of friends from his school who were going to the Flush concert, so their parents had agreed to let him buy a ticket. If it were anyone else who had already befriended an entire group to go to a concert with, it might surprise Emily, but this was Matthew.

“If we lived here, I'd work at the Fillmore,” Matthew said.

“If we lived here, I'd ride a cable car every day,” their mom chimed in. This was one of the games they often played. Imagining life, sometimes ridiculously, lived long-term in one place.

“If we lived here, my calves would become the size of small watermelons from walking so many hills,” her dad said.

Emily watched gray buildings whiz by. The clinging white mist made all the wires that crisscrossed the city stand out like a cat's cradle.

“Your turn, Emily,” their dad said.

“If we lived here, I'd live above a bookstore,” she said, thinking of the apartments above Hollister's.

“Ooh, yes,” her mom said. “If only.”

And Emily wondered, why if only? “If only” implied “if only we could stay,” and the idea of calling San Francisco home didn't sound so unreasonable to her.

When they got to the music concourse, the jazz was already in full swing. Her parents hadn't realized this was a Halloween-themed concert, and the front benches were filled with zombies, witches, and fairies. Even the stage looked dressed in costume as something out of Ancient Rome with an ornate dome carved with angels and columns flanking either side, but Emily knew from photos that that was how it always looked. Tables and pop-tents had been set up beyond the benches under frizzy trees, their leaves lit with orange lanterns. They passed the large fountain with a statue where Emily wanted to hide her book and continued to an expanse of lawn. An upbeat, bouncy number played as the Cranes wove in a single-file line around blankets and collapsible chairs and a dancing toddler dressed like a monkey. Emily's dad put his hands on her mother's hips and pretended to do an embarrassing conga that was mostly shrugging shoulders and the occasional kick. Emily was relieved when they found a clear space of grass to shake out their blanket.

“Anyone hungry?” Emily's mom sat down the bag of sandwiches.

“I'm going to hide my book,” Emily said.

“Why don't you go with her, Matthew?”

Emily pretended to be very interested in adjusting the waterproof baggie around
The Westing Game.
It had been a while since she and Matthew had hidden a book together. He used to be really into it, maybe even more than Emily in the beginning. They fought about it back then because he always wanted to hide books in a way that made it super hard to find them, while Emily wanted her books found so she could read about their adventures as they traveled on to new places. Matthew dug into the paper bag and pulled out a prosciutto sandwich. Without so much as a glance or apologetic smile her way, he said, “Nah. I'd rather go watch the guitarist.”

Emily knew her cheeks reddened. She could feel them get hot. It was stupid of her to care. She had known he wouldn't want to join her. All she was going to do was walk the book over to the fountain and drop it in, anyway, so it's not like she needed a partner. But if it had been a few years ago, Matthew would have found a way to make something simple like that feel like a secret spy mission.

“Matthew, go with your sister,” their mother said. “You can get up close to the music afterward.”

“That's okay,” Emily said quickly. “I'm not going far, and I'll be super quick. This one doesn't need two people anyway.”

Before anyone could say anything more, Emily hurried to the fountain. She'd added a small stone to the baggie to help weigh down
The Westing Game
so it would stay underwater. When it seemed like nobody was paying attention to her, she dropped the book. With a
sploosh
, it went under. That night, when she got home, she would enter the clue onto Book Scavenger. She'd thought of a good one:
Where the wet things are between art and science
, encrypted in her and James's secret language to make it a little more difficult.
Art
and
science
referred to the de Young Museum and the Academy of Sciences, which were on either side of the concourse.

She sat on the edge of the fountain for a minute. A Dorothy and a Cowardly Lion played checkers on their blanket. Three small pirates held hands, shrieking in circles until they fell down. She could see her family's blanket from here. Her parents were dancing a clumsy, barefoot salsa on the grass. Matthew was nowhere to be seen, no doubt standing as close to the stage as he could manage. She looked down at
The Westing Game
, still submerged at the bottom of the fountain. She wished James could have come with her tonight. He would have liked the whole hiding-a-book-underwater thing. How odd that she could be a solo book hunter for years and enjoy it, but now it felt like something was missing to be on her own.

 

CHAPTER

24

MONDAY MARKED
the third week of Mr. Quisling's cipher challenge. Nearly everyone had dropped out by now, having decided that doing homework would be easier than the work of creating and breaking the class ciphers. James and Maddie were both still into the challenge, but Emily figured it was more for the pride of winning their bet than for the homework passes at this point. The score was zero-zero, but at lunchtime James was confident that was about to change.

They sat at their table in the library, and James explained the mastermind code he'd come up with over the weekend, every so often looking over to where Maddie sat.

“I found this section about the Baconian Cipher,” James said. Emily leaned in to hear his whispered words.

“Bacon, like bacon and eggs?”

“Exactly. A cipher that tastes delicious on any sandwich.” James grinned. “No, Bacon was the guy who came up with it. With the Baconian Cipher, you use a combination of
A
s and
B
s to represent every letter of the alphabet. I was thinking about how computer programming is a type of cipher—it's called coding after all—and then I came across this Baconian stuff, and it gave me the idea to combine it with binary code.”

“Binary what now?”

Instead of explaining, James pulled a sheet of paper from his binder and slid it over to Emily. A short paragraph typed at the top read:
B
e
ware
t
h
e
ni
n
ja mo
n
ke
y.
He
l
ik
e
s ba
n
a
na
b
re
ad
an
d
dri
v
es a station wagon.