One False Note - 39 Clues 02 (14 page)

Both Cahills' hearts skipped a beat. It was the pad that contained the precious diary pages.

The others laughed and cheered as the best man waltzed the pad toward the steps. A thin film of sweat formed on Dan's brow.

What's this clown doing? Is he really stupid enough to take a seat cushion to a wedding?

At the last moment, the man tossed the pad back aboard the Royal Saladin

and followed the rest of the guests up the stairs.

Amy and Dan crouched in silence as the wedding party crossed the churchyard and filed into Santa Luca. Even when they heard the heavy door slam shut, they remained still and hidden. After so many reversals of fortune today, they half expected a meteorite to hurtle from the sky and vaporize them if they dared to move. Finally, Dan stood up. "Come on. Let's get those diary pages before they end up on the honeymoon cruise."

Their Venice hotel was cheap, mainly because it had no water view. That had been the Cahills' one condition.

"No more canals," Dan had said firmly. "I hate them."

While Amy and Dan took long showers to warm up and wash away the none-too-clean canal water, Nellie busied herself with the diary pages. It was only three handwritten sheets. But they contained some astounding information.

"You're not going to believe this, you guys," Nellie breathed. "No wonder somebody ripped these pages out. They're all about how worried Nannerl was. She thought Mozart was going crazy."

"Crazy?" echoed Dan. "You mean, like, stand on your head and spit nickels kind of crazy?"

"He was running himself into major debt," Nellie explained, following the flowery

German script with her finger. "Spending more money than he earned. But here's the thing -- the stuff he was buying was pointless and weird. He was importing rare and expensive ingredients from overseas."

Amy's ears perked up at the word ingredients. "Remember iron solute?
That's an ingredient, too. All this must be mixed up with the thirty-nine clues somehow."

"Mozart was in it up to his ears," Dan agreed. "Just like Ben Franklin." Nellie turned to a different page. "The diary mentions Franklin, too -- right here. Mozart was in communication with him. You know what Nannerl calls him? 'Our American cousin.' And you'll never
believe who else was a Cahill -
only Marie Antoinette, that's
who!"

"We're related to the queen of France!" Amy exclaimed in awe. "And the Austrian royal family, too," Nellie went on. "That was the connection. She and Mozart met when they were kids. When she married the future King Louis XVI and went to France, she became the go-between for Franklin and Mozart." Amy was so astounded by this overload of information that she almost missed the faint pencil lines in the margin next to Nannerl's heavy calligraphy. Her surprise was accompanied by a flood of emotion. "Grace wrote this," she said in a watery voice. "I'd know that handwriting anywhere."

Dan stared. "Our grandmother ripped out part of Nannerl's diary?" "Not necessarily, but these pages were in her hands at some point. She traveled all over the world. She's mixed up in this quest fifty different ways." She squinted at the spidery script beside Marie Antoinette's name and read aloud:

The word that cost her life, minus the music.

Dan sighed in fond annoyance. "That's Grace, all right. Clear as mud." Nellie was exasperated. "What's the matter with you Cahills? Why does everything have to be a
puzzle? Why can't you just come out and say what you mean?" "Then it wouldn't be the thirty-nine clues," Dan pointed out. "It would be the thirty-nine statements."

Amy looked thoughtful. "The thing Marie Antoinette was most famous for was this: When someone told her the peasants were rioting because there was no bread, she said, 'Let them eat cake.'"

Dan made a face. "You can get famous for
that?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "Don't you see? There was
no cake! There was no food at all! It became a symbol for how the rich were totally out of touch with the needs of the poor. Those words helped set off the French Revolution. And that was when Marie Antoinette died by the guillotine."

"Sweet -- the guillotine," Dan approved. "Now it's getting interesting." Nellie raised an eyebrow. "So you're saying that the word that cost her life was --
cake?"

"Minus the music," added Amy. "What could that mean?" "Well," mused Nellie, "Marie Antoinette spoke French, so -- " "Wait a minute!" Amy exclaimed. "I know this! Grace told me about it when I was a
little kid!"

"How come you can always dredge up some weird Grace conversation from a million years ago?" Dan demanded, his emotions suddenly close to the surface.

"She's only been gone a few weeks and I can barely remember her voice."

"That old stuff is important," Amy insisted. "We knew her as a cool grandmother. But all those years, I think she had a hidden agenda, too. She was training
us for this contest -- planting pieces of information that we were going to need. This might be one of them."

"And what exactly is 'this'?" Nellie prompted.

"When Marie Antoinette said, 'Let them eat cake,' she's usually quoted using the French word brioche.

But Grace was very careful to tell me that she used the more common term for cake gateau."

Dan's brow furrowed. "Cake is cake. Isn't it?"

"Unless this had nothing to do with cake," Nellie suggested. "According to Nannerl, Marie Antoinette was sending secret messages between Franklin and Mozart. Maybe it's some kind of code."

"So
gateau
is a message, and
brioche
isn't -- and they mean
the same thing?" Dan put in dubiously.

Amy shook her head. "I don't know what it means, but I'm positive it's a piece of the puzzle."

Dan was studying the Nannerl pages over Nellie's shoulder. "There's another note --
look!"

The pencil lines were even fainter, but there was no question it was Grace's writing. This time it was right in the center of the page.

D>HIC 156

Dan frowned. "Maybe she had the hiccups?"

"Wait -- the markings are right over a name." Amy squinted at the page. "Fidelio Racco."

"That's the guy on Uncle Alistair's paper!" Dan said excitedly. "Mozart performed at that guy's house!"

Nellie translated from the German. "It says here he was a big-time merchant and business honcho. Mozart hired him to import some super-expensive kind of steel that was only forged in the Far East. Nannerl blames Racco for overcharging her brother and landing him in debt. And guess what she calls him." "Blood-sucking money-grubber?" Dan suggested. "She calls him 'cousin.'"

Dan's eyes widened. "Another
Cahill?"

Amy unzipped her brother's backpack and took out his laptop computer. "Let's see what we can learn about our Italian relative."

CHAPTER 19

As rich Cahill superstars went, Fidelio Racco was definitely on the B-list. Maybe even the D-list. Google had heard of him, but a search for his surname placed him below Racco Auto Body in Toronto and Trattoria Racco in Florence, and only slightly ahead of the Rack O'Lamb Irish Chop House in Des Moines. The multimillionaire merchant might have been hot stuff in the eighteenth century, but the composer he had driven to the poorhouse had fared much better in the eyes of history.

Although he was no Mozart, Racco's great wealth had founded Collezione di Racco, a private exhibit displaying the treasures and artwork Racco collected during his world travels. It was there that Amy and Dan decided to continue their search the next afternoon, leaving Nellie at the hotel with Saladin and several varieties of Italian cat food. Maybe the change of country would lead to a change of fortune
in ending the hunger strike.

The exhibit was located in Racco's eighteenth-century home, which rubbed Dan the wrong way right from the start.

"Racco house, Mozart house," he grumbled as they marched along the cobblestone streets. "Boring house would be more like it."

Amy was losing patience. "Why do you always have to say that? Boring this, boring that! If this house gives us the next clue, it's the most un-boring place on the planet." "Amen to that," Dan agreed. "Bring it on, the sooner the better." "We're getting close," Amy promised. "I can smell it."

Dan wrinkled his nose. "All I smell is canal water. Man, I might never get it out of my nasal passages."

Venice really was a great pedestrian city, if you knew where you were going, Amy reflected. The walk to Collezione di Racco was only twenty minutes. That modest distance brought them from their shabby hotel to a large stone mansion in what was obviously a very expensive part of town.

"I guess the ripping-off-Mozart business paid pretty well," Dan commented. "It wasn't just the money he made from Mozart," Amy explained. "The guy was a major player in international trade. He had fleets o
f ships all over the globe."

Dan nodded. "Our old-time cousins were such big shots. What happened to all the loser Cahills? You know, regular Joes like us who never got rich and famous." At the front entrance, they were greeted by a statue of Fidelio Racco himself. If the likeness was life-size, the millionaire merchant had been very short -- only an inch or two taller than Dan. Most surprising of all, though, Racco was strumming a mandolin, and his open mouth seemed to imply he was singing. Dan's eyes narrowed. "Another Janus?"

His sister nodded. "That would explain why Mozart came to him to import that special steel. He figured he'd be safe with someone from his own branch." "Bad move, Wolfgang," Dan said sagely. "Never trust a Cahill."

They entered the mansion and paid the hefty admission fee of twenty euros. Even now, centuries after his death, Fidelio Racco was still overcharging people. They toured the exhibit's various rooms, which housed most of the riches of the eighteenth-century world -- silk, heavy brocades, and pottery from the orient; silver and gold from the Americas; diamonds, ivory, and spectacular wood carvings from Africa; and exquisitely woven carpets from Arabia and Persia. "This stuff is amazing," Amy whispered to Dan. "Only a Janus could have such incredible taste!"

The decorative arts were dizzyingly impressive, but the information display explained

that most of Racco's great wealth had come from less glamorous commodities -- teas, spices, and a rare Japanese steel alloyed with wolfram, which had the highest melting point of any metal.

"For sure that's the steel Racco was selling to Mozart," Amy said positively.

"Wolfram," Dan mused, a far-off look in his eye. "I've heard of that from somewhere."

Amy was skeptical. "Are you sure you're not thinking of Wolfgang?"

"No, wolfram. Grace told me about it." He rounded on his sister. "You're not the only

grandchild she told stuff to, you know."

Amy sighed. "All right, what did she say?"

He looked stricken. "I was sort of tuning her out."

"That's why she told most of it to me -- because she knew you'd forget it all." They wandered through a hallway of exquisite carved and gilt furniture from all corners of the world, which dead-ended in a round room. At the center, bathed in blue light, stood a polished mahogany harpsichord.

"I'm out of here," said Dan. "This is starting to look a lot like you-know-who."

Amy put a grip on his arm strong enough to splinter bone. "It is

you-know-who! It says right here -- this is the instrument Mozart played at his performance in Racco's house in 1770!"

"There's only one problem: It's a harpsichord. It doesn't tell us what D > HIC means. And it has nothing to do with cake, in French or any other language."

"Still," Amy insisted. "Everything we've been through has been leading us to this

instrument. It's going to give us the next clue. I'm sure of it."

Dan reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a wadded, crumpled napkin.

"Good thing I wasn't wearing these pants when we went into the canal."

Amy was confused. "What's that?"

He unfolded the napkin to reveal the train logo. "The only thing to do with a harpsichord is play music.

This
is music." He turned it over, and there was the version of KV 617 he had reproduced on the train.

Amy had to keep herself from cheering. "Dan, you're a genius! We take a musical clue from Ben Franklin and play it on Mozart's instrument!"

They looked around. The harpsichord was cordoned off by velvet ropes. A uniformed security guard was stationed by the door.

"Well, we can't do it now," Dan observed. "That guy would beat our heads in if we laid a finger on his precious keyboard." "Good point," Amy agreed.

"The house closes at five," Dan said. "We're going to have to hide out till then." The art deco bathroom was old, probably from the 1920s or 1930s, with black and white tiles and im
maculate porcelain fixtures.

How can you obsess on tiles and toilets at a time like this? Amy admonished herself.

Well, that was the point, wasn't it? If she worried about the real
stuff, she'd be a puddle. What if the mansion had an alarm? Or an army of night watchmen? What did D > HIC mean? How could you subtract music from the French word
gateau?

Too much for a fourteen-year-old brain.

And those were just the crises of the minute. This family! To find out you were related to Ben Franklin and Mozart and Marie Antoinette

There's no describing it! You feel like you were born with royal blood! Like you're a part of history!

But those great Cahills of the past were exactly that -- history. They were long dead and buried. Who were the Cahills of today? Jonah. The Holts. Uncle Alistair. The Kabras. Irina. Double-crossers, thugs, con artists, and thieves. People who smiled and called you cousin while reaching around to put the knife between your shoulder blades.

This contest was supposed to be so high and mighty -- a chance to shape the future. But the nitty-gritty was more like a reality TV show called Who Wants to Be a Backstabber?

It was getting more cutthroat by the hour. Were all Cahills so awful? She couldn't picture Mozart in a boat chase or setting off a bomb in a tun
nel. How deep did this ruthless
ness go?

The fire that killed Mom and Dad was ruled accidental. Uncle Alistair says he knows "the truth." Does that mean it wasn't an accident?

Just the thought of it took all the fight out of Amy. Words like contest and prize

made this whole business out to be some kind of game, but the tragedy of seven years ago was no game. It had robbed her of the parents she loved. It had robbed Dan even of the memory

of parents. The faintest notion that the fire might have been deliberate --

She felt suddenly, unexpectedly spent. Maybe we should just give up. Go home to

Boston, let Nellie off the hook. Surrender to Social Services; see if Aunt Beatrice will take us back...

And yet she knew in her gut that quitting was the last thing they would do. The last thing they could

do. Not with the next clue so close. They had no proof that their parents' death had anything to do with the Cahills. But even if it had
–
especially
if it had -- then it was fifty times as important to win the contest.

She resettled herself on the toilet seat cover and tried to relax. Across the hall, in the men's room, she knew Dan was doing the same. Or maybe he was too dumb to be scared.

No, not dumb. Her brother was smart. Brilliant, even, in his short-attention-span kind of way. He was the one who had come up with this scheme to hide in the bathrooms until the exhibit closed. She'd just been following his lead when they'd ranged through 164

the wings of the old house, taking careful note of the location of the security people. And when one of the guards had begun regarding them with suspicion, it had been Dan's reliable instinct to melt away into another exhibit.

I
would probably still be there, babbling lame excuses.

Dan needed her, yet she needed him, too. Like it or not, they were a team -- the crazy

dweeb and his stammering sister. Not exactly a recipe for world domination.

The butterflies in Amy's stomach threatened to fly away with her. Dan had his talents,

but he wasn't exactly a deep thinker about what could go wrong. Amy envied him that. Sometimes she thought about nothing but. She was the Albert Einstein of worst case scenarios.

She checked her waterlogged but still functioning watch. It had been half an hour since the announcement -- in six languages -- that Collezione di Racco was now closed. There was the click of a timer, and the bathroom was plunged into sudden darkness. Oh, no! They had no flashlight. How would they get to the harpsichord now? Carefully, she felt her way past the stall door, straining to conjure up a mental picture of the layout of the ladies' room. She had to find Dan, but first she had to make it out of here!

The sound of footsteps froze her heart. A security guard! They would be caught,

arrested, shipped back to the States --

"Amy?"

"Dan, you dweeb! You nearly put me into cardiac arrest!"

"The coast is clear. Let's go."

"In the pitch-black?" she demanded.

Dan laughed in her face. "It's only dark in the bathrooms. The rest of the place is
okay."

"Oh." Embarrassed, she followed his voice out through the heavy door. Dan was right. Collezione di Racco was in night mode, with the exhibit spotlights off but every fourth fluorescent bulb illuminated. "Any sign of a night watchman?" she whispered. "I didn't see anybody, but it's a big house. Maybe he's over guarding the gold and diamonds. I would be. Who steals a harpsichord?"

They hurried through the grand halls, grateful that their sneakers made little sound on the marble floors. The blue light had been turned off, but even in semi-darkness, Amy could make out the ivory glint of the keyboard that had been played by their distant cousin, the young Mozart, in 1770. Excitement surged through her body like an electric pulse. The next clue was close, very close.

And then the cold muzzle of a dart gun at the back of her neck erased all other brain activity.

CHAPTER 20

"We have got to stop meeting like this," purred Natalie Kabra behind her.

Enraged, Dan made a run at Natalie. But Ian stepped from the shadows and grabbed

him firmly around the midsection. "Not so fast, Danny Boy. I see you've recovered from

your evening swim." He sniffed Dan's hair. "Well, not completely."

"What do you want?" Dan challenged.

Ian regarded him pityingly. "Are you kidding? Like it's a coincidence we're all here. Basically, it's like this: You're going to stand in front of my sister's dart gun while I entertain you with some music."