The Box and the Bone (3 page)

Carlos sat up groggily and tried to get Eddy’s face in focus. When he did he realized that Eddy was looking very excited. “Guess what?” Eddy was saying. “You know those yellowish coins? I found a picture of them in my father’s books. I think they’re called half eagles. And some of them are worth as much as … Guess how much.”

“I don’t know,” Carlos yawned. “Maybe—a hundred dollars?”

Eddy grinned triumphantly. “More. A lot more. The book said that if they’re in good condition they can be worth as much as four thousand dollars.”

Carlos quit yawning
immediately
. “Wow! Really? Four thousand dollars?”

“Yeah, and there are three of them. And some of the other coins might be pretty valuable too. It depends on what condition they’re in and what year they are. I wish I’d looked at them more carefully. I wish—” Suddenly Eddy stopped talking and looked at his watch. “Hey. Bucky should be here by now.” He put his finger to his lips. “Remember. Don’t say anything about opening the box. Or coins. Don’t even mention the word
coin
.”

Carlos clapped his hand across his mouth. “Not a word,” he mumbled. “Punch me if I mention even one coin.” Then he lifted a couple of fingers and whispered, “Penny!” and Eddy pretended to punch him in the nose. They both collapsed laughing, but then Eddy looked at his watch and jumped up.

“It’s been more than two hours,” he said. He got up and ran around to the front of the house and came back looking worried. “The car’s gone,” he said. “The tutor’s car is gone.”

It was just a few minutes later, while they were still trying to decide whether to go over and knock on the Brockhursts’ door, when Susie, Carlos’s little sister, came out on the back deck and yelled at them. “Hey, Bucky’s on the phone. He says he has to talk to you guys right away.” Carlos and Eddy jumped up and dashed up the stairs and across the kitchen to the phone.

“Look, Garcia,” Bucky said as soon as Carlos said hi. “I’m grounded for the rest of the day. So I guess we’ll just have to wait until tomorrow. You know, to find out what’s in the box.”

“Tomorrow!” Carlos said. “Not till tomorrow?” He was really disappointed. So disappointed he forgot to remind Bucky to be careful what he said because there were other phones in the Garcia house and people had been known to listen in. People like his little sister, Susie, for instance. Instead he only rolled his eyes at Eddy and said, “Bucky’s grounded. So I guess we can’t—you know, open the treasure chest until tomorrow.”

Eddy looked really frustrated. “That’s not fair,” he whispered. “Here, let me talk to him.” So Eddy picked up the phone and said, “Look, Brockhurst. Don’t
you
want to know what’s in it? How about if Carlos and I go dig it up and open it and then we can call up and tell you all about it. I mean, we won’t take anything out. You know that.”

Carlos couldn’t hear exactly what Bucky’s answer was, but whatever it was, it was long—and loud. A long, loud, angry roar. Eddy’s eyes squinted up and he held the phone away from his ear. Finally he covered the receiver with his hand and said, “Rats. I guess we’d better wait.”

“Wait a minute,” Carlos said, “let me talk to him again.” But when he put the phone to his ear Bucky was still roaring. Something about how digging had been his idea—all his—so that made the treasure his.
All
his, if he wanted to be fussy about it. So they better not touch it till he got there.

Carlos let Bucky go on for a minute before he started to yell back. “Listen, Brockhurst. Just listen a minute. I want to ask you something.” And when Bucky finally shut up, Carlos said, “Okay. Okay. We’ll wait for you, but does it have to be clear till tomorrow? I mean, you usually don’t stay grounded that long.”

It was true. Bucky was always getting grounded and usually he found some way to sneak out of the house anyway.

For a minute Bucky just went on breathing hard, but when he finally cooled off enough to start thinking, he said, “Yeah. Well, okay. I’ll see. Maybe after dinner when everyone starts watching television. Maybe I can sneak out then. If I can, I’ll throw rocks at your windows, like always. Okay?”

So it was all arranged. That evening Carlos would wait in his room, and Bucky would sneak out and throw pebbles at his window and then do the same thing at Eddy’s. And then they’d all meet in front of Eddy’s garage.

S
USIE GARCIA KNEW THAT
listening in on other people’s telephone conversations was a bad thing to do. Bad and impolite and something you probably ought to mention the next time you went to confession. But the thing was—sometimes you just couldn’t help it. Like when your brother’s crummy friend Bucky, who was always doing terrible things, called up and said he had to talk to your brother
right away, right this minute,
because it was something
very important.
At a time like that, it seemed to Susie, it was practically your duty to listen in. So she did.

She listened to what Bucky had to say about being grounded and to what Carlos said about a box that he sometimes called a treasure chest. She also listened to what Eddy said about digging it up to see what was in it—and what Bucky said about how nobody better touch it until he got ungrounded,
or else
. And then, how Carlos and Eddy had finally agreed not to touch the treasure chest until Bucky got ungrounded. In fact, they’d absolutely promised they wouldn’t.

So when Susie hung up the phone she knew she had only the rest of that day to find the treasure, dig it up, and hide it somewhere else. She didn’t see anything wrong with that. After all,
she
hadn’t promised anyone that she wouldn’t touch it. And besides, in all the stories hidden treasures always seemed to belong to whoever got there first.

So she would start looking for the treasure right away. Just as soon as she found someone to help her, because looking for treasure all by yourself didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun.

That was when she realized that finding a helper might not be all that easy. The problem was—first of all—that the helper had to be a girl. Susie, who had lived for eight whole years, her whole life, in fact, with three older brothers, never had anything to do with boys if she could help it.

Her first choice would, of course, have been Kate Nicely and Aurora Pappas. Kate and Aurora, who were just a couple of years older than Susie, sometimes let her do things with them. Exciting things like looking for ghosts and unicorns, or planning a big, scary war to save some very important trees.

Even though finding a tin box wasn’t quite as exciting as finding a unicorn, Susie had a feeling that Kate and Aurora might be interested. What they’d particularly like about it would be the chance to get the best of Bucky and Eddy and Carlos again. At least Kate certainly would.

But Susie happened to know that Kate and Aurora were away for the whole weekend. The Nicelys had gone to spend the weekend in the mountains and they’d taken Aurora with them. So that left only one other possibility. The only other girl in the whole cul-de-sac anywhere near Susie’s age was Muffy Brockhurst. Muffy was a possibility—but just barely.

After Eddy went home and Carlos went up to his room, Susie went out onto the back deck to think. She sat down in the lounge swing and pushed herself back and forth, looking at the Brockhursts’ house and thinking about whether to ask Muffy to help her find the PROs’ treasure chest.

There was at least one good reason to ask Muffy, and one even better one not to. The one reason Muffy might be a big help was because stealing the treasure would be putting one over on her brother. And putting one over on Bucky was what Muffy liked to do better than anything else in the whole world.

On the other hand, the reason why asking Muffy might not be a good idea was that Muffy Brockhurst just happened to be the meanest girl in the whole world.

Susie was still sitting in the porch swing, thinking about whether to ask Muffy to help her, when a really interesting coincidence happened. Right at that very moment Muffy came out in her backyard and yelled “Hi, Susie” in a friendly tone of voice.

“Hi,” Susie called back—cautiously. That’s how you did anything with Muffy—cautiously. Because after you’d known her for a while you found out that when Muffy was being nice there was always a good reason. Sometimes the reason was that she wanted to swim in the Garcias’ pool. Or else it might be that she thought you knew something she wanted to find out about.

After Susie said hi back, Muffy climbed over the fence and walked up to the Garcias’ back deck. Throwing herself down in a deck chair, she stared at her fingernails for several minutes. Some of her nails were bright red and some weren’t. “Want to paint my fingernails for me?” she said finally. “I can’t do my right hand.”

Susie thought about saying plain old
no
, but then she changed her mind and said, “Not right now, I guess. There’s something else that I have to do. Something very important.”

“Oh yeah? What? Maybe I’ll do it too.”

It seemed like a sign. A mysterious sign that she ought to ask Muffy to help find the treasure. Susie’s friend Aurora was always getting mysterious feelings about things she ought or ought not to do. So Susie took a deep breath and started telling Muffy all about what she had heard on the telephone. How there was a box, a treasure chest, maybe, that was buried somewhere and how Carlos and Eddy and Bucky were going to go dig it up tomorrow. Or maybe tonight, if Bucky could get himself ungrounded. Just as Susie expected, Muffy was very interested.

“But where do you suppose it is?” Muffy said as soon as Susie had finished. “I mean, didn’t they drop any hints about where it was?”

Susie thought for a moment and shook her head. “No. No hints. Except that it was buried.”

“Buried! Hey, wait a minute,” Muffy said. “They were digging in the Pit today. I saw them when I went to get Bucky to come to his math lesson. I thought they were just digging another one of those dumb clubhouses. But maybe not! I’ll bet that’s where the treasure is.”

Susie jumped to her feet. “Hey! I bet so too. Let’s go look.”

A
FEW MINUTES LATER
Muffy and Susie were on their way across the cul-de-sac. Muffy was still asking questions like, “You sure they didn’t say anything about what kind of a treasure it is?”

Susie shook her head. “They didn’t say exactly. They just said it was in a box, only sometimes they called it a treasure chest. And Bucky yelled a lot of stuff about how the other guys better not touch any of it until—” She stopped then and said, “Look. There’s Athena. Over there in the fishpond.” She started to wave but Muffy grabbed her arm and pulled her back behind some bushes.

“Shhh,” Muffy said. “We don’t want her to see us. She might tell. You know, like if we take the treasure, those jerks might ask Athena if she saw anyone hanging around the Pit. And she’d probably blab about seeing us go in there. Let’s go in the back way.”

Susie saw what she meant and, for the moment, at least, she was really glad that she’d asked Muffy to help. When you’re doing something as sneaky as stealing somebody else’s treasure, Muffy was exactly the kind of help you needed. So they went the long way around and climbed down the back stairs where Athena couldn’t see them. Once inside the Pit, Muffy led the way to where she’d seen the PROs digging.

“See, it’s got to be right here,” Muffy said. “This is where they were when I came to call Bucky. Right here, where there’s all this loose dirt. Where’s a shovel? There are always lots of rusty old shovels lying around down here.”

It wasn’t long before Susie and Muffy were both shoveling away like crazy. The dirt was loose and the digging went quickly until suddenly Susie’s shovel hit something hard.

“Hey,” she said, “I hit something. I think I found the treasure.”

She threw down the shovel, dropped to her knees, and began to dig with her bare hands. Right away Muffy did the same thing. Shoving Susie out of the way she began to scratch and claw frantically, getting dirt all over her hands—even under the bright red fingernails on her left hand. Susie sat back on her heels and watched.

A few seconds later Muffy grabbed hold of something and yanked it up out of the hole. It was something hard, all right. A hard, white,
greasy
object that looked horrible and smelled even worse.

“Ugghh!” Muffy threw the gruesome thing down and wiped her hands on her shirt. “What is it?” she squealed. “What is that stinking thing?”

Susie moved closer. “A bone, I think,” she said. “A great big bone.” She sniffed. “Yep. A great big rotten bone.”

“Ugghh,” Muffy squealed again, and wiped her hands on Susie’s shirt. “I’m going home and wash my hands. Come on. You better wash yours too.”

She started off, muttering something about how Carlos and Eddy must have put it there because they guessed that she might come back to see what they were doing. So they moved the treasure and buried that disgusting bone in its place just for meanness. And was she ever going to get even with them.
Was she ever!

“They did it,” she told Susie. “It must have been Eddy and your stupid brother who put that bone in there.”

Susie nodded. It must have been her stupid brother. It was just like him. It would have been even more like Muffy’s stupid brother, but since he was grounded at the time it must have been Carlos.

They were already halfway out of the Pit before either of them remembered about Athena in the fishpond—and by then it was too late. Just as Muffy grabbed Susie’s arm and whispered, “Hey. Watch out for Athena,” someone said, “Hi. Hi, Susie and Muffy. Whatcha doing?”

It was Athena, of course. Muffy shrugged and turned loose of Susie’s arm. Athena was walking toward them carrying a doll in each hand. “Hi,” she said again. “I didn’t know you were in the Pit.”

Muffy stopped and stared at Athena. Then she marched toward her. “Look here, kid,” she said, “did you see anybody going into the Pit recently? Somebody like Carlos Garcia? Or Eddy Wong?”

Athena shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “No
body
. I didn’t see any people body go in there.”

“Oh yeah,” Muffy laughed. “No people body, huh?” She put her hands on her hips and stared at Athena with one side of her lip curled up. “What kind of English is that?” The tone of her voice, not to mention the look on her face, was definitely sarcastic. “Hey. I’ll bet it’s Greek. You speaking Greek, kid?” She turned to Susie. “Come on. Let’s go.” As they started off down the path she went on talking. “Well, somebody put that disgusting bone in there. Ugghh! That bone was really gross.”