The Box and the Bone (4 page)

They’d reached the sidewalk by then and Susie turned around to wave good-bye to Athena before she said, “Yeah, it sure was. So what are we going to do about it?”

“I don’t know …,” Muffy started to say, but then she stopped, puckering up her mouth and narrowing her eyes. “We’ll follow them, that’s what, and find out what they did with it. Didn’t you say they were going to meet in front of Eddy’s garage? You know, after dinner, if Bucky gets out of being grounded.”

“Yes,” Susie said uncertainly. “They said if. They said they’d meet
if
Bucky could sneak out.”

Muffy made a snorting noise. “He’ll get out,” she said. “He always does.”

“Well,” Susie said, “I don’t know if I can get out.”

Muffy gave her a disgusted look. “Sure you can. All you have to do is watch for Carlos to leave, and as soon as he does you come over to my backyard. Okay? If those jerks can sneak out, so can we. Right?”

Susie clenched her fists and stuck out her chin. “Right!” she said.

Back at the fishpond Athena was still standing with the two dolls in her hands, watching as Muffy and Susie disappeared across the cul-de-sac. When they were out of sight she made the doll in her right hand bounce up and down and say to the doll in her left hand, “She said
bone
. Muffy said
bone
.”

Then the doll in her left hand said, “Yes. Jinsky’s bone, I bet. Let’s go see if they took Jinsky’s bone.”

Athena put down the dolls and headed for the Pit. By the time she’d finished putting Jinsky’s nice big bone back where it belonged she was starting to get hungry. So she went back to the fishpond, packed up her doll family, and went on home.

I
T JUST SO HAPPENED
that Rafe was in charge that night at the Garcias’. Carlos’s seventeen-year-old brother, Rafe, was usually in charge when both their parents were working late at their restaurant. That was fine with the other kids, because Rafe usually was too busy with his own stuff to be much of a nuisance. And on that particular night it simply meant that sneaking out would be especially easy.

Right after dinner Carlos went to his room and waited for the signal that would mean that Bucky had escaped from being grounded. While he waited he sat by the window and thought about the tin box and the old coins that might be worth thousands of dollars.

At first he was thinking only of what you could buy with that kind of money. Like a new bike and blade skates and all kinds of top-of-the-line sports equipment. He pictured himself walking into a Sporting World store and strolling up to the clerk and going, “Well, let’s see. Give me one of these, and two of those and a couple of those over there.” It was a fun thing to imagine—for a while. But too much of that kind of imagining can get you into trouble.

Like, for instance, you could start wondering who had owned those old coins in the first place and what
they
had been planning to do with them someday. It was an uncomfortable thought. And it led to an even more uncomfortable one. Like wondering how much of a sin it would be to go ahead and keep all that money—without even trying to find out who the coins really belonged to.

Carlos got up and walked around the room looking for something else to put his mind on. He picked up books and magazines, looked at them without really seeing them, and put them back down. He thought about listening to his Walkman—and realized that he couldn’t because it might make him miss Bucky’s signal. Time seemed to be going very slowly.

The sun had been down for quite a while before a pebble finally bounced off his window. And by the time he’d tiptoed down the hall, snuck out the back door, and met Eddy in front of the Wongs’ garage, it was nearly dark.

“Where’s Bucky?” he asked.

Eddy grinned. “Officially?” he asked. Or unofficially?”

Carlos grinned too. “Both, I guess.”

“Well, officially he’s not here. And we haven’t seen him.” Eddy lowered his voice to a whisper and tipped his head toward the overgrown hedge that bordered the edge of Dragoland. “Unofficially, he’s hiding in the hedge.”

Carlos’s smile widened. “Well, I guess we better go find him, then. Unofficially, of course.”

They didn’t have to look very hard. They’d barely turned off the sidewalk into Dragoland when all of a sudden Bucky was walking behind them. Grabbing them both by the backs of their jackets he said, “Okay, you dudes. Let’s go. Let’s go get that treasure chest.”

Under the bushy, untrimmed trees and shrubbery of Dragoland, evening had suddenly turned into night. Deep dark night. Long shadows were everywhere and shapeless blobs of darkness lurked under bushes and oozed out from beneath low-limbed trees. The three PROs walked quickly and quietly—and close together.

At the top of the basement wall they stopped and peered down into the Pit—a bottomless well of darkness. Carlos felt a shiver crawl up the back of his neck. Clearing his throat, he said in what he hoped was a casual, offhand kind of voice, “Hey, it’s pretty dark down there. Isn’t it?”

No one answered for a second, and then Bucky said, “Dark, smarck. Who cares?” But then he stepped back out of the way. “After you, Garcia. You can go first.”

“That’s okay,” Carlos said quickly. “You go right ahead.”

Nobody went anywhere. It was beginning to be a little bit embarrassing when suddenly Eddy came to the rescue.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m going to go home and get a flashlight. There’s a big one on our back porch.”

“Hey, great!” Bucky said. “Just hurry. And if you meet anybody, remember—I’m not here. And you haven’t seen me. Okay?”

Eddy said okay and ran, and since his house was right next door to Dragoland he was back in just a couple of minutes. Then, with an extra-large flashlight leading the way, the three of them made their way carefully down the stairs that led into the Pit. After locating a couple of shovels, they moved toward the far corner. To the corner where they’d started their new clubhouse—and where they’d found the tin box.

As soon as they reached the spot, Bucky handed one of the shovels to Carlos. “Here,” he said. “You dig.”

“What about you?” Carlos asked.

“I’m standing guard,” Bucky said.

So while Bucky leaned on his shovel and “stood guard,” and Eddy held the flashlight, Carlos did the digging. It didn’t take long. After only a minute the shovel hit something with a whack. He dropped to his knees and began to dig with both hands. So did Bucky.

“Oh boy,” Bucky said as he pawed at the dirt. “I can’t wait to see what’s inside this baby. Can you? I can’t wait till—Hey! What’s this?”

“What’s what?” Eddy said, shining the light on what Bucky was holding. And that’s when they all saw it. What Bucky was holding up was a very large, very dirty, very disgusting—bone. They stared at the bone and then they all looked at each other in amazement, surprise—and
suspicion
.

“How did that get in there?” Eddy said.

“Yeah.” Bucky’s voice was tight and accusing. “That’s what I’d like to know. How did it?” He threw the bone down and grabbed the flashlight away from Eddy. Shining the light first in Eddy’s face and then in Carlos’s, he said, “
So
you dudes. Who do you suppose was fooling around over here while I was stuck at home?”

Carlos and Eddy shook their heads hard. “Not me,” they said one at a time. “Not me.” And then both together, like an unmusical chorus, “Not us, Bucky.”

“Oh yeah,” Bucky said. “Well, let’s see what else you didn’t do, then.” Giving the flashlight back to Eddy he began to dig some more. Carlos did too. Harder and more frantically, as it began to look as if nothing more was buried anywhere in the half-dug clubhouse’s hole. Nothing at all.

At last Bucky threw down his shovel and said, “Okay, what’s the gag? Where did you put it?”

“What gag?” Eddy said. “We told you. We didn’t do anything with it. We left it right here and went off to Prince Field and then we went swimming. Didn’t we, Carlos?”

Carlos nodded. “Yeah, that’s all we …,” he started to say but then suddenly he had an idea. “Hey, look,” he said. “Look at the bone.” He bent over and picked it up. “Look at it.”

“I’m looking,” Bucky said. “What am I supposed to see?”

“It’s greasy,” Carlos said. “See here? And there are still some chunks of fat on it.” He sniffed. “And it still smells like rotten pot roast, or something. Who do you think would bury a bone like that?”

“Hey, yeah,” Eddy said. “A dog. Maybe a dog left it there.” Which was exactly what Carlos was leading up to. Eddy was good at that sort of thing. Sometimes he guessed what Carlos was leading up to before Carlos knew himself. “Yeah,” Eddy went on. “I mean, who buries bones, anyway? Dogs do.”

“Sure,” Bucky said. “And then the dog carried off that heavy old tin box in his teeth. Sure he did, Wong. You’d better think of a better story than that.”

Carlos had to admit it didn’t seem too likely. The box had been too big and heavy—for most dogs. Not your ordinary normal-sized dog, anyway. “Well, I bet Lump could carry that box,” he said. Lump, who was the Garcias’ enormous Saint Bernard, had a mouth as big as a garbage can.

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me that’s what happened?” he asked. “Oh, I get it. Lump carried the box home to your house and—”

“No, no,” Carlos said quickly. “I never said Lump did it. Lump is fenced in. He never gets outside of our yard except on a leash. And even if he did, he’s way too lazy. I never said he took it. I just said he
could
have.”

Bucky glared at Carlos, and for a long time no one said anything. No words anyway. But Carlos could hear Bucky breathing hard. It wasn’t a good sign. He tried desperately to think of what might have happened to the box. Of who might have taken it. Because someone did—and he knew that he and Eddy hadn’t. But nothing new came to mind and Bucky was breathing harder all the time.

Just then Eddy said, “What I think is we must be looking in the wrong place. You know. Because of the dark. What I think is we better come back and look again tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Carlos said eagerly, “I’ll bet you’re right. Let’s come back tomorrow and look some more.”

“No way.” Bucky grabbed the flashlight back and shone it in both of their faces. “We’re going to stay right here until you guys come up with that box, if it takes all night. Nobody’s going anywhere until—”

Just at that moment a sudden noise wiped out what Bucky was saying. Somewhere in the darkness at the back of the Pit there was a heavy crash, followed by a trickle of smaller sounds. Scratching, spattering sounds, and then a strange animal noise, halfway between a growl and cough. A deep silence followed.

“What was that?” Bucky said in a strangely high-pitched voice.

“I don’t know,” Eddy whispered. “But it came from back there. Like maybe a wild animal was trying to climb over the wall. Maybe something wild that came down off the hill.”

Suddenly Carlos began to get the feeling that, this time, he was the one who knew what Eddy was leading up to. And why. “Yeah,” he said. “A mountain lion, probably. Mr. A. told me there were mountain lions around here.” The rest of what Mr. A. had said was that there were mountain lions around here
a long time ago
, but it didn’t seem like a good time to go into that.

It worked. The thought of a mountain lion seemed to make Bucky change his mind about staying in the Pit all night. Or even for a few more minutes. It wasn’t until after they’d dashed across the Pit floor, scrambled over the wall, and ran down the Dragoland driveway that Bucky slid to a stop and panted, “Okay. We’ll come back and look again tomorrow. And we better find that box. We just better—or else. You dudes know what I mean.”

Carlos thought he knew.

S
USIE HAD NEVER SNUCK
out after dinner before, but it turned out that Muffy was right about it being easy. At least the sneaking-out part was. It was particularly easy that night because both her parents had gone to their restaurant and left Rafe in charge. When Rafe was in charge he always told everybody to go to their rooms and do homework, and then he spent the rest of the evening talking to his girlfriends on the telephone.

That night Gabe and Carlos went to their rooms right away. On other nights Susie would go to her room too—after a while. After she went to her folks’ room first and listened in on their telephone while Rafe talked to his girlfriends.

She knew what Gabe did in his room because she could hear him playing his guitar. She wasn’t sure what Carlos usually did in his room, but on this particular night she knew exactly what he would be doing. He’d be listening for Bucky to throw a pebble against his window.

So all Susie had to do was go straight to her own room, which was right next to Carlos’s, and open her window so she could hear Bucky’s pebble too. Of course that meant she had to miss out on hearing Rafe and his girlfriends, but that didn’t matter too much. She’d listened to them so many times it was getting to be pretty boring, anyway.

It was a long wait. Susie had read through one short book and was halfway through another before she heard the click of a pebble on glass, and then the sound of Carlos’s voice whispering. “Okay. Okay. I’m coming. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Susie grabbed her jacket, opened her door a crack, and listened while Carlos came out of his room and headed downstairs. Leaning over the stair railing she waited until she heard the back door open and then close softly before she went down too. As she tiptoed down the back hall she could hear Rafe’s voice coming from the family room.

“Hey, gorgeous, wait a minute. Just wait one little minute, babe. You know I’d never say anything like that about you …” Susie went on tiptoeing.

Out on the back deck she peered over the rail and down into the Brockhursts’ yard. Muffy had said she’d be waiting there, but as far as Susie could tell the yard was empty. It was almost too dark to tell for sure. Susie went on down the steps and started across the yard. She was about to climb over the fence when there was a snuffling noise behind her and something cold and wet touched the back of her neck. It was Lump’s nose. Susie stopped to scratch behind his ears. She was still scratching and talking softly, telling Lump what a good dog he was, when a whispery voice said, “Susie? Is that you?” and Muffy’s face, witchy pale in the twilight, appeared over the top of the fence. “Is that you?” she said again. “Come on. Let’s go. Bucky left a long time ago. Stop petting that stupid dog and let’s go.”