The Treasure of Maria Mamoun (26 page)

“Look!” he said.

Maria came up beside him. Their headlamps shone into a large, round room. There were no exits but the passageway they'd come through.

“This is the end of the line,” Maria said. “If it isn't here, it isn't anywhere on this island.”

They shone their lights around the walls. Here, there were no weird rock shelves. Just smooth granite flecked with bright bits of mica. The floor, unlike the rest of the cave system, was oddly sandy.

“That's weird,” Maria said.

“What?”

“There shouldn't be sand here.” She got down on her knees and began sweeping away at the sand with her good arm. “All the rest of the cave is rocky. And we're really far from the beach. This sand is too perfect, like it was trucked in and dumped. To hide something. Help me look.”

Just as she spoke, her hand brushed against something hard. “Come here and dig.”

Paolo got the shovel from the bag, but it wasn't necessary. The chest was buried so shallowly they could find it with their hands. A brass corner poked from the sand. A little more digging revealed a leather handle.

Paolo whistled. “I never really thought…”

He grunted and pulled, but could not haul it up. Together, they dug away the sand to expose the top half of a wooden treasure chest. A large padlock secured the front.

“Oh, wow.” Paolo sat back. His hands raked his hair. “Oh. Wow. Can you believe it?”

Maria lifted the padlock and let it drop. It was real enough. Some kind of heavy metal. But the skull and crossbones carved on the back seemed theatrically pirate-esque. It reminded her of something.

“We don't have a key. I guess we could carry it out.” Paolo tried to lift the chest. “Jeez. This thing weighs a ton.”

“Wait a second,” Maria said. She fished through her backpack. There it was, down at the bottom. The key with the skull and crossbones. The key she'd found on the boat.

She slid the key into the lock. It fit perfectly. With an easy turn of her wrist, the tumblers clicked over and the lock sprang open. Maria sat back on her heels, surprised.

Paolo stared at her with a puzzled expression. “How'd you get that key to work?”

“Remember how this didn't fit in the engine starter?” Maria said. “Because it wasn't for the boat. It was for this treasure chest.”

“But why would Mr. Ironwall have the key to this treasure chest in his sailboat?” Paolo asked.

“Why would he have had the treasure map in his cottage?” Maria answered. “Maybe all these artifacts were handed down to him from his ancestors, but he just didn't put two and two together.”

“Well, let's open it!” Paolo cried. He sprang forward and lifted the lid.

They both peered in, shining the beams of their headlamps together. There, nestled on a bed of sea-smoothed rocks, sat a fork.

“That's weird,” Paolo said.

Maria picked the fork up and inspected it. It was badly tarnished, but it felt heavy and expensive. She rubbed a bit of black off and silver shone through. She rubbed a bit more, and the letter
I
appeared in the handle. The shape looked oddly familiar. Like the silverware she'd found on
The Last Privateer
that first day she'd gotten aboard. The set that was missing one fork.

“Oh,” Maria said. A horrible feeling washed through her. “I think I'm going to be sick.”

“What?” said Paolo. He hovered near her shoulder. “That looks like real silver. Are there more in there?”

Maria's head swam and she thought she might pass out. She bent over and took a few deep breaths. It felt like cold black oil was filling her lungs and she couldn't get enough air.

“Well, it's worth taking back,” Paolo was saying. He scrabbled around in the chest, moving rocks. “But it's not enough to make us rich.”

“Don't bother,” Maria said. “That's all there is.”

“How do you know?” Paolo said. He kept lifting out rocks and chucking them on the sand. “I bet the treasure is under all this—these rocks are just a decoy.”

“No. I know who the fork belongs to,” Maria said. She straightened up and shook the fork at Paolo. “See? The initial says
I
.”

“So?”

“
I
is for Ironwall. Mr. Ironwall,” Maria said. “And this is his fork. There were only three in the boat. There should've been four.”

“So what?” Paolo said. But he stopped chucking rocks.

Maria shone her light over the ground, carefully this time. A corner of paper stuck out from the bone-dry sand. She pulled it gently free and held it under her light.

It was a map, not unlike the map she had found in the attic, except this one was torn and brittle. She showed it to Paolo.

“So you're saying there were two maps?” Paolo said.

Maria dug about in the sand. “Mr. Ironwall got here before us.”

“Is that why he's so rich?” Paolo asked. “He already found the pirate treasure?”

Maria continued to pull things from the sand. She found a cocktail napkin. A toothpick with faded green cellophane decorating one end. A lady's bobby pin. An oyster shell. Another beat-up copy of the same map.

Maria showed him the items in her hand.

“I don't understand,” Paolo said.

“Do you remember the story Pops told about a party Mr. Ironwall threw?” Maria said.

“No.” Paolo pulled his headlamp from his head and shone it on the cave floor. Now they could see many small bits of litter. Another napkin. Another oyster shell. A peach pit. A corner of a picture. Paolo picked it up and held it to the light.

It looked like part of an old movie poster. Maria could make out:

               ast Privateer

ilm by Peter Iro

               in

                Technicolo

She showed it to Paolo. “Mr. Ironwall liked to throw elaborate parties. Your granddad told us about one where he put real pearls in the oysters to impress the guests. Where a lady cracked a tooth—don't you remember?”

Paolo stared blankly at her.

She sighed. “Okay, so you don't remember. But I do. I think this was a party like that. Maybe this
was
that party. To celebrate his new film,
The Last Privateer
.” She held up the shred of movie poster. “I saw a poster just like this in a room in his house.”

“Wait,” Paolo said. “You're saying this was all for a party?”

“Yes.” Maria waved the poster over the littered sand. “This was all for a party. The maps. The treasure chest.”

“So there
never
was a pirate treasure?” Paolo said.

“There never was a pirate treasure,” Maria said. “But there was a treasure hunt. The maps were the invitations. They said when and where the party was going to be.”

Paolo stared at her. Then he kicked an oyster shell across the cave. It shattered on a rock.

“But our map looks so real!” Paolo cried. “It's so old!”

“It just looks old.” Maria plucked other maps from the sand. “And this one looks old, and this one looks old, too. I guess it isn't so hard to make things look real when you have Hollywood professionals making your props.”

“So that's why the key fit,” Paolo said. “And why it was in the boat.”

“Yes,” Maria said.

Paolo squatted and put his head in his hands. “Now
I'm
gonna be sick.”

They sat down on the sand and leaned their backs against the fake treasure chest. After a while Paolo said, “I can't believe we stole a boat for this. We're idiots.”

“Yeah,” Maria said. “Kids like us don't find real treasure maps.”

“Or become millionaires,” Paolo said.

“I guess I'm going back to the Bronx, now.”

Paolo took Maria's good hand in his. “I'm really sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.” She squeezed his hand. “Well, it's been fun anyway.”

“Seriously?” Paolo said.

“Yeah.” Maria thought about the last few weeks, the last few days, and the last few hours. “It really was kind of fun,” she finally said. “Even if it was all stupid and useless. I mean, I never even used to leave my neighborhood. But since I moved here we fixed up a sailboat. And stole it!”

“And we tricked Taylor,” Paolo said.

“And we escaped in the middle of the night,” Maria said.

“And you solved a pirate riddle,” Paolo said.

“And we sailed to an unknown island on a dark and stormy night…” Maria said. “That's kind of a lot of adventures for someone like me.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Paolo said. “Still, I'm going to get teased so bad when Taylor hears about this. I'm going to be Captain Dirt forever.”

“Maybe he won't hear about it,” Maria said.

“Of course he will,” Paolo said. “He thinks we're going for the treasure with him on the seventeenth. We'll have to explain why that's not gonna happen.”

“Maybe not,” Maria said. “Maybe we won't even make it back home.”

“Of course we will,” Paolo said. “Then we're gonna wish we didn't.”

Maria stared at him. He was right. They'd stolen a boat in the middle of the night. Even with the wind at their backs, it was unlikely they'd get home by morning, and the adults were going to be seriously worried. And then who knew what kind of trouble they'd be in when they got home. The thought washed through her like ice water. She felt exhausted, and her shoulder hurt terribly.

“Paolo?” Maria said. “I think I really might have dislocated my shoulder.”

“Come on.” Paolo helped her to her feet. “Maybe we can still get home before anyone notices.”

But they did not have a chance. As they stumbled from the mouth of the cave, they heard the violent chop of helicopter blades and the roar of an approaching motorboat. Bright white lights flashed on them and an amplified voice boomed from the boat: “This is the U.S. Coast Guard. Stay where you are. We're coming ashore.”

 

34

W
HAT
K
IND
OF
T
ROUBLE

Her mother's sofa bed was so warm and cozy. The quilts felt heavy and reassuring, the pillow felt so soft. Maria wanted to stay burrowed in it forever, but the late-afternoon sun streamed through the kitchen window, and the shadow of her mother fell across the bed. She couldn't pretend to be asleep anymore.

“Mr. Ironwall wants to see you as soon as you are dressed,” Celeste said. She turned her back to Maria and started washing dishes.

“He's back?” Maria asked. She felt an odd mix of relief that Mr. Ironwall was alive and terror about having to face him.

“He came back this morning. Joanne had to take time off from her other job to bring him home. I was too busy dealing with your nonsense.”

Maria hung her head so her hair formed a dark curtain. Her nonsense. Her mother had met her in the ER of the Martha's Vineyard Hospital, where her shoulder had to be reset by an overworked resident. Then came X-rays and an awkward immobilizing sling, and painkillers that had blissfully knocked her out until now.

“Of all the idiot ideas!” Celeste suddenly burst out. She turned with a coffee cup in hand and shook it at Maria. “And stealing from Mr. Ironwall! His boat! Not yours!”

“We were supposed to get back before anyone noticed.”

“Do you realize that if Mr. Newcomb hadn't gotten up, you two could still be lost?” Celeste continued as if Maria hadn't spoken. “You hurt yourself, you could be dead from hypothermia … And do you think I'll even get another job after this fiasco?”

“I'm sorry, Mama,” Maria said.

“Sorry doesn't even come close to making up for this.” Celeste turned her back again to Maria. “You have no idea how bad this is.”

Maria did have some idea. She realized now that she and Paolo had put themselves in great danger. She understood that they never would have made it home by morning, and if the storm had been worse, they might not have made it home at all. They had been saved by luck and Mr. Newcomb's love of peaches.

Pops Newcomb had never been a good sleeper—not since he broke his back and started taking the pills. Luckily, he slept even more poorly that night, out of worry for the wind. And that worry woke him up. He thought he heard a creaking; he'd peeked outside to see if his precious peach trees were losing limbs, and he saw the rope ladder swinging against the house. He hobbled as fast as his bowed legs could carry him to wake Hattie and Grandma. Of course, once they woke, they found the empty beds.

Then he called Uncle Harry, who got dressed and came over immediately.

Meanwhile, Hattie called the police. The detective on duty suggested Paolo could be with one of his friends. He seemed to think it was only a matter of childish mischief. “Teenagers are like that. Sneak off with their friends.”

Grandma Newcomb looked at Hattie. “We both know Paolo doesn't have any friends but that fool girl who's clearly gone off with him.”

Just in case, Hattie called Taylor Bradford. She had a bizarre conversation with his sleepy and confused mother. There'd been a sleepover planned for the sixteenth, at the Bradfords, Hattie said. Perhaps she'd gotten the date wrong? No, Mrs. Bradford explained, as far as she knew, there was no sleepover, and Paolo certainly wasn't in their house.

Mrs. Bradford put Taylor on the phone, and finally, after Mrs. Bradford threatened Taylor with the loss of every electronic and motorized gadget he owned, the story came out—how Taylor had bullied the two to include him in the hunt for Captain Murdefer's treasure. “They were fixing up that old sailboat,” Taylor said.

Grandma called Celeste, who was dozing in the chair beside Mr. Ironwall's bed. The ringing cell phone woke them both up. He made Celeste tell him what had happened.