The Explorer's Code, page 18
“So whatever was left is still here,” Charlie said. “We can still find it. Clever catch, Anna!”
Anna twisted a loose curl, and Emily waved around the room. “Search everywhere.”
The three scattered, checking the walls for hidden compartments or cracks. Emily ran her hands over the splintery wood, searching for seams. Nothing.
But what if it wasn’t in the walls? That table by the window. Emily turned around and saw Anna and Charlie also staring at the table.
“It’s the only furniture in here,” Anna said.
“But it doesn’t have any drawers,” Charlie said.
“Doesn’t mean that’s not it,” Emily added.
They stood silently for a couple of seconds, and then, all at once, approached the table. Anna dropped to the ground, scooting under the table like she was a mechanic and it was a car.
“I see something,” she said.
Emily resisted the urge to drop and look, too. Anna would have it out in a moment, and a second person under there would only slow her down. But it was agonizing.
A minute later, Anna’s hand popped out, holding a box. “Got it!”
Emily took the box and set it on the table. It was wooden, fastened only with a twine tie wrapped around it. She wriggled the string, pushing it off the edge of the box.
“It was stuck to the bottom of the table,” Anna said, standing up. Her hair was ashen with dust. Emily suddenly understood why she was always showing up with wet hair. “There were latches down there holding it in place.”
Charlie was hopping around. “What’s inside? Do you think it’s money? Or jewels? Hey, Anna, what treasures did Virginia bring back? What would be inside?”
“Shhh!” Emily batted Charlie away. She took a deep breath and opened the box.
Inside lay the torn-off cover of a book. Emily laughed, pulling it out. “Our good friend Treasure Island,” she said, showing the others.
Charlie laughed, too, and took it before passing it to Anna. She tossed her hair, sending up a cloud of dust, and examined the cover, smiling at a doodle of a tree house scribbled on the back.
“What else is in there?” Charlie asked, leaning over. “A book?”
“Yeah.” Emily pulled it out. The book, bound in green leather, was heavy and large, with wide pages. A red ribbon marked a page, so she opened to it.
There was a piece of paper folded and stuck between the pages. Emily removed it, setting it aside to reveal rows of numbers underneath, but on the left side were words. “Gold Celtic … bracelet,” Emily read out loud, struggling with the old handwriting. “Wooden mask.”
Anna gasped and set the Treasure Island book cover on the table. “The ledger,” she said.
Emily frowned. “How did you know about the ledger?”
“I … I read the paper you had jammed in your book,” Anna said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Emily said. “I might have done the same thing. So you know about the scandal, then.”
Anna nodded. “Virginia apparently sold her treasures, including a Buddha statue, to the Mob, and then she vanished. Does Charlie know?”
“He does,” Charlie said.
“Don’t tell anyone about the letter,” Emily said. “My parents thought it was great, but they couldn’t verify anything he said. With memories that old, it could just be stories told to a child, remembered poorly. Mom and Dad couldn’t do anything about it without a second witness.”
“Well, you have one now,” Anna said, pointing to the ledger.
Emily nodded and continued scanning the list, then stopped. “Jade Buddha,” she read. “That was the last treasure the Mob got. So was this what Elaine was hiding? Proof that Virginia had been involved with the Mob?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Charlie said. He traced the lines of numbers. “I mean, it was a big deal to the Gardners, right? Why hide the proof instead of destroying it?”
“Yeah,” Emily said. It was odd. Simon Gardner’s letter said that the family did all they could to hide the truth. Even his sisters didn’t know anything. So why would Elaine rig elaborate clues to lead to this ledger instead of tossing it in the massive fireplace downstairs? Why require that the house remain unchanged so the clues would be there long after the Gardners left?
“This isn’t the proof,” Anna said. “I found that evidence upstairs in Ginny’s room. If Elaine was trying to hide the ledger, why leave pages up there? And,” she said, eyes widening as she looked at the ledger in Emily’s hands, “that’s not Ginny’s handwriting.”
“Oh. Oh.” Emily set the ledger down and pulled out Virginia’s journal. Opening to a random page, she set it beside the rows of items sold to the Mob.
“They’re different,” she said. “Virginia’s handwriting leans right. This stands straight up.”
That wasn’t the only difference. As Emily compared the two, she could see how Virginia’s letters were small and quick, and these were large and loopy. Her heart raced. If she was right, this was the reason for the clues, for the house’s unchanged status. And she was holding the proof in her hands.
But why would Elaine keep this information secret for so long? She loved her sister. Why not just tell the police that Virginia was innocent and she could prove it? And if Virginia didn’t sell her treasures to the Mob, who did?
“So if this isn’t Virginia’s handwriting,” Emily asked out loud, “then whose is it?”
“Um, I think this might help us,” Charlie said. He held up the paper that had been stuck in the ledger. “I mean, it was in the book for a reason, right?”
“Let me see.” Emily took it and unfolded it, and she, Anna, and Charlie huddled to read it.
It was a letter from Everett Gardner to Elaine. “‘My dear,’” Emily read. “‘Happy birthday! I’m afraid that if you want your present, you will have to work for it: 7-15 6-9-18-19-20 20-15 20-8-5 13-1-26-5 1-14-4 19-5-5-11 20-8-5 3-5-14-20-5-18.’”
A simple birthday note from husband to wife. But Emily started tapping the paper, hard. The handwriting was large and loopy. It stood straight up.
It was a match for the handwriting in the ledger.
“It was Everett,” Anna said. She slammed a fist down on the table. “He was the one who was selling Ginny’s gifts to the Mob!”
“But why?” Charlie asked. “Weren’t the Gardners rich?”
“They were, but they had some trouble once,” Anna said. “In the letters, Elaine mentioned not having enough money. Everett often complained about financial troubles, and he worked a lot. And then the comments stopped. Elaine would mention how the things Ginny brought for them went missing. Turns out it was her husband selling them the whole time. And he framed Ginny for it.”
“Look,” Charlie said, pointing at the bottom of the note.
A message, in a different handwriting, lay under the numbers. R’n hliib.
“That’s Atbash,” he said. “A equals Z, and R equals I. You can tell because the R is alone, and I is the only letter in the English language that’s set apart like that.”
“So what does it say, genius?” Anna asked.
“‘I’m sorry.’” Charlie stepped back. “That’s what it says.”
“You can decode that fast?”
Charlie took off his glasses to clean away the dust. “I can if it’s Atbash. I’m practically fluent by now.”
“You nerd.”
As the Hendersons bickered, each wearing a smile, Emily read the note again. I’m sorry. A note from Elaine to Virginia.
She must have found out after her sister disappeared. They’d fought, Virginia had vanished, and then Elaine found out Everett was the criminal. How must that have felt? Everett was also a loving husband. They had three kids, and from all records, he cared about them all. What could have made him go so far, and how had Elaine reacted?
By telling the truth, the only way she could. She needed to tell her sister that she knew Virginia was innocent, but she didn’t want to incriminate Everett, either. So she left the clues behind, a way of telling the truth without hurting more people she loved.
But had anyone but Anna, Charlie, and Emily ever received the message? The box looked like it had been left under the table, unmoved, since Elaine put it there. And what had happened to Virginia? Would anyone ever know more than just a part of the mystery?
But that part was enough for Emily, and enough for Idlewood. Emily put the note inside the ledger and closed it. Then she set Virginia’s journal on top and picked up the stack.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get this back to my parents and Mr. Llewellyn.”
“We can’t leave!” Anna said. “I want to know what happened to Virginia! So we know she was innocent. That doesn’t explain how she disappeared without a trace and how no one ever found any sign of her again. Do you think Everett made her vanish so no one would ever find out he was the crook?”
Charlie gave a freaked-out look to his sister. “You think he would?”
“After all this, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
Emily shook her head. It wouldn’t surprise her, either, but she didn’t think Everett had done it. The forged ledger had been enough to convince the police, and Virginia never went to court. He’d been safe. He never knew that someone else discovered his secret, and even if he did, Everett wouldn’t have harmed his family. Emily said as much to Anna and Charlie.
“But he got away with it!” Anna said.
“Not really.” Emily grinned. “Elaine found out, and, well, maybe karma got him. Everett Gardner was killed by a mountain lion.”
“Oh. That’s … better. But still, we can’t give it up now,” Anna said. “There’s more to the mystery.”
Emily sighed. “I know. But maybe there are some mysteries that aren’t meant to be solved. Maybe, no matter how much we look and try, we need to let them go.” She held up the books. “We solved a decades-old mystery today and cleared an innocent woman’s name. Isn’t that enough?”
Anna shuffled her feet, avoiding Emily’s eyes. She was disappointed, and to some extent, so was Emily. Her visions of dazzling her parents and Mr. Llewellyn with handfuls of treasure and a map leading to Virginia’s hideouts had gone up in smoke. But in their place was the prospect of showing them the ledger and explaining the clues and how they’d solved them—proof that Elaine had a reason for leaving the house the way it was, that Virginia had, in fact, lived here, and that she was innocent of all charges brought against her.
As she pictured that, Emily felt a pang of anxiety (she was going to get in so much trouble) along with a growing thrill. Maybe she hadn’t solved the whole problem, but she had solved enough.
The truth of Virginia Maines’s so-called Mob connections was a mystery that no one had been able to solve, and the answer had been written in the walls. Emily grinned. If that couldn’t save those walls from being torn down, then nothing could.
18
“COME ON,” Emily said. “We can’t wait around all day!” She started toward the door, ledger book and journal in her arms. Anna followed her.
But Charlie didn’t. Something didn’t add up. Something was bothering him. Pieces of information, some unwritten code, swirled in his head. The ledger, the missing treasure, an order to never change the house, stolen objects returned to their exact location, and an image of a penguin in the Arctic Circle.
“Wait,” he said, and the girls stopped.
“Charlie?” Anna asked. “What’s up?”
Charlie waved for the ledger, and Emily handed it back. He opened it to the last page. “Is this complete?” he asked.
The girls stepped forward. “What do you mean?” Emily asked, bending over the page.
“Is it complete? Is this a complete list of everything Virginia brought back? Or are there things missing?”
Anna scanned the ledger. “Things are missing,” she said. She gestured at the ledger. “From what I read in the letters, these are mostly just things Ginny gave to the Gardners. Some of them were items she wanted to keep for herself, but I remember other things she kept. Jars of shells, macaw feathers, a statue of Athena…”
“Athena?” Emily perked up. “Not Minerva? Athena?”
Anna answered by pulling a picture out of the journal and handing it to Emily. Charlie peered over the girls’ shoulders. It was Virginia Maines, standing next to a marble statue. “That’s it,” Emily said. “Right down to the pose and the gash cutting across her shoulder. It’s the same one as the one in our suite.”
“Ginny said it was a gift from her Greek friends. Apparently it reminded them of her,” Anna said with a laugh. “It was in the letters.”
“Let me see that,” Charlie said, reaching for the journal. He flipped through it until he found an entry about a penguin. “It says here that there was a penguin that was a favorite of Ginny’s,” Charlie said. “He would follow her around on her trip to the South Pole, and she fed him fish. When he died, she had him stuffed so she could remember him. There wasn’t room in the plane, so she had to take a boat back.”
Anna nodded. “I read that story. Bradley wasn’t happy.”
“I bet that’s the penguin in the Arctic Circle suite,” Charlie said. His mind hummed. “Why demand that a house stay the same? Exactly the same. Sure, to protect the secret passages, and the codes, but what if it was also to keep Virginia’s treasures safe?” He shook his head. “‘They are safe.’ Elaine made sure of it with her order.”
The treasures. They were here—they had always been here. But they weren’t the kind of things that Mr. Argent would find with his metal detector, not gold and silver. They were memories. Stories.
That was what had mattered to Virginia. Charlie looked at the ledger again. All that gold, she’d just given away. She’d kept the gifts and discoveries that reminded her of her adventures and the people she met along the way.
“They’re all over the house, I bet,” he said. “Virginia’s treasures. We could probably find them all.”
Emily turned dust pale. “If that’s true, then we have so much more than I thought! The codes and mystery could save Idlewood, but if all these old rooms are full of Virginia Maines’s missing treasures—not gold and jewels but mementoes with stories behind every single one—then no one could tear this place down!” She snapped up the ledger again. “We have to go. Right now. We have to tell someone before another minute passes!”
Emily took off back down the dark hallway, carrying both ledger and journal. Anna turned to follow her, then stopped and grinned at Charlie. “Treasure, everywhere. Hey, maybe, when they turn this place into a museum, you can have your name listed on the little placards as the guy who discovered them all.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Charlie said. He took off his glasses and wiped the dust off on his shirt. “Elaine. Virginia. All of this. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Sure you could,” Anna said.
“I don’t think so,” Charlie said. “You’re the one who found the journal and knew everything about Virginia, you’re the one who kept finding the hidden doors, and you’re the one who realized nothing had been taken from the treasure room. Even if no one stole our codes, we’d still be searching for the door between the dragon’s wings if it wasn’t for you.”
Anna smiled. “I was just doing what I always do. Getting into places I’m not supposed to be.”
“It was exactly what you were supposed to do,” Charlie said. He started moving down the hall, and Anna followed. “You found so much. What did I do but sit around reading codes?”
“Codes? Codes? Charlie, all of this depended on codes. And you solved them. All of them!”
“Me and Emily.”
“Emily found part of the code. But you’re the one who understood it was a code. You solved it, and you found your way into this room. You’re the one who figured out what happened to the treasure. Emily is running back to her parents to report, all thanks to you and your codes.”
Charlie grinned. The empty feeling had been replaced with warmth. He’d never heard Anna praise him like this, and it was like magic. Like an adventure from a book.
“I was just doing what I always do,” Charlie said.
“Please. You climbed a tower,” Anna said. “Both up and down. All the way to the third floor and back. You’re braver than you give yourself credit for. You always have been.”
He had climbed that tower, hadn’t he? Of his own free will. Here, in the dark and dust, safe on firm boards, it was hard to believe. But he had done it.
“I just had to know,” Charlie said.
“I understand.”
And without another word, Charlie knew she did. Hidden attics and books, wild forests and codes. They really weren’t that different: Both contained secrets to be discovered. Anna preferred one and Charlie another, but in the end, they were really after the same thing.
“Hey,” Anna said, putting her hand on Charlie’s shoulder and squeezing lightly. “This was fun.”
“Yeah. And we did it.” Charlie turned around and hugged Anna. He hadn’t done that since he was six years old, and for a moment, brother and sister held their grip on each other.
After a moment, Anna pushed him away. “We’re missing Emily’s reveal.”
“Let’s go.”
The siblings hurried down the hallway and back out of the airplane room.
* * *
Somehow Emily lost the Hendersons, but she knew they’d follow. She slipped out of the secret door and through the Haskells’ suite, which was still empty.
In the hall, her parents were talking. “Mom! Dad!” Emily called, carrying the books over.
“Emily! Where were you?” her dad said. “Mr. Llewellyn found pictures all over your bed. What have you been doing?”
Ohh. “Just helping out,” Emily said.
“We told you to let us handle this,” her mom said. “Mr. Llewellyn doesn’t seem very happy. I don’t know what he’s going to do now.”
Emily lifted the books. “Forget the pictures. You have to see this.”
“Where did you get those?”
“Anna! Charlie!” It was the Henderson parents seeing their dusty kids, who had emerged from the airplane room. “Where have you been?” Mrs. Henderson said. “Anna, have you been dragging your brother into places you know you’re not supposed to be?”
