“Yeah, really,” agreed Ben. “I’m glad he’s on our side.”
When they came to where Madison Street split off to the left, Jill said, “Meet you tomorrow at seven thirty, okay? Unless it’s raining hard. I’ve got to take my cello to school for orchestra, so my mom might drive me.”
“I’ll be there, rain or shine. See you.”
Ben walked on, thinking about Wednesday morning . . . and then remembered something—he’d meant to buy some cinnamon rolls to take home for tomorrow’s breakfast. He turned around and started walking back up to Buckle’s.
Glancing to his right down Madison Street, he saw Jill jogging, already half a block away. When he’d walked uphill another twenty feet or so, he reached the point where he could see the diner.
A man wearing a gray hoodie and a Patriots cap came out the door, looked both ways, then went around the corner onto Oak Street and climbed into a pickup. As the truck pulled out and turned left, Ben got a good look at the pickup and a clear view of the driver’s profile.
And that’s when he knew for sure—it was Lyman.
Ben spun around and hurried downhill again, his mind racing.
Had Lyman been there the whole time? But . . . how? He couldn’t have been sitting close to them . . . could he?
Right away, Ben stitched together some possibilities. If Lyman had followed Jill and him when they left school, then he would have seen them meet up with Robert on Central Street and go into the diner. So then . . . Lyman could have just pulled up the hood on his sweatshirt, slouched through the door, slid into a booth near the front, and opened up a newspaper. It had to be something like that . . . very smooth.
His logical appraisal of Lyman’s skills didn’t keep Ben from feeling slightly sick—almost light-headed. This was bad. And if Lyman had overheard even a little of what they’d talked about . . .
And the worst part? This could have been avoided.
Instantly, Ben made that thought more specific: I could have avoided this—and I didn’t.
Instead of going with his first instinct and contacting Robert only by e-mail and phone, it was his bright idea of getting everyone together this afternoon at Buckle’s. It had sounded like fun.
Fun—hah!
Once again, he had underestimated the enemy. And because of his bad leadership, Lyman had just shot down their Stealth Bomber. They’d lost an important tactical advantage, and their control of the high ground was now much less secure.
The marina came into view, and a crowd of seagulls suddenly took flight from the beach, their sharp cries cutting the air. It sounded like they were mocking him, screaming to the world, Pratt’s an idiot! Pratt’s an idiot!
Because that was exactly how he felt.
CHAPTER 11
Senior Advisers
By Wednesday afternoon, Ben was feeling less like an idiot. The chocolate cake helped a lot.
“Here, dear,” Mrs. Keane said, “let me cut you another slice.”
Tuesday night had been awful for Ben, a real low point.
When he’d arrived home that afternoon, he had immediately e-mailed Jill and Robert, sending them the pictures he had taken at the school, and then explaining how he’d seen Lyman coming out of the diner after their war council. He had also apologized for his lousy leadership abilities, and especially for coming up with an idea that had ruined Robert’s value as their secret weapon.
Jill had replied instantly:
Don’t worry, Benjamin. Lyman still knows almost nothing. And stop kicking yourself. You’re NOT the big chief, remember? You had the idea, but we ALL decided to get together today. Only 1/3 of the mess-up is your fault— democracy, remember? See you in the a.m.
Jill’s reply had made him smile, but still left him feeling like they had suffered a needless defeat—a defeat that was mostly his fault.
However, Robert’s reply had truly cheered him up:
Prattg, chill. Okay, Lyman saw me. BUT he did not see you after you learned that he’d seen me—which means we’re still in control. We just keep acting like we think L doesn’t know I’m on the crew. That way, we can use me to feed false information to him—spies call it disinformation. It’s a perfect setup. We’re gonna have that overgrown whippet chasing his own tail and howling at the moon in no time—trust me. Also took a quick look at the pix you took today. I’ve got an idea, maybe a theory. Can you send me the full text of the safeguard clues document?
What Robert said about feeding false information to Lyman had made sense to Ben. So instead of sitting around grumpy and depressed all Tuesday night, he had gotten all his schoolwork under control—because in addition to all the Keepers stuff, the math, social studies, English, and science assignments were not letting up. Throwing himself into homework had actually felt like a break, an escape into normality.
The three Keepers had arrived back at the battleground Wednesday morning with a plan. None of them had thought it was a good idea to try to get back under the stairs on Wednesday . . . but everyone had agreed to a test run of Robert’s disinformation idea.
The first move happened in the cafeteria. When she was done with her lunch, Jill had passed Robert a message written on a yellow sticky note. She made the handoff secretly, but Lyman had seen it—just like he was supposed to.
Robert read the message, then tore up the note and put all the little yellow pieces into his empty milk carton. Again, Lyman had observed. After finishing his lunch, Robert went and dumped his paper trash into the big metal barrel before he returned his tray.
Not three minutes later, Ben glimpsed Lyman carrying a large black garbage bag into the janitor’s workroom—the lunchroom trash. That bag had Robert’s empty milk carton in it, plus at least a hundred other cartons just like it.
None of the Keepers had actually seen Lyman opening up all those milk cartons until he found the right one. No one had watched him laying out all the little yellow milk-soaked bits, or reassembling those scraps into the note Jill had passed to Robert. But by the end of school on Wednesday, the Keepers knew that Lyman the Spyman must have done just that.
The note had been written in smudgy pencil—that was Jill’s idea. If Lyman was able to put the torn-up note back together, he would discover that only four words were clear enough to read: “under the water fountain.”
There were six gray, boxy water fountains in the original Oakes School building, two on each floor. By the time school had let out on Wednesday afternoon, Jill and Ben and Robert had spotted Lyman carefully mopping up around three different water fountains—proof that he had found Jill’s note, put it back together, and then investigated the information he had read.
Of course, Lyman didn’t find anything under any of the water fountains—there was nothing to find. But he must have felt like he had cleverly tapped into the secret communications of those annoying kids. He was dead wrong.
Mrs. Keane came back from the kitchen with Ben’s plate, and Ben temporarily forgot about Lyman. This woman made some of the best chocolate cake ever.
They had met at her husband’s funeral last week. She had thanked him for being kind to the injured janitor, and later she had given him Mr. Keane’s keys. She had also asked him to stop by at her home one day after school. If he had known cake would be involved, he would have come sooner.
“Wonderful berries, Maggie, and we’re not even at a funeral!”
Ben took a quick look at Mrs. Keane to see if Tom Benton had offended her—he certainly would never have dared to say that to a woman whose husband had recently died.
But Mrs. Keane laughed. “Tom, I certainly hope that when you get to heaven, there’s a big bowl of fruit waiting for you.”
Tom’s face wrinkled into a smile, and he raised one eyebrow. “Who says I’m going to heaven?”
Mrs. Keane laughed again. “I do—and probably Benjamin too, right?”
Ben’s mouth was full, but he smiled and nodded. Mrs. Keane was putting on a brave front, but he’d seen her dab away a tear from the corn
er of her eye. All this talk about her husband wasn’t easy for her. But she kept right at it.
“Now,” Mrs. Keane said, “when we spoke at Roger’s funeral, one of the reasons I invited you over, Benjamin, was because of his notebook—he told me to give it to you, and he said to be sure that Tom saw it too.”
She showed him a small booklet with worn leather covers, not much bigger than an index card. An elastic string held it shut. The notebook was curved, and Ben knew why—when he carried note cards in his front pocket for a day or two, they took on that same shape.
Mrs. Keane pulled off the elastic and opened it up. “Most of the notes here aren’t mysterious at all—hardware store lists, how to set thermostats, delivery dates, service appointments, all the hundred-and-one things a custodian has to keep track of.”
She flipped through the pages, then held the book out for them to see. “But here at the back, I think this must be what he wanted you to see. There’s no date on this page, but it looks like the last thing he wrote—any ideas?”
Ben and Tom leaned in close to look. There were groups of numbers with a few letters thrown in, all written in pencil. One of the number groups had been crossed out.
Ben shook his head. “Doesn’t mean anything to me—how about you?”
Tom munched a grape thoughtfully. “Well . . . if I’m not mistaken, what we’re looking at here . . . is a treasure map.”
“A map?” whispered Ben. Then, “Oh, ohhh—I get it! These are coordinates, right? Like on a nautical chart—latitude and longitude!”
Tom smiled and popped another grape into his mouth. “Nope. The giveaway is there in the third row. If you know what that L stands for, you can crack the code.”
Ben’s eyebrows bunched up. “Um . . . landing? Lamppost? Ladder? Locker? Lantern? Lifeboat . . .”
Then his face brightened. “Library—it stands for ‘library,’ right?”
“Good,” said Tom. “Now, how about that number twelve?”
Ben was on his feet, pacing. “Twelve . . . that must be room twelve, because when you come from the office, you pass room twelve, and then comes the library!” He stopped and stared at the notebook page for a long moment. “But . . . what about the other numbers, the ones and twos?”
Tom smiled as he speared a huge chunk of pineapple with a toothpick. “First, see if you can think why one of the nine entries has a line drawn through it.”
“Easy,” Ben said. “Mr. Keane was crossing it off—like that one didn’t matter anymore.”
“Okay,” said Tom, wiping off his chin with a lacy little napkin, “now think: On that last day when he told Maggie to give this to you, he said I should see it too. What was the very last thing Roger—Mr. Keane—told me about?”
Ben tapped his tongue against the back of his front teeth a few times—then smiled. “The tackle box, the coins! He found one batch of coins—the one he crossed off—and these? He thinks another eight are waiting! That’s it! That has to be it!”
“Almost,” Tom said. “By my count, there are ten other hiding places to find: one between rooms four and six, two between rooms seven and nine, and so on—first floor, second floor, third floor.”
Tom’s smile broadened. “Now, a good magician isn’t supposed to explain his tricks, but I’ve got a confession to make here—in case you were wondering how I solved this so easily. When this business about tearing the school down heated up this spring, I told Roger how I’d solved the clue on the gold coin and located the big key and list of clues. And right away, Roger noticed something I never did—twelve other places around the school with short lengths of baseboard molding, like the one up on the third floor. And when he opened up the one on the second floor between rooms twenty-three and twenty-five, he found something, and left me that phone message about my tackle box.”
“So, we should go and open up all the rest of them, right?” Ben said. “’Cause if there really is more gold and silver, that could add up to alot of cash!”
“Well,” Tom said, “would any amount of money make the Glennley people change their plans? I’m not sure hunting for more coins is the best use of your time right now. Finding the rest of those safeguards should probably come first . . . at least, that’s how I see things.”
Ben was quiet, thinking—they all were. Looking past Mrs. Keane, Ben noticed a photo in a simple wooden frame on the table beside the couch, a young couple on their wedding day. He was sure the woman was Mrs. Keane, but that guy, was that . . . ?
Mrs. Keane saw the look on Ben’s face and followed his gaze.
She smiled and said, “Benjamin, I want to tell you a little story about my Roger, not the gruff old custodian, but the man I married. Now, I’ve never told this to another soul—and I expect you to keep this in confidence, all right?”
After Ben nodded, she continued. “When Roger got out of the navy we got married, and we were very poor. Then Tom here got Roger the job at the school. We were so happy about that. I had a job at a bakery, and we both worked long hours, trying to save enough to buy a house. Well, a year or so after we’d been married, Roger came home to our rented rooms late one Friday evening in May and told me to pack a bag, because this was finally our honeymoon weekend—we’d never had the time or the money before then. I told him he was being foolish, but I packed, and we got in the car, and then that silly man made me put on a blindfold. He drove for almost two hours. I napped most of the time, and I had no idea where we were going. He finally stopped, and we walked into a hotel . . . it must have been nearly midnight—and me still wearing the blindfold! The desk clerk said, ‘Welcome, sir. I’m sorry, but our elevator’s out of order until morning. May I carry those bags to your room?’ And Roger said, ‘Yes, we are Mr. and Mrs. Keane, and I reserved the honeymoon suite.’
“We followed the clerk up the stairs, and when we finally got to our room, Roger gave him a tip and closed the door. Then he came up behind, and took off my blindfold. And I blinked, and I found myself facing a window, looking out at the biggest, brightest moon I have ever seen. There was moonlight on the water, and a soft ocean breeze, and we were standing in room thirty-four at the Captain Oakes School. The desks were all gone, and there were lace curtains on the windows, and there was a four-poster bed and a washstand, and right down the hall there was a girls’ room and a boys’ room.”
Smiling at Tom, she said, “All our gourmet meals were delivered to our door by that wonderful desk clerk, and we stayed at the ‘Captain Oakes Hotel’ until Sunday afternoon. It was the best seaside honeymoon any bride could ever wish for!”
She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin, then looked Ben full in the face, dead serious. “Benjamin, if there is anything, anything I can do to help keep our school right where it is, you ask me, all right? Will you promise me that?”
Ben looked her in the eye. “I promise. And . . . and thanks for telling me about . . .” He started to say, “your honeymoon,” but that sounded too personal, so he said, “. . . all that.”
“Now, more cake?” she asked. “Or another glass of milk?”
Ben’s phone made two sharp vibrations in his pocket. “No, thanks,” he said. “Um, excuse me, but I need to check my phone. This might be Jill or Robert.”
It was Robert.
I was on School Street when I saw L drive away. I doubled back n Mrs. Sinclair let me in. Had to check out an idea—I was right. S staircase has a room just like the N one does! Went in—and think I found the safeguard. Number 11 stamped on one side, EBTC and an eagle on the other. Ideas?? Home now—call!
The photo attached to the text showed something that looked like a dog tag next to a quarter for size comparison.
“Are you all right, dear?”
Ben looked up quickly. Tom and Mrs. Keane seemed worried—the expression on his face must have alarmed them.
“Yeah . . . yeah—it’s just . . . Robert thinks he found the safeguard—some kind of metal tag!”
He held out his phone, and they both looked at the image.
“Number eleven is stamped on one side, and EBTC and an eagle are on the other.”
Mrs. Keane and Tom exchanged a quick look.
“What?” Ben said. “What? You know what that means?”
Mrs. Keane nodded. “Almost anybody in this town who’s our age knows what EBTC means—that’s the Edgeport Bank and Trust Company.”
Tom added, “I’ve got a key to a safe-deposit box at home stamped with EBTC and an eagle, except my number is 1076. Edgeport Trust was one of the first banks outside of Boston . . . the captain must have stored something there.”
Ben frowned. “But . . . if he had his own huge building for hiding things, why would he keep stuff there?”
Tom shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
CHAPTER 12
The Ones Who Showed Up
At three thirty the next afternoon a fivesome walked into the lobby of the Edgeport Bank and Trust Company—the three Keepers plus their two senior advisers. Anyone glancing at them would have guessed it was Grandma and Grandpa running an errand with three of their grandkids.
A young woman wearing a blue pantsuit came over to the group, her heels clicking on the marble floor. She had short dark hair and a friendly smile.
“Welcome to Edgeport Trust—may I help you?”
She was surprised when it was Ben who stepped forward. “Yes, please. We have a token from the bank, number eleven.” He held it out for inspection, but didn’t offer to hand it to her.
She leaned in closer. “Hmm . . . interesting.” She ushered them past a velvet rope at the boundary of the main lobby and pointed at a waiting area with comfortable armchairs and low coffee tables. “Please take a seat while I go and make an inquiry for you.”
Three minutes passed, and Ben was starting to feel like they’d been forgotten. It was so quiet he could hear a large grandfather clock ticking from twenty feet away. One of the tellers behind the high granite counter began counting money, and every bill made a crisp little hiss.