Jonathon Wart and The Hand of Doom

  Chapter Five: The Grand Deception (Part 1)

  Jonathon peered intently into the chandelier over the dining room table. A small bump nestled between two of its lowest lamps. It wasn't there yesterday and it wasn't good news.

  He walked quickly into the living room, scanning the area carefully with every step. There was nothing obvious, but of course something like this would never be obvious. Jonathon ran his fingers over the wainscoting that surrounded the room on three sides. Nothing. But then his eye fastened on the large portrait of Uncle Wart on the far side of the room. Sure, why not? he thought.

  He carefully removed the rather large painting from the wall. And there it was...on the back of the painting, a unit about two inches wide, a small green light blinking cheerfully from its corner.

  The house was bugged.

  He wasn't really surprised. Jonathon had outsmarted Felicia and Mr. Thumbs so many times before that he had to figure they would do something dramatic to even up the score. And yet there was still something desperate and disgusting about this.

  He stopped in his tracks for a minute. Had he said anything this morning that Thumbs or Felicia could have heard and used against him? He didn't think so. And now that he knew that the two of them were eavesdropping on him, it shouldn't be too hard to use that to his advantage.

  But he had to tell Lizzie before any vital information was passed on by accident to Thumbs and Felicia. He quickly grabbed his phone and texted Lizzie to come down to the living room as soon as she could. A few minutes later, Lizzie came bounding into the room with an annoyed look on her face.

  “Jonathon!” she cried. “Whatever do you want? I was right in the middle of an absolutely disgusting algebra problem and I almost had it solved. I don’t know if I can psyche myself up to that level again without a lot of junk food.”

  Jonathon flashed Lizzie an unnaturally large smile. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll do just fine, Lizzie. And how nice of you to come visit me like this…just out of the blue.”

  Lizzie crinkled up her face. “Huh? Jonathon, what are you talking about? You texted me, remember? About three minutes ago? You said…”

  “Yes, of course I did, Lizzie,” Jonathon said, turning his head to speak directly into the microphone nestled into the frame of Uncle Wart’s portrait. “I just forgot.”

  “Forgot? Jonathon, your memory isn’t always great but you can usually remember what you did three minutes ago. What’s up?”

  “Oh, nothing in particular. I was only thinking…”

  “Well, can you think a little faster? All of a sudden, I’m starving. If I don’t get into the kitchen soon, I’m going to pass out.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Jonathon, holding up his hand to get Lizzie’s attention and then pointing to the microphone hidden behind the painting.

  “Jonathon, why are you pointing? And why are you being generally weird? Is there something wrong with you? I mean, you know, more than the usual stuff.”

  “Nothing, nothing at all wrong with me. We just need a little music, that’s all,” said Jonathon, quickly taking out an mp3 player and making a few clicks so that the music began to blare through the Bluetooth speaker sitting only two feet away from Uncle Wart’s portrait.

  “Oh, Jonathon! Please…not your horrible ‘70’s music,” moaned Lizzie. “You know I can’t take that stuff.”

  “Now Lizzie,” Jonathon bellowed loudly to be heard above the music. “We both know the best punk bands were from the ‘70s.”

  Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Jonathon! I hate it when you pretend to know anything about music. You know that you have no taste whatsoever.”

  “Well, I don’t have your taste…” began Jonathon.

  “That’s what I said!” shouted Lizzie. “So could you please turn that stuff down?”

  “Down?” bellowed Jonathon. “You don’t mean down, you mean up.” Jonathon walked over to the speaker and turned it up even louder.

  Lizzie shook her head. “Okay, that’s it. I’m not going to stay here just to be tortured by bad ‘70s music. You texted me, you know. I….”

  “Yes of course! Don’t go yet! Just come over here,” Jonathon said, gesturing her over to a far corner of the room.

  Lizzie rolled her eyes again. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to make all of this stop,” she moaned.

  As soon as Lizzie was close enough, Jonathon grabbed her by the arm and whispered loudly in her ear. “Don’t say anything, but the room is bugged. I had to turn the music up so the microphone wouldn’t pick up our conversation.”

  “Bugged? What do you mean, bugged?”

  “Exactly what I said. I assume that we have Mr. Thumbs and Felicia to thank for this latest invasion of privacy.”

  “Why that’s disgusting!” cried Lizzie loudly. “I won’t put up with this!”

  Jonathon shushed her quickly. “Could you be indignant a little more quietly? I don’t want them to know that we know that they’re bugging us.”

  Lizzie looked puzzled. “But they already know they’re bugging us.”

  Jonathon nodded. “Of course, but it’s better that they think we don’t know it. Here, come on outside into the backyard with me and we can talk normally.”

  Lizzie grinned. “Come off it, Jonathon, You never talk normally.”

  “Just come,” he said, leading her forcefully through the kitchen and out into the backyard.

  Once outside, Lizzie’s anger ballooned. “Really, Jonathon, I’m not dealing with this. I’m going to have it out with those two right now. You know, I never expected Felicia to really like us…I mean, she must think that we’re the reason that she can’t control her daddy’s millions.”

  “And that’s true, of course,” Jonathon said calmly. “We are the reason she can’t control her father’s fortune. Or at least I am.”

  “Well, so what? We never asked for all of this. I never asked to live in this mansion, cut off from all my friends and never allowed to do anything. And Uncle Wart’s money never really does me any good.”

  “Except for the allowance you get.”

  “So what? What teenager doesn’t get some sort of allowance? I’m saying that if Mom and Dad were still here…”

  “Yes, I know. It would all be very different. But that’s just something that you and I have got to live with.”

  “And what about Thumbs?” said Lizzie. “Why does he hate us? He’s supposed to be our guardian and financial advisor. Why is he always against us?”

  Jonathon sighed. “Because he thinks he can get a better deal if Felicia has control of Uncle Wart’s millions, I guess. That’s why he’s plotted against us from the beginning, even though he pretends to be friendly to us.”

  “I don’t call planting bugs in our living room very friendly.”

  “That’s why I said ‘pretends’ to be friendly. But he can’t really do us much harm—and neither can Felicia—as long as we keep outsmarting them. And we can do that better if they pick up false info from us through their precious little hidden microphones.”

  “Oh, I get it,” said Lizzie, nodding her head enthusiastically. “Let them think that they know what we’re doing, but then we really do something else.”

  “Exactly! And that starts with the upcoming art auction.”

  “Jonathon, are you really going through with that art auction thing—you know, bidding on the scary painting by old man Diggersby? Isn’t it taking a huge chance?”

  “Sure it’s taking a chance. But I’ve got to take chances according to the terms of Uncle’s will. I have a hunch about this one, though. I think that ‘The Hand of Doom’ might turn out to be a very valuable painting.”

  “But I saw another picture of that horrid thing online. Nothing about that monstrosity could be valuable. It’s ugly, it’s scary…”

  “And don’t forget haunted—everybody says that painting is haunted.”

  “Okay, it’s ugly, scary and haunted! Old man Diggersby was a terrible painter and that one has to be his worst.” r />
  “Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but I’m not interested in it for how well it’s painted.”

  “Why else would you be interested in it? Because it’s ugly? Because of the curse?”

  Jonathon smiled. “I don’t really believe in the curse, Lizzie, and that’s not why I want the painting anyway.”

  “So why in the world would you want it?”

  “I can’t quite tell you that until I confirm something. And I can’t do that until the three of us—Emma, you and me—take an informative little tour of the Art Institute.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No, it’ll be fun. We’re going tomorrow morning. You’ll like it, even though you probably won’t admit it.”

  Lizzie responded with an over-the-top eye roll. “There’s no way that…”

  “Look, Lizzie,” said Jonathon more earnestly. “We’ve got to do this in order for me to test out my theory. It’s important.”

  Lizzie sighed dramatically. “Well, alright. If it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “It is. But there’s something else that’s necessary right now. I have to lay down a false clue for Felicia and Thumbs. Since they’ve taken the trouble of bugging the living room, I’m going to feed them some new information to think about.”

  “But it’ll be false?”

  “Of course it’ll be false. And it’ll throw them off the track just enough to make things interesting.”

  “So how are we going to do that?”

  “Come back inside with me. We’ll sit on the sofa by Uncle Wart’s picture—that’s where one of the microphone bugs is placed—and just follow my lead.”

  Back inside the house, Jonathon spoke up loudly into Thumbs’ hidden microphone. “So you see, Lizzie, I told Mr. Thumbs that I’m interested in the ‘Hand of Doom’ painting, but that’s not really the one I’m going to bid on.”

  “Really, Jonathon?” Lizzie said loudly. “Which one are you really going to bid on?”

  “A clever little painting by old Diggersby called ‘The Acorn Rising.’”

  Lizzie wrinkled up her nose at Jonathon and shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

  Jonathon smiled back at her and moved even closer to Uncle Wart’s painting and the hidden microphone behind it. “It hasn’t gotten as much publicity as ‘The Hand of Doom’ but I think it’s got great potential. It shows a little acorn becoming a mighty oak tree.”

  “And you think that’s got potential?” questioned Lizzie.

  “Sure I do. So that’s the one I’m really going to bid on. I’m sure I’ll be able to make a great profit on it when I resell it,” said Jonathon, gesturing energetically for Lizzie to play along.

  “If you say so, Jonathon,” said Lizzie, now getting into the spirit of things. “You’re always right about these things.”

  “Great! I’m glad you agree. I can’t wait for the auction to begin!”

  Minutes later, Mr. Thumbs paced energetically back and forth in front of Felicia, eagerly rubbing his hands together.

  “The word ‘moron’ is no longer suitable for describing Jonathon Wart,” he said gleefully. “No, it simply doesn’t do him justice. The fact is he’s much stupider than any moron you could ever imagine.”

  Felicia crossed her arms impatiently. “Thumbsie, what are you talking about?”

  “He’s been playing us, Felicia. That sneaky little Jonathon has been playing us.”

  “How? How has he been playing us?”

  “It’s just as I suspected. He told me that he was going to bid on ‘The Hand of Doom’ but he’s not. He’s got a different painting by Diggersby in mind.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. The little fool was explaining it all to his dim-witted sister and it was picked up by the microphones I so skillfully placed around the room.”

  “So you actually heard him say that he was going to bid on a different painting?”

  “Yes, it’s called ‘The Acorn Rising.’ It sounds stupid but I’m beginning to think that Jonathon may know something I don’t. Maybe this ‘Acorn Rising’ painting is really valuable. After all, why would he try to mislead us into thinking he was going to bid on ‘The Hand of Doom’ if this other painting wasn’t worth even more?”

  “Maybe he’s just being dense.”

  “Possibly, but I can’t take that chance.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to go to the auction myself—in disguise of course—and bid on the ‘Acorn’ painting.”

  “So how does that help us?”

  “Don’t you see? I’ll bid the price up so high that he won’t be able to afford it with the thousand dollars that I’ve authorized him to spend. Then he won’t have the painting he really wants, we will.”

  “Mmm,” Felicia said. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Mr. Thumbs smiled smugly. “Don’t give it another thought, Felicia. The kid won’t know what hit him and we’ll be in possession of a very valuable painting.”