Simon leaned over Delilah’s cast, shaking his head. “Yeah,” he said. “I admit, it is strange. But let’s try to figure out what she was doing in the hotel. Why was she there?”
“Who knows,” Henry said slowly. “She had a house around here—Jacob Waltz lived with her right before he died, remember? So why would she have gone to stay in a hotel?”
“A hotel in a gold-mining town,” Simon reminded them. “What’s the date?”
“August 10, 1892,” Henry read from the page. “She stayed in room six.”
“So that was after Jacob Waltz died, right?’
Henry nodded. “That book at the library said he died in 1891. And then, remember, Julia Thomas had gotten instructions to the mine from him, or a map, and she was supposedly searching for it for years. So this would have been during that time.”
Simon continued to stare at the page. “Was anybody in the room with her?”
Henry scanned the column of room numbers for August 10. “Nope,” Henry said finally.
“Do you see any other names you recognize on that page?” Simon asked. “Anybody that you and Delilah read about in those books we got from the library before we went up the mountain?”
Henry squinted at the list of names covering the page. Some of the signatures were so cramped it was hard to even know what they said.
“No.” He shook his head in disappointment. But then he caught his breath. “Wait … look! Here she is again! On September 3, in the same room, room six.” It was the same slanted, decorative signature: Julia Thomas.
“So what does that mean?” Simon asked. “She stayed at the hotel twice, three weeks apart? I wonder why.”
Delilah swung her cast off the chair and sat down next to Henry.
“We could look in that book of Arizona legends we got from the library last time,” she said, “and see what it says about Julia Thomas and Jacob Waltz.”
“Those are legends,” Simon said doubtfully. “Made-up stuff. Does it have anything about real people?”
Delilah nodded. “That’s where I read about Adolph Ruth, remember? The guy whose skull was found with two bullet holes in it, and who left that ‘veni, vidi, vici ’ note in his wallet?”
“Oh, yeah!” Jack exclaimed. “The same thing that was written on that teeny piece of paper in the box from Uncle Hank’s desk! What did that mean again?”
“I came, I saw, I conquered,” Henry told him. “It’s Latin. Remember, back then, everyone thought it meant that Adolph Ruth had found the gold mine.”
“And if Uncle Hank’s note said the exact same thing, it means Uncle Hank could’ve found the gold mine,” Jack announced.
“Right,” Henry said.
But did it really mean that? There was certainly no evidence at Uncle Hank’s house that he’d found a fortune in gold during his life. His house, though quirky and interesting, was very ordinary, and Henry had often heard his parents complaining since they moved in that Uncle Hank had allowed it to fall into such disrepair. The deck had to be stained; gutters needed mending; the yard was a mess. Surely someone with a treasure’s worth of gold would have built a fancy house—or at least fixed up the one he had. Or owned a fleet of cars, or bought expensive furniture, clothing, paintings, and jewelry. There was no sign that Uncle Hank had done any of these things. And yet they’d found the cryptic note at the bottom of that rust-colored metal box in his old desk, with the same Latin expression that had been on a note by Adolph Ruth.
“Let’s look in my book of legends,” Delilah said. “There was definitely something in there about Jacob Waltz.”
She disappeared from the kitchen and returned minutes later with the book they’d checked out of the library a couple of weeks ago, before their last trip up the mountain. “I remember there was a lot about Jacob Waltz in this chapter. I didn’t read all of it.”
Henry secretly thought this was rather lazy of her, since he himself had thoroughly scoured the Arizona history book that was their other prize from the library that day. When she saw his withering glance, Delilah frowned at him.
“Well,” she said defensively, “I was busy reading about Adolph Ruth! And like Simon said, I thought it was going to be a book of legends, not stuff that really happened. But it turns out, most of the legends started out as something true and then kind of got changed around and added to—”
“Embellished,” Henry said, impatient.
Delilah pursed her lips. “Whatever.”
“Just see what it says about the Lost Dutchman’s Mine,” Simon ordered. “Is there anything about Jacob Waltz?”
Delilah turned to the index. “Here it is,” she said. She flipped the pages and began reading snippets aloud. “Born in Germany … worked in several mines in this area … began looking for gold in the Superstition Mountain range in the 1870s … may have heard the location of a rich gold mine from an Apache Indian girl named Ken-tee.”
“Indian girl?” Simon said thoughtfully.
Henry remembered reading about her in the book at the library.
Delilah’s forehead wrinkled. “Ewww. It says here the tribe was so angry with her for revealing where the gold was that they cut out her tongue!”
“Yuck!” Jack made a face, wagging his tongue around. “How can you talk or eat without your tongue?”
“You can’t,” Simon said. “Not really. But even if some stuff is true, this is a book of legends. It’s hard to know whether that really happened.”
“Keep reading,” Henry urged. “Does it say anything about Julia Thomas?”
“Uh-huh,” Delilah murmured, turning the page. “What you already told us. Jacob Waltz got sick when his farm flooded, and she took care of him, and he supposedly gave her a map to his secret gold mine right before he died.” She paused, reading silently. “And then it says she went up the mountain the following August to try to find it.”
“So the timing would have been right,” Simon said, running one hand through his hair. “What was the date she stayed at the hotel? August 10, 1892?” He stared at the page in the ledger. “And then again on September 3. Maybe that was on her way back.”
“Wait,” Delilah told them. “It says here that two men went with her, brothers from Germany.” She hesitated, sliding the book toward Henry. “I don’t know how you pronounce this.”
Henry looked at the strange combination of letters above her finger. “Me neither,” he said, struggling to wrap his mouth around the unfamiliar names. “Hermann and Rhinehart Petrasch?”
“See if those names are anywhere in the ledger for the same dates,” Simon ordered.
They all leaned over the book, squinting at the faded column of signatures. Simon suddenly pressed his finger to the page. “Here! Here they are on August 10,” he said. “It’s hard to read, but that’s the same name, right, Hen?”
Henry studied the signature above Simon’s index finger. “Well, it starts with a P,” he said, “and it ends with a ch.”
“Yep,” Simon said, “and the initials are H and R.” He drew his finger horizontally across the ledger to the narrow listing of room numbers. “Look, they stayed in number five, the room next to hers.”
Delilah shouldered closer to him, her brown braid brushing the page. “And on September 3, here they are again!” she said excitedly. “In the same room.”
“So she went up and down the mountain with those two guys, looking for the gold mine,” Simon said slowly. “The question is, did they find anything?”
He raised his head, his expression focused and serious. He was planning something, Henry could tell. It was a face he’d seen many times before.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Simon asked.
“What?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, what?” Henry echoed.
Simon took a breath. “It means that we have to go back to the ghost town. To see if Julia Thomas and those German brothers left anything behind at the hotel, in those two rooms.”
CHAPTER 13
AUNT
KATHY ARRIVES
“BACK TO THE GHOST TOWN? YAY!” Jack crowed. “That was fun!”
Henry stared at Simon in disbelief. “What are you talking about? You almost got eaten by something! Why would we go back there?”
“I didn’t almost get eaten,” Simon said dismissively. “I told you, it was probably just a rat. Also, we know what we’re doing now. We’ll bring flashlights and a rope, in case we run into any more trouble.”
Henry shook his head. “What makes you think the hotel rooms will have anything in them? None of the other places did.”
“We found the hotel guest book, didn’t we?” Simon asked. “It’s worth checking out—that’s all I’m saying.”
Delilah looked from one to the other.
“It does seem like it would be worth seeing what’s in the hotel rooms, Henry,” she began. “We know Julia Thomas stayed there, and we know it was right before and after she went up the mountain to search for the gold mine … and she seems to be the only one besides Jacob Waltz who might have known where it was.”
“Yeah,” Jack chimed in. “What if there’s some kind of clue that would help us find the mine?”
“You’re probably right,” Simon said diplomatically, “that the place was cleared out long ago. But maybe the three of them left something important behind.”
Henry sighed, feeling ganged up on and resentful that once again he was boxed into the role of the cautious one, rather than the fearless adventurer he wanted to be.
“When would we even do it?” He turned to Simon. “Aunt Kathy is coming in a couple of days.”
Simon rubbed his forehead. “Argh. That does throw a wrench in things.” He thought for a minute. “Well, maybe we can go to Gold Creek while she’s here. Actually, it’ll be easier to go while she’s here—Mom and Dad would be way more suspicious if they saw us taking flashlights and stuff. But we won’t be able to just take off on her the first day. How long are they going to be away again?”
“From Thursday till next Tuesday,” Henry said.
“That’s lots of time,” Jack announced.
Henry worried that he was right.
* * *
The next two days were frantically busy with preparations for Aunt Kathy’s visit and Mr. and Mrs. Barker’s simultaneous departure. Mrs. Barker cleaned the house from top to bottom, finally unpacking the rest of the cardboard boxes and persuading Mr. Barker to hang the pictures that had been leaning against the wall of the living room since the move.
“But we haven’t even talked about where they should go,” Mr. Barker protested.
“I don’t care where they go,” Mrs. Barker replied breezily. “I just don’t want Kathy to see us living in a house with big old empty walls. It’s depressing.”
“It will be even more depressing if I hang them in the wrong place and then we have to move them and leave a bunch of ugly holes,” Mr. Barker said grimly.
Mrs. Barker threw up her hands. “Oh, just find a spot for them, Jim! I hate these bare walls. It looks like we don’t intend to stay.”
“Honey, Kathy knows we’re staying,” Mr. Barker protested. “We only moved in a month ago. She won’t expect everything to be perfect.”
Since Aunt Kathy was famously messy and disorganized, Henry knew that hanging the pictures could have very little to do with meeting her standards of perfection. He decided it had more to do with Mrs. Barker’s need to be done with the move, once and for all. She had said many times that she was tired of spending every weekend stepping around boxes and trying to figure out the right place for a lamp or an end table from the old house.
Mr. Barker must have decided this for himself, because he relented on the pictures and spent Wednesday afternoon hanging every single one. Henry was put in charge of the ruler and pencil, and helped him line them up on the vast expanse of bare walls.
“Where are you going again?” he asked his father fretfully, thinking about the return to Gold Creek.
“Santa Fe,” Mr. Barker said. He held a large framed picture against the wall, an ocean scene that had hung over the mantel in their old family room. “How’s this? Is it centered?”
Henry considered. “More to the left. Where’s Santa Fe?”
“In New Mexico, the next state over, up in the mountains. It should be a little cooler there.”
“That’ll be nice,” Henry said sadly.
“What’s the matter, bud?” Mr. Barker asked. He took the pencil from Henry and marked the top of the frame.
“Oh, nothing,” Henry said. “Why are you going there?”
Mr. Barker set down the picture and took the ruler, making another mark where he intended to put the nail. “Well, your mother and I were there years ago, and we loved it. It used to be an artists’ colony—do you know what that is? A place where all sorts of writers and painters went to work on their art. There are still a lot of artists living there.”
Henry thought about what it would be like to live in a town filled with people who did exactly the same thing you did; who loved the same things you loved. He imagined a place full of people who read books all the time. It sounded nice, he decided. There would be so much to talk about, and you would probably like the other people because they shared your interests in the same things.
“How come they went to that place, instead of somewhere else?” he asked.
“Oh, lots of reasons.” Mr. Barker held a nail against the wall and pounded it several times, hard—a sharp bang! bang! bang! that made Henry jump, even though he was expecting it. “It’s a beautiful spot, for one thing, and the light is sharp and clear, which is what attracts painters. And the Taos Indians live nearby, and some of the artists were inspired by their culture.”
Mr. Barker lifted the picture and hung it, standing back to scrutinize the position. “Mmmm. It’s a little low, maybe. What do you think?”
“It looks good,” Henry told him.
“Okay, next one,” Mr. Barker said, picking up a large, orange and red abstract canvas that had hung in their entryway at the old house. “Where shall we put this sucker?”
“Over there in the corner, where it’s kind of dark.” Henry pointed. “That painting looks like sunshine.”
“Good thinking,” Mr. Barker said. “It will brighten up the room.” He lifted the painting and glanced over his shoulder questioningly.
“Higher,” Henry said, handing him the pencil. “Why are you going away now?”
“For our anniversary.” Mr. Barker scratched the pencil tip lightly against the wall.
“And you’re coming back Tuesday night?”
“Yep. Around dinnertime.”
Henry sighed. “But what will you do there? Without us, I mean?” It was hard to imagine how his parents could have fun without the rest of the family. He pictured them moping along the streets of a strange town, thinking of something funny to tell one of the boys and then realizing the boys were back home.
Mr. Barker grinned at him. “Oh, I don’t know, Hen. It’ll be pretty lonesome. But we’ll come up with something to entertain ourselves.”
“I don’t want you to go,” Henry said. He hadn’t known it was true till he said it aloud, but now a heavy sense of foreboding filled him.
His father turned, hammer in hand, and studied him quizzically. “Why not, Hen? You guys will have fun with Aunt Kathy. Too much fun, probably.”
Henry braced himself for the sharp crack of the hammer. “Yeah.”
“Then what is it?” Mr. Barker pinched the nail between his thumb and forefinger and gave it several whacks.
“I don’t know…,” Henry began, but at that moment, Mrs. Barker appeared in the doorway.
“Look how many you’ve done!” she said happily. She walked over to Henry and draped her arm over his shoulders, appraising the walls.
“That ocean painting is a little low,” she said, just as Henry shot her a warning glance.
Mr. Barker spun around in exasperation, but Mrs. Barker continued smoothly, “But you know what?
I like it. You guys are doing a great job.” She swept quickly out of the room, calling over her shoulder, “It would be terrific if you could hang them all by dinner.”
Mr. Barker rolled his eyes and lifted the orange and red canvas to hang it. Henry realized that the conversation about his parents’ upcoming departure was forgotten … and perhaps that was for the best, since he didn’t know how to explain the uneasiness he felt.
* * *
Aunt Kathy arrived on Thursday morning. Mrs. Barker picked her up at the airport, and the sisters came clattering into the house at noon, chatting and laughing and finishing each other’s sentences.
“It’s so good to see you!” Mrs. Barker kept saying, squeezing Aunt Kathy’s arm.
“Oh, I know!” Aunt Kathy exclaimed. “I can’t believe you’re halfway across the country now, living in the desert.”
Aunt Kathy had twinkly blue eyes and wavy light brown hair that was streaked with sunny highlights—just like her personality, Henry thought. She was bubbly and talkative and full of interesting stories. In addition to acting, which she did on the side, in community theaters and local playhouses—but which was, she would be quick to tell you, her first love—she worked for an advertising agency in Chicago. Her job was to come up with funny rhymes or slogans to sell things. Her latest project was an ad for a floral foot deodorizer, and her newest slogan was “Put Spring in your step.”
Aunt Kathy was tired of being single and was always either madly in love or brokenhearted from a failed relationship, the details of which she never hesitated to share with the boys. She had a husky, rolling laugh that took over her entire body like a spasm. If she thought something was really funny, she would throw her head back, shoulders shaking, tears streaming down her cheeks. Then she’d breathlessly exclaim, “Oh, stop. Stop. You’re killing me. I have to sit down.” Finally, she’d plop into the nearest chair, shake her head, and say, “Now THAT was funny.”
This whole ritual drove the boys to try to get her to laugh as often as possible.
When she came into the kitchen and saw them, she dropped her enormous purse on the floor with a thud and swept them into her arms. “Oh, my goodness, look how big you all are getting! Jack, you are a giant.”