The Box and the Bone Read online

  “Yeah,” Carlos agreed, “I think so too. You know old Brockhurst. If we told him, he’d be sure to say we took some stuff. You know, to keep for ourselves.”

  Eddy nodded. “Yes. I think we’d better just pretend we don’t know anything. And we’ll have to pretend we’re really surprised when the padlock breaks as soon as I start trying to open it.” He grinned at Carlos. “We’ll both be really surprised!”

  They looked at each other and smiled and then they both did a big surprise number.

  “Holy cow!” Carlos said. “Would you look at that! It broke.”

  Eddy made his eyes wide and buggy. “What do you know. Coins! Look at all those crazy old coins!” Then they laughed again, punched each other in the shoulder, and ran the rest of the way back to Prince Field.

  Chapter 5

  IT WAS AN HOUR or so later, while Eddy and Carlos were still practicing batting and pitching at Prince Field, that Dragoland had another visitor. The new visitor had four feet, a sleek, narrow muzzle, and a beautiful plumed tail. It was Nijinsky, the Grant family’s collie dog, and he was carrying an especially large and juicy bone.

  And not long after Nijinsky disappeared into the basement pit, still another visitor came down the path. A four-year-old visitor with a curly black ponytail, a polka-dot playsuit on backward, and her shoes on the wrong feet. It was Athena Pappas and she was on her way to play house in the dry fishpond at Dragoland.

  Athena was pulling a red wagon and singing in Greek—a song her father always sang while he was working on his sculptures. “Kato sto yialo,” Athena sang. “Kato sto periyiali.”

  The wagon was full of all the things a person would need to play house in a fishpond, like a whisk broom and a piece of chalk, a doll family, and lots of doll-sized dishes and furniture.

  Athena parked her wagon beside the edge of the fishpond, took out her doll family, and lined them up so they could watch. She went on singing as she carefully whisked away a lot of dead leaves and outlined all the different rooms with chalk on the nice clean cement. “Kato sto yialo. Kato sto periyiali,” she sang over and over again as she worked.

  When all the rooms were carefully drawn in chalk she was ready to unload the furniture. It was going to be a very beautiful house with everything in the right place.

  She arranged all the beds in the bedrooms first. There were three beds. One real Barbie doll bed made of beautiful pink plastic and two other homemade shoe-box ones. In the bathroom she put an oval-shaped asparagus bowl. Athena hated asparagus but she liked the bowl a lot. It was just the right size and shape for a bathtub. And because she’d gotten a whole kitchen set for her last birthday, the kitchen was best of all, with a sink and stove and refrigerator all made of pink plastic.

  After all the furniture was in place and her collection of tiny plastic vegetables and fruit was stored away inside the refrigerator, the house was ready for the doll family to move in. Except for one thing. She’d almost forgotten about her new tea set.

  Athena took a last little box out of the wagon, the one that held the new tea set, and looked around the fishpond house. That was when she realized she had a problem. The tea set needed to be on a table and she’d forgotten to bring one. She had remembered to bring a nice white linen napkin for a tablecloth—but nothing at all that would make a good table. For a moment she thought about going all the way back home to find something she could use for a table—but then she remembered something important.

  What she remembered was bricks. She was sure she remembered seeing some loose bricks down in the Dragoland Pit. And a nice big brick would do just fine for a table for her fishpond dollhouse.

  Athena had climbed partway down to the floor of the Pit before she began to hear a strange noise. A scratching, scraping noise. It sounded like someone was there already, digging a hole. Boys, probably. The people who dug in the Pit were usually boys. Athena frowned. Boys, particularly some of the ones who lived at Castle Court, were creeps. But when she got to the bottom of the stairs and looked around, her frown turned into a happy laugh. It was only Jinsky.

  “Jinsky,” she squealed. Athena loved animals—all animals. And Jinsky was one of her favorites. Jinsky liked her too. Even though he was busy digging, he stopped long enough to look back over his shoulder and wag his beautiful tail. Then, as Athena ran toward him across the floor of the Pit, he went back to the serious business of burying a bone.

  Athena was fascinated. She’d never seen Jinsky bury a bone before. He was digging with both front feet and making the dirt fly out between his hind legs. Being careful to step over the great big bone where it was waiting beside the hole, she moved carefully around the shower of dirt and squatted down to watch. She hadn’t been watching for long when Jinsky’s toenails began to make a different sound. Like fingernails on a blackboard, only worse. And that was when Athena found the perfect table for her doll family’s house.

  Jinsky didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seemed quite pleased when Athena pulled the dirty old box out of the hole. With the box gone there was a whole lot more room to bury his bone.

  Athena climbed back out of the Pit—carefully because the new table was pretty heavy. She would have opened it up and dumped out whatever was making it so hard to carry, but she couldn’t because it was shut with a padlock. Athena knew about padlocks. Her brother, Ari, had one on his bicycle chain.

  So she trudged slowly and carefully out of the Pit and all the way back to the fishpond. When she got there the heaviness didn’t matter anymore, and neither did the rusty, dirty ugliness. As soon as she’d brushed off some of the dirt and covered the old box with the clean white napkin, it looked just fine. Then she arranged the tea set carefully on top of the new table and the doll family sat down to have a nice tea party.

  Chapter 6

  ALL THAT MORNING WHILE Carlos and Eddy practiced batting and then went swimming in the Garcias’ pool, Carlos kept thinking about the coins in the tin box. He talked about it, too, to Eddy, while they were lying in the sun beside the pool waiting for Bucky to get through being tutored.

  “They must be really valuable coins,” Eddy said, “or, like you said, why would somebody go to the trouble to bury them?” Suddenly he sat up and began to put on his shoes. “I’m going to go home and look for those books. You know, the ones my dad has about coin collecting. Maybe we can find out how valuable they are.”

  Eddy took off running and Carlos went on lying in the sun. He must have dozed off for a while because the next thing he knew, Eddy was back, shaking him and saying, “Hey, Carlos. Wake up. Wait till you hear what I found out.”

  Carlos sat up groggily and tried to get Eddy’s face in focus. When he did he realized that Eddy was looking very excited. “Guess what?” Eddy was saying. “You know those yellowish coins? I found a picture of them in my father’s books. I think they’re called half eagles. And some of them are worth as much as … Guess how much.”

  “I don’t know,” Carlos yawned. “Maybe—a hundred dollars?”

  Eddy grinned triumphantly. “More. A lot more. The book said that if they’re in good condition they can be worth as much as four thousand dollars.”

  Carlos quit yawning immediately. “Wow! Really? Four thousand dollars?”

  “Yeah, and there are three of them. And some of the other coins might be pretty valuable too. It depends on what condition they’re in and what year they are. I wish I’d looked at them more carefully. I wish—” Suddenly Eddy stopped talking and looked at his watch. “Hey. Bucky should be here by now.” He put his finger to his lips. “Remember. Don’t say anything about opening the box. Or coins. Don’t even mention the word coin.”

  Carlos clapped his hand across his mouth. “Not a word,” he mumbled. “Punch me if I mention even one coin.” Then he lifted a couple of fingers and whispered, “Penny!” and Eddy pretended to punch him in the nose. They both collapsed laughing, but then Eddy looked at his watch and jumped up.

  “It’s been more than two hours,” he said. He go
t up and ran around to the front of the house and came back looking worried. “The car’s gone,” he said. “The tutor’s car is gone.”

  It was just a few minutes later, while they were still trying to decide whether to go over and knock on the Brockhursts’ door, when Susie, Carlos’s little sister, came out on the back deck and yelled at them. “Hey, Bucky’s on the phone. He says he has to talk to you guys right away.” Carlos and Eddy jumped up and dashed up the stairs and across the kitchen to the phone.

  “Look, Garcia,” Bucky said as soon as Carlos said hi. “I’m grounded for the rest of the day. So I guess we’ll just have to wait until tomorrow. You know, to find out what’s in the box.”

  “Tomorrow!” Carlos said. “Not till tomorrow?” He was really disappointed. So disappointed he forgot to remind Bucky to be careful what he said because there were other phones in the Garcia house and people had been known to listen in. People like his little sister, Susie, for instance. Instead he only rolled his eyes at Eddy and said, “Bucky’s grounded. So I guess we can’t—you know, open the treasure chest until tomorrow.”

  Eddy looked really frustrated. “That’s not fair,” he whispered. “Here, let me talk to him.” So Eddy picked up the phone and said, “Look, Brockhurst. Don’t you want to know what’s in it? How about if Carlos and I go dig it up and open it and then we can call up and tell you all about it. I mean, we won’t take anything out. You know that.”

  Carlos couldn’t hear exactly what Bucky’s answer was, but whatever it was, it was long—and loud. A long, loud, angry roar. Eddy’s eyes squinted up and he held the phone away from his ear. Finally he covered the receiver with his hand and said, “Rats. I guess we’d better wait.”

  “Wait a minute,” Carlos said, “let me talk to him again.” But when he put the phone to his ear Bucky was still roaring. Something about how digging had been his idea—all his—so that made the treasure his. All his, if he wanted to be fussy about it. So they better not touch it till he got there.

  Carlos let Bucky go on for a minute before he started to yell back. “Listen, Brockhurst. Just listen a minute. I want to ask you something.” And when Bucky finally shut up, Carlos said, “Okay. Okay. We’ll wait for you, but does it have to be clear till tomorrow? I mean, you usually don’t stay grounded that long.”

  It was true. Bucky was always getting grounded and usually he found some way to sneak out of the house anyway.

  For a minute Bucky just went on breathing hard, but when he finally cooled off enough to start thinking, he said, “Yeah. Well, okay. I’ll see. Maybe after dinner when everyone starts watching television. Maybe I can sneak out then. If I can, I’ll throw rocks at your windows, like always. Okay?”

  So it was all arranged. That evening Carlos would wait in his room, and Bucky would sneak out and throw pebbles at his window and then do the same thing at Eddy’s. And then they’d all meet in front of Eddy’s garage.

  Chapter 7

  SUSIE GARCIA KNEW THAT listening in on other people’s telephone conversations was a bad thing to do. Bad and impolite and something you probably ought to mention the next time you went to confession. But the thing was—sometimes you just couldn’t help it. Like when your brother’s crummy friend Bucky, who was always doing terrible things, called up and said he had to talk to your brother right away, right this minute, because it was something very important. At a time like that, it seemed to Susie, it was practically your duty to listen in. So she did.

  She listened to what Bucky had to say about being grounded and to what Carlos said about a box that he sometimes called a treasure chest. She also listened to what Eddy said about digging it up to see what was in it—and what Bucky said about how nobody better touch it until he got ungrounded, or else. And then, how Carlos and Eddy had finally agreed not to touch the treasure chest until Bucky got ungrounded. In fact, they’d absolutely promised they wouldn’t.

  So when Susie hung up the phone she knew she had only the rest of that day to find the treasure, dig it up, and hide it somewhere else. She didn’t see anything wrong with that. After all, she hadn’t promised anyone that she wouldn’t touch it. And besides, in all the stories hidden treasures always seemed to belong to whoever got there first.

  So she would start looking for the treasure right away. Just as soon as she found someone to help her, because looking for treasure all by yourself didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun.

  That was when she realized that finding a helper might not be all that easy. The problem was—first of all—that the helper had to be a girl. Susie, who had lived for eight whole years, her whole life, in fact, with three older brothers, never had anything to do with boys if she could help it.

  Her first choice would, of course, have been Kate Nicely and Aurora Pappas. Kate and Aurora, who were just a couple of years older than Susie, sometimes let her do things with them. Exciting things like looking for ghosts and unicorns, or planning a big, scary war to save some very important trees.

  Even though finding a tin box wasn’t quite as exciting as finding a unicorn, Susie had a feeling that Kate and Aurora might be interested. What they’d particularly like about it would be the chance to get the best of Bucky and Eddy and Carlos again. At least Kate certainly would.

  But Susie happened to know that Kate and Aurora were away for the whole weekend. The Nicelys had gone to spend the weekend in the mountains and they’d taken Aurora with them. So that left only one other possibility. The only other girl in the whole cul-de-sac anywhere near Susie’s age was Muffy Brockhurst. Muffy was a possibility—but just barely.

  After Eddy went home and Carlos went up to his room, Susie went out onto the back deck to think. She sat down in the lounge swing and pushed herself back and forth, looking at the Brockhursts’ house and thinking about whether to ask Muffy to help her find the PROs’ treasure chest.

  There was at least one good reason to ask Muffy, and one even better one not to. The one reason Muffy might be a big help was because stealing the treasure would be putting one over on her brother. And putting one over on Bucky was what Muffy liked to do better than anything else in the whole world.

  On the other hand, the reason why asking Muffy might not be a good idea was that Muffy Brockhurst just happened to be the meanest girl in the whole world.

  Susie was still sitting in the porch swing, thinking about whether to ask Muffy to help her, when a really interesting coincidence happened. Right at that very moment Muffy came out in her backyard and yelled “Hi, Susie” in a friendly tone of voice.

  “Hi,” Susie called back—cautiously. That’s how you did anything with Muffy—cautiously. Because after you’d known her for a while you found out that when Muffy was being nice there was always a good reason. Sometimes the reason was that she wanted to swim in the Garcias’ pool. Or else it might be that she thought you knew something she wanted to find out about.

  After Susie said hi back, Muffy climbed over the fence and walked up to the Garcias’ back deck. Throwing herself down in a deck chair, she stared at her fingernails for several minutes. Some of her nails were bright red and some weren’t. “Want to paint my fingernails for me?” she said finally. “I can’t do my right hand.”

  Susie thought about saying plain old no, but then she changed her mind and said, “Not right now, I guess. There’s something else that I have to do. Something very important.”

  “Oh yeah? What? Maybe I’ll do it too.”

  It seemed like a sign. A mysterious sign that she ought to ask Muffy to help find the treasure. Susie’s friend Aurora was always getting mysterious feelings about things she ought or ought not to do. So Susie took a deep breath and started telling Muffy all about what she had heard on the telephone. How there was a box, a treasure chest, maybe, that was buried somewhere and how Carlos and Eddy and Bucky were going to go dig it up tomorrow. Or maybe tonight, if Bucky could get himself ungrounded. Just as Susie expected, Muffy was very interested.

  “But where do you suppose it is?” Muffy s
aid as soon as Susie had finished. “I mean, didn’t they drop any hints about where it was?”

  Susie thought for a moment and shook her head. “No. No hints. Except that it was buried.”

  “Buried! Hey, wait a minute,” Muffy said. “They were digging in the Pit today. I saw them when I went to get Bucky to come to his math lesson. I thought they were just digging another one of those dumb clubhouses. But maybe not! I’ll bet that’s where the treasure is.”

  Susie jumped to her feet. “Hey! I bet so too. Let’s go look.”

  Chapter 8

  A FEW MINUTES LATER Muffy and Susie were on their way across the cul-de-sac. Muffy was still asking questions like, “You sure they didn’t say anything about what kind of a treasure it is?”

  Susie shook her head. “They didn’t say exactly. They just said it was in a box, only sometimes they called it a treasure chest. And Bucky yelled a lot of stuff about how the other guys better not touch any of it until—” She stopped then and said, “Look. There’s Athena. Over there in the fishpond.” She started to wave but Muffy grabbed her arm and pulled her back behind some bushes.

  “Shhh,” Muffy said. “We don’t want her to see us. She might tell. You know, like if we take the treasure, those jerks might ask Athena if she saw anyone hanging around the Pit. And she’d probably blab about seeing us go in there. Let’s go in the back way.”

  Susie saw what she meant and, for the moment, at least, she was really glad that she’d asked Muffy to help. When you’re doing something as sneaky as stealing somebody else’s treasure, Muffy was exactly the kind of help you needed. So they went the long way around and climbed down the back stairs where Athena couldn’t see them. Once inside the Pit, Muffy led the way to where she’d seen the PROs digging.

  “See, it’s got to be right here,” Muffy said. “This is where they were when I came to call Bucky. Right here, where there’s all this loose dirt. Where’s a shovel? There are always lots of rusty old shovels lying around down here.”