The Secret of the Missing Grave Page 8

Bean felt there was no point in arguing. In fact, it might give her another flicker of hope if she could convince herself she had seen a light. “Well, maybe you did,” he said. “What did it look like?”

  Ab tried to remember. She’d been so sleepy. “It was like a flash,” she said, then thought better of it. “No, more like a sweep.”

  “A sweep?”

  “You know, like a lighthouse lamp on a foggy night,” Ab explained. “Whoosh. It sweeps by, then it’s gone. Very weak, though.”

  “How many times did you see it?”

  “Two or three,” she speculated. “I must have been half awake. I saw the first one and it woke me up all the way. Then a couple of seconds later, I saw the next one. Then another. I know I did.”

  “It must have come from up here,” said Bean, squinting at the narrow crack he’d pushed the paper through. He put his eyes as close as possible to the crack and immediately was met with a faint flush of anemic light. “Hello,” he cried at the top of his lungs.

  “What are you doing?” said Ab, the adrenaline suddenly pulsing through her.

  “I saw it,” Bean cried. “You were right. I saw a light. Hello. Help ... help! We’re in here.”

  Instantly Ab was beside him, screaming as loud as she could.

  They stopped and listened. No response. If they tried hard, they could imagine sounds in the remote distance, but it was no more than the sound of their own hearts beating.

  Again they screamed until tears stood in their eyes and sweat ran down their faces.

  Again, not the slightest whisper of reply. The light was gone. Perhaps they’d only imagined it after all.

  Dejected and breathless, they sank once again to the floor, but no sooner had their tired bones settled into place than they heard the now familiar sound of cascading water. Distant. Ever so distant. But unmistakable.

  “It’s the cistern,” Ab cried, pulling herself once more to her feet. Bean was right behind her. Together they stared hopefully toward the ceiling as, ever so slowly, preceded by a whistling rush of air, it began to rise.

  They didn’t wait for it to ascend all the way. As soon as there was room enough to scrape through, they helped each other scramble up the steps and over the edge onto the cellar floor.

  Once they were out, the floor continued its mechanical journey toward the ceiling of the little white-walled room as the cistern filled behind them. No sooner had the floor come to rest than the cistern began draining and the floor descended noiselessly back into place. Bean and Ab stood watching, their eyes closed to narrow slits against the morning light and their senses numb with a flood of conflicting emotions as their former dungeon disappeared from sight beneath the great granite slab.

  For a minute or so they stood staring. Then the rushing water slowed to a trickle, bringing them to their senses. At the same time, they realized they were holding hands. Quickly, with reddening faces, they shook free of each other.

  “It’s daytime,” said Ab. “My folks will freak.”

  “So will my mom.”

  Still, they stood for a moment, nearly drowned by the waves of relief and confusion and leftover fear that swept over them. But something had happened down there, something that would change their relationship forever. Something that would take a lot of time to work itself out.

  “Where is everybody?” said Ab as she thundered down the stairs, nearly colliding with Bean, who had been calling from room to room on the first floor. “There’s nobody here.” She glanced at the clock. “And it’s only six o’clock.”

  It was the same story at Bean’s house. His mother was gone, and her bed hadn’t been slept in.

  An eerie silence greeted them as they emerged onto the wood walkway. Usually at this time of day, Main Street was bustling with the traffic of carpenters and shopkeepers on their way to work. Across the deserted street, the coffee shop door stood open, but none of the early risers who usually packed the place were there. Instead, plates on the tables were heaped with half-eaten breakfasts. Coffee still steamed in cups, and a kettle boiled furiously on the stove at the back of the room, but there wasn’t a soul to be seen.

  “Grady,” Bean called, running to the kitchen, but Grady, whom Bean had never seen outside that kitchen other than at Thursday night beano at the Legion Hall, wasn’t there. He had been. The signs of his cooking were everywhere. Bean grabbed some blueberry muffins from the tray on the counter. They were still warm. “We’ll pay for these later,” he said as he handed one to Ab, who immediately began devouring it. They went back onto the street again.

  There was nobody at the garage. Or at the parking lot. Even the old men who seemed to live around the potbellied stove in the hardware store, and were as much a fixture of island life as the granite itself, were gone.

  Out in the harbor, all the boats tugged at their mooring lines, seeming anxious to be about their day’s work, but there were no lobstermen to man them. It was as if everyone on the island had disappeared in the midst of their daily routines. Everyone except the two of them. Ab threaded her arm through Bean’s. She needed the reassurance that he, too, wasn’t going to disappear.

  “Bean,” she whispered, “what’s going on? Where is everybody?”

  9

  THE SECRETS OF MAUD VALLIERS

  BEWILDERMENT WAS JUST ABOUT TO GIVE WAY TO PANIC when a sound was borne to them on a contrary breath of wind, freezing both Bean and Ab in their tracks.

  “Did you hear that?” said Bean.

  Ab was already off, running down the sidewalk. She called over her shoulder. “It was a voice. This way ... somebody’s down this way. Come on.”

  Within seconds Bean was beside her. The slapping of their sneakers on the sidewalk echoed eerily from the vacant buildings, but in the distance the voice was growing louder. “That’s Tib Wruggles,” said Bean once they were near enough to make out a word now and then.

  “The constable?”

  By now they were abreast of the bank and were able to see where the voice was coming from. It was a sight that brought them to an abrupt halt.

  The whole town, it seemed, was pressed in a compact semicircle around Bickford’s flatbed truck in the parking lot of the fire station. Even from a distance, Bean and Ab could make out Ab’s mom and dad, the Proverbs, and Bean’s mom standing stiffly and nervously on either side of Constable Wruggles, who was speaking to the crowd through a bullhorn. Mrs. Carver was wringing her hands, and Mrs. Petersen was drying her eyes on the hem of her sweater.

  It seemed like a dream as Ab and Bean took to their heels again. “Mom!” Bean shouted. But they were still too far away, and Constable Wruggles was making too much noise with the bullhorn.

  “Now, what we want to do,” Bean heard him say as they drew closer, “is break up into groups of ten, with each group searchin’ a different part of the island accordin’ to the grids on this map.”

  “Daddy!” Ab cried.

  A few people at the edge of the crowd heard the cry and, turning to see Ab and Bean running toward them at full speed, began to poke those around them and point up the street. Those closer to the front, though, were the last to know.

  “Ray Lowry and Elliott Hall, you take this group to the creek side of Armburst Hill,” Wruggles continued, sleeplessness showing on his face. “Viv Drew, you and Harlan Gregory take your bunch out to Lane’s Island ... ”

  By this time the fringes of the crowd had begun to disintegrate, and the low murmur of excitement swelled to a chorus. Mrs. Carver looked up from her worried hands and, following the eyes of the distant members of the crowd and the little sea of pointing fingers, saw Ab and Bean running toward the fire station.

  “Bean!” she cried, catching Constable Wruggles in midsentence.

  Within a twinkling, Mrs. Carver was being lifted off the flatbed by a couple of burly lobstermen. By the time they set her down, Bean was in her arms.

  Seconds later, Ab was hoisted up on the flatbed, where she and her parents threw themselves at one another amid the tea
rs and sobs and cheers of the crowd.

  Constable Wruggles was the first to speak. “Now that this is all settled and folks can get back to breakfast, I don’t s’pose you two would mind tellin’ us where you’ve been,” he studied their dirty faces and hands, “and what on earth you’ve been up to.”

  There was a general murmur of agreement, and someone lifted Bean onto the truck. As he took his place beside Ab, you could have heard a feather fall on meringue.

  The kids looked at each other. Bean, who was never very comfortable in a crowd, nodded for Ab to do the talking. She cleared her throat and took a step forward.

  “We found the tunnel up at the Moses Webster House. That is, we found the secret way in.”

  From then on, the crowd, pressing closer and closer, hung on every word as she told the whole story and hardly breathed until she was finished. Afterward there was a long silence.

  “What about the treasure?” someone said at last.

  “Yeah,” said someone else. “Did you find anything?”

  “No,” said Ab. “As I said, it’s just a little room, or the tunnel must have been bricked over like the other wall”

  “Then all we got to do is break down the wall,” suggested the first man, “and we can get a look at old Minerva’s treasure.”

  “Let’s go,” said a few others, and they began to run up the street.

  They hadn’t gotten more than a few steps when a shotgun blast split the still morning air, sending clouds of frightened seagulls and pigeons into the sky. Everyone stopped and turned toward Constable Wruggles, who was holding a still-smoking shotgun on his lap. “Nobody’s gain’ nowhere,” he said flatly. “What you’re talkin’ about is trespass, and it ain’t gonna happen. That’s private property.”

  “But the Proverbs don’t own that treasure,” Monty Carver objected. He was Bean’s second cousin on his father’s side and was just the kind of person who could be relied upon to say the kind of things that would get a crowd worked up.

  Wruggles stepped to the edge of the truck and leveled a cautioning gaze at Monty. “That may be so,” he said. “As I remember, that tunnel’s s’posed to go to the Winthrop House. That means Maud Valliers owns half, if there is any treasure. And if there is, the courts will decide who gets what.”

  “It ain’t theirs,” Monty protested sharply. “It belongs to the whole town.”

  This notion found quick acceptance among many in the crowd. and Wruggles knew he’d have a riot on his hands if he didn’t do something fast. “I seem to recall that your old man found a handwritten letter from Abe Lincoln to Thomas Bodwell up amongst some old company papers in your attic, didn’t he?”

  “So?” said Monty. He knew what was coming but couldn’t think fast enough to get himself out of it.

  “So, he had it sold at auction at Christy’s, didn’t he, down to New York City?”

  Again, Monty said “So?” but with much less feeling.

  “Got thirty thousand dollars, I seem to remember you tellin’ me.”

  “Everybody knows that,” said someone else. “He tells most folks down to the ferry’ fore they have had a chance to put their bags down.”

  Everyone laughed, especially Bean. Monty had bragged about that thirty thousand dollars as long as he’d known him.

  “And he bought him a nice big lobster boat with that money, didn’t he?”

  Monty didn’t say anything, but he seemed to shrink about two inches.

  Wruggles continued: “And when he died, you come into that boat, didn’t you?”

  Several other people answered for Monty. “He sure did. Never had to put in a penny of his own.”

  “So, if we was to use your logic, we could say that letter belonged to the whole town. So I guess that means your boat belongs to the whole town.”

  “And so does all the money he’s made lobsterin’ off it,” added an astute lobsterman.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if that comes to a good deal more than Minerva’s treasure,” Wruggles continued, “whatever it is. How ’bout it?”

  Monty glowered angrily at the constable, but he knew he was beaten. “You’re an old fool,” he spat. “And you ain’t even from the island.”

  Bean had heard this logic before. His mother was from the mainland, though his father’s family settled the island in the late l600s.

  Wruggles smiled calmly. “That’s right,” he said. “I’m here ’cause I choose to be, not’ cause there’s no place else that’ll have me.”

  This retort seemed to be at least as sensible as the accusation, so Monty fell silent and slunk away toward the boatyard.

  “Now,” said Wruggles, turning to the Proverbs, “if you want to look into this business with Maud, you go right ahead, and I hope you find a treasure and get rich and treat the whole town to a lobster dinner. But as far as real treasure goes,” he put his hands on Bean’s and Ab’s shoulders, “I figure we’ve got that right here.”

  There was hearty applause from the crowd, which, after receiving thanks from the Petersens and Mrs. Carver, broke up.

  “That took the wisdom of Solomon,” said Mr. Proverb, pumping Wruggles’s hand vigorously. “It could have gotten nasty.”

  Wruggles wrinkled his brow. “The nasty part may still be ahead,” he said. “Maud Valliers likes her privacy. I don’t know how she’s gonna take to the idea of that tunnel. Well,” he said, zipping the bullhorn into its case, “this day’s turned out a lot better than it started. I’m headin’ home for breakfast and a nap. Let me know what happens. Not that I’ll find out long after you anyways,” he added with a wink, “the way news travels ’round here.”

  Later that morning, after Bean and Ab had a good, long rest, they accompanied Mr. Proverb to the front door of the Winthrop House. After leaving their names, they were shown into the front hallway by the maid, known to be a French Canadian girl named Mierette whom Miss Valliers had brought from Boston.

  Ab thought it funny, as she looked around, that the interior of the house looked just the way she’d imagined it would, with dark, heavily flowered wallpaper, rich oak and mahogany woodwork, fine tongue-and-groove wood floors strewn with ancient carpets, and the lower half of all the windows of ornate etched glass. It was like a place frozen in time. The maid, too, who stood waiting stiffly in her neatly pressed gray and white uniform at the foot of the stairs, accented the feeling of timelessness.

  Before the Winthrop House was occupied, Bean had tried to peek in the windows. The wood louvers had always been closed, though, and had remained so even after Miss Valliers moved in, so the interior was a surprise to him. There was a heavy odor of mothballs, and everything seemed just a little past its prime. But, unlike the exterior, the inside looked clean and cared for and generally in good repair. It was a place from the past, of course, but so were about half the houses on the island.

  Mr. Proverb, too, seemed lost in contemplation of his surroundings when they heard a voice and suddenly, as if from nowhere, Miss Valliers was at the top of the stairs.

  “May I help you?” she said coldly. She didn’t come down the stairs but stood with folded hands resting in front of her on the carved ivory head of an ebony walking stick.

  At school that year, Ab had learned the word anachronism, and it sprang to mind as she looked at the woman amid these surroundings. She was tall and slender, about forty or so, with long, dirty-blond hair thickly braided and draped across her breast. She wore a black turtleneck and a multicolored vest covered with ornate, exotic-looking designs in gold. A black cotton skirt, which nearly touched the floor, was cinched about her waist with a broad red leather belt.

  Curiously, despite her apparent great care in dressing, Miss Valliers was liberally spattered with paint from neck to knee, including her hands.

  Bean saw none of that. All he noticed were the hardest, coldest eyes he’d ever seen staring down at him as if he were a dog that had tracked something nasty into the house. He checked his shoes.

  Clearly she made Mr. Prove
rb a little uncomfortable, as well. “Ms. Valliers,” he said cordially, climbing a few steps with his hand extended.

  “Miss Valliers,” the woman replied sharply. “Miss.”

  She made no motion toward him, so Mr. Proverb stopped and, dropping his hand, fiddled with his hat. “I’m Spencer Proverb, Miss Valliers,” he continued as pleasantly as possible. “I’m sorry we haven’t met yet, but you’ve seen my wife and me across the lane, I’m sure.”

  “You and your wife are of no interest to me, Mr. Proverb,” Maud replied coldly. “I rarely look out my window.” She glared at Bean and Ab. “There is nothing new under the sun.”

  “Yes, well, so,” Mr. Proverb stammered unsurely. “Anyway, these children were playing in my cellar ... ”

  Ab and Bean bridled a little. They hadn’t been playing; they’d been investigating. But there was no point in making an issue of it.

  Mr. Proverb continued, “and they came upon what seems to be the entrance to the old tunnel.” He hesitated. “You’ve heard of the tunnel. I trust?”

  “I don’t listen to local gossip.”

  “No, no. Of course not. Not gossip at all, really. More like local legend, I’d say,” Mr. Proverb explained diplomatically.

  “The island is of no concern to me,” Miss Valliers announced. “I have no interest in its past, present, or future. Nor do I wish to be involved with its people or their lives in any way beyond those that my needs require. I came here to get away from people and to paint. If I find my privacy compromised, I shall be on the next boat and will never look back.”

  “Mm. Be that as it may,” Mr. Proverb plodded on doggedly, “it may interest you to know that, according to this particular legend, a great treasure is buried in the tunnel, and if so, it’s—”

  “You are mistaken in attempting to appeal to my sense of greed, Mr. Proverb,” snapped Miss Valliers. “I am a rich woman. I have made my own fortune and have no need of another’s, real or imagined. This conversation has exceeded my patience.” She struck the floor sharply with her cane. “The only treasures on my property are my paintings.”