The Treasure

by E. A. House

  Chris was terrified, but underneath the terror a little voice was wailing, Oh no, not again! And another little voice was demanding to know why he was the one they always threatened to shoot. Several very rude words occurred to Chris and he swallowed them with difficulty. But Professor Griffin was dangerous and it wouldn’t do to say anything to him that would antagonize him, even though he was perfectly capable of antagonizing himself over nothing.

  “I see you’ve found my treasure,” Professor Griffin said. He seemed calm, but his eyes were flicking from Chris to Carrie to Maddison to Dr. McRae to the ship, and although he’d started with his aim on Chris, his gun was now drifting through the air like he couldn’t settle on a person to threaten. “How astute of you, I was afraid you wouldn’t figure it out. I almost gave up hope when the coordinates were wrong.”

  “They weren’t wrong,” Chris said. The gun swung back to him and he winced. Nice going, Chris, draw attention to yourself. “They were just reversed.”

  “Shut up, Chris,” Carrie hissed.

  “No, no, Chris is right,” Professor Griffin said. “That was rude of me. I should have tried looking at the numbers from a different angle before I discounted them as incorrect, I was just so eager . . . ” He took a step closer. “I’ve waited so long to be the one to find this ship . . . ”

  “Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Willis,” Dr. McRae said, with enough venom in his voice that Professor Griffin actually took a step backwards in alarm, “but you aren’t the one who found this ship.” In two long strides he was standing between Professor Griffin and the San Telmo, his expression hurt and furious. “Elsie is the one who found this ship. And then Chris and Carrie and Maddison after her, and then me, and Robin, a—”

  “Oh yeah, hey, long time no see!” Redd exclaimed, actually popping out from behind the San Telmo, despite the fact that if he’d stayed behind the ship, Professor Griffin might not even have realized he was there.

  But if he hadn’t popped up out of seemingly nowhere, Dr. McRae might have angrily told the professor that a producer, a police detective, and a professional scuba diver had all laid eyes on the San Telmo before him, and Detective Hermann would have lost the advantage of surprise. As it was, they now had the advantage of a really surprised Professor Griffin.

  “Wyzowski?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, you know,” Redd said, “revisiting old stomping grounds, catching up with old friends. Tried to shoot a film about the legend of Annie Six-Fingers. You know, the usual. It’s been quite an adventure, the three of us haven’t been in the same room together since before Ryan Moore died.”

  “He disappeared,” Professor Griffin said. His eyes were now scanning the room in search of exits. Since the room was a cavern big enough to hold the wreck of a ship and mostly filled with a pool of saltwater with a sandy and treacherous bottom, he didn’t have much luck. Aside from Maria’s underwater route—treacherous even to experienced divers, as Detective Hermann had pointed out—there was only one way in or out, and that was the crevice they had all squeezed through.

  “No, Ryan died,” Dr. McRae said. “They pulled his bones out of the cistern at Saint Erasmus last week—but you already knew he was in there, didn’t you?”

  “W—well, so do you!” Professor Griffin said frantically. “You’re the one who pushed him in!”

  “Suuure I am. By the way, how do you know he was pushed? The general consensus, until last week, was that he had been kidnapped or mugged and then dumped somewhere.”

  “Or abducted by aliens.”

  “Or, if you’re Robin, abducted by aliens.” Dr. McRae looked at Redd. Then he looked back at Professor Griffin and deliberately folded his arms. “That’s why nobody believed you about the San Telmo the first time, by the way,” he told Redd, as if they were having a casual chat and not being menaced by a mad gunman. “Nobody could accept the aliens long enough to think through how logical the part about the San Telmo was.”

  “It’s not like it matters anyway,” Professor Griffin cried hysterically, and Redd and Dr. McRae turned their attention back to the professor grudgingly. Professor Griffin took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Look,” he said, in his very best let’s all be reasonable voice, “we’re all here now anyway, so why don’t we share the credit for finding this thing? One last meeting of the Treasure Hunters Club, what do you say?”

  “Aaaahhhh, I say, nope,” Dr. McRae said.

  “Nah, I’m good,” Redd added. “Thanks, though,” he said. “Nice of you to remember me after all these years.” Later, Chris would learn that Griffin had let his correspondence with Redd taper off and stop soon after he had started graduate school and that Robin Redd had spent years worrying and wondering why.

  “What?” Professor Griffin screamed.

  “If anyone shares the discovery of the San Telmo it should be Chris and Carrie and Maddison,” Dr. McRae said patiently. “They’re the ones who put all the clues together and found this place.”

  This was the last straw, and it broke Professor Griffin’s hastily constructed façade of goodwill and reconciliation completely. “I can’t let you do that,” he cried, and put a bullet into the ceiling of the cave. Everyone flinched. Chris thought, but was never sure afterwards, that he heard the quiet click of a gun being cocked behind him, where Detective Hermann was lurking behind the San Telmo. “I won’t let you do that!” Professor Griffin said. “I didn’t kill Ryan and Elsie just to have the San Telmo discovered by a bunch of nosey teenagers!”

  “Willis Griffin!” Detective Hermann said, rounding the wreck of the San Telmo with his gun out. “Drop your weapon and put your hands where I can see them. You’re under arrest.”

  Professor Griffin gaped at the detective, all color draining from his face. Then he squeezed the trigger of his gun again, sending another bullet harmlessly into the ceiling, and lunged at Chris. Probably in the direction of the San Telmo, but that was also the general direction of Chris, who ducked in anticipation of an attack that never came. Professor Griffin had been only a few steps into the cave, and so he had to cross almost the whole pool of water to get to Chris—and he apparently didn’t know that there were rocks, bits of ship, and unexpected deep chasms under the surface of the pool. He managed two steps before he caught his foot on something and tripped, cracking his head against a rock as he did so and splashing back into the water.

  In the shocked aftermath, Detective Hermann said, “You get all that?” He was moving quickly toward the place where Professor Griffin had fallen as he spoke, barely splashing the water he was so careful.

  “I have everything from when he walked in the room.” Bethy’s voice was shaky from behind the ship. “He’s not getting out of this easily,” she said. “We have him confessing to murder on film.” Some of the tension seemed to go out of the room—Carrie gave a shaky laugh and sat down on one of the treasure chests, which looked like a brilliant idea, why didn’t Chris try doing that—and Redd relaxed enough to turn an accusing glare on Dr. McRae.

  “Nobody believed me when I told three different police officers about the San Telmo because I also suggested Ryan might have been abducted by aliens?”

  “You also suggested Ryan might have been abducted by aliens,” Dr. McRae repeated patiently. “Also, there was a moderate case of police corruption going on at the time, but it bears repeating: Robin, you seriously suggested Ryan might have been abducted by aliens.”

  “Maria,” Detective Hermann interrupted suddenly and sharply, “do you know how deep this trench goes?”

  Maria tilted her head to one side and frowned, thinking. “Not really, I was trying not to get lost in the depths . . . Oh. Oh no, he didn’t—” Eyes wide, she joined Detective Hermann by the spot where Professor Griffin had fallen. It was also a spot where, despite the appearance of a calm surface, there was a deep trench. There was no body, and when Maria looked inquisitively at Detective Hermann he plunged his hand into the water up past his armpit, st
opping only when his nose began to get wet.

  “He did,” Detective Hermann said. “He sank. And he hit his head hard when he fell—if you don’t mind seeing how far you can go straight down?” Maria nodded and disappeared into the water. “Not like it’s going to make much difference at this point,” the detective said. “There’s a good chance he’s taken in enough water to drown by now.”

  Chris couldn’t quite believe it. Professor Griffin threatening them with a gun, yes; but Professor Griffin accidentally hitting his head and drowning because he fell down a chasm in an underwater cave system? It was not at all in character.

  “What made the professor trip?” he asked.

  They all looked at him, and then Detective Hermann felt around the silty bottom for the culprit. Eventually he held up a grimy and slightly weather-beaten tangle of gold. “It’s some kind of metal circlet,” he said, and Chris broke out in chills.

  Of all the things to trip over.

  “The golden flower crown,” Maddison said. “Isn’t that exactly the relic your aunt most wanted to find?”

  Utterly spooked, Chris agreed that it was, and checked the shadowy corners of the cave for ghosts, just in case. He didn’t believe it was her—and yet if it wasn’t somehow Aunt Elsie protecting them from beyond the grave, this was one more coincidence than Chris could tolerate.

  Maria came back up breathless despite the fact that she had her own air supply. “The current gets really strong and the sediment’s been stirred up,” she said, shaking her head. “If he is down there I can’t find him.”

  Detective Hermann sighed and thanked Maria for her efforts, and it was a much more subdued group that made their way back out of the cave and to the Meandering Manatee, miraculously still exactly where they had left her. As they waded through the shallows Chris overheard the detective admit to Dr. McRae, in an undertone, that he wasn’t surprised they hadn’t found Professor Griffin. “Sea caves can be dangerous, and people who die in them don’t often leave bodies to be buried,” he said quietly, and Dr. McRae said that he was inclined to agree with him. Chris wasn’t so sure.

  “It’s just that I don’t think we’re going to be safe until we see his d—his body again,” he told Carrie on the trip back to harbor. “Otherwise, for all we know, the professor could still be out there somewhere, watching and biding his time.”

  “We don’t exist in a comic book universe,” Carrie pointed out. “There’s no reason to think Professor Griffin could have survived. Even if he did there’s certainly no reason to think he’s going to bounce back from nearly drowning just so he can come after us!”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  Carrie sighed, all the fury going out of her at once. “No,” she said, “I don’t, actually. But what are we supposed to do? Dredge the sea caves?”

  FORREST HUNG UP THE PHONE AND ROLLED HIS shoulders with a sigh. “And the last marina is a no-go,” he said. Michelle groaned and put her head down on the newspaper-covered desk.

  “That makes two ‘no record matches,’ three ‘we don’t keep records,’ and one ‘mind your own business,’ for a total of six marinas on the island and zero leads,” Michelle mumbled into the business section of the newspaper.

  “So, as soon as we have something to eat, we can go take a look around the three who don’t keep records,” Forrest said. He shifted three newspapers and a phone book out of the way before he found a local map. “And we can see if visiting in person goes over better with the ‘mind your own business’ marina,” he added as he circled the marinas he wanted to visit. In Michelle’s experience, people who told the FBI to mind its own business over the phone were even less inclined to be nice when the FBI turned up in person, but Forrest was eternally hopeful and she was too sick of doing phone calls to shoot down his hopes. And it would get them outside for a bit, doing something other than talking on the phone all day. Michelle was sick to death of phones. If she didn’t have to pick one up for the rest of the evening it would be a relief.

  The phone rang.

  Michelle glared at it, which solved nothing, and then sighed and answered it before Forrest could panic and answer it himself. It was the phone on her desk, and therefore her responsibility.

  “Agent Grey?” Detective Hermann asked. “Oh good. I was afraid you might have gone out to dinner already. Listen, we have a bit of a situation here . . .”

  At first, Brad thought he was staring at a corpse. Griffin had missed the arranged pickup, and Brad had been forced to hide in a tree so the lavender-and-crimson monstrosity of a passing boat didn’t notice him. When he finally felt safe enough to climb out of the tree and try looking for the boat himself, he stumbled over a body lying motionless on the beach. He’d almost cut and run right then, but he had nowhere to run to and he was almost positive that the body had groaned when he tripped over it. Mostly positive. Oh please let it not be a dead body.

  It had already been a terrible day. When Griffin had made some massive realization about what the coordinates on his little yellow sticky note meant he had gone tearing off to his boat in high spirits, but by the time they rounded the jutting limestone cliffs and found the tiny bay with a boat anchored in it he had reverted to a stony silence broken only by direct instructions to Brad and mutterings of how it was his treasure, his, his, not theirs. Brad would happily have decked the man and made a break for it and never mind the consequences, but the professor was either too paranoid for him or perfectly aware of what Brad was planning. It was probably the latter. He couldn’t have been so effective at keeping Brad from running unless he knew that was what Brad wanted to do.

  Even finding a rickety ship painted purple and red floating in what passed for a bay—undeniable proof that they were hot on the trail of the Kingsolvers—hadn’t seemed to lift Griffin’s spirits, and when they’d discovered the footprints in the damp sand that pointed them directly after the Kingsolvers, the college professor had been too busy getting freaked out by a random set of wind chimes in a nearby tree to appreciate the stroke of luck.

  Nervously, Brad poked the maybe-a-corpse. He’d almost cut and run several times today—once when Griffin announced he was going into a cave system alone and needed Brad to stay outside and keep watch; once when, not long after the professor had disappeared, he’d heard muffled gunshots and felt the ground shake; and once when the police detective and the Kingsolvers had come hurrying out of the cave minus Griffin and booked it to their lavender horror of a boat. Only fear had kept him hidden, first behind a pile of driftwood and then up a tree—fear of Griffin taking revenge on him for his abandonment, and fear of the charges he was going to get slapped with if the police caught him—his fingerprints were all over that first boat Griffin had crashed, and the girl’s books, from where he dropped them at the library. There was even a nagging fear that they might have ticked off something supernatural.

  Brad had never believed in the supernatural, unless you counted persistent fear of the thing that lived under the bed, but Griffin had progressed from jumping at shadows that were actually there to jumping at things that weren’t, and Brad wondered if it was the work of a guilty conscience, or a psychotic break . . . or something more. Things kept going wrong for them in ways that left Griffin snarling with fury and Brad . . . unsettled. Creeped out, even. Case in point: if he wasn’t dead, Griffin was out cold. And Brad was in trouble. Brad had overheard the police detective calling in a search-and-rescue team on his way out. This place was going to be crawling with police as soon as they could either get a car halfway across the island or get a boat out, and Brad did not want to be here when they did.

  Griffin didn’t seem dead, though, and he had the boat keys in his pocket, so maybe . . . Brad gingerly grabbed the professor’s shoulder and gave it a firm shake. Nothing happened. Terrified but determined, Brad shook the man again, harder this time, and said, “Professor Griffin? Can you hear me?” Still nothing.

  “Come on come on come onnn,” Brad said, shaking Griffin f
rantically, and suddenly the man choked and gagged and started spitting out water. Some remnant of a high-school first-aid class took over and Brad rolled him over on his side so he could cough out a shocking amount of water.

  “Are you okay?” Brad asked when Griffin had hauled himself into a sitting position, breathing in heavy gasps. “How did you get here? What happened? For a minute there you weren’t breathing—”

  “Brad,” Griffin said firmly, as if he wasn’t pale and soggy and sporting an impressive bruise on his forehead. There was something wrong with his eyes—one of the pupils was as tiny as a pinprick but the other looked normal. “I’m fine,” he said. Which was so obviously not true Brad just gaped at him. Griffin clearly had a concussion.

  “I don’t mean physically, of course,” Griffin said in a hoarse voice. “But my mind’s quite all right and we have to go now.”

  “Go where?” Privately, Brad thought there was something not quite all right with Griffin’s brain, but he didn’t dare mention it.

  “After that ship, of course,” Griffin said, dragging himself to his feet and managing—somehow—not to fall flat on his face. “They’re on their way to announce the discovery of the San Telmo to the world and we’ve got to stop them before they do, it’s imperative that I be credited with the discovery.” Aaaaaand there was the crazy look again. “And I believe they may have caught me confessing to the murders of Elsie and Ryan on tape,” Griffin added as an afterthought. Brad gulped. The professor didn’t seem to notice. “Now, come,” he continued, “there’s a simply enormous pile of gold in it for you.”

  Reluctantly, Brad got to his feet and let Professor Griffin lead the way to the boat they had hidden under a draping of camouflage netting and some driftwood. Brad didn’t want to know where the professor had found military-grade camouflage netting or why he’d ever expected to need it. As he followed he thought—but didn’t dare say it out loud—that it would have been so much easier for everyone if Griffin really had been a corpse.