by Roland Smith
“Disguises!” Luther said. “Like Ted Bronson. I’ve been watching how he does it. I think I can do it better.”
“You’re dreaming,” Marty said. “But there are a couple of things we could do. And we’re the last two people they’ll be looking for.”
“So you’re in?”
“Duh du jour,” Marty answered.
• • •
Marty and Luther had loaded two small backpacks with things they thought they might need. Sitting on the nightstand in their cabin aboard the Coelacanth were Rose’s last two Moleskine journals. On the trip back from New Zealand, Marty had read all but these last two. He’d discovered virtually no useful information about Rose and Noah Blackwood. He thought about leaving these last two behind, then thought better of it. If he didn’t get time to read them ashore, maybe he could pass them on to Grace. He slipped them into his pack.
He and Luther were just about to leave when a boy with dark hair stepped into their cabin.
“Are you Marty and Luther?”
“Yeah. I’m Marty.”
“I’m Luther.”
“I see that,” the boy said, staring at Luther’s hair. “My name’s Dylan Hickock. I guess we’re going to be bunking with each other for the next couple of days. I’ve been looking for you. Did you know the ship’s about ready to cast off?”
“Now that you mention it, yeah,” Marty said, noticing the vibrations and loud rumbling of the engines. “We better hurry. Cap doesn’t care who’s on board or who isn’t. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”
A small yapping black dog the size of a squirrel ran into the cabin between Dylan’s legs, making him jump. “What’s that?” he blurted out.
“Teacup poodle,” Marty said. “PD. Short for Pocket Dog.”
A second later a gray parrot flew in, screeching. Dylan covered his ears.
“That’s Congo,” Marty said.
“You’re kind of jumpy for someone who’s seen Bigfoot,” Luther quipped.
“You heard about that,” Dylan said.
“Not in any detail, but Marty had a Bigfoot encounter, too. Of course, it really wasn’t Sasquatch, it was a chimp.”
“Shut up, Luther,” Marty said.
Luther grinned. “Are we going to take these two with us?”
Congo had landed on his perch and started to loudly crack sunflower seeds. PD had stopped yapping and was running circles around Marty’s feet.
“They’re too much trouble together. I’ll take PD.” He held his baggy cargo pocket open. “Snake!”
PD jumped into the pocket and disappeared.
“Hence the name,” Dylan said.
“Yeah.” Marty said. “She’s terrified of snakes. Saying snake works every time.”
The three boys hurried out of the cabin and ran across the deck, reaching the gangway just as it was being winched up.
“Jump!” Luther yelled.
They leaped the four-foot gap. Marty and Dylan made it with several feet to spare. Luther stumbled and plunged into the cold waters of Puget Sound.
“Can he swim?” Dylan shouted.
“Not very well.”
Dylan ran back toward the gangway and dove off the dock and into the water like a cormorant. By the time Marty reached the edge and looked over, Dylan had the sputtering Luther in a headlock and was towing him toward a ladder attached to one of the pilings. Marty helped them onto the dock.
“I can’t believe we fell!” Luther said. He looked at Marty. “And I can’t believe you didn’t, as clumsy as you are.”
Marty was a natural athlete and didn’t have a clumsy bone in his body, which Luther was well aware of. Luther also knew that Dylan had jumped in after him, but Dylan didn’t correct him — it would have been bad form to do so. In fact, his cold bluish lips were grinning. You either loved Luther or hated him. There was no in-between. Luckily, Dylan seemed to like him.
“We need to go to the Ark,” Luther said through chattering teeth, pouring salt water out of his backpack. “Where’s the car?”
“In the lot,” Dylan said. “Maybe we should stop by the condo and get dried out first.”
“I’m fine,” Luther said, wringing out the bottom edge of his T-shirt, “but if you need to, I guess that would be okay.”
Marty gave Luther a humongous eyeball roll.
“What?” Luther said.
They followed Dylan to the parking lot, where he unlocked a battered crew cab truck with a cracked windshield and a missing hubcap.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Luther said. “Ted …” He looked at Marty. “I mean Theo Sonborn drives a junker?”
It seemed Ted did not limit his disguise to his body. A trashed truck was exactly the kind of vehicle that Theo would drive.
“Not much to look at,” Dylan said. “But it runs. I’m just happy to have wheels. It was nice of him to loan it to me.”
“How long have you had your license?” Marty asked.
“A couple of months.”
“Shotgun!” Luther jumped into the passenger seat.
Marty wedged himself unhappily into the crew cab but was soon redeemed when Luther started sneezing from his plunge into Puget Sound.
“We need windshield wipers on the inside!” Dylan said, his head pressed against the driver’s side window, trying to duck the fallout.
Marty decided that he liked Dylan.
Twenty-seven sneezes later, they arrived at a condo that overlooked Lake Washington.
“Nice digs …” Haa-choo! “… dude.”
As soon as they were inside the foyer of the condo, Dylan handed Luther a box of tissues. Farther down the hallway, he opened a door. “My bedroom’s in here. Spare clothes in the closet. The bathroom has a washer and dryer.”
“My clothes don’t need washing,” Luther said, “but the dryer will come in handy.” He looked at Marty. “Lucky I fell in the drink and not you. You have the graphic novels in your pack. That would have been a disaster.”
Marty had more important things than their novels in his backpack, like the Gizmo and the dragonspy and the Moleskines. It would have been an even worse disaster if they’d lost any of those. He fished the Gizmo out of his backpack and slipped it into another cargo pocket for safekeeping. PD was still dozing in his makeshift papoose.
“Graphic novels?” Dylan said.
“We’re artists,” Luther said grandly.
Marty gave him an eye roll, which Luther ignored.
“I love graphic novels,” Dylan said. “Can I see them?”
“They’re kind of rough,” Marty said.
“Two volumes so far,” Luther said. “They recount our adventures all over the world.”
Our adventures was an exaggeration. Luther had not been in the Congo when Marty and Grace found the Mokélémbembé eggs, but he had been aboard the Coelacanth when they hatched.
“The third volume is a work in progress,” Luther continued. “We live these stories. That’s where our inspiration comes from. I can’t promise, but we might be able to turn your Bigfoot encounter into a graphic novel — if it’s interesting enough.”
“It’s pretty interesting,” Dylan said. “I actually wrote the story down, but didn’t want to put it out there for public consumption.”
“You have a title?” Luther asked.
“Right now I’m just calling it Sasquatch.”
“Bet I can come up with a catchier title,” Luther said.
Marty gave Luther yet another eye roll, then looked at Dylan. “I’d like to read it.”
“Sure. As long as you keep the story to yourself.” He turned to Luther. “I’m surprised Dr. Wolfe let you write about his exploits. I thought he liked to keep what he does quiet.”
“They’re not just his exploits,” Luther said. “He’ll come around.” He walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind himself.
Dylan looked at Marty. “Is he always like this?”
“Sometimes he’s weirder,” Marty answered. “And
he’s wrong about my uncle. Wolfe will never change his mind about going public. He likes to keep things secret.”
“Cryptic,” Dylan said.
“Yeah,” Marty agreed.
Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
“What’s that?”
“A note to you from Wolfe.” He handed it to him. “Theo gave it to me.”
Dylan is on the team. You can tell him anything.
No restrictions. Stay out of trouble. I mean it.
Wolfe
“What do you know so far?” Marty asked.
“I know about the dinosaurs and that Noah Blackwood nabbed them from the Coelacanth. I know your cousin Grace went with Blackwood. I assume that’s why you want to go to Noah’s Ark?”
Marty nodded.
“Does your uncle know?”
“Not exactly.”
Dylan grinned. “Like in, not at all.”
“He wouldn’t be too happy if he knew.”
“I’m not your babysitter.”
“Lucky for you,” Marty said. “When we were kids, Grace and I drove every nanny we had stark raving mad.”
“Imagine what Luther did to his sitters,” Dylan said.
“I think he had keepers rather than sitters. You want to look at the graphic novels?”
“Yeah. And if you’re hungry, there’s plenty of food in the kitchen.”
Marty let PD out of his pocket and followed the poodle into the kitchen.
• • •
Forty-five minutes later, Marty came out carrying a huge platter of food with PD at his heels.
Dylan looked up from the dining room table, where he was reading the second graphic novel. “These illustrations are great.”
“Thanks. Half of them are Luther’s.” Marty set the platter on the table.
“What’s this?”
“Middle Eastern food. Stuffed grape leaves, hummus, baba ghanoush, flat bread, and tabouli.”
“There wasn’t any Middle Eastern in the kitchen the last time I checked.”
“Yes, there was,” Marty said. “It was just in a different form, except for the flat bread.”
“So you cook, too?”
“I can get around a kitchen.” This was an understatement. The only thing Marty liked doing better than drawing was cooking. “Where’s Luther?”
“Haven’t seen him.”
That can’t be good, Marty thought, looking at the bedroom door.
Dylan pointed at one of the drawings. “Is Theo Sonborn really Ted Bronson?”
Marty nodded. “The illustration doesn’t do the real transformation justice.”
“You’ve got that right,” Luther said, coming through the door.
PD barked and jumped back into Marty’s cargo pocket.
Marty and Dylan stared at Luther in shock. He was completely bald, except the bits of tissue stemming the flow of blood from dozens of nicks on his pale scalp.
Luther gave them a triumphant grin. “I bet Noah Blackwood wouldn’t recognize me now if we tripped over each other.”
“I bet Noah Blackwood would run if he saw you from a hundred yards away,” Marty said. “You look like an extraterrestrial that got his head stuck in a wood chipper. You may need stitches.”
“Head wounds look worse than they are.” Luther spotted the platter on the table. “Food!” He started gobbling down stuffed grape leaves and shoveling baba ghanoush into his mouth with flat bread. “Aren’t you guys eating?”
For some reason, Marty and Dylan had lost their appetites.
“Do you have a beanie?” Marty asked Dylan.
“I think so,” Dylan replied.
“I hope so,” Marty said back.
Grace walked into the mansion smelling like dinosaur emissions. She was in for a brutally hot shower, where she would have to scrub herself raw to get rid of the odor. But it was worth it. She loved hanging out with the hatchlings in spite of the resulting stench — and having to be near Yvonne.
As soon as she stepped into her bedroom she knew someone had been going through her things. But she disguised her dismay, breezing in and kicking her tennis shoes off with a bright smile on her face. Remember the cameras, she thought. She crossed over to the dresser and opened a drawer as if she were getting fresh clothes. The drawers had clearly been gone through, but she kept her smile, acting as if her biggest concern was what to wear. She had arrived at the Ark with virtually nothing but the clothes on her back. Her grandfather had taken care of that by setting up a generous credit account on the Internet for her. All she had to do was find what she wanted, press the buy button, and the item would arrive the next day. There was a laptop on the desk, which she had only used to order things. She was afraid to set up a private email account or surf the web for fear that her every keystroke would be monitored.
On the bed was a pile of freshly laundered towels. She picked them up and walked into the bathroom. As soon as she had closed the door behind her she let out a sigh of relief. Acting cheerful when you weren’t cheerful was very taxing. She looked around the bathroom again for cameras, but didn’t see any. Next she went over to the toilet, disappointed to note that the water tank did not look disturbed. She removed the lid and set it on the seat. A smile spread across her face, but this time it was a genuine smile. The Ziploc bag was floating zip side down. She had left it floating zip side up. There wasn’t enough room in the tank for it to flip upside down on its own. A fish had nibbled on the bait. But which fish? Had Noah Blackwood searched her room, or was it someone else? There was only one fish she was trying to hook.
Her grandfather’s mansion was nothing like Wolfe’s house — or fort, as Wolfe called it — on Cryptos Island. In fact, the two homes could not be more different. Noah’s mansion was ultramodern, Spartan, antiseptic like a hospital operating room. The only other person she had seen within its stark white walls was her grandfather. Her bedroom, and the entire house, was cleaned within an inch of its life every single day, but she had yet to lay eyes on a maid. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were lonely affairs. By the time she got to the massive dining room, the food was already laid out no matter what time she arrived. No servers or cooks. Noah Blackwood certainly wasn’t preparing the food and setting the table. She had visited the kitchen several times at different times of day. Not once had she found anyone in there. It was like the meals were cooked by ghosts. When she had asked her grandfather about this, he answered, cryptically, that he preferred his help to be neither heard nor seen. “They are employees. This house is for family,” he had said. As far as she knew, she and her grandfather were the only two people in the Blackwood family. Half the time, her grandfather didn’t show up in the dining room for meals and she ate alone.
Grace missed Wolfe’s cluttered fort, which looked more like a Gothic castle than a home. Jammed into every room was a mishmash of antique and new furniture in total disarray. Meals were communal affairs. The kitchen and dining room were free-for-alls, with everyone participating in the food prep and the eating.
She pulled the Moleskine from the tank and shook off the water in the sink. She had written several pages. It was the most difficult writing she had ever done, because it was filled with lies.
I suppose that’s what bait is, Grace thought. A lie dangling on the end of an invisible line. She opened the Moleskine. But to hook a fish, the bait has to be believable.
She skimmed the first several pages and got to the section she had penned that morning, hoping it was convincing enough to negate her grandfather’s suspicions.
Timothy and Sylvia lied by letting me believe they were my parents and Marty was my twin brother. Wolfe lied by letting me believe he was my uncle when in fact he was my father. As far as I know, the only adult who hasn’t lied to me is Noah Blackwood, my grandfather. Wolfe and the others say he’s the biggest liar of them all. But I’m not so sure now.
It’s not bad here. I miss Marty of course, and I’m a little lonely, but when I think about it, I�
�m pretty happy, all things considered. Butch lets me do whatever I want. I know he’s not thrilled to be hanging out with me, but I think he enjoys it in his own way. He’s not nearly as tough as he’d like people to believe. When I finish my entry for the day, I’m going to ask him to take me down to play with the panda cubs. They are so adorable! Afterward I want to spend some more time with the hatchlings and Yvonne. She’s not as bad as I thought, either. She’s already taught me a lot about animal behavior and training.
Grandfather wasn’t there for breakfast today … again. I really miss his company and I hope he shows up for lunch. I want to spend more time with him. He’s my only relative. We have a lot of catching up to do, but we can’t do that unless we’re together.
Grace hoped this wasn’t over the top. She knew that Noah Blackwood, being one of the most accomplished liars of all time, was no doubt equally skilled at spotting liars. When she’d arrived at the Ark, she’d held on to a small hope that Noah Blackwood was not as bad as she’d thought. But after a few days the hope had all but vanished. Beyond his smiling, pleasant exterior there was something fundamentally wrong. It was clear from watching his interactions with his staff that they were all terrified of him. Even Butch, although he tried to hide it, was afraid of Noah Blackwood.
She looked at her ridiculously expensive Swiss watch. It had cost her grandfather twenty-three thousand dollars. He hadn’t batted an eye. Trinkets like this were his bait. The iPad was another one. Shiny, irresistible lures. If she didn’t nibble at the bait, he would think the fish wasn’t biting. Grace had never worn a watch in her life, she couldn’t care less about jewelry, but she had made a huge fuss over the timepiece. The more things, or trinkets, she accepted from her grandfather, the more she had to lose if she ran away. The more she accepted, the more he would trust her. It was an hour before lunch. If her grandfather showed up for the meal, she’d know the bait was working.
She slipped the Moleskine into the Ziploc bags and put it back into the tank, noting the exact position. With the Moleskine back in place, she took off her dinosaur-soiled clothes and dropped them down the laundry chute.
Laundry elves, she thought. Noah had bought her thousands of dollars’ worth of clothes, but she had only worn two outfits so far, simply switching the dirty clothes for the laundered ones. In a couple of hours the clothes she’d dumped would be back in her dresser, cleaned, pressed, and folded.