by Rick Riordan
"What?" Amy wasn't really listening. She sank to her knees and watched as the only place she'd ever cared about went up in flames. She pictured Grace telling her stories in the library. She remembered running down the halls, playing tag with Dan when they were little. She thought of the secret nook in the bedroom where she liked to read with Saladin on her lap. All gone. Her whole body shook. Tears welled up in her eyes. For the second time in her life, fire had robbed her.
"Amy." Dan sounded close to tears, but he put a hand on her shoulder. "You've got to listen. He took it. Alistair did."
Amy wanted to tell Dan to shut up and let her mourn in peace, but then she realized what he was talking about. She got unsteadily to her feet and stared into the distance, where the BMW's taillights were disappearing around a hill.
Alistair Oh had tricked them. He'd stolen the Poor Richard's Almanack with their mother's notes -- their only lead in the quest.
CHAPTER 6
Dan had always wanted to ride in a police car, but not like this.
His chest still hurt from the smoke. He sat in the backseat of the police car with
Saladin on his lap and tried not to wheeze, but every breath was like inhaling sand.
"If you'd just brought your inhaler..." Amy chided. But he hated his inhaler. It made
him feel like Darth Cahill or something. Besides, he hadn't had an attack in forever,
and he didn't know they were going to get caught in a stupid fire.
He couldn't believe the family mansion was gone. He'd woken up this morning sure that Amy and he would inherit the place. Now there was nothing left -- just a smoking
mountain of rubble.
The police detectives hadn't given them many answers. It looked like arson, they said. The fire spread too quickly to be an accident. They said William McIntyre would be okay. Amazingly, no one else had been hurt. Dan had told the police about Alistair Oh leaving the mansion in a big hurry. He figured he might as well try to get the old creep in trouble. But Dan had said nothing about the thirty-nine clues or the secret library or the strange guy with the binoculars.
"Who was the man in black?" Amy whispered, like she'd been thinking the same thing. She had Grace's jewelry box on her lap, and she was twisting her hair the way she always did when she was nervous.
"Don't know," Dan said. "Alistair?"
"He couldn't have been in two places at once."
"Mr. Holt?"
"Mr. Holt's not that old, and he's a lot more buff."
"Aunt Beatrice dressed as a man?" Personally, Dan liked this idea, because Beatrice definitely had the "evil" factor going for her. After all, she'd just left them at the mansion without a second thought. But Amy rolled her eyes.
"He wasn't anybody we know, Dan. At least, I'm pretty sure. But he was watching us, like he wanted to see if we got out. I think he set that fire to trap us."
"Mrrp,"
Saladin said.
"I agree with the cat," Dan said. "After that man in black and Uncle Alistair, I say we make a new RESOLUTION. Stay away from old guys."
"We'll have to be more careful about everybody." Amy lowered her voice even more. "Dan, our mother was involved in the thirty-nine clues. That writing -- "
"Yeah, but that's impossible. The contest just started!"
"It was Mom's writing. I'm sure.
She said, Follow Franklin, first clue. Maze of Bones. We have to find out what that means. This is just the kind of mystery Mom would've loved!"
Dan knew he shouldn't have felt annoyed, but he hated that Amy remembered more
about their parents than he did. He would never have recognized their mom's
handwriting. He had no idea what kind of person she'd been.
"We lost the book," he grumbled. "We kind of failed already, didn't we?"
Amy traced the monogram on top of Grace's jewelry box. "Maybe not. I have an idea,
but we're going to need an adult. Alistair was right about that. We'll never be able to
travel without one."
"Travel?" Dan said. "Where are we going?"
Amy glanced at the cop. She leaned closer to Dan and whispered, "First, we need to find a chaperone. And quickly.
Aunt Beatrice is going to call Social Services soon. We need to get home, get our stuff, and get out. If the police find out we've been disowned, they'll take us to a foster home or something. We'll never be able to find the thirty-nine clues."
Dan hadn't thought about this. He didn't know much about foster homes, but he figured he didn't want to live in one. Would a foster home let him take his collection? Probably not.
"So how do we get an adult?" he asked. "Rent one?"
Amy twisted her hair into a noose. "We need somebody who'll let us do what we want without asking too many questions. Somebody old enough to look like we're being chaperoned, but not strict enough that they'll try to stop us. Somebody kind of pliable."
"Does 'pliable' mean we can lie to them?"
"Mrrp,"
Saladin said, like that sounded good to him as long as he got fresh fish.
The police car turned onto Melrose Street and pulled up in front of their weathered brownstone apartment building.
"This is the address?" the cop asked. She sounded bored and annoyed. "Yes," Amy said. "I mean, yes, ma'am." "You sure there's somebody home? Your guardian or whatever?" "Nellie Gomez," Dan said. "She's our au pa -- "
His eyes widened. He looked at Amy, and he could tell she was thinking the same thing. It was so obvious even a Holt could've seen it.
"Nellie!" they said together. They got out of the police car with their cat and the jewelry box and raced up the front steps.
Nellie was just where Dan figured she'd be -- sacked out on the sofa with her earbuds in, bobbing her head to whatever weird music she was listening to while she punched text messages into her phone. A stack of cookbooks sat next to her on the couch. The top one read Exotic Mandarin Cuisine.
Dan let Saladin down to explore the apartment. Then he noticed the empty carton of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia –his Cherry Garcia -- sitting on the coffee table.
"Hey!" Dan protested. "That was mine!" Of course, Nellie didn't hear him. She kept jamming out and typing on her phone until Amy and Dan stood right over her. Nellie frowned like she was annoyed she had to actually work. She pulled out one earbud. "Back already? Whoa -- what happened? You're all grungy." "We need to talk," Amy said.
Nellie blinked, which was pretty cool to watch since her eyes were done in blue glitter eye shadow. She had a new nose ring shaped like a silver snake. Dan wondered why she wanted a snake curled inside her nostril. "What do we need to talk about, kiddo?" she asked.
Amy looked like she wanted to hit Nellie with the jewelry box. Dan knew she hated it when Nellie called her kiddo, but she kept her voice polite. "We -- we've got a deal for you. A new babysitting deal. It pays a lot of money." Nellie pulled out her other earbud. They had her attention now. Three words always worked with Nellie: guys, food, and money.
She stood up. She was wearing her ripped British flag T-shirt, faded jeans, and pink
plastic shoes. Her hair looked like a pile of wet straw -- half black, half blond.
She folded her arms and looked down at Amy. "Okay. What kind of deal?"
Dan was afraid Amy would freeze up, but she seemed to be keeping her nerves pretty
well. Nellie wasn't as intimidating as some of the other au pairs they'd had.
"Urn ... it's a trip," Amy said. "You'd be our chaperone."
Nellie frowned. "Why isn't your aunt asking me about this?"
"Oh, she broke her neck," Dan blurted out.
Amy gave him a look like Shut up!
"Broke her neck?" Nellie asked.
"It's not serious," Dan said. "Just a little break. She's, uh, going to be in the hospital for a while, though. So she figured we'd better take a trip. We talked to our Uncle Alistair. He said we'd need an adult to go with us."
That last part, at least,
was true. Dan didn't know where he was going with this, but he plunged ahead. He figured if he could just keep Nellie confused, she couldn't call him a liar.
"It's this thing our family does," he said. "Kind of like a scavenger hunt. We visit a bunch of places and have fun." "What sort of places?" Nellie asked.
"Oh, all kinds." Dan thought about the map in Grace's secret library -- all those pushpins. "That's part of the fun. We don't know all the places at the beginning. We could go all over the world."
Nellie's eyebrows shot up. "You mean, like, for free?"
Amy nodded, as if she were warming up to Dan's methods. "Yeah, it could take months! Traveling to exotic places where there's lots of ... um, food and guys. But you wouldn't need to be with us the whole time -- just for the adult stuff like buying airline tickets and checking into hotels and stuff. You'd have a lot of time on your own."
Yes, please,
Dan thought. Nellie was okay, but the last thing he wanted was her following them
around too closely.
"How are you going to pay for it?" Nellie said suspiciously.
Amy opened the jewelry box and dumped it on the table. The pearl bracelet, the
diamond ring, and the emerald earrings glittered.
Nellie's mouth dropped open. "Oh -- my -- god. Did you steal that?"
"No!" Amy said. "It's from our grandmother! She wanted us to take this trip. She said
so in her will."
Dan felt impressed. That wasn't exactly a lie, either.
Nellie stared at the jewelry. Then she picked up her phone and dialed.
Dan tensed. He had visions of Social Services - whatever that was - swooping in,
guys with white coats and nets, maybe, taking them to a foster home.
"Hello?" Nellie said into the phone. "Yeah, Dad, listen, I've got a new job for the
Cahills."
Pause.
"Yeah, it's really good money. So I can't make dinner tonight like I promised." Nellie picked up the diamond ring, but Amy snatched it away. "How long? Um ... we're traveling. So a few weeks. Maybe ... months?"
She yanked the phone away from her ear. On the other end, her dad was yelling in rapid Spanish.
"Dad!" Nellie said. "No, claw.
But the fall semester doesn't start for a month, and it's all, like, boring courses anyway. I
could just take more hours in the spring and -- " Another burst of angry Spanish.
"Well, if you'd let me go to cooking school instead of stupid regular college -- " Her dad's yelling got slightly louder than a nuclear explosion.
"Que, papa?" Nellie yelled. "Lo siento,
you're breaking up. I'll call you when I get a better signal. Love ya!" She hung up. "He's fine with it," she announced. "I'm in, kiddos."
On Amy's orders, Dan was only supposed to pack one bag. That meant clothes, but Dan wasn't interested in clothes. He looked around his room, trying to figure out what to take from his collections.
His bedroom was already way too small for his stuff. Against one wall were his tombstone rubbings. He'd have to roll them up or fold them to pack them, and that would ruin them. His closet was stacked with plastic bins holding his card collection and coin portfolios -- too many to choose from. Under his bed were boxes full of old Civil War weapons, his casts, his autographed celebrity photos, and a ton of other stuff.
He picked up his laptop, which he'd bought from the computer science teacher at school for $300. He'd have to take that, because he used it to find out stuff and make money. He knew the exact value of every trading card on the Internet. He'd learned to sell his duplicate cards at school and in the local card shops for a little more than he'd paid. It wasn't much, but he could make about $100 a month if he was lucky. And he was lucky. Unfortunately, he spent the money on rare stuff as fast as he made it.
He slipped the computer into his black duffel bag. Then he added three extra shirts, pants, underwear, a toothbrush, his inhaler, and -- finally -- his passport. Their parents had gotten them passports right before they died, when Dan was four. Dan didn't remember why. They'd never used them. Grace had insisted on renewing them last year, which had seemed kind of silly to Dan at the time. Now he wondered.
He shoved the passport to the bottom of the bag. There was hardly any room left. No way could he fit even a tenth of his stuff.
He dug under his mattress and brought out his photo album. It was a big white binder holding his most important collection: photos of his parents. There was only one. It was burned around the edges: the only photograph that had survived the fire. His mom and dad were standing on the summit of a mountain with their arms around each other, smiling for the camera. They both wore Gor-tex parkas and thermal climbing pants, with harnesses around their waists. Instead of helmets, they wore baseball caps, so their eyes were hidden in shadows. His dad, Arthur, was tall and tan with salt-and-pepper hair and a nice smile. Dan wondered if he would look like that when he got older. His mom, Hope, had reddish-brown hair like Amy's. She was a little younger than their dad, and Dan thought she was very pretty. Her hat was an Orioles cap. His dad's was a Red Sox. Dan wondered if that was random, or if those were their favorite teams, and if they ever fought about which one was better. He didn't know. He didn't even know if they had green eyes like he did, because the caps hid their faces.
He wanted to collect other photos of them. He wanted to know where else they traveled and what they wore. He wanted to see a picture that had him
in it. But there was nothing to collect. Everything from their old house had burned, and Grace always insisted she had no photographs of them, though Dan never understood why.
He stared at the photo and got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He thought about the fire at Grace's mansion, the man in black, Mr. McIntyre lying on the pavement, Uncle Alistair driving away like a madman, and his mom's handwriting in that Benjamin Franklin book.
What could be so important about a book? Dan knew the value of a lot of collectibles, but he'd never heard of anything worth burning down a house. Grace must've known what she was doing, setting up this contest. She wouldn't have let him and Amy down. Dan told himself that over and over, trying to believe it. There was a knock on his door. He took the plastic sleeve with the photograph out of the album and slipped it in his bag. He zipped it shut just as the door opened. "Hey, dweeb," Amy said, but she didn't really sound mean. "You almost done?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."
She'd taken a shower and changed clothes -- back into her regular jeans and green T-shirt. She frowned at his full duffel bag, then looked at all the bins sitting in the closet. Dan guessed she could tell he hadn't sorted through them.
"You could, uh, take a backpack, too," she offered. "If that helps."
Coming from Amy, it was a pretty nice thing to say. But Dan stared at his closet.
Somehow he knew he wouldn't be coming back here ever again. "Amy, how much money do you think we'll get for the jewelry?"
Her hand went to her neck, and Dan realized she was wearing Grace's jade necklace. "Um ... I don't know."
Dan understood why she looked guilty. He wasn't an expert at jewelry prices, but he figured that necklace was one of the most expensive pieces in the box. If she kept it, they wouldn't get nearly as much.
"They'll rip us off," he warned. "We don't have time to do it right. And anyway, we're just kids. We'll have to take the jewelry to somebody who can give us cash without asking a lot of questions. We'll probably only get a few thousand -- a fraction of what the stuff is worth."
"We'll need transportation for three people," Amy said uncertainly. "And hotels. And
food."
Dan took a deep breath. "I'm going to sell my cards and coins. There's a shop down on the square -- "
"Dan! You've spent years collecting that stuff!"
"It'll double our money. The store will rip me off, but I can get three thousand easy for all of it."
Amy stared at him like he'd dropped in fr
om outer space. "Dan, I think the smoke messed up your brain. Are you sure?"
For some weird reason, he was. He wanted to go on this clue hunt more than he wanted his collection. He wanted to get back at whoever had burned down Grace's house. He wanted to find the secret of the thirty-nine clues. Most of all, he wanted to finally use that stupid passport and make his parents proud. Maybe along the way he'd find new photos for his album. "I'm sure," he said.
Amy did something completely disgusting. She hugged him.
"Gross!" Dan protested.
He pushed her away. Amy was smiling, but she had tears in her eyes. "Maybe you're not such a dweeb," she said.
"Yeah, well, stop crying already, and let's get out of -- wait, where are we going?" "Tonight a hotel in town," she said. "Then tomorrow ... I've got an idea about Ben Franklin."
"But you don't have the book anymore."
"I didn't need the book for this. Mom's note said 'Follow
Franklin.' Ben Franklin started as a printer here in Boston, when he was a teenager working for his brother."
"So we just look around town?"
Amy shook her head. "That's what the others are probably doing. But we're going to follow where he went next, like follow his life. Benjamin Franklin didn't stay in Boston. When he was seventeen, he ran away from his brother's shop and started his own printing business in another city." "So we run away, too! We follow Franklin!"
"Exactly," Amy said. "I just hope nobody else has thought of that yet. We need to book three train tickets to Philadelphia."
"Philadelphia," Dan repeated. The only things he knew about Philadelphia were the Liberty Bell and the Phillies. "So when we get there, what do we look for?" Amy touched the jade necklace like it might protect her. "I'm guessing a secret that could get us killed."