Click Here to Start

by Denis Markell

  Isabel has just elbowed me hard in the ribs.

  Now, this part, with her hitting me, this is definitely new information.

  I hold up my hands, flinching. “Let me explain….”

  Isabel crosses her arms. “Okay, I’m waiting. And please don’t insult me with any more talk about some game on your laptop telling you what to do.”

  I wince. “Give me a second.” I’m trying to buy a little time. Nothing is coming.

  I have to make it good. Isabel is too smart.

  A look of contempt passes over her face. “All along, I thought you were kind of a cool guy, and now I find out you’re a…a…”

  “A what?” I ask, starting to get a little angry myself.

  “You want me to say it? Okay, a pervert! God, spying on me like that! No wonder my dad didn’t want me to have any contact with you!”

  “Are you on drugs? How does that even make any sense?”

  Isabel is pacing now. “Sure. That man who came and visited my father and upset him so much, he’s probably a neighbor, and he saw you outside my window and told my father. And you concocted this whole thing to make yourself look like a hero or something.”

  Isabel has worked herself up again, and runs at me.

  Seeing her coming, I put Caleb between me and another blow to the head.

  Isabel pulls up short and stands there panting. “You’re so smart, huh? Let’s see you escape this!” Just as she reaches to push Caleb out of the way, there’s a buzz from my phone.

  “Hold that thought,” I say. “I think that’s my dad.”

  It is indeed a text from Dad. Oh, perfect.

  Checking in. We said noon, right?

  Just once, I wish Mom were wrong about the not listening. This is perfect.

  Isabel is staring at me, with fire still in her eyes. “So?”

  “That was our ride,” I say simply. “My dad isn’t coming for another hour.”

  “What? But that means—” Isabel begins.

  The three of us freeze as a familiar heart-churning sound comes from up the street.

  The unmistakable sound of a throaty engine returning.

  I turn accusingly to Isabel. “You said your father was gone for the day!”

  “He’s supposed to be,” she says, her hand rising to her mouth. “Maybe the conference has been canceled?”

  Too soon, a large, expensive car turns onto the road. But it’s the Jaguar XJ6 sedan, with a welcome familiar face at the wheel.

  Stan opens the door and gestures to us to come over. Scarcely believing it, we run over.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “I went by your house this morning to try to talk to you again and saw you guys on your bikes. I guess I hoped that maybe you were going to get whatever your great-uncle left you.”

  “So you thought Ted had buried it in the woods or something?” Isabel asks.

  “I’ve seen it happen,” Stan says. “But then I saw you guys kind of dusting it up back there, and wondered what was going on, so—”

  “It wasn’t anything about his great-uncle,” Isabel says, brushing herself off. “It was…a misunderstanding.”

  Great! I think I’m off the hook, until I see the look she shoots me.

  “So, do you guys need a lift?” Stan asks.

  We look at each other in relief.

  “Could you possibly drop us off at my house?” I say.

  “Sure, no problem. Hop in!” Stan says happily.

  Isabel goes back, picks up The Maltese Falcon from the ground where she flung it after punching me, and brushes it off. She heads to the car without so much as a backward glance at me and Caleb.

  I note darkly that Isabel immediately chooses to ride up front with Stan, relegating me and Caleb to the backseat.

  Stan asks her how long she’s lived in the neighborhood, how she likes California, stuff like that. Since neither of them seems to want to include us, I text my dad to tell him we got a lift from Stan, and turn to Caleb.

  “How are you gonna explain this to her?” he asks me. “I mean, I know you’re a genius with these games, but you have to admit, it is a little wild that you knew her wallet was on her desk and—”

  “It was all deduction,” I sigh. “I swear to God.”

  “Hey, I believe you, but Isabel’s the one you have to convince.”

  For a while we ride in silence. The two up front continue to chat away like old friends.

  This is good for me. As we near my block, I’ve worked out my entire defense. I just have to pray that it will work.

  We’re about to turn into my driveway when I hear Isabel say, “Thanks so much. When we heard the car, we got a little spooked that you might be my father.”

  “What’s the matter?” jokes Stan. “Your dad doesn’t want you to hang around with these clowns?”

  “Something like that,” Isabel says. “Some guy visited him last night, and after that, Father freaked out and tried to keep me locked in the house.”

  There’s a squealing sound and we’re thrown forward as Stan slams on the brakes.

  “Your fa-father had a visitor last night?” Even from the backseat, I can see that his knuckles are white as he grips the steering wheel. “Someone from the college?” he asks hopefully.

  Isabel frowns. “I don’t think so. It was someone he didn’t know. And it was a pretty intense conversation.”

  “Fu-Fudgie the Whale!” Stan exclaims.

  “Excuse me?” I ask, trying to figure out what’s going on.

  “I was going to say something else, but then I remembered there were kids in the car,” Stan explains.

  “It’s okay, I go to private school—our teachers curse all the time,” Isabel remarks.

  It seems like all the blood has drained from Stan’s face.

  “You don’t think this has anything to do with my great-uncle?” I ask.

  “Er, no, of course not,” Stan says, in that way that means Absolutely I do.

  He pulls the car up to our driveway and we get out.

  “So what do we do now?” asks Caleb.

  “We?” says Stan, who seems in a hurry to get the heck out of here. “Well, I’ve got a lot of errands to do…and like I said, I’ll be leaving LA today. It’s been great meeting you kids….”

  “Are you running away?” asks Isabel, using her best “let’s be real” voice.

  Stan is visibly sweating now. “The thing is…I didn’t sign up for this. I’m just supposed to find stuff and report back to my father and the other Monuments Men. I promise as soon as I get home I’ll get him to call someone and they can come out and—”

  He doesn’t even finish the sentence before he’s slammed the door and backed out onto the street. He’s going so fast he almost hits two garbage cans on the curb.

  We watch him drive away.

  “Our hero,” mutters Caleb.

  As soon as we hit the kitchen and before Isabel can open her mouth, I hold up my hand.

  “You said you wanted an explanation, and I guess I owe you one,” I announce.

  Isabel looks at me. She starts to say something but changes her mind. Then, with a defiant look in her eye, she sits on one of the stools by the counter.

  “I’m waiting,” she finally says.

  I clear my throat. “Okay, let’s take one thing at a time. You have to understand that a lot of what I guessed comes from hours and hours of playing these games, and learning where things usually are in houses and how people think of passwords and stuff like that.”

  Isabel cuts in. “That doesn’t explain—”

  “Let me finish. Is it that weird that I knew you’d have a library card? You already told us you got that book from the library, remember? I mean, where else would it be but your wallet? I guessed it would be on your desk. You seem like the kind of girl who would have a place for everything. And I knew that the houses in your neighborhood were built in the seventies, when the room locks all worked the same way, with a button lock you could
disable with the old credit card trick.”

  “He’s right!” Caleb interjects. “Our house was built then, and we always do that if someone locks the bathroom door accidentally.”

  “Exactly,” I continue. “I’m sorry you got freaked out about the lip gloss, but you really jumped to some conclusions there. I have an older sister. And before she went to college, we shared a bathroom. She always kept her lip gloss in there. There were like a hundred tubes or something. So that was an educated guess.”

  Isabel’s face falls. She winces and puts her hand to her mouth, as if she wishes she could somehow take back everything she’s said and done.

  “So, you didn’t…,” she struggles. “I mean, it wasn’t like you—”

  “First of all, I would never do anything like that. Second of all, don’t you think your dad would call my parents, if not the police, if he thought that was the case? And third of all, I’m not that good at climbing trees.”

  Isabel gets up and crosses to me. For a moment, I’m not sure what she’s going to do. She leans in close to my face. It’s funny—I can smell the conditioner in her hair.

  Isabel winces. “I think you’re going to get a bruise there.” She pulls away and goes to the refrigerator. “Can I get some orange juice or something? I’m really thirsty.”

  I look at Caleb, who’s grinning from ear to ear. Crisis averted!

  “I think we all could use something to drink,” I say, reaching into the open fridge and grabbing the container. I pour three glasses, and we move into the living room.

  It’s time to get to work.

  “Listen, Isabel, this guy—the one who freaked your dad out so much. Could you describe him?”

  Isabel makes a face. “Sure, I guess so. Why? Do you think you know him?”

  “I doubt it,” I say. “But just the idea of him spooked Stan so much. What did he look like?”

  Caleb turns to a fresh sheet of paper in his sketchbook, and as Isabel begins to describe the man, he deftly fills in the contours.

  “He had kind of a squat face, with a double chin. And a big, broad nose, and a—what do you call it? A unibrow. And he was bald, except for a little fringe of black hair around his ears.”

  “How about his eyes? Were they big and bulging? Deep-set under a big caveman brow?” Caleb is firing questions as he rushes to keep up with Isabel’s description.

  “Big, I guess. Hard to tell. He had thick black glasses.”

  “Hipster glasses? Like he was wearing them as a joke?” I ask.

  “No, this guy didn’t look like he joked about anything. I think he had them because they were practical.”

  Caleb holds the pad at arm’s length, appraising his work. He adds a few more details and turns it around. Isabel gasps.

  “Oh my gosh! That’s him! You’re amazing!”

  I stare at the man in the picture. He looks dangerous. What did he tell Mr. Archer? What would make a father lock up his daughter?

  “So now all we’ve got is a key to somewhere and a book that doesn’t seem to mean anything,” I sum up.

  Caleb and Isabel look at each other. Caleb grins like an idiot, and there’s even a small smile on Isabel’s face. She turns back to me.

  “Actually, I think that book does mean something. I had a lot of time, so I read it while you two were—”

  “Gallivanting around?” Caleb interrupts helpfully.

  “Hey, someone learned a new vocabulary word!” Isabel exclaims. “And he used it correctly!”

  Suddenly, there’s the click of the back door opening and closing and the welcome sound of Mom’s voice. “Is that Isabel and Caleb I hear?”

  My mom bursts into the living room and gives us each a quick hug.

  I note with approval that Isabel has hidden the copy of The Maltese Falcon behind her back before Mom gets to her.

  “Please excuse the mess, Isabel. I’ve been working all week, and it’s not like anyone else here seems to notice.”

  Isabel gives my mom her best “I hear you” laugh.

  “I’m just going to get dinner ready. I’m afraid I can’t stay and chat. I’m covering for a friend tonight, so I don’t have that much time,” Mom explains to Isabel, and then sweeps out.

  My mom hums, opening and closing doors and drawers in the kitchen. I lean in and say in a low voice: “So—about the book?”

  “Right!” Isabel says excitedly. “It’s about this detective—”

  “The one who’s named after you,” Caleb throws in.

  “Miles Archer gets killed in the second chapter, actually. Can I finish, or are you going to keep interrupting with smart remarks?” Isabel asks sharply.

  “So it turns out there are a whole bunch of people after the same thing—this statue of a falcon made right after the Crusades. These Crusader knights—you know who they were?”

  Caleb rolls his eyes. “Yes, we know who the Crusader knights were. The ones who went to try to liberate the Holy Land from the Moors.”

  “According to this book, some of them took enormous amounts of wealth with them when they left,” Isabel continues. “And as a gesture of thanks to the Spanish king, they sent him a falcon statue each year. The first year it was encrusted with every type of priceless jewel, and probably made of solid gold.”

  I pick up the old paperback and flip through the pages. “So this is a history book?”

  Isabel sighs. “No! It’s fiction! It’s all made up! It’s not like the Maltese Falcon ever really existed. But I think it’s kind of a message from your great-uncle.”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “Well, these people were all looking for this incredibly valuable thing and were willing to kill for it.”

  “So what happens in the end?” demands Caleb.

  “So,” says Isabel, “the bad guys finally get it—well, they think they do—and it turns out to be fake. Well, that’s not really the part I think your great-uncle was trying to tell you. I think it was more about the search for this thing of great value. That you can be fooled into thinking you’ve found it when you haven’t.”

  Caleb put his head in his hands. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  There is a pause.

  Isabel purses her lips. “Okay, maybe that wasn’t it either.”

  I suddenly feel very tired. “So basically you’re saying we’re back where we started. I’m glad it was a cool book, but you really don’t know what it has to do with figuring out what the key goes to.”

  “Well…,” Isabel says slowly. “We are back where we started. But that’s a good thing. Because while I had all that time, I figured something else out as well.”

  “How can being back where we started be a good thing?” Caleb gripes.

  “Think about it,” Isabel continues. “Your great-uncle didn’t know what room he would be in in the hospital until he got there, right? So how could he have scratched the number into the box in his apartment? An apartment he never went back to before he died?”

  The only sound we hear is my mom in the kitchen closing the refrigerator door. Caleb and I stare at Isabel with a mixture of admiration and shock.

  “How come I didn’t see that?” I say, almost to myself.

  “You were a little busy, you know…,” Isabel replies, absent-mindedly flipping through the pages of The Maltese Falcon.

  “But it was right in front of my face!” I protest.

  “So who was it, already?” Caleb asked, moving over to the book Isabel is holding and looking at it as if the clue were in there.

  “There was only one person Great-Uncle Ted would trust to go into his apartment and set up that whole thing.”

  “Your mom!” Caleb exclaims. “I always knew she was hiding something!”

  “No, you dimwit,” I snap. “It’s—”

  “Mr. Yamada!” Isabel yells, unable to hold it in any longer.

  “Mr. Yamada. Of course! So he knew all along!” Caleb laughs. “He probably knows everything!”

  “He
certainly knows more than he’s told us,” I reason.

  “I think we need to pay him a visit as soon as possible,” Isabel says. “Because if my father comes home tonight and finds out I’m gone, he’s going to go completely mental and I’m definitely on that plane tomorrow.”

  I look at the kitchen. “If we’re going to see Mr. Yamada, it needs to be now.”

  Isabel pushes open the door. My mom is sitting at the kitchen table, writing something. She looks up and smiles.

  “I’m leaving a note for your dad. I left some lasagna in the fridge. Just nuke it for two minutes a portion.”

  “Sounds great,” I begin in my most cheerful voice. “Listen, Mom. I need you to do me a favor. A big favor.”

  Mom has a wary look on her face. “Oh, Ted. I hope it isn’t driving you somewhere.”

  I sit down on the chair next to her. Isabel takes the chair on her other side.

  Good move, Isabel, I think. Surround the enemy. Leave her no escape route.

  “I wouldn’t normally ask you, but—”

  Mom immediately softens. She regards Isabel with what I can only describe as a look usually reserved for pictures you find on the Internet of kittens in teacups or YouTube videos of kids saying adorable things.

  “Isabel, if it’s really that important…”

  Isabel looks away, as if she doesn’t know quite how to bring it up. I marvel at her ability to pull emotional strings like this. It’s almost Jedi-like. Or Sith-like.

  “It’s Mr. Yamada. We were going through some old magazines Ted took from the apartment and this fell out.”

  Isabel holds out The Maltese Falcon.

  “My gosh!” remarks Mom, examining the book. “This was one of my uncle’s favorites. He loved the movie too. He was always quoting from it.”

  “We thought this would be the perfect thing for Mr. Yamada to remember him by,” continues little Miss Sweetness and Light.

  My mom looks from one of us to the other. “So what exactly do you want me to do? Drive all the way over Laurel Canyon now to drop this off for him?”