Treasure Hunters

by James Patterson

  “Yeah,” said Beck, putting on her tough act. “But we’re still in business.”

  “Indeed? Tell me: Do the authorities here in port know that you are currently without adult supervision or guardianship?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh, my. I suppose the local orphanage might take you in.”

  Tommy stepped forward. “Are you trying to scare us, sir?”

  “Me? Scare poor, defenseless orphans? Heavens, no. However, as a friend of the family, I feel I must warn you—you’re not safe in the Caymans.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, first off, there’s the orphan situation we were just discussing. And I have heard rumors of pirates who seem quite interested in your father and certain items on board The Lost.”

  “Do these pirates want what Dad was bringing you?” asked Beck.

  “Perhaps. It is quite valuable.”

  “Then you should be afraid of them, too.”

  “You raise a good point. However, there is something else.”

  “More danger?” I asked, because it seemed to be lurking around every corner.

  “Oh, yes. A very dangerous man has just arrived in George Town. A man you may wish to avoid. He’s coming here to see me in, oh, about an hour.”

  “Who is it?” demanded Tommy.

  Louie Louie’s grin twitched up a notch into a full-fledged smirk. “Nathan Collier.”

  When we heard that name, the four of us gasped.

  CHAPTER 11

  Nathan Collier was our dad’s number one nemesis. His archrival. Collier, another treasure hunter, was forever trying to snatch our finds out from under us or take credit for discoveries we’d already made, because he wasn’t very good at bringing anything up from a dive besides old tires.

  “You’re doing business with Collier?” said Beck.

  “As I said, I am a businessman eager to do business with those eager to do business with me.”

  “I thought you were our parents’ friend.”

  “Oh, I was. Unfortunately, as Storm so eloquently pointed out, your parents are no longer, shall we say, available for me to be friends with. Perhaps Nathan Collier can find the item I so desperately desire. As I mentioned, he will be arriving in under an hour to discuss the matter.”

  “You don’t need Collier,” I said. “If Dad said he was bringing you your treasure, then it’s definitely on The Lost.”

  “Bick’s right,” said Beck. “We’ll honor your agreement with Dad. But you don’t get to take home your treasure till you hire a crew to fix up our boat.”

  Even though she’s only twelve years old, Beck is, if you ask me, one of the toughest negotiators in the world. My twin sister could talk a dog off a meat truck.

  “Such demands. Oh, my.” Louie was chuckling so much his blubbery cheeks were shimmying. “Very amusing. Very amusing, indeed. But tell me, little girl: Why should I pay workers to fix your boat?”

  “First, Mr. Louie, my name is Rebecca. Second, because The Lost needs repairs and you need whatever it was that Dad was bringing you.”

  “But I am offering you the amulet he desired.”

  “Yes, sir, but you messed up. First, you called this amulet a ‘trinket’ and a ‘bauble.’ You even said it was ‘worthless.’ On the other hand, the item Dad was bringing you is a ‘treasure.’ Now that you’ve shown us your hand, the only way to make this a fair swap is for you to, you know…”

  I gave Beck the words she was looking for: “You need to sweeten the pot.”

  “Exactly,” said Beck. “Sweeten the pot with a couple of days of free boat repairs. You find a fix-up crew to work on The Lost for two days. When they’re done, we give you your ‘treasure.’ ”

  “My, my, my. You drive a hard bargain.”

  Beck shrugged. “I am my mother’s daughter. Deal or no deal?”

  Louie Louie ran his tongue across his upper lip to swipe away some of the sweat beading there. “Deal. But, Rebecca, if I do not find what I am looking for on board your ship, if I am disappointed in any way, you four will owe me the full cost of the repairs. Do you have sufficient cash to cover such an enormous expense?”

  “Of course we do,” Beck bluffed. “We had an excellent year.”

  “Good. Because if you fail to satisfy the terms of our agreement, I will, with the assistance of my good friend Maurice, simply take possession of The Lost.”

  In other words, two days from now, if we didn’t give Louie Louie what he wanted and couldn’t pay for the repairs, he and his iguana-loving buddy with the AK-47 would come take our boat away from us.

  Bye-bye, Kidd Family Treasure Hunters Inc.

  Beck looked around the room.

  We all nodded in agreement. We didn’t have much of a choice.

  “Deal,” she said.

  She reached out for Louie Louie’s clammy paw.

  They shook on it.

  Poor Beck.

  There wasn’t enough Purell in the world to wash away the germs a slimy guy like Louie Louie left behind.

  CHAPTER 12

  For the next couple of days, Louie Louie’s crew crawled all over The Lost, fixing up holes in the hull, patching up sails, rewiring fried electrical circuits. Fortunately, neither Nathan Collier nor the local orphanage officials came snooping around our dock.

  I had a feeling that Jolly Mon and his blue iguana copilot had towed us to this particular marina because they knew it would be a good place to hole up. Nobody asked a lot of questions about us or our beat-up motor sailer.

  But there was one girl, maybe nineteen years old, who did pay a lot of attention to everything happening on The Lost. Her sporty little pleasure yacht just happened to be docked in the marina slip right next to ours.

  Actually, she only paid attention when Tailspin Tommy was up on deck.

  The girl, whose name was Daphne, spent most of her time sunbathing.

  “Y’all workin’ on your boat?” she drawled in a soft Southern accent the first morning fifteen guys showed up with toolboxes, hammers, and saws to—DUH!—work on our boat.

  “Yeah,” said Tommy, grabbing hold of a jib line so his chest and arm muscles would flex more impressively.

  “We ran into some gnarly weather.”

  “That storm the other night?”

  “Yeah,” said Tommy. “It was tough. But The Lost? She can handle just about anything. I like a girl like that.”

  That’s when Daphne sat up and started fanning her face with her copy of Modern Tanning magazine.

  Beck and I were working up on the poop deck. I had a brush and a bucket of paint. I was glad I had the bucket. I thought I might hurl.

  “I would just love to take a look around inside y’all’s ship sometime,” said Daphne.

  “How about now?”

  “Why, that’d be just awesome, Tommy!” Daphne slung her beach bag over her shoulder and sort of wiggle-skipped toward the stern of her boat while Tommy made manly strides toward ours.

  I turned to Beck, and I could tell we were both thinking the same thing: Intruder Alert.

  We dropped our tools, scrambled down the ladder, and followed Tommy and Daphne into the deckhouse.

  “We picked that puppy up off the coast of Peru.”

  “Oh, my,” gushed Daphne.

  “Okay,” said Beck, clapping her hands. “Tour’s over. Our floating museum is officially closed.”

  “Beck?” said Tommy. “Knock it off.”

  Beck kept going. “You need to leave, lady.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Daphne fluttered her eyelashes.

  “Scram,” I said. “Beat it.”

  Tommy pretended to chuckle. “Kids. Aren’t they adorable? They don’t mean what they’re saying.”

  “Actually,” I said, “we do.”

  “What’s going on up here?” said Storm, climbing up from the hull.

  “These two… children… are being extremely rude!” While Daphne did her whole why-I-never! bit, Storm scanned the walls the way she had sca
nned that law book. She whipped around and shot a look at Beck, who was standing closest to what Dad used to call our “Pirate Protection” closet.

  Beck popped it open.

  And pulled out Dad’s double-barreled shotgun.

  Which she aimed right at Daphne’s heart.

  Those polka dots on her bikini top made an excellent target.

  CHAPTER 13

  “You wouldn’t!” Tommy said to Beck.

  “Oh yes, I would.”

  “Tommy!” shrieked Daphne. “Do something!”

  “What’s missing, Storm?” I asked while Beck kept the shotgun trained on Daphne.

  “The mwana pwo African mask.”

  “Check her beach bag,” barked Beck.

  I was about to do it when Tommy snatched the canvas sack off Daphne’s shoulder.

  The African mask was in the bag.

  “Daphne?” Tommy sounded heartbroken as he gingerly picked up the mask and handed it to Storm. “Were you trying to steal this?”

  “Of course not, silly. I just thought it might be fun for Halloween.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “You expect us to buy that?”

  “You can ‘buy’ whatever you like, you saucy little brat.”

  And with that, Daphne snatched her bag, turned on her heel, and sashayed out the door.

  About ten minutes later, we heard her fire up her engines and putter out of the marina.

  “Sorry about that, you guys,” said Tommy as we all stood on the deck and watched Daphne’s yacht disappear. “What an airhead.”

  “Um, are you talking about Daphne or you?” cracked Beck.

  “Both,” said Tommy, draping his arms over our shoulders. “I’m just a wonderful dunderhead.”

  That made all of us smile because that’s what Mom and Dad used to call Tailspin Tommy: their wonderful dunderhead. It’s kind of like being a dunce. Only sweeter.

  That night, over dinner, when all the repairs were finished, Storm dropped another one of her blunt bombshells:

  “It’s a good thing Louie Louie paid for all the repairs. We’re broke.”

  “What?” said Beck.

  “I’ve been crunching the numbers. We have enough money in the checkbook for four tanks of gas and a week’s worth of groceries.”

  “Well,” I said, “someone will give us a loan.”

  “Nope,” said Storm. “We have absolutely no credit, anywhere.”

  “But Louie Louie’s coming tomorrow. If we don’t have the treasure Dad promised him, we’ll have to pay for all these repairs.”

  “Which will be kind of hard to do without any money,” said Tommy.

  “Then what happens?” I asked.

  “Easy,” said Beck. “Louie Louie takes over The Lost.”

  What a joke, I thought. After all our trusty ship had been through, it might finally sink.

  Right here at the dock.

  CHAPTER 14

  First thing the next morning, Louie Louie climbed aboard our boat.

  “Good morning, Kidds!” He was wearing half a plate of salt fish and ackee down the front of his Hawaiian shirt. “My, my,” he said, admiring The Lost. “The old girl cleans up nicely, eh?”

  “The guys you hired did a good job,” said Tommy, wiping his hands on an oily rag. He’d been down in the engine room, making certain we’d be ready to shove off the instant Mr. Louie was satisfied with his treasure.

  “Oh, yes. Very skilled laborers. Very costly, too. Now, then, where is my treasure?”

  “Well, sir,” I said, “since we don’t really know what Dad was bringing you, we’re also not sure where he stored it.”

  “Quite the conundrum, eh? Well, good thing I have a solution. Allow me a look around. You can trust Louie Louie.”

  I glanced over to Beck. She nodded tentatively, and so I led Louie into the deckhouse.

  “Ah! Eureka! There it is.”

  Okay. Some days you just get lucky.

  Louie Louie waddled into the grand parlor area and reached for… you guessed it… the mwana pwo African mask.

  “Such a marvelous mask, don’t you think? A true treasure!”

  Apparently, Daphne the bathing beauty hadn’t been such a dumb blond after all. “Well, then,” said Louie Louie, “since I am a man of my word, here is the item your father so desperately desired.” He reached into one of the pouch pockets on his baggy cargo shorts and pulled out a bronze pendant hanging off a golden chain.

  “As you can undoubtedly tell, this poor little fellow is missing its mate. There should be a second figure on the left. Why your father so urgently desired half of a bronze bumblebee bauble, we may never know.”

  “I think this concludes our transaction, Mr. Louie,” said Beck. “As always, it was a pleasure doing business with you.”

  “Yes. Indeed.” His little pig eyes darted around the parlor. “So much treasure. Might I examine that helmet more closely?”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Tommy. “We’re hoisting anchor with the next high tide.”

  “Leaving so soon?”

  “Yeah,” said Beck. “We need to be somewhere else.”

  “May I inquire as to your destination?”

  “Anywhere but here,” I said.

  “I see. Well, should you decide to seek, shall we say, loving homes for any more of this merchandise—”

  “We’ll give you a call,” said Beck.

  “Excellent. Farewell, Kidds. Again, my condolences on the loss of both of your parents.” Louie turned around and leaped back to the dock, the mask already tucked into one of his many pockets.

  As soon as Louie Louie was out of sight, Storm popped in her jeweler’s eyepiece and examined the bronze bee pendant.

  “This is very reminiscent of a Minoan bee pendant found outside the palace of Malia on the island of Crete. I can see locking slots for a second set of feet above and below the circular beehive in the center.”

  “So, Louie was right,” said Beck. “Somebody else has the other half.”

  Storm didn’t answer.

  Instead, she said, “Hello!”

  “What’ve you got?” asked Tommy.

  “Tiny latches. I need something to pry them open with.”

  I handed her my Swiss Army knife with the pointy file sticking out.

  She flicked at the locket.

  The bee’s bloated belly popped open.

  “Interesting,” said Storm, switching to the knife’s tweezers to pull something the size of a postage stamp out of the hollow cubbyhole.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Storm held the tiny scrap of paper under her magnifying lens and smiled.

  “A treasure map.”

  CHAPTER 15

  We sailed out of port on the early-evening high tide.

  While Tommy manned the wheel, I huddled with Storm and Beck in the deckhouse. We were transcribing the information from the miniature treasure map we’d found in the bee’s belly onto an actual sea chart.

  “No wonder Dad wanted this ‘bronze bumblebee bauble,’ ” said Beck, doing her best Louie Louie impersonation. (It involved a lot of slobbery vowels.) “This is our Cayman Islands treasure map!”

  “Do you guys know what this means?” I said.

  “Uh, yeah,” said Beck. “If we find this treasure, we might be able to afford more than four tanks of gas and a couple sacks of groceries.”

  “Our troubles are over!” I raised both fists triumphantly. “Kidd Family Treasure Hunters Inc. is back in business.”

  “You might be right,” said Storm, using her parallel rule and compass (the kind you probably use in geometry) to chart our course to the spot where the tiny map indicated that our treasure awaited. “There’s a legend at the top of the miniature map.”

  “What’s it say?” I asked eagerly.

  “Córdoba’s Lost Fleet.”

  Beck and I just leaned back in our chairs so Storm could school us from her five-billion-gigabyte memory of nautical history.

  “In 1605, Córdob
a’s nine-vessel fleet sailed from Colombia bound for Havana. After just five days, they met up with a hurricane. Four galleons became separated from the rest of the fleet. Each of those four ships weighed more than five hundred tons, carried bronze cannons, and was loaded down with gold and silver bars from the New World. None of them has ever been found.”

  “Until now,” said Beck.

  As soon as Storm finished plotting our course, I rolled up the chart and raced it up to Tommy in the wheelhouse.

  “It takes us straight to one of the galleons from the lost Córdoba fleet!”

  “Sweet,” said Tommy, because he always stays cooler than a cucumber sipping a Slurpee.

  “Definitely.”

  Tommy nudged the wheel hard to the right. “We should be at the dive site by noon tomorrow.”

  “Awesome!” Everything was looking up.

  Until I made the mistake of looking behind our boat to check out our wake.

  Another speedboat was chasing after us. This one had all sorts of antennas and radar dishes on top of its pilothouse.

  It also had a swirling red light.

  “Uh, Tommy, I think we’d better pull over. It’s the police.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “What’s going on, you guys?” said Beck, sticking her head out the deckhouse door. “Why are we slowing down?”

  “Police,” I said. “Don’t worry. Tommy and I can handle this.”

  “Right,” said Beck. “Like that’s gonna happen.” She slunk back down the steps. “Storm?” I heard her say. “I need your help on the computer.”

  “Cut your engines and drop anchor,” said a very official voice with a British accent over the police boat’s public-address speakers.

  Tommy pulled back on the throttles and killed the engines. I raced up to the bow and lowered our anchor. When I returned to the stern of the ship, Tommy was chatting with a barrel-chested officer of the RCIPS—the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service.