Unbelievable. This was Beck’s first time looking at the wall map through her tinted lenses. (Yes, Beck, I was going to remind everybody that the first time you went into The Room, you’d taken off your 3-D glasses because the cabin was so dark.)
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Where we need to head next,” said Beck triumphantly.
“New York, right?”
“Nope. Charleston, South Carolina.”
“Check it out,” said Beck. “George Town on Grand Cayman is circled. And there’s some writing: ‘Number one: Find bee amulet.’ ”
“Wait a second,” I said. “The same words were on that note Storm found in the file folder.”
“Yep,” said Beck. “And so was this: ‘Number two: Make trade.’ ”
“We made the trade. With Louie Louie. We gave him the African mask for half of a bumblebee bauble.”
“True,” said Beck. “But on the map, ‘Make trade’ is linked to Charleston.” She tapped the map on the coast of South Carolina.
“So we need to make another trade,” said Storm.
“Yep,” said Beck, “and whatever we trade the bee for in Charleston, that’s what we need to take to Dr. Lewis up in New York so he can authenticate it.”
“We have to complete Dad’s mission,” I said.
“Hello? I’ve been saying that forever, Mr. Let’s Take the Money and Fly to Cyprus.”
There was no need for a Twin Tirade. Beck was right.
“Tommy?” I said.
“I’m on it. Laying in a course for Charleston.” He jumped up and headed to the wheelhouse. The rest of us rolled up the map and stuffed it back inside the hollow mast.
“Charleston is a big city,” said Storm. “Second-largest in the state of South Carolina. Where exactly in Charleston are we supposed to make this trade?”
“Good question,” I said. “Let’s head back to The Room. Rummage through a few more files.”
“Why?” said Storm. “Collier and his Ukrainian knuckle-draggers didn’t find anything.”
“I know,” I said with a sly grin. “But they weren’t wearing Beck’s supersleuth 3-D glasses.”
CHAPTER 45
The next afternoon, Beck and I were sitting in folding chairs, sinking into the sand of Folly Beach, near a spot called the Washout (aka “Hollywood” and “The Edge of America”), which, according to Tommy, was where you could catch the best breakers on the whole South Carolina coast. We were under a beach umbrella, combing through another stack of file folders we’d found in The Room. Storm had stayed on The Lost to go through the items she’d hidden in case we’d missed something before.
And Tommy? He was riding the waves and hanging with the locals, including this muscle-ripped “surfer chick” named JJ who could stand on one foot at the nose of her board while riding the crest of a curling wave.
“Here we go,” said Beck, squinting through her 3-D glasses. “It’s about time!”
Beck and I had spent the entire nine-hour journey from our last dive site off the coast of Florida up to Charleston taking turns slipping on the gray shades and reading scholarly junk about archaeology, Egyptology, and all sorts of other ologys. Good times. Lots of laughs. (Not.)
“This paper is about excavations on a Spartan hill called Therapne near the River Eurotas, where some scholars think the real Helen of Troy might have had a castle. And get this: It’s double-spaced.”
She had my interest. Not about Sparta or the real Helen of Troy. The double-spacing. “Can you read something between the lines?”
“Yep. All of it in Dad’s handwriting. It says, ‘Trade the African Mask for the Minoan bee pendant.’ ”
“Right. Been there. Done that.”
“This is interesting: ‘Louie Louie—deals fairly—but with anyone.’ ”
“That’s for sure. I still can’t believe he helped Nathan Collier.”
“I can,” said Beck. “Sleazy attracts sleazy. Now write this down: ‘Take bee amulet to Portia Macy-Hudson, gray-market art and antiquities, Three Thirty-Three Sunset Lane, Daniel Island, outside Charleston. Make trade for the object.’ ”
“I’ll bet this Portia Macy-Hudson person has the other half of the bee bauble,” I said.
“That’s my bet, too. After we ‘secure the object,’ we’re supposed to take ‘the object’ to Dr. Lewis in New York and ask him to authenticate it.”
“Um, what, exactly, is ‘the object’?”
“Dad doesn’t say.”
“Because he thought he’d be the one making the trade.”
Beck nodded. “We just have to hope this Portia person knows what Dad was hunting for.”
“The way Louie Louie did.”
“Exactly.”
Beck closed the file folder.
“You know,” I said, “I think I figured out why Dad jotted down his secret notes between the lines of that particular document: Helen of Troy was kidnapped.”
“Duh. We learned that when Mom taught us Greek mythology back in second grade.”
“But don’t you see?” I said enthusiastically. “Dad knew Mom had been kidnapped, too. This mission was—and still is—all about rescuing her!”
“That’s a stretch,” said Beck, rolling her eyes.
“Come on, Beck. Think positive. We’re gonna rescue Mom!”
“No, Bick. You need to grow up and quit being such a sap.”
And right there, on Folly Beach, surrounded by surfer dudes and beach bunnies, Twin Tirade No. 431 erupted like Mount Vesuvius (which we’d recently read about in a file Dad had about the ruins of Pompeii).
“Grow up? I’m two minutes older than you!”
“Then act your age, Bickford. Quit saying we’re gonna rescue Mom.”
“I will, Rebecca—right after you quit being such a stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddy.”
“Fuddy-duddy? What kind of word is that?”
“It means you’re acting like an old fart.”
“I am not. I’m just being realistic.”
“No, you’re being an old poop pessimist.”
“Sorry, Bick. But the world is what it is, not what we want it to be.”
“It doesn’t have to stay that way, Beck.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I thought you said I needed to quit hoping?”
“Because you do!”
“Well, how can I be hopeless—without hope—if I’m hoping all the time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.”
“So there.”
“Fine.”
We both took a deep breath.
The tirade, like the last wave that just crashed against the beach, was officially done and gone.
Beck spoke first. “You think Tommy’s newest girlfriend will give us a ride to Three Thirty-Three Sunset Lane?”
From the way JJ and Tommy were comparing arm muscles and laughing, I had a feeling they might be sending out wedding invitations in a couple of weeks.
“Definitely.”
“Cool. Let’s boogie.”
“And we need to pick up Storm. She’s wearing the bee amulet.”
“Right.” Beck paused. “You know, maybe all of this will lead us to Mom, Bick.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
“Hey,” said Beck, “I want to rescue her, too. I need to thank her for picking the smarter twin to wear these sweet 3-D glasses.”
CHAPTER 46
Fortunately, JJ had this amazingly awesome old taco truck that she’d turned into her surfmobile. It was painted bright purple with yellow flower trim and had plenty of room in the back for all of us.
“Your friend must be totally loaded,” JJ said as we pulled up in front of the glass-and-stucco mansion on Daniel Island. The place had a five-car garage. Every one of those cars probably had its own private bathroom, too.
“Maybe you should wait out here, JJ,” said Tommy.
�
��Chyah. I’m not really dressed to go museum hopping.”
JJ was still in her surfing clothes: a tight shirt that she called a “rash guard,” a towel wrapped around her waist, sunglasses, and a bright purple sports watch. And she was right—the big glass building looked like a modern-art museum.
Tommy, Storm, Beck, and I made our way under a vine-covered arbor into a shady courtyard with a reflecting pool. We climbed a set of white marble steps and knocked on the double doors, made out of bronze hammered to look like a sunset. We rang the bell. A couple of times.
About a minute later, the front doors swung open and a very elegant-looking lady in her early fifties was standing in the foyer. She wore bright red glasses and even brighter red lipstick.
“Yeh-ya-es?” she drawled, staring at us like we were street beggars who’d made a wrong turn somewhere on the mainland. “May I help y’all?”
“Um, are you Ms. Portia Macy-Hudson?”
“Yeh-ya-es?”
(You ever notice how Southern people can make a one-syllable word like yes sound like it has three?)
“Wow,” Beck blurted out, who was peering around Ms. Macy-Hudson to scan the inside of the house. It had a humongous, sun-filled living room with giant oil paintings hanging all over the two-story-tall white walls. “Is that a Picasso? And that one there, over the fireplace—that’s a real Cézanne, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry,” said Ms. Macy-Hudson snobbishly, “but who, exactly, are you children?”
“We’re Dr. Kidd’s kids,” I said.
“Who?”
“Professor Thomas Kidd. The world-famous archaeologist and treasure hunter?”
“Oh, yeh-ya-es. Of course. Your father and I conversed over the telephone a week or so ago.”
“Mind if we come in?” said Storm, barging into the living room without waiting for an answer. “I sunburn easily.”
Ms. Macy-Hudson sputtered in protest as the rest of us trooped in after Storm.
Tommy whistled. “Check it out,” he said. “She isn’t wearing anything except a flower in her hair and a shoestring around her neck.”
“That, young man,” sniffed Ms. Macy-Hudson, “is one of Manet’s modernist masterpieces. It was inspired, of course, by Titian’s Venus of Urbino.”
“Was Venus naked, too?”
“Of course.”
“Man. I definitely need to check out more art museums.”
“None of it matches,” mumbled Storm, doing a quick scan of the dozen or so paintings. She had, obviously, just called up her photographic memory of the art images pinned to the walls of The Room.
“Do y’all have some reason for bein’ here, other than gawking?” Ms. Portia Macy-Hudson asked. “If not, I’ll have to kindly ask y’all to—”
She gasped. “Where… did you get that necklace?” Ms. Macy-Hudson asked, pointing to the bee pendant hanging from Storm’s neck.
I stepped in to answer. “From a businessman,” I said coolly. “One who enjoys doing business with those who enjoy doing business with him.”
“Do you enjoy doing business, Portia?” asked Beck. “Wanna make a trade?”
“For the Minoan bee-goddess pendant?”
“It’s a goddess?” said Storm, holding it up inches from her face.
“You shouldn’t be wearing it!” exclaimed Ms. Macy-Hudson. “It’s over two thousand years old! The bronze is very, very fragile.”
“Chyah!” said Tommy. “It’s already, like, busted in half.”
“I have the other half!” said Ms. Macy-Hudson, stretching out her arms like a brain-dead zombie. “I need that amulet.”
“Fine,” I said. “What’ll you give us for it?”
“Name your terms!”
“Um, did you and Dad discuss making a deal?”
“Yes!” Her greedy eyes grew wider.
“And what did Dad want in exchange?”
“He wasn’t specific. I want the bee. I need the bee. I must have the bee!” Realizing she was, basically, going nutzoid on us, she took a second to compose herself. “I will give you anything you desire.”
Beck’s eyes lit up. “Anything?”
“Anything you see in this house. It’s yours. Just name it!”
CHAPTER 47
“Don’t y’all see?” said Ms. Portia Macy-Hudson, leading us down a flight of stairs to a lower living room. “I am the reincarnation of the ancient Portia, the Minoan mistress known as the Pure Mother Bee, who was chosen by Apollo and gifted with prophecy.”
(She was also a wackadoodle, if you ask me.)
The crazy lady’s lower living room was even crazier. Every inch was cluttered with bee gewgaws. A fresco of the Sumerian bee goddess. Limestone sculptures of bees. A silk painting of the four-armed Hindi Bhramari Devi, a bee goddess from India who had a swarm buzzing out of her hair. There were even a few framed boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios with that cartoon bee.
And, in the center of the bee room, mounted with its own glittering gold chain, was the other half of our bumblebee bauble.
“When my pendant is complete,” Portia gushed, her eyes about as wide as honey-baked hams, “I will be the new high priestess of the ancient bee magic! Give me the amulet! Take whatever art you choose!”
“Really?” said Beck. “We can grab that Picasso in the other room? ’Cause it’s gotta be worth a bazillion dollars.”
“Anything. It’s yours. Just give me the bee pendant!”
Okay, this was a little like being handed a million-dollar gift card in an Apple store—especially for Beck, who loooooves art (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
“Okay. We’ll take the Picasso,” she said. “No, wait. The Degas. Or, um, that Cézanne!”
“I want that one,” said Tommy. (I’m sure you know exactly what painting he was thinking of.)
“That painting back there,” said Storm, gesturing at a dark scene of an old-fashioned sailboat being tossed up on a huge wave in a tumultuous storm. “That’s Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee, right?”
“My, my. No wonder you are the one wearing the pendant. You have a keen eye for art, my dear.”
“No, I don’t. That’s Beck’s department. I just have a photographic memory. That particular Rembrandt was stolen from a Boston museum in March of 1990 along with twelve other pieces of artwork in what is considered the biggest art theft in US history. A case that remains unsolved.”
“Is that so?” said Portia, putting on her genteel Southern damsel act. “Why, I had no earthly idea. I am but a middlewoman. I ask no questions.”
While she defended herself, a stack of wooden crates padded with dry straw caught my eye. They were stashed inside an open closet.
“What’s all this stuff?” I asked.
“New merchandise,” said Portia. “Mostly rubbish. It arrived several weeks ago from a Mediterranean acquisitions expert I work with. I haven’t had time to catalog or price it.”
“Mind if I take a look?” I asked.
“Be my guest.”
In one of the crates, I saw a chipped and dirty vase with two jug handles and a footed base. There were scenes painted on the sides in a rusty-clay color against black that reminded me of illustrations in our Greek mythology books. The scene on the side of the vase I could see through the slats showed a young guy chasing after a young girl.
“What’s in this crate?” I asked.
“That dirty old thing? A Grecian urn.”
“What’s a Grecian urn?” asked Tailspin Tommy.
“About thirty dollars a week!” I shouted. “We’ll take it!”
CHAPTER 48
I grabbed the wooden crate out of the closet. The instant I did, I swear I could hear Dad’s voice in my head saying, Way to go, Bick. You cracked my corny secret code!
Unfortunately, in my ears, I could hear Ms. Portia Macy-Hudson cackling with glee.
“You could’ve chosen any of my priceless masterpieces and you chose that? A chipped, old urn? What a foolish, foolish little boy!”
I could also hear Beck. “Are you nuts, Bick? We should take the Rembrandt or the Picasso.”
“Or the hottie,” said Tommy.
“I’d go with the Rembrandt,” said Storm. “I remember the museum’s insurance company offered a huge reward for its safe return.”
“No!” I said. “This is the object we want.”
I really tried to lay into those two words hard so Beck would understand that this was why Dad had that corny Grecian urn cartoon under the glass blotter in The Room, why he kept repeating that same lame joke to me all the time. But she didn’t get it. I couldn’t blame her.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Fast.”
“B-b-but,” stammered a totally baffled Beck. “Picasso? Rembrandt?”
“Wait!” shouted the loony queen bee. “I must first take possession of my merchandise and make certain it is the genuine Minoan amulet and not a cheap imitation.”
She started flicking her fingers, working her lips, and making weird buzzing noises as she moved toward Storm. She also twitched her shoulders as if she had wings. Yep. She was our very own Honey Nut Weirdio.
“Give her the pendant, Storm,” I said.
Storm carefully raised the necklace up over her head and handed the bumblebee to Ms. Portia Macy-Hudson, who received the bauble as if it were the Holy Grail.
“After all these years, it’s finally mine!” She was practically panting. She took the amulet and raced over to the dummy neck where the missing twin was on display. “Oh, ancestral bee priestesses of Crete! We are once more complete.”
I guessed that meant the two pieces fit.
“I have been searching for this lost relic for years. Decades. Wherever did you find it?”
I was about to answer when a familiar voice broke in. “Why, I know exactly where they found it, Momma!”
Treasure Hunters Page 11