“It must be worth a ton!” Calder exclaimed. “At least one house, maybe two. You and your mom can buy any place you want in Hyde Park now.”
Petra winced as if she’d been stung. “What’re you saying? Selling Wright’s fish is what will save the Robie House. That must be why we found it. Tommy can’t sell it and keep the money! We just made a discovery that will save one of the greatest pieces of art ever built.”
“We? We? I dug up that fish,” Tommy blurted, finding his voice. “And it’s mine.” Suddenly he realized he was trapped, horribly trapped — everything he’d always wanted was in plain sight, and yet now he might not get it. Was he going to lose the best find he’d ever made, a find that might make up for all the other things he’d lost? To his horror, he felt his eyes fill with tears.
Why had he ever joined the Wright 3?
Petra turned away while Tommy wiped his face on his T-shirt. Calder said gently, “That’s okay. I’d be wacko, too. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”
The ride home on the train was silent. It was Calder who suggested they each have some thinking time on the way back to Hyde Park and then talk things over in the tree house. They sat several seats apart, forming an awkward scalene triangle. No one mentioned the red herrings.
Tommy tried to feel happy about what he’d suspected all along: The carving was very, very special. He had uncovered something extraordinary, something that others would give anything to find.
And he knew Petra was right. Selling the fish to a museum would probably mean the Robie House could be saved. The art in museums was always worth millions, wasn’t it? This was a kind of miracle. He could prevent the murder of a great work of art, something an entire university had been unable to do. He wanted to save the house, yes. But did Petra understand what a real home meant? He didn’t think so.
And what about his mom? In his head, he could hear her telling him to put the money toward saving the endangered house. Family, she always said, was about being together, not about owning things or living in a specific place. Tommy wasn’t sure this was the whole truth — of course she’d love to have her own home. He knew those lines in her forehead when it was time to move to a new rental, and she always sighed at the sight of boxes and packing tape.
What would Mr. Wright tell him to do?
Tommy thought he and Mr. Wright would have liked each other, even though dads who disappeared were not Tommy’s favorite kind. Wright had been tough in a good way — even at the worst moments in his life, he had never given up. Ms. Hussey had shared stories with the class about Wright’s three marriages, and also some tragic things that had happened to him, things that were not his fault. Four years after the Robie House was finished, a woman Wright had loved very much was brutally murdered, with her two young children, in the house he had built for her. He was away on business, and it was an ugly, freakish happening. Then there had been times when Wright had no work or money, and seemed entirely forgotten by the world. He had been called selfish and stubborn, but even when he wasn’t popular he had stuck to what he believed in.
Tommy thought that both he and Frank Lloyd Wright knew about determination, about getting where you needed to go. The great man would probably want him to sell the fish, and in doing so continue on his own journey to becoming a dragon, a highly successful finder — a finder who earned a home for himself and his family. The dragon-fish had worked for Wright, and now it would work for Tommy.
And then he had a sneaky idea. What if no one but the Wright 3 knew where Tommy had found the carving? He could pretend he’d discovered it in the Japanese Garden, which was a ten-minute walk from Harper Avenue. The garden was a part of Wooded Island, a small piece of land where Tommy and Calder had often dug for treasures, and a place where Japanese master-craftsmen had built an amazing temple over a hundred years ago during a world’s fair that took place in Chicago. Although the building was gone now, the garden was still there. Millions of people had come to Hyde Park to visit that fair. Someone could easily have dropped the jade fish.
And, after all, Wright had kept many secrets during his lifetime. Maybe great men couldn’t reveal all their secrets, at least not instantly.
But would Petra and Calder agree not to tell where Tommy had really found the fish?
And then Tommy had an even better idea.
Looking out the train window, Petra thought about the strange and magical side of what had happened in the last week.
Was it just luck that Tommy had dug up a priceless jade fish right when it was needed, after it had been in the ground for almost a century?
And was it just coincidence that she had found the two Invisible Man books, and that Wright had talked about leaving an invisible code of some kind in the Robie House?
She had stuck one of the copies of The Invisible Man in her pocket that morning, meaning to show it to Tommy now that they were the Wright 3. She pulled it out now and, closing her eyes, flipped back and forth through the pages and put her finger down.
She opened her eyes and read:
ALL MEN, HOWEVER HIGHLY EDUCATED, RETAIN SOME SUPERSTITIOUS INKLINGS.
Who was superstitious? Frank Lloyd Wright? Was she? What was the book telling her?
And was it superstitious to think coincidences weren’t just coincidences?
Calder was thinking codes.
Wright had left a code of some kind in the house, and he’d also mentioned something invisible. The house was a puzzle, Calder sensed that was true — a puzzle that couldn’t be broken into pieces without destroying its meaning, just like a set of pentominoes.
As a kid, Wright had played with a set of math tools called Froebel blocks. Ms. Hussey had talked about them and brought in pictures. Some of the blocks resembled pentominoes. Wright had claimed that moving those blocks around as a child had changed the way he thought, and helped make him the architect he was. And Wright had written that he always loved making up the language in his famous art-glass windows.
Calder admired the matter-of-fact way Wright said that, and remembered it. He’d even asked Ms. Hussey a few days ago if he could try writing with shapes and not words, and she’d said yes, as long as he was communicating. He’d enthusiastically made rows and columns of triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, and hexagons, but that was as far as he’d gotten. The idea was better than the reality.
Could Wright’s code be made up of repeating shapes? Could a certain number and order of geometrical forms equal certain letters in the alphabet? Or could the code be imprinted in some way in the brickwork?
And how about Wright leaving an invisible piece of himself behind? Calder knew Petra must be thinking about this, too.
And Tommy — Calder knew he was thinking about the opposite, about becoming a very visible kid who lived in his own, visible home.
None of the three looked forward to the meeting in the tree house.
They climbed the ladder silently, Tommy first and Petra last. Tommy pulled out the bag of red fish and dropped it on the tree house floor.
“Red herring time!” Calder tried to say cheerfully. They each took one, but no one smiled.
Petra leaned back against a wall and opened her notebook. It was quiet except for the tapping sounds of Calder’s pentominoes, the occasional murmur of mourning doves and the whisper of leaves. They hardly noticed an occasional twig-snap coming from the branch that reached over the tracks.
Tommy cleared his throat. “I lied,” he said, sucking in his cheeks.
Calder and Petra stared at him.
“I told Calder I’d found the fish in the Robie House garden because I was thinking about telling the class. I wanted kids to notice me, and to think I’d done something brave. I didn’t find it there, and that means it isn’t Wright’s fish.”
“So where did it come from?” Calder asked, trying to hide his shock. He didn’t remember Tommy ever lying about anything important — not to his oldest friend. This wasn’t good.
“The Japanese Garden,” Tommy said, a
nd bit hard on his thumbnail.
“What?” Petra said. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”
Tommy shrugged. “I didn’t think it really made a difference.”
Petra had a dark red spot in each cheek. She looked like she was going to cry. This was one weird day, Calder thought.
Closing the notebook, Petra said, “But you can still save the Robie House with that fish, even though it wasn’t Wright’s. It’s still worth a lot of money, maybe a fortune. You can be a hero! And we’ll never breathe a word about your first story.”
“I don’t think that’s what Wright would want me to do,” Tommy muttered.
“What do you mean?” Petra’s voice was getting squeaky. “He cared more about that house than any other house he ever built — he saved it twice, twice, once right before he died, and now we can save it the third time. The Wright 3, that’s us!”
“But …” Calder was stirring his pentominoes on the tree house floor. “Maybe, if Ms. Hussey was right, he saved the house because of the carp-dragon story, because of losing his talisman, and not so much for the house itself. And once he got there, once he became a dragon … no, never mind. He kept saving it even when he was super-famous, didn’t he?”
“It was the house!” Petra practically shrieked. “Of course it was the house!” She turned toward Tommy. “And you want to sell the fish, keep the money, live in some fancy place and let the Robie House be murdered?
“You’re … you’re … despicable,” she finished.
Tommy crossed his arms and stuck out his lower lip. “And you don’t know what it’s like to never have your own house, to only have a mom and a goldfish in your family, and to lose two dads.” Tommy’s voice wavered on the “two.”
He went on, “Wright is dead. I’m alive. Is some old house more important than my family?”
Petra looked at Tommy with a kinder expression. “No,” she said slowly.
“I get it that you want your own home, you’ve had a bunch of tough moves, but … you think your mom would let you keep the money from this fish?” Calder asked.
“What if it didn’t occur to her that the money could save the Robie House?” Tommy asked. “After all, it’s only a coincidence, us hearing this talisman story about Wright and me finding the fish at the same time.”
“But won’t you feel bad about hiding something so important?” Petra asked. “Won’t you feel guilty when the first buzz saw bites into the Robie House and you have to watch out your window, knowing you could have saved it?”
All three were silent, picturing the twinkly glass in the windows and the inviting, maze-like look of the house.
Tommy covered his forehead with the palms of both hands. “Let me think about it,” he said.
Ten minutes later, Tommy put the key into his door. To his surprise, he found it unlocked again.
He knew his mom wouldn’t be home for another hour, and he realized now that he’d forgotten to tell her about finding the lock undone yesterday. It was a good thing Hyde Park was such a safe neighborhood.
When he pushed open the door this time, his heart practically stopped.
The apartment was a nightmare. Clothes were thrown everywhere, broken dishes were scattered across the floor, and the windowsill was empty.
Goldman! Tommy dashed across the room, crunching on glass, and gasped with horror. The pondweed and gravel were everywhere, but where was Goldman? Tommy got down on his hands and knees.
His pet lay gasping in several inches of water, miraculously cradled in a corner of the fishbowl that had flown under the bed. Tommy, shaking now, carefully pulled the fragment of glass toward himself, and Goldman flopped out of this tiny bit of water in a panic. Tommy tried to put him back in, but Goldman was too upset to stay still.
Tommy raced to the kitchen, grabbed a plastic food container, sloshed bottled water into it, and raced back. He felt a piece of glass sink deep into one knee as he knelt back down and lifted Goldman tenderly into the container.
At first his pet floated to the surface on his side. “Oh, Goldman! Please! You can do it! You’re tough,” Tommy whispered.
If Goldman died, he knew a part of him would die, too.
Suddenly Goldman righted himself and took a quick dive around the container, as if checking it out. Tommy whooped for joy.
He took the largest mixing bowl he could find, filled it with the rest of the bottled water, and carefully transferred Goldman. The bowl was empty, which wasn’t much fun for his pet….
The bowl was empty!
Tommy searched frantically through the mess on the floor. He pawed through the wet remains of his fish collection, and looked under pillows and around open books. By now the blood was running freely down his leg, but he didn’t even notice. Could the fish have slid under the bed? No … Fallen between two pieces of china? No … It was true: His find, the find of a lifetime, was gone.
Someone had known he had it. Someone had come looking for it — who could that be?
Not Calder or Petra … And the idea of Ms. Hussey wrecking his apartment to find the fish was crazy. But Mr. Dare …
He had quit the crew because of his fall, but was he still friends with those men? Had he told them the story of Wright’s talisman? Tommy thought of the guy with the black glasses.
And then Tommy had a spooky thought: Only someone standing on the south side of the Robie House could have seen him scraping the dirt off his find, jumping up from the garden, and racing back to his apartment.
Just then he heard the squeak-click of the doorknob turning, and realized it was too late to do anything but grab for a weapon. He picked up a large, deadly crescent of glass.
Zelda Segovia’s face appeared in the doorway, her mouth opening in a slow O. Tommy had never, ever been so glad to see anyone.
He rushed over and gave her a giant hug.
“What happened? Are you okay?” his mom asked, dropping her bag of groceries on the floor and adding a broken bottle of milk to the mess.
“B-break-in!” Tommy stuttered, the words catching in his mouth.
They stood in the puddle of milk while she held Tommy close. “Oh, thank God you weren’t hurt! None of this matters — I’m just so thankful you’re in one piece.”
Tommy felt a painful twinge when his mom said “none of this matters.” He didn’t know how to tell her about the missing jade fish, not when he’d kept it a secret for so many days. He needed time to think. One thing he did know: He had to tell Calder and Petra, and tell them right away.
He overheard his mom telling a police officer that nothing of value was missing — it was sickening, hearing her say that, but of course it wasn’t her fault. While she spoke with two detectives who were dusting the apartment for fingerprints, Tommy went into the kitchen, pretended to be talking to Goldman, and quietly phoned Calder. He whispered the news.
Calder kept saying, “What?” and sounded just as dazed as Tommy felt.
“Call Petra,” Tommy said, and hung up.
After the cut on Tommy’s knee was cleaned and bandaged, the locksmith came to change the lock and add a heavy bolt to the inside of the door.
Tommy and his mom picked up the broken china and washed the floor. That afternoon they went to the pet store and bought Goldman a new bowl, a perfect sphere the pale green color of sea glass.
“This is nicer than your old home,” Tommy told him as Goldman explored. The gravel on the bottom was multicolored this time, and Tommy anchored a fresh bunch of pondweed by a red footbridge he got at the pet store. Just for safety, he put a tiny onyx shark, one from his collection that hadn’t been smashed, on the bridge. Now Goldman had a guard.
After Goldman was settled in, Tommy’s mom stood in the kitchen with her hands on her hips, looking at the empty cupboard. Every plate and glass had been smashed.
“Good thing I save the jelly jars,” she said cheerfully. “And good thing we haven’t gotten all of our boxes down to the basement storage room yet.” With Tommy’s help, she pu
lled box after box out of the closet in her bedroom, and they made a pile of mismatched dishes.
“It’s good to see these again,” Tommy said. “They’re so familiar.”
“I know, you never did like change. Mr. Keep-Everything, that’s you,” his mom said fondly.
Tommy was looking at favorite baby toys and some of his old board books. Then he pulled out something unfamiliar: a plastic box with two receivers next to it. “Hey, what’s this?”
His mom laughed. “Your old baby monitor. Your dad and I were renting a gigantic house at the time you were born. The monitor goes in the baby’s room, then the parent keeps the receiver and even the tiniest sounds can be heard—quite amazing, really. I never could bring myself to get rid of that stuff, especially after your dad was gone.”
There was a short silence.
“He would be so proud of the fact that you’re a finder. It’s a shame so much of your fish collection was destroyed today.”
“Mmm,” Tommy nodded. “But I won’t give up.”
“That’s my guy,” his mom said, rubbing his back.
“Can I have this?” Tommy asked, holding up the baby monitor.
“Sure,” his mom said, closing the boxes again. “Come on. Let’s put these in the kitchen and go out to dinner. We need a treat. How about Chinatown?”
Calder phoned late that afternoon. Petra had just written in the notebook,
W’WNET LAPRIEZ UST’UNRVEX I’FL’INSLHU
P’INSI P’VTAP’LT’UTANBI’LIEU. X’WIHMYU
F’WIETRIEZ I’MPSMHI’UTSUSTEX’YT
NAN’NIDV U’MTRIDRAXRIET P’IN’NI
TAFSV’ILAP’NY T’WN’IN’NIGY?
TSUOP’MVEN’TIHM’IZ’NUGP UWTRLONTGZ.
She sat quietly now, trying to absorb the terrible news about the break-in. She and Calder had agreed that it all seemed too mean: the near-death of Goldman, the destruction of most of Tommy’s fish collection, and then the theft of what Tommy had just learned was truly the find of a lifetime. Never mind the thought that Tommy would probably have changed his mind, done the right thing, and sold the fish in order to save the Robie House.
The Wright 3 Page 11