Priceless: Crime Travelers Spy School Mystery Series Book 3

by Paul Aertker

The dishes on the tray clinked as Andrés wheeled a metal cart into the room. He set the breakfast table with white linens, silverware, and crystal glasses. He spread out breads and muffins, carafes of orange juice and hot chocolate, and tureens filled with eggs and ham. On one of the place mats he set an enormous golden bowl of frozen green peas. Then he pulled out a chair and set a Good Company Gazette on the seat.

  On top of the newspaper Andrés dropped an envelope that read FROM THE DESK OF CHING CHING.

  The waiter then waited with his hand upturned.

  “That will be all,” Ms. Günerro said to Andrés as she pressed a five-hundred-euro note into his palm.

  “Wow,” Andrés said, staring at the money. “I’ve never gotten a tip this big.”

  Ms. Günerro turned. “You’ve never met anyone as wealthy as I.”

  Andrés tucked the big bill into his jacket, wheeled the cart out, and closed the door behind him.

  Ekki’s nose sniffed the air. He tossed his phone and earbuds onto the bedspread, tightened his robe around his bulging waist, and slipped his bright red toenails into pedicure sandals.

  As he shuffled to the table, he said, “Your hotels are the greatest.”

  “I know that,” Ms. Günerro said. “I should change the name to the Great Hotels.”

  “Agreed,” Ekki said as he loaded two mini muffins into his cheeks.

  Goper and Ekki ate like hogs at a trough while Ms. Günerro funneled heaps of frozen green peas into her mouth. As she smacked her lips, she slipped on a pair of cat-eye reading glasses and glanced at the newspaper. She lifted the envelope from Ching Ching.

  Ms. Günerro gulped the peas down, and her stomach grumbled. Not from the food. She had butterflies every time she heard from Ching Ching. Sure, he always had extra cash. Lots of it. But if he was writing her a note, it could only mean she owed him something. Or else.

  There was always an “or else” when it came to working with Ching Ching.

  As she peeled back the envelope’s flap, her thumb snagged on a piece of tape. Someone had already opened the letter and resealed it. She knew something was up with Magnus. And now someone was spying on her mail. The look in her eyes shifted to worry. In a few months’ time the chief executive had blown a kidnapping job in Paris and lost a treasure-filled container, both of which could have saved her company.

  She glanced out the window and winced, thinking about the jewelry she could have made with the Kapriss diamonds. Part of her was surprised how quickly things had changed. Her fortune had gone from fabulously wealthy to near bankruptcy in the span of one summer.

  All because of Lucas Benes.

  She slid out Ching Ching’s note and let the envelope drift to the floor. She read:

  siba,

  I know of your troubles. i hope the west bengal silk housecoat i left for you makes you feel better. but you may have to sell everything you own.

  if you want to Remain president of the Good company, your payment to me and buNguu’s too must now be “priceless.” fortunately, U are in spain and there are plenty of priceless objects there. i have a troupe of Artists from everywhere—bangladesh, too—that “happily” stay at my castle in granada.

  you will comply, or Else. sincerely, ching Ching

  Ms. Günerro folded the note and glanced at an article on the back page of the newspaper.

  “Ha!” she chuckled. “Very clever, Ching Ching. Very clever.”

  Goper asked, “Does Ching Ching know about the secret message in the container?”

  “He might,” Ms. Günerro said. “But he’s giving us another option. You see, reading this message requires skill, which I have a lot of. Most people would be confused by his words or see this note as a threat from Ching Ching, but I’ll tell you the man is brilliant.”

  “How so?” Goper asked.

  Ms. Günerro looked up in thought. “Ching Ching has given us a fantastic plan B if the secret message in the container turns out to be a hoax, which it could, knowing the liars at the New Resistance.”

  “What’s plan B?” Ekki muttered.

  “If plan A doesn’t work out,” Ms. Günerro said, “we’ll be going, according to this note from Ching Ching, to a museum in Madrid.”

  Ekki stopped chewing. “Why?”

  “To steal a painting,” Goper said. “Duh, why else would you go to a museum?”

  “Ching Ching is also sending me artists who can make copies of priceless paintings that we can later sell,” Ms. Günerro said. “Plan B will be not only be fantastic but artistic!”

  “And terrific!” said Goper.

  “But if they’re priceless ...” Ekki said.

  “Be quiet,” Ms. Günerro snapped. “You fool.”

  “What about plan A?” Goper asked. “The secret message and treasure.”

  “Good question, Goper,” Ms. Günerro said. “Magnus will find out what the message Lucas Benes’s mother wrote in the container actually means. And we’ll find the treasure—if there is one.”

  Goper said, “Magnus told me that Mr. Benes had hired Rufus Chapman from the Good Hotel London.”

  “He knows a lot of secrets,” Ekki said. “And he lost one of our superyachts one time, didn’t he?”

  Goper added, “Rufus Chapman is ditzy. We could use him to our advantage.”

  “I like the way you’re thinking these days, Goper,” Ms. Günerro said as she pushed her chair back. “Not to worry. Magnus has probably already taken care of Mr. Chapman.”

  “Yeah, but,” said Ekki as he wiped egg from his lip, “Lucas has messed us up twice this summer.”

  “I know that!” Ms. Günerro screamed. “Lucas thinks for himself.”

  “He doesn’t follow rules,” Goper said. “That’s the problem.”

  “I follow the rules,” Ekki said.

  “You follow the food,” Ms. Günerro said.

  Ekki shrugged. “True, but this is a breakfast of champions. Who wouldn’t follow this?”

  “Well, if by chance Magnus fails,” Ms. Günerro said, “I have new champions to take on the New Resistance.”

  “Who’s that?” Goper asked.

  “Take your clean clothes across the hall and get dressed in your room,” she said to her security guards.

  With a muffin in his mouth, Ekki asked, “Where are we going?”

  “I want to show you the newest and most beautiful weapon in the Good Company arsenal.”

  RIGHTY TIGHTY, LEFTY LOOSEY

  For the third time in a row, the mustached man in a tuxedo with tails aimed a gnarled index finger at the door marked 725.

  “Master Lucas,” he said. “Your ride is ready.”

  He rattled on the door, and the sound hammered in the hotel room.

  Astrid looked at the others in the room and crinkled her eyebrows. “Your ride is ready?”

  She flung the door open.

  “We’ll be right there,” she said abruptly. “We have a diaper to change.”

  “Blimey!” said the mustached man. “You kids are still wearing nappies?”

  Nalini came out of the bathroom carrying Gini in her arms.

  “As you can see,” Nalini said, “we have a baby with us. And now a clean baby.”

  Gini aped, “Clean baby!”

  The butler’s nose wrinkled. “No one told me about a baby.”

  “It’s what we do here,” Astrid said. “We take care of people. Even babies.”

  Nalini strapped Gini in the stroller and pushed her out into the hallway. Lucas followed and immediately noticed the wrinkles in the man’s tuxedo.

  “Are you the new butler?” Lucas asked.

  “Indeed I am.”

  The mustached impostor briefly stared at Lucas and then shifted his eyes and fake-smiled. He quickly changed the subject.

  “Oh my heavens,” he said, staring at Lucas’s head. “Do you use product in your hair to get it to look like that?”

  “No,” said Lucas with proud confidence. “I’m a natural bed head.”

  “Pe
ople would pay a fortune for fringe like that,” said the man.

  Astrid, Jackknife, and Alister joined the others in the hallway.

  “Shall we?” said the butler as they began walking down the hall. “Yes indeed. Your ride will soon be ready.”

  “Ride?” Astrid asked. “We’re going to an all-school meeting, aren’t we?”

  “It’s at a secret location,” said the phony butler.

  “Excuse me,” Alister said. “Your accent doesn’t sound like it’s from London.”

  “My family’s moved around a bit.”

  Between rooms 715 and 714 Lucas stopped.

  Coach Creed always said that when a person gives you the creeps it’s for a good reason: It’s because he or she probably is a creep.

  The wrinkled tuxedo, the shifty eyes and fake smile, a ride to a secret location, and now the accent. Something wasn’t adding up. Lucas’s sixth sense piqued.

  “I was born in Argentina,” Lucas said. “Could you whistle the Argentinean national anthem?”

  The impostor stopped and took a step backward. “What kind of question is that?”

  Astrid started whistling the American national anthem. “What song is that?”

  “How am I supposed to know this?”

  Gini tried to whistle but just ended up spitting on Nalini.

  The impostor was now edging his way toward the end of the hallway. The kids continued to follow.

  “Seriously,” Jackknife asked, “can you even whistle?”

  At about room 704 the butler snapped, “Stop asking so many blooming questions!”

  “Smart people ask questions,” Astrid said. “That’s how they get to be so smart.”

  The door to room 701 opened, and Charles Magnus, still wearing a tuxedo and top hat, stepped into the hallway. The New Resistance kids froze.

  Gini said, “Uh-oh.”

  “Seems to me,” Magnus said, “that you’re just trying to get under people’s skin.”

  Also dressed in tails and top hats, the tall guy and the bearded man stepped out of the room and stood next to the mustached impostor butler.

  Lucas thought they looked ridiculous.

  Astrid got into her lawyer mode. “You’re violating international law by trespassing on this property. You’re also guilty of breaking and entering and theft of the use that hotel room, and I’m sure—”

  “Be quiet,” Magnus said calmly. “I’m not Ms. Günerro and I don’t want to be.”

  The mustached butler said, “Just tell us where the treasure is.”

  “What treasure?” Astrid asked.

  “There’s a message spray-painted on the inside of Ms. Günerro’s sunken diamond container,” Magnus said. “The one Lucas dropped into the Mediterranean.”

  Astrid clumped her long blond hair behind her. “What does the message say exactly?”

  Magnus’s eyes scanned the group in front of him. “You all know that Lucas’s birth mother sent this container around the world to keep her father’s diamonds out of Ms. Günerro’s hands, right?”

  Everyone nodded.

  Charles Magnus cleared his throat. “One of our scuba divers just reported to us that Lucas’s mommy left a note on the inside of the container about a priceless treasure.”

  Lucas felt his muscles tense up. He stopped listening as he tried to imagine what his mother would have looked like painting that message. He desperately wanted to know what it said.

  He was sick of the way things had been going. The New Resistance kids had done a lot to stop Siba Günerro and her stupid company. But as far as he knew, the Good Company had killed his mother for the sake of making money and brainwashed and kidnapped kids from all over the world, stolen diamonds, and killed elephants for their ivory.

  What kind of world is this? he thought.

  At that moment he knew he would do something about the despicable way grown-ups had run this world. It became clear to him what he needed to do. When Lucas’s mind came back to reality, Charles Magnus was still talking.

  “. . . but if you help us,” Magnus was saying, “then we can prevent Ms. Günerro from getting hold of a priceless treasure. If she gets it, the New Resistance would lose everything you’d gained this summer against the Good Company.”

  What? Lucas thought. Is Charles Magnus trying to get help from the New Resistance?

  Lucas could feel Astrid, Nalini, and Jackknife staring at him, waiting for him to say something. Part of Lucas wanted to help. Another side of him was skeptical.

  Sitting in her stroller, Gini stuck out her tongue. “Pppp!”

  Lucas spoke. “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re lying,” Magnus said.

  “Not right now,” Lucas said. “None of us has ever heard of a secret treasure or a message inside the container.”

  “That’s true,” said Astrid.

  “Honest,” Jackknife added.

  “We can make this easy,” Magnus said, “or difficult. Either way, you’re going to tell me what that message means and where the treasure is.”

  “It sounds to me,” Astrid said, “that you’re trying to go behind Ms. Günerro’s back.”

  “That is true,” Magnus said. “I’m tired of working for someone whose middle name is Greed.”

  “So,” Astrid continued, “you’re trying to quit before the Good Company goes broke.”

  Magnus’s head dropped.

  To Lucas the man looked defeated, almost sad, like he had just lost the biggest game of his life. Part of Lucas wanted to be nice, but his practical side knew they couldn’t take a chance on Magnus. Lucas looked for an escape.

  “We’d love to help,” Nalini said. “But I can assure you we have no information, and that’s true.”

  Gini said, “True dat.”

  Lucas looked for a solution. On his left he spotted a plate-glass window of a fire hose case. Someone had scratched out the o in bombero—the Spanish word for firefighter—to make it the Catalan word bomber.

  Then the idea hit him like a splash of cold water.

  “I smell smoke,” Lucas said as he winked at Alister.

  “Good try,” said Magnus. “Now is not the time to yell fire in a hotel.”

  “This is an old building,” Astrid said. “Its safety codes are—”

  “We don’t smell no smoke,” said the bearded man. “All we smell is some rotten kids making things difficult.”

  Alister looked at the others and grinned.

  Lucas squatted next to the stroller as Alister’s briefcase came flying through the air. The case’s tiny metal feet slammed into the plate glass. Shards clattered to the carpet. Lucas sprang up, ripped part of the hose down, and whirled it in the air like a lasso.

  Magnus and his men stepped back.

  Astrid grabbed the handle. “Righty tighty, lefty loosey,” she mumbled.

  The handle squeaked as she opened the faucet. The hose shook wildly as it spun from the spool. Bracing his legs as if it were a tug-of-war, Jackknife stepped in and held the nozzle with Lucas. Behind them the hose gulped and flapped up and down like a fat anaconda writhing on the carpet.

  Lucas twisted the metal head, and the water shot through the air and blasted Magnus straight in the face.

  The men blocked the spray with crossed arms. Their top hats exploded off their heads.

  For almost a full minute Lucas and Jackknife soaked the men from their nostrils to their knees. They nailed the tall guy in the mouth and Magnus in the eyes, and they hit the impostor butler so hard in the nose that the fake mustache sailed off his face.

  From her stroller Gini let out a huge cackling giggle. The men stumbled through the doorway of their room, where they collapsed on one another like a pile of wet rags.

  Astrid killed the water, and Lucas tied the fire hose around the door handle and knotted it to a door across the hall.

  “If my mother left me a message before she died,” Lucas said, “then I want to read it myself.”

  A CALL TO
FINS

  The kids split and left Magnus and his men trapped in room 701.

  Nalini took Gini in the stroller down the elevator while Jackknife, Lucas, Alister, and Astrid bolted down the back stairs to the deck area.

  On the left a giant maze of slides and tubes bridged an Olympic-sized swimming pool. At the far end a man was skimming trash from the water with a net.

  “Before we do anything,” Jackknife said, “let’s go on the slide first.”

  “Here’s an idea,” Astrid said. “Let’s use our brains first.”

  “I thought we were going to read this secret note from Lucas’s mom?” Alister asked.

  “We are,” Astrid said, “but the message is inside the container that is at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea!”

  Jackknife said with a smile, “We better get our wet suits on then.”

  “This, my friends,” Lucas said, “is an official Call to Fins.”

  “I like the way that sounds,” Jackknife said.

  Lucas nodded confidently. “Let’s go find out what that message in the sunken container really says.”

  Wearing gym shorts, a T-shirt with a bull on it, and flip-flops, Coach Creed emerged from the cabana dressing room. The Texan folded his beefy arms, blocking the children’s forward motion.

  “Hold your horses,” Coach said.

  “Neigh,” Jackknife said.

  “Where exactly do you think you’re going?” Coach asked.

  “We’re going to the bathroom,” Jackknife said. “That squid we ate last night gave us diarrhea.”

  “Diarrhea my eye,” Coach said. “You’re lying.”

  “We want to go down those slides and tubes,” Jackknife said.

  “It’s closed,” Coach said. “Look at it. That piece of junk is ready to fall into the pool. It’s rusted and dangerous. It’s off-limits for everyone. Now, tell me the real reason you’re down here.”

  “Apparently,” Astrid said, “Lucas’s birth mother left a message on the inside of Ms. Günerro’s sunken diamond container.”

  Coach’s eyes widened. “What’s the message say?”

  “Something about,” Alister said, “a priceless treasure. We think.”

  “We don’t know exactly,” Lucas said clarifying. “But we want to go find out.”

  Coach’s eyebrows crinkled. “Where did you learn all this?”