At exactly 2:45 p.m. the door swung open and Curial’s father walked in, followed by his assistant, a humorless and rail-thin young man named Getty. Curial seriously wondered if Getty had ever smiled; a frown seemed permanently chiseled into his face.
Curial’s father sat at the far end of the long table from Curial. Getty handed Mr. Diggs a folder, then the elder Diggs flipped on a microphone near him on the table. That was Curial’s signal to do the same. Mr. Diggs perched his reading glasses on the tip of his nose. “Monthly meeting between Robert Mercury Diggs IV and Robert Mercury Diggs V.”
Dad always used his son’s formal name in the meeting minutes, but from an early age, Curial’s mom had decided that Robert was too stuffy of a name for her only son. And Mercury wouldn’t do either. So when, as a toddler, he started to show an insatiable curiosity about everything, Mrs. Diggs came up with the perfect name: Curial.
“First order of business. The greeting.” Curial’s father looked up, gave a stiff nod, and spoke into the microphone. “Good afternoon, Curial.”
Curial leaned into the microphone as well. “Hello, Father.”
“How have you been?” came the reply.
Honestly? Curial thought. My mom died six months ago and I have to schedule meetings to see my father. How do you think I’ve been? At least, that’s what he wanted to say. But that’s not what a Diggs man does. So Curial lied.
“I’m fine, Father. How are you?”
“I’m fine as well. Just fine.”
Even from forty feet away, Curial knew what his father was doing: crossing something off his list. Most of the time Curial felt like just another something to be crossed off.
“Okay, number two, family schedule. Getty?”
Getty walked down the length of the long table, his polished black shoes clicking away on the hardwood floor while Curial and his father waited. Getty’s scowl transformed into somewhat of a smirk, and he handed Curial a thick cream-colored sheet of paper, the Diggs Bank logo embossed in gold across the top. Curial looked over the schedule. Nothing surprising. His father had listed all of his overnight trips for the next two weeks, and the events and appointments Curial would be expected to make. Curial was being groomed to one day take over for his father, and his preparations for the role, much to his personal dissatisfaction, had started early. Too early. He was routinely expected to meet important people, go to fancy dinners, and wear uptight clothing, when all he really wanted to do was something else, something he could never share with his father.
“I’ll be in Frankfurt, Vienna, Bern, and Naples, reviewing European interests. Which reminds me, I’d like you to visit those banks.” He looked again at Curial over his reading glasses.
Ever since Mom died, Father kept trying to drag Curial along on business trips. But a business trip with Father was just that: business. It meant dressing up like Getty, taking orders, and getting to see the insides of conference rooms. The only one who’d ever made traveling fun had been his mom.
“Maybe another time, okay?”
His father hesitated as if thinking of something to say, then let out a small breath. “Okay.”
Curial tapped the schedule. “The dinner party with Princess Margaret—is that necessary?”
Mr. Diggs folded his hands and leaned into the microphone. “I know you don’t like her, but yes, it is necessary.”
“Just that she always pinches my cheeks and calls me adorable.”
Even from this distance, Curial could see his father’s half smile. Not even his father liked Princess Margaret.
Mr. Diggs crossed something else off his list. “On to number three.”
Curial scanned down, and noticed that number three was blank. It wasn’t like his father to leave something blank. The great Robert Diggs never made mistakes.
Unless.
“We need to talk about Haverfield,” his father said in his low, authoritative voice.
Again with Haverfield. Curial felt his heart drop into his stomach. His shoulders tensed and he leaned forward.
“Haverfield?” Curial replied.
Robert Diggs shook his head slightly and leaned forward even further. “Yes, son, Haverfield. The prestigious military academy that was good enough for your grandfather and me. The one you should be going to in order to get a world-class education, to prepare you for your life. Haverfield.”
Curial tried to swallow, but his mouth went dry. He gripped the edges of the conference table and squeezed. “We already talked about this. You and mom talked and you promised.”
“And while your mother was alive, she was able to see to your education. It may not have been the education I wanted, but she was your mother.”
“And your wife,” said Curial through gritted teeth.
“Yes, of course. But there’s just no way you can continue to teach yourself.”
Curial’s heart beat faster and his throat tightened. “Mom, she—” he spat out, the words shaking in his throat. “She hated the idea of me going to Haverfield.”
Robert Diggs shook his head and looked up at Getty. “But Son, you don’t understand how much you’ll love it. You’ll get to hang out with other boys your age, you’ll be taught by the best instructors in the world… it’s a great place to learn how to be a man.”
“I’m not going,” Curial said.
“Then a tutor would seem the logical choice.”
“And I don’t need a tutor,” Curial practically growled.
His father studied him again, tilted his head a bit, then straightened up.
“How did the market close yesterday?”
“Excuse me?”
“The market, son. How did it close?”
His father’s default. When things got difficult and awkward, it was always good to fall back on the thrilling world of the financial sector.
Curial answered. “Blue chips up fifty points. Tech stocks up three points. Indications are that the Fed will take no significant actions on interest rates for at least another quarter. Employment numbers come out later this month, expected to show a slight growth in jobs. Need more?”
His dad stared at him for half a minute, his shoulders rising and falling as he breathed. Finally he looked down at his list, and, Curial noticed, he didn’t cross anything off.
“Fine, we’ll move on. Was there anything you needed today?”
How his father could move so easily from item to item, Curial would never fully understand. Life wasn’t a list. Heck, Curial was still shaking a little from discussing Haverfield.
“Um, I guess not.”
“Very well,” Mr. Diggs said. “Getty will email you to schedule our next meeting. Have a good day, son.”
Mr. Diggs turned off his microphone and stood, handing the meeting agenda to Getty. He was already walking away from the table when Curial remembered something.
“Wait,” he yelled.
Mr. Diggs stopped and turned. “Yes?” he said from across the room.
“I’m sorry, Father, there was this one thing. Did you ever have a chance to double check for me, you know, to see if mom might have left me—”
“That’s right,” Mr. Diggs said, snapping his finger. “I had Getty look into it.” He turned to his assistant. Getty leaned in, said something, and Mr. Diggs turned back to his son and shook his head.
“Nothing turned up. Sorry about that. Okay then, much to do. Goodbye, son.”
*-*-*
When Curial reached home, he ran up to his room, slammed the door, and jumped into bed. He stared at the picture he kept on his nightstand. His mom was much younger, holding a baby. Holding him. Below the picture was a caption, written in fine-tip marker in his mother’s unmistakably beautiful handwriting:
I knew from the day we met that you were a treasure.
Curial felt pressure in his eyes and his throat went tight. He stared at that picture until his cheeks were wet and it felt like a rag was stuffed in his throat. He locked the door to his room, crawled back into bed, buried his he
ad into a pillow, and cried himself to sleep.
Chapter Three – A Note
The picture had fallen to the floor by the time Curial woke up the next morning. He picked it up and took another long look. Get a grip, he told himself. She’s not coming back.
He dressed, shook his head like a dog after a bath, took a deep breath, and bit his lip.
She’s not coming back.
Curial’s room emptied out onto the third floor hallway. Like most of the spaces in the Diggs Mansion, it was covered with dark cherry and walnut woodwork from the late nineteenth century. The hallways themselves were triple wide, and Curial had a long-standing goal to one day drive a Mini Cooper through them. If only he could get the car through the front door.
Curial took the center staircase down to the second floor, where his mom had kept much of the family’s art collection. He rubbed the head of an old Spanish carving of a fisherman, then continued down, taking the steps two by two. For a moment he remembered how he used to ride the wide oak bannister when he was little, then he shook his head and kept skipping down the middle of the stairs. He jumped the last four steps, landed on the first-floor marble with a smack, and looked up into the disappointed face of a tall, distinguished man.
Giving his butler a hard time would be a good way to cheer up, he thought.
“Good morning, Albert,” Curial said, giving a quick bow to the man dressed in a formal suit, hands folded behind his back. “Or would you prefer ‘Cadbury’ today?”
His butler rolled his eyes while maintaining his ramrod straight posture. “Ah, Master Diggs, a joke that never gets old. You Americans do have”—he yawned—“a keenly developed sense of humor.”
Curial stopped and spun on his heel. “And what, Benny Hill is comedy at its finest?” Benny Hill was a ridiculous British television show of the 70’s and 80’s, and Curial knew this jab would hit the mark.
“How on earth does someone your age know about Benny Hill?”
Curial shrugged. “My mom showed me an episode one time during a lecture she called Reasons To Laugh At The British.”
The butler’s eyebrows curled forward and his impossibly large chin jutted out even further. “Reasons?”
“Yeah,” said Curial. “Benny Hill was just the tip of the iceberg. She spent half a day analyzing why a country as wealthy as Britain somehow missed out on the invention of dental care.”
The butler snapped his mouth shut, let his hands drop to his sides, and clenched them into fists.
“You are a wretched child, you know that?”
“Sorry, I just don’t think Hank is the name for a proper English butler. Sounds more like you’re a big game hunter, or maybe a NASCAR driver. ‘Albert’ is a much more suitable butler name. Although…” Curial scratched his chin. “Nigel or Rupert wouldn’t be too bad either.”
Hank, the butler, was indeed British, and he did come from a distinguished line of butlers. But his father had given him the name “Hank” after his hero, the great American home-run champion, Hank Aaron.
“And Curial is much better suited to a smart-alecky kid than a respectable future banker.”
Curial tilted his head and pointed at Hank. “Exactly what I’ve been trying to tell everybody. Quick breakfast, then see you in thirty?”
“This morning’s lesson will be how to properly take a punch without crying like a baby.”
Curial smiled. “Come on, Hank, I’ve never once heard you cry like a baby.”
Curial pushed open the swinging door that led to the kitchen, where Mabel was plating up an omelet.
“Smells great, Mabel. What’s the secret ingredient today?”
Mabel slapped Curial’s hand away as he tried to sneak in behind her and look. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be much of a secret, would it?”
Curial grabbed the plate, took a sniff, and sat down. Then he poked a fork into it, took a big bite and chewed thoughtfully.
He raised his head. “I don’t know, Mabel, is it duck?”
She made a sour face. “Buffalo.”
“Really?” Curial said.
“Technically, it’s bison. Lean and healthy. Thought I’d see what I could do with it.”
“Think it will pack some muscle on my bones?” Curial held up his arm and flexed. His long black arm was skinny but firm.
“Are you trying to frighten me with that tiny bump protruding from your arm?”
Curial smiled and turned his attention back to his food. As he ate, he glanced at the newspapers that were lined up next to his seat, just like they were every other day. Mr. Diggs expected Curial to start each morning reading the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Said he needed his son to be on top of the latest news, especially anything that might impact banking or the economy.
After breakfast, Curial rode the back elevator down to the gymnasium. Hank was already bouncing around the ring, gloves and headgear on, ready to spar.
“Come, Master Diggs. I watched a particularly thrilling episode of Survivor last night and feel inspired to kick your skinny can all over the ring today.”
Curial put on his headgear and gloves, then climbed into the ring. “You’ll have to catch me first, Limpy.”
Hank raised an eyebrow. “Having one leg shorter than the other is nothing to laugh at. I’ll have you know that two out of every ten people suffer from short-leggedness, and these brave souls walk around every day without anybody being any the wiser.”
“Yeah, until they slip into the ring with Kid Dynamo and his cougar-like reflexes.” Curial slipped his mouth guard in. “You ready?”
Hank lifted one glove into the air. “Ding, ding.”
Curial faked left, then faked right. Hank threw exactly one punch, a jab that hit Curial in the forehead. Curial fell flat on his butt.
The proper English butler stood over his boss.
Curial spit out his mouth guard. “Go ahead, you know you want to.”
“Pardon me, Master Diggs, but an English butler does not gloat.”
Curial stumbled to his feet. “Just one more thing Americans are better at than the English?”
Hank shook his head. “It does, however, feel quite good to put you in your proper place.”
After sparring for twenty minutes, Hank took Curial to the pull-up bar. Four impressive sets later, Curial fell to the mat, his arms and back exhausted. When he looked up, he was staring at the climbing wall, the one his mom had had custom-built for them.
Hank cleared his throat. “You know, Master Diggs, as much as it pains me to say it, you’ve developed an impressive amount of strength on the pull-up bar; I’m sure with me manning the ropes, that wall would be a cinch for you.”
Curial’s heart started beating again and his arms went clammy. He backed up.
“I—I can’t.”
Hank raised a finger and Curial cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“I said I can’t.”
*-*-*
Curial rode the back elevator to the fourth floor, where the doors opened onto a medium-sized foyer. Straight in front of him was the set of stairs leading down to the third floor; to his left was a single oak door with a circular stained-glass window. It led into the chapel that his grandfather had built.
Curial’s grandmother had been fond of saying that the secret to success is that there is no secret: just hard work and faith in God. Curial spent a great deal of time testing his own faith in God during the final weeks of his mom’s life. For hours and hours he’d prayed for her in his grandfather’s chapel. Sometimes he wondered if maybe he hadn’t prayed hard enough, or if his faith hadn’t been strong enough or, maybe, just maybe, God simply hadn’t heard his prayers.
To Curial’s right were two large hand-carved oak doors. He grabbed their brushed copper handles and pulled them open, revealing his favorite part of the Diggs Mansion: the library.
Correction: his library.
Curial’s grandfather designed the original library, and it still retained its
old charm. The main floor was covered in wide-plank quarter-sawn oak which, although eighty years old, looked almost new. Huge dark walnut bookshelves formed a giant U around a large rectangular table—said to have been made from the wood of an old fishing boat from the early 1900s. A beautiful spiral staircase led to the second floor. All in all, it was a fitting showcase for the hundreds and hundreds of leather-bound books the library held.
Curial climbed the stairs—he could handle stairs—to the second floor, which looked much like the first, minus the rectangular table. The walnut bookcases wrapped around the balcony in another U, and Curial walked along the railing until he reached the middle of that U. There he spotted the special copy of Swiss Family Robinson. The book was a recent addition to the library: one of a few high-tech modifications that Curial’s mom had allowed him to make in order to bring the old library into the new millennium.
Curial gripped the book, one of his favorites as a child, and pulled it straight out. When he did, he heard the sound of metal clicking against metal, followed by a whoosh, and a doorway opened up in the middle of the bookcase. He walked through to a large, well-lit interior room, with two computers, two wall monitors, and a large, clear glass desk in the center. He pushed a button on the glass table and the monitors and computers sprang to life.
After a moment of electronic humming, a voice crackled from a nearby speaker.
“Good morning, Curial.”
Curial set the Post-it note on the glass table and stared at it for a few minutes, trying again to make sense of it. When nothing magical happened, he crumpled up the note and tossed it into the corner. Time to move on.
Curial opened up a special search window. He always routed his searches through IP addresses in other countries, so they’d be more difficult to trace back to him. If his dad ever learned he was spending most of his time looking for treasure in Peru instead of learning how to read financial statements, Curial would be on the next train to Haverfield.
Teenage Treasure Hunter Page 2