Finding Fortune

by Delia Ray

  I wrinkled my nose. “He put the pearls in his mouth?”

  “Yep.” Hildy laughed. “It was the surest way to keep your pearls from getting snatched. There was a lot of thieving going on in those days.” Her voice dipped low. “In fact that’s how Pop’s treasure started. With a little thieving of his own.”

  “Really?” I barely moved, afraid of doing anything that might break the spell of Hildy’s storytelling.

  Hildy set down the pictures she’d been holding. “Pop had worked in shelling ever since he was a little boy,” she began. “At ten years old he was already earning his keep as a carrier, running buckets of shells back and forth. He found himself mixing with all sorts of unscrupulous types—the rowdy clammers and the pearl buyers who came through town. A lot of the buyers were swindlers, known for fixing their scales and measuring tools, and trying to trick the clammers into taking a lower price. There was one buyer in particular, a man named Peacock, who was notorious for cheating people.”

  Hildy stopped and listened for a minute, making sure the others were still occupied on the opposite side of the gym. “Whenever he conducted business,” she went on, “Peacock would lay out a square of black satin so he could get a better look at the pearls—their quality and color. While most freshwater pearls were white, sometimes the buyers would come across different shades—everything from rosy pink to hints of green and blue. Well, one day when Peacock came through town, he couldn’t resist showing off his latest prize—a large pearl with a rare salmon color that he’d bought from a clammer up in Wisconsin earlier in the week. The Blushing Beauty he called it, and he laid it out on his black cloth for his so-called friends in the tavern to admire. When they all crowded around to see, some young fellow who had had one too many bumped the table and the pearl went flying. There was a mad scramble, and when all was said and done the pearl was gone. Peacock raged and blustered and demanded everyone turn out their pockets. The search went on for hours, but my father was long gone with the Blushing Beauty in his hot little hand.”

  I drew in a sharp breath. “Your father took it? He was there?”

  “Indeed he was.” Hildy couldn’t contain her crafty smile. “He had come to the tavern that afternoon to deliver a message to one of the clammers and he happened to be at the right place at the right time. He was so small and quick, only one or two people even noticed he was there. And since Peacock wasn’t exactly popular in town, well, the police didn’t worry themselves with a very thorough investigation.”

  “Wow. So your father kept the Blushing Beauty a secret all those years?”

  “He had to,” Hildy said, “if he didn’t want to get caught. The story became pretty famous around here, and people would have recognized that pink pearl in an instant if he had tried to sell it.”

  “Did you ever see it? The Blushing Beauty? And the other pearls?”

  “Not for years. I was a teenager in high school when Pop finally told me the story and showed me the wooden box that he kept them in. By that time, things weren’t going so well for my father. My mother had died and the bottom was falling out of the shelling business.”

  Hildy paused long enough to give me a grave look. “That’s about the time he started drinking.” She turned and nodded sadly at the Little Miss. “He pulled his boat out of the water for good. Tom was the one who had to make ends meet. Even though business was winding down at McNally and Sons, Tom had managed to get a job in the office there. But cash was tight, and whenever Pop would run out of drinking money, he’d sneak off and sell a pearl or two.”

  “Not the Blushing Beauty.”

  “Oh, no. But he probably would have if Tom hadn’t stepped in before he shipped off to join the army.” Hildy shook her head ruefully. “Tom wanted to keep those pearls safe for me. But here I am still looking. My poor brother’s probably rolling over in his grave.”

  “Hildy,” I said, “I know you think it’d be a miracle if we found that box. But what if we did? What would you do? Would you really sell the Blushing Beauty? It sounds so beautiful.”

  Hildy sighed. “You’re right. If I ever find those pearls, it would break my heart to part with them again. But Tom meant them to be my nest egg”—she scanned the gym with a helpless laugh—“which would sure come in handy right about now.” Then she slapped her hands on her knees and rocked herself to her feet. “But that’s all silly talk. We got to keep thinking positive, and our best bet right now is making a good impression on those folks from the society.”

  Once Hildy had hurried off to see what the others were up to, I sat in a daze for a minute. After everything Hildy had told me, I was more determined than ever to sneak up to the tower and see if my instincts were right. But I knew I should bide my time until I could disappear without being noticed.

  I reached in the trunk and pulled out a handful of pictures. So often I had wondered what Fortune was like in the old days, before it had turned to weeds and broken glass and crumbled stone. Now I could see. It was all there in the photographs—the clamming camps, the button factories inside and out, the bustling streets when business was booming.

  I lingered over the details—the factory ladies’ changing hair and dress styles and the way the swaggering young button-cutters posed with their caps cocked over one eye. When I came upon a manila envelope full of photos from former pearl button festivals, I pored over each one, searching the buildings in the background for features I might recognize. A little shiver went through me when I spotted a boy leaning out from a second-floor window of McNally and Sons, waving down at the parade passing by below.

  Needless to say, I hadn’t made much progress when Hugh came zipping around the corner an hour later and found me hovered over another batch of pictures. “Hey, what are you doing? Did you miss me?” he jabbered as he scooped up my stack of festival photographs. “Is this the pearl button festival? Is Hildy in any of these?”

  “Not so far,” I said, trying not to sound impatient as I reached out to take the pictures back. “But I’ve got a lot more to go through.”

  Hugh plunked himself down in the seat beside me. “Can I help?”

  “I don’t think so, Hugh. See, Hildy wants all the photos divided into categories.” I gestured to the dozen or so stacks I had laid out across the two card tables. “And the system we’ve got going is kind of tricky. Sorry.”

  Hugh’s face fell. He sat watching me in silence for a while, and then he whispered, “What about the pearls? I made Mine leave the library as fast as I could. Aren’t we going to keep searching? You said you wanted to go back to Room 26 and look in those cabinets again.”

  “I know.” I sighed loudly, pretending to be disappointed. “But I guess we’re going to have to wait until after the visit from those historical society people. Did Hildy tell you about them coming tomorrow? I need to keep working so I can get these pictures organized in time.”

  Hugh crossed his arms and scuffed the toe of his sneaker against the floor.

  “Why don’t you go check with Garrett?” I suggested. I could hear the screech of metal on wood across the gym and Hildy’s scratchy voice calling out orders. “Sounds like he might need some help over there.”

  “No way,” Hugh muttered. “Tucker’s already helping him.”

  Hugh drifted off, and a few minutes later I noticed him sitting inside the Little Miss with his chin in his hands. I tried to ignore the flicker of guilt rising in my chest. Hugh would love nothing better than hearing the tale of the Blushing Beauty and searching the tower with me. But now that Hildy had officially warned me, I couldn’t risk taking him up there again.

  When Mine came to the gym around noon and yelled that lunch was ready, I stood up slowly and stretched, peering over the boxes. Hugh was already plodding toward the door, and Tucker and Garrett were heading in the same direction. When I didn’t join them, Hildy stopped by the card table to check on me.

  “Time for a break,” she said. “Aren’t you coming? Madeline’s gotten pretty good at making grilled che
eses.”

  I reached my hands toward the basketball hoop for another stretch. “No thanks,” I said. “I ate a really big breakfast. I think I’ll stay here and keep working.”

  “Well, be sure and come down to the kitchen if you get hungry,” Hildy said as she turned to go.

  “I will,” I told her, even though I had no intention of changing my mind.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I HADN’T EXPECTED THE WIND. The corn had barely been stirring when I rode my bike to the school that morning. But now when I stole a look over the railing, the green stalks were bent almost sideways. I glanced up at the sky. No wonder Mr. Bonnycastle had climbed to the tower for cloud-watching. There were 360 degrees of them—puffy white wisps hung over Fortune, but off toward Bellefield the sky had turned the color of bruises.

  At least the wind had driven the wasps away, and from what I could tell, the floor of the tower was completely sturdy. I dropped to my knees and crawled to the far left corner to get started. If Tom had hidden the pearls in the tower, I figured he would have pried up one of the boards and hidden the box in the hollow underneath. The only way to find out, I decided, was to work my way from side to side, creeping back and forth until I had covered the four low walls under the railing’s banister and all the floor space in between.

  I couldn’t help smiling at first. I knew I looked like a crazy person as I hunched over the boards, knocking here and there and hunting for raised edges and missing nails. But when a low round of thunder rumbled in the distance, I sat up in a panic to check my watch and the darkening sky. Luckily only ten minutes had passed since I’d left the gym and there wasn’t any lightning yet. I crouched over the floorboards again.

  By the time I finished searching the last corner, my knees were raw and I had two splinters lodged in the heel of my hand. “This is so stupid,” I hissed, pushing myself to my feet in frustration. Mr. Baxter was probably right. The pearls were gone and most likely it was Mr. Bonnycastle who took them.

  I must have stood up too fast because a sudden wave of dizziness rippled over me. I was tottering there, waiting for the floor to turn steady again, when something swooped down in the wind and brushed against my cheek. A wasp. I wheeled around, batting the air, and all at once I was stumbling forward and throwing my hands out to grab the rail. As I lurched against the banister I heard a sharp crack, and Hildy’s warning about rotten wood came flooding back.

  I froze for a long second, staring out at Garrett’s half-finished labyrinth, the spinning pathway of shells and bloodred paint. Then, slowly, I moved my gaze downward. Between my hands, just at the spot where my stomach had landed, the railing was splintered and two of the spindles below it had slipped from their sockets and hung out over the slanted roof. I could feel the wood creaking under my rib cage. If I made a sudden move or leaned too far forward, the rail might give way. I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath. Then, clenching every muscle, I shrank backward, inch by inch, until I was standing safely inside the tower again.

  Who knows how long I sat on the dark steps under the trapdoor with my pulse pounding. I wasn’t checking my watch anymore. You could have died, I kept thinking. If I had hit the railing just a little bit harder, I would have crashed through and …

  I felt numb as I slowly groped my way to the bottom of the narrow stairs and stepped out on the third floor—almost like I was in a trance. It’s the only way I can explain what happened next. When I noticed the door cracked open at the end of the hall, I didn’t turn away and make a beeline for the gym like a person in her right mind would have. Instead, I moved toward it, pushed the door open with one finger, and took a careful half step inside.

  Garrett’s room reminded me of a tidy ship’s cabin, with each object tucked into a puzzle piece of space—a neatly made bed in one corner, a leather reading chair and ottoman in another, an antique desk lodged under the arched window in front of me. There were books and a teakettle and china teacups precisely arranged on the shelves in between. Right away I could see that if any pearls had been hidden in Bonny’s old office, Garrett would have found them.

  I took one more curious step toward Garrett’s desk to get a better look at the patchwork of photographs that filled the walls on either side. They were labyrinths—bird’s-eye views of all kinds—painted on stone floors or made with tile, etched into sandy beaches, outlined in the snow with Christmas lights, and carved into meadows and grassy lawns.

  My trance snapped when someone spoke behind me. “What are you doing?”

  I whipped around to find Tucker standing in Garrett’s doorway with his arms crossed. My mouth wouldn’t work at first. He waited coolly, his eyes pin-sharp and accusing through his bangs. “I—I don’t know,” I stammered. “Just being nosy, I guess. I needed a little break and I came up here to … to check out the tower and look around.”

  “You expect me to believe that?” Tucker’s voice seeped with bitterness. “You’re too much. First you lie to my grandmother and get her in all kinds of trouble with your mom. Then once you weasel your way back here with some lame excuse about a service project, you act all high and mighty, telling me”—he tapped the tips of his fingers on his chest—“how I should act. But the whole time you’re the one sneaking around, waiting till we go off to lunch so you can break into people’s rooms.”

  “I didn’t break in!” I cried. “The door was open. I’ve never stolen anything in my life. I swear! I was just looking at Garrett’s pictures.” I gestured limply back at the room behind me. Tucker rolled his eyes and turned away. “Tucker, wait!” I screeched as I hurried down the hall after him. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to tell Garrett that I caught you in his room. And I’m going to tell my grandmother that she’s making a big mistake letting you come back here every weekend.”

  I had promised Hildy I wouldn’t tell Tucker about the pearls, but I could feel the stored-up secrets bubbling inside me as I followed him down the steps. “You want to know why I’ve been sneaking around?” I shouted at the back of his head. “Because your own grandmother doesn’t trust you!”

  Tucker halted on the first-floor landing and slowly turned to look up at me. “What are you talking about?”

  My knees felt weak. “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “So I guess you better get started then.” Tucker crossed his arms again. “Before somebody comes looking for us.”

  I sank down on the steps and told the story as quickly as I could, starting with the nos on the blackboards and Hugh’s spying and the letter in the safe and working my way toward how I ended up in Garrett’s room. I tried not to get bogged down in details. I didn’t even mention the Blushing Beauty.

  At some point Tucker came to sit sideways on the step below me. He never interrupted once and he only asked a single question when I was finally done. “Why didn’t Hildy tell me?”

  “She was worried that you’d tell your dad.”

  “I’d never tell if she asked me not to,” he said in a wounded voice. “I totally understand why Hildy doesn’t want my dad involved. He has a certain way of looking at things. His way.”

  “But you hate it here, right? If you told your father about the pearls and all the money Hildy’s spending, he’d probably make her sell this place and you could go home to your friends … and civilization.”

  Tucker pulled his chin back in disgust. “Is that really what you think I’d do? That I’d bail out on my grandma when she needs my help the most?”

  “Sorry,” I said quietly. “I guess I don’t know you that well.”

  I looked up. Rain had started to spatter against the half-moon window high above the first-floor landing, and a flash of lightning illuminated the mural painted below—the children clamming by the river, the school off in the distance, the seagulls and puffy clouds. I leaned forward waiting for another flash to light up the inside sky. The clouds. I gasped and clambered to my feet.

  “What is it?” Tucker asked. “What’s wrong?”


  “The mural,” I whispered. I dodged around him, searching the shoreline in the bottom right corner of the painting.

  “Lift me up,” I said to Tucker as I rushed down to the landing.

  “What?”

  I hopped in place under the mural, staring up at the white scrawl of brushstrokes painted on the clump of grass in the corner. I pointed impatiently. “Come on. I need a boost so I can get close enough to see.”

  Tucker was shaking his head as he came down the steps to join me. But with a small sigh, he leaned forward and laced his fingers together over his knee. I was so focused on my mission I didn’t even care that I was putting my nasty sneaker in Tucker’s hands, bracing one palm on his shoulder and the other against the wall.

  “Hurry,” he groaned as I hefted myself up and tottered there for an unsteady instant, long enough to read the small signature that snaked across the clump of grass.

  “That’s him!” I cried.

  “Who?” Tucker grunted as I jumped back down to the landing.

  “Jonathan Bonnycastle! He’s the one who painted that mural. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. Hildy told me he used to teach art lessons.” I whirled around and stood on my tiptoes, scanning the tiny windows Bonny had painted across the front of the school.

  “I don’t get it,” Tucker said. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Remember how I was telling you about the letter in the safe? About how Hildy’s brother said the idea for the hiding place was right there under Bonny’s nose? Well, maybe this is what Bonnycastle was doing that day—working on the mural—and maybe the clue is right here in the painting.” I gnawed on my lip for a second, thinking about what to do next. “We’ve got to find a ladder. Come on!”

  But halfway down the steps, I stopped and reached out to clutch the banister. “Hugh,” I said. “Hi.”