“Your dad won’t let her stay at the house?”
“Idon’t stay at the house. My dad doesn’t know about her.” The bathroom door hinges squealed, and Seb stepped out into the hall, pulling the T-shirt I gave him over his head while pausing in front of my bedroom door. When his face emerged from the cotton, his gaze flicked over my fuzzy robe, but he didn’t make any comments.
I sidled my way around him to get to the bathroom. “I thought you said things were better between you.”
“They’re civil, which is better. But the only reason we’re not at each other’s throats is because...” He shook his head. “I let him see what he wants to see, and I hide the stuff that pisses him off. If he knew I’d adopted Punkin, he’d say it was a ‘waste of resources,’” Seb said, making air quotes. “Lucky me, he’s got his hands full these days. He’s... distracted. I haven’t seen him in weeks.”
“Wow, okay.”
He wasn’t eager to elaborate so I changed the subject.
“Hey, what do you think the cipher means? Ideas?”
He shook his head. “Anything could be ‘under their noses.’ My first thought was the Wyrd Jack statue outside the harbor museum, because I was trying to think of anything with a nose in town, and that’s our only statue.”
“But it says ‘undertheirnoses,’ not ‘undermynose,’ or whatever. Plus, the statue was built in the 1950s, long after he wrote the ‘Prison Poem.’ His treasure had been hidden for thirty years, and he was dead.”
“Point taken. What about you? Any ideas?”
“Not yet.” I hesitated. “Hey, what’s with Jaz going nuclear back at the cave? Is something going on with her that I don’t know about?”
“Not sure. What don’t you know about?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.”
But he already knew that. I could see humor behind his eyes, but I wished he’d be serious for once.
“Look, Patty told me Jaz has been struggling, but she wouldn’t say why. Jaz has been acting a little weird around me...” I didn’twant to admit that I’ve overheard their conversation this morning, so I left it and said, “Only thing I’ve noticed that’s different is that it feels like Jaz’s hatred of Lulu is a little personal. She hasn’t told me anything, but clearly there’s something going on there.”
He hesitated then gave in. “This year was kind of tough for Jaz. You’d have to ask her for specifics, but, for example, I know she missed Benny while he was in Kalamazoo, and they made a lot of plans this summer that got wrecked when Lulu showed up. But, you know, she missed you, too. A lot, actually. Patty’s right—Jaz has been struggling. I think...”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she needed... all of us?”
“The Wags?”
He nodded. “You should ask her. Talk to her. For real.”
It was strange for him to advisemeto talk to my best friend. I wasn’t the one who left her behind when I chose juvenile delinquency over friendship. But I wasn’t in the mood to bring that up again.
We stood together, silent and awkward, not quite looking at each other.
“I’m just going to...” I gestured behind me, toward the shower.
“Right, right. I’ll be out in the garage.” He took a step back but didn’t turn around. “Get as naked as you want to. I won’t be peeking.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said with heavy sarcasm. “Thank you for allowing me to be naked in my own home, which I already do every single day.”
“God, stopflirtingwith me!”
I slammed the bathroom door shut and melted against it as my nerves went wild. He was only being obnoxious for the laughs,and I just wasn’t used to being teased that way—definitely not back at Harvard. No one there knew how to push my buttons.
Classic Seb Jansen.
I did my best to erase it all from my thoughts while taking a shower and instead concentrated on the skeleton key cipher. But like Seb, I couldn’t think of any obvious place in town that had to do with noses. The more I thought about it, the more frustrated I became.
After dressing, I put our wet clothes in the washer. Then I rummaged around until I found a decades-old Ace bandage under the bathroom sink—the metal fastener long gone and replaced by a safety pin—and wrapped it around my tender ankle. I hobbled my way outside and entered the garage, where Seb was already shutting the hood of the Corvair.
