I handed him one of the heavy plastic cups. “Can’t believe you remembered.”
“Mind like a bear trap.”
I chuckled and picked up my coffee, running a finger across the side to clear away beads of moisture that had sweated onto the cup. The cottage grew quiet, and a strained awkwardness hung in the air. Did he not want to be here? Maybe he’d sobered up after our cavern adventure. Maybe he regretted it.
It was getting weird.Say something.
“Hey,” I started. “So, um... I was thinking about the cipher—”
“‘Under their noses’?” He acted as relieved as I felt to have something safe to talk about.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding and stirring the ice inside my drink with the straw. “And I was thinking about how you first thought about it being connected to the statue of Wyrd Jack.”
“But we already decided it can’t be the statue.”
I held up a finger. “I’m wondering if the museum itself might inspire a solution. I can’t stop thinking about how that phrase means to do something bad right out in the open and no one suspects, right? The museum is inside the old jail where he was held.”
“Treasure hunters have scoured the museum for decades, though.”
“But they didn’t have this,” I said, pulling the skeleton key out of my jeans pocket. “Is there something still there, something they missed? Like...” I shook my head and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Seb filled another bowl with water. “Hmm.”
“Maybe I’m just spinning my wheels.”
“Maybe. But I’m getting that tingly feeling—you know the one.”
“You should really have that checked by a doctor.”
He leaned against the counter while Punkin plowed into her food. “Let me get the Corvair jacked up. Then we’ll take a trip to the harbor, see what we can see. After, we’ll come back here and I’ll start tearing down your engine.”
A little thrill went through me. This was good. No more awkwardness. We were just two old friends, reconnecting.
Seb went out to the garage, while I let Punkin out back after Seb reminded me that she didn’t need babysitting and was perfectly content to sleep on the back porch swing, which would explain the mud accumulating on the swing’s palm-tree printed cushion.
It didn’t take long for Seb to get the car jacked up on one side—enough that he could slide under and dismantle part of the engine from below. Once he’d secured the wheels, he cleaned up and checked on the dog—and left her dozing on the back porch swing—we piled into the Bronco and headed out.
The drive was less than ten minutes, and with his travelogue audiobook turned down low in the background, we talked about things that had changed along the route. A new sub shop opened. An old laundromat closed. The city was rebuilding our former middle school. After we crossed the river, heading into the nicer part of town, we turned away from Benny’s neighborhood and drove into the heart of Haven Beach: the Harbor District.
We didn’t have a big harbor, but it stayed busy with tourists in the summer. A wooden boardwalk curved around the water and was lined with quirky shops, street performers, and several hotels. At the far tip of the harbor stood our cherry-red lighthouse—nolonger working, just a tourist spot now. Halfway between it and where we stood, a late-nineteenth-century wooden mail-delivery ship was moored along the boardwalk.
Devil’s Revenge.
Wyrd Jack’s “pirate” ship.
Tourists were already paying for tickets at a nearby booth to tour the ship. We found a lucky parking space right next to the stone statue of Wyrd Jack—a fierce-looking man with a big beard and a corncob pipe dangling from this mouth, dressed in a heavy coat and a fisherman’s hat.
“Still looks like you,” Seb joked when we hopped out of the Bronco.
“I’m trying to grow my beard back in. Hey, you don’t think we should call Jaz and Benny before we go in here, do you? I mean, what if we actually find something?”
“Nah. Chances are low that we’d find the treasure inside there. Best we can hope for is another clue. Besides, you and me are the primary Wags. Always have been. If we find anything, we’ll loop them back in.”
I supposed that was sensible. I shielded my eyes from the sun glinting off the water and looked around. It was really nice here. Flowers bloomed in window boxes of an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, and pretty trees shaded a cobbled walk that had been there a hundred years. Birds sang. Tourists smiled. And I sighed to myself in pleasure as nostalgic feelings surfaced ... until I saw the sign outside the museum.
“Holy shit, they doubled ticket prices,” I said. “Ten dollars a person? It used to be five!”
“No worries, I gotcha,” Seb said as we walked up to the museum’s ticket window. “Those of us who are gainfully employed,see, we have a paycheck—unlike you freeloading students. Two, please,” he said to the ticket seller.
