“You okay?” Seb asked.
I shook away the feeling of eyes on my back. “It’s nothing.” Just a little good ol’-fashioned paranoia. “But you know, I was just thinking about the logistics of Wyrd Jack’s wife helping him hide the Golden Venus while he sat inside that cell . . .”
“So chances are the lock for this key is a million miles from here,” Seb finished, understanding what I was getting at. “They wouldn’t have hidden it in the police station. This would qualify as ‘under their noses,’ but it doesn’t make sense, logically. What would she do, bring a locked box into the station and hide it while a dozen cops roamed the halls? Even if she managed it, people would’ve found something like that years ago, when the station was being turned into a museum.”
I glanced at a framed photo of Wyrd Jack’s ship, theDevil’s Revenge. Hmm. “Uh, Seb? She might not have been able to hide something in here, but what about there?”
He blinked at the framed photo. “His ship? That’s... a better possibility. All the stuff in the cargo hold, maybe. Or . . .”
We both looked at each other and spoke at the same time. “Captain’s quarters.”
Somewhere in the back of my thoughts, the logical part of my brain was trying to remind me that hundreds of treasure hunters from all over the world had scoured every inch of that ship. But the thrill of the chase was too seductive. The way Seb grinned at me, I knew he felt the same.
Besides, none of those treasure hunters had our key.
Making a beeline for the museum lobby, we headed back outside, ignoring the attendant telling us that we’d need our hands stamped to get back in the museum once we’d left. It was bright and sunny outside, warming up, and dozens of tourists milled around the docked, out-of-commission ship—taking photos with their children, pointing up at the rigging and the re-creation of Wyrd Jack’s black “pirate” flag, blowing in a warm breeze that swept in from the lake.
The entrance fee for the ship was higher than the museum, which I started to complain about when Seb placed a hand on my back and urged me forward so that we could blend in with a large family that had purchased a tour package. “Go, go, go!” Seb whispered near the top of my head, and for a moment I was overwhelmed by his warm hand on me, his breath tickling my hair. But we soon slipped past the cordoned entrance to the ship and the attendant who guarded it, and Seb released me.
“Ahoy, maties!” a perky tour guide called out to our group,gathered on the ship’s main deck, surrounded by fat rigging rope and polished pine. “You are standing on theDevil’s Revenge, one of the most infamous ships to ever sail the Great Lakes. This ship carried bootleg liquor, stolen federal timber, and even an infamous passenger. The gangster, Bugs Moran, was rumored to have been ferried into Chicago by Wyrd Jack before his men were gunned down by Al Capone’s gang in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre...”
We’d both heard a version of this tour many times. When the guide asked the tour group to climb steps that led to the helm, Seb and I broke away and sneaked toward the door tucked under those steps, the captain’s quarters.
“Booyah!” Seb said when we slipped through the open doorway and found ourselves alone in the cabin, which was preserved much as it was when the ship was confiscated in 1929.
We stood in a small, dark room with paned windows that provided a nice view of the harbor. A large japanned pedestal desk sat in the center of the room, the front of which was ornately carved with swirling dragons and tree branches. Two visitors’ seats were parked in front of it, and tucked behind, where the captain himself would’ve sat, was a padded chair that looked a little like a throne. An unlit fireplace stood along the right wall, and a rather big bed occupied the left wall. Rugs crisscrossed the old wooden floorboards.
“Look for a keyhole,” Seb whispered loudly. “We’ve only got a few minutes before the tour makes its way down here and maybe less than that if someone’s monitoring that camera above the fireplace.”
My nerves hummed. I’d been in this room a dozen times. The memory of it had lived in my head since I was a child, visiting theship with Nana, who knew Wyrd Jack’s history better than any tour guide here. But now that I stood in the dim chamber, which was lit by battery-operated lanterns and fake candles, I couldn’t think of any lock that would fit our skeleton key.
“Okay, let’s be smart about this. The obvious lock is the hidden cabinet,” I said as we both inspected an open cabinet that was designed to hide valuables, hidden within the wall’s wooden paneling. A framed sign described what the police had found there when the ship was seized—several thousand dollars in cash and a box filled with stolen jewelry. It stood open for visitors to inspect, making our skeleton key unnecessary.
“Too obvious,” Seb said, shaking his head. “There’s the grandfather clock in the corner...”
Our key was too big for that, but we inspected the clock with our hands, feeling around for any kind of secret lock and finding nothing.
Above our heads, boards squealed with the weight of footfalls.The touring group.Seb looked up and hurried his movements. “There’s the trunk at the foot of the bed, but there’s no way it hasn’t been opened yet—”
I bent in front of the trunk to check it and was surprised that the top swung open. Unlocked. Nothing but dust bunnies inside.
“Dammit!” Seb complained. “I thought for sure we might find something—anything!”
I checked two smaller boxes: one on a built-in bookshelf and one that sat upon the big desk. Both had locks too small for our key. “Is there something we’re not seeing?”
Seb plopped down in one of the two wooden visitor’s chairs that sat neatly in front of the captain’s desk. “‘Under their noses’... What noses? Maybe he meant literal noses, like in a painting ofpeople’s faces? That’s where we found the first clue, a painting...” Seb rotated his neck to glance around the room at several oil paintings and black-and-white photographs that lined the cabin’s walls. They were all landscapes. A framed watercolor of this very ship hung above the fireplace. I slipped my hand around the frame, but it had been secured to the wall with screws.
“There are no noses in this room,” I said, taking the seat next to him in defeat. The tour group would be here any minute. I could hear them coming down the nearby stairs.
Seb hung his head and stared at the desk in front of us while I looked over it, toward the slanted windows.
“‘Under their noses,’ ‘under their noses’...” he repeated. “Huh.”
“What?”
He gestured at the front of the desk, where two stylized dragons stared at each other, their curving tails intertwined. “Dragons have noses,” he noted.
We looked at each other for a moment before pushing out of the chairs to squat on the rug in front of the desk. It was made of walnut in the late 1800s by a Parisian furniture maker and was easily the most valuable thing on the ship.
