Scottie dipped his head and raised his brow in an unspoken question.
“We do trust you.”
“You could ask the courts for information. If your parents died without a will, there will be information about it in the probate courts. You’d have to ask a lawyer to look into it.”
“That’s what we did. That’s why Patrick died. We can’t risk endangering another person, including you.”
“Don’t be silly. I have an old school friend in Christchurch who is a lawyer. I could ask him to look into your case. Patrick didn’t seem to have any trouble getting information. Let me make a few calls.”
“If you think that’s best?”
“I do, but first, there’s the security stuff I brought for you.”
He walked around to his truck and comes back with a bunch of boxes.
“I found these great security lights. They are solar powered and have an infra-red motion detector. Once they are triggered, it also switches on the CCTV and you can monitor the lot with your cell phone. I’ll install three at the back boundary where the trees begin, another three at the boundary line at the front. Then we have two at the back and two at the front of the house.”
“Do you think that’s necessary? If someone comes, it’ll light up the place like a Christmas tree.”
“Don’t you think it’s time to amp up the security? Your best bet is still Prince, but I would feel much more at peace if I knew you had footage of intruders on your phone. Something we can present to the police in case we needed to.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me. I like being helpful and I can’t stomach people harassing others just for fun.”
When he drives off, he leaves me with a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. It hit me how much more serious the situation sounded when I voiced it out loud compared to just thinking about it. One thing is certain, whoever is hunting us is not doing it for fun.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mikey: 3 December 2015, Morning, Wright’s Homestead
Hello, black book, this is Mikey!
What’s the number one rule for a good treasure hunt? Keeping the secret, silly! Now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it? The problem with others in the Tribe is they are chatting all the time. Don’t ask me why. I can’t see any good reason for it. I keep my mouth shut. You have to unless you want the entire world to know where you are, what you’re doing, and where the treasure is.
Everyone goes ooh and aah and @#$*^—that’s Lilly—when something happens like the police showing up. Such a drama. I don’t do drama. I roll into a tiny, tiny ball, more like a speck of dust, so nobody can see me. They don’t even know I’m around. That’s fine with me. Whenever there is a need for hiding something or finding a hiding place for yourself, I’m the man! I’ve already figured out where to go when we have to run away from here. I could have told them that auntie’s house isn’t a good hiding place. When I found out that’s where we were going, it was too late to stop it.
Nobody in the Tribe takes me seriously. For them, I’m just a twelve-year-old kid that fancies pirates. As If. What they don’t know… I see everything. When I say everything, I mean everything. But I tell nobody. Not even Sky. Most of all, not Sky. She’s a know-it-all. But she doesn’t know everything.
I’ve seen Auntie Amanda put things away in really strange places. Some of her hiding places are too easy to find, like the jar with a screw top behind a box of washing powder. She puts her jewelry in it when she leaves the house. But the other one under the stove is super cool. It was funny to see her crawling on her tummy until she could reach under the cooker. I had to press my fist against my mouth not to laugh out loud when I saw her loosen the floorboard. Her bottom stuck in the air like the hump of a camel, wobbling to and fro. That was funny.
Her things must be important, at least to her, to go to all that trouble. Or maybe she likes to play hide and seek as I do? I found all her secret places and I like them a lot. The one under the cooker was the best one of them all. I’m sure she doesn’t mind if I put some of my treasures there too.
I wonder where she is though. To think about it, I haven’t seen her for a while. The big Ama woman, who looks like the Venus figurine people found in excavations in Austria, has been wheeling and dealing in auntie’s kitchen. She’ll be in big trouble because auntie hates people messing with her stuff.
Once, when Elise’s mum came and asked her to keep things for her, she slapped her hand with a wooden spoon because she dared to open the drawer of the kitchen cabinet. That taught her. After that she stopped strutting around and gave auntie the big envelope to “put away,” she said.
I haven’t seen her for a while. The same goes for Elise’s dad. It can’t be too difficult to find out what happened to them. Not today. Today everybody was afraid of the police people. Of course, they would have found the money. Putting it in a box under the bed was a stupid hiding place. That’s why I took it and put it in auntie’s super hiding place under the cooker. Nobody will find it in a hundred years.
I’ve been thinking of booby-trapping the hiding place, but that’s difficult. I found a few old mousetraps and put them under the stove. That’s the
