You wily fox! I thought. Nathaniel Daniel had covered his tracks well. Nobody in a million years would believe this public-spirited citizen was a pirate, which was likely just the way he’d wanted it.
There were also bequests of a few personal items. He left his gold pocket watch to his son, Obadiah, whose portrait I passed every day in the stairwell at home—and a harpsichord to his daughter, Abigail, whose portrait hung right beside her brother’s. My eyes drifted down the page. A copper teakettle to a cousin, a horse to his friend and neighbor John Wainwright, blah blah blah, the list went on. I was just about to hand the pages back to the archivist when my gaze landed on the last item. It was tossed in almost like an afterthought, only it wasn’t an afterthought.
It was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I sat up straight in my chair, every hair on the back of my neck at attention. And finally, to my beloved wife, Prudence, I leave a parting gift—my signet ring engraved with an eagle in flight.
That was the ring that Nathaniel Daniel was wearing in his portrait at home! The one that had been passed down to my grandfather and would someday belong to my dad!
I continued reading. May it serve to remind her of our courting days in the sunrise of our youth. Always remember, my love: Where the eagle flies, there lies the prize. Where the eaglet sleeps, harken to the deep.
Where the eagle flies. Gramps had told me once that eagles had nested on Cherry Island for as long as anyone could remember. Had they nested there in Nathaniel Daniel’s day too?
The clue fell into place as neatly as the final number in a sudoku puzzle.
To most readers, those words would seem just what they appeared to be—a sentimental gift from a loving husband to his wife. But they were likely much more than that. “The prize” had to be the pirate treasure, and Nathaniel Daniel was telling Prudence where she could find it! Where the eaglet sleeps. The eagle’s nest in the tallest tree on the island was the key.
“May I take a picture of this?” I asked Peregrine, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice.
She glanced up from her desk. “Of the will? Sure.”
I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and snapped photos of the transcript. Then I kicked Cha Cha under the table and cut my eyes urgently toward the door.
She got the message.
“Hey, you guys,” she said, setting a faded document back on the table. “I’m getting hungry. Can we break for lunch?”
The archivist looked surprised. “I told Dr. Calhoun I’d be happy to stay open as long as you need.”
“Thank you, but we’re starving,” I said, handing her back the transcript. “This is really cool, though. Maybe we can come back again another day?”
I practically bolted out the door. I grabbed my backpack from the security guard and ran up the stairs two at a time. My friends were right behind me.
“What’s your hurry?” asked Scooter.
“Look what I found!” I exclaimed, pulling out my cell phone and holding it up.
“ ‘Where the eagle flies, there lies the prize,’ ” Calhoun read aloud, and I explained my theory about the nest.
“It can’t possibly be the same tree,” scoffed Scooter. “Nathaniel Daniel wrote that will back before the Revolutionary War!”
“There are plenty of trees around Pumpkin Falls that have been here for hundreds of years,” I retorted. “My grandfather is always pointing them out. There’s even one in our yard. Why not one on Cherry Island, too?”
“I guess it’s possible,” said Calhoun, but he sounded doubtful too.
“I just know this is it,” I insisted. “This has to be the key to finding the treasure.”
Jasmine frowned. “Do you think Dr. Appleton figured it out too? She’s pretty smart.”
“She may have figured out the connection to Cherry Island, and she may have figured out the part about the tree, but she still doesn’t know about the cave.”
“At least we hope she doesn’t,” said Lucas.
“So what do we do now?” asked Scooter.
“We ‘harken to the deep.’ We have to go back to the island. We have to find the underwater entrance and get to the treasure before Dr. Appleton does.”
Cha Cha looked at me. “But we promised your aunt we wouldn’t go alone!”
“We’ll figure something out!” I called over my shoulder as I ran out the front door of the library—and smack-dab into my father.
CHAPTER 34
The thing about skating on thin ice is that you almost always fall in.
I should have known that my run of luck wouldn’t last. My father was bound to find out about my escapades sooner or later, and now, thanks to a last-minute cancellation of his physical therapy session, he had. And he wasn’t happy about it at all. In fact, I hadn’t seen him this mad since I’d gotten an F-plus in math last winter.
Lieutenant Colonel Jericho T. Lovejoy did not like being lied to. Not one bit. He marched me home on the double.
“This is a breach of trust, young lady!” he stormed. “You knew the agreement—bookstore, piano lessons, stage crew.” He ticked them off on the fingers of his good hand. “That’s it! And now I find you’ve been sneaking around the whole time—”
“Not the whole time.”
“Don’t you talk back to me!”
“No, sir,” I said meekly.
“I knew I was being too lenient! I never should have listened to your aunt.”
When the dust finally settled, I was banned from the bookshop until further notice. The only reason I was still allowed to take piano lessons was because my parents had prepaid for the summer, and
