Cora Flash and the Treasure of Beggar's Bluff (2 page)

"I already help out," I said. "I do lots."

"I know you do, sweetie," she said to me, "but there are going to be some evenings and weekends where I need you to watch over Ethan if I have to investigate an accident or claim scene. And until your father gets back from the road, you are my number two."

My father traveled a lot, mostly to other states, selling broadband Internet service to businesses. He always said the life of the salesman was nothing but airport lounges and lousy hotels. My mother's new job, however, sounded terribly exciting, even a little bit dangerous. She was the person who would be responsible for looking into people's insurance claims to make sure they were telling the truth. If she determined the claims were valid, she would approve their request and pay the insurance amount. For some of the claims, there were hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake. She was almost like a detective, which thrilled me to bits.

"I understand," I said. "I can take care of Ethan, don't worry."

Almost as if he'd been waiting for the chance, Ethan took a handful of his dinner and threw it across the room. Mashed potatoes and green peas were suddenly all over the kitchen floor.

"Ethan!" my mom yelled. "Stop that!"

Ethan found humor in his actions and began to laugh hysterically.

"I'll get it," I said, reaching for the paper towels to begin the cleanup operation.

"Thank you, Cora," she said.

I started to wipe up the mess, but it felt more like I was just pushing it around the floor into a big blobby pile. "Eww, gross," I said out loud.

Calvin, my Norfolk Terrier, sprang into action at the opportunity for more food, gobbling up as many of the mashed potatoes and peas as he could manage.

"Calvin, stop it," I said, trying to push him out of the way. He forcefully fought back, pushing his snout into the mashed potatoes, licking furiously the whole time.

After I had the mess cleaned up, I sat back down and started to tell my mother about the assignment we'd received from Mr. Levine.

"Homework on your first day?"

"You sound like Shelby," I laughed. "It's just a research project. I have to learn about the shipping trade from this area. I'll need to go to the library after dinner, I'm going to meet Shelby there."

"Okay," Mom replied. "I'll take you after dinner. Can you ask Shelby's dad to drive you home? I'll be putting Ethan to bed."

I didn't think Shelby's dad would mind driving me home; he often drove me home when Shelby and I went to the movies.

"Do you have your first case yet?" I asked my mom.

"I do, but I'm not supposed to talk about it."

"Oh come on!" I cried. "Who am I going to tell?"

"I know," she said with a giggle. "I'll tell you, but you can't repeat this to anyone you know. You never know if one of the people involved is related to someone at school."

"I promise!"

"Well," she began, "the number seventeen bus was driving up Water Street a few weeks ago and a car cut off the bus quite suddenly. The driver of the bus stopped and avoided hitting the car, but many of the passengers were hurt."

"That's terrible," I said.

"It is. And there are many claims from the passengers, eight in all, who have medical expenses that they would like to have covered."

"It sounds scary," I said. "Was anyone seriously hurt?"

"Thankfully, no. The injuries are mostly whiplash and a few broken bones, but nothing very serious."

I was intrigued by my Mom's first case on the job. "So what do you have to do?"

"Well, I'm going to start by interviewing each of the passengers on the bus, as well as the driver of the bus."

"What about the driver of the car who cut them off?"

"Unfortunately, that person left the scene, so I won't be able to get any information from them. But remember, I'm not the police. I'm not trying to find out who caused the accident. I just need to find out if the passengers have a legitimate claim to medical compensation."

"Compensation?" I asked.

"Payment," Mom explained. "Money, basically. I have to determine if the insurance company will cover their medical expenses. Okay, let's get going."

My mom scooped Ethan up from his highchair and grabbed her purse from the kitchen island. "I'll clean up after I get home," she said. "Do you have your library card?"

I arched my eyebrow, clearly indicating that her question was preposterous. "I always have my library card with me," I said as we walked out the front door.

CHAPTER FOUR

The town library, one of the oldest on the east coast, was one of the many libraries built with money from millionaire Andrew Carnegie in the early 1930s. I had spent many days in the library, spread out on the floor reading mystery after mystery. Sometimes the librarian, Mr. Burton, would have to tell me to leave as I had stayed well past closing time.

Shelby had agreed to meet me at the library, but she'd sent me a text to say she was running behind because her mom was caught up watching
Jeopardy,
yelling answers at the screen and refusing to leave until the program ended.

I decided to take advantage of the extra time and see if there were any new mysteries to check out. The library collection was not vast, but they managed to add enough new titles each month to keep me happy. A shelf near the front always had all the new books on display. As usual, three or four sounded appealing to me.

I picked up,
The Mystery of the Golden Leopard
. It sounded a bit ridiculous. Who ever heard of a golden leopard?

"It's a statue," said a voice behind me.

I turned around to see the librarian, Mr. Burton, standing nearby.

"The book," he continued. "It's about a golden statue shaped like a leopard that goes missing."

"Oh," I said. "That sounds intriguing."

"I don't think you'll like it," he added. "It's not very well-plotted. You know right from the beginning who the culprit is."

Mr. Burton was right. I would not like that book at all. One of my biggest pet peeves was to know the end of the book almost from the beginning. I replaced the book and continued browsing.

"This one you will like," he said, handing me another.

I took it from him and read the title out loud, "
The Crystal Caper
. Wow, that does sound exciting. Have you read it?"

"No, not yet, but some other patrons have told me it was one of the best stories they have read in a long time. I think you should give it a try."

That was enough reason for me, so I tucked the book under my arm and made a mental note to check it out.

"Can we get this over with?" said Shelby, who'd suddenly appeared by my side.

"Hi. I'm ready if you are."

"Cora, do you want to trade topics? I think you'd do much better with this one than I would."

"No way. I'm quite happy with my subject. Let's go look for some books and we'll meet back at one of the big tables."

"Fine," she said. "I'm going to need some help," she said to Mr. Burton.

"What exactly are you looking for?" he asked.

"Here," she said, handing him the slip of paper with her topic on it. "I have to do a report on this."

He took the paper from her hands and studied it closely. "Ah, well, that is quite interesting. Come with me and I'll show you where to look."

She followed Mr. Burton and disappeared into the stacks in search of books on local vegetation.

I had been to the library so many times that I knew exactly where to start looking for my books. I skipped over to the section on local history and started to scan the shelves for anything that might help.

There were not many books to choose from, and in fact only one seemed worth reading.
"Shipping Routes of the East Coast."
Maybe it wouldn't have anything for my area, since it covered the whole East Coast, but I thought I'd look through it to see if anything caught my eye. It was a pretty large book, so I hauled it back to one of the project tables.

SLAM! The book fell onto the desk with a loud thump, startling everyone in the otherwise silent room.

"Sorry," I whispered loudly. "It was an accident."

I sat down at the table and began to flip through the massive book. It was very thorough, covering many different regions, each represented by a number of maps.

"Finally," I said as I discovered the part of the book that covered our town.

I began to skim through the description of industries that used the river to ship their goods to and from our region. There were a number of references to salt and flour refineries, making it sound like our town was the best place for a baker to live.

I turned the page and noticed a small piece of paper tucked into the middle part, the gutter, of the book.

"Ugh," said Shelby as she joined me, dropping a pile of books on the table. "Can you believe all of these books? There are ten or twelve of them, and I have to read them all."

"Shhhh!" said a man two tables away.

"Sorry," she said in a tone that didn't sound very apologetic. "What is that?" she asked, noticing the small piece of paper in my hands.

"I found it tucked into this book."

I started to open the paper, unfolding it until I could read the message written inside,
"Fortune and love favor the brave. CMXLVI JON."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm not sure."

I stared at the last part for a long time. CMXLVI JON. What could that mean? Some sort of code, I guessed. But for what?

CHAPTER FIVE

That night, I sat in front of the computer and typed in the code written on the piece of papery I'd found. CMXLVI JON.

I hit search and browsed the results that appeared on screen. There were quite a few references to CMXLVI, but nothing that paired it with JON. I could not find a link between the two things.

Next, I tried searching on the rest of the message, "Fortune and love favor the brave." That one uncovered many hits, and it became clear that the quote was from a Roman poet named Ovid who died in AD 17.

I tried saying it out loud to see if it made any sense. "Fortune and love favor the brave."

"Reading poetry?" Mom asked from the doorway.

"Yeah," I said, not wanting to get into the details of my discovery.

"How did your library search go?"

"Okay, but I only found one helpful book. I think I might need to look up some stuff on the Internet."

My mother shook her head, "I doubt you'll find that much online. I remember when we first decided to move here, we tried to search for information on the local area and did not find much at all."

That disappointed me a great deal. If I couldn't find anything on the Internet, I wasn't sure where to go next.

"You know who you could talk to? Mr. French, at the Town Hall. He curates the little museum that is in the lobby."

That little museum was nothing more than a bookcase, mounted to the wall with three or four black-and-white pictures of the area, and a few bricks from the original town hall that had burned down in the 1920s.

"Maybe. I could try," I replied.

Mom disappeared as quickly as she'd appeared, and I continued my search to make sense of the CMXLVI.

Wait a second,
I thought to myself.
I know what these are!

Something clicked in my head and I suddenly remembered seeing letters arranged like this before. They were numbers, but not normal numbers that we use today. Roman numerals!

I quickly searched, "CMXLVI Roman numerals" and up popped a whole bunch of answers. They all pointed to the same thing. CMXLVI stands for 946. I read the message again, "Fortune and love favor the brave. 946 JON."

I wasn't entirely sure that figuring out the Roman numerals had made a difference. 946 JON was too short to be code for a phone number, so what else could it stand for?

Blip
! My computer announced an incoming message from Shelby.

"Hi," I typed.

"I'm so bored," she responded. "I hate this project."

"Give it a chance," I typed. "You just started!"

"I think Mr. Levine hates us. Why else would he give us homework on the first day?"

"That's normal for our grade," I responded. "We'll probably get homework every single day, and weekend."

"I have to go back to the library tomorrow," she answered. "There's one more book I have to check out. Do you want to come?"

The library. Of course, that was it!

"I have to log off," I hastily typed.

I closed the chat window and looked at the sticky note in front of me.

946 JON.

It was a code, and I knew exactly what for. I had to go back to the library the next day to find a new book.

CHAPTER SIX

I was not able to concentrate much at school the day after figuring out my coded message.

Twice Mr. Levine stopped speaking to ask me if I was okay. Both times, I'd turned my head toward the wall and let my eyes glaze over. He must have thought I was bored, or focused on something unrelated to his lesson plans. Both times, I apologized and tried to refocus.

"Are you coming to the library after school?" Shelby asked as we prepared to go for lunch.

"Of course!" I responded, with no attempt to hide my enthusiasm. "I can't wait to get there."

"It's just the library, not the Dairy Palace."

The Dairy Palace was our favorite ice cream shop. We often met there on Saturdays to talk about our friends and trade gossip.

"I'm going to the lunch room now," Shelby announced, taking her knapsack from under her desk. "You coming?"

"Yeah." I grabbed my bag and followed her out the door.

"Just a minute," said Mr. Levine. "Cora, can I talk to you before you go to lunch?"

"Uh oh," said Shelby, under her breath. "It's the second day and you're already in trouble."

Shelby left the room and I walked up to Mr. Levine's desk. "Yes?"

"Cora, I know we have just met," he began. "But you seem a little lost today. Is something wrong?"

"I'm just thinking about my school project."