Gasparilla's Treasure (Trip Mongomery Book 1) (12 page)

Trip, Josh, and Sarah talked over each other’s words all the way to Trip’s house.  The excitement crackled like electricity as they discussed finding the final map piece and about how Trip had chased Eli down.  They tossed ideas back and forth about why Pappy had not been able to find the treasure even though he knew where it was.  They were no closer to solving the mystery by the time they got to Trip’s house.

“Uh oh,” said Josh, as they arrived in Trip’s driveway.

Trip looked up and stopped dead in his tracks.  Mom was standing there waiting for him.  She was furious.

“I can't believe you!” Mom blasted.  “Any of you!  What were you thinking?”

Trip opened his mouth to answer, but Mom cut him off before he could even form a thought.

“Don't answer that!” said Mom.  “I don't want to hear it.  Any answer to that question is only going to make me angrier.  This is over!  I've taken everything, including that trunk, and locked it all away for good!”

Trip, Josh, and Sarah looked concerned.  They were getting so close to solving this, to finding Gasparilla’s treasure.  And now, if Mom had locked away all their research, it would seriously slow them down.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Mom, her voice now earsplitting.  “You’re thinking you will still find a way to go after that treasure behind my back.  But rest assured, I am going to be watching every move you make, Francis Montgomery.  So you better straighten up.”

Mom stared icily at Sarah and Josh.  They looked as if someone had just shot them with a freeze ray.  The expressions on their faces were pure horror.

“And you two,” she spat.  “Go home!  NOW!”

Sarah and Josh turned and hightailed it down the driveway without a word.

Trip cowered on his bed as Mom towered over him.  She had regained control of her volume, but she was still irate.  She was finishing up an hour long lecture.

“I meant what I said, Trip,” warned Mom.  “I'll be watching you now.  I thought I could trust you, but obviously I was wrong.”

“Mom, we're getting so close.” Trip pleaded, which just made Mom more irritated.

“That's what your father used to tell me,” said Mom.  “We're getting so close.  That's why he lost his job, that's why he was always gone...  Because he was always so close.  I've got enough to deal with right now without having to worry about you and that treasure.”

Things were really bad if Mom was dragging Dad into it.  She rarely mentioned him.

“Mom, I'm sorry,” Trip said, and he meant it.  “I just wanted to...”

“You think you're sorry now,” barked Mom.  “You don't know sorry.  I've taken away your cell phone, there's a lock on your window, and I haven't decided if you'll ever be able to leave your room again.  You've gone too far this time, Trip.  I'm disappointed in you.”

With that, Mom stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her.  Trip buried his head in his hands.  How could this day have taken such a drastic turn?  One minute he could almost feel the treasure in his hands, and in the blink of an eye, it was a distant dream.

Late that night, Trip sat in bed looking at the map pieces.  He tried to focus on the positive things after Mom’s earlier tirade.  She did not realize he still had the map pieces, or the cast iron plate he had tucked away in his clothes.

He rotated the map pieces and held them up to the light, hoping he might find the missing piece of the puzzle.  He lined them up in different ways on his bed, looking for something they had missed.  He would not sleep until he figured out why Pappy had not found the treasure.

He moved to his desk, and placed the map pieces back in their proper positions.   Then he just sat at his desk studying the map for what must have been an hour.  It simply made no sense.  Pappy figured out exactly where the treasure was, and yet he did not find it. 

Trip looked closely at the details of the map, and decided to focus on some of the strange symbols that worked their way across all four pieces of the map.  They resembled markings from an ancient cave wall.  The symbols formed a large circle around the entire map.  Another smaller circle of symbols was directly inside the larger circle.  He spent the next three hours scrutinizing the symbols.

He found himself in a world between sleep and waking as he stared at the symbols.  He was so tired, he found it difficult to keep his eyes open.  But he was not going to stop until he figured this out.  Pappy was counting on him.

His brain started playing tricks on him.  At one point he saw a picture of a red fox on the map.  It was not there before, and it started to move.  The fox’s bright eyes caught his for a moment, and then started dashing around the map.  As the fox ran, it changed into a man, a Native American man.  The man’s face grew larger and seemed to rise out of the map in a cloud of smoke.  The smoke held its shape, and Trip realized it was the man he had dreamed about the other night.  He spoke to Trip in broken English with a voice that carried the wisdom of a thousand years.

“If you are found worthy and choose path of wisdom,” said the old man, “then you keep forever, the gift of understanding we give you.  If you abuse this gift, or choose path of selfish ways, then you are not the person we think you are.  We search thousands of years for
Guardian of Knowledge
, and we finally find you.”

The smoke dissolved back into the map, gradually becoming the drawing of the man, and then finally back to a fox.  The fox ran away, becoming smaller and smaller until it was the same size as one of the symbols that formed the circles on the map.  The fox trotted to the center of the circles and sat down.  He looked at Trip intently for a moment, and then transformed into a symbol that strongly resembled a fox.  Trip stared at the symbol as it seemed to dissolve through the paper with a golden glow until it was gone.

Trip was so tired and he stared at the map in confusion.  His eyelids felt like lead weights and he found it hard to keep his eyes focused.  He could not resist the need for sleep any longer.

Trip woke up with his cheek lying on the desk and realized it had all been a dream. As he thought about the old man’s words, it all seemed real.  He said something about being
worthy
.  Was this a test of Trip’s character?  He also said something about a
gift of understanding
and
choosing the path of wisdom
.  All Trip wanted to do was make sure Pappy was safe, and to do that he had to find the treasure.  Then he said something about Trip being the
Guardian of Knowledge
.  This made no sense to Trip, but he was wasting time worrying about a dream, when he needed to be figuring out where the treasure was.

He reached down and touched the spot on the map where the fox symbol had been.  It seemed so real, but the symbol was not there.  He turned the map over and next to the hand written clues was a symbol that had not been there before.  He expected it to look like a fox, but it more closely resembled an owl.  He could not explain it, but his brain was making connections.  He realized he had seen all the symbols before.

He pulled the cast iron plate from its hiding place, and there they were!  All the symbols were on the plate, just as they appeared on the map.  They were faded and worn, but they were there.  The symbols were imprinted in a circle around the plate’s rim, making the same circle as the map.  The inner circle was there too.  Trip must have noticed the symbols on the plate in the many hours he spent looking at all the stuff Pappy left him, but he never realized they were important.

He checked each symbol, looking for the owl, but he could not find it.  He flipped the plate over, and Trip could have sworn he saw a faint golden glow that vanished the moment he turned the plate over.  In the center of the plate was the imprint of the owl symbol.  It was not faint.  In fact, it looked like it had just been made.  Trip remembered seeing a symbol there before, but it was not an owl.  He had a feeling it may have been a fox.

Things started to make sense to Trip.  He didn’t know why, they just did.  Maybe the old man in the smoke had really given him a gift of understanding.  The symbols in the circles were like map locators.  If you drew a line between two matching symbols, and then another line through two other matching symbols, the point where the lines crossed would mark the treasure.

Down in the lower corner of the map were some of Pappy’s hand written calculations using the symbols.  From what Trip could tell, the circle of symbols needed to be rotated a certain number of degrees before the lines could be drawn to find the treasure.  Trip wasn’t sure how Pappy came up with the proper rotation and symbol matches, but he suspected the answer would be in the Gasparilla book.  Why did he let Eli run off with that book?

It did not matter.  Trip could work his way backwards from Pappy’s conclusions.  Each symbol represented a number or a direction.  He didn’t really know what each symbol meant, but he got the basic idea.  Trip spent the next four hours trying to figure out each symbol’s meaning, and then he saw something that changed everything.  There was a single symbol in Pappy’s calculations that he could not find anywhere else.  It was the fox symbol, and Pappy should have used the owl symbol.

“They made a mistake,” he said softly.  “They were looking in the wrong place.”

Josh and Sarah sat in the lunchroom, an empty seat at their table. They were talking about Trip. Trip was supposed to have math with Josh second period, but he never showed up.  Finally, nervous and tired, Trip arrived and flopped down at their table.

“Where were you?”  Josh asked.  “You weren’t in class.”

“What happened with your Mom?” asked Sarah.  “Is she still mad at me?  I sure hope she isn’t mad at me.” Her brow wrinkled anxiously.

“You know,” said Josh casually, “when I didn’t see you this morning, I thought about calling the police.  I was pretty sure that she killed you.”

“No,” said Trip wearily.  “Nothing like that.  Look. I want you guys to see this.”

Trip quickly laid out the map pieces on the table.  Although tired, he was talking so fast that he sounded like an auctioneer.

“OK, check this out,” Trip started.  “I looked at the map, and I realized that these symbols matched the symbols on the old cast iron plate and when I compared them to the map they’re exactly the same.  And because I didn’t have the book, I had to figure out how they used the symbols as map coordinates, and when I substituted the fox symbol with the owl symbol from the old man, there it was...” He had to stop to take a breath.

Josh and Sarah looked at Trip like he had completely lost it.

“Did you by any chance stay up all night trying to figure this out,” asked Sarah, “and then drink a ton of coffee to try and stay awake?”

“Well, yeah,” said Trip, eyes wide.  “How did you know?  Did you know I’ve never had coffee before?  It seems to really help you stay awake.”

“Dude,” said Josh.  “I don’t know what your mom did to you, but you have completely lost it.”

“Slow down, Trip,” said Sarah.  “You’re not making sense.  What’s going on?”

Trip took a deep breath and gathered himself before he spoke again.  He grinned like a Cheshire cat.

“All that matters is,” said Trip at a normal speed, “is that they were looking in the wrong place.  That's why they couldn't find the treasure.  They were looking in the wrong place!”

“Are you serious?” said Josh, gripping the side of the table in disbelief.

“Yes,” said Trip.  “I compared the plate to the map, and figured out how Dad and Pappy read the symbols.”

“But they were wrong?” asked Sarah.

“That's right,” said Trip.  “When I checked the map against the plate, it all matched.  But there was one symbol out of place.  There is an old faded symbol on the back of the plate, and when added to the original sequence, it changes the way you rotate the numbers by a small amount.  They used the little fox symbol thing, but it’s supposed to be the little owl looking one.”

Trip decided not to mention the man that appeared in smoke.  He thought that would be too much.

“Brother,” said Josh.  “I thought you were losing me, but it turns out I was lost before you even started.”

“Look at this symbol,” said Trip patiently, referring to the underside of the plate.  The owl symbol was still there, but it no longer appeared new.  It looked as worn and old as the rest of the symbols.  “That is the owl symbol. But…” said Trip, “it should be right here.”  He pointed at the fox symbol on the map.

Sarah and Josh raised their eyebrows, shaking their heads.

“Huh?” said Josh.

“It doesn’t matter, guys,” said Trip.  “The point is, I know where it is.  I know where to find
Gasparilla’s treasure.”

Josh and Sarah exchanged a worried look.  Earlier, they discussed how this treasure hunt was leading Trip in the wrong direction.  He was forgetting his homework and sneaking out, and they realized they were partially to blame.  And now he was talking complete nonsense.

Moments later, Trip finished laying out some satellite images he had printed off the internet.

“Where did you get those?” asked Josh.  “I thought your mom took your computer.”

“She did,” said Trip.  “That's why I was late today.  I went to the copy center up on the corner and used their internet.”

Trip referred to the satellite images as he continued.

“They were looking here, at the Fountain of Youth.  But when I rearranged the grid lines according to the new shifting symbol...”

“Cut to the chase,” said Josh.  “I’m trying to decide whether to believe you, or have you put in the loony bin.”

“OK, fine,” said Trip.  “When you add in the new information, we need to go right here.”

Trip pointed to an area very close to the original X on the map.  It was just off the designated paths, but still within the Fountain of Youth Park.

“Are you sure?” asked Sarah.  “This sounds crazy!”

“Yes, I'm sure!” said Trip, determined.  “We're skipping school tomorrow, and we're going to find that treasure.”

After school, Trip was in a hurry to get home.  He did not want Mom to have any reason to suspect he was up to something.  He was alone when Eli approached.

“Look, Twit,” said Eli.

“It's Trip,” said Trip.

“Look, Twit,” Eli repeated.  You're going to tell me why you've been running all over St. Augustine.  I’ve been looking through that book of yours and I have some questions.”

Sarah and Josh caught up, and Sarah raised her mace.

“What's going on here?” Sarah asked, mace aimed right at Eli’s face.

“How many times you
gonna pull out that mace?” Eli asked.

“Until I need to use it,” said Sarah.  “After that, I probably won't have to pull it out again because you'll be blind.”

“Listen, I know this book leads to some sort of treasure,” said Eli.

Trip put on the worst acting job imaginable. 

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Trip.  “Do you guys know what he's talking about?”

“No, I don't know anything about any treasure,” said Sarah, joining in, although she was not sure where Trip was going with this.

“Sure you do, guys,” said Josh.  “That's what we've been doing for the past couple of...”

Josh stops mid sentence as he catches on.  “Oh.  I mean, no.  I don't know anything.”

“You're going to tell me where that treasure is, or I’m going to show your face where the ground is,” threatened Eli.  “ Every day until you do tell me.”

“If you don't find it by tomorrow,” said Trip, “it will be too late, because that's when we're going to get it.”

“Trip!” Sarah squeaked, surprised.

“Oh, did little Twit let something slip?” asked Eli mockingly.  “Watch your back, Francis!  That treasure is mine.”

Eli walked away, knocking all of Josh’s books out of his hands with a resounding whack.

“Why did you do that, Trip?” asked Sarah.  “Now he's going to try to stop us.”

“I'm counting on it,” said Trip calmly.

“You really are losing it, Trip,” said Josh as he gathered his books.  “What are you talking about?”

“Well,” Trip said smugly.  “I'm sure we'll need that book tomorrow.  And...”

He left the words hanging there for them to complete.

“Eli has the book,” said Sarah, getting it.

Trip and Sarah start walking away.  Josh picked up his last book and chased after them.

“Yeah, Eli has the book,” Josh said.  “I was going to say that, you know.”

That night, Trip was in bed looking at an old picture.  Pappy and Dad were smiling on either side of Trip, and they were all much younger. It was one of the only pictures he had of his dad.  His Pappy and his dad both hunted for this treasure, but he was going to be the one to find it.

There was a knock at the door.  “Trip!” Mom called, and Trip told her to come in.

“Pappy's OK,” said Mom through her tears.  “He just came out of his coma.”

“Really!  Are you serious? Can we go see him?”

“He's resting,” said Mom.  “But we'll go see him after school tomorrow.”

Mom gave Trip a huge hug, not wanting to let him go.  Trip could not believe how full his heart was.  First he figured out where the treasure was, and now Pappy was going to be OK.  Trip could hardly wait to tell him all the things he had learned about the treasure.  And if things went well tomorrow, he could tell Pappy he found it.

“Everything's getting better, Mom,” said Trip.  “This is just the beginning.  You'll see.”

Mom hugged him a little harder.