Secret of the Time Capsule (2 page)

“My father volunteered to help build one of the floats in the parade,” she said. “He promised to let me ride on it as Miss Fourth-Grade Redoaks! I’ll wear a gorgeous costume and probably a crown, and wave to everyone in the crowd.”

The other girls in the class started oohing and squealing, but Sean mumbled, “Yuck!” and slid down in his seat. Sometimes girls were weird.

Matt leaned across the aisle and said, “Sean, if it’s okay with you, Jabez and I won’t go with you and Brian to see Mr. Vlado. The guy’s too creepy.”

“Huh! You’re some friends,” Sean said.

“We are friends, and if you had to go alone we’d go with you. Honest. But you said Brian will be there, and he’s thirteen. He’s a lot better protection than we’d be.”

“Protection from what?” Cold shivers trickled up and down Sean’s backbone.

“I—I didn’t say that right, I guess.” Matt shook his head. “Mr. Vlado wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. He’ll just tell you some scary stuff. And he looks scary. His eyes are kind of wild and—”

Mrs. Jackson rapped on her desk. “Come to order, class. I want you to spend some time after school thinking about what you can tell the kids of the future in the letters you’ll be writing. Make a list of things we use in our daily lives, from alarm clocks to computers, and bring it to school tomorrow.” She opened a math book and added, “Right now, let’s see how well you do on a short quiz.”

Brian and Sean rode their bikes over to Matt’s street and quickly found the house where Boris Vlado lived. It was set back from the street and surrounded by broad-limbed shade trees, but its mustard gold paint had faded and yellowed in streaks. On each side of the front door was a large pot of geraniums, but none of the plants were blooming. They’d been badly choked out by weeds.

Mr. Vlado answered the door. He had once been a fairly tall man, Brian decided, but now he stood hunched over, scowling up at Sean and Brian from under bushy eyebrows.

“Go away,” he said. “I don’t talk to salesmen.”

“We’re not selling anything,” Brian quickly explained. “I’m Brian Quinn. This is my brother, Sean. My brother’s class at school wants to invite you to a party.”

“
Hummph!
I don’t go to parties,” Mr. Vlado grumbled.

“This is a party for the whole city,” Sean explained. “It’s going to be next Saturday when the time capsule is opened.”

“The time capsule?” For an instant Mr. Vlado’s small, dark eyes opened wider, and he chuckled.

“We’d like you to come with the fourth grade to the ceremony in the park,” Sean said, “and watch the mayor open the capsule.”

Again Mr. Vlado chuckled. “Maybe he’d better not open it,” he said.

Brian stepped forward. “Mr. Vlado, we’d like to ask you some questions about the capsule. Is it okay if we come in?”

Mr. Vlado nodded. Then he slowly turned, leaning on his cane, and led the way into the dimly lit living room. All the shades were down, but Brian and Sean could see that the furniture was heavy and squat. The brown plush on the sofa was so old and stiff that it scratched their arms and backs.

Brian pulled out his investigator’s notebook and pen. “Why shouldn’t the mayor open the time capsule?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Vlado answered.

“But you just told us that maybe he shouldn’t open it.”

Mr. Vlado chuckled again and rested his chin on the head of his cane. “Maybe no one should open it.”

“Why?” Brian asked.

“I don’t know.”

Brian and Sean looked at each other while Mr. Vlado watched them carefully, his eyes darting back and forth. Mr. Vlado was aware of something, Brian thought. But how was Brian going to get him to tell them what it was?

Brian closed his notebook. “Thank you for talking to us,” he said. “You were only nine years old in 1918. We should have realized that you were too young to know anything important about the contents of the time capsule.”

He began to stand, but Mr. Vlado waved his cane at him.

“Sit down and pay attention,” he said. “I wasn’t too young to
hear
things. I heard my father talking to my mother about when the time capsule would be opened. He said, ‘I think they made a bad choice. It could blow up in their faces.’”

Sean gasped, and Brian asked, “Did he think someone had put explosives in the capsule?”

“My father wasn’t talking about explosives,” Mr. Vlado said. “If he knew about explosives he would have stopped the mayor from burying the capsule. I think he was talking about some kind of information that’s inside that capsule. Something that’s going to upset somebody.”

“What?” Sean asked.

“I told you,” Mr. Vlado said, “I don’t know.”

Brian stood, and Sean scrambled to get up. “Mr. Vlado, we’ll send you an invitation to come to the park with our class next Saturday for the ceremonies. We hope you’ll change your mind and come.”

“Maybe I will,” he said. “If something’s going to happen, I want to be there to see it.”

“Do you know if any of your classmates are still in Redoaks?”

Mr. Vlado struggled to stand. He leaned into Sean’s face. “Only four of them,” he said, “and you can count on it. They’ll be on hand.”

“Great!” Sean said. He pulled the list Mrs. Jackson had given him from the pocket of his jeans. He handed it to Mr. Vlado. “Can you tell us their names and where we can find them?”

Mr. Vlado jabbed at the paper with one finger, then shoved it at Sean. “They’re long gone from Redoaks except Cropper, Jones, Murphy, and Slade. And they’re all at the same address.”

“What is it?” Sean asked.

Mr. Vlado’s eyes bored into Sean’s, and his words came out in a hiss. “The cemetery,” he said.

O
N THE WAY HOME
Brian said, “Let’s stop off at the park. I’m curious about that time capsule.”

Sean pedaled faster to keep up. “There’s no way we can see the capsule. Nobody can see what’s in it. It’s going to stay buried until it’s dug up at the opening ceremony.”

“Let’s make sure,” Brian said.

“What are you talking about?” Sean asked.

But Brian had parked his bike and was already walking across the grass toward the small hill on which the statue of John M. Williford had rested.

“Look,” Sean said. “It’s just like Jabez said. The statue is down on the ground.”

“The marble base under the statue has been moved, too,” Brian said. He stared into a large, square hole that was about two feet deep. In the center of the hole the dirt had been brushed away, and he could see the top of a metal container. The rim was sealed shut with red sealing wax.

A sudden shout made both Brian and Sean jump. A tall park employee, dressed in a work uniform, strode toward them. The top of his bald head gleamed pink in the late afternoon sunshine. “Hey, you kids! Get away from there!” he yelled.

“It’s okay. We’re not touching anything,” Sean answered.

“We’re Brian and Sean Quinn,” Brian said. “We just came to see where the time capsule is buried.”

Sean pointed. “Is that it in there?”

“Yes, that’s it,” the man said. “It’s part of my job to make sure it stays there.”

He wore a badge with his name on it: Hugh Dickerson.

Brian memorized the name. He knew that sometimes a private investigator doesn’t want people to know that he’s investigating. When he can’t pull out a notebook and write down important information, he uses his memory and makes notes later.

“You kids run along,” Mr. Dickerson said.

“Who took the statue down?” Brian asked.

“My brother Gene and I did,” Mr. Dickerson said. “Along with tackle and a pulley and a truck motor to help with the heaviest part.”

Brian pointed at the hole in the ground. “I bet it was hard to get that marble base out of there,” he said.

“Terrible hard,” Mr. Dickerson answered. “And it didn’t help to have so many people come rushing over to watch.”

“Who were the people?” Brian asked.

“And how did they know about it?” Sean added.

Mr. Dickerson frowned as he thought. “I suppose they knew about it because it was city business,” he said. “The mayor and the city council and some other people from city hall were all here.”

“Did any of them want to open the capsule?” Brian asked.

“Oh, sure. The mayor did. He said he should be in charge of it. He insisted he should keep it in his office until it was time to bury it again. But that grandson of the old guy who posed for the statue …”

“Councilman Victor Williford,” Brian said.

“Yeah. Anyhow, he didn’t want the time capsule to be opened. He said at least it should stay where it was until they decided what to do with it. Then the mayor’s secretary said there ought to be a ceremony and they could open it then. Most of them went along with that.”

“I wonder why the mayor didn’t post a guard,” Brian said.

“He did,” Mr. Dickerson insisted. “During the day my brother and I take turns guarding the place. Then at night the police keep an eye on it.”

Sean piped up, “Shouldn’t a guard be on hand all the time?”

“A guard
is
on hand,” Mr. Dickerson said. “You see me here, don’t you?”

“You weren’t here when we came,” Brian said.

Mr. Dickerson turned red, right to the top of his head. “I have to leave once in a while,” he mumbled and pointed toward a toolshed in the distance. “And I can’t spend all day talking to you,” he said grumpily. “G’wan home. Do your homework or something. Stop hanging around here bugging me.”

As Sean and Brian walked toward their bikes, Sean said, “How come you asked so many questions about guarding the capsule, Bri?”

“I just want to have all the facts,” Brian said. He pulled out his notebook and wrote the names of Hugh and Gene Dickerson. Then he made a note of what Hugh Dickerson had told him.

“You don’t think someone will try to steal the capsule, do you?”

“They wouldn’t have enough time, if Mr. Dickerson’s schedule was right. The capsule’s big, and it’s heavy.”

“Couldn’t they take off the top, right where it is?”

“You saw all that dried red wax around the lid of the container. It would have to be chipped off. It would show it had been opened.”

Brian pulled his bike from the rack and kicked back the stand. “Do you want to see some of what’s in that capsule?” he asked.

Sean nearly fell off his bike. “What are you talking about, Bri? How are we going to see what’s in the capsule, if nobody else can?”

Brian grinned. “We can see duplicates. We know the dates of both the newspaper and the copy of
California Pix.
They probably have a copy on microfilm at the library. And the November 30, 1918, issue of the
Redoaks News
will be on file at the newspaper office.”

“Why do you want to see them?”

“I’m curious,” Brian said. “I want to know why the mayor insisted on opening the capsule before one hundred years were up. Maybe a story in the magazine or newspaper will give us the reason. Come on, Sean. Let’s go to the library first.”

Brian was right. The November 1918 issue of
California Pix
had been filmed. The librarian threaded the film through the microfilm machine, and Brian and Sean slowly scanned it. It was a thin magazine, so they easily found what they were searching for on page eighteen, close to the end.

“Look. Here’s an article about John M. Williford and his large stamp collection. No wonder they put this issue into the time capsule,” Brian said.

Brian and Sean leaned forward to read the praise for Mr. Williford’s outstanding role as a businessman and for his highly generous contributions to local charities. Two photographs were with the article. One showed Mr. Williford holding a page of rare stamps in his collection. The other showed him—his eyes twinkling with delight—as he held forward a letter that had been sent to him by William D. Stephens, at that time the governor of California.

There was something odd about that picture, Brian thought, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was Mr. Williford. He had that same kind of mischievous look Dad got when he talked about being a boy and playing tricks on Halloween.

Sean, who’d been leaning forward studying the article and photograph, sat back. “Weird,” he said.

Brian looked at him in surprise. “You saw it, too?”

“Yeah,” Sean said.

Brian sighed. “But there was nothing in that article that would embarrass Mr. Williford or his grandson.”

“Maybe what we’re looking for will be in the newspaper,” Sean told him. He looked up at the large clock over the checkout desk. “We’ve got time to go to the newspaper offices, haven’t we?”

“We’ll give it a try,” Brian said. “But we’d better hurry. We might have to read all the way to the back page, and the newspaper will be a lot longer than this magazine.”

Brian was soon surprised to find he was wrong. The lead headline on page one was: “Indicted for Bank Fraud.” The story stated that a Roger Harlow, bank teller, was the culprit who had been indicted. Not only that, but his partner in crime was a fellow bank employee, Amos Wegman!

“Harlow and Wegman!” Sean said. “Bri, our mayor’s name is Harry Harlow, and his secretary’s name is Emma Wegman! Do you think Roger and Amos were their relatives?”