Chapter Twenty-Nine
I pull away from Cam on instinct. Self-preservation kicks in like a backup generator.
“The truth about what?” I bite into the last word so hard that he has to know I’m shutting down his question more than asking my own. I’m not doing this again. I’m not opening myself up to Cam just so he can smash my feelings to bits and then pretend like the whole exchange was a silly game.
I turn toward my own microfilm reader and press my face into the lens. I dive into the 1983 reel of theSan Francisco Chronicle, speeding through a whole spring’s worth of headlines. Serial thefts. Business closures. New election candidates. Time blurs into a buzzing haze of ink.
March 1983.
April 1983.
May 1983.
The dial clicks.
“Holy shit.”
Cam sighs next to me. “Don’t pretend like you foundsomething great just to avoid saying you don’t want to talk to me.”
I pull away from the microfilm. “Oh, I’m not avoiding it. Idon’twant to talk to you. But it turns out I also found something pretty great.”
He stares at me, trying to decipher my expression. I shift the view over from the microscope to the front screen on the reader. “See for yourself.”
The article takes a moment to come into focus.
Twelfth Year of Legion of Honor Installation by Mystery Vandal
“Holy shit,” Cam breathes.
I smile. “Told you.”
Under the headline is a grainy photograph of what looks like a clock growing right out of the ground. Each slice looks like a different kind of green plant. The clock numbers stand at the edges, spelled out in flowers.
Twelve Faces, No Hands, the caption reads.
I look back at the photo and realize it’s not just the title of the piece, but a description of the clock itself. There are no clock hands or arms, nothing to signify the time. It’s just an empty clockface out in the middle of a field. Gilbert could have found it and buried the treasure right outside the raised circle. He might even have been the mystery artist behind the entire thing.
But where exactly would he have buried the treasure, then? There are no markings, nothing that points to one particular spot.
“A clockface in the grass?” Cam asks from beside me. “That’s a little strange, isn’t it? You would think this would have matched up with the grandfather clock in the scroll.”
I think about the drawing of the grandfather clock. “But that clockface wasn’t empty,” I say. My brain does a double take, and I suddenly pop up out my chair. “It wasn’t empty! There was a time on it!”
“Well, yeah,” Cam says.
I reach into my bag and pull out the wooden box. “No, you’re not getting it. There’s not a time on the clock in the installation. It doesn’t have any hands. But the clock in our picturedoes!”
I peel the scroll open. Cam looks over my shoulder. “What time is that? 9:20?” he asks.
“I think so,” I say. “But that still doesn’t give us a specific place to look for a treasure. The arms are pointing at nine and four. So which one is the right one?”
“V. Look.” Cam brings his finger from the grandfather clock down to the woman in the long dress. “Look at her arms.”
I gasp. I don’t know how we didn’t see it before. The woman’s two arms, outstretched in either direction, are in exactly the nine and four positions. Same as the grandfather clock hands. The left arm points at the edge of the page, where the paper cuts off. But the right arm, the one holding the strange glasses, is pointing directly atThe Three Shadessculpture. Right where the clock installation used to be.
“Four o’clock,” I whisper.
I look at Cam. “Gilbert must have buried the treasure right outside the four o’clock section.”
