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I take the pieces from her. “’Made in China’”, I report, reading the label on the bottom.
“Oh, thank god.” Ivy gives a relieved sigh. She stuffs the figurine in a drawer, and then leads me out into the foyer, looking around. “If you were Earl and Madeline, meeting here, where would you hide something?”
“Somewhere secret, where people don’t go very often,” I suggest.
She nods. “Attics and basements, that’s where the good stuff is always lurking.”
This house doesn’t have a basement, just a dusty wine cellar that’s completely empty now, so we quickly check the downstairs rooms, scanning for false floorboards or secret panels in the walls. “There’s nothing here,” Ivy reports, after we’ve done a full circuit of the grand rooms. “Or, if there was, it would have been found a long time ago, with all those visitors traipsing through.”
“Upstairs then,” I agree, checking the time. It’s been ten minutes since Braithwaite left, so I figure we’ve got another ten left before we need to worry.
Ivy skips straight past the bedrooms, and up another flight to the attic. I flip the light on, and a bare bulb illuminates the space. “Now, this is more like it,” she gasps happily, surveying the cramped, low-ceilinged space packed to the rafters with old furniture and boxes. “Jackpot!”
“You get excited about the strangest things,” I say with a grin.
“Look, a newspaper from 1962!” she exclaims, peering at the closest box. “This stuff has been sitting up here forever. With no archival protection at all,” she adds, frowning.
Ivy pulls plastic gloves from her purse, and hands me a pair. “Do you travel with those?” I ask, amused.
“Obviously.” She beams. “Now … if we ignore all the mess and clutter …”
“You start over there, by the creepy broken rocking horse,” I decide. “I’ll check from the doorway. We’ll meet by that oversized wardrobe to Narnia?”
“Got it,” Ivy nods, and we both set about searching again. This time, there are plenty of nooks and crannies that would make a great hiding place, and half the floorboards come up with the slightest nudge. But aside from an old candy tin of quarters, and a pile of 1970s Playboy magazines, I can’t find anything stashed away.
“Any luck?” I call across the attic.
“Not yet,” Ivy replies.
I pause, remembering back when I was a kid, wanting to hide my own secret treasure, aka, some VHS tapes and my prized trading card collectibles. I put them in an AC vent, up by the ceiling in my bedroom.
Maybe I’ve been looking too low, when I need to be searching higher.
I move to the edge of the attic, where the beams jut lower along the length of the room. I reach up, running my fingertips gently along the top of the dusty beams, getting a palmful of cobwebs, and scratching my thumb on a jagged nail, but finding nothing—
My hands hit something smooth and metal, perched up under the eaves. A box.
“Ivy,” I whisper excitedly, pulling it down. “I think I’ve got something!”
She rushes over to meet me as I give it a shake. “It’s light,” I report. “No gold here. Sounds like papers, maybe.”
I bring it under the light to get a better look. “St James’ Mining Company …” I read from the raised print embossed on the lid.
She gasps. “That was her family’s mining company. Madeline St. James.”
I feel a surge of excitement. If I’m honest, this treasure hunt has been 95% about spending time with Ivy, but now we’re holding another clue in our hands …
“Open it,” she urges me, breathless. “But carefully!”
I tug at the lid. It doesn’t give. “It’s rusted shut,” I report, examining the seam. “I could bang it on the table—”
“No!” Ivy blurts. “You could damage something—” she starts to say, then she stops, and clutches my arm. “Did you hear that?” she whispers, eyes wide in panic.
A noise comes from somewhere in the house.
Footsteps on the stairs. Getting closer … closer …
Somebody’s coming.
