CHAPTER NINE

 

 

To accommodate my students’ work schedules and other extracurricular commitments, our science club met before school on Monday mornings.

“I think I can get permission to hide a geocache in the history center,” said Brock. “When I called yesterday, the director said it would be best if the puzzle taught something.”

He brushed back the flap of curly black hair that fell over his face, and he hovered over his girlfriend. Lorelei punched her glasses up on her nose. She had the geocaching website open on her laptop. She bit her lip in concentration, twirling a blond tendril. “GPS units may be unreliable, inaccurate, or inconsistent indoors, so many of the hides are mystery multicaches that begin somewhere outside. What’s a mystery cache?”

“To find the geocache, the searcher needs to solve a puzzle,” I said.

“We could design one of those. We have some pretty high-powered brains in our group.” Brock waggled his brows at Lorelei, and she rolled her periwinkle eyes, but he was right. She continued tapping the keyboard. In order to secure my teaching job, I agreed to supervise the science club. No one else wanted to do it. But my kids were brainy, resolute, and fun.

The door of the math area banged, and three students joined us.

“What are we doing?” asked Carlee. She hurled her backpack onto the table.

“History,” Brock answered. He winced at the disbelieving looks he got. “We are,” he whined.

“For a geocache,” Lorelei said. “We need to teach something, to be able to hide a cache in the history center.” Her fingers stopped dancing over the keys. “Ideas?”

The legs of a chair screeched and Galen grinned, knowing the sound would make Carlee cringe.

Lorelei ignored them. “There are so many facts about the Titanic, and the new exhibit makes up a huge part of the museum, so we should be able to come up with something related. We just have to cull through a century of data.”

The students buried their noses online in search of a unique nugget of information to share. I pulled out a short stack of books. The mock trial team I worked with had wanted to research the ship’s musicians for our Titanic trial, a fictional lawsuit brought by the fiancée of one of the bandsmen who perished, and it had paid off in their most recent competition. Defying all odds, they won. Perhaps it would pay off again.

The books thumped onto the table.

Carlee skimmed through the top one. She lit up, sat straighter, then sagged and said, “False alarm.”

Brock read from his phone, “Depending on your sources, three of twelve dogs which originally boarded the ship were rescued.” No one looked up. “No, huh? Did you hear about the guy that died last weekend?” He stared intently at his phone. “I waited on him at the gala. What a grouch.” Before I could change the subject, he managed to say, “I bet his assistant did it.” He glanced up. “How about the fact there were twenty thousand bottles of beer?”

Four pairs of eyes drew imaginary laser beams on him until he resumed tapping his phone. “Eight thousand cigars?” he read.

“No,” came at him from four directions.

“The kitchen stored forty thousand fresh eggs. That’s seventeen eggs per person to be consumed on their journey in breads, desserts, egg dishes, specialty cocktails, and other delicacies.” Lorelei read from her screen. “There were also fourteen thousand gallons of drinking water consumed every twenty-four hours, which means every person on board could have been offered …” She scribbled on a piece of paper. “… one hundred cups a day.”

Disbelieving pencils and pens scribbled on notebooks and fingers tapped on keyboards to verify her calculations.

“And listen to this,” said Lorelei. Everyone stopped what they were doing. “Of over fifteen hundred victims of the catastrophe, only three hundred thirty-four bodies were recovered.”

The sobering statistic replaced some of the giddiness and brought us back to the task at hand.

Galen rubbed his chin. “That could be it.”

“We’ve been to the exhibit a few times now and we’ve studied different aspects of the doomed ship, but I don’t know if we’ve ever come across that statistic,” I said. “Brock, you got this ball rolling so I think it’s up to you to choose—wisely. And communicate with the director to make certain this is an endgame she can support. Meanwhile, what do we want the cache to look like?”

“The final segment of the cache could be a captain’s log. Our answer could be found inside the cover,” said Lorelei.

Brock set his phone on the tabletop. “I think a mystery cache with multiple parts would work. The GPS units would get the finder to the history center and an outside clue would tell you where to go first. We could use the historical placards to generate directions to get to the next segment and eventually they could sign and date the log and take away the answer.”

“Everything will be easier to put together when we know we’ll have a place to put it,” said Galen.

I rummaged in the closet for my plastic tub of possible containers. I lugged it to the center of the math commons and pulled off the top. Inside were magnets, bison tubes, large and small empty plastic bottles, metal storage containers, camouflage duct tape, a popcorn tin, and an ammo canister. I included small pencils, pocket-sized notebooks, journals, and a smattering of loot—a plastic bag of tchotchkes wrapped in a jacket I threw in for use in inclement weather. We just needed to choose the best hiding place and an appropriate receptacle.

“That’s a great idea. Brock can you …”

His phone flew to his ear and the amiable look on his face made me smile. He stepped into an empty classroom. Thirty seconds later he strode out, talking into his phone, “We can meet Wednesday, at four o’clock and give you a run down.” We all gave him a thumbs up. “Great.”

Brock disconnected the call, and an impish glint in his steely gray eyes reflected his intensity.

“Let’s bring it to the director as complete as we can. She said she’d love anything that would increase traffic and expand their profile. Geocaches could bring in a few new faces.”

Galen emptied the storage bin, organizing the contents from smallest to largest, and the students circled the table, examining each piece for possible use.

Lorelei grabbed a journal. “I think I can embellish this to look like a captain’s log. I have an old piece of leather.” She turned to Brock. “Do you still have your grandfather’s leather-burning set?”

“I’m never getting rid of that. He willed it to me.”

“Perfect. Can we get together tonight?”

With a swagger Brad Pitt would envy, he replied, “Anytime, babe.”

She rolled her eyes and pretended to punch his arm. He rubbed it in mock pain.

Carlee pulled out a fountain pen. “What about this?” She received head nods and grunts of appreciation.

Kindra stood straight and stretched. Her blue eyes gleamed. “They sell a replica of the necklace Rose tossed off the back of the Titanic in the gift shop. You know the one.” She winked. “What if we can rig the necklace to display our fact? To get credit for the find they’d have to email the answer to our question.”

Carlee’s dark eyes glittered. “We could start the hunt and direct the searchers into the history center and the log could lead them to the locket we would plant at the rear of the ship.”

“Let’s meet tomorrow with whatever we can scrounge up. Can you all go Wednesday?” Brock asked.

Kindra said, “I’ll be here tomorrow but I work Wednesday.”

“Tomorrow,” I said, barely finishing my word before the students vanished, leaving me to clean up. I looked up when I heard a strong rap on the doorframe. “Hey, girlfriend.”

“I got a call that freaked me out,” Jane said.