Miller-Poe Swim Night was consistently horrific, and this Tuesday was no exception. Swim night managed to be worse than Friday golf night and Monday tennis night combined. At least Amelia was just bad at those other two sports. With swimming, the chlorine made her eyes burn, her skin itch, and her hair frizz.
Plus, she was at least somewhat less likely to drown while playing golf and tennis. Even if there were water hazards on the golf course and a creek by the tennis courts.
And she’d accidentally fallen into both. More than once.
Eager to get rid of the smells of chlorine and humiliation, Amelia took a shower in her big, sparkling white bathroom as soon as they got home. Then she retreated to her big, sparkling white bedroom to sit at a table that was also depressingly big, sparkling, and white. She’d put on a button-down shirt, one of her dad’s ties, and a brimmed hat because that’s what Humphrey Bogart had worn as the private investigator in the black-and-white movie The Maltese Falcon. Amelia had watched that one with her grandma Suzy the last time she was over at her grandma’s house.
She got out her stack of the old letters. Before she looked at them, though, she pulled up her YouTube channel on her Chromebook to see how her video was doing. It had thirty likes and she’d gained ten more followers.
Amelia wondered if one of them was Mr. Roth or Principal Stuckey. She wasn’t entirely sure that she really believed either one of them could be using her and Sloane.
But she wasn’t sure she didn’t believe it, either.
Certainly, someone had sent her these letters. Maybe they’d just done it to be nice.
Maybe.
Or maybe not. Belinda was a bit of a worry too, as was Mr. Neikirk. True, he didn’t seem to know a lot about technology—but she bet his grandkids did. And he definitely knew a lot about old stuff. Maybe even more than he was telling them.
The lens of the Chromebook’s camera stared back at her like an eye—or a spy hole. For the first time, a creepy-crawly feeling shivered its way across the back of her neck. She checked to make sure that her Chromebook’s camera was turned off. Then, still not feeling entirely reassured, Amelia went ahead and shut it completely.
Her stack of letters was mostly from Charles to Oscar. However, the first letter was made of different paper than the others. It was thinner, more yellowed, and far shorter. Amelia’s heart beat faster as she read it, for it cleared up one mystery right away. Thomas had quickly scrawled out a letter to his wife before he got onto that unlucky train.
My dearest Beatrice,
Please forgive me, for I’ve done something terrible, though I did it for you and Oscar. By now you’ll know that the jewels are gone from the Hoäl mansion and that I took them. They are hidden inside a compartment on the other side of the fireplace from the safe, a secret that only I know about. However, I can no longer get to them without arousing suspicion. I have gone to Chicago to beg Jacob’s forgiveness. If he does not give it to me, I will be imprisoned for many years, leaving you penniless. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow morning, he hasn’t forgiven me and you must find some way to the jewels right away. Flee Wauseon and start a new life somewhere else, even if it means leaving behind your family. I know that you will think it is wrong and not want to do it. But how else will you take care of our son?
Your loving husband,
Thomas
Well, that sounded like a truly terrible plan to Amelia. Even without factoring in the bad luck of the train accident, there was no way this was ever going to work out well for Thomas. A criminal mastermind he most definitely was not.
Maybe the reason the plan was so bad was because he wasn’t naturally a bad person. Just one desperate to take care of his family.
The rest of the letters were all on a thicker paper that wasn’t as yellowed as Thomas’s. These were the ones that Charles had written to Oscar more than fifty years after Thomas had robbed Jacob.
October 8, 1940
Dear Oscar,
Do you remember the first time we met? We were both fifteen when the circus came to Toledo, where I lived with my grandparents. You didn’t know who I was, but I knew you as soon as I saw you pounding the tent pegs into the ground. You looked exactly like your father. I knew because my grandparents kept a copy of his picture so I would never forget what the monster looked like.
I expected you to be a monster too, and I planned on getting my father’s revenge against your family. That was really why I joined the circus. Not to escape my grandparents, the way I told you. I didn’t know how, but I was going to make your life miserable.
Instead, we ended up friends. Can you believe the luck? I should have hated you, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not. And so, I forgot my plans to make you suffer.
The circus life wasn’t for me any more than it had been for my father. When I left it a few years later, I thought that you were happily living the life your father had always dreamed about.
How wrong I was.
Charles
Huh. Oscar and Charles had been friends just like their fathers. Who would have thought it? Although, it sounded like only Charles had actually known about their dads at the time. They’d both joined the circus too, and eventually fallen out and become enemies. Amelia couldn’t decide if that was bad luck or bad choices.
Either way, Mr. Roth was going to be so totally impressed with what she and Sloane had discovered—whether or not he was using them to find the location of the jewelry.
The next letter was dated only two days later on October 10, 1940.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that you were no longer with the traveling circus! Not only that, you had grown quite rich. I lost all my money in the stock market crash of 1929. Yet you were rich. And your answers about how you had come by your money made no sense.
There was more to the letter after that, but it was mostly Charles venting angrily about the mystery of Oscar’s money. He was understandably angry that he didn’t have any money because Oscar’s dad, Thomas, had taken it and Oscar himself had spent it.
Honestly, Amelia thought it was pretty stinky of Oscar not to give Charles back Jacob and Lucretia’s jewels. Especially now that he knew that Charles had lost all of his money.
This was reinforced by a letter the next day that included this:
Why? Why wouldn’t you give me the money I needed to pay Dr. Hadley to save my darling Lucy’s life? Why did you let her die? You have a son, though he is still a baby. Do you think I loved my Lucy any less because she was an adult with a baby of her own? I would have done anything to save her. The treatment to cure her cancer could have worked. Why would you not give me the money I needed? It was rightfully my money, not yours. Yet you cruelly kept it from me.
Tears welled up in Amelia’s eyes as she read Charles’s words. What a horrible person Oscar must have been! Just like his equally terrible father. What sort of person stole money from a person trying to save his daughter’s life?
She couldn’t help but feel glad that Charles had managed to steal the jewels back from Oscar. They were his, so he should be able to do whatever he wanted with them. Maybe Oscar hadn’t believed he was hurting anyone to keep the jewels when he thought that Oscar was still rich too. However, once he knew that his former friend wasn’t—and that the jewels were Charles’s anyway—what sort of monster wouldn’t give them back? Especially when Charles needed to get his daughter those cancer treatments?
The injustice of it really burned Amelia up inside. Forget what she used to think about Thomas not being a bad person. She bet he was every bit as lazy and dishonest as those old newspapers had painted him to be. And his son was even worse.
The last letter was from October 12, 1940.
You thought I wouldn’t figure out your secret, didn’t you? You thought the jewels were safe inside the secret panel in my father’s mansion. Did your mother really leave them there for all those years afterward? I bet she thought the jewels were cursed.
Ha! Amelia had been right. They were the Cursed Hoäl Jewels.
Not really the point, of course. But it always felt good to be proven right.
You left the jewels in the house, thinking them safe where no one had found them for all these years. In the mansion you thought I had left to rot. You didn’t know I would return and try to turn the building into apartments. I did it after you refused to give me any money. That way, I could rent out the apartments to try to raise money for my beloved Lucy. Imagine my shock when I found the secret compartment! Now I know your little secret. Did you like the surprise I left for you in there? You made me suffer, so now I will make you suffer. Solve the riddle and the jewels will once more be yours. If you can’t—then you can go back to being a clown. That’s what you really are. Just someone who makes people laugh.
Except Oscar Kerr hadn’t suffered. He’d died right after he got this letter. Actually, from what Norma Cooke said, maybe he never even read this letter. He discovered the jewels were gone and then stumbled in front of that streetcar. Probably before he even thought about checking the mail.
Then Charles had died not long afterward, and it all seemed terribly unfair to Amelia. Oscar should have suffered for letting this Lucy person die. Charles certainly did.
It was all very sad, but Amelia didn’t see how this got them any closer to figuring out where the jewels were now hidden. Maybe whoever had sent the letters really was just a fan.
“Find the baby, find the jewels,” but what baby? It couldn’t be either Charles or Oscar, so what baby could it be? Charles’s letter mentioned that his daughter Lucy had a baby, so Amelia supposed they’d have to find her now. Although… wait. The baby could be Oscar’s son, though that seemed unlikely. What was his name again? Johnny? Johnny Kerr?
Up until now, none of the clues Amelia and Sloane had discovered about the missing Hoäl jewels had been caused by either serendipity or zemblanity. Every last bit of information they had uncovered had been due to one of two causes: either the unseen hand of the person who was using the seventh grade, or the hard work of Amelia and Sloane themselves.
What happened next was due entirely to serendipity.
(Or zemblanity, depending on how you looked at it. In just a few moments, Amelia would have definitely blamed zemblanity, if she only knew the word.)
“Amelia? What on earth are you doing?” Her mom stumbled sleepily into the room, rubbing her hair so that it stood up like she’d been electrocuted. She wore black-and-white silk pajamas that looked exactly like the suits she wore during the day.
“I’m working on my project for English, Mom.”
“Well! I’m very proud to see you applying yourself so diligently to your schoolwork!” Her mom beamed. “Though you should have Aiden or Ashley look it over before you turn it in.”
“Sure, Mom.” Amelia reached for one of the notes she’d stuck to the wall, knowing what was coming next.
“Here, let me help you clean up.”
“Sure, Mom,” Amelia agreed listlessly. Time to return her room to the way her mom wanted it to look. That right-out-of-a-designer-magazine perfectness that made it feel like it wasn’t really her room at all.
Amanda Poe, however, froze as she picked up her first Post-it. In a strangled voice, quite unlike her usual bark, she said, “Amelia?”
“Yes, Mom?”
“Why do you—how do you—why does this note have your grandfather’s name on it?” her mom finally managed.
Amelia just blinked at her in confusion. She knew it was late and that she was tired, but that didn’t make a bit of sense.
“Huh?” Amelia said.
“Why are you researching your grandfather?” her mom demanded, waving the piece of paper about like it was evidence of a crime. “How did you find out his name? Have you been talking to Grandma Suzy? I told her that I didn’t want her talking to you about him!”
Amelia tried blinking several more times. Maybe she’d fallen asleep and was dreaming. “Mom, who are you talking about? Do you mean Oscar Kerr? He’s the son of Thomas Zimmerman, who stole a fortune in jewels over a hundred years ago.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” her mom scoffed. “I mean Johnny Kerr, of course. John Kerr. My father. Though I don’t think he can correctly be called that given that he tried to rob a bank and ended up in prison pretty much right after I was born.”
Amelia knew most of that already because Grandma Suzy had told Amelia even though she wasn’t supposed to. She also knew that Grandpa John had gotten sick in prison and died there. However, Grandma Suzy had just called him “John,” and Amelia always thought of her real grandpa as Grandpa Lloyd Poe, who’d married Grandma Suzy when Amelia’s mom was five. He’d adopted Amanda and helped raise her.
Amelia had never really bothered to think about the father her mom had started out with. Lloyd was nice and John had abandoned her mom and grandma. What else was there to know?
A great deal, as it turned out.
“Mom, Johnny Kerr was the son of Oscar Kerr, who was the son of Thomas Zimmerman, Fulton County’s most notorious robber. Well, until everyone forgot about him and he stopped being notorious,” Amelia explained. Her mom continued to stare at her like Amelia was babbling nonsense. “That means you’re the great-granddaughter and I’m the great-great-granddaughter of a notorious robber. Who, uh, also accidentally caused the events that made two trains crash into each other, killing a whole bunch of people.”
Other kids had always treated Amelia like she was a freak. Like she was defective somehow. For all the teasing, for all the times they had made her cry, Amelia had always told herself that they were wrong.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
Her great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, and grand-
father were all thieves.
What if being defective was in her blood?