After school, Sloane had to sit through her very first detention. Amelia was not allowed to join her, so she ended up sitting on a bench in front of the school until Sloane got out. Her black dress was super hot in the sun even without the black hat and veil. By the time Sloane dashed out the front doors an hour later, Amelia was so drenched in sweat that her curls couldn’t even frizz anymore.
“Hey,” Sloane said.
“Hey.” Amelia had planned a short speech while waiting for Sloane. As theatrically as she could, she laid a hand upon her heart and announced, “Sloane, it’s time to lay to rest the feud between our two families. It’s already claimed far too many lives: Thomas’s, Jacob’s, Lucretia’s, Oscar’s, and Charles’s. Partly this feud can partly be blamed on unbelievable bad luck—beyond bad luck, even—”
“Zemblanity?”
“Yes, that. But it also can be blamed on our ancestors failing to actually talk and listen to each other. Just like how you couldn’t talk to your dad, and my family wouldn’t listen to me.” Amelia extended her hand. “By taking my hand and shaking it, you agree that from now on we will actually talk and listen to each other. And that neither one of us will seek vengeance for past wrongs committed by either ourselves or our ancestors.”
“Sounds good to me.” Sloane took Amelia’s hand and shook it vigorously. Ow—it figured that Slayer Sloane would have a bone-crushing death grip. “Now let’s head over to my Nanna Tia’s. Do you have a bike?”
“No, but I texted a ride.” As she spoke, Aiden pulled up in front of the curb.
“How’s the search for the missing jewels coming?” he asked them as he hooked Sloane’s bike onto the rack on the back of his sports car. “Have you beat all the competition—er, found out anything more no one else has?”
“Lots,” Amelia said.
“So much,” Sloane agreed.
“That’s my sister!” Aiden punched Amelia on the arm. Ow, again. What was with these athletic people? Were they like giants and just didn’t have a sense of how strong they were?
Sloane’s Nanna Tia lived in a long, low 1950s ranch house with lots of pink flamingo lawn ornaments stuck into the garden. There was also quite a bit of noise drifting out of the house from an open window.
“G thirty-eight!”
“B fifty-two!”
“I nineteen!”
“BINGO!”
“What’s going on in there?” Aiden asked, leaning across the passenger seat to peer through the open car door as they got out.
Sloane looked pained. “Do you really want to know what a pack of ninety-year-olds do when no one else is around?”
Aiden seemed terrified just thinking about it. He recoiled back into his seat. “Uh, no. Definitely not. Amelia, Ashley will be over to pick you up in about an hour. Sloane, I’ll drop your bike off at your house.”
As he snapped his seat belt into place and peeled off down the street, Sloane said to Amelia, “Illegal bingo games.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s what’s a pack of ninety-year-olds do when no one else is around. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, she runs illegal bingo games to help cover the cost of her winter home down in Florida.”
“Illegal?”
“She doesn’t have a gambling license, and Dad keeps worrying that the feds are going to find out and raid her house.”
“Then I guess we’d better talk to her before she gets arrested.”
Sloane rang the doorbell, but rather than some Nanna Tia person, two women Amelia recognized as Sloane’s Granny Kitty and Granny Pearl answered the door.
“Sloane-y! Oh, and it’s her little friend Amelia!” As Sloane got her cheeks kissed and pinched, Amelia found her head being patted and her own cheeks pinched, too.
“I’m not little!” she protested as they were both dragged inside.
“Of course you aren’t!” Granny Pearl bobbed her head in agreement.
“That’s the spirit!” Granny Kitty urged.
“Gail, that’s the third time you’ve bingo-ed! Let me see that card!” An elderly man in suspenders and a striped shirt climbed up onto a card table. He attempted to wrench the bingo card out of the gnarled hands of the woman across from him.
“Back off, Edward.” She clung to the card with one hand while also pulling out a tiny screwdriver. “I’ve got my hearing-aid kit tools with me, and I’m not afraid to use them!”
“Excuse us.” As one, Grannies Pearl and Kitty turned around and hustled over to break up the brawl.
“Nanna pays them to be bouncers,” Sloane explained gloomily. “Dad worries about that, too, but I think they can handle just about anyone. Let’s go find Nanna.”
They made their way through an enormous room stuffed with card tables and a large number of elderly people. The walls were covered in woven wood and the ceiling appeared to be made of grass, though that couldn’t be right.
“She’s decorated it like a 1950s tiki lounge,” Sloane further explained when she noticed Amelia looking. Amelia suspected that there was a lot about Sloane’s Nanna that needed to be explained. The air was very smoky and all of the bingo players drank out of pineapples and coconuts with little umbrellas stuck in them. However, Sloane assured her that no one was actually smoking or drinking alcohol. “The drinks are all fruit juice because the sugar keeps everyone alert while they play. The smoke is from aromatherapy candles to calm everyone down because things can get—er, a bit tense.”
“Gail’s leaving! That means her card is up for grabs!” a woman in a tie-dyed shirt shrieked. Several retirees jumped up and swooped down on Lucky Gail’s table like a pack of vultures. Granny Pearl and Granny Kitty rushed to break up this new fight.
As they reached the patio door, Amelia noticed a familiar face-off in one corner.
Mr. Neikirk.
He wasn’t playing bingo like the rest of them, though he had a coconut drink in his hand. He slurped on it as he watched Amelia and Sloane go out the sliding door.
What was he doing here? Amelia wondered uneasily. If he was here for the game, why wasn’t he playing? And if he wasn’t here for it, was he looking for Amelia and Sloane?
Amelia was just as glad when Sloane slid the glass door shut. At least the maybe-evil auctioneer wasn’t likely to try anything with Granny Pearl and Granny Kitty close by.
Nanna Tia was taking a break out on the back porch. Weird green AstroTurf covered the floor, and she was half lying on a wheeled, flowered lounge chair while fanning herself with an enormous straw hat. Even though she wore a brightly colored muumuu-style dress and sunglasses, she looked like a crime boss in a movie.
“Sloane-y!” she cried cheerfully, though she fortunately seemed too tired to pinch anyone’s cheeks.
“Nanna!” Sloane gave her a kiss.
“My dogs are barking.” Nanna Tia sighed. When Amelia looked at her in confusion, she added, “That means my feet are tired. I’m getting too old for this bingo business.”
She wiggled her toes, which had nails painted neon orange. Amelia could imagine that being a crime boss was exhausting at any age, let alone eighty- or ninety-something.
“This is my friend Amelia. We’ve got some questions about my great-great-grandma and great-great-great-grandpa.”
“That’s too many ‘great’s,” Great-Granny complained. “Who do you want, again?”
“Your mom and grandpa.”
Sloane’s great-grandma swept off her sunglasses so she could see the two of them better. Then she patted the wrought-iron bench next to her and said, “Come sit down, and I’ll tell you what I can. But I was only six years old when they died, you know.”
“Did you know that your great-grandparents were millionaires?” Amelia asked as Nanna Tia poured a coconut juice and handed it to her. Sloane’s great-grandma also offered them a half pineapple covered in skewers of cheese, maraschino cherries, and pineapple chunks, but Amelia passed on that. “Only your grandpa lost it all when the stock market crashed in 1929.”
“I’m impressed that you know the stock market crashed in 1929.” Nanna Tia nodded approvingly. Amelia sat up straighter, trying to look like a hardworking student who knew all sorts of things other kids didn’t. She thought she pulled it off pretty well. “I don’t know anything about being related to some millionaires, but I do know that Papa always said Granddaddy took it terribly hard when Mama died. She was his only child, you see, and he’d been orphaned himself. He wanted to give her the perfect, happy family he’d never had. When she got cancer, he was desperate to find some cure. But there just wasn’t one back then, and so she died. Papa said that Granddaddy died right after of heartbreak.”
Amelia and Sloane both opened up their mouths to ask more questions, but before they could, Nanna Tia added, “Of course, he lived long enough to get them to change the name of the cemetery where he’d buried her. It was just a little cemetery on a farm his father used to own, but he wanted to name it to honor her memory.”
Amelia and Sloane exchanged a look over Sloane’s coconut drink. Sloane said, “What do you mean?”
“Something about Great-Granddaddy having purchased the farm where he’d worked as a kid. The farm family had always buried their loved ones in that cemetery. Maybe my great-granddaddy liked the thought of being the boss of them in death since they’d bossed him around when he was little.”
Amelia wasn’t sure how you were going to tell people what to do if you were dead and buried. Especially when they were dead and buried too.
“Anyhow, even after he lost all of his money, Granddaddy held on to that farm and some old house that his parents had owned too, Papa said. He sold them all to pay for Mama’s cancer treatment when she got sick, but like I said, it didn’t do any good. However, when he sold the farm, it was on the condition that Mama was to be buried there along with him and his parents. He also renamed the cemetery after his baby.”
Amelia and Sloane exchanged an excited look. Cautiously—afraid to get her hopes up too much—Amelia asked, “His ‘baby’?”
“He always called Mama that.”
“So… he named the cemetery ‘Baby Cemetery’?” Amelia asked, perplexed.
She’d never heard of a baby cemetery before, but it sounded super creepy. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go digging for treasure there. Actually, she was positive she didn’t.
Nanna Tia nodded. “Well, the Hoäls were actually German, you know. So, Granddaddy named it Saugling Cemetery.” When Amelia and Sloane still looked confused, she explained. “ ‘Säugling’ is German for ‘baby.’ ”
Saugling Cemetery.
Hold on.…
That cemetery on Principal Stuckey’s farm had been named Saugling Cemetery.
Right where Mr. Roth had first given them this assignment.
“ ‘Find the baby, find the jewels,’ ” Amelia repeated. “Sloane, they were there all along!”
Sloane looked like someone had clubbed her over the head. “Amelia, I stood next to a tombstone with a baby on it! I thought it was a cupid missing its wings, but now I’m sure it was a baby. And it said ‘Lucy’! I thought it said ‘Lucky’ and that the ‘k’ had just eroded away!”
“Yes, that’s Mama’s grave,” Nanna Tia confirmed.
Amelia collapsed backward against the bench, unable to say anything more. Sloane joined her, both of them stunned.
They’d been standing right over the jewels when all of this began.
Now that they knew where the jewels were hidden, they had to find a way to get to them. Preferably without whoever had sent those letters following them. They couldn’t let Principal Stuckey know what they planned to do, even though the cemetery was on her property. If she was the one who’d set this whole thing up, who knew what she’d do to them? Both Amelia and Sloane were pretty sure that getting put into after-school detention would be the least of their worries.
That meant that they’d need to sneak out there when no one would see them. Possibly in the middle of the night, though neither Sloane nor Amelia was exactly excited about that idea. Fortunately, the cemetery was on the other side of the woods from Principal’s Stuckey’s house. If they could get out there, they could be fairly sure that she wouldn’t see them even in the middle of the day. Less fortunately, her farm was a solid three miles outside of town. That was a long distance to walk through farm fields and woods and across ditches and creeks.
After school (and after Sloane’s detention) the next day, the two of them walked to Sloane’s house. Once there, they changed into old flannel shirts and jeans that belonged to Sloane. Amelia had to roll up the cuffs on hers by quite a bit. Then they called an Uber and went outside to stand along the leafy curb. They had shovels in hand for digging and backpacks on their shoulders for carrying off the jewels.
“Tell me again how we explain why we’re taking shovels to a cemetery,” Sloane said nervously.
“School archaeology project,” Amelia said. “Though to be honest, I’m just sort of hoping the driver doesn’t ask.”
However, right about then, an all-too-familiar roar reached their ears as a motorcycle with a double sidecar screeched around South Park.
“Oh no.” Amelia couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “Is that…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. She just couldn’t.
A bark finished it instead.
Bunny panted happily at them, his tongue lolling as he looked out from behind his goggles. Screeching to a halt, Belinda undid the chin strap on her own helmet and peeled it off.
“ ’Sup?” she asked.
“ ’Sup,” Sloane managed faintly back. The best Amelia could do was give the scary librarian a little finger wave.
“You need a ride out to Principal Stuckey’s farm?” Belinda narrowed her eyes at them both. “What’s up with that?”
“Nothing’s up with that.” Sloane gasped, clutching her shovel like she might need to use it to fend off the librarian.
“Shouldn’t you be at the library?” Amelia couldn’t help but ask.
“Closes at three on Fridays. Then Bunny and I work as Uber drivers to make some extra cash. No one’s ever gotten rich by being a librarian,” Belinda chuckled.
True enough. But Amelia bet that lots of people had gotten rich by stealing someone else’s stolen gems and then murdering them. Well, okay. Maybe not lots of people. Still, she was sure it had happened to someone, somewhere, sometime. And Amelia was completely confident that neither she nor Sloane wanted it to happen to them.
“What are you thinking?” Belinda asked them. “That the jewels are buried out there somewhere?”
“No!” Amelia and Sloane shouted together, startling Belinda and making Bunny whine anxiously.
“Then what’s up with the shovels?” Belinda asked.
“We… saw a… tree out on the farm that, um, I wanted to give my dad as a gift,” Sloane lied.
“What kind of tree?”
Amelia and Sloane exchanged a look. Sloane clearly didn’t know what to say.
“The kind with leaves on them?” Amelia tried hopefully. “And, um, sticks?”
“And Principal Stuckey is cool with this?” Now Belinda was giving them the same look she’d given them that day she threw them out of the library. The one that made you think her eyes had actual laser beams hidden behind them. And she was thinking about singeing off your eyebrows and giving your hair a scary perm.
“You know what, you’re right.” Sloane grabbed Amelia by the shovel and dragged her back toward the porch. Amelia didn’t put up any fight, deciding that retreat sounded like an excellent plan. “This is a terrible idea. What were we thinking?”
“Hey.” Belinda’s voice cracked through the air like a whip, catching them both just as they reached the porch steps and freezing them in place. “You still owe me for my time.”
“Right, right.” Amelia was glad that Sloane was brave enough to release her shovel and run forward to give Belinda a five-dollar bill. She practically threw it at the librarian before scurrying back to Amelia and the safety of the porch steps.
“You’ll call me if you need to go anywhere?” Belinda asked menacingly. “Won’t you?”
“Oh, definitely!” Amelia gasped, and then they both fled inside. Even though they heard the motorcycle take off again, they hid in the front parlor, peering out from behind the window curtains to make sure she’d really gone. Amelia could easily believe that the librarian had trained Bunny to drive the motorcycle and that she was slowly creeping up on the house to—to—to…
Honestly, Amelia didn’t know. Bludgeon them to death with dictionaries? Slice them up with paper cuts?
“So much for Uber.” Sloane shuddered. “Do you think she was the one who sent you the letters?”
“She’s a definite possibility,” Amelia said grimly. “Now what?”
“Now we call my grannies and hope they don’t ask too many questions.” Sloane pulled out her phone and FaceTimed them. However, rather than either Granny Kitty or Granny Pearl, Nanna Tia answered the call.
“Sloane-y!” The woman wore a different straw hat and flowered dress from the day before. She giggled at someone just off-camera and said, “Look, Timothy! It’s our Little Sloane-y!”
Timothy? Wait, wasn’t that…
“I know her!” Mr. Neikirk, the auctioneer, shoved his face into view. “She’s one of the girls who’ve been working on figuring out where the missing Hoäl jewels have gotten to!”
“Did you know that I’m a Hoäl?” Nanna Tia asked him.
“Then you’ll be filthy rich if they find those jewels!” Mr. Neikirk agreed happily, before chuckling, “Unless someone steals the stolen gems off of them, too, heh-heh-heh.”
“What do you want, girls?” Sloane’s great-grandma asked.
“Nothing!” Amelia and Sloane cried together. Then Sloane added, “Are, um, Granny Pearl and Granny Kitty there too?”
“Just making up some Jell-O salad! Want me to put them on?”
“Nope. Gotta go. Love ya, Nanna! Byeeee!” Sloane closed out of the app in a hurry.
“Sloane, he was at your nanna’s house yesterday!” Amelia gasped. “And he wasn’t playing bingo. He was just sitting there! He could be the one who set this all up!”
Grimly, Sloane said, “At least I know that if Granny Pearl and Granny Kitty are there, Nanna is safe. They can definitely take him.”
“Your great-grandma is a local crime boss. I think she can take care of herself.” Amelia looked anxiously at the time on her phone. It was still only four o’clock, and it wouldn’t get dark out until after eight. That gave them about four hours to get there, dig up the graveyard, and get back without getting mugged, kidnapped, murdered, or some combination of all three. “Let me try Aiden or Ashley.”
However, when she texted them, Amelia got this back from Aiden:
Principal Stuckey and Mr. Roth stopped by to talk to Mom and Dad. Something about abominable snowmen?
Oh, terrific. Amelia closed her eyes in pain. Now Aiden and Ashley would know too. She’d been sort of hoping that her mom and dad would keep the yeti business from them.
Only, hang on a moment. Wasn’t it sort of weird for a principal and a teacher to make a house call over something like Amelia getting called names? Wasn’t that the sort of thing that you phoned a parent about? And if you needed to speak to them in person, they came to the school? You didn’t go to their house?
Unless you were trying to figure out what their child knew about some long-missing gems.
So you could steal them from their rightful heirs all over again.
Amelia explained the situation to Sloane, concluding, “My family won’t work, either.”
“There’s nothing else we can do, then,” Sloane said with a grimace. “We’ll have to ride our bikes out there. You can ride one of my old ones.”
Riding a bike was one more thing Amelia wasn’t very good at. But doing something she was bad at was still better than hitching a ride with a possible murderer.
As Amelia and Sloane got onto their bikes to head out of town, they were quite right to be worried.
The person who had set this whole project in motion had been watching Amelia’s YouTube videos with great interest.
That person now also knew they were on the move—and had a pretty good idea of where they were heading. Certain that whatever was left of the long-missing jewels was now within fingers’ reach, this person picked up a slingshot.
And went to go join Sloane and Amelia.