WHEN WE sneak out of the house, the moon is so bright we don’t need a flashlight, but we bring one anyway.
The Gillans’ mailbox is made of brick, like a tall, narrow house, and the ancient metal bird is perched on top. The metal part of the box, where the mail actually goes in, looks like a small garage where the bird could park its car.
We stand side by side, staring at the bird with hard feathers. The street is empty and the Gillans’ lights are out. “What do we do?” Ally whispers.
“I don’t know,” I say, crooking my head and looking more closely at the little bird. I try to move it but it doesn’t budge.
“Maybe one of the bricks,” Rose says and starts feeling around at the base of the mailbox. Ally and I join in. We touch every brick. All solid. Until I push the one right underneath the metal mailbox/bird garage. It moves.
“Look,” I whisper. We bend down and I press at one side of the brick and watch as the other side slides forward. Carefully, I remove the brick.
“Flashlight,” I say and Ally hands me the flashlight as I give her the brick. I shine it into the space the brick left behind.
“What’s in there?” Ally asks.
“Animal bones,” Rose whispers.
“Cut it out, Rose.” I bend down further and look inside the hole. There’s a little compartment in there, a hollow space at the very center of the brick housing. The light from the flashlight is illuminating something. But I can’t tell what it is.
I hand Rose the flashlight and start to reach inside.
“Stop!” she says.
I look up at her.
“Bones,” she says. “Seriously.”
“No bones.” Even if there are bones, I don’t care. I’ve come too far. I have to know. I reach in. The narrow hole swallows my hand and wrist before I touch anything. Thankfully, when I do make contact, it feels like a plastic bag. But there’s something hard inside so I can’t help but think there might be bones in there after all.
My fingers wrap around the plastic as the lights flip on in the Gillans’ kitchen.
Rose kills the flashlight and we hurry through my yard and back inside the house. We’re all breathing hard when we get back into my room and I close the door quietly behind us.
“That was close,” Ally whispers as I place the plastic bag on my bed. It’s folded over and stapled at the top. For a tense moment, we just stare at the bag, illuminated by the light of the moon coming through my window.
I click on the flashlight and examine it more closely. The plastic bag is white. We can’t see through it. And none of us goes to touch it.
“This was your idea,” Rose finally says.
She’s right. If I hadn’t figured it out, we never would have gone to the mailbox.
“Scissors,” I say and Ally retrieves my scissors from the desk. Carefully, I grasp the top of the bag and snip off the top. I gaze up at my friends before pouring the contents out onto my bed.
Whatever it is is wrapped in an old dishcloth, held together with a rubber band.
“Okay…,” Rose says cautiously.
Slowly, I reach for the object. As I pick it up, the rubber band disintegrates in my hands. The dishcloth falls open. And it’s worse than bones.
It’s a knife.
“What?!” Ally gasps.
Not a long knife. Not a normal knife. A knife with a short blade that curves backward. Like when you Scotch-tape your nose up to look like a pig.
“This is so wrong,” says Rose.
I hold up the knife and Rose hits it with the flashlight beam. “Have you guys ever seen anything like this before? What is it?”
“The police will know,” Ally says.
“Is this the murder weapon?” Rose asks gravely. “Is this the knife that killed Ruthie Delgado?”
“It doesn’t look like a murder weapon kind of knife,” I say.
“How do you know what a murder weapon knife looks like?!” exclaims Ally.
“Shhhhh!” Rose shushes her.
Ally leans in and whispers, “How do you know?”
We all look at that strange curved-back blade again.
“I don’t think it’s the murder weapon, either,” Rose says. “I mean, you could kill someone with any sort of blade as long as it’s sharp, I guess. But it’s not like regular murder-knives weren’t available in 1973.”
“Regular murder-knives?” Ally backs away from the bed. I notice she’s still carrying the brick from the mailbox in her hand. “Al.” I point at the brick.
She looks down, surprised it’s there, then drops it on the bed. “Well, what was I supposed to do? We had to run.”
“Something else is in there,” Rose says, tilting her head to look into the bag.
I peek inside. “No way,” I say and gently pull out a yellowed piece of folded notepaper. “The next clue.” I unfold the paper and smooth it out on my bed. The writing is more faded than on the last clue. As Rose hits it with the flashlight, I clear my throat and begin reading:
Congratulations. You’re smarter than you look.
Now you know.
Ruthie didn’t go to see Gregg.
Because of him.
He knows how to use this.
Of course he does!
Find him and you can find her.
Keep following the clues!
But here’s the Wrinkle—
Meg is waiting.
Silently, we stare at the clue. Three pairs of eyes reaching back to 1973.
“Who’s Meg?” I ask.
“Who’s Gregg?” asks Rose.
“The Allman Brother,” Ally says quietly. “You know, the one who lived.” Somebody’s been paying attention.
“None of that matters,” says Rose. “Who is he? The one with the knife? The killer.”
Ally squeals and springs away from my bookshelf like one of my books suddenly bit her.
“What’s wrong?” I jump up and look behind her.
“That! Why do you have that thing out?” She points with a trembling finger at the black ring from the clue box that’s been sitting on my shelf for the past two weeks. “Birdie, that ring is haunted!”
“No, it’s not,” I say before even thinking.
“No, it’s not?!”
“Shhh,” says Rose.
“First, we find a haunted ring,” Ally hisses. “Now we find a killer’s knife. You want this to be our last summer for real.” She glares at me in a very un-Allylike way.
“It’s not going to be our last summer together that way,” Rose says. “Just in every other way.”