Brewster trotted down the sidewalk, yanking on the leash like he was walking them instead of the other way around. Rachel and Joon strolled behind him. “Look casual,” she said softly. “Spies need to blend in with their environment.” At any moment, Mom could look out the window, and Rachel didn’t want her to guess that she felt as excited as Brewster. Mom would get suspicious, and then there would be questions Rachel wasn’t ready to answer. Brewster’s tail was wagging back and forth so enthusiastically that it looked as if he were trying to trim the nearby bushes.
Joon grinned. “Blend in with the environment, huh?”
“Do not pretend to be a tree,” she told him.
“I was going to be a rock. Or maybe a bird.” He flapped his arms.
Birds were calling to one another, both in deep caws and in high chirps. Lawn mowers whined in the distance, and an airplane hummed somewhere between the blue and the clouds, too high or too far away to see. It was July warm, but not the kind of hot that made Rachel’s hair fluff up instantly.
In short, it was a perfect summer afternoon.
She’d never pictured a sunny, summery day when she thought about visiting graveyards. Actually, she’d never thought about graveyards much at all. But shouldn’t it be chilly and rainy? She bent down and scooped up a rock.
“What are you doing?” Joon asked.
“Bringing a rock,” Rachel said. “You’re supposed to put a rock on the gravestone, when you visit a cemetery. It’s a Jewish tradition. It’s . . . okay, I don’t know why we do it, but I think it says I miss you. Or maybe just I remember you.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You can do it too,” she said. “Pretty sure you don’t need to be Jewish.”
As they walked, they scouted for rocks. Rachel found a better one: a round stone as gray as the sky wasn’t. She stuffed it in her pocket, next to the ring box.
Slowing, she stopped at the green street sign for Cemetery Lane. Below it was a yellow sign that said “Dead End.” Both were nailed to a tilted telephone pole, and their edges were eaten by rust.
“Heh,” Joon said. “Cemetery Lane. Dead end. Get it?”
Rachel glanced at the map on Joon’s phone. “I think it is a dead end.”
“Unintentionally funny is still funny.”
She waited for Brewster to sniff the pole, then shove his snout into the ivy growing by the side of the road, before they turned onto Cemetery Lane. It was narrow, the width of one and a half cars, with cracks in the asphalt. They passed a couple of houses before the road turned and they saw the sign for the cemetery.
Rachel read it out loud: “‘St. George’s Manor Cemetery. Colonel William Tangier Smith, the patentee, his wife, Madam Martha, patriots Captain Selah Strong and his wife Anna Smith Strong, known as Nancy, and many of their descendants are buried in this historic site.’ See, told you she was called Nancy.”
“I guess we found it,” Joon said, as if surprised the internet hadn’t lied.
“I had no idea this was here,” Rachel said.
Brewster sniffed the gate as Rachel unlatched it and let themselves in. She glanced around for “No Trespassing” signs, but there weren’t any. The house next door looked empty—no cars were in the driveway and all the shades were down—but she still half expected someone to burst outside and tell them they weren’t allowed to be here.
On the other side of the gate was an enormous oak tree. Another, just as large, grew farther in, amid the graves. She could see them from here: a few dozen headstones in rows that faced the bay. She’d seen on the map that the tiny cemetery was on the shore of Little Bay, the inlet that they had to drive around every time they left and returned to their neighborhood on Strong’s Neck. On the other side of the inlet were houses, trees, and street. Beyond that was the center of Setauket, with two churches, the library, and their elementary school, but you couldn’t see any of that from here. Just the sunlight on the water through the trees.
“I thought it would be creepy,” Joon said, “but this is kind of nice. You know, for a place with dead people.”
While Brewster ran from a patch of old leaves to an exposed tree root, stretching the leash as far as it would go, Rachel and Joon crossed to the graves. Dried oak leaves crunched under their feet, then the ground softened, and they were walking over moss. The first gravestones they reached looked new. They were light gray, with crisp edges, but the dates carved into them were all at least a few decades old.
“Lots of Strongs,” Rachel noted.
“The sign did say descendants,” Joon said. “Where do you think Nancy is? And where are you supposed to walk? I don’t want to, you know, step on someone.”
“Just don’t go right next to any of the stones,” Rachel said. “I think.” She hoped it was okay that they’d brought a dog in here. Maybe she should have tied Brewster back by the road. “One second. . . .” She jogged the dog back to the gate, secured his leash, and rubbed his ears. He wagged his tail at her, and then he lifted his leg and peed on the gate, making it clear she’d made the right decision.
She rejoined Joon, glancing back to make sure Brewster was okay and didn’t feel abandoned, but he’d already forgotten her. He’d spotted a squirrel and was barking at it enthusiastically, as if he wanted to join it as it leaped from branch to branch.
After about a dozen newer—as in, from the last century—graves, Rachel spotted the really old ones. The stones were thinner and edged in lichen. A few were tilted precariously, and some had crumbled. One was held up at an angle by a trio of logs.
Rachel and Joon weaved through them.
On these old stones, the words had been eaten away by wind, rain, and time.
“How do we find her?” Rachel asked. She couldn’t even read these. Squatting in front of one, she tried to make out the shapes of the letters. There had been writing here once, but the words looked as if they’d been scoured off.
Joon stopped in front of a larger monument. A square pillar, it had the name Strong carved in three-inch-high letters at the base. “‘Selah Brewster Strong, 1792 to 1872, died at St. George’s Manor,’” he read. “Didn’t the sign say she was married to a Captain Selah Strong? Wait, though, the dates aren’t right. He’d have been, like, fifty years younger than her.”
“Half these graves are for Selah Strongs,” Rachel said. “Guess the family really liked the name. That one must have been a grandson or grandnephew.”
Beyond Joon, Rachel spotted a pair of identical monuments. Each was a four-sided pillar, topped with an egg-shaped ornament—easily the tallest grave markers in the cemetery. Both were ringed with American flags that had been stuck into the earth.
As on the other grave markers, the words etched into the pale gray stone were half-eroded, nearly impossible to read when the sun hit them directly. Rachel circled the markers and stopped halfway, her back to the water. Below the old gray stone, someone had affixed brass plaques to each of the pillars.
The one on the left read: “Selah Strong, Patriot.” It went on to say he’d been a member of the New York State First Continental Congress.
And the one on the right . . .
“Found her,” Rachel said quietly.
Joon joined her, and they stared at the plaque at the bottom of the marker: “Revolutionary Patriot, Anna Smith Strong, 1740–1812.”
“Whoa,” Joon said, just as quietly.
By the gate, Brewster barked at his squirrel.
“I didn’t . . .” Rachel tried to find the words. “I didn’t think she was real—you know what I mean? She’s a name on a poster for school. A hero. But she’s right here. A person, with a grave.”
“I know what you mean,” Joon said. “A real spy. Not a story. Or a game.”
Rachel rose on her tiptoes and placed her stone on Nancy’s monument, at the base of the topper, beside other stones of various shapes and sizes left by other visitors. Joon placed his stone as well. “We did it,” she said. “We found her.” In her head, she imagined victory music swelling, louder and faster.
“Cool,” Joon said.
This was definitely something, she thought. Very cool.
Then Joon said, “What’s the next clue?”
Rachel gaped at him. “Next clue?”
“There has to be a next clue,” Joon said. “It can’t just end here. I mean, it wouldn’t make sense. Why say ‘Find me’ and have it just lead to your grave? It’s not like it’s a secret she’s here.” He waved his hand at the flags and the other remembrance stones.
Well . . . Huh, she thought. That was true. If all Anna Smith Strong had wanted was to be remembered, she didn’t need to leave a cryptic command on a ring. Rachel lifted her hand and looked at the silver ring that had once belonged to a spy called Nancy. She’d been clever enough to be a spy. Why couldn’t she have been clever enough to create a series of clues? “Clues to what?”
“To the Strong family’s lost treasure!” Joon said. “It’s a treasure hunt!”
Whoa, just because there might be clues didn’t mean they led to treasure. “I don’t know,” Rachel said. “That’s kind of a leap.”
“She has to be leading us to the lost treasure,” Joon insisted. “Why else bring us here?”
Maybe he was right. And even if he wasn’t, did it really matter? Looking for clues was still infinitely better than spending the afternoon worrying about how far away Joon was going to have to move, and it was definitely better than eavesdropping on Mom and Dave planning their wedding. They’d be solving a puzzle left by a real-life spy! And not just any spy, but Anna Smith Strong! “Okay, I’m in, but don’t get your heart set on there being a treasure.”
“Why have a clue if it doesn’t lead to a prize?”
He’d liked when they’d played pirates, Rachel knew. He’d worn an eye patch and a feathered Captain Hook hat for every Halloween, except for second grade when he went as an M&M. It made sense he’d immediately assume there was a treasure chest at the end of Nancy’s clues. The lost treasure was just a legend, though. “Yeah, but—”
Joon hopped from foot to foot. “It’s a treasure hunt! I’m sure of it. And if we find it—when we find it—then I won’t have to move. Think of it: super-old treasure would help my parents buy a house. Not rent. They could buy whatever house they wanted. I could stay in Setauket for sure.”
That would be amazing. She began to picture it: a treasure chest full of silver. Would it be coins? Or jewelry? Or goblets and candlesticks? The legend wasn’t specific. She was definitely in favor of a treasure hunt if it meant helping Joon . . . though she wasn’t exactly clear on how finding a treasure would keep him from moving—would they even be able to keep what they found?—but it definitely beat sitting around trying not to think about him being gone.
“Don’t you see?” Joon said, practically shouting. “This is the answer I’ve been searching for! Delivered to us on a silver—no, not a silver platter. A silver ring.”
He was so excited that Rachel didn’t have the heart to say he was grasping at straws. Besides, the fact remained—the ring had guided them here, to Nancy’s grave. What if he’s right? She felt her own burble of excitement start inside her rib cage. If he was . . . “The clue has to be on the gravestone. That’s where the ring led us.” A thought occurred to her. “But how could she leave a clue on her own grave? It had to have been carved after she died.”
“She could have put instructions in her will. Told her relatives what to write.”
That satisfied her. Spies were clever. They hid within the ordinary, living their lives in plain sight. Like her and Joon. If Nancy had left instructions in her will or with a relative, she could have dictated the details. “So if that’s what she did, then we just need to figure out which part of the gravestone holds the clue.”
Both of them stared intently at the grave marker as if it would cough up the answers.
On the front, above the plaque, Rachel could read a few of the words carved into the gray stone, at least she could well enough to guess what they said: “An affectionate wife, a tender mother, and a noble friend,” but the next line was impossible to read no matter how hard she squinted at it. The back was worse. A few illegible words at the top, followed by “Aged 72 Years 3 Months and 29 Days.” Below that, the stone was too weather-beaten to puzzle out more than a word or two. “Hallowed be . . .” The next few were unreadable, the stone worn away. “They shall . . .” What? They shall what?
“This side’s easier to read,” Joon said.
She joined him on the left side of the grave marker.
Here, the stone was mostly blank, except for three words. Rachel read out loud, “‘Time how short!’” Rachel and Joon circled to the right side. It was also blank except for: “‘Eternity how long.’”
“Dark,” Joon said. “But poetic, I guess?”
She mused over the words. If this was the clue, she didn’t know what it meant. On the other hand, why would the clue be right here for everyone to see? No, it had to be more clever than that. “If there is a clue, it has to be something you can’t find without the ring. Otherwise, someone would have discovered it before now.” She pulled the ring off her finger and studied it.
“Maybe if we combine the ring with the stone?” Joon suggested.
Circling the stone, she fitted the ring over the letter O—the O in “how” and “short” in “Time how short” and the O in “how” and “long” in “Eternity how long.” She tried all the Os in the eroded text that she could find, even on the brass plaque that had clearly been added much later.
Nothing happened.
What did I expect? Did I think it would work like a key and open a hidden door like in a movie? Maybe. But it didn’t.
“Maybe there isn’t anything here,” Rachel admitted.
“There has to be,” Joon said. “We need this treasure. It’s not like I can set up a lemonade stand and make enough money for my parents and me to live anywhere we want.”
It would take a miracle, she thought. But why couldn’t they get a miracle? She’d had the fizzing feeling. It had to mean something. “Keep thinking,” she instructed both Joon and herself. “There has to be a connection between the ring and the grave marker.”
“What if it begins with the words on the ring?” Joon suggested. “‘Find me’ could mean we’re supposed to find the word ‘me,’ or the letters M and E.”
“Like in ‘time’?” Stopping on the side of the gravestone, Rachel pointed to the word “time” in “Time how short.”
Both of them stared at it.
“Huh,” Joon said. “Okay, that was easy. Now what?”
Think, she told herself. They had a bunch of words that didn’t seem like a clue. . . . What kind of message could a spy hide inside ordinary words? “Maybe it’s an anagram? You know, mix up the letters to make other words. ‘Time how short . . .’ What can that spell?”
“Me, tow, two, hot, mow, tot . . . Yeah, I don’t think that’s it. It makes a lot of words. Worm, wish, show, tooth . . . Ooh, ‘wrist,’ that’s a good one. Worst, worth, threw, moose. I don’t think the clue is ‘moose.’”
Fine, not that. “Maybe it’s in code?” She thought of her notebook. It was easy to read if you knew how she’d made the code, but if you didn’t know, it just looked like a lot of math homework. “If it is, though, we’d need a key to decipher it, and we don’t have—”
Excited, Joon cut her off. “Hey, can I see the ring?”
She handed it to him.
“August 16, 1713. What if that’s the key?”
What was he getting at? “Go on.”
“What if the numbers in the date tell us which letters . . .” Leaning forward, Joon touched the worn letters on the gravestone, and then he retreated and shoved the ring back at her. “The numbers in the date could point to specific letters. Like, a number three could mean the letter M.” He pointed to the M, the third letter in “Time how short.”
She looked at the ring. “First number is sixteen. Or one, I guess. So that would be a T.”
“Or first number is an eight,” Joon said. “For August.”
“Okay, what’s the eighth letter?”
He counted. “S.”
“One?”
“T.”
“Six.”
“O.”
“One again.”
“T again.”
“Seven.”
“W.”
“One.”
“T.”
“Three.”
“M.”
“Stotwtm?” Joon said. “Nope. Sorry. Not a word. Told you it was a dumb idea.”
By the gate, Brewster barked. Rachel glanced at him. He’d spotted another squirrel. Or a leaf. Or a cloud. She turned back to the gravestone. “What about the gaps in the date? Look, it’s written weird, with extra spaces. What if that’s not a mistake? What if it’s part of the clue?” She showed him the ring again. “Try eight, one, six, seventeen, thirteen.”
He counted. “There aren’t seventeen letters.”
“There are if we use the whole quote,” Rachel said. “‘Time how short. Eternity how long.’ Eight, one, six . . .”
“S . . . T . . . O . . .”
“Seventeen . . . thirteen.”
He circled to the other side of the grave. “N . . . E.”
Stone.
It spelled a word. A real word.
Not just a word, she thought. A clue!
Joon whooped. “That’s it!”
Dancing in place, she imagined she heard fireworks. A real clue! We did it! They really had stumbled onto a treasure hunt—a two-hundred-fifty-year-old mystery—left by a woman who had lived, died, and spied right here in their hometown.
A treasure hunt to what? And why had Nancy left it? Maybe she wanted to make sure her treasure went to the right someone—the person who could solve her clues. Maybe Rachel and Joon could be the right someones. If they could figure out what she wanted them to do next, then they could find the next clue and then the next and the next, until—
Brewster barked louder.
A man shouted, “Hey, what are you kids doing in there?”