Chapter 13
The guard chuckled.
“I think you’re going to help us,” said Jack, “or we’re going to help you. Whichever.”
“Why do you think that?” asked the guard.
“Because you’re his friend,” ventured Jack. “And you’re as confused as we are about what’s going on.”
Jack looked at his brothers, both of whom were staring at him blankly.
“Don’t you guys see,” said Jack, “he brought us down here, not to the main security office like the other guards did earlier. So that meant that he was either one of them – whoever them is – one of the jewel thieves or bad guys of whomever is lurking out there. Or else he was one of us. If he were just a guard, he’d have taken us to the main office. If he were one of them, who knows? He’d have beaten us up or something by now. Something other than this. And then there’s that—“ he pointed to the crossword puzzle book on the desk. “It can’t be a coincidence that it’s the same exact book that Souvlakis had. I’m guessing Souvlakis gave it to him, or vice versa. Either way. I don’t see how else this can make sense.”
As Jack spoke, a smile grew on the guard’s face. It stopped just short of an outright laugh, then dissipated.
“Tony and I are old friends,” said the guard. “Twenty years and more. My name is Otis Black. And I am a guard here, although I like to think that I’m more than ‘just’ a guard, thank you Jack. And yes, this book is from him. He used to give them to me all the time. He did those puzzles during his coffee break every day. He’s a whiz at them. I’m not much for puzzles though. Not this kind, any way. I can’t do them. I’m dyslexic. But he’d give them to me anyway. I carried them around.”
“Are we in some kind of trouble or not, then?” asked Quinn.
“Oh you’re in trouble, alright,” said Otis. “You should be very glad that your friend Max came to me asking questions about Tony and not to someone else. You’d all have been in trouble and so would he have. Hopefully he’s gone back to his office and isn’t still beating the bushes for information about Tony. Now then, can you tell me, Cable, what actually bring you into this story?”
Cable told Otis a quick version of the tale of the book-buy and the plans and papers and the visit from the contractors and everything leading all the way up to the note they’d found in the pedestal. Otis took it all in, stroking his chin between thumb and long forefinger all the while. When he’d finished, Otis asked, “can I see the note?”
Jack took it out of his pocket. “Are you sure you want to see it? It’s a lot easier if you just listen to it.”
Otis nodded, “Tony can be like that. He loves puzzles.”
Jack read the whole poem. Otis’s eyes flashed when Jack read the second part. “In Berkeley,” Otis muttered.
When he’d finished reading, he handed the note to Otis. “It seems straightforward, at least relatively so, when you read it out loud,” said Jack, “but the closer you look at it, the more it slides away from you.”
“I was thinking that it had something to do with the eyes of the Lion and Tiger,” said Cable.
Otis nodded. He put the note down on the desk. “That sounds like him,” he agreed.
“What do you think is going on?” asked Jack.
“I don’t know,” said Otis. “I really don’t. Tony did those animals up there, you know. The Lion and Tiger. All of them. It’s entirely possible that he did put something in them. I can tell you this, though, there’s no way Tony Souvlakis has run off with the National Gem collection. He’d have been the first to tell you, he owned those gems already. They were here in the Smithsonian, owned by all Americans.”
“He was American, then?” asked Jack, “because I was thinking from the note there that he might have had an accent or maybe English wasn’t his first language.”
“He was born in Jersey,” said Otis, “the only accent he had was the same one Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel have.”
“So what’s with the weird spelling and punctuation?” asked Jack.
Otis shrugged again, “that’s just Tony. Word games. Puzzles. Always. I got a note from him too. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Like this. I remember it said something about ‘peel the eyes,’ so I assumed it meant, ‘keep my eyes peeled.’ Now I wonder if he meant what you were saying, Cable, that I was supposed to pry the eyes out of something.”
“Do you have the note?” asked Cable.
“No, it’s at home,” said Otis.
“We looked at the eyes,” said Quinn, “they looked normal.”
“Not that we know anything about what they’re supposed to look like,” said Cable.
“Do you have any ideas about the rest of the note?” asked Jack. “Does any of this mean anything to you? The owl, Berkeley, whatever this missing word is in, ‘keep and eye on the blank?’”
Otis nodded, “some of it. Berkeley was a stuffed squirrel that he had.”
“We’ve got it!” exclaimed Quinn, “it’s at the bookstore.”
“You took it from his house?” asked Otis, surprised.
Cable nodded, “it was that or it was going to the Salvation Army. So ‘in Berkeley lies the truth.’ You think that means he’s put something in the squirrel?”
“What about the owl?” asked Jack, “he had this giant stuffed owl at his house too.”
“That’s meant to be me, I think” said Otis, “he called me black owl.”
“Is that like an Indian name?” asked Cable.
“Otis, or rather Otus with a ‘u’ is the Latin word for owl,” said Otis. “And my last name is Black. Black Owl.”
“So this note was meant for you?” said Quinn.
“It looks that way,” said Otis.
“So how do we know that you’re not in on the heist?” said Quinn.
As soon as he’d said it, Jack and Cable turned and stared at him with eyes wide. But it could not be unsaid. Otis was a long time responding.
“You don’t,” said Otis, “If you’re not sure now, then nothing I can say will convince you. In most stories, you’re allowed to believe whatever you want for a time. It usually doesn’t stay that way. But you’re right. You don’t know.”
The walkie talkie on Otis’s belt beeped. He pulled the earpiece out of his shirt pocket and put it in his ear. “Go ahead,” he said. He listened for a moment. Then he said “Alright” and took the receiver out of his ear.
“Here’s what I can do,” said Otis. “You want to see those animals up close? I can arrange for that.”
“How?” asked Cable.
Otis looked at his watch. “I have to go now,” he said. He looked at Quinn. “If you decide you trust me, stay down here for forty minutes and then come on back upstairs to the main hall. If you don’t, let yourself out the way we came in and remember that if I’ve judged you wrong, I know your names and can find you again.”
“Whoa,” said Jack, “I don’t like the sound of that. What happened to ‘he’s my friend?’ How can we help?”
Otis looked at Jack. “Tony is my friend. The rest was your theory.”
“But why forty minutes?” asked Cable. He opened his phone and looked at the time. “I don’t get any reception down here. What time is it?”
“It’s 4:45,” said Otis. He stood up. His walkie talkie beeped again.
“I have to go,” he said.
Before the boys could find anything else to ask, Otis had stood up and let himself out of the room. The door clicked shut behind him. They listened to his footsteps going down the hallway. Then silence.
“That got weird fast,” said Quinn.
“Well Geez Quinn, you practically accused him of being one of the thieves,” snapped Jack.
“How did you interpret it, then?” Quinn retorted, “I may be a little late getting all the information that everyone else has, but if Otis is the black owl and that note was meant for Otis to find, then why don’t you think it was Otis who Tony was trying to communicate with?”
“He’s right,” said Cable, “that makes sense. And we just told him everything we knew.”
Jack shook his head, “but what about the crossword puzzle book?”
Cable shook his head, “I don’t know. It seemed like it made sense when you said it.”
“I think he’s legit,” said Jack.
“How do we know he’s not going up there to check on the eyes of the animals right now?” asked Quinn.
“There are people all over the place,” said Cable, “the same reason we couldn’t do it earlier.”
“But he’s a museum guard,” said Quinn, “who’s going to stop him?”
“We’ve gotten in this deep,” said Jack, “we might as well wait a few more minutes. It he wanted to arrest us or something, he could have done it by now. Think about it. Anything he wanted to do, he could have done by now. All he did was assess the situation and make a judgment. Now he’s giving us a chance to decide if we trust him or not. Like he said, we can just walk out if we want to.”
“That was sort of threat, that remark about knowing how to find us,” said Cable.
“He’s right, though. He does know,” said Jack, “maybe he just wanted to remind us of that.”
The boys talked for another few minutes. By the time they decided to take Otis up on his offer to get them access to the stuffed animals, most of the allotted forty minutes had already passed. They thought it had, anyway. None of their cell phones got reception in the basement and none of them had watches except for the ones on their phones. When they figured it had been long enough, they opened the door of the office. Walking quietly, they retraced their steps to the small staircase and climbed up. When they reached the turn in the steps, they were surprised not to be met with a buzz of activity in the great hall ahead of them. They climbed the rest of the steps and let themselves out through the gate, which closed and locked behind them. The great hall was deserted.
“Oh my God,” said Cable. He checked the clock on his phone. “It’s 5:30. The museum is closed and we’re locked in.”
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