Jared knelt in front of the mound. “Unless your aunt left you something in one of these bears, we’re out of luck.”
“Think she buried it?” Priest slipped off his headphones, Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like a Hole” still blaring.
Alara looked disgusted. “Go ahead and find out, but I’m not digging in a cemetery. That’s the definition of bad luck.”
“Maybe we should check Hancock and Revere’s graves, too,” Elle offered. “Just in case.”
I stared down at the soggy stuffed bears. This was a dead end. I’d known my aunt for all of twenty-four hours. I had no idea what we were looking for, or why she wanted me to have it.
Lukas looked at the map again. “Adams has a family tomb.” He pointed at a row of tombs, obscured by evergreens, along a wrought iron fence, hidden. “Back there.”
Everyone followed Lukas across the graveyard, but Alara lagged behind. Bear stood next to her, waiting.
Priest elbowed me and nodded in her direction. “She’s on the phone again.”
“Who do you think she’s talking to? Her brother?” I asked.
“No one calls their brother every other day,” Elle said. “I told you, it’s a guy.”
When we reached the tomb, Jared cleared the fresh snow off the stone with his sleeve. ADAMS was etched across the top. “This is it.”
The corners were chipped and weathered, and a tangle of tree roots had wrapped themselves around the tomb. Only a few tiny cracks cut across stone.
Lukas bent down and checked the base. “There’s nowhere to hide anything.”
Priest opened his mouth to say something, but I held up my hand to stop him. “Forget it. We’re not looking inside.”
“It would be pointless anyway,” Elle said. “Based on the width of these roots, they’ve been wrapped around this thing for decades. So unless your aunt hid this mystery item over twenty years ago, it’s not in there.”
“Where did that come from?” Jared asked.
Elle stared at him from beneath the furry hood of her faux leopard jacket. “Botany, which I took after AP Bio and Geology. Not all pretty girls are stupid.”
“She’s right on both counts.” Priest turned on his EMF and circled the tomb.
“You’re testing for spirits in a graveyard?” I wasn’t even sure how that worked.
“Just this tomb,” he said, turning off the device. “The needle barely moved.”
Alara made her way toward us, navigating between the snow-covered grave markers. I didn’t have the heart to tell her how many bodies were actually buried here. She’d probably stepped on more than a few of them already.
“Talking to your boyfriend again?” Lukas teased, once she was in earshot.
Her expression was somber. “Another girl disappeared this morning.”
My stomach twisted, and I pictured the row of photos in my dorm room. “What was her name?”
Alara gave me a strange look. “Lucy Klein. Why?”
“Just wondering.” I added her name to my mental list. I’d look up her photo later and sketch her portrait to my notebook.
“Maybe they’re alive somewhere,” Elle offered.
I waited for someone to agree, but there was only silence.
Old South Meeting House, where the Sons of Liberty planned the Boston Tea Party, was the only place left to look. By the time we reached the brick building, with its towering steeple and a door painted the color of a Redcoat’s uniform, the snow had turned to cold rain.
A group of tourists stood out front huddled under their umbrellas. A tour guide dressed like Paul Revere, complete with a brown tricorn hat, gestured at the red door.
Alara rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Another one? Who goes on a tour in this weather?”
“I wonder if they get a discount on those hats,” Priest whispered as we walked by.
“The cornerstone was an important symbol to Freemasons like Paul Revere and Sam Adams,” the tour guide’s voice carried over the rain.
Priest stopped on the front steps. “Wait.”
The guide pointed at a gray, weathered stone that stood out from the surrounding red brick, and the tourists craned their necks. “For early masons, the cornerstone was the first stone set into the foundation, and it was inscribed with the date and initials of the builder,” he continued. “Freemasons considered the stone more of a symbolic element and usually added it to the outside of their buildings. Unless you were patriot and Freemason Benjamin Franklin.”
Alara stood in the doorway. “Maybe you can take the tour later, Priest. I’d rather watch paint dry.”
“Now this is for all you Jeopardy! fans,” the guide rambled on. “Benjamin Franklin cared more about with what was inside the cornerstone than what was inscribed on the outside. In his diaries, Franklin revealed that he hid important documents related to the Sons of Liberty behind the cornerstone of his house.”
A pudgy guy wearing a plastic poncho raised his hand like he was in elementary school. “If the documents were so important, why would he write down where he hid them?”
“An excellent question, sir.” The guide jumped at the opportunity to elaborate. “Freemasons were known for their flawless and seamless workmanship and often hid valuables inside the things they built. Those items could only be accessed by leveraging a specific angle—just like the cornerstone of Franklin’s house.”
Lukas turned to me. “Let me see the note again.”
Priest scanned the scrap of paper in my hand and looked at Lukas. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Lukas flashed him a crooked smile. “Maybe.”
Elle squeezed between them, trying to avoid the rain. “Can we think about whatever it is inside?”
Priest flipped up his hood. “We need to go back to the cemetery.”
Alara groaned. “It was a dead end.”
“That’s because we were looking in the wrong place,” Lukas said.
“So what do the numbers mean?” Jared asked, falling into step next to Lukas.
“I think they’re angles,” his brother said.
I pictured Faith’s handwriting on the note she’d left in my coat pocket.
And let the angle guide you.
It said angle all along, not angel.
Priest looked around. “We need to find a drugstore.”
Alara stopped walking and stood in the middle of the sidewalk with her arms crossed. Bear sat down next to her.
“What are you doing?” Priest asked.
“Waiting for someone to tell me what’s going on,” she said.
Priest pointed at the drugstore at the end of the street. “How about we explain inside, where it’s dry?”
Alara stalked past him and headed in the direction of the store.
That was a yes.
The five of us stood in the school supply aisle, scanning the shelves and dripping all over the cheap carpet, while Jared waited out front with Bear.
Priest found a compass and a ruler and opened them, while Lukas unfolded the note. “If I’m right—”
“If we’re right,” Priest said.
Lukas pointed at the bottom of the page. “If we’re right these two numbers are angles.”
“And you know that how?” I asked.
“The tour guide said Ben Franklin’s cornerstone could only be moved if someone leveraged a specific angle.” Lukas tapped on the numbers on the note. “But there are two numbers here. I think the intersection of these two angles is the spot that opens Faith’s cornerstone.”
Elle opened a roll of paper towels she’d nabbed on our way down the aisle and wiped her face. “Back up. How do you know Faith didn’t hide this mystery item behind the cornerstone at the Meeting House?”
Lukas shrugged. “I don’t. But the Meeting House is in the middle of a busy street. I can’t see Faith climbing over the fence and prying stones out of a historic building without anyone noticing. The burying ground seems like an easier place to hide something.”
?
??If he’s wrong, we’ll have to wait until it gets dark to go back to the meeting house anyway,” Priest said.
Elle wiped off the smudged black eyeliner under her eyes. “You guys really know how to show a girl a good time.”
Lukas slung his arm around Elle’s neck. “How do you feel about breaking into a tomb?”
15. PHANTOM DREAMS
The three, soggy bears stood in formation as we passed Samuel Adams’ grave. When we reached his family tomb, Priest bent down next to the Northeast corner. “It should be over here.”
In the Northeastern corner, at the base of the tomb, the initials S.A. were carved into the stone.
I ran my fingers around them. “There are no indentations. How do we figure out where the cornerstone begins?”
“I’m not sure.” Priest pointed a few inches above the initials. “There’s a crack, but it’s pretty thin.”
“Which means it’s probably a crack,” Jared said.
Lukas positioned the compass at the ninety-degree angle formed by the cornerstone. “This is zero.” He drew an arc. “What’s the other number?”
I double-checked the note. “One hundred thirty-three.”
He measured the second angle and drew an arc, which bisected the first one.
“What now?” Alara asked, holding her umbrella over Lukas while he worked.
Jared scrolled down the display on his cell phone. “According to everything I’ve found online, if we hit the exact spot where the lines intersect, the cornerstone should open.”