I grinned and pocketed the coin and wondered how long I had until Sadie asked about it. But she didn’t. She just kept on about how Dickens’s characters were “forced to swim for their lives in the deep dark swamp of his bloviating prose,” while my mind carefully traced all the contingencies of what I’d done. How, if the DC mentioned he’d seen me, as he was sure to do, my dad might react to me being in the park at a crime scene in the middle of the day. What Mallory might think. It was stupid to tell the DC my real name and sloppy to be caught hanging around the scene. I couldn’t afford to be either.
I almost walked past the fountain planter, once we reached it, but at the last minute pulled Sadie to a stop at the side with the elaborate tree plate attached.
Sadie immediately saw what I had, just days before. “What a weird little planter this is. It doesn’t even match. Is this part of your hunt?”
I stepped back out of Sadie’s periphery and pulled out Mum’s coin. Holding it up to the fountain made it obvious that someone had used the coin to craft the plaque. The tree on the plaque and on the coin were almost an exact match. That had to mean something. I slid the coin through my fingers, on purpose this time, and tried to figure out what. “This might be the biggest clue yet.”
Sadie wandered to the other side and said, “Huh. Reminds me of a clock tower in Rome.”
“You finally made it to Italy,” I mumbled.
“Georgia,” she corrected. “Rome, Georgia. There’s this big clock tower there that started its life as a water tower. The clock was only added a year after its construction, but it kind of sits on top in this odd way that lets you know it wasn’t part of the original. Kind of like these plaques, yes?”
“Yes,” I said, catching the glint of the tumbling coin in my periphery.
“Don’t lose it,” my mom had warned one day when I showed her my trick.
“Is it worth money?” I’d asked.
She’d smiled. “This coin is worth more than money. It’s a token. It means you belong.”
“To what?”
“To me, and to where I belong.”
That had sounded like a riddle to me, so I narrowed my eyes. “Where do you belong?”
I remembered that she looked around our house then. If I’d been older, maybe I’d have known what her look meant, because she didn’t answer, except to say, “When you’re where you belong, it’s like magic. That and a turn of luck, and you’ll find your way through anything at all.”
“It’s like magic,” I whispered. My fingers drifted over the plaque, tracing the branches up to the top. It looked even more out of place in the rare bright sun. I splayed my hand across the design, so that each of my fingers slid along a branch, and for no real reason, I pushed against it.
The top half of the plaque tilted forward. I thought at first it was a trick of my mind, or I’d imagined it, because when I pulled my hand back, and pushed at the top, it didn’t budge. But with my whole hand on the tree, I was able to tip the plate forward until it clicked. After the click, when I removed my hand, the plate stayed tilted, but I could hear the soft clicks of a timer, as it ever so slowly righted itself.
“What’s that noise?” Sadie said, coming around full circle to where I stood.
“It’s like magic,” I said splaying my fingers to tip the plate again.
“Oh!” Sadie’s wide eyes were the brightest amber. “What do you think it does?”
I shrugged. “You try it, and I’ll run around to the other plaque. See if it moves or something.”
At the four-leaf-clover plate, I tried to tip it as well, but it didn’t budge. And then the clicking timer stopped and I scowled.
“Anything?” Sadie called.
I looked around to make sure we weren’t being watched. “Try again,” I called. Then whispered, “When you’re where you belong,” as Sadie tipped the tree plaque, “it’s like magic.” I grasped the four-leaf-clover plate. “That, and a turn of luck.”
I twisted to the left. Sure enough, it rotated and slid back, revealing a small compartment beneath. I held my breath as I leaned down to look and found a bunch of papers inside. I glanced around again, my breathing coming faster. I pulled the papers free, and the plaque slid closed, leaving me holding a picture and two envelopes. I heard some footsteps behind me, and turned my back to the planter right as the globular woman who carried all her bags through the park strolled by. She stared hard at the ground, not even acknowledging my presence, but her steps were slow, and I didn’t want to look at what I’d taken from the compartment until I was alone. So, I stuffed everything into my bag and called, “Nothing!” to Sadie.
She ran around and pulled and pushed at the four-leaf--clover plaque, but it didn’t budge for her. She scowled. “It should spin in circles at least. I mean, if it’s not gonna reveal buried treasure or some kind of Victorian animatronic wonder.”
“Fresh out of automatons, London is.”
Sadie shook her head. “Now what foreign atrocity will I tell my mama about on our Sunday call?”
“I heard something about a swamp of prose today.”
She smiled. “A deep dark swamp. And here I thought you never did listen to me.”
I tried to act shocked and hurt, but Sadie glanced at her watch and gasped for real. “Late!” she cried, and then ran a few steps backward on the path before stopping to ask, “You coming?”
I looked back at the planter, searching for an excuse. “You go first. I have one more thing to check out.”