Secret Histories yrj-1 Read online

  “Why don’t you put off your cocktail or whatever until we’ve got the CPU instal ed.”

  The Heathkit came with a Z-80 processor, whatever that was, which was the heart and brain of the computer. If they didn’t instal it correctly, nothing

  would work.

  “Okay, okay.”

  He took a long swig before placing the can on the far corner of the table, then he moved up beside Jack to study the diagram. Jack was a little worried

  about him.

  “Stil don’t know why you want to ruin the taste of a Pepsi.”

  “Wel , the booze tastes too bad to drink straight.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Because maybe I like the way it makes me feel, okay?” he said with an edge in his voice.

  Obviously Steve didn’t like talking about it. Maybe he knew he had a problem. Jack tried warning him off another way.

  “Sooner or later your dad’s going to notice his bottles getting empty, and since they can’t be emptying themselves …”

  Steve gave a dismissive wave. “My dad’s too busy at the Lodge to notice.”

  Jack couldn’t hide his surprise. “The Lodge? Your father’s a member of the Lodge?”

  Steve shrugged. “Yeah. Like forever. Why?”

  “Nothing.”

  But Jack’s mind whirled. Just a little while ago when Steve had asked if his father had known the dead man, Mr. Brussard had said he’d “heard of him.”

  But if they were both members of the Lodge, wouldn’t he have more than heard of him?

  1

  Professor Nakamura lived on the other side of Route 206 in the wel -to-do area of Johnson—the most recently developed section, where they had real

  sidewalks and curbs and where homes tended to be bigger and more lavish than regular folks’. Since it occupied the westernmost end of town, as far as

  possible from Old Town on the east, its residents had started cal ing their neighborhood “New Town.” The name never caught on with anyone else.

  A little after nine-thirty, Weezy swung by Jack’s place with the cube and the two of them biked down Quakerton Road. They had plenty of time so they

  rode slowly, weaving back and forth as they talked.

  Jack told her what Kate had said about the identity of the corpse and how he had the Lodge’s seal branded on his back.

  “The Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order,” Weezy said, shaking her head. “Should have known.”

  “Why should you have known?”

  “Al right, I should have guessedwhen you said ritual murder.”

  Jack’s stomach did a flip. “They kil people?”

  Weezy shrugged. “Who knows what they do? They’re rumored to have al sorts of rituals. I’ve tried to read up on the order but there’s almost no hard

  facts. Lots of theories, but it’s so secretive no one seems to know much for sure. One thing that’s certain is the Ancient Septimus Order is real y and truly

  ancient.Lots older than the Masons.”

  “The masons? You mean bricklayers?”

  Weezy rol ed her eyes. “No, another secret society. The order has lodges al over the world and they cal the shots in many places. Like New Jersey, for

  instance. It’s said nothing gets done in this state unless the Lodge approves. Everybody chalks it up to corruption, but it’s the Lodge.”

  Jack had to laugh. “C’mon, Weez! We’re talking about Johnson, New Jersey, here. The butt end of nowhere. If this order is oh-so-powerful, don’t you

  think it’d set up in Trenton or Newark? I mean, anywhere but Johnson.”

  Weezy gave him that tolerant smile she used when she was about to tel someone what she thought everyone should already know.

  “The Lodge wasn’t built in Johnson … Johnson—or Quakerton, as it was cal ed back then—was built around the Lodge.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Lodge was here first. Some say it was here even before Columbus came to the Americas, but no one can prove that.”

  “How can that be? Look at the building. It can’t be that old.”

  Another eye rol . “Ever hear of rebuilding and remodeling? Anyway, some accounts—and I can’t say how reliable they are—say that members had

  settled themselves around the Lodge in what they cal ed Quakerton—what we now cal Old Town—long before the Pilgrims arrived.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Wel , it’s pretty wel accepted that the Norse and even Irish had settlements in North America in the eleventh century. Who’s to say who else was

  around? But here’s what’s real y interesting: If the Lodge’s settlement was already here when the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, how could they have cal ed it

  Quakerton when the first Quakers didn’t even exist until 1647?”

  Jack said, “I don’t know about you, but that sounds like pretty good proof that somebody”—his turn to give a look—”has her dates screwed up.”

  “Maybe it meant something else. Maybe their idea of a Quaker wasn’t our idea of a Quaker.”

  Jack found that unsettling, but couldn’t say why.

  “And another thing—” She stopped and pointed. “Look!”

  They’d reached the light at the highway, and Jack saw what had caught her attention. The flashing lights of a pair of cop cars and an ambulance were

  spinning like mad at Sumter’s used cars across 206.

  He looked at Weezy, she at him, and they both nodded.

  Jack led the way across the highway and into the car lot where they stopped behind two deputies. Both were watching a guy and a woman from the

  volunteer first-aid squad work on an unconscious man who lay spread-eagled on the pavement. They’d torn open his shirt and slipped some kind of

  plastic board under his back. The first-aid guy was on his knees, thumping on the man’s chest while the woman held a face mask over his nose and

  mouth and squeezed a footbal -shaped bag to pump air into his lungs.

  Jack wondered who it could be. He noticed one of the deputies was Tim but didn’t dare ask him. He’d shoo them away for sure.

  The first-aid guy was bathed in sweat. He stopped thumping and listened to the chest while pressing two fingers against the man’s throat. Then he

  leaned back and looked at his watch.

  “Twenty minutes of CPR and nothing. He’s a goner.” Another look at his watch. “I’m pronouncing him at nine-forty-seven.”

  The deputies pul ed out pads and pens and made notes as the woman first-aider removed the mask. The dead man’s face was white, his mouth hung

  open, and his glassy eyes stared at nothing.

  Jack and Weezy gasped in unison when they recognized Mr. Sumter. Tim must have heard, because he turned and saw them.

  “Okay, you two. Move on. Nothing to see here.”

  Jack said, “What happened?”

  “Looks like a heart attack.” He waved them off. “Come on, now. Get going. Clear the area. Haven’t you two seen enough dead bodies this week?”

  That startled Jack. It hadn’t occurred to him. Come to think of it, he and Weezy had seen two dead people in less than forty-eight hours.

  Wow.

  As they were wheeling away he glanced back just as the first-aiders were rol ing Mr. Sumter onto his side to remove the plastic board from under him.

  His shirt had ridden up, revealing a symbol scarred into his back.

  The seal of the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order.

  Two dead men … both Lodgers. But they couldn’t possibly be connected.

  Could they?

  2

  Jack led the way to Professor Nakamura’s place.

  He lived on Emerson Lane, home to Johnson’s biggest houses, and the only

  street in town that ended in a cul-de-sac. The so-cal ed New Town used to be Eppinger’s sod farm, and so it had no native trees. Any oaks and maples in

  sight had been trucked in and planted by
the homeowners. A cornfield

  stretched to the north, the leaves on the green stalks waving gently in the

  breeze. To the south lay an orchard, its trees sagging with fruit.

  The professor answered the door and welcomed them in. A chubby little man

  with a round face, gold-rimmed glasses, short black hair graying at the temples, he led them to a library. Al sorts of stone heads and statuettes vied for

  space with the books crammed on the shelves. A big window overlooked a sand garden in his backyard. Three big lava stones of varying sizes had been

  set at odd intervals, and the sand had been raked into curving patterns around them. Jack liked the effect. Very peaceful.

  “Now, what have you brought me?” the professor said in a soft, accented voice

  as he seated himself behind a mahogany desk. Jack recognized it as

  mahogany because Mr. Rosen had been teaching him about the different kinds

  of wood that went into the old furniture in his store. “Mister Rosen says I wil find it very interesting.”

  Weezy handed Jack the cube. He placed it on the desk blotter and opened it. The professor stared at the pyramid for a moment, then ran his hands over its

  surface. He removed a magnifying glass from a drawer and gave it a

  quick once-over.

  “You found this in the woods?” He spoke without looking up.

  “Yes.” Weezy glanced at Jack. “We dug it out of something that might be a burial

  mound.”

  He grunted and continued his examination. “Real y. And you think it is … what?

  Some sort of ancient artifact?”

  “We don’t know,” Jack said. “That’s why we brought it to you.” Professor Nakamura grunted again, then put down the pyramid, took off his

  glasses, and looked at them. His lips were pursed like he’d just bitten into a lemon.

  “Are you trying to hoax me?”

  The question took Jack by surprise. “Hoax? No way! We real y dug that up

  and—”

  “If that is true, then someone is hoaxing you.”

  “Impossible!” Weezy said. She looked majorly upset. “Nobody knew where we’d

  be digging, not even us!”

  The professor raised a hand and smiled. “No-no. Not you purposely. Anyone.

  Hoaxers like to find a mound—burial or otherwise—and plant phony

  artifacts in them, then wait until they’re found.”

  “But—”

  “A tablet with Phoenician writing ‘discovered’ in Grave Creek mound in West

  Virginia in eighteen hundreds— fake.Piltdown man— fake.Ica stones from Peru— fake.”

  “I don’t know about that stuff,” Jack said. “But I can tel you, if someone buried

  that cube and hoped someone else would find it, he must have been

  ready to wait a long, long time. Because it was buried in an area of the Barrens

  where hardly anyone goes.”

  Professor Nakamura frowned. “But you said it was a mound. Someone must

  have told you about it.”

  “Uh-uh.” Jack jerked his thumb at Weezy. “Shefound it.”

  The professor stared at her. “This is true?”

  She nodded.

  He picked up the pyramid again, tracing his pinkie finger along the symbols. “These symbols look pre-Sumerian, which would make them six or seven

  thousand years old. But on this pyramid … notice how cleanly they have been etched into its surface? Back then, scratching quil s on wet clay tablets was state

  of the art. So it is obviously a hoax.”

  “It’s not a hoax,” Weezy said. “Can’t you feel it? It feels old.”

  The professor offered half a smile. “Archaeology and anthropology cannot

  operate on feelings, young miss.”

  Weezy looked ready to explode, so Jack jumped in. “Isn’t there some

  carbon-dating test you can do to see how old it is?”

  His smile broadened. “Carbon-fourteen dating is not a test one does in one’s

  basement. And besides, carbon-fourteen can date only organic material, like wood or bone.” He tapped the pyramid. “This is not organic.” “There must be someway,” Jack said.

  The professor sat silent, as if thinking. Final y he said, “I suppose we can try

  potassium argon dating. It can date nonorganic material—”

  “Great! Let’s do it.”

  “I must take this to the university then—”

  “No!” Weezy cried. “You can’t take it away!”

  He spread his hands. “Then I cannot help you.”

  Jack touched her arm. “Come on, Weez. Otherwise we’l never know.” “I’l never see it again. I just know it.”

  She looked at him with glistening eyes—were those tears? He hoped she wasn’t

  going to cry. He’d never seen Weezy cry and didn’t want to now.

  “Look—”

  “I final y found one, Jack,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I final y

  got my hands on one of the secrets. I can’t just let it go.”

  He had a sudden idea.

  “Hey, why don’t we compromise? Keep the box and let the professor take the

  pyramid.”

  She opened her mouth as if to say no without even thinking, but stopped. After a

  moment’s thought she said, “Look, if we’ve got to give him something, let him take the box. I want the pyramid.”

  “The pyramid wil work out better,” the professor said. “Its engravings might be

  the easiest to date most accurately.”

  Weezy chewed her lip, her gaze locked on the pyramid. Final y she said, “Okay.

  But you promise I’l get it back? You promise?”

  “I promise,” the professor said. “My department handles artifacts and specimens

  al the time. We are experts. You have nothing to fear.”

  “I hope not. But there’s something I’ve got to do before you take it.” She looked

  around. “Can I have a pencil and a piece of paper?”

  “Of course.”

  The professor produced them immediately from the top drawer of his desk.

  Weezy grabbed the pyramid and laid the paper over one of its sides. Then she began rubbing the pencil over it. The engraved symbol appeared. She did

  this with al six sides.

  “Don’t forget the bottom,” Jack said.

  Weezy nodded and finished up with that. She put down the pyramid and held up

  the paper to look over her work.

  “Got it.”

  Jack peered over her shoulder at the strange symbols. What could they mean?

  He gathered up the flattened panels and snapped them back into a cube while the professor lifted a hard-sided briefcase from the floor. He laid it on

  the desk, opened it, and placed the pyramid inside.

  As he snapped it closed, Jack glanced at Weezy. She looked like some of those mothers he’d see at the bus stop every fal when they sent their child

  off to school for the first time.

  3

  Moments later they were standing outside, blinking in the bright summer sunshine. Weezy looked downhearted.

  “It’l be al right, Weez,” he said as they got back on their bikes.

  She looked at him. “Wil it? What if they lose it?”

  “Come on. He’s an archaeologist. He does this sort of thing al the time.”

  She sighed. “I know, but …” She let the word hang.

  “At least we’l know how old it is. That’s important, don’t you think?”

  She shrugged. “I guess so. But on the other hand, I don’t care how old they say it is, I knowit’s old and I knowit’s important.”

  Jack felt a growing impatience. “But that’s just it, Weez—you don’tknow. You feel, you wish, you believe, you hope, but that’s not knowing. To know