Ник Сайнт: Purrfect Crime

“Do you think it’s heavy?” asked Doug Adams, the fair-haired one of the two. He shoved his shovel into the ground and took out a first chunk of turf and dumped it to the side.

“I don’t think so,” said his best friend, dark-haired Rick Curtis. “Most of these capsules are quite small.” He was staring pensively and a little trepidatiously at the ancient stone walls of the school’s main building. It looked medieval, with its fortified battlements, thick masonry and heavy oak entrance door. It reminded him more of a dungeon than an actual school. He shivered. “This place gives me the creeps,” he confessed.

“Which is exactly why we need to dig up this capsule,” said Doug, his tongue sticking out while he stuck his spade into the ground again.

They’d had some trouble removing the heavy bronze plaque and dumping it to the side, and the deeper they dug, the more Rick was having second thoughts about this endeavor. “What if they put some kind of protection in place?” he asked. “You know, like in those Indiana Jones movies?”

“Are you kidding? This isn’t some ancient treasure, Ricky. Just a bunch of old crap.”

“If it’s just a bunch of old crap, why are we digging it up?” he asked heatedly.

“There might be some fun stuff in there,” said Doug, always the more adventurous of the twosome.

“Like what?”

“Like Mrs. Rampart’s knickers.”

Rick grinned. He would like that. He hated Mrs. Rampart’s guts. Ever since she’d punished him for accidentally aiming a soccer ball straight through the library window, she’d had it in for him. “We could fly her knickers from the school flagpole!”

“Or we could boil them down and make Mrs. Rampart Knickers Juice! We could bottle it and sell it and make a fortune!”

“Or we could stick it on the head of Cardinal Yardley himself!”

They both looked up at the statue of the old cardinal, which stood sentinel in front of the school, his eyes staring manly up at the sky, his long beard brandishing in the wind, his funny-looking hat slightly askance, as if he’d dipped into the sacramental wine again. Both boys’ eyes gleamed. Yeah, this was a right great scheme: dig up Mrs. Rampart’s knickers and stick them on the head of that old fruitcake Cardinal Yardley.

With renewed fervor, they dug their spades in. It was hard going, and the capsule proved to have been buried a lot deeper than they’d anticipated when they’d concocted this wild scheme, but finally Rick’s spade hit something solid. His eyes went wide with excitement. “I think I’ve got it, Doug!”

“Go on, then. Don’t stop now,” Doug urged. And as they cleared away the dirt, Rick saw something glimmering in the moonlight. It looked like… an amulet.

“Hey, look at that!” said Doug. “We found treasure after all!”

Rick reached down and picked up the amulet. He removed the caked earth and twisted the precious find in his fingers.

“I think it’s silver,” said Doug, his voice reduced to an awestruck squeak. “Regular silver!”

“There must be more,” said Rick, and started removing the dirt with his hands.

He felt it before he saw it. There was something mushy under his hands. Something soft and squishy. And when he finally reared back, a scream stifled in his throat, Doug asked, “What is it? What’s wrong, Ricky?”

He gestured at the face of the man he’d just uncovered. “It’s—it’s—it’s a body, Doug! There’s a dead body down there!”

And then they were both screaming.

When they’d finally recovered their sangfroid, Doug said, “We have to bury it again. No one can know we were here.”

Rick quickly agreed. He could just imagine what his parents would say if they found out that instead of having a sleepover at Doug’s place, he was digging up dead bodies in the middle of the night.

They quickly shoved the dirt they’d removed back into place, then placed the clumps of turf on top of them and rolled the plaque to cover up the damage they’d done. When they were finished, no one could see that the site had been disturbed. And as Rick threw one final glance at their handiwork, a glint caught his eye. And then he saw it: Doug was throwing the silver amulet in the air and deftly catching it again.

“Did you take the amulet?!” he cried, aghast.

“Of course I did. It’s ours. We found it fair and square.”

He had to agree that his friend had a point. “Well, I found it, actually.”

“We both found it.”

And as they walked away, dragging their shovels behind them, they agreed that they would share ownership of this new and exciting treasure. Doug would get to keep it one week, Rick the other. That was only fair.

“Who do you think that body belongs to?” asked Rick.

“Old Yardley, of course,” said Doug. “Who else?”

Ricky shivered. “I hope he won’t put a curse on us.”

“No, he won’t. We buried him again, didn’t we? Trust me, Ricky. It’s fine.”

“Do you think we should have called the police?”

“Are you nuts? For digging up the cardinal? We’d be expelled!”

As usual, Doug was right. And as Rick palmed the amulet, his nails removing some of the dirt, he asked, “How much do you think this amulet is worth?”

“Millions,” said Doug knowingly. “Maybe even billions.”

His face lit up. “You think?”

“Of course. We’re rich, Ricky.”

“How rich?”

Dough thought about this for a moment. “At least as rich as David Beckham.”

“Wow,” said Rick, his eyes wide as saucers. “We’re super rich, Doug!”

“Yah,” said Doug with a wide grin. “Super duper rich!”

And as they walked home, he quickly forgot all about Cardinal Yardley’s body. They were rich like Beckham!

Chapter One

We walked the hallowed halls of the Natural History Museum, our feet sounding hollow on the stone steps as the sound reverberated in the vaulted space. As I looked around, I thought the museum resembled a cathedral more than an actual museum, and was more than a little spooky. Great place for a ghost to make a nuisance of himself.

Jarrett seemed even less comfortable traversing the hallways of this ancient place than I was. Then again, Jarrett hates both mummies and dinosaurs, so that might have had something to do with that slightly worried look on his face.

My name is Henrietta McCabre and I’m a ghost hunter—though we like to call ourselves wraith wranglers, as it sounds a little—or a lot—cooler. My associate Jarrett and myself have been doing this work for a little while now, and are usually called in when some poltergeist or other ghostly guest kicks up trouble. It was the first time we’d actually been called in to clear a museum of its ghosts, though.

“I don’t like this, Harry,” said Jarrett, his eyes flitting up at the gigantic skeleton of the dinosaur at the heart of the museum hall. “I don’t like this at all.”

“Relax, Jarrett. It’s just a bunch of old bones.”

“It’s a dinosaur. Have you seen what they can do? I’ve seen Jurassic Park . And Jurassic World —you just have got to love that Chris Pratt. He’s got the finest bum I’ve seen in the movies recently.”

“Focus, Jarrett,” I said. “We’re here to do a job, not talk about Chris Pratt’s bum.”

Jarrett craned his neck to take in the enormity of the dinosaur. “That thing’s huge! Where is Chris Pratt when you need him?!”

“It’s a dead dinosaur,” I reminded him. “It’s not going to do anything. So we don’t need Chris Pratt.”

“You don’t know that,” he said. “It might come alive again. And one can always do with a bit of Chris Pratt. That man is fine.”