Fish Finelli Book 1: Seagulls Don't Eat Pickles (9 page)

I glared at him.

“Gonna look for the treasure down the sewer?” Bryce pointed to the mops and plumbing supplies. “That’s where you belong, with the rats and cockroaches.”

I had to bite my lip so I wouldn’t start yelling.

“Excuse me!” Roger called out to the waiter again.

“That food’s not for you,” said Bryce. “You weren’t even invited to this party.”

“How do you know?” I was starting to get mad.

“Duh!” said Bryce. “The plumbing equipment is a dead giveaway. I was invited because my dad’s a successful real estate developer, and you weren’t, because your dad’s a dumb old plumber, so—”

“Take back what you said about my dad!” I glared at him.

“No way!” retorted Bryce. “Especially since it’s true.”

My ears started burning. I was so mad I felt as if my whole face was on fire.

“Is not!” I shouted. “Plumbers are supersmart. My dad knows all about engineering and math and—”

Heads turned. Conversations stopped. Waiters halted with trays in their hands.

Bryce just laughed. A waiter walked by carrying a tray of glasses filled with punch. Bryce reached for a glass.

“Whatever, loser! Just make sure you have my money ready, since you know I’m going to win the bet.”

“You don’t know that!” I yelled.

“Oh, yeah,” smirked Bryce. He took a sip of punch. “Like you and your loser friends have a clue how to find that treasure.”

“Quit calling us losers!” I said.

“Losers!” said Bryce.

Before I could think about what I was doing, I grabbed the closest weapon I could find. Then I stepped closer and waved the mop at him.

“Fish!” said Roger in a warning voice. “Don’t.”

“Oooh, a mop,” sneered Bryce. “I’m so scared!”

He jabbed me in the chest with his finger. I was so mad that I pushed him back pretty hard. Bryce lost his balance and toppled backward right into the waiter. His glass of punch flew up in the air. The waiter’s whole tray tipped. Punch got all over Bryce.

“I’m going to get you for this.” Bryce’s white outfit was splattered with red punch. It looked as if his clothes had developed a bad case of the chicken pox.

Someone gasped. Someone else laughed.

Before I could say a word, a stern voice said, “Boys, that’s enough. This is a garden party, not a boxing ring.”

I looked up into the icy blue eyes of an old lady dressed all in white. She wore a big white hat with big white flowers on it.
Oh, no!
It was the Lioness. My stomach felt like it dropped to my shoes.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

She stared at me for a long moment. I wasn’t sure if she even heard me. But before she walked away, I swear I saw her smile.

A little while later, my dad stuck his head out the door to tell us it was time to get started. Lucky for me, Bryce and the Lioness were nowhere in sight and the punch was cleaned up, so there was no evidence of the fight.

Roger and I followed my dad into the bathroom with the leak. We both stopped short.

I’ve seen a lot of plumbing problems in my life, but this one was such a mess it even made me forget all about big-mouth Bryce Billings. Not only had the toilet overflowed, but the sink and bathtub had backed up, too. There was water and black goop all over the floor. The leak was so bad that part of the floor had sunk in.

“Let the games begin!” said Uncle Norman, handing Roger a mop.

My dad motioned me over to where he was busy unbolting the toilet from the floor. I sighed and knelt down to open the black case and let out the snake. Don’t worry—it wasn’t a real snake. A snake is the coiled metal wire plumbers use to unclog pipes.

“Just a little farther,” said my dad, after I had uncoiled almost the entire snake for him to send down the pipe. “Turn it again.”

I sighed and turned the crank again. But whatever was stuck in the pipe was too far down for the snake to reach.

“Carmine, come on,” said Uncle Norman. He stuck his head out from under the sink, where he was tightening a ring nut on a new section of pipe.

“Come on, what?” My dad pretended like he didn’t know what Uncle Norman meant.

“This is the perfect time to try out the Zapper.”

“Zapper?” asked Roger. He looked up from mopping the crud that leaked out when the toilet was unbolted. “Sounds dangerous.”

“The Zapper 290 has a four-amp universal motor
(amp is short for ampere, which is the basic unit electric current is measured in, by the way)
and it’s set to run at 325 RPM
(short for revolutions per minute)
,” I explained. “It’s for drains one and three-quarter inches to three inches wide, and the snake is one hundred feet long. It even takes pictures.”

“Whoa, Fish, how do you know all that?” asked my dad as he pulled the snake back out of the pipe.

“Plumbing kind of runs in my family?” I joked. “Oh, and it cost a whopping—”

“Don’t remind me,” interrupted my dad.

“Remember the advertising?” asked Uncle Norman. “The Zapper goes where no snake has ever gone before.”

The two of them cracked up. Plumbers have a weird sense of humor.

“All right, let’s give the Zapper a try,” said my dad. “Fish, run down to the basement and check the water valves.”

I headed down the hall. The basement was just past the kitchen. VROOM! VROOM! The Zapper sounded like a monster truck revving up for a rally. Its four-amp motor was really powerful.

I pulled back the bolt and opened the basement door. Just then I saw a flash of white behind me. I wondered if it was the Lioness. I turned. There was no one there.

I started down the steps. BANG! The door suddenly slammed shut. CLICK! The bolt slid into place.
Oh, no!

I ran back up the steps. “Hey!” I shouted. “Open the door!”

There was no answer. “Hey!”

“Gotcha!” taunted Bryce Billings from the other side.

“Let me out, Bryce!”

“I told you not to mess with me.” Bryce laughed. “Later, gator.”

I pounded on the door, but it was no use. Bryce was gone. And there was no way Roger, my dad, or Uncle Norman would ever hear me over the Zapper. I sighed and headed down the steps. I would just have to find another way out.

While I looked, I thought I’d better check the valves. I waded through boxes and old furniture. Chunks of ceiling and insulation had fallen from the leak. The water pipes were at the far end, sticking out beside a giant stuffed swordfish mounted on the wall.

I reached up and tightened the valves. Suddenly I heard a loud pinging sound, like someone was tapping a glass with a metal utensil. It was coming from the small window just above the fish.

PING! PING!

“A toast!” someone called out.

“Save Lyons Island!”

“Mr. E. Mann, director of the . . .
mumble mumble
. . . Captain Kidd . . . here at Lyons Island.”

I stopped in my tracks. Mystery Man was the expert the Lioness had hired to save the island—but he was also hunting for the treasure? Something fishy was going on for sure. I climbed up on a trunk to hear better.

After the clapping, Mystery Man started talking. I couldn’t catch every word, but it was stuff that I already knew—back in 1695, Captain Kidd had been hired by the English government to get rid of pirates, and King William III had even signed the order. Captain Kidd had overtaken a French galley that was filled with treasure from the South Seas. I couldn’t hear what Mystery Man said next, except the words “trouble with the crew” and “diamonds.” If only I could get closer to the window.

I jumped down and grabbed a box and stuck it on top of the trunk. Then I climbed up on the box. My head was now almost level with the window. I was also eyeball to eyeball with the dead swordfish.

“Captain Kidd was on his way home,” Mystery Man said, “when he discovered there was a warrant out for his arrest. So he stopped at the closest place to hide the booty—Lyons Island. It is believed that the map of where he hid the treasure was itself hidden in a trunk that has his initials on it, plus a skull-and-crossbones symbol.”

Whoa!
That was exactly what T. J. said!

“The trunk is supposed to be of black wood and locked with an iron padlock,” Mystery Man went on. “And in all these years, it has never been found. Legend has it that if anyone dared to open it, he would be haunted by Captain Kidd’s ghost forever!”

BRRRRRMMMM! The hot-water heater started up with a bang. I jumped. I lost my balance. The box toppled over. I fell to the floor.

“Ouch!” I rubbed my head.

I leaned against the trunk. This one was black, just like the one Mystery Man was talking about. I noticed that it was locked with a rusty padlock that might be iron.

A shaft of yellow sunlight suddenly shone through the window, casting a stripe across the trunk. I blinked in surprise. There was none other than a skull and crossbones.

Oh, snap!

I jumped to my feet. There were two letters carved beside the skull and crossbones. One was a
W
and one was a
K
.

It was Captain Kidd’s trunk!

Heart pounding, I tried pulling on the lock. It was stuck. I pulled harder. Still stuck. I reached in my pocket to see if I had a tool that might help. There beside the Superman Special Shooter marble I won off Two O and my library card was Grandpa Finelli’s pocketknife. Carefully, I pushed the end of the spoon into the padlock. Then I shoved as hard as I could. No luck.

I shoved the spoon in again. CREAK! The lock popped open! I was so excited I could barely breathe. I opened the lid and peered inside.

The trunk was empty!

I kicked it in frustration.

POP!

Something shot out. It was a drawer.

Double snap!

It was a secret compartment! I had read about how sea captains and pirates hid valuable stuff in secret compartments and false bottoms in their trunks. I reached my hand inside. My fingertips touched something smooth and thin, like paper.

My heart started pounding. Slowly, I pulled out a rolled-up piece of parchment and stared at it.

Holy cow!

No one had touched this piece of paper since Captain Kidd hid it in this old trunk. So many people had hunted for it. Now, here it was in my hand.

Just then I heard something behind me. Mystery Man’s words about Captain Kidd’s ghost ran through my mind. Someone was watching me. Was it Captain Kidd? Was he upset I had the map? I stared around wildly, my heart beating a rat-tat-tat in my chest. But the only eye on me was the yellow glass eye of the dead swordfish. I took a deep breath. I had to calm down.

“Fish, are you down here?”

Footsteps thudded toward me. I stared at the parchment in my hand, just as my dad popped his head through the doorway. Now what?

I couldn’t let my dad know I had found Captain Kidd’s treasure map. I wasn’t supposed to be looking for it in the first place. I couldn’t put it back, either, because then Mystery Man might find it.

There was only one thing to do . . .

X Marks the–Stop!!!!

"You did
what
?” asked Roger. “No way!”
I nodded and paced back and forth across Roger’s kitchen floor.

“But that’s stealing,” said T. J. He took a big bite of doughnut. Red jelly oozed out of the sides.

“Not exactly,” I said. “Anyway, what else could I do?”

“Not take it,” said Roger. “But since you did, let’s check it out.”

Carefully, I pulled the paper out from under my shirt. My hands were shaking.

T. J. took another bite of doughnut.

“How can you eat at a time like this?” I asked.

“Simple,” said T. J. “I’m hungry.” Powdered sugar shot out of his mouth.

“Watch the doughnut, dude!” I pushed my chair back from the table. “This is a historical document. It’s worth tons of money. It’s probably priceless.”

“Dude, just unroll the map already,” Roger cut in.

I took a deep breath. This was it. A pirate had held this very map in his hands. And it wasn’t just any pirate. It was Captain Kidd, the pirate hunter. And now Roger, T. J., and I were going to find out where he had buried the most famous treasure in the whole world.

Just then Summer walked into the kitchen. “I’m hungry,” she announced, pulling a brush through her long brown hair.