The Case of the Missing Deed (18 page)

“What do you mean?” Geneviève asked.

“His uncle?”

“Huh?”

Rachel looked at her. “Didn’t you know that Shane was Stan Wilensky’s nephew?”

“What?” Geneviève felt her cheeks flame.

“What!” Sébastien said.

“His mom is Wilensky’s sister,” Chad said. “You didn’t know?”

For a moment, Geneviève couldn’t speak. “No … I …”

“Wilensky got his sister a job with Tantalus – that’s why they moved here, apparently,” Chad said.

“They’re staying in the cottage on Wilensky’s land for now, but I hear they’re looking for a permanent home,” Rachel put in.

Geneviève felt all the heat drain from her face. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead.
Shane, Wilensky’s nephew!

Why hadn’t he told her? Had he purposely kept it from her? Was that why he hadn’t shown her where he and his mom were living – because he didn’t want her to know about the connection?

What did it mean? Did it mean anything? Geneviève took a deep breath.

No, she decided. Shane wouldn’t have had any reason to keep his relation to Wilensky a secret. It just hadn’t come up.
After all, she’d never asked him if he had any relatives on the island. And maybe he was embarrassed that he and his mom were living in a small cottage that belonged to a wealthier relation, and that was why he’d never taken her there.

Geneviève heaved a sigh. That must be it.

She managed a smile and a careless wave of the hand. “No big deal.”

Within minutes, she’d corralled the rest of them and they were getting back on their bikes to head home.

Sébastien waited for Alex, Claire, and Olivia to take off. He pulled Geneviève aside. But before he could open his mouth, she jerked her arm away. “Don’t say a word!”

“But Gen–”

“It’s none of your business.”

“But don’t you think it’s suspicious–”

“It doesn’t mean a thing.”

“What, that he never told you?”

“It never came up, that’s all. I’m not in the habit of asking guys who they’re related to. Which you wouldn’t know because you don’t date yet.”

“Gen–”

“I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t change anything. He’s a good guy.” She hopped onto her pedals. “So shut up about it!” She sped away down the hill.

he next morning, Geneviève was lounging on the deck with Sébastien and Claire, watching her mom and Charlie, who were strolling at the water’s edge. As a wave rolled in, Eve stomped on the water with her bare foot, splashing Charlie. He roared, chasing her as she ran out of reach. When the next wave rolled in, Charlie splashed her back, and Geneviève could see the dark patch where her rolled-up pants were wet.

“Got you!” she heard, followed by Charlie’s booming laugh.

Eve skittered away, her laughter floating over the sound of the waves. When Charlie caught up to her, he pulled her close. She lifted her face and they kissed.

Geneviève smiled, remembering her own kisses. It was fun to be in love – and, if her mom was any indication, it didn’t matter whether you were young or old. It was still a thrill. Sure, Geneviève thought, she’d had an uncomfortable moment when she’d found out that Shane was Wilensky’s nephew. But he’d just texted her and asked her to meet him for another surfing lesson. She knew what that meant.

The phone rang, and she ran inside to answer it.

“Is Charlie McNulty there?” a man’s voice asked.

“Uh … not at the moment,” Geneviève said. “Can I take a message?”

“Sure. Tell him Stan Wilensky called. It’s about the matter we discussed.”

She stood there, silent.

“Did you get that?”

“Uh … yeah, I’ll tell him. What’s the number?” “He has it.”

Dazed, Geneviève hung up and stumbled outside.

“Who was it?” Claire asked.

Gen hesitated. “Stan Wilensky,” she said. “For Charlie.” She repeated what Wilensky had said.

“See!” Sébastien said. “Now do you believe me?”

Geneviève felt her heart sink. She hadn’t believed it, had refused to believe it, but how could she go on denying what was right in front of her? “Well …”

Claire shook her head. “Look at him,” she said. They all looked out toward the beach again. Eve and Charlie were sitting on a boulder, their legs dangling over the edge. Charlie leaned close and whispered something in Eve’s ear, and she reached up and stroked his cheek. “He’s so sweet. How could he be plotting to hurt Mom and Grandma?”

“Claire!” Sébastien said. “He’s taking calls from Stan Wilensky!”

“I know, but–”

“Look, I was wrong about Rachel and Chad. I admit it. But with Charlie, it’s clear-cut. We’ve caught him plotting with the enemy.”

Geneviève sighed. “It does look bad.”

“It doesn’t
look
bad, it
is
bad!” Sébastien said. “And we’ve got to tell Mom – now, before he gets away with it.”

Geneviève sighed. After all those happy thoughts about
love …“I suppose you’re right. Oh, poor Mom! She’s going to be so heartbroken–”

“No!” Claire yelled. “I – I know it looks bad, but I just don’t believe Charlie would–”

“But Claire–”

“No!”

“Shush!” Geneviève said. “They’re coming.”

The three children waited silently as Eve and Charlie climbed the steps from the beach to the deck. Their hair was windblown, and they were grinning broadly.

Brushing sand from her feet, Eve said, “You’re awfully quiet. Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s just fine,” Geneviève said in a hearty voice. “Oh, Charlie, you got a phone call. From Stan Wilensky.”

Eve jerked her head. “Stan Wilensky?”

Charlie turned red. “Yeah … I was, uh, asking about getting a seat on the float plane tomorrow. Got to go back and straighten things out at the office.”

“You never told me!”

“Just for the day. I’ll be back by evening.” Edging toward the house, he said, “I’d, uh, better call him back.”

He went inside.

Eve looked after him with an odd expression.

Geneviève looked away.

Charlie’s betrayal made Sébastien even more determined to figure out what was going on with that slip of paper from Ted. He went up to Grandpa’s office and turned on the computer. Once again, he typed
secret codes
into the search
engine and, after several clicks, came to a page titled Caesar’s Cipher. This secret code, he read, had reportedly been used by Julius Caesar to plan secret attacks. And it was pretty simple to use: You just chose a number and replaced each letter in the written text with the letter that number of places further along in the alphabet. So, for example, if you had the word
APPLE
and the number was five, by moving each letter five places along,
APPLE
turned into
FTTQJ
.

Which, Sébastien thought, was a nonsense word – but Caesar’s Cipher still might have been the method used to disguise the words on the slip of paper.

Excitedly he referred to the list he’d written down earlier of the letters written in bold:

But what number had they used for the cipher? Sébastien scanned the slip, looking for clues. The only bit that had anything to do with numbers was “fish, birds, and wildlife.” Three things. Not much to go on, but maybe the key number was three.

Beneath the row of letters, he wrote the letter three places on.

Gobbledygook!

But maybe he was supposed to use the plain letters.

W k h r w h u v o q w d q w d o x l …

More gobbledygook. He threw down his pencil in disgust.

Back to the computer.

On another site he discovered the Vigenère Cipher. This was much more complicated – and much more sophisticated.

First, Sébastien found, you had to set up a table where you wrote out the alphabet twenty-six times, each row beginning with the next letter of the alphabet. So:

Then you chose a keyword with the same number of letters as the word you wanted to hide. So, if your code word was
OTTER
, the keyword had to have five letters also – say,
CLOWN
.

Then you had to create the cipher – the fake word that hid the code word. To do this, you took the first letter of the keyword,
C
, went to the row in the table beginning with
C
, found out what letter was in column
O –
in this case,
Q –
and wrote that down.