Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17 Nellie squealed the tires as she rounded the corner. "Left! Left! Drive on the left side!" Dan yelled at her. "Oh, right," Nellie said. She swerved back into her lane, barely missing a parked car. "How'd you know where to find us?" Amy asked. "I've been hanging around you two goobers practically twenty-four/seven for more than a month," Nellie said. "I can tell when you're trying to keep a secret. You had 'We're planning to sneak back into the church' written all over your faces." Amy slumped in her seat. "Everybody knew we were planning to sneak back into the church," she muttered. "They were just pretending not to."

"As Shakespeare himself would say, 'All the world's a stage,'" Nellie said. She peered into her rearview mirror. "Wow. I have to hand it to Hamilton. He's practically keeping up." Amy whirled around in her seat. Hamilton was running behind their car, only four or five lengths back. If Nellie had to stop for a red light or a stop sign, he'd catch them. "Should I wait for him?" Nellie asked, slowing slightly. Amy saw another hulking figure striding alongside Hamilton. "No! His dad's with him!" she shrieked. Nellie whipped around another corner. "So," she said. "You got a destination in mind or do you just want me to keep going with the evasive driving?" "Back to the hotel to pick up our stuff," Amy said. "And then—" "Been there, done that," Nellie said. She took a hand off the steering wheel to point

at the backseat and floor. For the first time, Amy noticed that Saladin's cat carrier and Nellie's bag were right beside her. "As soon as I got away from Alistair, I packed up and checked out," Nellie said. "Then I headed toward the church. I thought my timing was pretty good, didn't you?" Nellie sounded amazingly casual given that she was practically driving a slalom course around cars parked on either side of the narrow street. "Oh, this is crazy! Eisenhower's waving at us like he thinks we're going to stop!" "Get on the highway," Amy said. "Toward…?" Nellie asked. "Not sure yet. Got any scissors?" Amy asked. "On my Swiss Army knife," Nellie said. "Bottom pocket in my bag, right-hand side." Amy pulled out the knife. Then she reached into her own bag for a Boston College T-shirt that had gotten kind of ragged during the Clue hunt. She began cutting off a spiral strip of the shirt from the bottom up. She made the strip extra long, just in case. Then she leaned over the front

seat and handed the cloth and a thin marker to Dan. "Start writing," she said. Dan let out a deep breath. That's why he wasn't talking, Amy thought. He was holding his breath, trying so hard not to forget. She'd noticed on the Clue hunt that Dan's photographic memory wasn't completely effortless. He just acted like it was. "Done," Dan said a few minutes later. He held up the strip. Its edges curled up because of the way it'd been cut. Curled, Amy thought. A spiral. Like… "I still don't get it," Dan said. "I can remember the letters from the ribbon. I'm even pretty sure I got the wacko spacing right, all the gaps between the letters. But I can't figure out what any of it means." "Wrap the cloth around the pole," Amy said. "Because back in Shakespeare's time, English villages always had these huge midsummer parties

where girls would dance and wrap ribbons around a maypole in particular patterns. The midsummer festival would have been a big deal in Stratford, something Shakespeare probably missed when he moved to London. Something that reminded him of home." Home, Amy thought. That's what this clue is about. It's calling Cahills back home. Like in the hint we got in London: "Everything can come full circle." "One of Shakespeare's plays is called A Midsummer Night's Dream," Nellie said as she jerked the steering wheel left and right. "It's kind of bizarre, with—" "Stop it!" Dan yelled. "Both of you—stop trying to tell me stuff!" "I just thought it might help you solve that," Nellie said, sounding offended. "But I already have," Dan said, holding up the pole. "It's numbers, after all. Just spelled out as words!" Amy hung over the front seat so she could see. Dan had lined up the edges of the strip of cloth

with the words spiraling around the pole: MADRIGAL STRONGHOLD CAHILL ANCESTRAL HOME MADRIGAL STRONGHOLD CAHILL ANCESTRAL HOME… With the strip of cloth wrapped all the way around the pole, the nonsensical list of letters did indeed spell out words on one side. "'Fifty-three oN Six oW'?" Amy said. "What's that mean? Oh—" "That's not 'oN' and 'oW,'" Nellie said, glancing toward the pole. "That's—" "Degrees north," Dan said. "And degrees west," Amy said. "Latitude and longitude," Nellie finished. They'd all figured it out at the same time. The ribbon gave them the precise coordinates of the Madrigal stronghold. Nellie yanked the portable GPS unit off the dashboard and tossed it back to Amy. "Good thing I sprang for the deluxe rental package, now that you both know we're spending Madrigal money," Nellie said as Amy punched in the coordinates. "Where to?"