“So your team didn’t sign a register?”
“There was no register,” Dolly answered for her. “There was a box in a tree trunk, and no register, which I thought was odd, but now that we know people are stealing things, should we be surprised?” She directed a haughty look at Isobel, who flipped her long gray hair over her shoulder before bracing her fists on the table, looking supremely smug.
“Would you like to know why there was no register in the box?” Isobel asked. “Have you figured it out yet? Because our intrepid leader—the guy who found the cache singlehandedly, in record time, took us to the wrong location. Nice going, Cam.” She slapped him on the back. “You found the wrong damn container.”
“No. That’s not possible.” He looked utterly bewildered. “I … I followed the right coordinates. I—”
“Turkey,” Isobel jeered.
“Point of order!” Lucille Rassmuson raised her hand, looking as puzzled as Cameron. “Which container did Isobel steal? The one with the pink register or the one with the knife?”
I leveled a quizzical look at the members of Team Five. “Knife?”
“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Isobel shot back in a growly voice. “It wasn’t real.”
“It looked real to me,” argued Dolly.
“That’s because you’re a putz.”
If Dolly’s eyes hadn’t been weighted by so much volumizing mascara, they would have flown out of their sockets. “I’m a putz? Oh, that’s rich, coming from the freaking genius who decided to rig the contest by stealing the wrong container. You want to find the real putz? Try looking in a mirror.”
“I have a makeup compact if you’d like to borrow it,” Margi offered helpfully.
“Hold it!” Lucille heaved herself to her feet, making herself visible to everyone in the room, while at the same time insuring she was first out of the blocks in the upcoming race for the dining room. “So if Isobel stole the wrong container, whose container did she steal? Won’t the owner be mad when he goes back to get it and discovers it’s missing?”
“No one’s going back for it,” Isobel ranted. “It’s a piece of junk. Who wants a crummy box with a crummy knife inside anyway?”
“You mean, besides you?” asked Bernice. “How do we know you haven’t bamboozled us? How do we know your crummy knife isn’t worth a whole lot of money that you don’t want to share with the rest of us?”
“Cameron found it singlehandedly!” Dolly reminded us as she slanted a flirtatious smile at Dasher. “If it turns out to be worth a fortune, he’s the one who should receive all the proceeds. And then he can dole out whatever monetary settlement he chooses to the team members he deems worthy.” She gave her hair a little pouf. “You know. The ones who aren’t thieves.”
“Morons,” grumbled Isobel as she reached for her zebra print backpack.
Uh-oh. This wasn’t good. Not only was Isobel stealing other people’s property, she was stealing Bernice’s lines.
She slapped the backpack onto the table, unzipped the closure, and riffled through the contents like a petulant child before yanking out a metal box that was the size and shape of a hardback novel. She slammed it down in front of her. “Here it is. The ill-gotten treasure that’s worth a fortune. Good luck finding someone dumb enough to pay you.”
The metal was so eroded with rust that it looked to be suffering from a fatal case of psoriasis.
“Looks pretty old,” I said as I stepped closer for a better view.
“It took a little elbow grease to pry the lid off,” said Cameron. “It wasn’t completely rusted shut, but it was getting there. I’d guess it hadn’t been opened in a really long time.”
“Is the knife still inside?” I asked Isobel.
She wrestled the lid off and banged it onto the table with a noisy clatter. “The knife,” she said, eying my dad sourly as he tiptoed in for a close-up shot.
“Do you mind if I pick it up?” I asked.
“I don’t give a flip what the hell you do with it.” She gave the box a shove toward the edge of the table. “It’s not doing me any good. You can give it away for all I care.”
“I’ll take it!” Dolly and Bernice cried out at the same time.
I waited indulgently while Dad stood over the box, zooming in, and out, and in, and out. “Done?”
“Yup,” he said, panning seamlessly to a floor shot as he skulked off in Mom’s direction.
I plucked the knife out of the box, surprised by its heft. The blade