for quiet as I navigated my way around furniture and guests to take center stage. “I’m confused. If Cameron’s team found the cache first, and Isobel removed it—”
“Stole it!” Bill Gordon bellowed.
“—removed it from its hiding place so no one else could find it, then what, exactly, did the other four teams find?”
Everyone flew into motion at the same time, digging into pockets, purses, and fanny packs to retrieve their cameras and mobile phones. Alex Hart was quickest on the draw, yanking his camera out of his new sporran with the skill of a marsupial yanking a joey out of its pouch. He punched a button then handed the camera over to me. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but that’s what our team found.”
I studied the screen, trying to analyze what I was looking at. “A shoebox-shaped plastic container.”
“It was one a them real good ones,” offered Nana. “The kind what won’t decompose even if you nuke it.”
“The register was noteworthy,” said Tilly as she regarded the photo she’d taken with her own Smartphone. “It was a glittery pink notebook, with kitten and pony stickers covering the front, which might indicate that the person who placed it there was a teenage girl.”
“Or not,” I quipped as I cradled my hands around the metallic pink housing of Alex’s camera.
“I got a good shot of the page we signed and dated,” said George, brandishing his phone in evidence. “Marion did the honors for Team One because she has the best penmanship. She even managed to jot down a nice comment about the scenery.”
“I took a picture of the comment,” enthused Dick Teig as he accessed his zoom function. “It says, ‘Out.’ ” He held it up so everyone could see.
“I have a picture of that, too!” exclaimed Margi. “Do you think it’s code for something?”
“It’s code for—there wasn’t no time to write no more, so I had to leave off the last half of the word,” said Nana.
“Which was—?” I asked.
“Outstandin’.”
“I think ‘outlandish’ would have been a better word,” said Dick Teig.
“Outdoorsy,” countered Grace. “Definitely, outdoorsy.”
“You’re both wrong,” quibbled Helen. “‘Outdated’ is the word you want. I mean, didn’t you notice? The whole town looked like it was about a thousand years old.”
Tilly stared at her, deadpan. “That’s because … it is.”
“Is the pink register the only thing everyone found in the container?” I persisted.
“Our team found a travel size bottle of Hog Wild hand sanitizer,” Grace revealed. “Three guesses where that came from.”
Margi lifted her shoulders and smiled impishly. “Seemed like the polite thing to do. Kind of like a little hostess gift.”
“I could have used some sanitizer after I pried that container out of its hiding place,” admitted Dick Stolee as he inspected his fingernails. “It was a great location, but those rocks were gross. Have you ever seen so much slime-green algae in your life?”
Bernice sat up in her chair as if she’d been poked by a cattle prod. “Rocks? What rocks?”
Erik Ishmael leaned over in his chair to show her the image on his camera screen. “These rocks.”
She studied the photo for a half-second before dissolving into a fit of snarky laughter. “Hate to break it to you losers, but the container wasn’t hidden near any rocks. Your team went to the wrong place.”
“Did not,” snapped Margi.
“Did so,” mocked Bernice. “This is where the container was hiding.” She held up her phone, flashing the picture to anyone sitting close enough to see. “In a hollowed-out tree trunk camouflaged by lots of weeds. Weeds, not rocks.”
“Shoot.” Helen regarded the photo on her Smartphone in dejection. “I’ve got rocks.”
“Me, too,” lamented Osmond.
“So do I,” said Alice Tjarks. She sighed. “Does this mean we didn’t find the cache after all?”
How did the saying go? If disinformation is repeated often enough, people are brainwashed into thinking it’s the truth? “Did you sign the pink register?” I asked Alice.
She nodded. “I was the official signatory for Team Two. I even took a picture. See?” She turned her Smartphone outward. “My signature, the date, and the time. And you can see where Team One signed just above me, with Marion’s comment.”
“Did you happen to take a picture of Team Five’s signature?” I pressed. “If they were first up, they would have signed before you.”
Alice shook her head. “The entry above Marion’s wasn’t written in English.”
“It was written in Lithuanian,” Tilly spoke up. “Left by two geocachers named Jadvyga and Pranciskus. Rough translation, ‘These rocks are very slimy.’”
“Aha!” I lasered a look at Bernice.