SHAKESPEARE’ SECRET Read online

  She tried to look indifferent as her mother thought about it. Then her father intervened. “I’ve been wanting to see that Van Dyck exhibit. Let’s do it.” He winked at Hero. “The girls need some time to themselves, apparently.”

  “Hero needs some time to herself,” Beatrice corrected. “I’m hanging out with Kelly and Sara.” She looked at Hero curiously, as though she too wanted an explanation.

  “Are we having pancakes?” Hero asked, reaching for a juice glass in the cupboard.

  “Yes indeed. I was just about to get them started.” Her father scooted his chair back, and in the general commotion of breakfast, everyone seemed to forget about Hero’s strange request to spend the day alone.

  Nonetheless, it took them a very long time to leave. Beatrice lingered in the shower, tried on three different outfits, and then took forever to repaint her nails. Hero’s parents dug out various maps and spread them over the table, plotting their route into the city. Hero watched them restlessly, doodling on the newspaper. She took the pencil rubbing out of her T-shirt. Shielding it with her palm, she found a blank corner of newspaper and started copying the bird from the back of the pendant. She was just beginning to draw the tree branch in its outstretched claw when her father touched her hand.

  He looked at her drawing, frowning slightly. “Where did you see that?” he asked.

  Hero felt a quick pulse of guilt. She swallowed nervously, crumpling the pencil rubbing in her fist and dropping her hand beneath the table. “What do you mean? I’m just fooling around.”

  “It’s not a branch,” he said. “It’s a scepter.” Deftly, he sketched over her picture, putting a crown on the head of the bird and turning the tree branch into a monarch’s staff.

  Hero stared at him. “How did you know what I was drawing?”

  Her father looked at her strangely, then smiled suddenly. “You’ve been in the study after all, haven’t you? That story about Shakespeare and the Earl of Oxford has got you all fired up. You’ve been looking through my books on British nobility!” He nudged Hero’s mother, his face flushed with pride. “Look at your daughter. She’s drawn the Pembroke falcon, the crest of Anne Boleyn.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  Hero’s mother glanced at the sketch. “Really? Oh, yes, a falcon. I see it.” She turned to Hero, eyebrows raised. “What’s gotten into you, Hero? Is this something else you’ve been discussing at Mrs. Roth’s?”

  Hero couldn’t think what to say. She could barely think at all. In her mind, she kept seeing the initials on the back of the pendant, tiny and faint on the gold. Not AE, AB, Anne Boleyn, the wife of Henry VIII. The one who was beheaded. One of the ones who was beheaded. Hero couldn’t remember anything else about her. She felt a shiver of excitement. Was it possible that the necklace had once belonged to Anne Boleyn? Was it a queen’s necklace? A queen’s diamond?

  She tightened her fist around the pencil rubbing and looked up at her parents, trying to make her face blank. “Well, I was talking to Mrs. Roth about, you know, Shakespeare, and then we just started talking about English history. I got kind of interested in Anne Boleyn.” That should be enough to get her father going.

  “I can certainly see why,” her father said, beaming at her. “She’s a fascinating character. Started out as the king’s girlfriend, just another pretty courtier, but she was clever and strong-willed, determined to be queen. She got her wish—his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was annulled—but she ruled only a few years before Henry’s eye wandered again. Her enemies plotted against her and had her executed.”

  “She was beheaded, wasn’t she?” Hero asked.

  “Yes, on Tower Green. Falsely accused of adultery. Five men, including her brother of all people, were tortured to provoke confessions. Like your namesake, Hero: ’Done to death by slanderous tongues.’ At the end, when she was imprisoned and sentenced to die, she showed extraordinary courage. And of course she was the mother of Elizabeth I, the greatest ruler in English history. I have a couple of excellent books on the era. I’ll take them out for you.” Her father went eagerly to his study.

  Hero’s mother continued to look at her curiously. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” she asked. “Your father could tell you more about Anne Boleyn.”

  “No, Mom,” Hero said with conviction. “I really just want to stay here.”

  Hero was beginning to abandon all hope that she’d ever have the house to herself, when— simultaneously—Kelly’s mother drove up, calling for Beatrice, and her parents realized there was a docent tour of the Van Dyck exhibit at eleven o’clock. With barely a goodbye, everyone rushed off at once.

  As Hero watched their car swing out of the driveway, she sighed with relief. She couldn’t wait to tell Mrs. Roth about Anne Boleyn. She saw that her father had left a fat history book on the counter for her: Tudor England. She flipped through it, skimming the pictures until she discovered a stark portrait of Anne Boleyn: dark, serious eyes, black hair sweeping neatly away from her forehead. She looked proud and bold. Her face showed no hint of the terrible things that lay ahead of her.

  Below the portrait, Hero found the image of the falcon. It looked exactly like the etching on the pendant, but now she could see the details. Eagerly she read the caption: “Crest of Anne Boleyn, Marquess of Pembroke. This title and its emblem were awarded to Anne Boleyn by the king in 1532, to placate her during the lengthy debate over the annulment of Henry’s first marriage.”

  Hero could see that the bird was standing near a bunch of roses, gripping a scepter, just as her father had drawn it. Mrs. Roth would be so excited about this! She stuffed the book in her backpack for her next visit.

  At last, a few hours of uninterrupted diamond hunting. Hero drifted through the still house. Where should she begin? The bookcases? Each one of the downstairs rooms had some kind of built-in cupboard or cabinet, with flowery carvings and scrollwork in the trim. Unfortunately, Hero’s mother had been sufficiently organized in her unpacking to fill most of them already—with books, knickknacks, delicate pieces of crystal.

  Hero was determined to be thorough. She kept reminding herself that the house had already been searched once by the police, and the diamond had been hidden well enough to escape their notice. A diamond so big wouldn’t be easy to conceal. Maybe it was tucked under something or inside something, some kind of hole or hollow.

  In the living room, Hero pulled stacks of books off the shelves and checked for loose boards. In the dining room, she slid her fingers along the inside edges of the corner china cupboard, trying not to bang the slender handles of her mother’s teacups. She checked for knotholes, mouse holes, grooves in the wood, soft spots in the plaster. By the middle of the afternoon, she’d examined every nook in the downstairs rooms, and with rising frustration, scoured the upstairs medicine cabinets as well. She found nothing but a pen cap, a nickel, and a chipped orange button.

  Tired and bored, Hero thudded down the back steps into the bright sunlight. She stood in the driveway, picking at the splinters under her fingernails and glancing around. What if the diamond wasn’t in the house, after all? She was just considering the leafy borders of the backyard when she heard the low rumble and scrape of a skateboard. She looked up to see Danny Cordova standing at the end of her driveway.

  “Hey, Netherfield,” Danny called to her. With a quick pivot, he flipped the skateboard into the air and caught it under his arm.

  “Hi,” Hero answered, hoping it didn’t sound like an invitation. She flinched as Danny started down the driveway.

  “I was at Ben’s,” he told her, as if he expected her to be interested. When Hero said nothing, he added, “Ben and Aaron are fighting again. Maybe you should go down there and break it up.”

  Hero scowled at him, but his easy grin made it hard not to smile. Triss was right. There was something about him.

  “So what are you doing?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” Hero scuffed her sneaker in the loose gravel. “Just hanging out. My pa
rents are in D.C., and Beatrice is over at a friend’s house.”

  Danny was watching her steadily. “You’re looking for it, aren’t you?” he said.

  Hero flushed and shook her head. But then, unbelievably, she heard herself say, “Yes.”

  She had no idea why she said it. She didn’t trust Danny. She didn’t even know him. And she was trying so hard to keep the diamond a secret from her own family, the people she did know and trust. But it was something about the way he looked at her, the friendly interest in his eyes. It had been a long time since any kid had looked at her that way: smiling, curious, wanting to hear what she had to say. It hadn’t happened all summer; it hadn’t happened at school.

  Hero realized that if she’d had a really good friend to talk to, she would have told the friend about the Murphy diamond. Instead, she told Danny Cordova. And because she told him, suddenly it seemed that he must be her friend. It was mixed up. Usually, you confided in someone because you trusted the person. But she was trusting someone because she’d confided in him.

  She watched him, wondering what he’d say “I figured you were looking for it.” Danny grinned with satisfaction. He sat on his skateboard, rolling it back and forth with his feet. “Miriam’s helping you, right? She could’ve told me. I know she doesn’t want to get me in trouble with my dad, but I wouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Oh, please, don’t,” Hero said, sitting cross-legged on the driveway. “You can’t say anything to anybody. Really.”

  “Hey, don’t worry. I won’t. I’d like to find it too. It’s worth a ton of money, you know. A million dollars or something.”

  Hero rested her chin in her hands and gazed at the backyard, at the grass growing too long in the shade, the sprawling rhododendrons and azaleas, the thicket of weeds next to the garage.

  “I looked all over the house,” Hero said. “Everywhere. All the bookshelves, all the cupboards, any place he could have hidden it. But I didn’t find anything. I think it must be out here.”

  Danny shook his head. “No way. You weren’t around for the police search. My dad had four detectives on it. And they didn’t find any place that was dug up. Plus, my dad figured it wouldn’t be safe for Murphy to leave a diamond out here. A dog could get to it, or some kid in the neighborhood. After it was stolen, we used to sneak over here all the time to look.”

  “You searched the yard?” Hero asked. This was beginning to seem hopeless. Maybe the diamond really had been stolen, and Mr. Murphy, crazy in his old age, had sent them a mysterious clue that had nothing to do with it.

  Danny stood up. “This is what we should do,” he said decisively. “We should look at the police report.”

  “Oh, sure,” Hero joined in. “We’ll just ask for a copy. No one will suspect a thing.”

  “No. No. Come on. We’ll go down to the station.”

  Hero stared at him. “What do you mean? Just walk in there and request the Murphy file? Look, I don’t know much about police work, but that stuff is probably you know, confidential or something. Plus, they’ll ask why we’re interested. Plus, they’ll never give it to a kid.”

  Danny grabbed her arm impatiently. “No, listen, we’ll go right now. They’re short staffed on weekends. My dad’s there but he’s on patrol, so we can hang out in his office. That’s where the Murphy report is.”

  Hero frowned. “How do you know?”

  “We used to talk about it, and one time he showed me. He still thinks it’s an active case or something. He keeps it in his file cabinet.”

  “So you want to sneak in his office and look at it without anyone seeing us?”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “You got a bike? It’s only a couple of miles. I can use my skateboard.”

  Hero hesitated. As a partner in detective work, Danny Cordova seemed a lot pushier than Mrs. Roth, and his ideas sounded more dangerous.

  “What if we get caught?” she asked.

  “Caught doing what?” Danny scoffed. “We’re just going to visit my dad. Don’t worry, they know me down there. And you’ll be with me.”

  “Right,” Hero nodded grimly. “And didn’t you get suspended once?”

  Danny looked at her in surprise. “Yeah, sure.” He shrugged. “But that was a long time ago. And they don’t suspend you for looking at police files.”

  “No, they probably arrest you,” Hero muttered.

  But she wheeled her bike out of the garage, and with the afternoon sun warm on their faces, they started down the street together.

  CHAPTER

  12

  They rode down the street, past Mrs. Roth’s yard with its burst of flowers, past Aaron’s house, where someone was washing a car in the driveway. Hero pedaled through the river of soapsuds trying to keep up with Danny. At the corner, he turned sharply and stopped, waiting for her.

  “You’re pretty fast on that,” she said, veering around him.

  “Yeah, on the quiet streets. It’s harder to keep up your speed when there’s traffic.”

  “So how do we go? Grove?”

  Grove Street was the main avenue from Hero’s neighborhood into the center of town. It was a wide, long street with a steady stream of cars. The houses were bigger there, set back on deep lawns, with shrubs and fences shielding the yards from the road.

  “Yeah, follow me,” Danny told her.

  Following someone on a skateboard, Hero discovered, could be a nerve-racking experience. Danny would sail ahead, then swerve and stop, often bumping into the curb when a car passed too close. As a result, Hero found herself pedaling furiously then slamming on her brakes. Once, a blue Jeep roared by and a girl leaned out the back window to yell, “Danny! Danny Cordova!”

  Danny turned to wave, and Hero had to steer onto the sidewalk to avoid crashing into him.

  “Let me ride in front,” she said.

  “But you don’t know where you’re going.”

  “Maybe not, but I won’t get us both killed.”

  “Oh, come on. I was just waving. You worry too much.”

  Hero sighed. “Then watch where you’re going.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who almost ran into me. You watch where you’re going.”

  Hero guided her bike into the street again. She glanced irritably at Danny. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

  “It’s a great idea. And we’re almost there, so quit complaining.” Danny pushed off easily and coasted ahead, his slim frame shifting comfortably with the motion of the skateboard. Hero had no choice but to follow.

  Finally they reached the end of Grove and turned on to Main. There was the police station, a squat brick building with brass letters on the side that read POLICE HEADQUARTERS.

  “Headquarters, that’s a joke,” said Danny. “They’ve only got eight cops.”

  “Your dad is the head of everything?” asked Hero.

  “Yeah, he runs the place.”

  “He must have been—” Hero paused. “Was he mad when you got suspended?”

  Danny took her bike from her and leaned it against the wall in the parking lot. He clamped his skateboard under one arm.

  “Not really,” he said.

  They walked through the double doors together, and Hero immediately felt her stomach clutch. She’d never been inside a police station before. They were standing in a tiny lobby. There was a bulletin board on one wall, covered in WANTED flyers that had bold letters with creepy photos. In front of them was a metal door with peeling paint and a large, sliding window. Through the window they could see a middle-aged woman with curly red hair typing at a computer. She smiled at Danny.

  “Well, hi, hon. Did you come to see your dad? He’s on patrol.”

  “He’s still out? I thought he was coming back this afternoon.”

  “Not till later.”

  Danny hesitated, long enough that even Hero thought he looked like he was about to leave. Then he said, “Could we wait for him in his office?”

  “Wel
l, sure, of course you can. I’m just saying it could be awhile. Come on through.”

  The red-haired woman smiled again, looking curiously at Hero. She pressed a button on the edge of her desk. There was a buzzing noise, which made Hero jump, then a dull metallic thunk as the door unlocked. Danny pushed it open and Hero followed him inside.

  The room they entered was large and plain, with a linoleum-tile floor, a few metal desks heaped with papers and file folders and, here and there, a stained coffee mug. At the back there was a separate office. Its half-glass wall overlooked the room. The red-haired woman returned to her typing, and Hero followed Danny into the rear office.

  “This isn’t exactly private,” she whispered, as he shut the door. “She can see everything we’re doing.”

  “I know,” Danny said. “We have to be careful. Just sit here for a minute.” He motioned toward a wooden chair against the wall. Hero sat stiffly, already feeling like a criminal.

  “The file is over there in the cabinet,” Danny said. “Bottom drawer. But we should sit here until she gets busy with something.”

  Hero nodded. “Are you sure she can’t hear us?”

  “No way. It’s soundproof in here. This is the room they use for questioning.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, shooting quick glances at the secretary, who continued to type.

  “So why did you get suspended?” Hero asked.

  Danny looked at her. “Why do you care?”

  “I don’t,” Hero said quickly. “Forget it.”

  He shrugged. “It’s no big deal. I pushed a teacher.”

  “What do you mean, pushed her?”

  “Him. I kind of shoved him. Not hard. But he said I hit him.”

  “Well, why did you do that?”

  “He was picking on somebody. This girl he always picked on.”

  “Was she a friend of yours?” Hero tried to make sense of it. It was hard to imagine deliberately touching a teacher, much less pushing one.