The Maze of Bones (The 39 Clues #1)(17)

Another burst of angry Spanish.

"Well, if you'd let me go to cooking school instead of stupid regular college -- "

Her dad's yelling got slightly louder than a nuclear explosion.

"Que, papa?"

Nellie yelled.

"Lo siento, you're breaking up. I'll call you when I get a better signal. Love ya!" She hung up.

"He's fine with it," she announced. "I'm in, kiddos."

On Amy's orders, Dan was only supposed to pack one bag. That meant clothes, but Dan wasn't interested in clothes. He looked around his room, trying to figure out what to take from his collections.

His bedroom was already way too small for his stuff. Against one wall were his tombstone rubbings. He'd have to roll them up or fold them to pack them, and that would ruin them. His closet was stacked with plastic bins holding his card collection and coin portfolios -- too many to choose from. Under his bed were boxes full of old Civil War weapons, his casts, his autographed celebrity photos, and a ton of other stuff.

He picked up his laptop, which he'd bought from the computer science teacher at school for $300. He'd have to take that, because he used it to find out stuff and make money. He knew the exact value of every trading card on the Internet. He'd learned to sell his duplicate cards at school and in the local card shops for a little more than he'd paid. It wasn't much, but he could make about $100 a month if he was lucky. And he was lucky. Unfortunately, he spent the money on rare stuff as fast as he made it.

He slipped the computer into his black duffel bag. Then he added three extra shirts, pants, underwear, a toothbrush, his inhaler, and -- finally -- his passport.

Their parents had gotten them passports right before they died, when Dan was four.

Dan didn't remember why. They'd never used them. Grace had insisted on renewing them last year, which had seemed kind of sil y to Dan at the time. Now he wondered....

He shoved the passport to the bottom of the bag. There was hardly any room left.

No way could he fit even a tenth of his stuff.

He dug under his mattress and brought out his photo album. It was a big white binder holding his most important collection: photos of his parents.

There was only one. It was burned around the edges: the only photograph that had survived the fire. His mom and dad were standing on the summit of a mountain with their arms around each other, smiling for the camera. They both wore Gortex parkas and thermal climbing pants, with harnesses around their waists. Instead of helmets, they wore baseball caps, so their eyes were hidden in shadows. His dad, Arthur, was tall and tan with salt-and-pepper hair and a nice smile. Dan wondered if he would look like that when he got older. His mom, Hope, had reddish-brown hair like Amy's. She was a little younger than their dad, and Dan thought she was very pretty. Her hat was an Orioles cap. His dad's was a Red Sox. Dan wondered if that was random, or if those were their favorite teams, and if they ever fought about which one was better. He didn't know. He didn't even know if they had green eyes like he did, because the caps hid their faces.

He wanted to collect other photos of them. He wanted to know where else they traveled and what they wore. He wanted to see a picture that had him in it. But there was nothing to collect. Everything from their old house had burned, and Grace always insisted she had no photographs of them, though Dan never understood why.

He stared at the photo and got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He thought about the fire at Grace's mansion, the man in black, Mr. McIntyre lying on the pavement, Uncle Alistair driving away like a madman, and his mom's handwriting in that Benjamin Franklin book.

What could be so important about a book? Dan knew the value of a lot of collectibles, but he'd never heard of anything worth burning down a house.

Grace must've known what she was doing, setting up this contest. She wouldn't have let him and Amy down. Dan told himself that over and over, trying to believe it.

There was a knock on his door. He took the plastic sleeve with the photograph out of the album and slipped it in his bag. He zipped it shut just as the door opened.

"Hey, dweeb," Amy said, but she didn't really sound mean. "You almost done?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."

She'd taken a shower and changed clothes -- back into her regular jeans and green T-shirt. She frowned at his full duffel bag, then looked at all the bins sitting in the closet. Dan guessed she could tell he hadn't sorted through them.

"You could, uh, take a backpack, too," she offered. "If that helps."

Coming from Amy, it was a pretty nice thing to say. But Dan stared at his closet.

Somehow he knew he wouldn't be coming back here ever again. "Amy, how much money do you think we'll get for the jewelry?"

Her hand went to her neck, and Dan realized she was wearing Grace's jade necklace.

"Um ... I don't know."

Dan understood why she looked guilty. He wasn't an expert at jewelry prices, but he figured that necklace was one of the most expensive pieces in the box. If she kept it, they wouldn't get nearly as much.

"They'll rip us off," he warned. "We don't have time to do it right. And anyway, we're just kids. We'll have to take the jewelry to somebody who can give us cash without asking a lot of questions. We'll probably only get a few thousand -- a fraction of what the stuff is worth."