The Crims #3 Page 10

“That wasn’t me,” said Don Vadrolga. “That was Tom Cruise.”

  “Well, I loved you in Jerry Maguire,” said Freddie.

  “Again, a Tom Cruise film,” said Don Vadrolga.

  “You were fantastic in that movie with the talking baby!” said Uncle Clyde.

  “Thank you,” said Don Vadrolga, smiling his crinkly smile. “A film I actually appeared in.”

  “It was so cute the way you commented on everything that was going on, even though you were just a baby!”

  Don Vadrolga stopped smiling. “That wasn’t me. I played the hero! The love interest! Are you seriously confusing me with a newborn baby who didn’t even grow up to be a famous actor? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ava, stepping forward, eyes furious. “What’s wrong with YOU?”

  As soon as Don saw Ava, he stood up and started shaking. And not because he was doing a very familiar disco dance move. “No!” he cried, clutching his chair, as if it could help him, which it couldn’t. “Not her! She can’t bring me back there!”

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” Ava shouted.

  But Don Vadrolga didn’t reply. Instead, he leaped out of his chair and ran out of the room. And he actually looked pretty cool doing it, too, because he was Don Vadrolga.

  The Crims and Ava ran after Don Vadrolga, through the mansion, out of the back door, over the manicured lawn, past the hedges that had been topiaried to look like characters from Don Vadrolga movies, and back through the booby-trapped jungle. Panting and breathless, they somehow made it all the way to a clearing in the middle of the rain forest that they hadn’t come across before. A private plane was waiting on the grassy runway. But it didn’t wait very long, because Don Vadrolga was already running up the steps into the plane.

  “The traitor!” Ava screamed, still running toward the plane, as Don Vadrolga started the engine. She staggered to a stop as the plane soared into the air. “The only reason he knows how to fly a plane is because Luka gave him flying lessons. He used to fly my brothers and sisters to their Italian classes in Rome, and their flamenco classes in Seville, and their capitalism classes in New York. And how did he thank us? He abandoned the family when we needed him most! He wasn’t there to release the tigers when the Gull attacked Krukingham Palace, so Uncle Dedrick and cousin Violet got arrested! And Luka has probably been arrested too by now, because Violet is such a little snitch. I miss her so much.” Ava tried to cry, but she couldn’t, because she was a Kruk.

  Big Nana put an arm around Ava’s shoulders, and then she took it off again, because it looked as though Ava was about to hit her. “Well, my buttered crumpet,” said Big Nana, “at least it will be easier for us to find the treasure without Don Vadrolga around.”

  Ava nodded. But her fists were still clenched.

  Imogen was nervous. Please let the treasure be worth something. . . . She knew what Ava was like when she was disappointed: psychopathic, violent, fond of hurting people with saws . . .

  “Right,” said Big Nana. “Enough of being distracted by faded Hollywood stars. It’s time for me to give you the first set of directions to the treasure.”

  The Crims cheered half-heartedly—to be honest, they’d had quite enough of nearly dying for one day. But Uncle Clyde still seemed very excited about the whole thing. He loved treasure hunts almost as much as he loved coming up with ridiculous ideas for crimes that would almost certainly fail. “Tell me! Tell me!” he said, jumping up and down in front of Big Nana like a terrible pogo stick.

  “Right,” said Big Nana. “Here’s the clue: Walk through the thickest brambles you’ve ever seen. Stop when something makes you scream.”

  “This way!” shouted Uncle Clyde, running headfirst into a thicket of thorns. The rest of the Crims tramped after him, shouting out their favorite swear words whenever the thorns scraped their ankles and shins and faces. And then they stopped, because Uncle Clyde was staring at a tree trunk and screaming.

  “The pattern in the bark!” he shrieked, pointing at the tree. “If you squint, it looks a bit like Mother Teresa!”

  The Crims were no fans of Mother Teresa—she had taken a vow of poverty and dedicated her life to helping others. She had even been made a saint. In other words, she was the opposite of everything the Crims stood for.

  “Excellent, Clyde, you inedible wallaby,” said Big Nana. “Let’s hear your clue next.”

  Uncle Clyde rubbed his hands and recited the next set of directions: “Find a group of vicious jaguars and follow them, like a guiding star.”

  “That doesn’t sound remotely dangerous or terrifying,” said Imogen as they walked through the rain forest, searching for animals that any sane person would stay far away from. She often resorted to sarcasm in difficult situations.

  They were tiptoeing around the edge of a crocodile-infested swamp when Henry, who was leading the group, stopped. “There,” he whispered.

  “Jaguars?” whispered Delia.

  “No,” said Henry, looking around. “I was just thinking those bushes look really flammable. Nice dry twigs.”

  The Crims all groaned and then kept walking—but they didn’t get far, because then Imogen actually spotted a pair of jaguars, slinking between the trees. She stared at them, awestruck by their beauty for a moment, before pointing them out to her family.

  “Darling, well done,” whispered Josephine. “I’ve been desperate for a new leopard-print coat. But jaguar will be even better!”

  Jaguars, it turns out, don’t really like being followed. They get a little growly, a little scratchy, and quite a bit bite-y. Luckily, as soon as the jaguars turned on them, the Crims all ran away as fast as they could, and the only person the jaguars managed to attack was Uncle Knuckles. His limbs were so tough that the jaguars lost several teeth and then backed away from him apologetically.

  “I’m beginning to wonder,” panted Delia, once they were out of danger, “whether Captain Glitterbeard’s treasure is worth all this effort.”

  “But it must be,” said Sam, “if he went to this much trouble to hide it.” Imogen noticed that Sam was shaking like a terrified leaf. He loved animals, but only if they were smaller than him.

  “I suppose we’re where the jaguars were supposed to lead us?” asked Imogen. But really, she wasn’t sure. The directions seemed frustratingly nonspecific.

  Still, Big Nana nodded and looked to Sam, who recited his directions next. They led them across a rocky ravine. Then Isabella recited hers, which were quite hard to understand, because she still couldn’t say her Rs properly. Al’s clue led them through a swarm of mosquitos, and Josephine’s took them up a sheer cliff face, and Nick’s led them across a small but extremely hot desert—the private island featured a weirdly large number of microclimates.

  “Please say we’re nearly there,” huffed Delia as they trekked up sand dunes and dodged spitting camels.

  “We are, my uncomfortable suspenders,” said Big Nana, pointing to the ground in front of her. “Look.”

  There, on the sand, was an X made of rocks.

  “That’s it?” asked Sam. “That’s the treasure?”

  “No,” said Big Nana, sighing heavily (she had gained weight on the cruise because she had been determined to “get someone else’s money’s worth” from the buffet). “This is where we have to dig.”

  “Brilliant!” said Uncle Clyde. “Has anyone got a shovel?”

  “Spade!” said Isabella, holding out the plastic toy shovel Imogen had bought her in Dullport.

  “Anybody got a proper one?” asked Uncle Clyde.

  There was an unwelcome silence. Which is saying something, because usually, when the Crims were involved, silence was like an oasis in a very shout-y desert.

  Imogen was at the end of her rope with her family. And her rope hadn’t been very long in the first place. “Seriously?” she said. “We come on a treasure hunt, and no one has brought a proper shovel?”

  Delia looked at her. “Have you brought a shovel?” she asked.
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  “No,” Imogen admitted, looking down at her feet, because they were never annoyed with her.

  “Well, then,” said Delia, who held out her hand. “Isabella, give that shovel to me.”

  Delia took a deep breath, took the shovel from Isabella, and started digging. At least, she tried to start digging. It wasn’t easy, because the ground was rock hard. Which wasn’t surprising, as it was made of rocks.

  Ava sat down on a patch of grass—Just like her to find the only comfortable place to sit, thought Imogen—and watched as, one by one, the Crims took turns with the toy shovel. No one lasted very long. Freddie was hopeless, because he spent too long calculating the best possible angle to dig at and no time actually digging. Henry set fire to the shovel and melted it, so everyone thought that was that, but then Isabella started gnawing her way through the rocks with her teeth, which was much more effective than the shovel had been. But even she took more than an hour to make a small dent in the ground.

  “This dirt is like concrete,” murmured Imogen.

  “I think it is concrete,” Freddie replied, scratching his fingernail over a piece of rubble that Isabella had chewed free. “How strange . . .”

  “Don’t be silly,” Big Nana put in. “It’s just a bunch of tiny rocks, stuck together. It happens all the time in Caribbean climates.”

  “I wish you’d told us that before we started digging,” Delia moaned.

  Miserable, aching, and humiliated, Imogen turned to Ava, who had produced a sun umbrella, deck chair, and fruity cocktail from her pockets and was lounging on her patch of grass, sipping her drink and reading Chicken Soup for the Supercriminal’s Soul. “Aren’t you going to help?” she asked.

  “I thought you’d never ask!” said Ava. She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a tiny but powerful pneumatic drill.

  “That’s cheating,” said Aunt Bets, who didn’t really believe in technology—the other Crims were always getting telegrams from her saying things like “I’ll be home for dinner in an hour, once I’ve caught and killed a couple of pigs and turned them into bacon.”

  “Who cares if it’s cheating?” said Josephine. “I’m sweating, and I haven’t sweated since 1984, when I tried to steal a baton at the Olympics and ended up accidentally taking part in the 400-meter relay race.”

  So, Ava shrugged, walked over to where the X had been, and switched on her pneumatic drill. Imogen had an unnerving flashback to the last time she’d been around Ava and a power tool, when Ava had almost sawed her body in half and then blown her up for good measure (knowing when to stop wasn’t Ava’s strong point). But Ava did know when to stop this time—just a few seconds after she had started drilling, she turned off the drill and reached down into the hole she had made. She had hit something.

  Ava pulled an object out of the sand. Everyone crowded round to see what it was.

  “A treasure chest,” whispered Delia, with the sort of awe she usually reserved for the Instagram reveal of celebrity sportswear lines.

  Imogen was relieved to see that it was, indeed, a treasure chest. (Her cousins weren’t very good at describing things. Henry had once told her he’d stolen her a golden bracelet, and it turned out to be a rubber hand.) Ava brushed the sand off the treasure chest and held it out to Imogen. “You should open it,” she said. “Captain Glitterbeard’s your ancestor.”

  Imogen took the treasure chest from Ava and smiled. Wow, she thought. Ava is much more generous than I’d given her credit for. Maybe she won’t try to steal the treasure and kill us after all.

  And then Ava said, “Besides, it might be booby-trapped, and I like having all my fingers.” Which was much more of an Ava thing to say.

  Imogen took the box. This is it. The moment of truth.

  She took a deep breath.

  She let out the breath.

  She took another deep breath.

  “Get on with it!” yelled Uncle Clyde.

  “LEAVE HER ALONE! SHE’S DOING MINDFUL BREATHING EXERCISES!” shouted Uncle Knuckles.

  But Henry was trying to grab the chest off her now, so she pried it open. The hinges squeaked as the lid swung up. It opened more easily than she thought it would.

  Imogen looked down.

  But there wasn’t gold inside the treasure chest.

  There weren’t jewels or precious stones of any kind.

  There weren’t long-lost paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, or original Shakespeare manuscripts or ancient Chinese pottery.

  The only thing inside the box was a mirror.

  It wasn’t gold-plated. It wasn’t inlaid with diamonds. It wasn’t particularly big or particularly old. It didn’t look as though it had once belonged to a Hollywood star or an evil Disney stepmother. The frame was plastic and the words “HENRY CRIM LOOKED AT HIMSELF IN THIS MIRROR” were etched on the outside. And the mirror itself was cracked. In other words, it wasn’t worth very much at all.

  “This isn’t treasure,” Imogen said. “This is seven years’ bad luck.” She looked at her grandmother, and everything started to make sense. Big Nana’s sudden need to pee and the mud on her face . . . the “concrete” poured over the treasure . . .

  “Where’s the actual treasure?” Imogen asked. “Because you clearly brought this with you from home and buried it here when we weren’t looking.”

  “You’re the real treasure!” said Big Nana. “Look into the mirror! It’s all the Crims, working together to overcome a difficult obstacle!” She looked around at her family, with eyes full of love.

  They looked back at her, with eyes full of hate.

  “What?” said Imogen, horrified.

  “What?” said Uncle Clyde, confused.

  “Watt?” said Henry, who was trying to remember how electricity was measured. He was staring at Ava, who was vibrating as though an electric current was running through her. Imogen had a horrible feeling she was actually shaking with anger.

  “You made up the whole thing?” asked Imogen. “About Captain Glitterbeard and the treasure? There isn’t a hidden fortune buried somewhere on this island?”

  This is okay, she told herself. Take deep breaths. This isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. That was when Big Nana pretended to be dead and you cried yourself to sleep for two years. Or when Big Nana wrote that poison-pen letter and got you kicked out of the school you loved so much. Or when Big Nana lied to you and pretended she was a babysitter called Mrs. Teakettle for months. . . . Now, she came to think of it, all her worst memories involved Big Nana. She shook her head. How could she have been so stupid? She should never have let herself trust her grandmother again.

  “I didn’t make it all up,” said Big Nana. “We are related to Captain Glitterbeard. Only he was a pretty rubbish pirate. Actually, he was a pirate for only a few months before he settled in Nantucket and started a clambake business. So, I suppose I did lie, a little bit.”

  “But why did you lie?” Imogen asked.

  Big Nana sighed. “I thought we could do with a bonding exercise, and the ropes course that everyone likes was booked up for months. But then you were all so awful in the caravan that I decided you didn’t deserve a bonding course. Then we were on the cruise ship, and the Mussel was about to kill us, and I needed to think of something that would convince Ava to help save our lives . . . and Imogen brought up Captain Glitterbeard, and—” Big Nana stopped. “What’s that growling noise?” she asked.

  Everyone looked around to see where the sound was coming from.

  “It sounds like a really lethal, high-pitched grizzly bear,” said Sam.

  “OR A MAMMOTH WITH INDIGESTION,” said Uncle Knuckles. “EXCEPT THEY’RE EXTINCT, SO IT PROBABLY ISN’T THAT.”

  “Come on, children,” said Big Nana. “What have I always taught you? ‘If you can’t identify an animal by its growl, you’ll end up in its bowels.’”

  Imogen looked across at Ava, whose fists were clenched, and whose face was purple with rage, and whose teeth were bared (and, Imogen n
oticed, horribly pointy). . . .

  “I think the noise is coming from Ava,” Imogen said. “I think she still might be about to kill us.”

  And as Imogen spoke, Ava let out a terrifying roar.

  “Excellent impression of a lion!” said Sam. “Can you teach me? Once you’ve finished murdering my grandmother?”

  Because Ava was now standing over Big Nana, throttling her with her bare hands.

  12

  “HELP ME!” SHOUTED Big Nana, trying and failing to push Ava off her.

  But Imogen was too angry to help. She just stood there and watched, her mind mostly blank, apart from the bit that was filled with anger at her grandmother.

  The other Crims just stood there watching too. They didn’t seem to know how to help, which was understandable—most children are taught to help others, and share, and cooperate, but the Crims were taught to steal from hospital patients and never say “please” and “thank you” except in an ironic way.

  “Ava’s strangling me!” shouted Big Nana, between gasps of breath.

  “Duh,” said Henry. “We can see that.”

  “And if you think about it, that’s sort of a good thing,” said Freddie. “Because she could be shooting at you with an anti-aircraft gun.”

  “Bets!” shouted Big Nana. “Come on! You’re always going on about how you want to kill Ava! Now’s your chance!”

  Aunt Bets rustled around in her bag for her sharpened knitting needles, or her sharpened colostomy bag, or her sharpened packet of custard creams (she could sharpen anything), but she couldn’t find any of them. She shrugged apologetically. “All I’ve got in here is an empty packet of acetaminophen, some receipts, and a tub of Vaseline,” she said. “Ooh, and my cyanide-flavored cough drops! Ava, dear, would you like one?”

  “No thanks,” said Ava, carrying on with the throttling.

  “Someone, please!” croaked Big Nana. “Help! Anyone!”

  “Don’t worry!” cried Uncle Clyde, his red hair waving as though it were trying to get everyone’s attention, which it probably was (his hair had always wanted to be famous). “I have an idea! It’s a little bit complicated. . . .”