Cape by Kate Hannigan

Author:Kate Hannigan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

Twenty-Three

NEARLY SHOUTING, WE BEGAN BOMBARDING Harry with questions. Who was he with? Where did he go? How did he seem? What did he say?

Harry waved his hands to quiet us down.

“He seemed fine. He was here with my friend the Duke and some other kids. Three of them sat right here,” Harry said, fumbling with his apron string. “I think they were working on some math problems . . . or puzzles, maybe? Smart kids, I hear.”

And then Harry disappeared into the kitchen, saying something about poaching eggs.

Immediately I looked all around, frantically searching for a sign of some sort. Emmett would have left behind a clue to tell me if he was okay or not. But where? And how? He wouldn’t want the Duke to catch him.

I ran my hand along the underside of the table, feeling for a note—he could have stuck it there with bubble gum.

Nothing.

Then I felt all over the booth bench and in the crease where the back met the seat. Akiko and Mae checked theirs too. But all we found was some lint and a couple of pennies.

Akiko grabbed the menus and thumbed through them, looking for any sort of sign there. Mae poked around inside the napkin dispenser and unscrewed the salt and pepper shakers. Again, nothing. We shoved the stack of newspapers to the other side of the booth and even scanned the tabletop itself for some sort of hastily written message, but it was clean.

Then, like a silent snowflake, a sheet of white paper fluttered to the floor. It must have been tucked inside a newspaper. We sat stunned, watching as a customer stepped on it and left behind his shoe print.

“What’s that?” rasped Akiko. “Could it be a note?”

She leaned out of the booth and picked it up. It was a simple sheet of white writing paper. We flipped it from one side to the other and saw that it was blank on both the front and the back. “Nothing here,” she said, her voice heavy with frustration. “Maybe he meant to write something but ran out of time.”

“Wait. Look a little closer,” said Mae, taking the blank paper from Akiko’s hand. “It looks stiff in some places, almost like there was a spill that dried.”

She passed the paper to me, and right away I knew we had something. “I think this is a secret message!” I whispered, scrambling out of the booth as fast as I could. “Clever Emmett!”

I dashed through the diner to the kitchen, with Akiko and Mae trailing close behind. Thankfully, Harry was in the stockroom in the far back, so the three of us had a quick moment alone with the stove. And that was all we needed.

“You guys, make sure nobody comes over here,” I said, my knees like wet noodles as I turned on the gas burner. I could hear Gerda at the cash register, ringing up a ticket.

Holding the paper above the flame—far enough away that I didn’t set the paper on fire but close enough that the heat reached it—I held my breath and watched.

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