television show. He got up and struck a pose. “Nobody escapes the Spanish Inquisition!”
She threw up her hands. “You can’t learn history from a British comedy show!”
“Sure you can.” He leaned forward, grinning. “Want to know the real story of the knights? They used coconut shells for horses—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said, and covered her ears. “Let me work or we’re both going to starve.”
“Not hardly,” he said with confidence. “There’s always royalties.”
“Twelve, and you’re an investment counselor.”
“I learned all I know from you. I’m precocious on account of the fact that I’m the youngest child of scientists.”
“You’d be precocious if you were the youngest child of Neanderthals.”
“Did you know that the h in Neanderthals is silent and unpronounced? It was written wrong. It’s a German word,” he continued.
She held up a hand and her glare grew. “I don’t need lessons in pronunciation. I need peace and quiet!”
“Okay, I get the message! I’ll go out and fish for sea serpents.”
She didn’t even glance his way. “Great. If you catch one, yell. I’ll take photos.”
“It would serve you right if I did.”
“Yes. With your luck, if you caught one, it would eat you, and I’d spend the rest of my life on this beach with a lantern like Heathcliff roaming the moors.”
“Wrong storyline. I’m your brother, not your girlfriend.”
“Picky, picky.”
He made a face and opened the sliding glass door.
“Close it!” she yelled. “You’re letting the cold air out!”
“God forbid!” he gasped. He turned back toward her with bright eyes. “Hey, I just had an idea. Want to know how we could start global cooling? We could have everybody turn on their air conditioners and open all their doors and windows…”
She threw a legal pad in his general direction. Not being slow on the uptake, he quickly closed the sliding door and walked down the steps of the deck onto the sugar-white sand on the beach.
He stuck his hands into his pockets and walked toward the house next door, where a skinny young girl sat on the deck, wearing cutoffs with a tank top and an Atlanta Braves hat turned backward. Her bare feet were propped on the rail and she looked out of sorts.
“Hey!” he called.
She glared at him.
“Want to go fishing for sea serpents?” he asked.
Her eyebrows lifted. She smiled, and her whole face changed. She jumped up and bounced down the steps toward him. She was blond and blue-eyed with a fair complexion.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Ever seen anyone catch a sea serpent around here?”
“Not since we got off the plane,” she said.
“Great!” He grinned at her, making his freckles stand out.
“Great?”
“If nobody’s caught it, it’s still out there!” he whispered, gesturing toward the ocean. “Just think of the residuals from it. We could sell it to one of the grocery store tabloids and clean up!”
Her eyes brightened. “What a neat idea.”
“Sure it is.” He sighed. “If only I knew how to make one.”
“A mop,” she ventured. “A dead fish. Parts of some organ meat. A few feathers. A garden hose, some shears and some gray paint.”
A kindred soul. He was in heaven. “You’re a genius!”
She grinned back. “My dad really is a genius. He taught me everything I know.” She sighed. “But if we create a hoax, I’ll be grounded for the rest of my life. So I guess I’ll pass, but…”
He made a face. “I know what you mean. I’d never live it down. My parents would send me to military school.”
“Would they, really?”
“They threaten me with it every time I get into trouble. I don’t mind boarding school, but I hate uniforms!”
“Me, too, unless they’re baseball uniforms. This year is it, this is the third time, this is the charm. This time,” she assured him, “the Braves are going to go all the way!”
He gave her a long, thoughtful look. “Well, we’ll see.”
“You a Braves fan?” she asked.
He hadn’t ever cared much for baseball, but it seemed important to her. “Sure,” he said.
She chuckled. “My name is Karie.”
“I’m Kurt.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Same here.”
They walked along the beach for a minute or two. He stopped and looked back up the deserted stretch of land. “Know where to find a mop?” he asked after a minute.
Blissfully unaware that her young brother had just doubled his potential for disaster, Janine filled her computer screen with what she hoped was going to be the bare bones of a new mystery. Some books almost wrote themselves. Others were on a par with pulling teeth. This looked like one of those. Her mind was tired. It wanted to shape clouds into white horses and ocean waves into pirate ships.
“What I need,” she said with a sigh, “is a good dose of fantasy.”
Sadly there wasn’t anything on television that she wanted to watch. Most of it, she couldn’t understand, because it was in Spanish.
She turned the set off. The one misery of this trip was missing her favorite weekly science fiction series. Not that she didn’t like all the characters on it; she did. But her favorite was an arrogant, sometimes very devious alien commander. The bad guy. She seemed to be spending all her productive time lately sighing over him instead of doing the work that she got paid to do. That was one reason she’d agreed to come to Cancñaun with her parents and Kurt, to get away from the make-believe man who was ruining her writing career.
“Enough of this!” she muttered to herself. “Good heavens, you’d think I was back in grammar school, idolizing teachers!”
She got up and paced the room. She ate some cookies. She typed a little into the computer. Eventually the sun started going down and she noticed that she was short one twelve-year-old boy.
She
