CHAPTER 1
On the ninth of August, at 3:47 p.m., the thermometer in the little town of Starling, Texas, reached 115 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest moment so far this year, and the Jeopard siblings, Pauline and Chance, found themselves trapped indoors with their mother, Daisy, and her new friend, Neville Fred Antaso. They were all sitting around the living room in the air-conditioning like exhausted, overfed felines, waiting for the temperature to drop.
Boring.
Life in general had been rather boring since Pauline and Chance had escaped from Saint Philomene’s Infirmary, deep below the Earth’s surface, at the beginning of the summer. Nothing aboveground could compare to their harrowing days underground, and they—Pauline, Chance, and their dear friend Mersey Marsh—had had to keep it all a secret from everyone they knew, though Chance had privately written and illustrated a book about their experiences. Their adventures had bound them ever closer as friends, and they met every day and talked about the perils of June.
But there was only so much to talk about, and as the endless, scorching Texas summer dragged on, the friends saw less and less of one another, and found themselves immersed in other interests. Mersey Marsh had begun dating a nice boy, Killiam Ng, Pauline had become deeply involved in her arrowhead project, and Chance was building a counterpoise trebuchet in an abandoned lot a few blocks from the house.
“How’s that launcher coming along, lad?” said Fred, directing the flow of air-conditioner air with the sports section of the Starling Town Crier.
Chance had found the plans for the trebuchet on the internet. It was ambitious. When completed, it would throw a fifteen-pound bowling ball three hundred yards. At first Chance had been disappointed—he’d wanted a contraption that would hurl a human half a mile. But those devices were built by corporations with reinforced steel and six-digit budgets, not twelve-year-olds with power drills and scavenged two-by-fours. Fred had offered to loan Chance whatever tools he needed if he could secure the materials. With his meager earnings from mowing lawns, doing chores for his mother and his neighbor, Mrs. Applebaker, along with diligent searching around town and on the neighborhood listserv, Chance was by increments acquiring materials to build his towering medieval catapult. He had already put together the base and frame assembly, and wanted nothing more than to work on it today, but 115 degrees were even too much for sun-bleached Chance Jeopard.
“Pretty good, sir,” said Chance. “I still need to find something to use for the main throwing arm.”
“I have a property near Chamberlain,” said Fred, who had migrated to the kitchen and was mixing himself an Arnold Palmer. “It has a bunch of antique telegraph poles running through it. Maybe I could have one of my men uproot one for you. They run a good twenty feet in height. Would that do ya?”
“It sure would! That would be great, sir!”
Fred Antaso, who liked to wear pink or green guayabera shirts and razor-creased pastel golf pants, was tanned to the color of turmeric and reminded Chance of a cross between Billy Bob Thornton and a tangerine Popsicle. Chance liked Fred. Even Pauline liked Fred. He and Pauline had gone out arrowhead hunting once, and he had kept up with her for six hours in the August sun, finding a fragment of an ax-head and a small but nearly pristine Clovis point, both of which he gave her for her collection. He had further impressed her by knapping a perfect spearhead out of a chunk of obsidian, right in the backyard.
Their mother, Daisy, had met Fred Antaso at a yoga retreat in Northampton, Massachusetts, and when they discovered they lived in neighboring towns—he in McCandless, only a mile away—they decided they would get together and practice yoga on a regular basis when they got home. It wasn’t long before they were an item. It did not hurt that Fred seemed to love her children.
Yes, everyone seemed to love Neville Fred Antaso.
Except a certain somebody.
Tikki-tik-tik-tik—Mersey Marsh’s long, black-painted fingernails tapped on the stained-glass window in the front door. Daisy answered.
“Mersey! Come in before you melt, heavens. Where’s Killiam?”
“Diving again.”
Mersey’s boyfriend was a champion diver, and much of his time was spent doing just that.
“Hi, Mersey,” said Chance, who was lying on the living room floor working on a 1:8 scale drawing of his trebuchet on a piece of poster board.
“Hi, Mersey,” said Pauline, who was sitting in the Eames chair reading about the Gault Clovis site on her laptop.
“Hi, Mersey!” said Fred, who was sitting on the couch watching golf on TV, his Arnold Palmer sweating down his wrist.
“Hello,” said Mersey, who stood in the middle of the room, her arms crossed, perspiring from the two-block walk from her house, strands of her midnight hair stuck to her forehead. She looked like she had something to say, but she kept her lips pursed shut. Daisy brought her an Arnold Palmer.
“Thank you.”
A cheer rose up from the crowd on TV; somebody’d birdied.
“Attaboy!” shouted Fred, spilling his beverage.
Mersey Marsh seemed to be growing peeved. One brow was arched high into her bangs, one foot, shod in a black witch’s shoe, tapped impatiently. She suddenly drank her Arnie in two gulps, strode over to the sink, washed out the glass, placed it in the strainer, then, in a strident, commanding voice, boomed:
“Jeopard siblings, upstairs, now!”
Pauline and Chance leaped up. Chance grabbed a bag of gummi spiders off the kitchen counter, Pauline a beef jerky, and they both followed Mersey upstairs. The siblings arranged themselves on Pauline’s bed, struggled a moment opening their snacks, then waited.
“What is it?” said Chance. Mersey always made Chance feel a little funny, as though he were suspended in a sensory-deprivation tank full of lemon Jell-O. It was not an altogether unpleasant sensation, though one he did not understand at all. When Mersey was being fierce, like now, it further complicated his feelings. Yet he couldn’t wait to see where it all was going to go. Chance felt sort of giddy.
“Yeah, what is it?” Pauline, on the other hand, was just plain curious. A fierce Mersey was a compelling Mersey. She had become rather ho-hum after taking up with that boyfriend of hers, always on about inward-twisting-tuck-and-pike armstands and other diving jargon. Pauline wanted the old Mersey back, and now Mersey stood before them, hands on her hips, a stormy look in her green eyes. Here was the Mersey she knew and loved!
“Look, you two,” she said, pointing at Pauline, then at Chance, then back at Pauline. “I know how much you like old Fred Antaso—”
“And we know how much you don’t like him,” said Pauline. “So?”
“Well, I’ve got news for you. I’ve been researching him.”
Mersey was a crackerjack googler. She even knew how to navigate the dark web.
“I’m not sure I want to know,” said Chance, mouth full of gummi spiders.
He didn’t want to find out that Fred was a retired safecracker or a bank robber who’d been on the lam for twenty years or one of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum thieves. Or worse. He wanted Fred Antaso to be Fred Antaso, the man who laughed at reruns of The Love Boat and watched golf tournaments all day and pored over Chance’s trebuchet schematics.
“Me neither,” said Pauline, gnawing on her beef jerky. She didn’t want to find out that Fred was a junk bond cheat or a crown jewel thief or a euro counterfeiter or a moonshiner. Or worse. She wanted Fred Antaso to be Fred Antaso, the man who lost spectacularly at Rummikub and Othello and Pente, who could also spot a half-buried Clovis point at twenty feet in the murk of dusk.
Pauline and Chance wanted what their mother wanted, and that was a life with Fred Antaso in it.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I found out: nothing.”
“Wha?”
“According to the internet,” said Mersey, “there is no Neville Fred Antaso.”
“What are you talking about?” said Pauline, cheeks full of jerky.
“Google returns nothing for Neville Antaso, Antaso, Neville, Fred Antaso, Antaso, Fred, Frederick Antaso, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”
“So?” said Chance. “Lots of people keep a low profile.”
“Not so,” said Mersey. “Everyone’s on the internet now. Your mom is, famous yoga impresario. Your dad, of course.”
The siblings’ father, Albert Wuthering Jeopard, meteorologist extraordinaire, had passed away only a year ago, the victim of a rogue lightning strike. The vacancy his passing had left in the family was one that no one thought could ever be filled.
Until Fred had come along.
“And you are, too, Chance,” said Mersey. “When Channel Eight News did that story about you for rescuing that Samoyed from the Lonegin Creek rapids two summers ago? The news clip is on YouTube. And, Pauline, when you found acrocanthosaurus tracks and got interviewed by the Dallas Museum of Natural History? That clip is on Vimeo. I have makeup tutorials on both sites, and all of us are on Facebook. I challenge you to find someone who is not on the internet somewhere—a birth record, their Little League batting average, a guest at a wedding.”
“But Fred…,” said Pauline, finishing the last of her jerky, wadding up the wrapper, and sky-hooking it into the wastebasket in the corner of her room.
“Yes. Neville Fred Antaso is absent.”
“What does this mean?” Chance asked.
“I think,” said Mersey, “that he’s using a fake name.”
“What for?” said Pauline.
“No idea,” said Mersey. “What’s he do, anyway?”
“Consultant,” said Chance and Pauline at once.
“What does he consult, um, on?”
“Not sure,” said Pauline. “Maybe oil?”
“I think cattle,” said Chance. “Or stocks.”
“So neither of you know.”
Mersey crossed her arms, blew her bangs in the air, and looked at her friends with a mixture of compassion and vague annoyance.
“Maybe he’s just a general consultant.”
“Yeah, he knows an awful lot about everything,” said Pauline.
“Could his name be an anagram?” said Chance.
“I thought of that, but the online anagram machines don’t do names. I tried to work it out on paper, but couldn’t come up with anything. You’re both welcome to try.”
Text copyright © 2021 by Bill Cotter
Illustrations copyright © 2021 by Red Nose Studio
