Free Wade and the Scorpion's Claw by Tony Abbott Page A

passports?” Lily asked.
    â€œNo, papers that document the tile,” she said.
    â€œNo,” I said, “but you can see it’s not a fake. It’s part of the original piece. See how it fits.”
    â€œDoes your father know this?” she asked.
    â€œHe knows,” said Becca. “That’s probably what he’s talking to your director about. He should be here very soon.”
    â€œThe museum will want it, obviously,” Dr. Powell said. “It’s part of the spice box. But we can’t acquire it if it doesn’t have any documentation. And we’ll likely have to call the police. I mean, I’m sorry, but the director is required to do that.”
    The enormous stupidity of what I’d just done was dawning on me. We could be in deep trouble. A priceless piece of art given to us by a murder victim? I should have let Dad handle it. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
    â€œExcuse us a second, Dr. Powell. Guys . . .” Becca drew us back a few steps away from the table. “Look. If this belonged to Mr. Chen, forgetting for a moment how he got it, wouldn’t he have come here and done the same thing we just did? He had a piece of the puzzle leading to a relic—possibly Scorpio—and needed to attach it to the spice box. How would he have handled this situation?”
    â€œThere’s no document somewhere deep in that pocket of yours?” Darrell asked me.
    â€œI wish,” I said. “Let’s get Dad back here. Maybe we could donate the tile to the museum. I mean, just give it to them. Once we find out what it’s supposed to tell us, we may not even need it anymore.”
    â€œIt’s worth a try,” said Becca.
    I flashed her a shy smile. “You say that now . . .”
    We—I—told Dr. Powell what we’d decided and that she should talk to the director and my father, “who, by the way, is an astrophysicist at the University of Texas,” which seemed to impress her. She was still suspicious, but the fact that we offered to donate the tile to the museum, and that my dad was making deals with the director, seemed to take some of the guilt away.
    She said she would hold on to the tile until everything was decided. Which was fine with us. The tile seemed to be merely a way to open their spice box, and maybe the real clue was the writing inside.
    â€œUm, if it’s not too much to ask,” said Lily, “do you think you could translate the words on the inside of the lid?”
    â€œWhat exactly are you working on?” Dr. Powell asked.
    We shared a glance. “A legend,” I said. “A story.”
    She seemed to accept that. “I’ll translate the text for you. It will take me a few minutes.” She sorted through the books she’d brought in and pulled down several more from a shelf and set them on the table next to her computer.
    â€œLily, you should probably take some pictures of this thing, right?” Darrell suggested.
    Lily did. And so did Dr. Powell. She sent her photos to a computer sitting at the far end of the worktable so we could examine them in high resolution. We set ourselves up around it, while she turned her attention to the writing inside the box.
    â€œThis is definitely a Ming-era object,” she said right off, “but the writing inside the lid is not Ming. Strange, no? The characters are modern simplified Chinese. This particular form of it wasn’t even around until 1956 at the earliest.”
    â€œDr. Powell, are you saying that writing was added to the box sometime in the last sixty years?” I asked.
    She nodded once. “Yes. And please call me Tricia. Now, come over here and look.”
    She moved the box under a lens that was connected to her computer. “There are two tiny impressions stamped into the inside of the lid. They are old.” She pointed out a tiny ball with rings around it hovering over what looked like a small