Three Days to Never Read Free

know.”
    He was staring at the slab. “I mean, isn’t the real one at the Chinese Theater?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    He glanced at her and smiled. “Sorry. But this might be real. Maybe they made two. She says she knew Chaplin. She flew to Switzerland after he died.”
    â€œWhere did he die?”
    â€œIn Switzerland, goof. I wonder if these letters—” He paused, for Daphne had got down on her hands and knees and begun prying up the bricks along the edge of the exposed patch of wet dirt. “What?” he said. “Gold?”
    â€œShe almost burned up the shed,” Daphne said without looking up. “Got the cap off the gas can, at least.”
    â€œWell—true.” Her father knelt beside her, on the bricks instead of the mud—which Daphne was pleased to see, as she didn’t want to wash a fresh pair of pants for him to wear to work tomorrow—and pulled up a couple of bricks himself. His dark hair was falling into his eyes, and he streaked a big smudge of grime onto his forehead when he pushed it back. Great, Daphne thought; he looks—probably we both look—as if we just tunneled out of a jail.
    Daphne saw a glint of brightness in the flat mud where one brick had been, and she rubbed at it; it was a piece of wire about as thick as a pencil. It was looped, and she hooked a finger through it to pull it up, but the rest of the loop was stuck fast under the other bricks.
    â€œIs this gold?” she asked her father.
    He grunted and rubbed more dirt off the wire. “I can’t say it’s not,” he said. “Right color, at least, and it’s pliable.”
    â€œShe said you should get the gold up from under the bricks, right? So let’s—”
    From outside, on the street, a car horn honked three times, and then a man’s voice called, “Frank?”
    â€œIt’s your uncle Bennett,” said her father, quickly slamming back into place the bricks he had moved. Daphne fit hers back in too, suppressing a giggle at the idea of hiding the treasure from her dumb uncle.
    The bricks replaced, her father leaped up and grabbed all the papers in the ammunition box into one fist and shoved them deep into an inside pocket of his jacket on the shelf. He wiped his hand on his shirt, and Daphne remembered that he had said the envelopes were sticky.
    â€œStand back,” he said, and Daphne stepped back beside the television set.
    Then he cautiously put one foot on the square of black dirt and gripped the cement slab by the top edges and pulled it toward himself. It swayed forward, and then he hopped backward out of the way as it overbalanced and thudded heavily to the floor, breaking one row of bricks. The whole shed shook, and black dust sifted down onto the two of them from the rotted ceiling.
    The block’s near edge was visibly canted up, resting on the row of broken bricks.
    â€œBoth of us,” said Daphne, sitting down on the bricks to set her heels against the raised edge. Her father knelt on the bricks and braced his hands on the slab.
    â€œOn three,” he said. “One, two, three.”
    Daphne and her father both pushed, and then pushed harder, and at last the slab shifted, slid to its original position and thumped down flush with the bricks. Its top face was dry and blank.
    Daphne heard the click of the backyard gate, and she scrambled up and ran two steps to the VCR and hit the eject button. The machine whirred as her uncle’s footsteps thrashed through the weeds, and then the tape had popped out and Daphne snatched it and dropped it into her purse as her father hastily grabbed his jacket from the shelf, slid his arms into the sleeves and shrugged it onto his shoulders.
    â€œFrank!” came Bennett’s shout again, this time from just outside the open door. “I saw your car! Where are you?”
    â€œIn here, Bennett!” Daphne’s father called.
    Her uncle’s red