It had started out like any other birthday. My sister Carley woke me up at eight in the morning with breakfast in bed. It was pancakes, as usual. The morning was filled with games and I didn't have to do any chores. My friends came over for the party after lunch. We went to the old theater and saw a movie. It was really great. It was a science fiction drama based off a book, like most popular movies nowadays. We had a yellow cake with purple and white frosting, and then came the presents. Again, just like any other birthday.

Until...

That evening, I was sitting alone downstairs as the light outside dimmed and shadows lengthened, when I heard a knock at the door. It was a thick, sharp knock, repeating several times like the police at the door of a kidnapper, but with a craftiness to it. I opened the door to a tight, tall, straight man in a suit and a plain green tie. He had a bald head and a stern, educated face with thin black eyebrows. He glowered at me with brownish grey eyes the color of stone.

"You are miss Elisabeth Jones?" He said in a slightly accented and suspicious voice.

"Um, yeah I'm Lisa," I replied, hoping he wasn't a kidnapper.

"I am Mr. Schofield; I was your grandmother's lawyer. Silvia Jones was her name?"

I perked up at my grandmother's name. She died a few months ago of cancer. "Yeah, that's her name. What are you doing here though? Did she have debt or something?" That was highly unlikely, though; she was quite rich.

"No," he said, slipping a small box from his pocket, "She left you this."

I took it from his palm. "What is it?"

"She instructed me not to open it. Before she died, she told me to give it to you on your next birthday."

I looked at the writing on it. It was purple, in Grandma's hand; 'To Lisa, from Grandma,' it said. I flipped it over, and on the back it said; 'Daylily'. I opened it up and took out a tiny, heavy, shiny brass key the size of a quarter. "What does it open?"

"I haven't the faintest," Mr. Schofield said, then spun around and walked off.

I sat in my room, fingering the key, and yelled for my sister Carley. When she came up the stairs, I told her about Mr. Schofield at the door just now, and about the odd key.

"What do you think it unlocks?" I asked.

"I don't know. It could be a room in her old mansion."

That'd be so cool, I thought. A secret room with a big surprise or something. My happiness wavered, "it could just be a keepsake. Like, for a necklace or something."

"Well, whatever it unlocks, if anything, it's bound to be in her house."

"Maybe a vault, or a chest. At the size of it it could be a jewelry box," I replied, "but we can't just go snooping around in there, It's owned by great uncle Bart." Bart was Grandma's closest living relative, and as no will was found, he had inherited her fortune and her house.

"Oh, come on. He'll be fine with it," Carley argued.

"Alright, fine," I gave in, "We'll do it tonight

« « «

We crept up to the old mansion by the coastline. The roar of the sea and the whispering of the wind were more than enough to cover our careful footfalls. The home that looked so quaint in our visits to grandma's for lunch, filled with sun and flowers with deep blue and white paint now looked dark and gloomy, paint peeling and flowers no more than brown crisps. The old manor loomed down at us from an overgrown yard. The wrought iron fences were caked with vines and the grass was a fourth weeds and turning yellow. We were distraught. We hadn't been here since she died, and I couldn't believe the condition it was in. Why had Uncle Bart left it like this? Well, of coarse he couldn't do the work himself, but he could have at least hired a groundskeeper.

We climbed the vines and iron bars, dropping down where the petunias once were as we had done on numerous visits. We snuck across the crisp lawn, the dying grass crunching underfoot. We crept up to the door just as a flashlight beam rounded the corner. I looked at Carley, and we slipped into the overgrown hedge, trying to make as little noise as possible. We stilled and peeked through the branches just as the silhouette of a man appeared in the wake of the light. It was too dark to him properly, especially against the bright, bluish, LED flashlight.

"Blast it!" I whispered under my breath before I could stop myself.

"Shh!" Carley elbowed me.

The pool of light swept the lawn, shadows twisting around on their axis' to watch him, and then the light rounded the corner along with the swirl of movement behind it.

"That was close," Carley sighed. "What was that blast it for?"

"Sorry," I said, "I just remembered that we forgot a flashlight."

"Aw, darn it! You're right. Let's take him out and steal his," Carley said.

"No way! Besides, it could be uncle Bart. Who else would be here this late?"

"Darn it. It could be a burglar! Makes sense, right? Huge, unprotected mansion, a mile from town. He didn't unlock the door, so he must be searching for an open window or something."

"He probably just dropped his keys in the grass," I said, but Carley was probably right.

"Well, that didn't look like Bart," she continued, "Where's your phone? We should call the cops."

"Blast it! I forgot it too."

"Aw, come on!"

"Sorry. I figured they probably have a phone in the house, and we could've just used the light switches, so I didn't think to bring them."

"Ugh. We'll just use the landline inside."

"Well, how're we going to get in? We should just call this off, go home, and tell Mom what happened. And call 911, of course."

"No way! He could be gone by then. Let's follow him, and if he finds a way in we'll go in and use the phone."

"Fine, but let's try the key on the front door first."

We walked up to the large maple door and tried the key. It didn't fit.

"Well, at least we tried," I said. I followed Carley around the house, just as we heard a sound, like rough on rock. We peered around the corner just in time to catch movement by one of the windows on the first floor, and a faint light that vanished quickly. We snuck up to the window and looked in. It was a guest room. The Australian one. Like all of the many guest rooms, it was furnished and painted after a country or region. The window was open, of coarse.

"I really don't think we should go in there, what with a burglar crawling around and such. We'll get shot!" I realized.

"Well, which is more important: our lives or a billion dollars?"

"Our lives! Well, maybe. But there's no way I'm going in there."

« « «

We looked around at the Australian room, and aside from its dustiness, it looked just the same as it did when we stayed there six moths ago. It was quite dark, though. I reached to flick on the switch, but Carley caught my hand. Right. Burglar. It would be a dead giveaway to our position if they saw someone turn on the light. I carefully slipped the drawer on the nightstand open and extracted the customary flashlight. A little habit of grandmas was to use a flashlight if she got up in the night. I traced the light around the room for signs of the burglar, but all I noticed was that the door was open. I peeked out just as a foot vanished around the corner at the end of the hall.

"He's probably looking for the master bedroom," Carley whispered, "that's where the money is most of the time. He's going toward a dead end, though, that should buy us some time."

Carley and I went the other way, and soon we emerged into the main hall. The crystal chandelier glimmered overhead, and the twin staircases swept up to an open doorway looking into the darkness of the second story hallway. Two more staircases led from the second story landing up to two more doorways on opposite sides, looking into the third story. The huge, two story stained glass window above the enormous front door cast red, green, and blue moonlight onto the dusty spruce-wood floor. The ceiling, miles above, was white with gray flowery designs, lined with gold embezzlement.

We took a side door into the grand dining room, and slipped through another door to the kitchen. Thankfully, there was no sign of the burglar. I wondered again what the key unlocked. There wasn't anything locked on the first floor, which we had explored every nook and cranny of, or the second floor, but the third floor might have something that we hadn't explored to death already, and the fourth floor, more like the attic, was off limits. So was the master bedroom, which was Italy themed, though grandma had let us in there quite a few times before. She didn't want us sifting through her stuff, as we would explore her house for hours on end, memorizing the layout of each floor. It was most likely in the fourth floor, though I wasn't sure I wanted to go up to a spooky, unexplored attic.

"Darn it!" Carley said, a little too loud. She continued softer, "The wire's been chewed through by mice! We'll have to use the phone in the study."

Ah, the study. Second floor. Large, windowed, spooky room. I grabbed two butcher knives from a drawer before we left, and handed Carley one, just in case. We snuck up the stairs to the second story and warily slipped into the dark hallway. We turned right and slipped across the red and brown carpets, and I was about to round the corner when a faint light caught my eye. I held Carley back and peered around the corner, and whipped right back in shock.

"He's right there!" I told Carley, "Around the corner right outside the study door at the end, and coming this way! He must've come up while we were in the kitchen."

"Did he see you?" Carley asked franticly.

"No, I don't think so," I said, "New plan. We use the phone in the master bedroom. Hurry!"

Carley and I ran to the third floor, but we shouldn't've made so much noise on the creaky steps, because soon we heard the burglar running down the hall behind us! Carley shrieked and we scampered up the stairs, the man barreling up in pursuit, gaining fast. I stumbled and dropped the flashlight, but we kept running. We ran through the third floor hallway in the faint light of the burglar's LED, whipped through the master bedroom door and slammed it behind us.

"That," I panted, a tremor in my voice, "was close."

We dashed over to the phone I the dark just as the door swung open. We forgot to lock it! We turned around and screamed in unison. He flicked on the light.

It was Mr. Schofield.

« « «

I calmed down a tad and said, "Mr. Schofield! We thought you were a burglar!" even though I knew what he was going to say next.

"Well, that's funny," He said as he slipped a gun out of his belt, "Because I am one." He pointed it at us.

"No!" we screamed, and we hugged each other all dramatically.

"Relax," He said, "I'll only shoot you if you try to run. Now, let's take a walk. And put down those knives."

We set them on the floor, not relaxed any more than we had been, and followed his directions with him in the rear, gun pointed at our heads, our hands in the air. He led us to the fourth floor, and I was surprised to see it was not exactly an attic. He illuminated the room with his LED, and gaped at the long hall, wide with paintings and gold embezzlement. Hickory doors with shiny brass knobs lined the walls, about twenty feet apart. Fancy tables and elegant chairs lined the walls, along with dressers and cabinets. A conga line of chandeliers designed like flowers and dripping with candles dangled from the ceiling on pulley systems, the rope attached to the wall on old rusty hooks that looked like they might break any second. An endless Persian rug stretched across the marble floor, and everything was covered in a thin layer of dust.

"Wow..." I gasped, and for a second I forgot that we were about to die. It was fancier than the rest of the house, but not too out of place fancy. I noticed that there was no light switch.

Mr. Schofield closed the door and stood in front of it. "Now Lisa and Carley Jones, you have until the break of dawn to find where that key fits. This is the only exit, unless you count the windows, which would be very annoying, as I would have to go all the way down and take the key from your bodies. In fact, why don't you give that to me, so we don't get any ideas. Find the lock and I will set you free. Don't find it and I will shoot you and find it myself."

"We'll need a light." Carley managed to say.

With great annoyance, Mr. Schofield tossed the flashlight into our trembling hands. We opened the first door and walked into a rusty old-fashioned bathroom. We looked around and headed out into the next room, which was a library.

"Man, these books are old!" I whispered, "They've got to be pretty valuable."

"Yeah," Carley said, "You know he's not going to let us go, we'll tell someone it was him."

I nodded. "We'll need to capture him somehow."

We devised a plan as we searched the rooms. I took a mallet from one room to use (don't ask me which room), and Carley unwrapped some rope from the chandelier at the end of the hall. She wrapped the end of it in a loop and set it on the carpet outside the last door, and held the middle of it as I posed ready with the hammer.

"We found it," I called.

I heard Mr. Schofield walking along the fat carpet with his sharp, slick shoes. As soon as he stepped in the rope, Carley pulled it tight wrapping it around his foot.

"Now!" She yelled.

I leaped out and smacked the hook on the wall with the hammer, then jumped out of the way as the chandelier came crashing down, flipping Mr. Schofield onto his back, hitting his head on the floor. The rope was long enough that his foot was only about two feet in the air. His gun flew out of his hand and skittered to a stop on the ground. He was out cold. We tied his hands and called the cops. Then we went back up to the fourth floor and searched the last of the rooms.

"We haven't found any keyholes," Carley said to me, "Maybe it was just a keepsake after all."

I stared at a picture frame of some potted daylilies. I sighed. Too bad. Well, at least we stopped a robbery, I thought. Then I remembered. Daylily! That's what it said on the back of the box!

"Carley! Daylily!"

She rushed over. We took down the painting and behind it was a secret cabinet in the wall. Taking the painting down, we crossed out fingers, and, I tried the key in the lock. To my glee, it slid it! I turned it slowly and opened the cabinet. Inside it was pitch black.

Carley turned the LED flashlight into the cabinet. Inside was grandma's will! The first line read:

Well done Lisa! And Carley, I knew you'd come along too. You solved my riddle! I know how much you two love puzzles. 

It went on to say who got what amount of money, certain furniture and possessions to be given to certain people, and then at the end it said: 

And of course, Carley and Lisa, to you I give my land, my house, and all remaining furniture not listed above. I'm sorry for keeping this floor off limits for so many years. It's so old I thought you might damage some of the things when you were younger, and I guess I sort-of forgot to let you in when you got older. Hopefully you'll modernize it a bit. It really isn't fit for living up here.

Your loving sister, mother, grandmother and friend,

Silvia F. Jones