Secrets of Harmony Grove by Mindy Starns Clark

both Rip and Charlie had drawn their weapons and were holding them at the ready, just in case. Seeing the looks on their faces, I decided that if there really was a creature out here somewhere, I wouldn’t want to be it right now. Just as quickly, I realized they needed to be careful. With other teams also working the grove, they could all end up shooting each other.
    “Let’s not be trigger-happy,” Mike said, as if he could read my mind. “We have other people out here, remember.”
    “We know, boss.”
    Wondering if any of those teams were nearby, I began to direct the beam of my flashlight toward the trees that surrounded us rather than on the path in front of us. As I did, I noticed something odd.
    “Wait,” I said, pausing on the path. Playing my beam along the ground around some of the trees off to one side, I realized I was seeing holes, dozens of holes that had been dug in the ground. “This isn’t right. Someone has been out here digging.”
    “Someone or some
thing
,” Rip said, moving gingerly toward one of the holes to take a closer look.
    The technician and Mike moved in as well, squatting to study them, and after a moment both agreed they could clearly see shovel marks. These holes had been made by a human, with a tool, and not by a creature. Mike stood up, looking at me.
    “Seems like your treasure-hunting theory was correct, Sienna. Probably what the folks across the street saw your ex-boyfriend carrying around out here was a shovel.”
    While it was certainly comforting to know that these holes hadn’t been dug by some beast, seeing them now certainly raised more questions than it answered. If Troy really had been out here in the grove searching for treasure, was it possible he had succeeded in his quest? Before he died, had Troy actually found our family’s mythical diamonds?
    As the technician took some photographs and our gunmen stood guard, I noticed that Mike was shining his light all around the area, looking for markers and then reading them. I joined him at one, a metal plate next to a tall, old oak.
    “What are you thinking?” I asked.
    “That there must have been a method to his madness. The grove is huge. Troy couldn’t have just gone digging at random. I’m thinking that there must be something right around here that indicates a Fishing Tree.”
    I helped as well, skimming the text on each plate I could find.
    “What do you think of this one?” Mike asked, pointing.
    It read:
    They set sails to the wind,
though as yet the seamen had poor knowledge of their use,
and the ships’ keels that once were trees
standing amongst high mountains
now leaped through uncharted waves
.
     
    “This is the closest one yet, given that it talks about ships and water,” he said.
    “True, but it doesn’t mention fish. Somewhere out here, there are at least two markers I can think of that are way more specific about fishing than this.”
    We weren’t far from the middle of the grove, and it struck me that perhaps the Fishing Tree was the name of the grove’s centerpiece, the delicate bay laurel that sat just on the other side of the bridge and was flanked by a circle of beautiful wrought iron benches. We kids had always called that one the Kissing Tree, but perhaps that was just our name for it and my grandfather called it something else. Certainly, it was the most significant tree in the grove, the one around which all of the others had been planted. If my grandfather had referred repeatedly to any one tree in his papers, it more than likely would have been that one.
    I explained my thinking to Mike, so once he and the technician had finished examining the area for evidence, he used his radio to call in a follow-up team and our little group pressed onward.
    “What do sailboats have to do with the story?” Rip asked as we went.
    “Yeah, and where were they going in that ship?” Charlie added.
    I explained that before the main point of the story—the part with Cupid’s arrows and the