Skull of the Zipa PREVIEW CHAPTERS by Chuck Chitwood (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📕

When we walked into the Style Shoppe, Courtney and her clones were gazing at themselves in the mirror after trying on the shortest skirts and highest heels. They laughed and giggled like they were trying to prove how much fun they were having. I put my head down, walked to a corner of the store, and found some dresses on the clearance rack.

I felt my father’s hand gently but firmly grasp my elbow. “I think the prettiest dresses are on the center rack over here. Let’s ask to have a look at those.” He nodded to the plus-size woman behind the counter wearing a pair of glasses on the edge of her nose. “Good morning, Marguerite. How are you?”

Marguerite grinned. “Dr. Green, so good to see you again. I haven’t seen you at the Chamber of Commerce lunches lately.”

“Yeah, I’ll try to make it next month if I get back from South America in time.”

Marguerite placed her hands on her cheeks and whispered, “Are there ancient treasures hidden deep in the jungle? Will you get to wear the hat I gave you? It would make you look so daring and bold like an action hero.”

“You know that’s just in the movies.” He smiled and brushed off the comment. “I’m just doing a little research at a museum in Bogotá. I’m meeting with one of my former students who’s a professor at the university down there. There’s something he’s been looking into for me. He thinks he may have some valuable information to help me find an artifact that’s been lost for years. But, you know I hate to be rude, Marguerite, but we aren’t here to talk about me. This visit is for Haddie. She needs an elegant dress for the prom.”

Marguerite looked at me grinned. “Of course, of course.” She patted my shoulder. “You know Haddie, I just love your father’s stories he regales us with a chamber luncheons. He’s just so adventurous and hunky, too.”

Hunky? My dad? She must be smoking something serious.

She motioned for dad and me to sit down on the fuzzy pink couch in the middle of the store then called out to her assistant. “Amber, if you’re not doing anything would you go get the new dresses out of the back, please.”

Amber, a young college dropout with a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder and a ring of some sort in her nose, was helping Courtney and her friends. I giggled inwardly when I saw the angry look on Courtney’s face when Amber walked away. I leaned and whispered into my father’s ear, “What are you doing, Mr. Hunky?”

“Shhh.” He put a finger to his lips. Suddenly, I realized every eye in the store was on my father, since he was the only man in the place. Then my dad raised his voice ever so slightly and said, “Marguerite, did you know my dear Hadassah got into Harvard?”

“Really? Wow, that’s terrific.” Placing her hand on my shoulder, she grinned from ear to ear. “You simply must come back when we get our new fall line in and let me get you ready for college, dear. They dress all preppy at those Ivy League schools. Plaid skirts, cardigans, penny loafers. Oh, it will be wonderful.”

“Thanks, but I’m not going to Harvard in the 1950s.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I felt a bad. But Marguerite just chuckled.

“Oh my, you have the wit of your father.” Marguerite placed her glasses on the tip of her nose as Amber made her way to the pink couch with an armload of dresses.

Dad continued, “You know what else?” His voice lowered as if sharing gossip or scandal. “Her date for the prom is none other than Chance Baker.”

Marguerite gushed. “The quarterback? Oh my, how wonderful.”

“So, we are looking for a special dress for Hadassah, Marguerite. Not a little cocktail dress you can pick up at the mall.”

Marguerite agreed and fussed with Amber sending her to the stock room three or four times. My father, ever the professor and never one to let a few minutes get away from him, opened his leather satchel and started reading his notes. Papers spilled out of an old notebook covered with coffee stains. I glanced the papers he was studying while Marguerite and Amber brought me dress after dress.

“What’re you studying now?”

“These are copies of ship’s manifests. Somewhere in these lists is a missing relic is mentioned.”

I tried to look interested but my dad could tell he was losing my attention. “You know, Haddie, most people, like Marguerite, think archaeology is always like an Indiana Jones movie, but most of the time, I’m in a library looking at old records, government documents, or ancient letters trying to find out what happened to some item. Trying to connect a sentence or maybe just a single word I find in a journal to old bank records can take hours or days. And most of the time I find nothing and have to start from square one again. But when I do make that connection it’s electrifying. It’s like being given the key to a treasure chest.”

Here we go again. The Indiana Jones thing. Just smile and nod. I can’t imagine him with a whip and fedora running through a jungle somewhere. Now my mom she could pull off a fedora with ease. But Dad is a bookworm. His office has always been filled with stacks of books with sticky notes attached to the pages. There are files stacked in varying heights around his desk. And photos of ancient treasures are pinned to corkboards on his wall. Every inch of his office screams bookworm.

I bought him a tablet for Father’s Day last year and showed him how to load all of his pictures and important files but what did he do with it? He loaded it with hundreds of blues tracks by musicians with weird names like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. I asked him why he didn’t want to use the table to help him and he said he liked getting his hands dirty, feeling the paper, and smelling the aroma of old books. Personally, I think modern technology scares him or maybe it goes against some archeologist code or something.

As an archaeologist, my father’s specialty is locating lost treasures. Wherever the ‘clues’ led him, is where he goes. He loves his job. In fact, I think he loves it almost as much as he loved my mom. If it hadn’t been for his work, he would have never been in the library where he met her when she was with her friends talking about what life was like growing up in Israel and how different it was in America as an exchange student. I think I heard that story at least a thousand times and he would always end it by saying my mom was his ‘best find ever.’

I was barely paying attention to what he said. But whenever he said something like Nazi or stolen or artifact, I’d go ‘mmmm’ or ‘uh-huh’. To be honest my attention was actually on Marguerite and Amber and the dresses they thought I should try on. Most of the time I’d nod ‘no’ to their suggestions without even trying on the dress.

But then my dad said something that caught my attention. “I hate to say it, Haddie but I don’t think we’ll make it back to Israel this summer.”

“What?” I stared at him. Going back to my mother’s homeland was something we always did. And since my mother had died, it made me feel closer to her somehow. I couldn’t imagine not going. “Why not?”

“Haven’t you been listening? There’s a lead in South America I have to track down before I can even think of going back to Israel. One of my former students stumbled across something dealing with two relics in the Museo del Oro in Bogotá . It’s a theory I’ve been working on for a while but I think the third relic in the set which had long been rumored to be lost or destroy was actually hidden by the Nazis in Colombia during the war.”

“Oh. So, let me guess we can’t go to Israel because if you find this third relic it’ll make a map leading to a lost treasure? Kind of like the old ‘follow the map to point ‘X’ then put a ruby in an ancient staff at the break of dawn and it’ll open a hidden passageway?’” I grinned knowing my dad hated any reference to Hollywood-style archeology. But it was fun to bug him.

He gave me his you’re being ridiculous face. “No. Honestly Haddie. Why do you always say things like that? It’s just important. Besides, we’ve been to Israel every summer for the last ten years. I’m sure your Uncle Ami will understand.”

“But…” When my father married my mother and she left Israel to live in the United States with him, he promised to take her back to her homeland as often as possible. Then, when I came along, it became more important to him. And after Mom died, our visits to Israel became more important to me.

Mom was from old city of Jaffa outside Tel Aviv. And when she was alive, we would stay with her Uncle Ami, whose name looks like a stylish way to spell Amy only it’s pronounced Ah-me, while my father would go off and dig at different sites. Sometimes she and I would take some time to travel in Europe – just the two of us - while Dad was busy. But my best memories are when my mom and I would do thing like buy scarves and shoes on Shenkin Street or sun bathe at the Dead Sea. And then there was Uncle Ami who would teach me the Israeli martial art form called Krav Maga at his studio just like he taught my mother when she was young.

“Haddie, it’s not a definite that we won’t get to Israel. If I find the information I need in the museum, my friend, Javier Quesada, can take me up the Orinoco River and I think I can track down a couple of leads based on some ship manifests I’ve been studying to find the relic.” He shook the papers he held. “It’s a longshot but I believe it wound up in a village in the highlands far away from the coast where the U-boats would’ve been hidden from view. If I’m right I shouldn’t be gone too long and maybe we can spend the rest of the summer at Ami’s place in Jaffa.”

I was about to reply but Amber stepped in front of me carrying a long sapphire blue dress that jumped out at me.

My father smiled as Marguerite handed me the dress and said that the hottest young actresses wore this designer at the Oscars. “Go on, dear, try it on. I’m sure it will look amazing.”

I took the dress and made my way to the dressing room, passing by Courtney and her cookie-cutter friends. I could feel her minion following behind me and spied them getting into a stall next to me. Then, just as I stepped into the dress I heard them talking. I knew she probably sent them in just to upset me. It worked.

“She is such a freak.”

“She’s like a giant and what’s with that hair?”

“Yeah, it’s like Medusa or something.”

“I know, right? Don’t look her in the eyes whatever you do.”

I sighed. At least they paid attention during the Greek mythology unit. I felt horrible when I stepped out of the dressing room. My head was down. My shoulders were slumped. And I stood there feeling utterly dejected