“We can’t be too careful,” said Leo. “We’ll leave the money right on the counter. Tell me you don’t know where John keeps the keys.”

“Joe.” And of course I did. They were under the mat, though he probably didn’t even lock the doors. There hadn’t been a real crime in Moose Junction since some college kids vacationing here let a deer loose in Coontail’s.

“I’ll buy them,” I said. “I’ll tell him it’s for . . . a school project.” Mr. Linn flashed in my head: O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! Some old dead guy had said that once, and Mr. Linn repeated it whenever someone claimed their dog ate their homework. It’s better to be honest, he’d said, and face the consequences.

Well. Easy for him to say. He was an English teacher. His life wasn’t that complicated.

“In August,” Simone pointed out.

“Summer school! Look, digging up the time capsule won’t send us to jail. But breaking into a hardware store might,” I said. “Besides, security cameras? Hello?”

They both looked stumped at that, even though I highly doubted Joe had cameras in the store. He could build a bench or fix a roof but he still needed help sending text messages. He didn’t even take credit cards.

“Fine,” said Simone. “I say we go for Abby’s plan. I just don’t want them pinning this on Leo.”

“Done,” I said.

Leo handed over some cash, a few crisp bills that were larger than any I’d ever held in my life.

“Good luck, stargazer,” said Simone.

The two of them headed out back toward the dock, talking about some TV appearance Leo had booked for the fall. They had plans to take a boat out, which made me nervous. Leo said if he could find new planets he could probably operate a speedboat, but they weren’t really the same skill set. Whatever. Mom and Dad’s problem, not mine.

I was learning some things about Leo, more than you could find in a Google search. For starters, he was a person with secrets. That was okay by me; everyone has pieces of their life they don’t want to talk about. Sometimes at sleepovers Lex cried a little in the middle of the night and I’d never even asked her why. I have plenty of stuff I wouldn’t broadcast on a billboard. But Leo had never mentioned any family or friends besides Simone. He said he was “married to work,” whatever that meant.

He could also zone out in the middle of conversations. Earlier, when we’d been plotting our time capsule mission, Simone was going on and on about the exact timing of the eclipse. When we asked Leo his thoughts, he blinked as if he hadn’t even been in the room. He’d been thinking about the galaxy, he said. What about it, I’m not sure any of us knew.

Mom had actually become buddies with Simone. I would look outside sometimes and see the two of them chatting on the front porch of Eagle’s Nest, Mom usually talking and Simone nodding, occasionally bursting into laughter. I could see Mom chuckling and giving off “mm-hmms” while Simone ranted about Leo’s obsession with his coffee being a certain temperature, and Mom in return would go off about the reporters from Chicago who kept complaining about the sometimes-unreliable Wi-Fi. The other night, they’d even gone to the Green Lantern together. I’d spied on Leo through my telescope. He’d been busy with his own stars, testing out his different telescopes in the observatory. I couldn’t help but wonder how on earth the Star-Gazer Twelve had slipped from his grasp and wound up buried. How could you let something like that go?