Deprivation House (14 page)

“Don't even think about it, Joe,” Frank warned as I started toward a massive, freestanding closet thing. A wardrobe, they'd call it in England.

“We're detectives. We can't pass this by. It'll only take a second,” I said in a rush. “And I'm not leaving until I look, so give me a boost.”

Frank came over and made a stirrup out of his hands. I put one foot in and he launched me up. Good thing the wardrobe was so heavy, or I'd have knocked it over. I shoved myself to my feet and sidestepped over to the beam. I probed it gently. I definitely didn't want to bring it down if it turned out to be moveable.

A panel in the bottom of the beam slid free—and fat stacks of money plopped down on the floor. I was shocked, and I was the one who thought the beam might have been used as a hiding place.

Frank stared at the cash. “There's a ton of money here,” he said.

“Now what?”

“I don't get how this fits in with the case so far. But it's got to be important.” Frank started gathering up the stacks and tossing them to me. “Let's put it back for now. We don't want anyone to know the money has been discovered.”

“I couldn't maybe keep one stack?” I asked as I slid the panel back in place. “I'm sure no one would notice. I doubt they count it every night.”

Frank ignored me. I wonder if there is a
Bonehead's Guide for Developing a Sense of Humor.

We kept the anticamera on even when we'd made it out of the house, flashlights in hand. We didn't know exactly what the surveillance situation was outdoors. There were definitely some cameras positioned around the pool, but it would take hundreds of them to observe all the land that was part of the villa property.

“The big thing tomorrow is a lawn mower race. We're each going to mow sections of that field where we did the dog wash,” Frank explained. “But there's going to be an obstacle course first. We'll have to make it through to get to the mowers. The fastest people will get the best ones.”

We began working our way around the course, checking everything. Ropes. Inner tubes. A trampoline. A zip line. Crawling tubes. A balance beam. An inflatable wall.

“I can see how somebody might get hurt trying to make it through the obstacles too fast. But I didn't see any signs of sabotage,” I said when we reached the end.

“Me either. All we have left to go over are the mowers. I think if we don't find anything, we should make another pass in the morning.” Frank's face was troubled. “I think whoever sent the e-mail was serious. That doesn't mean they'll actually kill anybody. But they'll do something.”

“We should do a check as close to go time as we can,” I agreed. We started across the field to the row of mowers at the far end. “It will probably have to be before breakfast. It's going to be hard to get away after that. We have the cameras under control, but we can't keep nine other people—plus maybe Veronica and some PAs—from asking questions about where we're going.”

Frank nodded. “Let's get started on these. You might need a tetanus shot if you touch that one, but that's probably it.” He pointed toward a rusted-out push mower.

“Oh, man, this is the one I wanted Dad to get. It has some muscle. Twenty-six horsepower,” I said. I ran my hand over the garden tractor's deep red paint job.

“Our lawn doesn't need twenty-six horsepower,”
Frank replied. “It only needs the power of the Hardy boys. Isn't that what Dad said when you asked him to buy it?”

“Pretty much.” I was going to get a look at the engine. Not because I wanted to. I had to. For the mission.

“Frank, come over here,” I said.

“No time. I'm checking this one,” he told me.

“Forget it! I found what we're looking for.” My stomach twisted into a knot as I thought about what could have happened. “There's a bomb wired to the ignition.”

Frank dashed over. “Let's get it out of there.” He leaned over the engine and studied the bomb's connection to the mower. “I think—”

He stopped abruptly as a beam of bright white light slashed across his face. I squinted as it cut across mine.

“Come away from there immediately,” a familiar voice ordered. Veronica.

“We found a—,” I began to explain.

“I have no interest in hearing anything cheaters have to say,” Veronica told us as we walked over to her. “Why do you think you deserve an early look at what the competition entails? It's completely unfair. You're both out.”

She raised a walkie-talkie to her mouth. “Mitch,
I found them on the field. I want you to come and take them to your quarters.”

“Veronica, it's very important—,” Frank started.

Mitch arrived. “Take these two to your quarters. Stay with them. Don't let them out of your sight. They aren't slinking home until tomorrow. I want footage.” Veronica turned on her heel and left the three of us standing there.

Frank turned to Mitch. “She wouldn't listen to us. You need to. There's a bomb in that mower.”

Mitch immediately went over and looked. He let out a long, low whistle. “Things are getting way too intense around this place. I just wanted to make a little money.”

“You're going to tell her, right?” I asked.

“Definitely. Then I'm going to stay far away while somebody who knows how to deal with those things gets that bomb out of there,” he answered. “But look, I've got to take you over to my place. Veronica is going to flip if I don't. Then nobody will be able to talk to her.”

He led the way to a little guest cottage out of sight of the main house. “Pretty sweet, huh?” he said. “There are a few of these places scattered around, and I got assigned one.”

Mitch unlocked the door and ushered us inside. “I'm not going to lock you in or anything. But stay
put until Veronica recovers and I talk to her. Make yourselves at home. I have some drinks in the fridge. There are some glasses in the cupboard. To living through it, right?” He gave us a half salute and left.

I sank down on the blue-and-white-striped sofa. Frank took the armchair across from me. “I can't believe she wouldn't listen.”

“She practically stuck her fingers in her ears. She's a nut job,” I agreed. “At least Mitch is cool.” I shoved myself to my feet. “I think I am going to get something to drink. You want one?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Frank said.

I found the kitchen, grabbed some sodas, decided to skip the glasses, and headed back to the living room. Frank didn't even complain that I was making him drink out of the can. That's how wiped he was.

I raised my can toward him. “To living through—”

“Whatever it is,” Frank joined in, finishing our toast. Suddenly he sat straight up. “We came up with that our first day.”

“Yeah.”

“Joe, that was before Mitch started working on the show,” Frank said.

“Maybe he saw some film from that day,” I suggested. “That's probably part of his job, searching through it for usable stuff.”

“But they didn't get any outdoor footage the first day. There was some technical mess-up,” Frank reminded me.

“Right. That PA said something to Veronica about it, and Veronica practically turned her into an ice sculpture.” I took a slug of soda, my mind whirling. “That means Mitch was there the night before Leo died. He was there the night before there was any way he could have known there was a job opening.”

“Unless he knew he was going to kill Leo,” Frank said.

“For a job?” I shook my head. “That's extreme.”

“Maybe that wasn't the motive. Maybe he didn't kill Leo. All I know is that I don't want to sit around waiting for him to come back.” Frank stood up.

“I'm with you, my brother.” I drained my soda and headed out the door.

The night was dark, but everything went darker.

Everything went black as pain exploded in the back of my head.

And I was falling. . . .

A
ll I knew at first was that I definitely wasn't at home. Then I realized I shouldn't be at home. Then I realized I wasn't in my bunk bed in the villa. And then I basically remembered everything and realized I was lying on the floor of what I thought was Mitch's place. I was tied back-to-back with somebody I assumed was Joe, and as I blinked, I realized daylight was coming in through the window. Whoa, it was already morning? We'd been out all night?

Maybe it had something to do with the fuzzy feeling in my head—my eyes scanned the room, and sure enough, landed on a syringe in the corner.

Mitch must have pumped us with sedatives after
knocking us out, to keep us out of play for all this time.

A pair of boots clomped by. “You're awake,” Mitch said. “Sorry I had to knock you guys out. But I told you to stay in the cabin, and less than five minutes later, you come sneaking out. You didn't give me a choice. You've seen how Veronica is.”

Okay, so Mitch didn't hear us talking about him,
I thought. That was something. We had a little bit of an edge as long as he didn't know we were suspicious of him. It wasn't much of an edge, though—since we were tied up on the floor.

“Yeah, Veronica.” I cleared my throat. “We didn't want to deal with her. Weren't trying to get you in trouble.”

“Well, you would have,” Mitch shot back.

As he rattled off a list of what Veronica would have done to him if we'd managed to escape, Joe started up a silent conversation with me. Tapping out a Morse code message against my side. It took awhile for him to dot-and-dash out what he had to say: “Big mirror near me.”

I remembered a big mirror in Mitch's living room. “So?” I Morsed back.

“Roll hard. My go,” Joe Morsed. Out loud, he apologized to Mitch.

I didn't know what Joe's message meant exactly.
But it involved rolling on Joe's signal. Rolling toward the mirror, I was pretty sure.

Joe coughed loudly. “Something reeks over here,” he said. “It's foul.” He gave me a nudge.

“Let's not talk,” said Mitch. “I'll just turn the TV on while we wait for Veronica to get here. She wants to get some footage of you with the other kids. Their faces when they hear you were cheating and all that.”

I thought I knew where Joe had been going with the “foul” comment. I remembered Kit teasing Mitch about smelling foul not too long before the dog-washing contest. Joe was thinking Mitch had something to do with giving the bad-smelling jimson-weed to Captain.

“It does smell nasty. Maybe you aren't getting a whiff up there, but it's like jimsonweed,” I said as Mitch started flipping channels.

Bringing up the jimsonweed was a risk. Right now, Mitch didn't realize we were suspicious of him. But mentioning the jimson could tip him off. Or he might just think—and this is what we were hoping—that we honestly just smelled the jimson in his place and didn't have any idea jimsonweed had been fed to the dog.

“It grows around here. I bet you tracked some in,” Joe said. “You've got to let us up.”

“Uh, I don't think so,” Mitch told him.

“You don't get it,” Joe went on. “Most people think that stuff is only poison if you eat it. But if it releases spores in an enclosed space, it can kill you too. Just more slowly.”

“We have our noses right in it. We have to with the way it smells down here,” I added.

“Do you know the symptoms, Frank?” Joe asked.

I went into the rhyme. “Mad as a hatter, red as a beet, dry as a bone, the heart runs alone.”

“I'm definitely dry. It's like I have no saliva in my mouth,” Joe said. “And heart runs alone—that's like fast heartbeat, right?”

“Yeah. I can feel mine going right now.”

I thought it was possible, at least a little possible, that Mitch might be feeling some of those symptoms right now. Not because he was somehow getting jimsonweed poisoning through the air. That wasn't possible.

But dry mouth, red face, accelerated heartbeat—those were all also symptoms of anxiety. And Mitch had a couple of things to be anxious about. He might be thinking he could have maybe brought a little jimsonweed into the house accidentally. That might be making him nervous. Or he might be remembering how he primed the Newfie to attack Joe. That would do it too. Maybe he was thinking
about what he did to Leo—if Joe and I were right about that. Yeah, he had a few reasons to be a little twitchy.

Besides, if you talk about symptoms, some people start to feel them. “I can't see if my face is red,” Joe said. “Mitch, dude, just mop the floor or something. Seriously, I don't want to be sucking jimson into my body.”

“Veronica isn't going to be happy if we're dead when she comes out here,” I added.

I heard Mitch take a step toward us. Or maybe toward the mirror.
Yeah, Mitch, you want to look in the mirror. You want to see if your face is red. You don't want to end up poisoned, do you?
I thought.