Some Like It Hawk (33 page)

When I got back to the world, I was going to ask if the Shiffleys in charge of tunnel maintenance ever just sat in it thinking of all the various things that could go wrong and then doing everything they could to prevent them.

Back to the world. As if this wasn’t the real world. It didn’t feel that way when I crawled out of the tunnel into the tiny little cell.

I wanted to lie there and recover, but the sooner I finished my errand, the sooner I could go back and rejoin Michael and the boys. So I got up and knocked on the door.

“I didn’t know anyone was coming over.” Mr. Throckmorton appeared flustered, but not displeased. “Come in,” he said. “If you can pardon the mess.”

“There’s someone else coming over,” I said. “The private investigator who used to work for the Evil Lender. He’s helping us now.”

“I’ll leave the cell door open, then.” As he walked down the path to the main room, he was tidying things—moving a paper from one stack to another, pushing a file cabinet drawer shut, picking up a fallen paper clip. More than ever I had a sense that beneath the outer chaos there was an inner order that mattered deeply to Mr. Throckmorton. Every horizontal space might be piled with papers, but they were tidy piles, their edges neatly aligned. He placed the paper clip he’d picked up in a small glass jar on his desk, and I could see that he had three identical glass jars—one each for large, small, and colored plastic paper clips.

And when he learned my mission, would he consider me an unwelcome subverter of all that lovely order?

“Have a seat.” Mr. Throckmorton lifted a stack of papers from a chair, tapped them gently on the table to align them, and anchored them with a large binder clip—I could see now that there were also shallow boxes for small, medium, and large binder clips. Then he did the same with the rather larger stack occupying the table space immediately in front of me, although he used a large rubber band instead of a binder clip, and invited me to sit with a surprisingly gracious gesture.

“Would you like some tea?” he asked.

As Mr. Throckmorton fussed over making the tea, I suddenly realized that for all our focus on him over the last year, I’d barely given much thought to him as a person. My presence seemed to agitate him, but not unpleasantly.

Mr. Denton appeared, still completely encased in the gorilla suit, but I could tell from his body language that he hadn’t enjoyed the trip over. Only his eyes showed through the eye holes, and they were definitely a little wild.

“Horace?” Mr. Throckmorton asked. “I thought you’d gone down to Richmond.”

“He has,” I said. “This is Mr. Stanley Denton. The PI.”

Denton raised one paw in a weak salute, and then buried his face in his paws, taking deep breaths as if to calm himself.

Curious. I’d been embarrassed about the anxiety I felt about going through the tunnel, and did my best to disguise it. But now that I thought about it, I realized that to my knowledge fewer than fifty people had ever completed a trip through the tunnel, and fewer than half of those had repeated the experience. And since the earthquake, the number of people willing to brave the tunnel had shrunk down to Rob and a handful of Shiffleys. If the chief or Randall had ever done it, it wasn’t on my watch. Maybe they weren’t entirely disappointed that urgent town business had kept them from making this trip. Should I share this with Mr. Denton? Lie to him and say that going back was much easier? Congratulate him on being one of the proud, the few, the tunnel rats?

I didn’t actually think he’d appreciate any of those things. So I just said, “It’s strenuous, hauling yourself along in that cart. Just rest until you get your wind back.”

“Tea, Mr. Denton? It’s Earl Grey today.”

Denton shook his head without even lifting it from his paws, and uttered a muffled, “No, thanks.”

“And what will you take in yours?” Mr. Throckmorton said, turning back to me.

“Plain is fine.”

“Very sensible.” Mr. Throckmorton was nodding his approval. “Silly to spoil the taste of a fine tea. Now what can I do for you … I’m sorry—should I call you Ms. Langslow, or Mrs. Waterston?”

“I answer to either, or you can just call me Meg,” I said.

“Then you must call me Phineas!” He beamed as if we had just accorded each other rare and important honors. “Now what can I do for you? Because I know very few people make the difficult journey here without a good reason.”

“Yes, not enough people make the effort.” Why was I suddenly envisioning Mr. Throckmorton—or Phineas, as I resolved to learn to call him—as the noble sentry at a lonely and dangerous outpost? “I’ll try to do better in future. But for now, I’m afraid I’ve come to make a difficult request.”

He composed his face into a serious expression.

“I need to check out a document,” I said.

“Why, that’s not difficult at all,” he replied. “I’d be happy to show you any document you like.”

“I mean check it out in the sense that one checks books out from the library,” I said. His face stiffened a little at that.

“I know it’s not common,” I said. “But surely there must be an official procedure for conveying a document from the archives to someone who is authorized to use it.”

“Yes … but it’s all…”

“Unusual,” I said. “Perhaps even unique.”

“Not quite unique,” he said. “Unusual. But what’s the reason for the transfer? What’s the document?”

“The original copy of the loan document between Caerphilly and the Evil Lender.”

Phinny stood frozen for a few very long moments. Denton lifted his head as if suddenly interested, now that we’d cut to the chase.

“But why?” he asked. “What’s so important about the original? I would offer to make you a copy, although I can’t see the point. There must be dozens of copies floating around.”

“Yes,” I said. “But they’re not all the same. Someone connected with the Evil Lender has been trying to forge a new version of the contract. We haven’t seen the full text of the forgery yet, but I bet when we do, the terms are going to be a lot less favorable to Caerphilly than they are in the real contract.”

“But what good are the forgeries unless—”

He stopped, and turned suddenly pale.

“Exactly,” I said. “We believe the copy here in the archives is the last surviving signed original of the real contract. We were incredibly lucky that it was down here while we didn’t know about the danger.”

“In that case, why not leave it down here?” he said.

“Because now the lender also knows it’s here,” I replied. “In fact, they probably knew well before we did. And they’ve been taking steps to get at it. We have no idea if Ms. Brown was killed merely to frame you, or if she, perhaps, was aware of the scheme and tried to stop it. We need to get that document to a secure location unknown to the Evil Lender—where our lawyer can produce it to prove any new versions of the contract are false.”

“You don’t think I can protect it!” He drew himself up, and I found myself suddenly reminded of Spike facing down a neighbor’s German shepherd.

“I think you’ve done a great job of protecting it so far,” I said. “But these people are unscrupulous. They’ve already killed once to get it. As long as it’s here, not only will it be in danger, so will you. And anyone who comes near the courthouse.”

I could see the talk of danger was only stiffening his spine.

“In fact,” I went on, “the entire archives could be in dire peril. These people will stop at nothing! Who knows what they’ll do.”

Dire peril. Had I gone a little too far with the melodrama?

No. Phinny studied my face for a few moments, then nodded.

“To protect the archives,” he said. “Yes. You’ll convey it to the county’s attorney personally?”

“If you like,” I said. “Actually, he should be here in the morning to take it, and Randall is arranging a highly secure place for it tonight. I’ll personally see it stowed there.”

“All right then,” he said. “Done.”

“Well, there is the small matter of finding it,” I said.

“No problem,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, I may have a little surprise for you.”

He sipped the last of his tea, stood up, walked briskly to his desk, and pulled out a large brown mailing envelope, which he handed to me. Then he opened a nearby file drawer and pulled out a folder.

“The original contract,” he said. “Take the whole folder; it’s tidier that way.”

While I tucked the folder into the envelope, he had pulled out a piece of cardboard and was writing on it.

“There we are,” he said. “Name of the file. Today’s date. Purpose: use by attorney. And your name. I put the full name, so there are no questions. Sign here, please.”

I signed the cardboard, which was halfway filled already with the names of other files checked out by other people. Evidently letting files leave the nest wasn’t completely unfamiliar to Phinny.

Denton had risen and stood watching. He was still wheezing slightly. He hadn’t looked that out of shape. Maybe it was stress—probably induced by claustrophobia. I made a mental note to have Dad check him out when we got back on the other side.

“But that’s not all!” Phinny said. With the air of a magician unveiling a dazzling new illusion, he led us through the room to one of the cells.

“The former town attorney’s files,” Phinny said, pointing to several stacks containing perhaps a dozen neatly labeled cardboard banker’s boxes. “When everyone else evacuated the courthouse, he left all his papers behind, and I offered to take them in, for safekeeping. And shortly after that he was fired, and then the mayor was recalled, and—well, they’ve been here ever since.”

“Do you know if Hamish had a copy of the contract, too?”

“I believe I recall seeing one,” he said. I suspected that meant he knew precisely where it was. And I was right. He ran his fingers down the box labels until he found the one he wanted, and pulled out the folder within five minutes.

“Here you are.” He handed me the file folder and pulled out another cardboard placeholder.

This folder was a lot thicker. I flipped it open and began leafing through the contents.

“Now this is interesting,” I said. “He does have another signed copy of the real contract. He also has two other contracts. One signed, one not. “

Phinny took the folder from my hands and leafed through it.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “This second document is the original loan contract Mayor Pruitt presented to the county board. They felt several clauses were dealbreakers, and told him they’d only sign it if he brought them a version without those clauses. Which he did. That’s the version they signed.”

“And what’s the third one?” I asked.

Phinny studied the third contract both through and over his glasses. Then he set it beside the second contract and began flipping the pages of each.

“It appears to be a signed version of the unfavorable contract,” he said.

“Signed by the county board.”

“Well, no,” Phinny said, looking over his glasses at me. “In my job, I tend to see a lot of documents with the board members’ signatures. These aren’t even good forgeries.”

“But if you sent these to someone who wasn’t familiar with the board members’ signatures, they’d have no idea it was a forgery.” I said. “He faked it. The mayor.”

“Ex-mayor,” Phinny corrected.

“Right. They wouldn’t sign, so he faked their signatures—he probably had plenty of examples in his files.”

“Incredible,” Phinny said. “And so obviously a forgery.”

“It’s not really such a bad forgery,” I said. “Most people don’t know the board members’ handwriting as well as you do. But I bet a handwriting analysis will back you up. We don’t just have proof of the real terms of the contract—we’ve got evidence of a crime. We definitely need to get all these to a safe place.”

“They’ve been in a safe place all along,” Phinny said softly. “A secure, climate-controlled environment in which the only people aside from myself who have had access have been persons well known to me and under my close supervision.”

“I stand corrected,” I said, throwing up my hands as if in surrender.

“But you’re right,” he said. “We need to get these out where Chief Burke and Mr. Hollingsworth can use them.”

“I don’t think so.”

We turned to see that Denton was pointing a gun at us. The seams of Horace’s gorilla suit had been ripped open at the wrists, and his hands were sticking out. The right one was holding the gun. The left one was fumbling at the gorilla head.

Then he pulled the headpiece off and I could see it wasn’t Denton.

It was Hamish Pruitt.

Chapter 42

“Oh, dear,” Phinny gasped. He looked as if he might faint.

“Into that small room over there,” Hamish said, pointing slightly with the gun. “Now.”

He was indicating one of the cells—one that wasn’t quite as chock-full of file cabinets as the others and had a key stuck in the lock.

Phinny stumbled obediently into the room. I followed more slowly. In fact, I lingered outside the door until Hamish snapped at me again.

“Inside!” he said. “This place is pretty well soundproofed, you know. Would you rather be locked up while I escape, or dead?”

I couldn’t see a way out of it, so I stepped into the room and sat down on a box of files. Phinny was already sitting on a nearby box, curled up as if trying to take up as little space as possible. Hamish slammed the door and I heard him turn the key in the lock.

“Now hand me your cell phone,” he said.

I blinked at him as if I didn’t understand.

He raised the gun, and I gave in. I handed the cell phone out through the barred window in the door.

He threw it on the desk beside Phinny’s computer and disappeared from view. I heard sounds of rummaging elsewhere in the basement.

“What’s he doing?” Phinny asked.

“No idea,” I said.

Phinny got up and came to peer with me through the cell door window.

Hamish reappeared. He had taken off the gorilla suit, revealing that he was wearing a navy blue track suit. He was carrying a can of kerosene. He unscrewed the cap, tossed it aside, and began pouring a trail of the liquid around the base of some of the nearer filing cabinets.