Under the Boardwalk (17 page)

He unfolded the ladder and leaned it against one of the walls so it reached the trap door. "He might have known it was here."

Another point against Tom Robles. They were adding up.

"You ready?"

She nodded. "But you can go first. I'm brave, not stupid."

Kyle climbed up the ladder and pushed up on the trap door. It fell back with a creak of rusty hinges and a bang as it hit the floor above. He disappeared into the hole. She heard his heavy steps on the floor, and a shuffling noise.

"Kyle?" she called up.

He stuck his head through the door. His hair and shoulders were covered with dust. "You're not asthmatic, are you?"

She shook her head. "That bad?"

"Come see for yourself."

When she stuck her head through the trap door she did see: the high gabled windows let in a pale light that cut through the clouds of dust in the air. He helped her through the door and to her feet.

"How big is this place?"

"Same size as downstairs. A few thousand square feet."

"Don't you Madrigals believe in garage sales?" They were surrounded by junk in piles higher than Hallie's head.

"Nope," he said. "We've got stuff that dates back to the conquistadores in the barn."

She stood on tiptoes to try to see over a tarp-covered object that blocked her view. "Is it all this cramped?"

He peeked over the pile from his higher vantage point. "Yup. It looks like it."

"Kyle?" She moved closer to him. "How can you be sure there's nobody up here?" she whispered.

"Don't be scared," he murmured. He started to put an arm around her, but put it back down by his side instead. "The police made a very thorough search this morning. And the place has been locked since."

Hallie straightened her shoulders. "Then there's nothing to be scared of." She lifted up a corner of the nearest tarp. Underneath was a battered bumper car. "So what exactly are we looking for, anyway?"

Kyle shrugged his shoulders. "I dunno. Anything out of the ordinary, I guess. Something Joe might have missed." He looked over Hallie's shoulder at the bumper car. "Piece of junk."

He squeezed his way past it, then reached a hand back toward her. "Can you make it?"

She grabbed his hand and squeezed gingerly through the narrow space after him. She bumped into a cardboard box and it tipped over, taking other boxes with it. A dusty pile of rubber bats spilled onto her head. She screamed.

"It's okay, it's okay," Kyle said. He pulled her close, and brushed the bats off of her. "Don't be scared."

She leaned against him, laying her head against his chest to listen to his heartbeat, like she had the first time she'd met him. He ran his hand over her hair. This was habit-forming, she realized. Every time she got scared she found herself looking for Kyle's arms to hide in.

"When I find this guy I'm going to have to kill him," he muttered.

"Mmm hmm," she agreed, then pulled away to look at him. "Like Rambo, eh? Machetes at ten paces? A duel to the death?"

He pulled her close again. "That's right. He hurt's mine, I hurt him."

"You're too articulate to play Rambo," she murmured into his shoulder.

He grunted in response.

She snuggled closer. She could get used to this side of him, she thought. He'd handle the scary stuff and she'd be the helpless female.

She pulled away from him abruptly and shook her head. Not helpless, not ever again. "I'm fine," she said firmly. "Let's go on."

"I'm not sure there's much point," he said. "I don't think this makes a very good vantage point for attacking anybody below. There's hardly room to breathe up here." He lifted a second tarp, kicking up more dust. They both coughed.

"Not to mention hardly any air to breathe," Hallie said.

Kyle lifted off another tarp and then dropped it back over before Hallie could look. "Nah," he said when she tried to look around him to see. "It's a haunted house reject, you don't wanna look."

"I'm supposed to be facing my fears here, remember?"

He obligingly lifted the tarp. It was a green scaly thing about eight feet long lying on its side, with claws that seemed, underneath layers of dust, to be dripping blood.

"Ugh. What is it?"

"I think it's supposed to be the Creature from the Black Lagoon."

Hallie leaned over to examine it. "What were they thinking, making something like that for little kids to see?"

"It's not half as bad as today's video games. Besides, in the old days, amusement parks were more for adults than for kids—if it was too tame the grown-ups would get bored. The Haunted House was originally a ride to scare adults."

She stepped back and he dropped the tarp over it again. "Let's see what other buried treasure we've got."

Two tall tarp-covered objects flanked them. They each grabbed hold of an end of the nearest tarp and lifted it off.

"There's your King Kong," he said. "Wanna hide behind me?"

She shook her head. "Ah, he's cute. She rubbed a hand over it. "Real fur. It's an old one. You guys sure have a thing for King Kong."

"This place goes back to the 1920s. King Kong was big stuff in those days."

She craned her neck back to look at the beast. "He's still pretty big stuff. What's he doing up here?"

Kyle looked him over. "Well, most of this junk is stuff that got outdated and replaced with newer models, I imagine. This guy doesn't look like he has any moving parts, so he probably got replaced by that mechanical guy in Tom's office. Tom's guy lost his arm a few years ago, so he got dumped for the one that's downstairs now. It has a bigger range of motion."

"Thanks for the history lesson."

"I do sound like the kids." He looked wistful, then mad. "Well, this little walk down memory lane is getting us nowhere."

Hallie put a hand on his arm. "Let's keep looking." She lifted the tarp opposite King Kong. She jumped back when she saw a face staring back at her, then laughed. It was her face reflected in glass. She pulled the tarp all the way off. "Wow." It was a large machine with a big glass window in the center, surrounded by painted scenes of the beach and mountains. Kong loomed behind her in the glass's reflection. She glanced back over her shoulder. It was as tall as the gorilla was, maybe seven or eight feet.

The glass had a huge crack that ran from top to bottom, and behind it, she could see a jumble of what looked like broken pipes and even a snare drum. At the top the word "Wurlitzer" was painted in swirling letters.

"March 11, 1933," she said.

"What?"

"The top story in the newspaper clippings. On March 11, 1933, an earthquake destroyed the band organ and Mayor Madrigal vowed to replace it before summer. I'll bet this is it."

Kyle nodded. "Yeah. It would be outdated now, anyway. I think these need to be tuned regularly. An iPod's less trouble, and just as loud."

Hallie remembered the raucous music at the carousel. "You say loud like it's a good thing."

She ran her hand over the frame around the glass. It was painted in multicolored swirls. "It's beautiful," she said. "It must be a collector's item."

"Everything here's a collector's item, I suppose. Even broken, I suppose some collector would probably pay a few grand for it. We could auction a lot of this off, but the kids—" he stopped.

"They wouldn't let you," she finished.

"Yeah."

"Hey," she said. "You don't suppose there's something valuable in here? Something they found?"

"Do you know how heavy this junk is?"

"But you said there was a block and tackle for getting stuff in and out of the attic."

"Still looking for the Maltese Falcon?" He shook his head. "You'd have to be a pretty dumb thief to try to steal a broken-down band organ. Any crook with half a brain would be breaking into hotel rooms and stealing tourists' cameras and computers—and those things would be a lot easier to sell at a flea market."

"I suppose," she acknowledged. "But I keep thinking there has to be an explanation for everything that's happened—and a hidden treasure would be a logical place to start."

Kyle sighed. "I agree. There is a logical explanation. I'm sure there is. And we'll find it. But a few thousand dollars isn't motive for kidnapping or attempted murder."

"You've never gone hungry."

He looked startled, then thoughtful. "You're right. I guess I've led a charmed life. Up till now." He looked around. "You know, I don't think we're going to find any clues to the guy who attacked you up here. It's obvious now that he couldn't have used this place as a vantage point—I don't think he'd be able to see downstairs very easily from here."

She nodded. "I guess so." She sighed. "I'd settle for just one big fat clue."

"Me too."

They squeezed their way back to the trap door, and went down the ladder.

"Look," she said when they got down to the main floor again. "The base of the ladder is resting right on the track. Is there any other trap door?"

"Nope. This is it."

"Then he couldn't have been upstairs. The ladder would've gotten knocked down the first time a car came by on the track. And even if he was Spiderman and could get up there without a ladder, he could hardly move around with all that junk in the way."

"Right." He sighed. "Another dead end."

~*~

CHAPTER SEVEN

When they got back to the rancho Chris was waiting in the driveway. "Any news?" he asked.

Kyle shook his head.

Chris handed Kyle the house phone. It was like the passing of the guard, Hallie thought. She thought of the people in the missing children's organizations. Some of their children had been missing for years. How did they go on? How would they go on?

Kyle shifted the phone back and forth in his hands and stared off into the distance. The afternoon wind off the coast picked up a little dust from the driveway and scattered it around them.

"You ready to give me a ride?" Chris asked Kyle. "I gotta be to work by five."

Kyle hesitated, then shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Come on," Chris said. "You're not going to start that again."

Chris turned to her. "You went to the park just now. Nothing happened to you."

"That's true," she said.

Kyle cut in. "You weren't wandering around by yourself," he said to her.

"That's true, too," she said.

"I'm not going to be by myself," Chris jumped in impatiently. "There'll be thousands of people there. I want to talk to more people about what's going on, not just sit around here doing nothing."

Hallie touched her throat, and she thought of how quickly she'd gone from investigator to victim the other day. "You'd have to be careful if you went. You don't want anything to happen to you."

"There's no sense taking the risk," Kyle said.

Chris set his jaw. "But you said before that the deputies are going to be there all evening. I'll be perfectly safe."

Kyle shook his head.

"I promise I'll stay on the main drag and won't wander into any places where there aren't lots of people around." Chris pressed his point home: "And I'll check in with the deputy every hour."

Kyle nodded slowly. "Every half hour."

"Every half hour. I promise. And I'll make sure Tom knows where I am all the time, too."

"You don't need to let Tom know," Kyle said quickly.

Chris looked confused.

"No need to bother Tom," Kyle added lamely. "Just keeping in touch with Joe Serrano is enough."

Chris shrugged. "Oh. Okay. So you'll give me a ride now?"

Kyle handed Hallie the phone. "Keep an eye on things for me?" he asked.

She nodded. "I'll hold down the fort."

He saluted. "I'll be right back, Colonel."

Hallie watched while Kyle and Chris got into the pickup and Chris rolled down the window. He looked so young and serious sitting there beside Kyle. Hallie put a hand on Chris's arm. "Don't go anywhere by yourself," she said to him. "Not even for a minute."

"I won't. I promise."

She watched them drive off down the hill until they were out of sight. She went back into the house. Now what to do? If only they could find some substantial clue; maybe then they'd be able to end this interminable waiting and wondering and get to the bottom of whatever was going on around here.

She wandered upstairs and found herself standing outside Zac's room. She gingerly pushed open the door.

The place was a still life of a typical teenage boy's room: the unmade bed, the piles of books and gadgets and clothes stacked on every available surface. The walls were covered in posters—of rock stars she realized she was too old to recognize, of the San Francisco 49ers' upcoming game schedule, of insiders' secrets for playing the latest online games—but also of less predictable subjects: the Spanish missions in California, trails taken by early settlers to the region, the shorebirds of Pajaro Bay.