She followed the footprints and the smell of onions across the factory floor and out another door into a corridor. It was very dark there and Amanda had trouble picking out the prints. Unfortunately with her phone all gunked up she couldn’t use her light, so she had to squint and do the best she could.
It was slow going. She still couldn’t hear anything and the smell had disappeared. The corridor angled around and around. There were doors on either side, all closed and unmarked. A couple of times she thought the prints led inside one of them, but after bending down and checking carefully, she concluded that the men had proceeded straight ahead. But the sugar was sparser here and the prints were disappearing so she couldn’t be sure.
Just as the prints were becoming so faint that she couldn’t see them at all, Amanda found herself at the end of the corridor facing another door. There were two words written on it in shiny gold letters: Schola Sceleratorum. She had no idea what that meant. Schola. Scholar? School? Yes, that must have been it. This was some kind of school. In a factory? Maybe this was where the criminals trained their workers. What did sceleratorum mean? It sounded like some place where they burned dead bodies. Skeleton? A school to teach people how to cremate? That made no sense, unless these people really were Murder, Incorporated. Amanda shuddered. This whole experience was starting to resemble a horror story. That didn’t sound like Moriarty at all. He was much cleverer and more subtle than these people seemed to be, although that didn’t mean his descendants were.
She extended her hand and turned the knob. The door was unlocked. She pushed it slowly until she could see through the crack. What she saw on the other side was baffling.
There, walking through an archway at the far end of what looked like a foyer, was Nick Muffet! But that was impossible. How could he be here? Why would he be here? Had he learned something about the criminals and set off to find her? Was he in trouble? It didn’t look like he was. He was looking nonchalant, as if he belonged in the place.
Should she call out to him? What if one of the bad guys heard her and captured both of them? Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. It would be better to follow him and take him aside discreetly. Then the two of them could look for her father together. When she told him what was going on, assuming he hadn’t figured it out already, he was not going to believe it.
She looked around to see if anyone else was there. No one was, so she pushed the door open and tiptoed into the foyer. It was gorgeous, nothing like the factory behind her. Polished wood paneling, stone columns and floor, sparkling chandeliers. Actually, it looked a lot like Legatum.
She crossed the room as quietly as she could and followed Nick’s path. Then, when she’d stepped through the archway, she got another shock. There, straight ahead, was a hallway lined with lockers, and it was full of kids just like her. What in the world would a school be doing inside a factory, and why would kids be there at night? Was the cartel renting out space to make money? She ducked behind a huge urn and listened. All she heard was the sound of kids talking, laughing, and carrying on, just the way she did with her friends. And then one voice rose above the rest.
“Hey, get your mitts off me, Moriarty. You think you’re hot stuff, don’t you?”
Amanda peeked out. A pasty-looking blond kid was staring into Nick’s face with a look that could kill. Why did he call him Moriarty?
Suddenly Nick saw her and froze. His face went all red and he looked angry in a way she’d never seen before. He stared for a moment, then marched over to her, pulled her out from behind the urn, and said, “What are you doing here, Amanda?”
She nudged him and said quietly, “You know. Looking for my father. Tracking criminals.” Then louder, “What are you doing here, Nick?”
The pasty boy broke into raucous laughter. “Who’s your girlfriend, Moriarty?”
There it was again. What was wrong with that kid? Didn’t he know who he was talking to? Was this some kind of nickname he’d given Nick?
“You shouldn’t have come here,” said Nick, pulling her away rudely. “You’ve made a lot of trouble for yourself.” He took out his phone and punched in a number, then said, “We have a problem.”
“I don’t understand. Who are these people?” said Amanda.
“I thought you were so smart, Amanda,” he said, sliding the phone back into his pocket. “You figure it out.”
“Why are you talking to me like that?” she said, searching his face, which was looking decidedly un-Nickish.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” she said. She wasn’t used to feeling dense and didn’t like it. Maybe the stress of the day was dulling her mind.
“Don’t you know where you are?” he said in a particularly nasty way.
“Yes. I’m in some factory run by criminals who are trying to take over the UK sugar trade and are making weapons out of pink powdered sugar. What I don’t know is what you’re doing here and who these kids are.”
“Do you know what Schola Sceleratorum means?” he said. He pronounced the words in a peculiar way. Maybe he knew Latin and that was the ancient Roman way of doing it.
“Haven’t the faintest idea. What does it mean?”
“School for Criminals, Amanda. This is our secret school.”
“What do you mean ‘our’?”
“Do I have to shake you, stupid girl? You really are Lestrade’s descendant. This school is our Legatum. It’s where we’re trained to be the most cunning, successful criminals on earth. Say, you smell awful. Where have you been?”
“None of your business. That boy called you Moriarty. Why did he do that?”
“Because it’s my name!” His face twisted into a rictus of contempt.
“But the cook’s assistant—”
“My mother, Mavis Moriarty.”
“Wait. Are you telling me that you’re descended from Professor Moriarty?”
“Bingo.”
“But you’re Nick Muffet.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to think.”
And then it hit her. He wasn’t kidding. He really was a Moriarty. But if he was, why would he have been going to Legatum? OMG, he’s a spy! He was only nice to me so he could find out what we were all up to. He never liked me at all.
Of course. She’d been so stupid. Why hadn’t she seen it? From the moment he’d walked her into the orientation he’d never really shared anything with her. She’d been so blinded by all the attention he’d lavished on her she hadn’t noticed that he never volunteered anything about himself. Under duress he’d made up that story about his family, told her exactly what she wanted to hear, but that was it. If anything he’d engaged in massive misdirection, feeding her bits and pieces of misinformation, giving her the idea that he was noble, altruistic, and true. And she had fallen for it like a cocker spaniel for a chew stick. He was an actor. It had been easy for him. Slap to head.
This also meant, of course, that he was in on the whole sugar conspiracy. He’d known what the pink stuff was all the time. Known that the cook had hidden her stash in the secret room, known . . . that they’d hidden her father there!
It also meant that he knew about the weapons and was okay with them. There was nothing sweet about him. He was a cold-blooded killer. In fact he’d probably killed the cook himself. And the doctor. And Professor Pickle and the other teacher, for all she knew. And now she was trapped with him!
But instead of being afraid she was furious. “How could you do this to me?” she screamed.
“I only gave you what you wanted,” he taunted. “You seemed to like it just fine. You’re so easy, Lestrade.”
“What did you call me?”
“You heard me.”
Amanda stared at him as the awful truth hit her. “It wasn’t that Wiffle kid at all. You sent me that text. But you were with me when I got it. How could you—”
“Do you really think you can’t schedule a text to be sent later, Amanda?”
He was enjoying this. She was s
o angry she wanted to sic that monkey on him.
“You’re a monster!” she cried.
“I certainly hope so,” he said. “It’s my aim in life to be as badass as my ancestor. You know, Professor Moriarty. The genius.”
“I hate you!” she screamed. “And I’ll get you. You just wait, Nick, if that’s even your name. I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do.”
But Nick just laughed. Suddenly the whole hall was laughing at her. She was so mortified that she thought her knees would give way, but that didn’t stop the anger. She’d never been so furious, not even with her parents.
Suddenly she felt a pain in her arm. A tall, elegant man with salt and pepper hair and ice blue eyes had snuck up and grabbed her. She’d never seen eyes so mesmerizing. “You’re coming with me,” he said, pulling her away.
“Thanks, Dad,” said Nick.
“Dad?!” said Amanda. “You mean there are more of you?”
“Of course,” said Nick. “More than you know.”
“But—”
“Shut up,” said the elder Moriarty, “or I’ll shut you up myself.” He turned to Nick. “How did she know where we are? Did you give us away?”
A guilty look passed over Nick’s face. She’d never seen him like that before. It was unsettling. “No, of course not. I have no idea—”
“If I find out that you’ve been lax you know what will happen,” said the man.
Nick went red. “I didn’t. You know I wouldn’t.”
“I know nothing of the kind. Now get out of my sight.”
33
Trapped
The older criminal pulled Amanda into a classroom and shoved her onto a hard wooden chair. He grabbed some duct tape from a drawer—wasn’t it convenient that it just happened to be there—and secured her mouth, wrists, and ankles. Then he threw her bag across the room so hard that it hit a wall.
“Idiot Lestrades,” he said. “If we were able to defeat Sherlock Holmes, what chance do you people think you have? Your father thought he was so smart. What a fool. I should take you to him and show you how smart you really are, but there isn’t time. It doesn’t matter anyway. Soon this will all be over. Say, do you know that you stink? You should wash once in a while.” He eyed her with an expression so smug that it made her want to hit him, than and left the room.
She was so furious with Nick that she wanted to scream, but all she could do was make a sort of gurgling sound. On the other hand she kind of admired him, or she would have if she hadn’t been his victim. His ancestors were dashing. Of course he would follow in their footsteps. He must lead such a glamorous life. She wondered how her own might have been different if she’d been a Moriarty. It was obvious, wasn’t it? A life filled with intrigue and challenge, with limitless opportunity for creativity.
Except he was on the wrong side. No matter how exciting his life was he was still a bad guy. As much as she hated what her parents had done to her, hated the school, hated Lestrade and Holmes, she hated evil even more.
But that was all moot at the moment. Right now she had to get out of these restraints and away from these people, find her father, and get back home. Home. Surely the school wasn’t that. It never would be, and yet she’d just thought of it that way. How was that possible?
She had no idea how she was going to get out of this mess. Up to now she’d been lucky, but she couldn’t count on her luck holding. At this point in a movie, now would be the worst time, and then there would be a huge battle and the villain would be defeated and things would get better. But how could she make that happen?
At this point in a movie. Of course. That was it. Darius Plover had told her to trust the story. What had he said? The way to get to the cause is to determine the perpetrator’s motive and work backward. If you know why, everything else will follow. It was time for the everything else. Now that she knew the truth about Nick, she’d have to figure out his motivation all over again. But if she could do that, she might be able to find a chink in his armor, or the criminals’.
To say that the criminals’ motive was to make money was to be simplistic. You could make money by getting a job. Amanda couldn’t believe that they were all unqualified to work—Mrs. Moriarty certainly wasn’t—so there had to be another explanation. Of course in Nick’s case he was too young, so unless his family was experiencing financial problems, money probably wasn’t his motivation, or at least his primary one. Of course he might simply have been raised to be greedy. Some people were. But the original Moriarty wasn’t about that. Perhaps his descendants weren’t either.
No, Professor Moriarty had been prideful, arrogant, and contemptuous of anyone whose intellect wasn’t as well developed as his, which meant most people. Holmes had been an exception, of course. He was every bit as clever and intelligent as Moriarty, which had made them peers, and rivals. If these Moriartys were equally brainy, they might be similarly motivated to show how smart they were at every turn.
But what if they weren’t that smart? Or more to the point, what if Nick wasn’t . . . and knew it? What if he was insecure? She’d seen flashes of doubt once or twice when he’d stumbled in an academic exercise, but he’d been so quick to cover his gaffes that she wondered if she’d imagined it. But maybe he wasn’t so clever after all. Maybe he was just good at seeming clever.
She thought back to a day in logic class when he had messed up. He’d fallen into the most basic trap there was, and he’d been mighty embarrassed. He’d come up with a syllogism he swore was valid: “The person who committed the crime wasn’t in the national database. The national database lists people who have committed crimes. Therefore, this was the suspect’s first crime.” His reasoning was obviously fallacious. The suspect could have committed all sorts of crimes and not been caught, not been entered into the database. Nick should have been able to see that.
Yes! She was onto something, she was sure of it. Good old Nick Muffet might well be insecure about his place in the world and try to compensate for what he feared was a lower than Moriarty IQ. She’d seen it before, in some of the kids back in L.A. It hadn’t been about brains there. At home it was more about athletic prowess and attractiveness and how rich their parents were. But it had to be the same thing. If a kid felt inferior, he’d try to act as superior as possible.
But there was more to it than brains. Look at the conversation Nick had just had with his father. He hadn’t been such a big man then. Here was someone he couldn’t charm, who had power over him. Maybe he resented his father, a man who questioned his intelligence, abilities, and even his loyalty. That would have to make him hopping mad.
I’ll bet that’s it. And if that’s the case, I can use his weak points against him. Let’s say this is his internal problem. He’s running from his own inadequacy, so I’ll make him face it. I’ll turn him into such a bundle of neuroses that he’ll be paralyzed. Amanda was so pleased with herself that if she hadn’t had duct tape on her mouth, she’d have let out with a huge bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Of course she couldn’t do anything until she got free. She had seen a gazillion movies in which people had been tied up and managed to escape, and she mentally went through the possibilities. The fact that her mouth was covered made it more difficult because she couldn’t call out and trick one of the criminals into freeing her. But surely there were other options.
For some bizarre reason, her first inclination was to pull her thumb out of its socket and make her hand smaller so she could extract it from the restraint. This was a most unappealing alternative and she decided to make it a last resort. Maybe there was another way to shrink her hands or feet so she could pull them out.
One possibility was to make them colder. She couldn’t see a way to do that, though. There was no refrigerator or freezer in the room, not even an electric fan, and certainly no chemicals that would produce a cold effect, so that didn’t seem like the most viable idea.
The next alternative was to find something to cut the duct tape with. That seemed a much easier appr
oach. The fact that her hands were stuck behind her back was going to complicate any moves she might come up with, but there might be something in the room she could use. If she could just slip her arms around whatever it was and saw through the tape, she might free her hands.
She looked around. It was a run of the mill classroom, with desks and chairs and a lectern for the teacher, a large flat screen on the front wall, a radiator, and blinds over the windows, which she could swear were underground anyway. There might be something in the back of the lectern, but other than that Amanda couldn’t see anything that looked promising. You can’t saw through duct tape with a chair leg.
What else could she think of? If all else failed, she’d find a way to get to that lectern and look around the back, but there might be something better. She didn’t have any hairpins or barrettes and she wasn’t wearing any jewelry, not that that would have helped. If only there were a scissors or a knife . . . wait a minute. Her bag! There was a scissors in her evidence kit. If only she could get to where Nick’s father had thrown it.
Fortunately the man had been in too much of a hurry to bind her to the chair, so she could stand up and kind of shuffle. That strategy didn’t prove very effective, though. Each move took her only half an inch forward and made her unsteady. As she edged forward she lost her balance and started to fall. Fortunately at the last second she was able to twist toward a desk and fall against it with her side rather than splatting on the floor.
There had to be a better way. Maybe she could lower herself to the floor slowly and roll herself to her bag. Or she could jump. She thought jumping would be easier, so she bent her knees and pushed off. That seemed to work nicely so she continued jumping around the room, almost losing her balance again twice, until she was next to her bag.
Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set Page 27