It All Started...

by David W. Smith

  “Yes, yes, no problem.”

  “Very good.” Turning back to the group, he slowly walked in front of them. “Let’s get started then. Oh, Daniel,” he called over his shoulder, taking a sip of the lukewarm tea, “could you go bring the car around? I need to show Mr. Brentwood something later. Thank you.”

  Daniel stopped in his tracks and watched the backs of the three people as they entered the elevator that would take them to the third floor and the War Room. All three, as they turned to face the front of the elevator, avoided looking into his face—each for their own reason.

  His eyes narrow, Daniel gave a small smirk when his boss took another sip of his tea, grimacing at the bitterness, as the doors of the elevator closed them off from his sight.

  Lance tried to keep his mouth closed as the enormity of the room and its function seeped into his overloaded brain. Monitors. There were floor to ceiling monitors covering an entire wall of the room. A bank of telephones. An old-fashioned gold and ivory telephone set off to the side covered with a large glass dome. Copy machines. Fax machines. A holographic map of Disneyland with certain pinpoints blinking red—including the points of the quest from Walt’s diary that he and Adam had figured out. Those were other Hidden Mickeys, he had just been told. Protect them. Protect Walt. There was Walt’s chamber under Pirates, lit up by night-vision cameras as bright as if it were sitting in the middle of Main Street. Another map—this one of the world with even more flashing pinpoints of light in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, the Pacific and South America.

  “So that’s how you knew,” he muttered more to himself than to the other people in the room with him. “Incredible.”

  He was about to ask a question when there was a crash of porcelain behind him and a shriek from Kimberly. “Daddy!” He spun around to see the blond-haired man slowly crumple to the carpeted floor, Kimberly right with him.

  “It’s his heart,” she explained. “It’s been worse lately.”

  Lance pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll call 911.”

  “No!” The voice was stronger than either of them would have expected from a man in his condition.

  “Daddy, let him call!”

  A white, bloodless hand reached up to her beloved face. “No, my dear. It won’t do any good this time.” He pushed away the Nitro tablet she was trying to give him, the grimace on his face showing the intense pain he was in. “It won’t do. I can tell. You know what to do next. Lance.” He was getting weaker now. “Lance, listen to me!” The stricken man reached out to Lance. Lance felt the cold, clammy fingers grip him with a resolute grasp. “You missed a clue. Walt just about handed it to you on a silver platter, but you missed it.” He began to get excited now, wheezing in the effort to speak and get it out before it was too late. “You had it all along.”

  Lance waited, torn between calling an ambulance, worry for the man in front of him, and the desire to shake him for his foolishness in letting them do nothing but watch him die. “I had what all along? What clue did I miss? I don’t understand.”

  The voice was weak now. They had to lean in to hear him. “The next clue. You’ve had it all along.” The effort spent, his duty done, he gave a last smile to his shocked daughter, closed his eyes and his grasp fell limp.

  “It wasn’t time!” Kimberly began to cry. “It shouldn’t have been now! I’m not ready.”

  Lance tried to take her in his arms, unsure of what he could or should do. She pushed him away. “No. There’s no time for that now, Lance. You have to go. I…I have to make a call. Don’t you see? No one else can see this room. You have to go!”

  He looked at her with a disgusted amazement on his face. “Your father just died and you’re worried about some kind of propriety!?”

  Her green eyes flashed through her tears. “Don’t judge me, Lance. There’s more going on here than you know about yet. I’ve been trained for this moment for years. We knew it was coming.” Her voice caught, but she fought down the emotion threatening to devour her. “I know what I have to do. It’s the only way. Please,” she softened her voice, “Please, if you want to help me then you have to go.”

  “I don’t want to go.” Lance was adamant. “I want to help you here, now.”

  She could see the concern in his eyes. “I know you do, but you can’t. Not yet.”

  “But, what did he mean about the last clue? I don’t understand.”

  “That I honestly don’t know, Lance. That’s something you’re going to have to figure out. And I hope you figure it out soon for the sake of all of this.” Her gesture took in the room, her father, and Walt. “Please, Lance, just go.”

  In a futile gesture, Lance raised his hand toward her but let it drop. Without another word, he turned and walked from the room. Looking back, he saw Kimberly had followed him as far as the doorway. He hoped she would call him back. But, with a soft click the door was shut and a bolt was pushed into place, locking the War Room. With that gesture, he knew that he, too, was locked out—locked out until he could figure out what it was that he missed, what it was that he had all along.

  Forgoing the elevator, Lance headed down three flights of thickly carpeted stairs, his mind spinning.

  “You had it all along.”

  He had work to do. And, he suddenly knew at that moment…for him…it all started.

  Once the Jaguar was safely off the property, Kimberly picked up the nearest phone on the desk. Composing herself as she dialed the well-known number, she heard it ring twice before a deep voice answered. “Yes, boss?”

  Emotion flooded through her when she heard both the words and the voice. Her eyes filled up as her throat tightened. “It’s me,” was all she could say.

  There was silence from the other end for a few, long moments. There was only one reason for the daughter—not the father—to be calling. “It happened?”

  Not able to talk, Kimberly nodded into the phone.

  Understanding the silence, Wolf knew what he had to do. “I’ll be right over. Please don’t touch anything.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered and hung up.

  “You missed something.… You had it all along.… You missed something.… You had it all along.”

  These words played over and over in Lance’s mind. What was it he missed? They had finished the quest. Adam and Beth had gotten the treasure—whatever it was.

  “You missed a clue.”

  Lance mentally went over each step of the journey he, Adam, and later, Beth had taken as they followed each of Disney’s obscure clues. Marceline. Kansas City. The Golden Oak Ranch. The Studio. Back to Marceline and Kansas City. Disneyland. San Francisco. Tobago. And back to Disneyland again. He went over each clue and its logical next step. How could they have possibly missed something? And even if they did, didn’t their discoveries still take them to the conclusion of Walt’s Hidden Mickey quest?

  Was it in the small treasures Walt left along the way? The first gray capsule had given them stock certificates to the railroad. There was nothing else there. The abandoned building in Kansas City? They found the engraved WED and figured out where the capsule had been artfully hidden. Was there something else in the ruins of that room? The entire building just needed a good, stiff breeze to come tumbling down. No, the gray capsule had to be the only find there with its Alice script and the Laugh-O-Gram business card.

  Lance paced back and forth in his small living room. Could it have been in the old garage in Kansas City? The studio in Burbank? The Golden Oak Ranch? Lance ran a frustrated hand through his hair. The Ranch was huge. Was there more to it than the guest house where they had found the WED carved into the attic? No. Mario, the groundskeeper, had known Walt personally. He would have told them, especially after he had waited forty years for someone to come along. There was no doubt he wouldn’t have let them leave if there had been something else of this much importance.

  What about Manny at the Studio? No, it couldn’t have been him. He didn’t even know what they were looking for. He had just sho
wn them Walt’s empty office. Walt’s desk had been moved to the Opera House at Disneyland and it had given them the unpublished animation cels from Snow White. Tobago? Were they supposed to search the whole island? The movie Swiss Family Robinson had been filmed at Barcolet Bay. The crew had stayed at the Blue Haven Hotel. The clue pointed specifically to Jeremy B. But, Jeremy had been dead for many, many years. If there had been something else connected to Jeremy, they’d never learn what it was.

  No, none of that fit. After seeing the War Room, Lance realized the blond-haired man had been aware of almost every step of their journey. What he didn’t know, he was able to fill in by questioning Lance. It would be ridiculous to think that a man’s dying words would be something impossible to attain. This man had spent his entire life protecting Walt and his legacy. His last words would certainly be true.

  There just had to be something they overlooked in the clues and treasures they already had in their possession.

  Without any firm, logical idea, Lance decided to go to the only place he could think of that might trigger some thought or something to tell him what they had overlooked. He headed for Disneyland.

  In the quiet lobby of the Opera House on Main Street, he studied the items from Walt’s history that Beth had loaned to the Park in exchange for her job. Lance ran his hands over the edge of the glass case; the metal frame was warm from the fluorescent bulb that illuminated the case. He paused in his scrutiny to think of his old friends. If the lobby had been empty, he probably would have banged his forehead against the wall. Instead, he gave a deep sigh—one that was echoed by a trio of college girls who had followed him into the building.

  Unaware of the girls’ longing looks, Lance stared unseeing at the display in front of him. How in the world would he ever be able to justify pulling a gun on Adam and Beth and demanding the unknown treasure for himself? It hadn’t really hit him until he was exhausted in Idaho and on his subdued flight home to California. He knew who Sunnee was by then, but at that point, it didn’t matter. It took more than a month after the fiasco before he even returned to the hidden cave under the Pirates ride. The hated gun had been thrown into his little wall safe. The force he had used had been so great that it scattered the few important papers he still possessed. He remembered the stock certificate and some white envelope had fallen out of the safe. Grabbing them up off the floor, he had thrown them back into the safe before slamming the door shut, vowing never to open it again.

  His eyes narrowed as he thought back on those documents. What was there? There were the worthless lease papers for his Mercedes—the one his father had repossessed. The stock certificate for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad was a minor prize he and Adam had found early in their quest and had forgotten to return to Adam after having it evaluated. His birth certificate. A few valuable coins he had collected. A letter from an old girlfriend. A copy of his grandfather’s will that had been invalidated by his father. Just those few things and that white envelope that had fallen to the floor. He looked away from the display of Walt’s office, over the heads of the patient women who now smiled encouragingly at him. What was in that envelope? Another letter? Maybe, but he didn’t think so. He couldn’t remember any writing on the front and knew it hadn’t been opened. It had been curled. He recalled that it hadn’t stayed flat at first. It was like it had been rolled up in something….

  Something hard and plastic and gray…yes!

  “That’s it!” Lance let out a loud yell. “That has to be it!”

  The three women looked around, confused. They couldn’t see what in the world he was talking about. They just knew it had nothing to do with any of them. Their theory was further validated when Lance suddenly turned away from the display that had oddly held his interest for so long and strode quickly out of the ornate building. The women gave each other a disappointed pouty-face look and decided to go ride Space Mountain.

  “That has to be it.” That became Lance’s mantra as he drove home, his palms impatiently banging against the steering wheel at red lights. He zoomed around slower drivers which invoked more than a couple honking horns and dirty looks which went unheard and unseen. “That has to be it.” He slammed the shift into park and shot out of his Jag.

  “Hand the envelope to Manny, Mo, or Jack if you can’t find it.” That had been part of the clue that first led them to the Burbank Studio and then to the Opera House where Walt’s original desk was on display behind a large plate glass window. But he and Adam had figured out the clue and hadn’t needed to open the envelope that was part of the reward at the Golden Oak Ranch. Considered unimportant, the envelope had been tossed in the back of his car after discovering the Grant Deed to the guest house and another page torn out of Walt’s diary. Wow, he thought unbelievingly, we treated it like trash.

  Once home, Lance quickly spun through the combination of his safe. Trying to avoid touching the gun, he pulled the white envelope out from under the still-scattered documents inside. He carefully examined it as he held it in his hands. Only this time he held it with a touch of reverence.

  Taking the envelope into the kitchen, he pulled a paring knife out of his messy utensil drawer. Heart pounding in his chest, he took the knife and put it gently under the sealed flap. Licking his dry lips, the knife made a clean slit across the top of the envelope. There were two sheets of paper inside. The blank envelope was forgotten on the table as he unfolded the first page and started to read:

  “Well, boys, if you are being handed this envelope, it means two things: 1) I am no longer here having fun setting this up, and 2) the person or persons who handed it to you needs some help in figuring me out. Don’t we all? Ha ha.

  “I hope everything in my studio is going well. I know you all are doing your best to keep things on track. I chose well and I know you will carry on to the best of your combined abilities.

  “Since you know I plan things out pretty well and pretty far in advance, this letter probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to you. Please help the bearer of this missive as best as you can without interfering or asking too many questions. You know me too well to do that, anyway. They have a mission to fulfill and the contents of this envelope are designed to help them on their way. You have your work to do and they have theirs.

  “Forgive the secret nature of this, but it’s something very important to me. I am sure they already realize how important this is, so give them any help they might need. I don’t think this is too difficult to figure out, but then, who knows all this better than I do?

  “Give them the attached paper and your promise of help in case they can’t figure it out. Tell them to get busy and that ‘this trip inspired the first Hidden Mickey in film. Look for El Lobo and tell him WED sent you.’

  “I wish I could be there with you all seeing how everything we started is working out. Keep up the good work, boys!”

  Lance again read through the letter Walt had written to whom he assumed were Walt’s dedicated animators. He knew about the “Nine Old Men”—the most loyal animators who had stood by Disney through the bulk of his career. Recognizing Walt’s handwriting from all the clues and the pages from Walt’s diary that he and Adam had originally found, he smiled to himself as he held the letter. Walt thought of everything, even to the point of offering help if the discoverers of his long-hidden diary got stuck on his clues.

  Pausing for a moment, the papers now at rest on the countertop, he looked sightlessly out the kitchen window next to him. He, Adam and Beth had finished the first set of clues the diary had set in motion. Adam and Beth had found some kind of treasure in the small closet-like room under Pirates. The blond-haired man had confirmed that. However, it was he who had found that hidden button recessed in the floor that they must not have seen. That button revealed an even larger room and the cryogenic chamber. Was that the point of the quest the diary had sent them on? To find the treasure and then the chamber and its famous resident?

  Lance could picture Adam discovering whatever was in t
hat small wooden crate and in his haste—probably because he was nervous, as Adam tended to be—he completely missed the whole purpose of the quest: Walt. Yes, he had some of the treasures that had been found along the way, but he hadn’t seen the grand reward. Lance sensed he now held what appeared to be another quest set in place by Walt. However, he thought, wouldn’t this quest also lead right back to the chamber where Walt was? But, what would be the point of that? Why had the blond-haired man been so adamant that Lance had missed something? He had said the search for the Hidden Mickeys wasn’t over. Was this envelope part of the grand plan to become a Guardian? Or, were all the clues set in motion by Kimberly’s father all along? Perhaps when he began having heart difficulties and sensed his pending demise, he put the envelope in with the original clues Walt left. No, that couldn’t be. This note was also written by Walt, Lance was positive of this. It couldn’t have been hidden after Walt was.… Lance pictured Walt’s face within the machine’s glass window.

  As he pondered these thoughts, he glanced at the slightly-yellowed envelope as it silently sat in front of him. Walt must have wanted to insure his eventual discovery. Perhaps Kimberly’s father was only aware of the envelope, not its contents. Lance shook his head. He felt a mild headache begin, but he couldn’t put his mind to rest. The questions just kept coming.

  What if the envelope had been opened and the clue in Walt’s desk had never been discovered? What would have happened to the ending of that quest? Or, perhaps this clue circles back and leads the discoverer right back to Pirates of the Caribbean and the secret chambers…which would make sense if Walt wanted a backup quest.

  His mind was spinning as he went over the same ground. There were so many questions and fewer and fewer people to answer them. The blond-haired man was now gone, his daughter distraught. She didn’t seem to know about the envelope or what her father had meant. Maybe Daniel Crain could help. Lance made a sour face. He wasn’t sure what Daniel did or didn’t know, but he sure wasn’t going to ask him at this point to find out.