I jumped up and squeezed her hand in both of mine. “Thank you, Miss Laine.” I headed toward the door of the parlor and gestured for the others to follow me. Maude was waiting outside for us to finish.
Kyle had been ahead of us all along. If he’d already solved the Mesarthim riddle—not inconceivable in the age of Internet research, and with his access to Devin’s footage—he could be on his way out of state with a painting worth millions. “Maude, I need you to call the police and ask Officer Tavish to head over to the ruined lighthouse. The killer may already be there, but even if he isn’t, there’s something very important we need to get into police custody.”
Startled, the secretary nodded and headed for the nearest phone.
I grabbed my raincoat from the coatrack and bolted out into the rain. The wind had begun to howl through the branches of the ornamental trees lining the edge of the parking lot, and I couldn’t even hear the footsteps of my guests or Lake behind me.
We all clambered into Sadie at the same time. “You still have the keys Gwen gave you?” Lake asked.
I nodded. “But I don’t think we’ll need them. The firefighters probably had to break down that door to the speakeasy.” I revved Sadie’s engine and threw her into gear. My stomach lurched at the thought of returning to the place where I’d nearly died a few hours ago, but I shifted my feelings hard into Determined Mode. No one else dies today.
From the backseat, Al let out an excited whoop. “I’m going on an actual treasure hunt and racing a killer at the same time! Best writers’ retreat ever!”
23
“A villain is just a hero who gave up too soon.”
Raymond Moore, 1945
As I drove back to On The Rocks, I fished my phone out of my pocket and handed it to Lake. “Can you call Jordan for me? I can’t wait to tell her we’re about to find her great-grandmother’s treasure.”
He dialed and put the call on speaker, but it went to Jordan’s voice mail. I gestured for Lake to hang up. “I can’t leave her a voice mail about this. It has to be done in person. I bet I called while she was in the bathroom again. I have this uncanny knack for it. She’s gonna be bruised from kicking herself for the next year over missing this. Here we are, everyone.”
I parked in the alley beside the club, near the side door and the dumpster. The blowing rain couldn’t reach us very well, but a chill wind shot down the alley from the river, whipping at our coats and chilling our fingers. I grabbed the hide-a-key again, but my fingers felt big and clumsy as I tried to turn the key in the lock. Lake took it from me and gave the knob a firm twist.
We entered single file into the dimness. The back hallway reeked of smoke from the fire that had forced Lake and me into the underwater whisky tunnel.
“So far, so good,” Paul murmured from the back of the line. “I didn’t see any other cars as we drove up, and the door was locked.”
I didn’t voice my worry that Roddy’s keys had gone missing when he was killed, and they hadn’t shown up yet.
Once we were away from the outer door, Paul clicked on a tiny flashlight attached to his key chain. I was grateful for even that small illumination.
Sure enough, the sturdy metal mesh door that used to block the way to the speakeasy leaned against a wall, its hinges clipped loose by the fire department’s powerful cutters. I started down the steps, but Lake grabbed my arm. “Those old wooden stairs were creaky enough to begin with, and then they got set on fire. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
“Are you kidding me?” Al pushed me aside. “I am not passing this up. I don’t care if I break both my legs. I’m going down there.”
I started to call after him, but he was nearly halfway down the spiral staircase, and I hadn’t heard a death wail yet. Paul leaned over the rail and shined his light straight down.
Al’s voice floated up to us. “Stick to the metal frame, and you’ll be fine.”
After a few ginger steps, I figured out the pattern of stepping near the central pole so that each footstep had two metal support struts under it. In moments, all of us had reached the bottom. The once-dusty floor was a sea of soggy, sooty footprints. I couldn’t tell if anyone had been down here since the firefighters had doused the flames. The area was nearly pitch-black, except for Paul’s tiny flashlight. The stench of burnt wood was strongest there. Paul shined his light around, and it illuminated a large black patch on the floor and burn marks that devoured the nearby walls. The doorway to the speakeasy still stood, though its jamb was blackened and ashy, and it was cordoned off with an X of bright-yellow barricade tape that read CAUTION DO NOT ENTER.
“Looks like they got to it before it did too much damage,” Lake murmured. “It seemed way worse when the smoke was billowing across the ceiling toward us.”
I nodded and shuddered. I really didn’t want to revisit that horrible, trapped feeling again. Definitely not this soon. I slipped through the heavy door with the eye slit, but I remembered how uneven that floor was. I pulled out my phone and tapped a white-light app. The glow from my screen wasn’t as useful as a flashlight beam, but it helped me feel better.
“You want to go look for your flashlight, or should I?” Lake asked in my ear.
I’d abandoned mine when I leaped into the smugglers’ tunnel with Lake. “You go ahead. Take my phone so you don’t trip.”
As Lake made his way across the room, Paul aimed his light after him and called, “Watch out for caution tape. They may have cordoned off that bloodstained area.”
Lake managed to find my flashlight and brought me back my phone. Skylar, Paul, Al, and I headed to the bar with him and began looking behind the bar for the double star brick, Mesarthim.
I walked along the outside of the bar, trying to get a better perspective on the wall behind it. Though most of the golden stars decorated the now-sooty ceiling, the back wall of the bar was still covered with a few dozen glittering shapes. As I swept my phone light up and down, my eye caught a tiny pool of reflected light atop the bar. “Paul, can you shine your light over here for a second?” He lent me his beam, and I stared at what it illuminated. I reached out and lifted a long strand of hair that glowed cherry-red in Lake’s beam. Several more long hairs clustered together on the bar surface, held together by something dark and sticky.
Numb, I dialed Jordan again. “Everything Is Awesome” echoed up from somewhere behind the bar. Jordan’s ringtone for me.
Everyone froze. Skylar bent down and picked up Jordan’s phone, shutting off the loud sound in the otherwise silent room. I hung up, but my mind was suddenly crowded with tattered black curtains of despair. I’d lost one best friend six years ago. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing another. I literally couldn’t think.
My chest seized up, making it hard to breathe. The frantic feeling was similar to how I’d felt in that room earlier that day, only now I was terrified for someone else’s life. “He has her. He’s found out she’s Graciela’s great-granddaughter. He must’ve figured out Mesarthim, too, if he took her down here. But Jordan wouldn’t know anything about the secret tunnel or where the treasure’s hidden at the other end. Even if it’s just lying in the open, he could kill Jordan to keep his secret. We need to find those stars.”
Paul whipped out his phone and dialed 9-1-1, reporting Jordan’s kidnapping and likely location. The others scrambled for the wall, running their hands across all the bricks they could reach.
“Here, I found it,” Lake said.
“Of course it’s the tall, handsome love interest who finds the critical clue. Why is it never the clever, quirky author?” Al bemoaned.
Lake gave him an odd look. “Maybe because I’ve got a good six inches on you?”
Al shot him a frustrated look. “Whatever, Larry Bird. Push the brick already.”
Lake pressed in on the brick with all his fingers and both thumbs. A lo
w, grating noise rumbled within the wall, and toward the corner, a foot-thick section of bricks with crenellated sides sank back with a puff of dust. Paul gave it a solid push, and it swung open on a hidden hinge.
He patted the inner edge of the exposed wall. “This is thick. Old. Looks like the speakeasy borrowed their neighbors’ basement over here for storage. I wonder if the owners knew about it.” He went through first, shining his little light.
I followed with my heart in my throat, strangling my desire to shout Jordan’s name. I didn’t want to alert Kyle that we were close by. But she wasn’t on the other side of the wall. We all entered a small, empty room with a couple of alcoves, and my heart sank down into my gut. Where is she?
“This would be exactly what the cops would look for during a raid, though,” Paul said. “The tunnel must lead out of here toward the lighthouse.”
Paul and Al began searching the walls. I panned my glowing screen across the thick dust that coated the wood floor. One pair of footprints was clear, another smeared as if their owner had been dragged.
“Oh, Jordan, I’ll find you. Hang in there.” I tapped Lake’s arm and pointed toward the floor, where my light cast long shadows in the dusty footprints. The sets of prints clustered in front of the wall, as if stymied for some while, then vanished through a section of mortared bricks along the back of an alcove. “Here. They went through here.”
Paul and Al manhandled that section of wall, but they couldn’t figure out how to open it. “Oh, God,” Skyler whimpered, putting a hand to her forehead. “What if we can’t get through?”
I stood in front of the pale bricks and stared them down. This wall had stopped Kyle for a while, but he’d eventually figured it out. If I couldn’t figure out its secret, Jordan might die. I couldn’t lose my best friend. Come on, Brain. Think!
“Look for a sledgehammer or something!” Paul called.
The guys scattered back into the speakeasy proper, leaving Skylar and me staring at the alcove wall. She started checking the nearby bricks for hidden levers and buttons. I glared at the wall, demanding its secrets. Soon, a tiny discoloration caught my eye. I stepped forward and reached for its surface, touching one spot with the tip of my finger. “It is a hole. I wasn’t sure. Maybe from a nail?” What, were they hanging pictures in here? Closer study revealed that the tiny dark dot wasn’t the only one. Over a dozen holes were spread across the brick face in apparently random spots.
An oddly familiar setup. In my adrenaline-heightened state, the connection jumped to mind: Al’s character Artemis lived in New York City during Prohibition, and he’d encountered a similar secret lock once. Knowing Al, he’d borrowed it from a real-life speakeasy’s secret door somewhere. “I got it!”
Skylar’s startled eyes glowed white in the light of my phone. In the next room, the guys were making so much noise, I wondered if they were tearing the bar apart to build a battering ram.
“You do?” she asked.
I grinned, probably a little manically. “We need a key. All these are keyholes. We just need to find the right one and push something long enough—and thin enough—inside to open it.” I patted my pockets in futility.
Skylar also dug into her pockets and came up with nail clippers. With shaking hands, she unfolded the tiny file from beneath the levered handle. “How about this?”
I took the proffered tool, though my hands were only a little steadier. Starting with the lowest holes, I plunged the little file into each hole. The little strip of metal was just over an inch long. I prayed it would be long enough to reach the mechanism. I also hoped there wasn’t some complex pattern I needed to use. If Kyle had gotten lucky and stumbled on a complicated key—
Click. A hole near knee level triggered a hollow thud somewhere inside the wall. I nearly wept with relief, sagging onto the floor with my free hand.
“She got it! Pippa got it open!” Skylar shouted.
The others hurried into the hidden room behind me. I threw myself against the wall, and it swung open with a groan. Lake, Al, and Paul helped me shove the section wide.
Beyond lay a dark, cramped tunnel carved through the living basalt of the cliff beneath Seacrest, just broad enough to roll a whisky barrel. The stone ceiling and walls glittered, slick with damp, and I suddenly worried that the tunnel had caved in somehow. Through the carved shaft, the friendly boom of the ocean sounded more like the ominous mutterings of a subterranean beast. As our lights reflected around the edges of the tunnel, dark voids in the gleaming water drops showed me where Jordan had stumbled against the wall. Her perfect handprint marked the dark stone where she’d pushed herself upright again. I tried to tell myself that was a good omen.
“No one’s claustrophobic, are they?” I murmured. Everyone replied with a single “No,” even Al, who was brandishing the leg of one of the Lantern’s abandoned chairs.
Skylar dropped her voice to a loud whisper. “Do you think there are giant cave spiders in there? I kind of have this thing about giant cave spiders. In a bad way.”
“Is there a good way to have a thing about giant cave spiders?” I asked.
Al stared ahead with fixed fascination. “No. Should be fine. If this tunnel really does travel only between this room and the sealed lower basement of the lighthouse, there’s not much chance the spiders could get in, let alone would want to. What would they eat?”
“Treasure hunters?” Skylar said.
Paul dropped a kiss on Skylar’s temple. “You watch too much Indiana Jones.”
She shot him a nervous grin. “Not possible.”
Lake took my hand and led the way, playing his light down the tunnel. It was carved almost perfectly straight, and my feet told me the floor had a slight incline. The sea thundered louder as we walked, seeming to echo from all sides of the tunnel while remaining muted. The smell inside the tunnel was pure, raw, wet stone. I couldn’t smell any salt, so maybe all this water was simply rain, filtering down from above. The basalt walls had a rough crystalline look to them, with broad, flat planes, almost like the tunnel diggers had been building the entrance to the Troll King’s lair.
Skylar’s whisper was loud in the small space. “How long is this thing?”
The poor girl was attached to Paul’s side like a limpet. Her knuckles and face were white in our lights.
I said, “It’s three blocks from the club to the last street before the ocean. The lighthouse is on the far side of that street. It only seems like a long trip because we don’t have any milestones. No cross streets, no buildings. Remember how you told me about your main character’s first journey through the otherworld? How it felt strange and twisted, and she had no idea how long she’s been in the Divide? This is your Divide.”
Skylar lurched to a stop and gasped. “Yes. Yes, this is my Divide. I wanted Petra to feel exactly this lost and afraid. Just like this! But I really didn’t have any idea until now how scary it is. Oh, my God, no, this is perfect. I’ll just think about that, and I can get through this. Thanks, Pippa.” She shot Paul a forewarning look. “But seriously, if I see even one spider in here, you’d better be prepared to do the fireman’s carry.”
“I don’t think the spider’ll be that big,” he teased. “I can probably carry it off in a jar or something.” Skylar punched his arm, and he yelped.
“Shh,” I warned, though the ocean probably muffled our voices from detection. I hoped that was the reason I couldn’t hear Jordan yet.
I wished I’d counted my steps from the beginning of the tunnel. Even though I knew about how far we had to go, the unchanging view really did throw off my estimate of distance. After another five minutes or so, I was desperate for something to break the tension: humming, whistling, I’d even settle for knock-knock jokes.
The regular booming sound gradually altered until it resembled a giant’s heartbeat. I gave Lake a questioning look.
Lake’s voice held a smile. “We’re nearly there. Look, a door.”
I took a second to warn everyone to be completely quiet and wait there. Al handed me his chair leg with a solemn look, and I made my way forward alone.
Another thirty feet or so brought me to an old, mildewing oak door, complete with old-fashioned metal hasps and handle. It was ajar less than an inch, but I heard faint voices on the far side. Jordan was still alive. My heart shuddered in relief.
“Tell me where it is!” Kyle’s voice was rough with mad frustration.
Somehow, Jordan managed to remain calm, using the professional voice she reserved for unreasonable tourists. “I’m trying to explain to you, Kyle, I’ve never been down here before. I didn’t even know this room existed. How should I know where my great-grandmother hid an old painting? This room is full of junk. It could be anywhere. Why don’t we look together? Then we’ll find it twice as fast, and you won’t be pointing that gun at me the whole time.”
She doesn’t sound like she’s too hurt, but that creep has a gun. Now what do we do? I backed away and returned to the others, reporting in a whisper what I had overheard.
Lake crouched and tensed like he was about to burst through the door and take on an armed killer all by himself.
I clutched at his forearm. “Oh, no you don’t,” I whispered. “Let’s think about this. Guys, what do we have with us? We need a plan.”
A furious, nearly silent discussion raged for the next minute or so, while Jordan tried her best not to get killed in the next room.
“Okay.” I handed the chair leg back to Al and extended my empty hand toward Skylar. In the damp dimness, no one else could tell how sweaty my palm was.
Skylar put Jordan’s phone in my hand.
I clutched it. “Let’s do this. And remember, you guys need to have my back. If you get me killed, I ain’t making scones for you tomorrow.”
Smugglers & Scones Page 23