The Final Step

by Ridley Pearson

  “Father buying the train passes.” In looking into Father’s death, which the three of us did not believe accidental, we’d discovered some unexplained purchases of train tickets. James had asked Sherlock to dazzle us with his brilliance and attempt to try to explain the unusual purchases.

  “The same. Yes. The rail passes are sold by distance. Zones. Concentric circles around Boston city center. Your father purchased such a pass. It took some figuring, but by process of elimination using other credit card charges, I estimate he used the pass regularly once a week. Thursdays. Rarely missed a Thursday. It implies a number of possibilities, some of which a daughter should not consider.”

  “He had a girlfriend,” I proposed painfully.

  “I asked you not to consider such things. Possibly, yes. Likely? No. There are no other charges—flowers, wine, dinners—to suggest such a courtship.”

  “Isn’t that clever of you to think of that. Medical?” I said.

  “I considered that as well. But the best hospitals are in the city. Why leave the city for treatment, or an appointment? Business makes sense. Something to do with the Scowerers, one would suppose.”

  “You don’t sound at all convinced.”

  “No.”

  The Connecticut summer night, the sun setting, the birds flitting about, the smell of cut grass nearly overcame the annoyance and the roar of cars driving past. Sherlock kept his head down and a hood pulled up. I’d never known him to shrink like that. It worried me. Who was he afraid of?

  “How could you have left me the photo at the Cape house?”

  “Was not me,” Sherlock said. “Explain, please.”

  I described in detail the photo of Mother and Father getting into the car. The sticker pointing to a car across the street. Then, I explained it a second time.

  “Use Ruby. Her artistic talents. Your photographic expertise.”

  “You think?”

  “The face of whoever’s sitting inside the car across the street,” he said. “I believe it may be important.”

  “A face across the street? Seriously?”

  “Use your tools. We will see. We need Ruby’s talents to fill in what isn’t there.”

  “Like the driver’s face?”

  “You two can do this.”

  I considered his suggestion, bothered that it made so much sense.

  “And of course you missed the newspaper,” he said.

  “What newspaper?”

  “Score one for me,” he said.

  “This isn’t a competition!”

  “Everything’s a competition to some degree,” he said. “Even walking now. Who’s keeping up with whom?”

  “You’re the fastest walker I know.”

  “You see?” Sherlock said.

  “What newspaper? Where? The common room?”

  “In the photograph, silly! You said there’s a man on the sidewalk in the photograph, newspaper tucked under his arm.”

  It was true: I had.

  “Show-off!”

  “Ruby,” Sherlock said. “Your photography. The newspaper.”

  “A headline!” I said. “You want me to find a headline so we can—”

  “Confirm the date of the photograph. Yes. About time, Moria. You’re getting soft! A few months ago you’d have solved that in half the time.”

  A few months ago he and I had been spending part of every day together. A few months ago I’d been happy despite my sadness.

  “Come to the Bean when you have something,” he said. “I’ll know if you were there.” He disappeared through a pair of towering lilac bushes, leaving me walking on my own. I knew better than to try to catch up to him.

  CHAPTER 41

  THE SUMMER FROGS AND SCREECHING INSECTS turned the nighttime woods into a place so impossibly loud that it covered the approach of four figures dressed in all black. The installation of wireless cameras around the crumbling mansion’s exterior was being tended to by Eisenower and Maletta, both of whom claimed tree-climbing skills. The battery-powered, motion-triggered cameras connected over a cellular carrier to an app on James’s phone, all financed by his trip to Boston the prior weekend.

  Stacey and Leith, now part-time employees of Sugar Maple Cleaners, had yet to set foot inside Hildebrandt’s rooms, but had easy access to the company cleaning schedule (thumbtacked to a corkboard in Ginny Lonstadt’s kitchen, which served as her home office). Hildebrandt had rescheduled the housecleaning of his apartment to fit his travel schedule. He was currently away for two days.

  The cleaning company also included a property’s security alarm code on the assignment sheet for the few homes that used such codes. The assignment sheets were stacked between Ginny Lonstadt’s four-slot toaster and her laptop on the kitchen banquette, so she could properly input the hours her girls spent on each job, and the tasks completed. Since she was typically about a week behind on her paperwork, the stack was not small. Stacey had found two sheets for the Hildebrandt property, the same security code on both.

  Once down the tunnel, James slipped through the door and hurried to the keypad panel by Hildebrandt’s front door. He input the code written on his palm and silenced the box. On his signal, two boys and a girl named Claudette followed in behind him. They performed exactly as James had instructed. The boys took photos and shot video while Claudette, a toothpick of a girl with straight hair and a stretched face, installed tiny video cameras disguised as screws in light switch wallplates. They cost one hundred dollars each. James searched the office more carefully than on his first visit. He examined a paperweight marking Hildebrandt’s government service. Several photographs showing the man in the Oval Office with different presidents.

  He reached some of the framed newspaper clippings and stopped. One in particular held him. It seemed so familiar, as if he’d seen it before on a different wall of a different office. A different headline but the same photo: an armored car on the side of the road, police everywhere.

  Eisenower startled him from behind. He asked some stupid question James couldn’t answer. James moved on.

  In the small kitchen, he noticed a pad of custom notepaper by a wireless telephone. He tried a trick he’d seen in a movie: rubbing a pencil lead gently across the top sheet to reveal impressions from the note made above it.

  avocados

  bananas

  soy milk

  raw sugar

  coffee

  James hurried upstairs to the apartment’s only bedroom. Another custom stationery notepad sat alongside the bedroom phone. James rubbed this as well. Not all the impressions had been made strong enough to carry through.

  6_7__23475

  A___an____

  He raced downstairs to Hildebrandt’s office and was in the process of rubbing that notepad as well when, only by blind luck, he happened to check if Claudette’s hidden cameras were showing up on the app yet.

  A car pulled into the driveway.

  Men were getting out of the car.

  James sent a group text:

  code red

  Maletta and Eisenower hurried into the kitchen and headed into the basement. James skidded to a stop as Claudette dropped a small switch plate screw onto the floor, electronics hanging from the wall. He couldn’t leave her.

  “Thirty seconds,” he said. “Maybe less.” He tapped some keys on the security panel. It started beeping.

  “Got it,” Claudette said, her voice impossibly calm. She retrieved the fallen screw, pushed the wires into the wall, and put a screwdriver to the screw.

  “You and me, up here,” he said, from his position by the door. “We won’t make it out.”

  “Just a few more seconds,” she said, her feet working to pile up the tools on the floor while her hands finished tightening the screw. She reached down, snagged all the tools, but dropped some small lengths of rubber wire covering—the trash from the work she’d done.

  “Now,” James said in a whisper as he watched the front door deadbolt move.

  Claudette glid
ed across the floor, hands on her tool belt to keep the contents from making noise. She worked on the security panel. It stopped beeping—the alarm was set.

  James held the coat closet door open for her. She slipped inside. He squished up against her as he pulled the closet door shut, enclosing them. They were as close together as if slow dancing. It was pitch black. Her hair smelled sweet, like breakfast cereal.

  James was hungry.

  The alarm started beeping.

  The front door had been opened.

  Being pressed against a girl was more scary than whoever had entered the apartment, but James managed to overcome the fear by concentrating on the conversation that didn’t take place. The swish of clothing told him that two people had entered before the door was closed, then the alarm’s countdown beeping was silenced. One wore shoes that sounded like a kiss with each step—the same sound made by deck shoes. The other person’s pant legs whispered with each stride. Two distinct people, James thought. The two did not speak. Squeaky Soles moved to the left of the closet. Swishy Pants headed farther away. Several minutes passed. James’s and Claudette’s breathing competed against the other’s. Claudette leaned to separate herself from James, but his hand caught her shoulder and stopped her.

  “Hangers,” he whispered, practically eating her ear through her hair. He’d spent plenty of hours hiding in closets during hide-and-seek. He knew how hangers could clank like bells.

  “Clear!” said a man’s voice from afar.

  “Clear!” returned another man from a different distance.

  Squeaky and Swishy were bodyguards. They’d just checked . . .

  Quickly, James hugged Claudette even tighter and spun 180 degrees, both putting her back to the closet door and, more importantly, folding the two of them fully behind the hanging coats instead of between them. He squatted down a few inches to bring his head below the closet hanging bar and he placed his hand on Claudette’s head and pulled her tightly into the crook of his neck and shoulder, practically smothering her.

  The closet door came open . . . and shut.

  James had anticipated that if the two were conducting a search of the rooms, they wouldn’t completely neglect the coat closet. If he hadn’t moved himself and Claudette, they’d have been caught.

  Claudette gave James an extra hug to thank him. Neither could breathe, they were so scared.

  What now? James wondered.

  The sounds told him at least one of the guards had gone back outside. A car door shut. The front door shut.

  “Listen, I’m just home now.” A man’s annoyingly high, irritating voice. “You’re what, six hours ahead? Carry on as charged. This only works if they don’t see it coming. They won’t kill the messenger if they like the message. Get it ready. I need it in place.”

  Wondering if the software was recording this, James worked to memorize every word. In case he missed some of it, he whispered for Claudette to do the same. He felt her chin dig into his shoulder as she nodded. He eased up on holding her head so close, hoping he wasn’t smothering her. They waited. And waited. Eventually the slice of light at the bottom of the closet door went dark. They waited even longer.

  Eventually, James led the way out of the closet, down the hall, and into the basement. He and Claudette moved like escaping prisoners. Minutes later, breathless, they fled from the observatory and into the woods. Claudette took his hand as they moved through the dark. James considered breaking their grip, but allowed the contact.

  Reaching a clearing, they both bent and gripped their knees, out of breath.

  She said, “I know I’m not supposed to ask . . . I promised not to ask. But who is he?”

  “Do you remember what he said?” James asked, panting.

  “The last part, yeah, about them not killing the messenger. But who’s the messenger, anyway?”

  James didn’t answer. Wasn’t able to answer. Running through the dark woods, he’d been focused on one of the three pieces of notepaper in his pocket. The one with the numbers and a few letters.

  Two things had jumped out at him. 6_7 was likely 617, a Boston area code. With that tidbit of information, the letters below the number made more sense.

  A___an____

  became

  Alexandria

  Lexie was her nickname.

  James spit into the grass, allowing Claudette to believe he was simply out of shape.

  CHAPTER 42

  THE LIVE IMAGES OF HILDEBRANDT AT HIS office desk came from one of Claudette’s hidden cameras. James had been addicted to watching all the images over the past twelve hours, nearly getting caught during math class.

  Back in his dorm room now, skipping lunch, he grinned, thinking that he was secretly eavesdropping on a man who had once run the FBI and had therefore been in charge of so much surveillance.

  He’d also been focused on Lexie’s name and phone number being on Hildebrandt’s notepad, something that continued to make him feel sick.

  The other page was a grocery list that James dismissed as unimportant.

  He watched the man dialing the desk phone. James pushed the earbuds in deeper.

  “If you can’t trick Moria into showing you, then consider something more forceful,” Hildebrandt said. He paused to listen. “I understand the friendship,” he said, “the trust, of course I do. But this is important information to us!”

  James could only think of one person with whom Hildebrandt might be speaking. He speed-dialed Lexie’s phone.

  It went directly to voicemail.

  Lexie’s phone was busy. Hildebrandt’s phone was busy! If James had harbored any doubts about her number being scribbled onto a phone message pad in Hildebrandt’s apartment, they vanished.

  Lexie was a traitor?

  James texted Claudette to meet him on a bench after lunch. She texted back that she’d be there right away.

  Once together, James asked her to recall the words they’d overheard Hildebrandt speak. He had his own version written down and folded in his hand.

  “Something about six hours,” Claudette said, eyes squinted. “Carry something? What I remember pretty clearly is the thing about ‘They won’t kill the messenger if they like the message.’ Then something about being ready and that he needed it in place.”

  “Do you remember ‘six hours ahead’?”

  “Yeah,” she said excitedly. “That was it! Ahead of what, though?”

  “Time change, I think. Not ‘in advance of something,’ not ‘ahead’ like that. Six hours ahead. That’s Europe. The person he was talking to was in Europe.”

  “Seriously?”

  “‘It’ll only work if they don’t know,’” James recalled. “Something like that.”

  “‘If they don’t see it coming’!” Claudette said.

  “Right! Perfect! That was it. That’s it exactly!”

  Claudette sat up taller and more proudly. Closing her eyes, she recited. “‘I need it in place.’ That’s how he ended it.”

  James grinned, writing it down. “I think you’re right. That sounds like it to me.”

  “So who is they, do you think?” she asked. “And what aren’t they going to see coming?”

  “And what does it have to do with Europe?” whispered James aloud while he churned over the fact that the Scowerers had both allies and enemies in Europe. As the leader of the Scowerers, he thought he should have known more than he did about such business ties. “Sometimes it seems like your friends are your enemies and vice versa,” he muttered.

  “Are you describing middle school or high school?” Claudette asked with a grin.

  “Both?” he said, glad that she’d misunderstood him. Everything to do with the Scowerers was strictly secret.

  “Hey, you two!” Lexie was coming up the sidewalk from the common room. She called out to them both, but her accusing eyes were locked onto Claudette. Supposedly, Lexie and James were kind of girlfriend and boyfriend, a relationship James had yet to fully acknowledge.

  If James had
been honest with himself he’d have told her to get lost. But James the Manipulator, James the Great of the Scowerers, saw things differently. You didn’t push away enemies, you got as close to them as possible.

  Both Claudette and James said hello.

  “I didn’t know you two were chums,” Lexie said, a little bitterly.

  “We—” Claudette said. “James—”

  “I hired her,” James said honestly. Father had told us dozens of times that “Once a liar, always a liar.” He’d schooled us that little lies become big lies, that untangling a lie never works because there’s no truth to it to begin with. “Some electronics. Security stuff so that I can see what’s coming.” He didn’t happen to say where or who.

  “That sounds cool,” Lexie said, looking at Claudette for the first time. She didn’t mean a word of it. All three knew exactly what she meant: That sounds like competition I don’t need. Lexie added, “I see you’re taking notes.”

  James stuffed the note away in his top pocket. “How about you? What are you up to?”

  “Lunch?” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  Phone calls? James wanted to ask.

  “Didn’t see either of you in there,” Lexie said. “Lunch.”

  “We lost track of the time,” Claudette said, speaking up for the first time. She seemed to be teasing Lexie, taunting her.

  Staring down James, Lexie spoke sharply, only to him. “You lost something too.” She walked off.

  James caught up. “Lexie,” he said in a hushed voice, reaching to stop her. “I’m sorry!” She shook off his grip and James knew better than to try a second time. He walked alongside of her. “She’s helping me. I hired her! She set up some surveillance equipment for me. She covers Mo, too.” He felt the lies come easily, wishing he could pull out the notepaper and write them down so he wouldn’t forget them. Little lies become big lies.

  “So, you’re paying people to be your friends now?” Lexie said. “What about Thorndyke? Eisenower?” When James didn’t answer, Lexie stopped her brisk walk. “You can’t be serious! I was kidding. You are paying those two? That’s disgusting, James! Shame on you! How desperate are you?” She hurried off, leaving James stuck where he was.