He composed his face into a serious expression.
“I need to check out a document,” I said.
“Why, that’s not difficult at all,” he replied. “I’d be happy to show you any document you like.”
“I mean check it out in the sense that one checks books out from the library,” I said. His face stiffened a little at that.
“I know it’s not common,” I said. “But surely there must be an official procedure for conveying a document from the archives to someone who is authorized to use it.”
“Yes … but it’s all…”
“Unusual,” I said. “Perhaps even unique.”
“Not quite unique,” he said. “Unusual. But what’s the reason for the transfer? What’s the document?”
“The original copy of the loan document between Caerphilly and the Evil Lender.”
Phinny stood frozen for a few very long moments. Denton lifted his head as if suddenly interested, now that we’d cut to the chase.
“But why?” he asked. “What’s so important about the original? I would offer to make you a copy, although I can’t see the point. There must be dozens of copies floating around.”
“Yes,” I said. “But they’re not all the same. Someone connected with the Evil Lender has been trying to forge a new version of the contract. We haven’t seen the full text of the forgery yet, but I bet when we do, the terms are going to be a lot less favorable to Caerphilly than they are in the real contract.”
“But what good are the forgeries unless—”
He stopped, and turned suddenly pale.
“Exactly,” I said. “We believe the copy here in the archives is the last surviving signed original of the real contract. We were incredibly lucky that it was down here while we didn’t know about the danger.”
“In that case, why not leave it down here?” he said.
“Because now the lender also knows it’s here,” I replied. “In fact, they probably knew well before we did. And they’ve been taking steps to get at it. We have no idea if Ms. Brown was killed merely to frame you, or if she, perhaps, was aware of the scheme and tried to stop it. We need to get that document to a secure location unknown to the Evil Lender—where our lawyer can produce it to prove any new versions of the contract are false.”
“You don’t think I can protect it!” He drew himself up, and I found myself suddenly reminded of Spike facing down a neighbor’s German shepherd.
“I think you’ve done a great job of protecting it so far,” I said. “But these people are unscrupulous. They’ve already killed once to get it. As long as it’s here, not only will it be in danger, so will you. And anyone who comes near the courthouse.”
I could see the talk of danger was only stiffening his spine.
“In fact,” I went on, “the entire archives could be in dire peril. These people will stop at nothing! Who knows what they’ll do.”
Dire peril. Had I gone a little too far with the melodrama?
No. Phinny studied my face for a few moments, then nodded.
“To protect the archives,” he said. “Yes. You’ll convey it to the county’s attorney personally?”
“If you like,” I said. “Actually, he should be here in the morning to take it, and Randall is arranging a highly secure place for it tonight. I’ll personally see it stowed there.”
“All right then,” he said. “Done.”
“Well, there is the small matter of finding it,” I said.
“No problem,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, I may have a little surprise for you.”
He sipped the last of his tea, stood up, walked briskly to his desk, and pulled out a large brown mailing envelope, which he handed to me. Then he opened a nearby file drawer and pulled out a folder.
“The original contract,” he said. “Take the whole folder; it’s tidier that way.”
While I tucked the folder into the envelope, he had pulled out a piece of cardboard and was writing on it.
“There we are,” he said. “Name of the file. Today’s date. Purpose: use by attorney. And your name. I put the full name, so there are no questions. Sign here, please.”
I signed the cardboard, which was halfway filled already with the names of other files checked out by other people. Evidently letting files leave the nest wasn’t completely unfamiliar to Phinny.
Denton had risen and stood watching. He was still wheezing slightly. He hadn’t looked that out of shape. Maybe it was stress—probably induced by claustrophobia. I made a mental note to have Dad check him out when we got back on the other side.
“But that’s not all!” Phinny said. With the air of a magician unveiling a dazzling new illusion, he led us through the room to one of the cells.
“The former town attorney’s files,” Phinny said, pointing to several stacks containing perhaps a dozen neatly labeled cardboard banker’s boxes. “When everyone else evacuated the courthouse, he left all his papers behind, and I offered to take them in, for safekeeping. And shortly after that he was fired, and then the mayor was recalled, and—well, they’ve been here ever since.”
“Do you know if Hamish had a copy of the contract, too?”
“I believe I recall seeing one,” he said. I suspected that meant he knew precisely where it was. And I was right. He ran his fingers down the box labels until he found the one he wanted, and pulled out the folder within five minutes.
“Here you are.” He handed me the file folder and pulled out another cardboard placeholder.
This folder was a lot thicker. I flipped it open and began leafing through the contents.
“Now this is interesting,” I said. “He does have another signed copy of the real contract. He also has two other contracts. One signed, one not. “
Phinny took the folder from my hands and leafed through it.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “This second document is the original loan contract Mayor Pruitt presented to the county board. They felt several clauses were dealbreakers, and told him they’d only sign it if he brought them a version without those clauses. Which he did. That’s the version they signed.”
“And what’s the third one?” I asked.
Phinny studied the third contract both through and over his glasses. Then he set it beside the second contract and began flipping the pages of each.
“It appears to be a signed version of the unfavorable contract,” he said.
“Signed by the county board.”
“Well, no,” Phinny said, looking over his glasses at me. “In my job, I tend to see a lot of documents with the board members’ signatures. These aren’t even good forgeries.”
“But if you sent these to someone who wasn’t familiar with the board members’ signatures, they’d have no idea it was a forgery.” I said. “He faked it. The mayor.”
“Ex-mayor,” Phinny corrected.
“Right. They wouldn’t sign, so he faked their signatures—he probably had plenty of examples in his files.”
“Incredible,” Phinny said. “And so obviously a forgery.”
“It’s not really such a bad forgery,” I said. “Most people don’t know the board members’ handwriting as well as you do. But I bet a handwriting analysis will back you up. We don’t just have proof of the real terms of the contract—we’ve got evidence of a crime. We definitely need to get all these to a safe place.”
“They’ve been in a safe place all along,” Phinny said softly. “A secure, climate-controlled environment in which the only people aside from myself who have had access have been persons well known to me and under my close supervision.”
“I stand corrected,” I said, throwing up my hands as if in surrender.
“But you’re right,” he said. “We need to get these out where Chief Burke and Mr. Hollingsworth can use them.”
“I don’t think so.”
We turned to see that Denton was pointing a gun at us. The seams of Horace’s gorilla suit had been ripped open at the wrists, and his hands were sticking out. T
he right one was holding the gun. The left one was fumbling at the gorilla head.
Then he pulled the headpiece off and I could see it wasn’t Denton.
It was Hamish Pruitt.
Chapter 42
“Oh, dear,” Phinny gasped. He looked as if he might faint.
“Into that small room over there,” Hamish said, pointing slightly with the gun. “Now.”
He was indicating one of the cells—one that wasn’t quite as chock-full of file cabinets as the others and had a key stuck in the lock.
Phinny stumbled obediently into the room. I followed more slowly. In fact, I lingered outside the door until Hamish snapped at me again.
“Inside!” he said. “This place is pretty well soundproofed, you know. Would you rather be locked up while I escape, or dead?”
I couldn’t see a way out of it, so I stepped into the room and sat down on a box of files. Phinny was already sitting on a nearby box, curled up as if trying to take up as little space as possible. Hamish slammed the door and I heard him turn the key in the lock.
“Now hand me your cell phone,” he said.
I blinked at him as if I didn’t understand.
He raised the gun, and I gave in. I handed the cell phone out through the barred window in the door.
He threw it on the desk beside Phinny’s computer and disappeared from view. I heard sounds of rummaging elsewhere in the basement.
“What’s he doing?” Phinny asked.
“No idea,” I said.
Phinny got up and came to peer with me through the cell door window.
Hamish reappeared. He had taken off the gorilla suit, revealing that he was wearing a navy blue track suit. He was carrying a can of kerosene. He unscrewed the cap, tossed it aside, and began pouring a trail of the liquid around the base of some of the nearer filing cabinets.
“Oh, my,” Phinny murmured.
“Do you keep a lot of kerosene here?” I whispered.
“Several cans,” he said. “I run a space heater on really cold days.”
Hamish finished and came to stand where we could see him through the cell window. He was holding the files we’d found in one hand, and a pocket lighter in the other.
“Shall I?”
Phinny closed his eyes and stifled a whimper.
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “At least not until I was sure I didn’t need them.”
Hamish looked puzzled, and then a look of cunning spread over his face.
“You’re right,” he said. “Properly used, these could be worth a lot of money. Thank you. In gratitude, I’ll give you a choice: smoke inhalation, or a bullet.”
He cocked his head as if waiting for an answer.
“Still thinking about it? Well, you have a little bit of time.”
He chuckled mirthlessly and disappeared again, this time in the direction of the barricade.
“If he’s thinking of going out that way, he’s in for a disappointment,” Phinny said.
We heard a creak. Then another creak.
“He’s opening the plywood privacy doors,” Phinny said.
And then a clink.
“And throwing the cell door key outside,” I said. “Pretty pointless.”
“I think it’s intended as a gesture,” he said. “To unnerve us.”
Hamish was whistling, rather off-key, as he passed by the cell door on his way to some other part of the basement.
The idea of waiting until Hamish finished his preparations and set the basement on fire didn’t appeal. I studied the old lock.
“Do you have a screwdriver?” I asked.
“A screwdriver?”
“Or anything like a screwdriver. Something I can use to pick the lock.”
His face looked blank for a second.
“I don’t have a screwdriver unless—well, I do have this.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Swiss army knife. One of the really large, complicated ones with at least a dozen various implements on it.
“Fantastic.” I knelt in front of the door and began testing all the knife’s attachments.
“Are you a skilled lock picker?” he asked.
“I’ve had lessons,” I said.
I didn’t look up to see if he found that explanation reassuring. I suspected he didn’t. If I hadn’t been trying to concentrate so hard on the lock, I’d have told him about the long-ago summer when Dad had become obsessed with lock picking, and I’d been the only one of his three children who really put my heart into what Mother called “your father’s little burgling project.”
I’d been the star pupil—better than Dad, even. But while my skill had proven useful a few times since, when I’d lost my keys, my successes had been on the cheap locks of rental apartments in my salad days. Who knew if the ancient cell door lock was harder or easier?
Hamish reappeared with an axe. He glared at us, and I was suddenly very glad we had a locked door between us.
He whirled and smashed Phinny’s computer with a few savage whacks. Phinny flinched with each blow.
He picked up the telephone, and I was expecting him to throw it on the floor and give it the same treatment, but instead he dialed a number.
“It’s me,” he said. “Don’t give me that. You’re the one who really knows all this explosive stuff.”
Explosive stuff? I looked at all the kerosene glistening on the papers. I’d been starting to worry about the effect a match could have on the paper-packed basement. If someone was planning to set off explosives …
“Besides,” Hamish went on, “I’ve been doing something even better—I’ve got the paper and Denton. Yeah, it was him running around in the gorilla suit all day, not the policeman. I was hiding in my uncle’s office and overheard that they were going to take him over to the basement to hunt for the paper, and I found a chance to jump him and steal the suit.”
He’d probably done it when I’d made my quick trip to the bathroom. Too bad we hadn’t thought to search that locked inner office.
“And you’ll never guess where I’m calling from,” Hamish went on. “Bingo … And I’ve doused the whole place with kerosene. It’ll burn like a grill with too much lighter fluid on it when we blow up the rest of the courthouse.”
Maybe it was that phrase “blow up the rest of the courthouse” that gave me new energy. Suddenly, I felt the tumblers inside the lock moving, and—
Click!
“You did it!” Phinny whispered.
I tried to look blasé about my accomplishment, as if I organized jailbreaks on a regular basis.
Of course, now all we had to do was overpower a man with a gun.
“I’ve taken down the plywood,” Hamish was saying. “So those bombs you put just outside the barricade will do as much damage as possible. Yes, I saw them just now, and laid a trail of kerosene from there back into the room. So I’m taking off in a few minutes, and I can just lay the paper on top of … well, yeah, if you like. And we can burn it together.”
He removed the contents of the thicker of the two folders—the one that contained not only the real contract but also the forged one. He folded up the papers and stuck them inside the jacket of his track suit, and then stuck the other copy of the real contract in his pants pocket.
“See if you can call him over,” I whispered into Phinny’s ear. “And we’ll knock him down with the door.”
He nodded.
“Listen,” Hamish was saying, “Denton’s in the janitor’s closet on the third floor. I whacked him on the head and tied him up. Might be a good idea to leave him somewhere near one of your bombs, so there’s no chance he survives to tell tales.”
I felt a surge of relief that Denton was alive. At least for the moment.
“How long till The 1812 Overture?… Well, what’s playing now?… Hold up the phone, then … That’s the New World Symphony. We’ve got the rest of that and then the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and then boom! No, I’m coming out now. Meet me in the tent by the bandstand—the
tunnel’s in the crawl space under the bandstand, and you get there through the tent.”
The tent. Surely someone would notice him when he came out. Unless, of course—
“I’ll be the one in the gorilla suit,” he said. “And remember—nothing goes boom till I’m safely out of here. Or you’ll never be sure I didn’t leave this incriminating little piece of paper behind in the fireproof safe.… How do you know there isn’t?… About fifteen minutes. Right.”
He hung up. He whacked the phone to bits and disappeared from our field of vision.
“Maybe we should just run out,” Phinny said.
But Hamish reappared almost immediately, carrying the gorilla suit.
I gestured to Phinny to wait.
A few moments later, Hamish had to put the gun down to wriggle into the suit.
“Go!” I said.
We slammed open the cell door and both launched ourselves at Hamish. My flying tackle was better, but Phinny’s wasn’t bad. We went down in a tangle of fur and loose papers. Hamish was facedown, half in and half out of the gorilla suit. I managed to pull both of his arms behind him.
“Get the gun,” I said. “And then find something we can use to tie him up with.”
Phinny scrambled to follow orders. Once we had Hamish’s arms and legs trussed up with heavy-duty packing tape—with a strip over his mouth to block out the foul insults he was hurling our way—Phinny and I stood up and took a deep breath.
“Of course we can’t just leave him here,” I said. “I’ll go out the tunnel first. Then you can put him on the cart and I’ll haul him—”
“I’ll take care of him, and myself,” Phinny said. “Just take these and go. Warn them. Save the courthouse.”
He reached into Hamish’s pockets, pulled out the various papers, and thrust them toward me.
I hesitated for a few moments, then nodded. It made sense. I shoved the papers into my pockets, grabbed Hamish by one foot, and began dragging him toward the tunnel.
“I said leave him,” he said.
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