“I will,” I said. “But I can at least leave him close to the exit. Up to you if you want to bring him out—”
“Or send him out,” Phinny said. “I keep a lot of fire extinguishers here. I’m going to gather them all, close the plywood doors, and maybe I can prevent any fire. Or contain it.”
I thought it was a crazy idea, but I didn’t think I should take the time to argue with him. I kept seeing all those people sitting on the steps of the courthouse. The deputies guarding it. Denton.
And if the courthouse really blew, how far would the destruction go? As far as the audience gathered around the bandstand?
As far as the roof of Muriel’s restaurant, where Michael and the boys would be waiting for the fireworks?
“Your decision,” I said. I had dragged Hamish with me into the cell that contained the tunnel entrance. I shoved him into a corner where he would be convenient for dragging farther, but not in my way.
“Wish me luck.”
“Most fervently,” he said. Then he dashed back into the main part of the basement.
Hamish wiggled a little, and tried to say something through the packing tape. I took a deep breath and got down on my hands and knees, ready to enter the tunnel.
“Let’s hope your friend really does wait for you to arrive before he sets off his explosion,” I said to Hamish. He squirmed slightly.
I climbed into the cart and set out.
“Slow and steady,” I told myself. Easier said than done. My arms ached by the time I arrived at the junction. I was about to send the cart back, so it would be there if Phinny changed his mind, when I heard the faint squeaking of the pulley wheels.
Someone was coming through the other tunnel toward me.
Chapter 43
I told myself that the person riding toward me on the cart didn’t have to be Hamish’s fellow thug. It was probably someone else. One of the Shiffleys, checking on some small detail of the construction. The chief, coming in person to find the documents. Rob, intent on talking Phinny into sneaking out to watch the fireworks.
But if it was a bad guy, the junction wasn’t the place to meet him. Especially since I’d left the gun with Phinny. I hopped back on the cart and pulled myself as fast as I could back to the cell.
Maybe not such a smart idea. If I could hear the wheels, he could, too. I stood by the opening of the tunnel, waiting either to greet a friend or to ambush a foe.
No squeaking.
“Hamish?” Someone was calling from inside the tunnel. The sound was slightly muffled, and I couldn’t identify the voice.
Hamish made some noises through the duct tape. I made a gun with my forefinger and mimed shooting him. He shut up.
Phinny came back in.
“Meg, what—”
“Shhh!”
He stopped immediately. I mimed the gun again, this time pointing my finger in the air. Phinny handed the real gun to me, looking anxiously between me and Hamish.
“Hamish?” The voice from the tunnel again. “We’re running out of time.”
Phinny and I waited in silence.
Then I heard the faint squeaking. But the pulleys on our end weren’t moving.
“He’s going away,” Phinny whispered.
“To blow up the courthouse,” I said.
I launched myself into the tunnel—just me, not riding the cart, so whoever it was wouldn’t hear the squeaking. Trying to crawl quickly and quietly through the tunnel made me really appreciate the cart. The rails dug into my body as I crawled, and the ground under them was alternately muddy or pocked with small sharp stones. I tried to keep my breathing regular instead of panting noisily.
About ten feet into the crawl, I heard a small explosion ahead, followed by the muffled sound of dirt falling.
“He blew the tunnel,” I muttered.
I kept crawling until I reached a place where my way was blocked with dirt. I turned my headlight on. Blocked solid.
Curious how calm I felt now that what I’d been dreading so long had actually happened. Oh, I could feel the impulse to panic, scream, claw the walls, and curl up into a little ball. But it was surprisingly easy to push those thoughts to the back of my mind and focus on the practical. I’d break down later when I got out. When—not if.
I dug with my hands until I encountered a splintered bit of wood. One of the side supports. Not good. Should I keep digging? Or go back and see if Phinny and I could remove the barriers?
I remembered those huge landscaping logs, bolted to the wall.
I grabbed the splintered board and dug with that.
At first it felt like bailing a bathtub with a thimble. Then I realized that I could see something other than dirt ahead.
A stretch of intact board ceiling on the other side.
I dug with new frenzy, and while I was far from clearing the tunnel, I was opening up a space near the ceiling. After what seemed like forever, I finally got the hole large enough to crawl through.
“I’m not doing this again,” I muttered. “Phinny will have to come out and visit me.”
I resumed my crawl. I had no idea how long I’d been digging. Five minutes? Five hours?
Not five hours. I could hear music ahead. The concert was still going on.
Not The 1812 Overture, though. Which must mean they were still playing Dvorak’s New World Symphony. Not a piece of music I knew well enough that I could tell how far along they were. But the music was fast, loud, and dramatic. Damn. Probably meant they were working up to the grand finale.
I stopped long enough to pull the gun out of my pocket and hold it in one hand for the final ten feet of the crawl.
But the junction was empty.
And the pulley at the mouth of the other leg of the tunnel was still softly squeaking.
I studied the rope system. We’d mounted it on the wall rather than the ground, on the theory that it wouldn’t be as easily covered up by any dirt that fell. Which meant if I was careful, I might be able to crawl through the tunnel without pressing on the rope.
At least I hoped so. Because whoever was creaking along in the cart—rather slower than I’d have been going—would probably be alert for any signs that he’d failed to block the tunnel.
I crawled. Beside me the ropes slid slowly along.
Then they stopped. I kept crawling, but more slowly, so I could listen.
I heard someone squelching through the mud at the bottom of the ladder. And then a shoe scraping on one of the treads.
Could he hear me as well as I could hear him? If he could, he might be planning to ambush me when I reached the top of the ladder. I paused long enough to wipe the sweat off my right hand and get a better grip on the gun.
I reached the bottom of the ladder only to see a foot disappearing at the top.
I ducked back into the tunnel and was peering up to see what happened next when I heard a report that sounded like a gunshot, a low bass growl, a human howl, and then frenzied barking from Spike.
“What is he doing to Spike?” I muttered, and scrambled up the ladder. I managed to drop Hamish’s gun in the process. It went splat in the mud at the bottom of the shaft. Was it still usable? I didn’t climb back down to find out, but leapt out of the open trapdoor.
Spike was fine. Lieutenant Wilt was not. He was sprawled on his stomach with Tinkerbell standing on his back, growling in a deep rumble whenever he twitched a muscle. Spike was dancing around the pair of them, barking in triumph.
“Good dog!” I said. “Stay! Guard him!”
I considered stopping to tie Wilt up. But that would take time. And I had no idea how much or little time I had. He was safe with the dogs for now. If Spike took a few chunks out of him, I didn’t think anyone would complain.
I patted down Wilt’s pockets. I couldn’t find anything that looked like a detonator device. Only his wallet and his cell phone. Of course, I had no idea what a detonator device looked like. Maybe he could do it with his cell phone. I put the wallet back and pocketed the phone.
>
Or maybe he had it on a timer.
“How are you detonating the courthouse?” I asked.
His answer was singularly uninformative, and if he’d uttered it on network television it would have come out as one long bleep.
I whirled to see if there was anyone else in the tent to help. No, apparently they’d gone off to watch the fireworks, leaving the dogs to mind the trapdoor. They hadn’t even tidied up—the whole tent was littered with stuff from the history pageant. A British redcoat’s uniform. Several oversized quill pens. Assorted reproduction guns.
Guns. I should go and retrieve Hamish’s gun. Maybe that would make Wilt more cooperative. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to brave the tunnel again.
An idea struck me. I grabbed one of the stage guns—a sleek musket with a bayonet attached to the muzzle. I ran to stand where Wilt could see me.
“Let’s try again. How were you planning to detonate the device?” I asked. I shoved the bayonet right next to his eyes, so he could see it, but I hoped a little too close for him to see that it wasn’t sharpened.
He looked up at me and grinned.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Given time, I could probably have extracted the information from him, with Tinkerbell’s and Spike’s help. But time might be the one thing we didn’t have. There could be a timer. Or some third confederate with a detonator.
I raced out of the tent.
Rose Noire was standing about ten feet away.
“Call the chief!” I shouted to her. “They’re planning to blow up the courthouse!”
“Who?” She looked at me strangely, and I realized I was still holding the musket.
“Just tell him!” I said. “It could go up any minute!”
She pulled out her cell phone and began punching buttons.
I ran toward the courthouse. The wide marble steps were packed with people. People were standing on the plaza at the top of the steps, and the street below was also crowded with people.
“Everybody out!” I shouted. “Evacuate! Evacuate!” I repeated it a couple of times, and I wasn’t even sure anyone heard me.
I spotted Aida at the top of the steps. I raced up to her, earning quite a few harsh words from the people I bumped into or stepped on.
“The Evil Lender has wired the courthouse to blow,” I shouted in her ear. “We need to get these people off the steps. And Stanley Denton’s inside.”
Aida sent another deputy inside to look for Denton and began trying to help me. But we didn’t make much headway until Seth Early figured out what we were trying to do and deployed Lad, his Border collie. Lad’s efforts tipped the scales in our favor. Within minutes, he had several hundred tourists on their feet and moving. And when Aida took out her service revolver and fired several warning shots into the air, the tourists really took off.
Then two police cars pulled up, sirens shrieking and lights flashing, and Sammy and Vern Shiffley leaped out and helped guide the flocks of tourists into a more orderly evacuation. We had the steps clear and were working on the road when suddenly the music reached a huge crescendo and an enormous “boom!” shook the air.
I dropped to the ground and covered my head, hoping a huge chunk of courthouse wasn’t going to fall on me.
Then I felt someone shake my arm.
“It’s okay, Meg.” Aida. “It’s only the cannons and the fireworks.”
I lifted my head and looked around. Dozens of people, like me, had dropped to the pavement to shelter in place.
I rolled over onto my back and watched the firework show. I can’t say I enjoyed it as much as I normally would have. But when it was all over and the courthouse was still in one piece, I got up, still a little shaky on my feet, and nodded my agreement when I overheard several townspeople say that this had been the most exciting Fourth in years.
Chapter 44
“At least you did get to see the fireworks,” Michael said, for about the seventeenth time. I didn’t mind. I’d figured out right away that what he would have said, if little ears were not around to hear, was “Thank God you weren’t shot, buried alive, or blown up.”
And it was nice, sitting quietly with Michael and the twins in a corner of our tent—now temporarily the chief’s crime scene headquarters. The former forensic tent was serving as a field hospital where Dad and several doctors from Caerphilly Hospital could patch up all the minor injuries people had incurred while being stampeded off the courthouse steps. And a squad of FBI agents had commandeered Randall’s office tent. I was looking forward to hearing how they happened to be so close by that they could show up less than half an hour after the end of the concert. And odds were I would hear—the tent was buzzing with people dashing out to tie up the evening’s loose ends and then dashing back in to report on them.
“Fah-wah!” Jamie was wiggling excitedly on my lap.
“Yes, you saw the fireworks,” I said.
“More!” Josh demanded, from his perch on Michael’s shoulder.
“More fah-wah!” Jamie agreed.
I was afraid we’d have a small rebellion on our hands when we told the boys that no, we were going home without any more fireworks. But just then Rob showed up with frozen juice cones to distract them, and within a few minutes both boys were asleep in the pen, using Tinkerbell as a cushion while Spike ate the remains of the cones and licked their sticky faces.
“More ice, Mr. Denton?” Mother asked. I wasn’t sure if she was offering to freshen his tea or replenish the ice pack he was holding on the bump on his head.
“I’m fine, thanks,” he said.
He still looked a little shaky to me, but he’d assured us he didn’t need to lie down.
“I want to hear everything that happened after that jerk sidelined me,” he said whenever we tried to send him over to the hospital tent.
And he was looking better than when they’d first brought him out of the courthouse. Dad kept popping in to check on him, and was still insisting that Denton stay with him and Mother overnight. “So I can watch for any signs of concussion,” he’d said. But knowing Dad, I assumed he was less worried about Denton’s health than interested in hearing war stories from a real private eye.
The chief strode in and slumped into a plastic lawn chair. Randall followed on his heels.
“Good Lord, what a night,” the chief said. “The bomb squad from Richmond is finally here, and they say it’ll take them all night and maybe into tomorrow. Apparently Wilt snuck in while we were evicting the mimes and wired that building six ways to Sunday.”
“How come Meg and I didn’t see any sign of it when we searched the courthouse?” Denton asked.
“They didn’t do anything on the second or third floors,” the chief said. “They mainly hit the furnace room and the part of the basement they could reach, and apparently they did that at the last minute, while you two were upstairs. They may have put some stuff outside, near the foundations. We’ll find out soon enough. Incidentally, he was going to set it off with his cell phone. Thank God Meg was sharp enough to take it away from him.”
He’d have been thankful in any case, but two of his grandchildren had been in the crowd that Lad, Aida, and I had shooed off the courthouse steps.
“Where is that damned snoop?” Muriel Slatterly strode into the room. She looked around, frowning as if searching for someone who’d stiffed her on his check. Her eyes fell on Denton, and her frown intensified. She stalked over and stood over him, glowering.
“Here,” she said finally, tossing something into his lap.
A small cardboard take-out box. Denton opened it, his fingers fumbling with eagerness. Inside were three slices of pie—apple, blueberry, and pecan.
“On the house, this time,” she said. “On account of your helping save the town. And you can have the space if you want it, but board’s not included.”
With that, she strode out.
“Space?” I asked.
“The vacant office space over the diner,” Denton said. He had
picked up the fork Muriel included in the box and was hovering indecisively between the three slices of pie. “I’ve got no family ties in Staunton, and I hate the winters. Been thinking of relocating to someplace closer to D.C. and Richmond. Someplace that gets a lot less snow. I expect Caerphilly will work just fine.”
He finally stabbed his fork decisively into the blueberry pie and leaned back to chew with his eyes closed and a blissful expression on his face. Convenience and climate my foot. Clearly Muriel’s cooking was the real attraction.
I glanced around the tent to see that several other people were concealing grins. And the chief wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding an enormous yawn.
“Why don’t you get some sleep, Chief?” Randall said. “Nothing to do tonight but watch the bomb crew and the FBI work. I can call and wake you if they ask any questions I can’t answer.”
The chief frowned for a moment, and then his face cleared.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll head out in a few minutes, as soon as I clear up a few more things. Thank you kindly, Randall.”
“Just why were the FBI in town?” I asked. “Because we know they couldn’t possibly have shown up so fast unless they were here already.”
“In hot pursuit of our ex-mayor, I expect,” Randall said. “They’re from the financial crimes unit. Apparently they were thrilled to find out he was back in their jurisdiction.”
“And do we know why he came back?” I asked. “And where—”
“This is incredible!”
Festus Hollingsworth had arrived. As soon as I’d realized that the fireworks were over with and the town was still in one piece, I’d borrowed Aida’s cell phone to make two calls—one to Michael, and then one to Festus, to tell him what we’d found.
His parents would definitely never forgive me.
And then, before I handed the phone back, I’d made a quick call to Kate Blake, offering her—and her only—an exclusive interview.
“But not until tomorrow,” I’d added.
“I’ll be there at seven,” she’d said.
“And I’ll let you in at nine.”
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