Finders Keepers (16 page)

“Grumpa, can you reach that?”

He snagged the bird with a big stretch. Just like the mounted animals near Grumpa's worktable, the bird had an engraved plate that said
For My Edmund.

“All the other ones your mom made are at the house,” Alex said. “Why is there only one here?”

Grumpa inspected it. He gently pulled and twisted the bird, but it stayed firmly on the mount. He tapped on the base and squeezed the bird's head. He picked at the
For My Edmund
plate, but it didn't budge. Finally he twisted the wood base, hard, separating it from the bird.

The top of the base opened and inside the wood was a carved hole with a piece of paper.

“Read it!” I practically jumped up and down.

He gave Alex the flashlight to shine on the paper. “It says, ‘Dearest Edmund, the suitcase is hidden next to our house. I buried it in the spot Gerald Westman marked for the cabin he is building.'”

It didn't make sense right away. Grumpa said, “Hell's bells! She buried it when Gerald Westman started digging to build the cabin. Your cabin, Minnow. You've been sleeping on loot your whole life.”

A voice deep and low, from behind a bright flashlight, said, “Good to know. I never would've thought to look there.”

Sheriff Duncan.

Grumpa nearly dropped the flashlight. Alex and I pressed our backs against the boxes while Grumpa muttered, “Duncan? Nobody called you for help. This ain't your business.”

“Who said I'm here to help?” I didn't understand what Sheriff Duncan meant until he said, “It's easy to break into places when you've got a badge. See, I've been looking for that money for nearly thirty years, old man. I've been in Capone's hideout and every building he ever set foot inside. I've been down here at least half a dozen times.”

“You're supposed to be the law!” Grumpa's face looked fierce.

“So your mother buried it underneath that cabin by your house. That's not very convenient, is it?”

“That's my cabin,” I yelled.

The sheriff tapped the gun in his belt with his knuckle. I shut up. He said, “Give me the freezer key, Ed.”

“Bad men make bad money, Duncan.”

“I'll take my chances. Don't make me pull my gun. Just give me the key.”

Grumpa's hand shook as he handed the key to Duncan. Grumpa backed up, so we did, too.

“You can't lock us in here!” Alex shouted.

“Go ahead and yell. Nobody will hear you.” The door slammed shut, and the lock clicked. Footsteps pounded up the stairs, and then there was nothing except the sound of us breathing.

 

DIRT AND MORE DIRT

Alex pounded on the sides of the freezer while I kicked the door. He yelled, “Open up, Duncan!”

Duncan. He didn't deserve to be called Sheriff Duncan or Mr. Sheriff Duncan. He was worse than Al Capone, worse than all of Capone's thugs combined. Capone never pretended to be a good guy. He was bad and everyone knew it.

“Open up!”

Grumpa grabbed Alex's arm. “Stop. Duncan's right. Nobody can hear you.”

“When the restaurant opens tomorrow, how long will it be before someone comes down here?” My voice didn't hide fear. “Does someone come down here three times a day? Twice a day? Once?” Grumpa was quiet, and I couldn't see his face. “How often? Answer me!”

“Nobody's supposed to come down here, period,” Grumpa said. “But we've got a way out. The clue said the note is in ‘a place from which it
can
escape.' That place is right here, right in this freezer.”

“I don't get it,” I said.

“When this basement was a bar, we needed an escape route. When the cops came, customers would get into this freezer. The panel at the end is a fake. They'd open it up and escape through the back.”

“Escape to where?” Alex asked.

“The tunnel.” Grumpa handed Alex the flashlight. He pushed and pulled on the back panel until it popped off. Behind it, a hole in the wall led to a dirt tunnel. The tunnel was just a few inches higher than Grumpa and probably three feet wide.

Dust drifted into the freezer. My eyes burned. Grumpa stepped into the tunnel and waved for us to follow. “I hope it hasn't caved in.”

We stuck close to Grumpa as he scanned the tunnel with the flashlight. I'd never seen such darkness. The tunnel swallowed the beam of light. I was afraid it would swallow us, too, trapping us with no light and no air.

Grumpa said, “This tunnel goes under the street. It's not long.”

Untouched for decades, the space seemed to come alive as we moved through it. Dirt came down in a fine mist, and spiders scurried from the light. Grumpa jumped as a furry mass darted in front of us. Alex backed into me, knocking me against the dirt wall. A chunk of mud dropped and landed on my foot.

“Just a mole,” Grumpa said.

I'd never seen a mole before, but I knew from Amelia that moles had tiny eyes buried in coarse fur. She said their heads looked like eyeless blobs with snouts and spiked teeth. I shuddered, thinking about moles wriggling around my feet, sniffing with long snouts. Moles. Moles and snakes. The tunnel might be full of them, and if the flashlight gave out, we'd be blind. We'd be able to hear them scurry and hiss, and feel them brush against our ankles, but our eyes would fail us. We wouldn't know what to kick or where to run.

I wished we were pretend trapped in a pit that was really Grumpa's basement and pretend chased by zanimals that were really Grumpa's taxidermy.

I tugged Grumpa's shirt. “Will you give me a piggyback?”

“Just keep moving,” Grumpa whispered. “Slow but steady.”

The flashlight teased with flickers of things—a stick, an old shoe, a broken bottle, a man's hat. Every few feet I could make out wood beams supporting the tunnel's walls and ceiling. I wanted to touch the wood and feel something sturdy, something that couldn't collapse, but I was afraid the wood had rotted into mush. One hand, one elbow, might bring the beams down.

The ground was uneven, and my shoes squeezed into the earth. I lost my balance and landed on my knees in the damp earth. The fall made me cough, and dirt trickled down. I scrambled to my feet, thinking about moles and snakes.

“You okay?” Alex asked.

“Totally.”

“Take it slow,” Grumpa whispered. He held my arm at the elbow and pulled me along.

“I'm scared.” Alex's voice shook. “I wanna go back!”

Grumpa let go of my elbow and patted Alex's shoulder. “Remember what I told you about staying calm? Think about being somewhere else. Tell yourself it's not dark; it's not dirty; you're not scared.”

The flashlight showed Alex nodding and wiping his face. Grumpa turned and led us deeper into the tunnel. Finally he stopped. Finally.

We'd come to a brick wall with a hole covered from the other side by a wood board. Grumpa handed the flashlight to Alex and pushed on the wood. The slab didn't move, but dirt rained down from overhead. Grumpa pushed harder as ground dropped around us.

“Hell's bells!”

Alex yelled, “Grandpa! We're going to be buried!”

Coughing rattled my body. I brushed the dirt off my head, but it kept coming. Grumpa backed up and threw his entire weight at the board. He rubbed his shoulder while Alex tried kicking it loose.

“It's not moving,” Alex said.

Even though I was coughing, I threw my weight against the board, too.

“Stand back!”

Grumpa slammed against the board again and again until I heard a
crack
. The board split open. As he gave it a final push, I leaned to my right—just a bit—and my elbow pierced the side of the tunnel. Dirt poured down my leg and piled wet and cold around my ankle. I could feel grit in my shoes.

With a tug on my arm, Grumpa pulled me through the hole, and the three of us were standing in a cramped space. I reached out and felt a solid wall around me. We coughed and gasped and brushed dirt off our bodies. It looked like we were in a concrete closet with the hole behind us and a grate the size of a door in front of us.

“Where are we?” I asked.

When Grumpa had caught his breath, he said, “Pops needed to get supplies and booze and people in and out this way. So the tunnel was connected to the building people least suspected. The library.”

The grate gave way with a kick, and we stepped inside a larger stone room. We could barely move because the space was crammed with a huge metal drum with pipes attached to it. “That's the old boiler. It's how they used to heat the building.”

In the front of the boiler was yet another door. It opened easily, and we stepped into a basement, an old and damp basement like the one in Clarks Pizza. I couldn't stop coughing. Alex sneezed and rubbed his eyes. With a wave of the flashlight, Grumpa pointed to a switch on the wall. I raced across the room and turned on the ceiling light.

Grumpa didn't look right. His eyes were red from the dust and dirt. His breaths came hard, and he stumbled across the floor and steadied himself once he reached the wall.

“Grandpa! Are you okay?”

“Think I busted my ribs taking down that door. But we're in the library now. Just give me a second to catch my breath.”

Alex took Grumpa's hand and led him around a corner to a storage area. Packed into the room were a copy machine, boxes of paper, shelves with office supplies, and several old computers. A few feet from the shelves was a staircase.

Grumpa leaned against the wall and slid down until he was sitting on the floor. Alex kneeled next to him. Grumpa said, “Here's what's going to happen. You two are going to get on that ATV and go to the cabin.” He paused, struggling to get a breath. “Get Amelia and those kids out of there. No packing, no talking. Don't call the police. Duncan may not be working alone and besides, he'd hear on his radio. When you're far away, have Amelia call Walt Miller. He'll know what to do.”

I said, “We'll come back here first to get you and take you with us.”

“Did I say anything about you coming back here? No, I didn't.”

Grumpa rumbled Alex's hair and said, “Don't crash that ATV. I hate it when your dad's right and I'm wrong.”

“You're going to be all right.” Alex patted Grumpa's shoulder.

“Hell's bells. Course I am.”

“No, I mean it.”

“I mean it, too.”

“I really mean it, Grandpa. You're going to be all right.” Alex squeezed Grumpa's shoulder. “You will. I know you will. Right?”

Grumpa rested his head against the wall. “I'm already better.”

Alex patted his shoulder again. Then he stood up, rushed past me, and darted up the stairs. I turned to follow him when I heard Grumpa say, “Minnow! Come here.”

I shuffled back and kneeled next to him. Grumpa's face was gray under the dirt. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He didn't squeeze back.

“What?”

“Let it rest. Okay? Let it rest.”

“Grumpa, are you really okay?”

“That's enough. Go.”

I went.

 

THE CHASE AND THE ESCAPE

The ATV blasted down the county road with Alex in front and me behind him hanging on tight. We rumbled to a stop at the intersection before his house. He turned off the engine and took off his helmet.

“Alex! Are you crazy? Get moving!”

“The ATV is too loud. If Duncan's there, he'll hear us. Help me hide it. Let's get it as far in the brush as we can.”

“Good idea.” We each grabbed a handle bar and pushed the ATV down the ditch, through the weeds, and into the brush. Then we ran toward the cabin and his house.

We were nearly to his driveway when he grabbed my arm. “Wait. Let's check it out and make sure he's not already here.”

“Okay.”

Another good idea. As we crouched behind a pine tree, I realized Alex's brain was moving faster than mine. I needed to catch up, and the catching up wasn't about a race to be the best. Not this time. I thought about Grumpa in the library, not able to help us, and Amelia in the cabin, not knowing that she needed help. We wouldn't beat Duncan without two brains working together.

“Everything looks okay,” I said. “Let's make a run for it.”

We ran to the cabin door. Amelia and her friends were in the same spots as when we left them, only now a movie was playing. Amelia pressed the pause button.

“We've got to get out of here!” I said.

“You're covered in dirt,” Amelia said. “What—”

“Never mind that!” I yelled. “Listen. The sheriff locked us in the freezer at the restaurant and we got stuck in an underground tunnel and broke into the library and now Grumpa's there and Duncan is coming here to steal the money that's buried here.”

Amelia, Matt, Travis, and Lara all looked at each other, then at us. Everyone burst out laughing—everyone except Matt. I turned off the TV. “Grumpa says we have to leave now and call Mr. Walt Miller because he'll know what to do.”

Amelia was still laughing when Matt grabbed her arm and said, “I don't think she's kidding.”

“We're not kidding!” Alex yelled.

“My grandpa's always said the sheriff shouldn't have a badge, that he's a bad guy,” Matt said.

Amelia asked, “Why would he think that?”

“Years ago, Grandpa saw him sneaking out the back of the Rod 'n' Reel Bar late at night. The next day he heard the bar had been broken into and money was stolen. Mr. Clark told Grandpa to forget about reporting it because nobody would believe him, and Duncan would start following Grandpa around, giving him tickets for every little thing. My grandpa says Duncan doesn't deserve a badge.”

Nobody was laughing anymore. Amelia took a breath. “This is all really weird. Can we just start from the beginning?”

Before I could speak, Alex said, “We'll tell you all about it in the car, but we have to get out of here. Capone's loot is buried underneath this cabin. Duncan's coming to get it.”