Tunnel of Secrets (3 page)

“You can’t print excuses, Hardy,” she said. “There’s some stuff here we can use in a pinch, but I want something that really grabs readers’ eyeballs. Hit me up when you get that. In the meantime, I’m going to get some more quotes. Now I’ve got two front-page stories to file.” She rushed off, recorder in hand.

Frank hadn’t been joking when he’d told me Charlene took being a reporter seriously. Lois Lane Jr. was super intense. I could tell Frank was pretty crushed by her reaction to his pictures; I knew how much he wanted to impress her. But something else was bugging me. Something I’d seen in one of the photos.

“Can you flip back through some of those last pics?” I asked him.

“Why? They’re obviously not very good,” he complained.

“I’m not so sure about that,” I said as he scrolled through the images. “Stop. There!”

It was a picture of Deputy Hixson conferring with the
mayor before the press conference. It wasn’t them I was interested in, though; it was the woman in the background way off to the side.

“It’s an okay picture, I guess, but there isn’t much going on,” Frank said.

“Can you zoom in on Layla’s mom?” I asked.

“Mrs. Hixson? She’s barely even in the picture. I—” Frank stopped short when he noticed the furious expression on her face. Even with big sunglasses hiding her eyes, you could tell she was
mad
. “It looks like she’s arguing with someone out of frame.”

“Do you have any wider shots so we can see who?” I asked.

Frank quickly scrolled through the images. “Nope, that’s it. I took three or four pictures of the deputy and the mayor from the same angle. She’s yelling at someone in each one, but that person is cut off.”

“It might not mean anything, but I’d sure like to know what made her flip out at a press conference about her daughter’s kidnapping. Could be relevant to the investigation,” I said.

“Don’t give up so easily,” Frank said, smiling as he zoomed in even tighter on Mrs. Hixson’s face. “Digital imaging has opened up all kinds of new forensic detection techniques. The resolution on this camera is high enough that I could enlarge the image enough for us to see the color of a person’s eyes if I wanted.”

“Yeah, but Mrs. Hixson is wearing sunglasses,” I said, wondering what had Frank so smiley.

And then it hit me. We could probably see the person she was arguing with reflected in her sunglasses!

When I gazed at the image, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Hey, is that—” Frank began.

“Sal?” I finished. There was no mistaking the raggedy homeless man’s reflection. “Isn’t he mute?”

“Yeah, but he communicates by writing things down. Look,” Frank said, zooming in on the next picture. Sure enough, Sal was holding a piece of paper.

“Can you zoom in further?” I asked.

“That’s the best I can do. The writing’s too small and out of focus. But from the look on her face, whatever Sal wrote has her ready to flip her lid.”

Frank scrolled to the next picture and zoomed in. This time Sal was scribbling something else on another sheet of paper, but all we could see was the back. Frank flipped to the final image and zoomed in.

“I don’t know what Charlene was talking about, bro,” I said. “Because that sure grabs my eyeballs.”

Sal’s face wore a terrified expression. The sheet of paper he held had just two words scrawled in large, shaky print:

THEY KNOW!

T
HEY KNOW.’ ” I READ THE
words out loud. “Who knows what? And what in the world could Sal and Delia Hixson possibly have to do with each other? You don’t think Layla’s own mother could be connected to her daughter’s kidnapping, do you?”

“I don’t know, dude, but I see someone who might.” Joe pointed to the street, where Delia Hixson was walking quickly toward her car.

We took off running across the square. Delia looked up in surprise when we caught up to her.

“Joe?” she said. “Can I help you with something?”

Joe got right to the point. “Mrs. Hixson, what were you arguing with Sal about before the press conference?” he asked.

Delia scrunched up her face like she’d suddenly smelled something awful. “I—I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I clicked the shutter on my camera to get her attention. “I have pictures.”

“And so will your husband if we have to submit them into evidence,” Joe added.

Delia’s shoulders sagged. “Please, no,” she whispered. “I’ll tell you about Sal, just let me be the one to tell him.”

“Okay, we’re listening,” Joe said with a nod.

“Sal is my . . .” Delia’s voice was barely above a whisper. “My uncle.”

“What?!” Joe and I both blurted.

“How can that be? You’re from an important family that helped found Bayport. Sal’s a homeless guy who has silent conversations with himself.” I stated the obvious, trying to make sense of it.

“He wasn’t always that way,” Delia said softly, sitting down on a bench by the street. “When I was growing up, Uncle Sal was the pride of the entire family. He was a gifted young engineer with a promising career ahead of him. But then something . . . changed.”

Delia looked down at her hands as she spoke.

“He was working underground a lot for the city, something to do with the sewers, I think. He kept going on and on about some crazy legend having to do with a cursed treasure, claiming that our family was heir to a massive fortune buried
somewhere below Bayport. I was a just kid back then and thought my uncle was telling exciting stories for fun. But the adults were worried. Soon even I could tell his behavior was getting more and more erratic. He was fired from his job because of it. It was a terrible scandal for the family. Father and Grandfather said he’d disgraced the Foreman name.”

“Foreman? That’s your maiden name?” I asked.

Delia nodded. “Uncle Sal would disappear for days and even weeks digging under Bayport. Then he would come home raving about the treasure, looking and smelling like a bum. Finally, on one of his ‘expeditions,’ as he called them, he was trapped inside a sewer pipe and . . . and he almost died.”

Delia pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her eyes.

“Uncle Sal recovered, but his vocal cords were so badly burned by the toxic gas fumes that doctors said he would never be able to speak again. The family tried to get him help, but he refused. He became so obsessed with his quest that he lost touch with reality altogether. He took to living on the streets. Our family was prominent in Bayport, and they . . . they disowned him. They simply pretended he didn’t exist. It’s become our family’s darkest secret.”

“Layla doesn’t know she has a great-uncle?” Joe asked.

Delia shook her head. “My husband doesn’t even know.”

“How could you not tell the people you love about something so important?” Joe asked, unable to hide his astonishment.

Delia looked away again. “My family has been living this
lie for so long, I guess I started to really believe it. That he was just some crazy homeless man and not my uncle Sal.”

She sat quietly for a moment before continuing.

“I didn’t even think he remembered who I was until he approached me at the press conference. He was saying something ridiculous—that the Admiral’s ghost kidnapped Layla to punish
him
, Sal, for meddling,” she said.

“Admiral Bryant?” Joe asked.

“The guy whose statue just fell through a giant hole in the ground?” I added.

“Yes, strangely enough,” she said, as if noticing the coincidence for the first time. “Sal wrote down that the Admiral’s ghost was holding Layla prisoner in the ‘Secret City.’ ”

I looked at Joe, but he just shrugged. “Never heard of it.”

“Yes, well, apparently, it’s the Admiral’s underworld lair.” Delia rolled her eyes. “Where he keeps his treasure.”

“So let me get this straight. Your long-lost, crazy, and mute uncle comes to a press conference about your daughter’s kidnapping to tell you that your daughter, his great-niece, is being held captive by the ghost of a famous Revolutionary War hero who died two hundred years ago,” I recapped. “And you didn’t think the police might want to know?”

Delia waved her hand in the air dismissively. “What good would it do? He’s obviously delusional. The experience was very upsetting, but it was all gibberish.”

“Yeah, but even if his story is nuts, just the fact that he’s her great-uncle makes him a person of interest in the
case,” I told her. “He might know something for real.”

“You’re not just lying to your husband, you’re withholding information from the police that could be relevant to your own daughter’s kidnapping.” Joe leveled with her.

“I would do anything to have my daughter back,” she insisted.

“Everything except being honest with your husband,” Joe mumbled under his breath. I put my hand on his arm to signal him to back off. We wanted to keep Delia talking, and making her more upset wasn’t going to help.

“Sal wrote down the words ‘They know.’ What did he mean by that?” I questioned her.

“I asked him the same thing,” Delia said. “He wrote that he had ‘opened the vault.’ ”

She saw the confusion on our faces. “No use in trying to make sense of it. It’s the ravings of a very disturbed mind. I don’t know if he actually believes his own nonsense or if he was just trying to upset me, but I told him if he came anywhere near me or my family again, I would have him locked up in an asylum.”

“Mrs. Hixson, I think it’s time you told your husband everything you just told us,” I said.

“But it could— But my marriage,” she pleaded.

“Think about Layla,” Joe said gently. “The police need to know everything having to do with her disappearance, even if it seems like a long shot. Your husband will be a lot more understanding if you come clean with him now than if you
keep hiding something that could possibly help him find your daughter.”

Delia nodded. “Thank you for letting me tell him myself.”

“We have to check with the deputy later to make sure he knows,” Joe said. “I hope you understand.”

“Yes, thank you.” She rose, then turned back to Joe.

“I don’t blame you for being mad at me, Joe. You’ve been a good friend to Layla. When she comes home, well, if you wanted to ask her out, it would be okay with my husband and me.”

“Oh, um, okay, thanks,” Joe said, turning a shade or two pinker, which isn’t something you see every day. I mean, I’m usually the one who does all the blushing when it comes to girls.

“Well, that’s a new one,” I said to Joe as she drove away. “I don’t think we’ve ever had someone invite one of us to date their daughter during questioning.”

“We have to find her first,” he said.

“What do you make of Delia’s story?” I asked.

“Which part? That Sal’s secretly her uncle or that the Admiral’s ghost is her daughter’s kidnapper? It all sounds nuts.”

“It’s a crazy story, all right, but that doesn’t mean her version of what happened isn’t true,” I said. “Though it’s going to be tough to trust Delia knowing that she kept such a big secret from her own family. And even if she was telling the truth about Sal being her uncle, she could still be making up the story about the Admiral’s ghost.”

“We
have no way of knowing for sure what Sal told her, or wrote her,” Joe agreed. “And I don’t want to burst my own bubble, but it’s possible she mentioned me going out with Layla just to butter me up.”

“It’s awful to think about, but we have to at least consider the possibility that she knows more than she’s letting on about her daughter’s disappearance,” I said.

“But why would she want to harm her own daughter?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Who knows what other deep, dark family secrets she has to protect? She and Sal could even be in on it together.”

“Or maybe he’s blackmailing her,” Joe suggested. “Sal being disowned by his family would give him a strong motive for trying to get back at them.”

“From what I saw of the press conference, it’s better than anything the police have to work with.” It didn’t sit well with me, though. Sal had always seemed so harmless. Some of the local kids made fun of him, but I always went out of my way to be nice when I saw him.

“Deputy Hixson will definitely want to interview him to find out where he was when Layla went missing,” Joe said.

“As loony tunes as Sal’s story sounds,” I said, “don’t you think it’s a little strange that he warned Delia about the Admiral’s ghost just a few minutes
before
the Admiral’s statue was sucked underground by an inexplicable sinkhole?”

“Well,
you know what Dad always says about coincidences,” Joe reminded me. Our dad, Fenton Hardy, is a legendary retired detective who taught us a lot of what we know about investigating.

“It isn’t coincidence when you make yourself look like a fool by ignoring a coincidence,” I recited. “I don’t have a clue how the Admiral and his ghost fit into it, but Dad also says that even the most far-fetched stories can loosen the thread that unravels the truth.”

“Does that mean we get to interrogate a ghost?” Joe asked.

I laughed. “I don’t know where to find his ghost, but maybe we can start by getting the lowdown on the real Admiral and his creepy statue.”

“How are we going to do that?” Joe asked. “Did you find a time machine and forget to tell me about it?”

“Nope.” I grinned. “The next best thing.”

I
F THERE’S ANYWHERE IN BAYPORT
we’re going to find pertinent information about Admiral James T. Bryant, it’s here,” Frank announced with an especially nerdy glow as we walked up to the information desk at the Bayport Historical Society library.

“Frank! It’s good to see you again,” said the bushy-haired man behind the desk.

“Hi, Mr. Schneider. We need to dig up some information on Admiral Bryant and his statue. There isn’t much online besides the basics they taught us in middle school,” Frank explained.

“I hear it’s been an eventful day for the old Admiral,” Mr. Schneider said.