The Final Step

by Ridley Pearson

  Blinking to try to clear my head, I sank down into one of the two comfortable chairs.

  “Bottom shelf,” I said, pointing. “That section there. Take all the books off, please.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Lexie looked as if she might try to talk me out of my request. Thankfully, she changed her mind and started laying stacks of books onto the floor.

  “James told me about it,” I said. “I don’t know if he found it himself, or pulled a bunch of nails out or whatever. Maybe Father showed it to him.”

  “Nails?”

  “You’ll see.”

  It took her a moment to get all the books off the built-in shelf.

  “So?” Lexie said.

  “I need you to look at me,” I said. “To look me in the eye.”

  Lexie’s concern ran deep as she did as I asked.

  I stood, all by myself, and dodged the piles of books, barely breaking eye contact with her. “No shouting. No squealing. No sounds at all. You promise?”

  “I . . . ah . . .”

  “You’ve got to promise. We can’t afford to wake Lois. You will never speak of this, unless to me.”

  “What is it, like a signed first edition or something?”

  “More in the ‘or something’ range,” I said. “You’ve got to promise.”

  “OK. No noise. Promise.”

  “Pinkie swear. You’ll never tell another person. No one. Not for any reason, even the most extreme reason. Never.” I held my pinkie finger out like a hook.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” I said. “Swear.”

  She took my finger in hers. “Swear. This is really stupid, you know?”

  “I know,” I said. “You’ll see.”

  I jiggled the bottom shelf board. It was dark, polished, probably a rare kind of wood. I didn’t know much about wood. It was cut so that the front stuck out from the recessed bookshelf an inch or two. I wasn’t great with measurements. The little finger of wood to the right matched perfectly with the left finger of wood on the next shelf over. Father had once told us that a good deal of the oldest woodwork in the house had been crafted by boat builders. The upstairs library’s floor-to-ceiling bookshelves seemed to confirm that.

  “The trick,” I said, pulling the shelf gently, “is lifting at the same time. There are these little—” The shelf came free. Up and out. Lexie helped me set it onto the floor.

  “What is that?” she said.

  “Insulation.” The box was filled with clumps of what looked like shredded newspaper or maybe dryer lint. “Old stuff. From a long time ago.”

  “I think you hit your head harder than you know, Moria.”

  “It gets messy,” I said. “I use both trash pails.” I pointed.

  Without asking, Lexie retrieved them. I felt a little bossy, but she wasn’t complaining.

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” she asked.

  I delicately scooped out some of the insulation and placed it into the first of the trash pails. I continued, filling the second. Then I pinched the corners of a folded pillowcase that only I knew was there. Carefully hoisting it so that it cradled the gray clumps, I eased the whole mess into the last of the trash pails. With Lexie’s help, it went more smoothly than when I’d done it myself.

  As we stood, Lexie got her first look inside.

  Despite my warnings and her promises, I had to slap my hand over Lexie’s mouth to prevent her screaming.

  James’s hidden compartment held a stack of gleaming bars of solid gold.

  CHAPTER 33

  THE TWO OTHER SHELVES HIDING FATHER’S gold presented a mystery: a bar was missing. First bar on the left. Lexie didn’t know it, but I did, since I’d stacked them. I’d lugged them up from Father’s study, quietly and carefully. I placed them. I knew.

  Why just the one? I wondered. If you’re robbing a house, wouldn’t you take as many as you could carry? Even I had managed to carry four at once. A grown man could easily take four times that in his pockets alone.

  “Something’s wrong,” Lexie said, eyeing me. Testing me.

  “Maybe.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Let’s check the basement first.”

  Sneaking around one’s own house might feel uncomfortable to some. But it was so much a part of my life with James that when I found myself sneaking around for real, it didn’t feel like sneaking around at all. It was more a game for Lexie and me.

  We made it through the kitchen and into the basement, a dusty old place with walls of large whitewashed stones and overhead, irregular beams that dated back centuries, not decades. Musty smelling and harshly lit by bare bulbs, it held old suitcases, cardboard boxes, shelves with tools, and more boxes. There was a space cut into one wall that had once been the home’s coal bin. It still contained coal. The clothes washer and dryer looked like space aliens among all the old stuff. There was a soapstone sink and a collapsible drying rack with a broken leg that lurched to one side like an old man with a cane.

  A few of the boxes lay torn, spilling out their contents. Several suitcases had been opened and tossed.

  “They came down here,” I said.

  “No doubt. How did they know about the gold, Moria?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No one robs a basement, right? So they were after the gold.”

  Lexie was too smart.

  “I don’t know. Only me, James, and—” My throat knotted. “Sherlock. He would not do this.”

  “But he knew?”

  “Knew? He’s the one who figured it all out. Without him, James and I would never have found . . . anything.”

  “But you trust him, right?”

  “Trust him? Of course I trust him! What, are you kidding?”

  “But if only you, James, and . . . I mean . . . he gets expelled. He’s mad.”

  “No! That’s not even close to who he is. No!”

  “People do funny things. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Well stop saying it!” I said.

  She looked as if I’d hit her. I apologized. Then she apologized to me.

  I worked my way over and around a bunch of clutter to reach the coal bin. Lexie stayed where she was. “Careful,” she said, “there’s spiderwebs and stuff.”

  What she couldn’t have known, what the thieves couldn’t have known, was that I’d put the cobwebs there myself with a package of SuperScary Stretchy Spiderwebs. A web in the lower left corner, and a smaller one in the upper right. I felt proud that Lexie thought they were real. The one in the lower left served a purpose. I pulled it away, the webs sticking to my fingers.

  “I am going to puke!” Lexie said. “You are so brave!”

  I said nothing. I reached into the bin, my fingers seeking out—and finding!—a string I’d attached to the bin’s near wall. I pulled. It was tight. On the other end, buried under two feet of coal, was a suitcase containing all the jewelry and coins we’d found in Father’s hidden treasure room. I wasn’t going to dig it out. The cobwebs remaining in place told me it hadn’t been discovered. The paintings, some of them rolled up, some framed, had been harder to hide. I asked Lexie to help me move a wardrobe lying on its side and pushed against a wall. Thankfully, the four stretched garbage bags were where I’d left them. The rolled-up paintings were overhead, tucked into a space between beams. Nothing had been stolen. All told, if Sherlock had been right, there were tens of millions of dollars’ worth of art and jewelry hidden down here. Confident none of it had been taken, doubtful that the thieves had even been looking for it, I returned upstairs with Lexie.

  “Moria, didn’t James tell me about how your father installed all this security gear last summer?”

  “Yeah, it was kinda weird. But then . . . you know . . . we found all this stuff and it made a lot more sense.”

  “No kidding! The thing is . . .”

  “What? The thing is what?”

  “I mean, I’m su
re it wasn’t Sherlock, but the video . . . you know.”

  “I’m so stupid!” I said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Well, you can’t exactly ask Lois to show you the video of her getting beat up. I mean, that’s just not right.”

  My mind was spinning. There was a closet in the short hallway that led to Father’s study. It contained the internet and cable TV stuff along with a sound system and the security gear Father had had installed.

  “I’m not exactly a wizard with computers,” I said. “That’s more James’s thing.”

  “Show me,” Lexie said.

  “The police would have taken them, right?”

  “Doubtful. A copy, probably. If it’s all digital then . . . Please, show me.”

  CHAPTER 34

  BACK IN MY ROOM, SITTING SIDE BY SIDE IN MY bed with the covers pulled up, Lexie worked my laptop from a thumb drive that contained dozens of video clips copied off the equipment downstairs.

  Some fascinated me. Others I couldn’t bring myself to watch, namely the ones showing Lois getting pepper-sprayed and backhanded as she confronted the robber. Lexie studied it all like a scientist. She even took notes in a SpongeBob notebook I had that dated back to elementary school.

  “What are you writing down, anyway?” I asked.

  “Observations,” Lexie said.

  “Such as?”

  “Do you remember what Lois said about her getting sprayed and everything?”

  “I’d rather not,” I said.

  “I’m not sure you’d want to hear this anyway. How about I just make some notes?”

  “The sun is going to come up soon. I think we should just go to sleep.” I finally processed what she’d just said. “What do you mean I won’t want to hear it?”

  “You clearly didn’t catch it,” Lexie said.

  “Catch what?” I asked, feeling challenged. What had I missed that was so important?

  “When Lois was explaining it, she said that someone struck her. Then she said, ‘They sprayed my eyes.’”

  “Did she?”

  “She did. Singular, then plural. You see?”

  “Maybe not?” I said.

  “Inconsistencies! You’d have to look at the video, and I know you don’t want to.”

  “No, go ahead, show me.”

  “You sound angry.”

  “I’m tired,” I said, feeling much more awake all of a sudden.

  Lexie found the security system’s video clip and played it for me. In color, with no sound, shot from a camera mounted over the back door. I found it hard to watch.

  A hooded man comes up the steps and rings the doorbell, then pounds on the door. At the same time he’s putting some kind of device into the doorknob. The angle of the camera doesn’t allow a good look at every last detail. As the door comes open, a message in red lettering appears on the screen. STATION 7: OPEN. The intruder sprays something—obviously the pepper spray. Lois pushes the man. He slaps her hard and she falls. The man steps inside. The frame goes black.

  Before I can ask a question, Lexie clicks on another clip. “Check out the time in the corner. This starts six seconds after the last one stopped. Camera’s motion sensitive.”

  Two other guys, also in hoodies, hurry through the back door. The frame goes dark.

  “So?” I ask.

  “I don’t mean this the way it sounds, Moria. Or maybe I do, actually, but I don’t want you mad at me about it. It’s only an observation. OK?”

  “Lexie?”

  “Please!”

  “OK. I won’t be mad at you.” It felt a little first grade to me.

  “‘He struck me,’ ‘they sprayed.’ Her words. But there was no ‘they.’ They didn’t enter for another several seconds. She told us it was mostly blank after that.”

  “Wait a second . . .”

  “You promised!” Lexie said, reminding me.

  “You’re saying Lois lied? She got hit in the face, Lexie! Him, they? What’s the big deal?”

  “No big deal. Just . . . weird.”

  “I think you’re super tired,” I said.

  “Then there’s this,” Lexie said. She opened a document, not a video. “It’s the security panel log. So check this out.” Her nail was a chipped clear coat.

  “What exactly is this?”

  “Each line shows new activity. See? Here’s the back door opening. Next, motion detected in the kitchen. Then the hallway. Then . . .”

  “Father’s office.”

  “First place they went.”

  “Hmm.” We knew they’d stolen our family’s silverware and some silver pitchers. How would the thieves have known where Father’s office was, and why go there first?

  “Right? You’re breaking into a home you’ve never been inside and the first thing you do is go through the kitchen, turn down a hallway, and open a door into the owner’s private study.”

  “That’s not right,” I said, my throat dry all of a sudden.

  “It’s not hard to follow,” Lexie said. “And check it out: they’ve spread out.”

  “Thieves would do that,” I suggested. “Check out the house, search the house as quickly as they can.”

  “Yeah. I suppose. One guy goes upstairs right away. One into the basement. Moria, if you’re robbing a house, would you look in the basement first?”

  “Ahh . . .”

  “And look at this! The last place someone goes is clear down here,” she said, moving four pages down the log. “It’s the dining room.”

  “The silverware.”

  “The silverware,” Lexie said, echoing me. “The last thing they even look for.”

  “The only thing they took.” I wasn’t sure Lexie could hear me. My throat was closed off.

  “That’s what I’m saying. They didn’t come here to steal silverware. They took it—”

  “So it would look like a robbery.” I felt a chill. I tugged the blanket and tipped over the computer by accident.

  “Do you see what it means? What it implies?”

  “Maybe not?” I admitted.

  “The other two robberies,” Lexie said. “Down the street.”

  I must have been more tired than I knew. “I’m not following you.”

  “Did you ever see that horror movie where the guy kills something like four people on this one street? Really gross!”

  “Kill-de-Sac?” I said. “I couldn’t watch that to the end.”

  “That’s the one!”

  “Disgusting.”

  “But remember why he did it?” she asked.

  “I told you! I turned it off.”

  “It’s because the second woman he killed was an ex-girlfriend who’d dumped him. He killed the others just to make it all look totally random.”

  My head hurt. My chest, too, from a pounding heart. “So you’re saying the other houses were robbed to make ours look random?”

  “The Interpol detective.”

  “Superintendent,” I corrected. “Colander.”

  “Him. Yeah. Think maybe you should call him?”

  “I can’t! I’m not about to tell him about Father’s hidden treasure! And I sure as shingles don’t want him searching the house.”

  “All you need to do is show him this log. I guarantee you the other houses weren’t searched the way yours was. Somebody needs to know this. It might help them catch them. And if they’re caught, maybe some of this will start to make sense.”

  “Superintendent Colander,” I whispered, thinking to myself. “He scares me.”

  CHAPTER 35

  JAMES, WHOSE LACK OF INTEREST IN THE NEWS made him a barnacle riding on the belly of society (as far as I was concerned), heard about the string of break-ins on Beacon Hill sometime Sunday. It was probably because Lexie and I had suddenly left school that morning. James didn’t like unsolved mysteries. He called Lois Sunday night, gushing with questions.

  A moment after the call with Lois, Lexie’s phone rang and she retreated into the downstairs library. I headed
off to eavesdrop—being the friend and sister I was—but Lois caught me and returned me to the kitchen with her.

  Lexie raised her voice several times during the call. “I did not!” “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” “I wouldn’t do that.” It didn’t take sneaking around to overhear it.

  She came out of the library, her swollen red eyes finding me and Lois in the kitchen. She hurried upstairs.

  At Lois’s insistence, I gave her some alone time, and finally joined her in my room.

  “That didn’t sound so great,” I said, noticing the clumps of tissue on the floor and the box at her side.

  “He’s blaming me for something he won’t even explain. How fair is that?”

  Fair? I wasn’t sure. But interesting, I had no doubt.

  “Did he give you any hints?”

  “No. It’s like in his head we had this conversation. But it never happened.”

  “Yeah, that’s my brother,” I said. “The World According to James.”

  “How can he blame me for something when I don’t even know what he’s talking about?”

  “Maybe I do?” I said, hoping she might include me in on it.

  She shook her head. “No. It’s some kind of big secret. He wouldn’t tell me the secret because of course, in his mind, I already know, since I was the one who gave it away.”

  “That’s so . . .”

  “Confusing,” she said, finishing my thought.

  “Do you two have a lot of secrets?” I asked. I didn’t know where that came from. Sometimes one’s lips get ahead of her brain.

  There was this something in her eyes. It was like she’d put in colored contact lenses. Her eyes went black for a moment. Black, like the girl in the horror movie whose body’s been taken over by the snake the guy in the mask put in her bed. She wasn’t evil, but possessed. She wasn’t Lexie but some girl my brother had turned her into. Then it was gone. She nodded.

  I felt so cold. She wasn’t nodding about fun secrets. She wasn’t nodding about awkward boy-girl secrets that made you laugh before you could get a word out. These were unspeakable secrets, secrets she wasn’t about to tell me and we both knew it. That nodding of hers put a thick piece of glass between us. We could see each other, but we were in different rooms. Different spaces.