by Gwenda Bond
He snorted. “I hardly think a mystery boyfriend qualifies you as an expert on these matters.”
“Watch it,” I said. “He’s not even my boyfriend. Just… think about what I said.”
Mayor Ellis climbed into the sedan, and so did two of his security detail. The other two turned as it roared away from the curb, heading back inside. Please don’t be going back to hang in his office.
“I’ll think about it,” James said. “Okay. I guess it’s time for us to do this. And by ‘this’ I mean something incredibly stupid, which might work or might get us in real trouble. I’m not sure this is a good idea…”
“And you’ve convinced me it is.” I stepped behind him and gave him a little push. “Forward march. This is the only way you get your dad back for keeps.”
CHAPTER 31
We exited from a semi-crowded elevator onto the slickly polished marble of City Hall’s second floor. This was the same route Devin and I had taken to the property records office, around the corner from the suite that belonged to the mayor and his staff. That was why we’d encountered his clump of very important people during the other day’s evacuation.
Our trip through security had been uneventful. We’d listed the hall of records as our destination again. No suspicions had been aroused. But the guard on scanner duty also hadn’t seemed to recognize James, and from his expectant waiting for some hello and the way he trudged onto the holoscanner when none came, I thought that disappointed him.
“It must have been something, to have the run of this place as a kid,” I said.
James’s dad wasn’t a first-termer. He’d been in office for six years when he got busted.
“‘No running in the halls, James Worthington the Third!’” James responded, in what must have been an imitation of his mother. “‘Let the boy have his fun.’” That one was his dad.
Two flags flanked the entrance to the mayor’s office. The wide wooden doors to the suite were propped open, with a member of the security detail standing on either side. I smiled at the taller guard as we passed, and glimpsed somebody inside who must be the mayor’s assistant. The youngish man with a buzz cut sat behind a desk in the outer office, the hallway that branched toward the break room opposite him. And behind him was the door to the mayoral HQ itself. It was closed.
We didn’t stop, not yet. James touched a door we passed near the end of the hall. “This is the break room.”
It was in the peripheral view of at least the closest security guy, which wasn’t ideal. But they both looked pretty bored. The one I’d smiled at was now busy checking his phone.
We rounded the corner and I relaxed against the wall beside the entry to the property office. “I’ll wait here. You text me when you get to the break room, not before. Open the door as quietly as you can.”
“We’d better wait here a minute before I go, so it’s not suspicious that I came right back.” James spoke in a hushed rush. Nervous.
I kept my voice down, too. “You’re going to be—so, good might be a stretch. You’ll be perfectly decent at this. You said you stop by and talk to… what’s his name?”
“Cal.”
“You stop by to say hi to your pal Cal sometimes, and so this is all perfectly normal. You tell him you’re here with a friend, working on a story, and want a snack from the vending machine like old times. Easy.”
He shook his head wonderingly. “It sounds like it when you put it that way. No wonder your permanent record is the stuff legends are made of.”
I straightened. “You’ve seen it?”
He adopted his usual air of superiority, which had been MIA of late. “Butler loves me, remember?”
“So unfair,” I said, and kicked his shoe. “I never get so much as a peek. Does it… well, what I want to know is…”
A grin that I did not like crossed his face. “Does it make you sound like the kind of girl who strikes fear into the hearts of all who cross you?”
I wouldn’t dignify that with a response. Out loud, anyway.
“Yeah,” he said. “It kind of does.”
I suppressed a smile. That was something, at least. And I gave James another push—he’d need it to get through this. “Go work your magic. I’ll watch for the door to open.”
I stepped over to the edge of the hallway’s corner and waited. I had a perfect view of the door in question, and I would leap across and in, hopefully without anyone seeing me. James was about to leave cover, but I said: “Wait.”
“Yes?” he whispered.
“If someone sees me, it’s important I get into the ceiling before they can reach the room. So be ready to help.”
Trepidation returned to his face, but before I could tell him to buck up or similar he was gone.
I didn’t want to be caught loitering suspiciously if someone came up the hall, and so I removed my phone. Pulling up the app, I tapped out a message.
SkepticGirl1: Don’t text me back. I’m just staying occupied while James does part one. Then I go up into the ceiling.
I pretended to look at the screen of my phone, but my focus was trained on the door. Until a reply came. I hadn’t expected him to be signed in.
SmallvilleGuy: Just pretend I’m there and you’re flying. Don’t fall.
What a sweet response. Typically sweet. The kind of sweet that made me want to swoon, even if I couldn’t seem to admit it out loud. My friends—and the taxi driver—were right. I should tell him how I felt. I vowed to consider the matter more seriously, stop agonizing and find a way—
I heard a hiss. “Lois?”
The door was already cracked open. Whoops.
I crammed the phone into my bag and glanced over—the closest security detail guy was still scrolling down his screen. James opened the door the rest of the way and I hurried through it.
It shut behind me with a bang. I’d almost missed my cue. I needed to get back into my game mindset.
The break room was standard issue. There were a couple of vending machines, two long tables surrounded by mismatched plastic chairs. A half-eaten box of cake that looked like it’d been there a week sat on one of them.
“Hurry up,” James said, eyes pointing ceiling-ward, and I worried he might faint if I didn’t rush.
“I’m on it.” I looked up, too, and considered the ceiling. It was tall. James hadn’t exaggerated.
Probably nine feet. Which meant the table wouldn’t give me quite the launching pad I needed to get there.
But it was only a couple feet above the vending machine.
I pulled a chair over to the nearest machine, filled with bad-for-you snacks, and held a hand out to James. “Help me get up here and in I go.”
Someone knocked on the door out in the hallway. Then again, more insistent.
“Tell them I handed you money and went back to do research,” I told James, climbing on the chair. I stepped into one of his hands and he practically tossed me up.
I landed on the target—the gross, dusty top of the vending machine. Pressing aside the panel above me, I stuck my head through to check out the inside of the ceiling. Yes, in between the removable tiles there were some support beams that I could use to get me where I needed to go.
“Hello?” a voice at the door. “Is someone in there?” And after a beat, “We may need to call down for keys.”
“I’m coming!” James called out.
I pulled the skinny flashlight out of my bag, then adjusted the bag’s strap so it clung tight to me. “See you on the other side,” I said. Then I put the flashlight between my teeth and climbed into the darkness above. I replaced the tile immediately, sliding it back into place and staying put. Listening.
I heard James open the door to the hallway and footsteps enter the break room.
“Do you have any change?” James asked, almost making it sound like he wasn’t mid-heart atta
ck. Good boy.
“Did we see a young lady come in here?” a man asked. “What are you doing in here?”
“Hey, I didn’t recognize you before.” That was a different voice. “You’re Mayor Worthington’s kid.”
“I am,” James said, donning his full-on snooty mode. “I’m here working on an assignment. I wanted a snack and to say hi to Cal. But I realized I don’t have change. My friend—my colleague—passed me some and went back to work, but it wasn’t enough.”
“I might have some,” one of the guys said.
I began to crawl as quietly and slowly as I could and still make decent progress. The important thing was getting to the evidence.
Unfortunately, it was beyond dark and dusty up in the ceiling. I couldn’t see farther than my flashlight beam, and keeping it in my mouth wasn’t exactly comfortable. I paused and removed it, swept the light around, and concentrated on memorizing my path forward.
And what was that? I strained to hold the flashlight farther in front of me.
Yes, there it was, a box, so dust-coated it almost blended in with its surroundings. It was far from me, but not so far. Just about right per Devin’s estimate. Right over the mayor’s office. I’d say I had about twenty feet to cover to get there.
“Should’ve worn fatigues and a face mask,” I mumbled, and then I turned off the flashlight.
Completely in the dark, my progress wasn’t any faster. And about halfway to the box—I thought—my nose decided it couldn’t take any more dust and forcibly ejected a sneeze. A loud sneeze.
I expected the cool metal bar beneath my hand to shudder with the force of it.
I waited, afraid to move. But no one came, no alarm was raised. “Forward march,” I said, repeating my command to James from earlier, blinking dusty eyelashes and moving.
And a few feet later, my hands blundered into cardboard.
I shifted to sit, facing the box, and took out the flashlight again. Holding it between my shoulder and neck, I lifted off the box top and nearly dropped the flashlight in the haze of yet more dust that shook into the air.
Inside were files. Many, many files. I flicked through a few of the neat brown folders, and they were exactly what James’s dad would have put away. Receipts, two small audiotapes (one labeled: threat against family), lists of dates and times and requests—of the inappropriately corrupt variety—from Boss Moxie. There was a map with his high-priority property development projects marked. I saw Mayor Steve Ellis’s name pop up here and there too. Back then, he’d been comptroller.
In other words, in the box? Paydirt.
I replaced the box lid, already skipping ahead to our triumph. Except… in all our talking about getting me up here and retrieving the evidence, there was one key thing we’d forgotten to discuss: How I’d get down. And transport a box this size out of this office.
“Sorry, James, I told you we might have to wing it,” I said, scooting aside a ceiling panel.
Oh good. The mayor’s desk was right below me. Making it only a six-foot or so drop. Ack.
I picked up the box, squinted to line it up as close to center as I could. “Bombs away,” I said, then dropped it straight down. Where it hit with a CRASH!
It looked mostly intact, for all the racket. The mayor’s desk… not so much. Papers had flown this way and that, displaced by the impact.
Now it was my turn. Helpfully, the door to the office opened, and James and the assistant burst in.
“James, I have no idea how I got stuck up here. Be a dear and—” I slung my bag down to the floor ahead of me, and then launched myself out of the ceiling—“catch!”
To James’s credit, he rushed forward and managed to keep me from landing in a busted sprawl on the floor. But my impact knocked the wind out of both of us and nearly took out a leather wing chair.
“Thank you,” I said, releasing him and straightening my dust-covered T-shirt, jeans, and boots ensemble. I gave the assistant a friendly smile, and held out a dusty hand. He blinked at it.
“You must be Cal,” I said. I kept my voice low, conspiratorial. “Those two guys outside, I take it they didn’t hear the commotion?”
Cal was tall, pale, and about as scared as James looked, contemplating the breaking of a rule. I’d have to be gentle with him. But I wanted—needed—to believe that given a clear choice between right and wrong, most people would choose right. Cal would be my latest test case.
He swallowed. “James told me it was nothing, not to get them. But…”
Cal took in the gaping ceiling, and the only slightly dented box on the desk, and my dust-smudged clothing.
“Cal, you trust James, don’t you? And you trusted the former mayor? More than trusted, you liked him.”
Cal seemed afraid to speak. He nodded.
“If you help us get out of here,” I said, “he might be your boss again. And Ellis—who I’m guessing is an unappreciative jerk—will not be anymore. He’ll get what he deserves.”
Cal had begun to nod more at the jerk part. I was pretty sure he hadn’t meant to.
“What if I get fired?” he asked.
“We’ll never tell anyone you saw us.”
His eyes went back to the box. “And you’re taking that box?”
“Yes,” James said, stepping in to take a more active role. He picked it up. “We are.”
I fished around on the floor and came up with my bag. “We’ll just need you to distract those two gents outside. We’ll go out the break room door. No one will know anything about this. Where we got the evidence is immaterial. It belongs to Mayor Worthington.”
“Evidence?” Cal repeated nervously. He added, “Mayor Ellis was acting funny this morning. I think he’s on to you.” He hesitated, and then said, “You’d better go.”
“Thank you,” James said. “Dad will remember this.”
At Cal’s alarmed reaction, complete with scared, blinking eyes, I said, “But he’ll never know about it. He’ll just remember you are a good employee.”
“Right,” James said. “No one will ever know about your helping us.”
Cal said, “Right this way,” and gestured for us to leave. “I’ll clean up the mess.”
“I wouldn’t bother,” I said. “He won’t be here much longer.”
James and I lapsed into silence as soon as we left the extravagance of the mayor’s actual office and entered Cal’s domain in the reception area, not wanting to draw the attention of the security detail back at their posts in the hallway. We could see them stationed on either side of the entrance. They had returned to phone-checking.
But one of them lifted his head.
I ducked behind a bookshelf. James—bless him for thinking quickly—pretended to set the box on Cal’s desk, like he was helping Cal out.
As soon as the guard’s attention wandered again, Cal waved us toward an interior hallway I could only assume led to the break room.
James picked up the box and, when we were safely out of front entrance earshot, said low, “There are people in the offices, so move fast.”
He didn’t need to tell me twice. In the break room, the woman I’d seen the mayor cursing at during the evacuation stood in front of the vending machine. I ignored her questioning look and opened the door to the main hallway.
She shrugged and put in her quarters. I peeked out, James behind me. The security detail wasn’t in the hall anymore. Well done, not-so-cool Cal.
James and I scurried toward the elevators. As we passed the entrance to the mayor’s office, I spotted Cal inside pointing at the top of the bookshelf, the security detail squinting up at it.
And then we were back at the elevators. James pressed the call button, and we both vibrated with tension, waiting.
I finished typing a quick message to Perry: Headed to first floor.
“Should we find the stairs?” Ja
mes asked.
But the car arrived and the doors slid open. We lunged inside, somewhat freaking out an overly tan man in a polo shirt.
I forced myself to stand tall under his scrutiny, and only then realized what he was dismayed by was the state of my wrinkled, dusty outfit. My face was probably dirty too.
“It’s a new style thing,” I said. “Hobo chic.”
He said nothing, but his face wore a “kids these days” look.
James pressed the button for the first floor until the doors closed.
The elevator stopped at the first floor. James had a death grip on the box.
The doors opened, but there was no rush of security to meet us. Instead, Perry and an elegantly dressed woman who looked a lot like Devin stood outside it. The polo guy excused himself, leaving fast as James and I stepped out of the elevator.
Devin’s mom and Perry both absorbed my wrecked state. Perry asked, “What took you so long?”
CHAPTER 32
I gave Perry what I hoped was a withering look. Way to take the wind out of a girl who just leapt out of a ceiling’s sails.
He held up his hands. “Don’t shoot,” he said. “I’m just kidding.”
The main lobby was full enough that no one at the security checkpoint nearby was keeping a close eye on the elevator. All good.
James handed Perry the box of evidence. The woman said, “I’m Angela Harris.”
“Devin’s mother,” I said. “Hi.” I wished I wasn’t meeting such an impressive person while I was coated in dirt. If there was ever a time to quote Dorothy Parker, it was now, so I did. “Excuse my dust.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said. “Let’s move.”
No-nonsense. I approved. Boss Moxie wouldn’t know what hit him until he was knocked off the perch of his lofty, illegal empire.
Devin’s mother started walking, and Perry, James, and I followed her. Even Perry was deferential to her—that was a new look for him.
Oil portraits of important men and women from the city’s past dotted the walls, nearly blurring as we took the hallway at all but a run. Ms. Harris moved fast, and she talked faster. “We had to bring your father in through an employee entrance,” she told James, “but he’s waiting in an office this way. If what he told me is in the contents of that box really are there, then this should be a slam-dunk. I’ve already taken his sworn statement, and I’ve got a judge on standby.”
