Keyword Cypher

by E. A. House

  He realized much later, after the adrenaline wore off, that they were lucky they’d been on a side street after dark. It meant that there were plenty of dark alleys for someone to come speeding out of unexpectedly, but it also meant that when Chris slammed on the gas pedal harder than he’d ever done in his life there was nobody in front of them to run into. The car that had come roaring out of the mouth of the alley missed crashing into them by inches—in fact it scraped the back bumper it was so close—before cutting its lights and speeding away.

  “That was too close!” Maddison said, rolling the window down and leaning halfway out, the better to snap a picture of the fast-receding car. Chris pulled over and put the car he was driving in park, because he didn’t trust himself behind the wheel at the moment. “They almost hit us!” he gasped.

  “They would have hit us if you hadn’t noticed them,” Carrie gasped. “What warned you they were there?”

  Chris was staring at the dashboard clock, still slightly frozen in shock and wondering if this was what it felt like in the aftermath of an alien abduction. He’d lost a minute or two and wasn’t sure what he’d done in the interim.

  “I—I saw headlights,” Maddison said, “unexpectedly. I just thought they weren’t paying attention. I didn’t expect—” She swallowed. “That car was aiming for us, wasn’t it?”

  For a half second, Chris considered lying, but there didn’t seem to be a point. “I think they were,” he said.

  “It was the car from the parking lot,” Carrie added.

  “But why?” Maddison wailed. “Someone just tried to kill us! There isn’t a point to all this!”

  Chris looked at Carrie, who shrugged, put an arm around Maddison’s shoulders, and said, “We don’t know, either. But, well, ever since Aunt Elsie died, things have been weird.”

  “Weird how?” Maddison asked.

  “Sketchy people at her funeral,” Carrie said.

  “Not your family,” Chris added, and Maddison half smiled.

  “That prickling feeling at the back of your neck,” Carrie continued. “And the Archive Board of Directors replacing her super-fast . . . ”

  “And there was something off about the police report,” Maddison added. Chris stared. “Dad—Dad had a copy,” she added, which didn’t really explain anything. “I think he’s more worried about the Archive than he’s letting on.”

  “Something might be . . . off, about how our aunt died,” Carrie admitted. “And it’s possible someone’s been following us ever since we packed up our aunt’s things at the Archive. But I had no idea someone would try to kill any of us.”

  “The absolute last thing we wanted was to put you in danger,” Chris added, wondering in the meantime if McRae was responsible, and if so, had he known his daughter was in the car?

  “She was pushed off the road,” Maddison said faintly. It took a second for Chris to realize that she was talking about Aunt Elsie. “Just like we almost were. So then the creeping feeling that we were being watched . . . ?”

  “Oh ick, somebody was watching us!” Carrie exclaimed. “Probably the same person who went after Aunt Elsie—oh.” She froze. “I thought it seemed familiar.” When Chris and Maddison just blinked at her she swallowed hard and elaborated. “The—the car that almost hit us. I can’t be certain, but it looked familiar. I think—I think it might have been the same car that followed Chris and me home the other day.”

  “Okay,” Maddison said. “Okay, I’m okay.” She didn’t sound okay. “Do you mind just dropping me off at home? This has been a long night.”

  “Sure,” Chris said.

  “And be careful about alleys?” Maddison added.

  “Very careful,” Chris agreed, and not at all facetiously. But the rest of the drive passed perfectly quietly. There were no cars sitting in alleys with their lights off, or following uncomfortably close. There were no cars acting suspicious at all.

  “They must have accidentally turned the headlights on when they started toward us,” Maddison said quietly, finally breaking their still-stunned silence.

  “And I’ll bet that car you thought was following us last Friday was following us,” Carrie said to Chris, who shuddered.

  Maddison’s father was at the door to meet her when they dropped her off. He was concerned by how late it was and by the fact that Maddison was pale and still shaking slightly, which was understandable for someone who had just survived a murder attempt, but less understandable for someone who had been helping a friend search for a piece of jewelry. He did not look like he had just tried to cause a fatal car crash, unless he was in the habit of doing so in his pajamas.

  “He could have doubled back,” Chris said to Carrie as he pulled into his driveway ten minutes later. “If you had only let me get out and feel the hood of his car—”

  “Because Maddison wouldn’t have found that suspicious at all,” Carrie sighed. “Chris, either this incident proves that Kevin McRae had nothing to do with Aunt Elsie’s death, or it proves that he is entirely willing to sacrifice his daughter for the sake of whatever is in this box. Either way, what is the last thing we should do?”

  “Suggest in any way that we suspect him or know anything about Aunt Elsie’s secrets?”

  “Yup,” Carrie said. Chris and Carrie shared a sigh. Then they climbed out of the car, locked it, and trooped inside Chris’s house, trying hard to act casual and as if they hadn’t found anything interesting at all in the office. The house was silent, and empty of all but the occasional bubbling of Chris’s dad’s aquarium. His parents were at a square-dancing competition and wouldn’t get back until the early morning hours. Possibly later if they made it to the final round.

  This was, Chris thought with a pang, exactly the sort of night he used to spend with Aunt Elsie. For a few minutes, they just fidgeted around the kitchen, Carrie getting a can of soda out of the fridge and Chris absently picking at some grapes, but finally neither could take the suspense anymore.

  “Well, you want to try opening the box?” Carrie asked.

  THEY CHECKED THAT ALL THE DOORS AND WINDOWS were locked first. There wasn’t a security system to turn on, because the neighborhood was quiet and the last criminal activity in the neighborhood, if it could be called that, had been when the Randalls’ son came home from college while everyone in his family was on vacation, forgot his key, and climbed in the side window, causing the next-door neighbor to call the police and report an intruder. The subsequent search for the home invader she reported to the police took nearly five hours.

  So all Chris and Carrie could do, fresh off almost being run off the road by a mysterious adversary and not sure if they had been followed home, was lock the doors and windows. Then they settled in Chris’s bedroom, and Carrie pulled the mysterious box out of her bag and set it down on the desk. The bronze trimmings shone dully in the light of the single desk lamp Chris turned on, and they set about examining it.

  The box proved to be securely locked and the lock was intricate: the lid was held closed by a hinged bronze latch, shaped like a spade from a deck of cards and with a finely wrought sun in the middle. It was a gorgeous piece of workmanship, even if there didn’t appear to be even so much as an opening for a key and you couldn’t even wedge the lid up enough to peek inside. Chris said as much, picking at the latch with a fingernail.

  “There has to be a key, though,” Carrie said. “Unless we go with Maddison’s suggestion and take the whole thing apart, and I want to try everything else first.”

  “Except,” Chris said, examining the bottom of the box for the third time, “taking it to an archivist and asking for an appraisal?”

  “Well no, we probably don’t want to ask McRae to take a look at it, and we’d better hope Maddison doesn’t think to mention this to him. Or if she does, that it doesn’t register,” Carrie said. “Although if worse comes to worst we might ask Dad or Uncle Robby. Or maybe the professor.”

  “I’m not sure you could even take it apart,” Chris added. He handed the
box to Carrie. “The craftsmanship on this thing is incredible. Where do you think she got it?”

  “It looks old,” Carrie said with a shrug, after turning the box over in her hands. “No watermark or maker’s mark—”

  “Maker’s mark?”

  “Um, the mark of the manufacturer. Sometimes they call it a maker’s mark,” Carrie said absently. “This is real bronze, and I have no idea how to tell the age of an etching or an engraving. But it has Aunt Elsie’s initials so I’d guess it was expensive,” she added. “How do you open?” she asked the box.

  “Maybe,” Chris suggested, laying his head down on the desk and staring at the box from his new sideways vantage point, “we should fold the letter Aunt Elsie sent me into some kind of origami key?”

  “Well, she did give me a book on origami folding for my fourteenth birthday,” Carrie said. “But somehow I think that’s a stretch even for—”

  “Wait a second,” Chris interrupted her, “I think this might come off.” He sat up and ran his fingers carefully over the sun decorating the latch, and he wasn’t mistaken. The piece of brass was raised, just enough to suggest it was a separate piece, and what looked like decorative balls on the tips of every other ray might be holding it on. Chris pushed the small brass sun gently away from him, which caused a startling squeak of metal—and then the sun swung to the side, revealing a small oval depression fitted with a series of grooves.

  “Okay,” Carrie said. “We’ve . . . found the keyhole?”

  “Yeah,” Chris agreed, “but where’s the key?”

  “We’re looking for something round, with a pattern of raised surfaces,” Carrie said. She ran a finger thoughtfully across the depression. “And I’ll bet it is brass, same as the lid. Drat, hang on,” she added, because her phone was ringing. It was a ringtone Chris didn’t recognize.

  “If I were a key Aunt Elsie gave to us, how would I be disguised?” Chris asked himself, digging in his desk drawer for a notepad.

  “Hi, Maddison, what’s up?” Carrie asked, standing up and walking over towards the door.

  “About this big,” Chris said, still to himself, now sketching it out on his trusty notepad. “Probably brass, and with a raised pattern that copies the grooved pattern of the keyhole, which looks like this . . . ”

  “He thinks what?” Carrie said in the background. “Why does—oh. I—yeah, okay, we will—”

  “Huh,” Chris said. If you assumed a circular brass object the same size as the keyhole with markings that were the exact reverse, you got something that looked remarkably like—

  “You just drew my locket,” Carrie said slowly. “And that was Maddison on the phone.”

  MADDISON WAS ON THE PHONE, CHRIS LEARNED later, because her father had noticed how rattled she was by her recent brush with death and demanded to know how visiting an archive as a favor for a friend could leave her so shaken. Which was either a clever extra layer of ruse or more proof that Kevin McRae wasn’t involved. Chris was still reserving judgement. As Maddison had no idea that her father might possibly be responsible for one murder and another attempted murder, she had proceeded to tell him the entire story.

  “Even the part about my having a crush on her?” Chris wanted to know.

  “Strangely, that didn’t come up in the conversation,” Carrie said.

  Kevin McRae had reacted to Maddison’s unintentionally edited version of events by exclaiming that he knew something like this would happen.

  “Something like what?” Chris had asked. Carrie had told him to shut up and let her finish.

  Dr. McRae had asked Maddison for a description of the car, scribbled it down in a notepad while muttering a number of rude words and that he should have known, and then told Maddison to warn her friend Carrie that she might still be in danger before dashing out the door, already on the phone to what sounded like a police detective.

  Maddison was bewildered by her father’s reaction. “I was expecting him to be freaked out about the whole ‘car tried to run us over’ part,” Maddison had told Carrie, “and he was, but he also immediately decided it was part of a bigger plot that involved you and Chris, which, what the heck?”

  “That is a puzzle,” Carrie had said. When she related the conversation to Chris, she had ended it with a smack to the head and the comment that, “if you don’t fess up about the lost treasure ship soon she is going to hate you.”

  Unfortunately, the narrative of why Maddison had called Carrie at one in the morning in a panic had to wait for after the fact, because only seconds after Carrie told Chris that it had been Maddison on the phone the glass on the picture window in the kitchen shattered. The large, ground-level picture window in the kitchen.

  Chris and Carrie froze, listening to glass tinkling and then the unmistakable sound of heavy footsteps in the house. Unless their parents had come home very early and forgotten both their keys and their common sense, there was an intruder in the house.

  “Maddison was warning me that someone might try breaking into the house,” Carrie whispered, casting worried glances from the open bedroom door to the desk lamp they’d turned on when they came home. Her eyes were very wide.

  “Gee, ya think?” Chris hissed. Then he grabbed the box and his notepad, yanked the loose floorboard under his desk up, and shoved them both into the resulting hole. The footsteps were coming, faster now, down the hallway, almost as loud as Chris’s pounding heart. Carrie scrambled to her feet and was just at the door when a guy Chris had never seen before came barreling the last few feet down the hallway, gun in hand and heading right for them.

  Actually, Chris had seen him before—it was the uncomfortable, sketchy-looking guy in sunglasses he’d seen at the funeral! Chris was frozen, but Carrie’s adrenalin-fueled response was more vicious—she yelped in terror and threw herself at the door, into the path of the gun he was raising, slamming it closed on Sketchy Guy’s arm with such force that the gun went skittering across the floor even as she screamed. Then she stayed there, entire body jammed against the door in an effort to keep someone three times her size from pushing it open.

  “Chris,” Carrie said, back against the door and all her weight keeping a scrabbling hit man—because really, what else could he be?—from throwing the door open. She had been screaming but that had stopped; now she was glacially calm and very pale in a way that suggested she was almost at the point where superhuman strength set in. “I think you should go out the window and call the police.”

  “And—and leave you here with a homicidal gunman?” Chris asked. “No way!”

  “If you go call the police,” Carrie said, panting with the effort of keeping Sketchy Guy from shoving the door open, “they might get here before my strength gives out!” She was skidding a little on the floor, even though she was wearing shoes. Chris cast a desperate look at the window, but his conscious won out over his sense of self-preservation and he joined Carrie at the door, lending his weight to hers. This earned him an inarticulate wail of frustration from Carrie.

  “How is this helping?” she demanded.

  “I can’t just leave you alone with a dangerous criminal!” Chris put his shoulder to the door; it didn’t help. Sketchy Guy was stronger than Chris was, and Chris could feel his feet slipping.

  “One of us needs to survive!” Carrie retorted. “Because of the thing!”

  Chris spared a moment to marvel at his cousin’s devotion to secrecy, although talking about “the thing” was still a bit of a giveaway. Nobody talked about “the thing” and meant the grocery list. They might have been talking about a radiation monster, but you couldn’t hide one of those. Plus, Chris suspected Sketchy Guy had a better idea of what he was looking for than Chris and Carrie did.

  There was a furious roar from the other side of the door. Apparently Sketchy Guy hadn’t counted on either of them holding out this long, which was reassuring but also worrying. Chris couldn’t hold out much longer, Carrie had been slipping before Chris joined her, and in fact even with their combine
d strength the door was inching open. Chris decided, irrelevantly, that being trapped in an action movie was a terrible experience and he’d like out now, and then suddenly had an actually passable idea.

  “Carrie,” he said, in an undertone, “remember how Fritz and Freda escaped from the zombie llamas?”

  “What?” Carrie asked, after a terrible second where she just stared at him and Chris hoped desperately that she remembered the movie from Friday. Then her incredulous expression cleared and she looked faintly relieved. “Oh. Yes,” she gasped, “but do you think that actually works in real life?”

  “No,” Chris admitted, “but if it does it might be our only chance, so on the count of three?” He did not want to know what Carrie had thought he meant about zombie llamas before she remembered the movie.

  “Oh,” Carrie sighed, “we’ll probably die, but sure.”

  “One,” Chris said, and braced himself against the door.

  “Two—no, wait!” Carrie said, and frantically darted across the room to snag the dropped gun.

  “Carrie,” Chris groaned as Sketchy Guy shoved the door open far enough to get three fingers in. Whimpering, Carrie threw her full weight at the door again—there was an anguished howl from the other side of the door—and fumbled the magazine out of the gun. She gave Chris a furious shrug when he stared at her in amazement and then she kicked the now-useless gun under the bed.

  “Three,” Chris said, and in a mostly synchronized move they swung away from the door. Abruptly and with no warning. Sketchy Guy went flying into the room and Chris and Carrie bolted out past him as fast as possible. As they did Chris grabbed the gym bag Sketchy Guy had dropped when he fell, on the basis that if he could do anything to thwart the man he should. Carrie slammed the door shut on her way out and then hurled the small but solid side table across the doorway, which, from the sound of it, caught Sketchy Guy across the mid-thigh as he lunged after them. It served to slow him down but did not, unfortunately, stop him.