Chapter 25

“You should have stayed home,” Julie whispered at her brother. “It does not take three of us to look for doors in dirt.” As far as she’d been able to tell from Lucas’s explanation, there was a concealed door in the back of the artificial hill that disguised the workings of the Jesus Cave, one of the park highlights.

“I wouldn’t trust that skelm with a blade of grass,” Zander muttered as they followed Lucas along hedges in the direction of the back of the park. Under heavy clouds, the late afternoon light was gray enough to turn them into shadows. “For all I know, he’s a killer. Do we know where your FBI informant was last night?”

“Not attending an invitation-only party for the rich where Melissa was killed,” she said scornfully. “They murdered his sister. He’s on our side.”

“What exactly is our side?” Zander asked in exasperation as Lucas halted to peer through the sticks of the winter-barren hedge.

“Reverend Arden, of course. He is in danger, and so is his school program. And now, Ana may be in danger as a witness, just the way I am. We must stop this killer.”

“For all we know, Arden is a criminal who is hiding in a hospital bed,” Zander said with scorn. “You are too trusting. We should just tell the police what we suspect and go home.”

“The police have been all over the park and have not found this room even though they had the blueprints. Lucas is the one who is helping!”

“That is because there are two sets of blueprints,” Zander argued. “We should show the police the ones we found in Gregory’s files.”

“Too late. They should have found them on their own. I bet they didn’t even know what they were. Lucas does.” Julie picked up speed when Lucas waved at them to proceed. She was being defensive because she was starting to feel the same as he. . . that they were doing something dangerously foolish.

But Ana had already risked enough for them. Julie needed to learn the same courage.

“The blueprint shows a door in the hill behind the cave,” Lucas said when he caught up with them. “We’ll need to go around the high side of the mound, and it would be best to stay off the road.” He pointed to the tractor path on the lower end. “We’ll have to go to the left to stay out of sight.”

“All I see is a mound of dirt piled over a concrete arch,” Zander complained. “How can there be a door? And even if there is, how would we unlock it?”

“I have Arden’s keys, but we won’t know what we can do until we find it.” Lucas began easing through the overgrown bushes surrounding the mound.

Julie thought there might once have been a lovely hedged garden here. The digging had destroyed all but the remnants.

Zander had his phone out. “We should call the police.”

“Not until we have something to show them.” Lucas held up his hand to halt them.

Julie peered around his shoulder. From their vantage point on the hill, she could see two men using a forklift to load a crate onto a rental truck on the far side of the mound. She zoomed up and took a quick photo but didn’t have time to do more before they climbed in the cab and drove off.

They waited, listening, but Julie only heard the wind rustling in the hedge. Lucas slid out from under cover and started down.

Cursing, Zander trotted off after him. With trepidation, Julie did the same, scrambling around the mound with thick brambles to conceal them.

They found the door in the mound easily. Tire tracks led straight to it, although the door itself appeared to be solid rock. They eventually located a concealed hinge that hid a keyhole behind a rock-like plate. Lucas jiggled through his keys until he found the ones he needed. After a few attempts, the lock clicked.

Handing Julie the keys, he used both hands to tug the heavy door open. “It’s built strong enough to keep out an army,” he complained. “What the hell do they have in here?”

He pulled out a flashlight and beamed it into the opening. “Shit.”

Zander pushed past Julie to peer inside. His response was the same, only in a more familiar dialect. “Kak.” He began snapping photos with his phone.

“Wait,” Julie said, grabbing his arm in panic. “I hear something.”

The low roar of a heavy motor rumbled closer. Zander and Lucas repeated their imprecations.

“If there’s evidence in there, I need to find it. I’m going inside. You two lie low.” Lucas jogged into the interior, taking his flashlight with him.

Before Zander could imitate that macho stupidity, Julie grabbed her brother’s arm and tugged him toward the safety of the leafless hedge on the hill.

The cave had been filled to the two-story ceiling with crates labeled General Defense. She had a very bad feeling deep in her belly as she started sending messages to Ana.

I will not worry, I will not worry, I chanted inside my head as I once more caught the Metro for Alexandria and Arden’s hospital. He was still heavily guarded but no longer in intensive care, so I’d been given permission to visit again. I wanted to know how much he’d known or suspected about his board’s operations, but the visit would also put me closer to the park, where Julie and Zander had apparently gone.

I didn’t like what they were up to, but I understood the urgency. I’d skimmed over their messages, knew what they were doing, and agreed it should be done. A large room under a make-believe mountain where gun crates had been unloaded sounded suspicious to me. I just didn’t want the twins looking into it, which was why I was trying to dial back my mother hen instinct.

I was back to my normal invisible self, wearing my army jacket and my hair in a braid, when I walked down the hospital corridor toward Arden’s room. Approaching me was the beige blonde I’d met last night—Laura Jeffrey, Tony’s daughter.

I’d read up on her this morning. She was GenDef’s new CFO, stepping in to take Georgie the Embezzler’s place. She was a chip off the old block, quietly working her way up through the corporation, hobnobbing behind the scenes with powerful politicians and gun lobbyists, not spending much time on a social life, if the society pages were any indication. Never married, no hint of anyone but her immediate family in her life. She appeared to be a hard-nosed career woman.

And she’d told me she didn’t agree with her father’s policies? I wondered which policies those were, since moneymaking and wielding power seemed to suit them both. Or maybe she just meant she was a feminist, and he was a sexist.

She walked right past me without blinking an eye. Okay, so we were both invisible. I was good with that. Had she been visiting Arden? If he was a friend of her father’s, it made sense they knew each other.

I showed my ID to the guard at the door, and he let me in. The good reverend was sitting up in bed, still looking pale and tired. His golden-boy good looks faded when he wasn’t smiling. The bandage hiding most of his pretty hair didn’t help. He shoved away his half-eaten lunch and picked up a Bible from the side table.

“Good morning, Miss Devlin,” he said formally. “Thank you for sending your mother by to see me. It was good to catch up after all these years.”

I took a seat in one of those uncomfortable plastic hospital chairs and snorted impolitely. “You’re probably the first person besides Mallard who has expressed happiness at seeing my mother when she’s on a mission. Did she grill you unmercifully?”

He shot me a glimmer of his old smile. “Of course, but not any more than Laura did. I seem to be attracted to strong women.”

“Laura? Jeffrey?” This was not the direction I’d planned to take this conversation. “You’re an item?”

“Once. But I’m devoted to my work, and she’s devoted to hers, so there really wasn’t much point.”

“But she was in here grilling you instead of asking after your health?” Not that I was doing anything different, but I’d never expressed any other interest in him.

His smile faded. “She’s upset that I’m considering closing the park. I hadn’t realized her faith was so deep. She even offered to straighten out the mess George Paycock has made of our finances.”

“That’s generous of her, but I think you should hire an outside auditor instead of relying on friends if you go that route,” I tried to warn him politely. I wasn’t in any position to order him to do anything. That was a job for the feds.

“That’s what my father says, but to put it politely, he’s not a friend of the Jeffreys. We don’t agree on the gun control issue, so I avoid that topic when we’re together.”

So would I, then. “My issue, and probably the cops’, is with your board’s accounting. You sign off on the invoices. Who explains them to you?”

“George handled it until he died,” Arden said, rubbing wearily at his temple. “I haven’t had time to find anyone else to step in yet.”

I wanted to feel sorry for the former football hero, but I was too angry. “Whose idea was the park? You don’t seem to have much interest in the details of an undertaking this large.”

“I’m only interested in the school,” he said, sounding a little more spirited. “Spreading education and the Lord’s word is my mission. Laura suggested we could raise more funds with a theme park. She and the rest of the board have been there from the first, helping build support. And they’re right. People want to contribute to the park more than they do for education. We’ve been able to build twice as many schools as previously.”

I didn’t want to argue with education and the Lord’s mission, but I danged well would like to argue about his old flame, Laura and the “people” who were contributing to the park. But I couldn’t slap any evidence on him, especially when he looked as if he was doped to the gills. He hired people to handle finances. They’d let him down. So I went back to his mission.

“I came here to talk about Melissa. Did you know her?”

He looked even older and grayer. “I wish I understood what was happening with those girls. They seemed such good, responsible young women. How did they end up with mobsters?”

“Mobsters? Who told you that?”

“Laura. She said they’d fallen in with a bad crowd, and there wasn’t anything I could have seen or done. But I feel as if I’ve shirked my responsibility to their parents and to them.” He frowned and flipped the pages of the Bible in his hands. “I have thought of myself as their shepherd, but that is arrogance, I suppose. I must put my faith in God, and trust that He knows what is best.”

“Looking after young students is not arrogance,” I practically shouted. “Isn’t there a verse about God helping those who help themselves? You can’t ask God to do your job! I’m not a Bible student and not much of a believer in omnipotence unless there’s a verse about us acting as His hands and eyes. Melissa was not living with a mobster. Did you never inquire about those concerts and parties your students were attending?”

Arden looked surprised at my vehemence. “The concert tickets were merely donations, unused seats that our generous sponsors gave to the school. I wanted the students to have as well-rounded an experience as possible. Some of them come from very rural areas and have never seen an orchestra. It was good for them to rub elbows with the people who build our schools. What do you mean, Melissa wasn’t living with a mobster?”

Lord, save me from naïve do-gooders wearing rose-colored glasses. “Melissa was living with one of your sponsors, Ed Parker, a perfectly respectable gentleman and a member of your board of directors. Admittedly, his support of the American Gun Association puts him in the creep department, but that doesn’t make him a mobster even in my eyes.” I waited to see his expression on the topic of guns.

“Even my father gave up fighting the AGA,” he said, shrugging, revealing nothing. “As much as I dislike violence, I cannot turn my back on so many of my flock who believe guns are their God-given right. I agree, AGA membership does not mean Ed is a mobster.” He frowned in puzzlement, finally.

“Then who does she mean? Esther was dating George Paycock, another AGA member who, given his embezzling tendencies, may have been a mobster for all I know, but he worked for General Defense and was on your board too. Maybe Laura knows something we don’t.”

Squirming uncomfortably, he wiped at a bead of sweat on his forehead. “Months ago, Esther tried to warn me that the books were ‘cooked,’ I think she called it. I talked to George about it, but he said she was just an angry young woman and said he’d have the books audited, if I wanted. Only audits are rather expensive, so I hesitated. I trust my board.” He rubbed at his middle. “Money has never been my interest.”

Yeah, I was starting to see how that could be a bad thing. “Rebecca was another of your missing students. But she was unwisely dating your general contractor, a violent man who beat his wife. I’m not sure that qualifies him as a mobster, but he seems an odd choice to be allowed around a crowd of young students.”

When he merely looked sick and didn’t reply, I threw in my zinger. “Surely you had your suspicions about Gregory’s construction work.”

He closed his Bible and his eyes. I thought maybe he was praying. And then he turned a ghastly gray, clutched his chest, spewed his breakfast across the covers, and began twitching spasmodically.

I’d pushed too hard and I’d killed him! I screamed for the guards. I slammed the nurse’s alarm button. That hadn’t been guilt on his face, but pain. I panicked at my helplessness and watched a decent man writhe in agony.

The room filled with more useful people, who shoved me aside. For a moment, I thought Arden’s eyes lifted beseechingly to me, and he tried to speak, but a nurse was pressing something between his lips and a doctor ordered us all out, and I fled, shaking. Had I really done that? What had he been trying to tell me?

I might never know, I realized, gulping back tears and a bucket of horror and guilt. If I knew how to pray for him, I would. If he died. . . Two deaths in two days would seriously shake my world.

I leaned against the wall, trying to pull myself together. An orderly rushing down the corridor with a gurney brought back my last deadly encounter in these halls. Hospitals were not a safe place for me. I needed to leave.

I avoided the public elevator and fled down stairs in the wake of a janitor. I followed an aide to a staff elevator and escaped out the back. Still rattled, I hid behind some dumpsters and texted a message to Graham about Arden. Did people throw up if they had heart attacks? I really didn’t think Arden could fake that act to avoid questioning.

Trying to control my shredded nerves, I scanned the messages on my phone.

Is storing crates of guns illegal? That one was from Julie.

Zander was more dramatic. Gun smuggling income part of park donations?

I couldn’t see any way that could turn out good. They’d also sent me photos they had taken of a forklift loading crates into a rental truck. I couldn’t read the writing on the crates, but more photos showed a door inside what looked like a dirt mound with more crates inside. The GenDef insignia was clear. The park could be supplying terrorists or local gangsters with weapons for all I knew.

Mobsters. Laura Jeffrey had called Arden’s board of directors mobsters.

Paul Rose had been known to hire local gangs for his dirty work.

I swore and sent an all cap message to both of them. GET OUT NOW!

Not enough suspects. I didn’t have enough suspects. Where was our brutal contractor right now? Driving forklifts? But he couldn’t have murdered Melissa. No way that crude brute would have showed up at a party in a tux and not been noticed.

My phone rang and I nearly dropped it in surprise. I punched the screen and Graham shouted, “Gunfire at the park now! Get those idiots out of there. Limo will meet you at the bus stop. Crash the gate. I’m on my way.”

Heart pounding, I dashed toward the street and the waiting limo. I couldn’t find my twin siblings and lose them only a few days later. I just couldn’t. Their family would declare war on Washington and behead me and everyone else involved. We were rich now. Everything was supposed to be hunky-dory, copacetic, and Andy Griffith idyllic.

And then I noticed the limo was parked the wrong way for this side of the street. Sam never did anything improper. Like Mallard, he was old school. Ergo, either that was a space alien behind the wheel or Sam was in trouble.

I swung around and shot off across the parking lot, away from the street. “You still there?” I called into the phone. I heard a car door slam. I didn’t have time to look over my shoulder.

“On the roof. Out of contact shortly,” Graham said, sounding as if he were talking into a mouthpiece.

“Someone may have Sam. I’m not taking the limo.” I would tell him to send help for Sam, except I suspected the space alien had abandoned Sam and was running after me now. “Meet you at the park.” I turned off the phone and scrolled across my screen, looking for my Uber app.

I raced through a crowded parking lot, heading for the opposite street. Hospital parking lots are acres of bad hiding places and excellent visibility, so anyone following me could easily keep up. On the positive side, hospital visiting hours made for traffic jams and way too many people dodging cars. Whoever was behind that slamming door and badly parked limo probably wouldn’t dare fire—yet.

I poked my favorite app as I ran, darting in between the tallest vehicles I could find and ducking behind short ones. I lucked out. A low-rider pickup truck carrying lumber with its tailgate down had just started pulling out of a spot. I leaped into the bed. The driver may have looked up at my thump, but I was already down flat, and he probably didn’t see me. Being small is occasionally useful.

As the truck took a curve, I clung to the tool box fastened to the truck bed and peered over my shoulder. More people were pouring out of the hospital into the lot. No one was overtly waving a weapon.

But I could have sworn a woman in a fur coat raised a middle finger at me.

My mind raced furiously as I slid out of the truck bed at the first stoplight. Dodging traffic, I ran for the coffee shop where I’d told my favorite Uber driver to meet me.

Hiding in the crowded coffee line, I called Sam, the limo driver. “Are you okay? Did you have a passenger or am I crazy?”

He greeted me in relief. “A lady in a fur coat. I thought she was a friend until I saw the gun. Thank goodness you understood my message. Shall I pick you up now?”

“No, the limo is too conspicuous. Be available in the vicinity of the park. I’m afraid the hornets have been stirred.”

A lady in a fur coat. . . As far as I was aware, the only females left alive in this sorry affair were my mother and Mrs. Overcamp.

Or Laura Jeffrey. She’d seen me in the restroom before Melissa entered.

She’d passed me in the hospital corridor this morning. Maybe I wasn’t as invisible as I thought.

“Lucas is trapped in there.” Julie hated herself for sobbing as they edged further down the hedge row, away from the activity below.

The trucks they’d heard had carried construction equipment. While she and Zander had darted up the hill, Lucas had shut himself inside the cave, proving he was bosbefok.

They hadn’t been able to reach him since the door shut.

When the men in the trucks hadn’t been able to open the door, there had been a lot of shouting and cursing. Lucas must have jammed the lock from the inside.

And now, the mean-looking skebengas were ramming a bulldozer against the back door into the Jesus Cave. Julie wanted to weep, but there wasn’t time.

“His own fault for going inside to explore first,” Zander said. “We can’t do anything against a dozen men with machinery. I have called the police, but the dispatcher thinks I am a prankster. I don’t know if they will arrive or if they will send enough cars.”

Julie had attempted frantic calls to Ana and Graham but received only voice mail. “Distraction,” she said. “We could stage a distraction to lure some of those men elsewhere. There may be other ways to escape if he just has time to find one. What can the police do when we’re the ones trespassing? Those men could just say there’s a problem with the door.”

Zander hesitated, studying the fleet of construction machinery and trucks parked in the back lot. “I am not an engineer. I have never driven so much as a forklift. I drove a bakkie once. It is not much different from a car, if these are like the one I drove.”

“Would they leave keys in the ignition?” she asked dubiously, studying the lot of equipment. There were several small white bakkies—pickups—down there. She’d seen the contractor driving around in a monster version, but his vehicle wasn’t in the lot.

They both peered over the shrubbery. The forklift drivers were now employed in attempting to pry open the door. Could Lucas hide once they did? Did the workers know the door had been deliberately jammed?

The parking lot was empty and on the far side of the hill from the angry workers. Zander slid from the shrubbery and down into the gravel lot. Julie followed on his heels.

“Let me see the keys Lucas gave you.” Zander held out his hand.

She’d almost forgotten she was clinging to them. She handed them over and let him sift through them.

“Bakgat,” he said softly, holding up several of the keys. “Ford.”

Cool, indeed. The pickups were all Fords. They tested truck doors until they found two that opened with the keys. Zander slid one key off, kept it, and handed the ring back to Julie.

She climbed into the interior of the second truck. Now what?

She was a photographer, a filmmaker, not a terrorist. What could she do to distract the bad guys?

Zander discreetly rolled his truck downhill out of the parking lot.

Julie wished for a big video screen. . . . Wait a minute! The park had a sound system that played anthems in the morning before class and gospel at the end of the day. The ancient system was rotten, but it could be heard all over the park. They even occasionally used it for announcements. Her mind spun with possibilities.

She couldn’t think fast enough to text. Starting the truck, she punched the phone for Ana’s number but only received voice mail again. As she rolled out of the lot, a man ran over the hill, shouting, and she hastily hung up. She thought she heard shots. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw dirt fly up from the road. Her heart thumped in terror, but knowing she might be able to help Lucas kept the adrenalin pumping and her foot on the pedal. She was around the bend before he could aim better.

Zander veered off toward the pathetic excuse for a Ferris wheel. Julie hit the gas and aimed for the market coffee house. Lucas’s keys might open more doors. If so, she could access the audio equipment.

With the park and school closed until after the new year, no one was about as she pulled up at the back door. There might be a few students holed up in the trailers. She hoped they stayed inside, if only for their own safety. She glanced over her shoulder, but no one seemed to have followed.

Turning off the truck, she could hear the roar of the bulldozer ramming the cave mountain, slamming against metal and concrete. The beep, beep as it backed up to try again kept her heart pounding. She prayed the door was as solid as Lucas had said.

It took a few frustrating minutes to find the right key. She was almost in tears before she had the latch open. She locked it behind her and shoved a chair beneath the knob.

More precious time was lost while she located the sound equipment and figured it out. Like everything else, it was dated, but that made it simpler. She found the microphone, heard the familiar buzz when she flipped the switch, and took a deep breath as she pondered what to say.

“Police, stop in the name of the law,” she cried, turning the volume up to boom, and striving for a voice of authority. “Weapons down. We have you surrounded.”

She had no idea if anyone was paying any attention. She located the switches that turned on the security monitors and flipped through them. There was no camera at the back of the mountain where the bulldozer operated, but she found the monitor overlooking the construction road to the back exit.

A rental truck rolling slowly down the rutted road picked up speed as she watched.

“Stop that truck right there, young man,” she shouted into the microphone. “Freeze where you are.”

Instead, the truck driver hit the gas, veered off the road, and aimed for a broken gap in the chain link fence.

Well, she shouldn’t have expected criminals to listen to the law.

She tried Ana’s phone again and told voice mail what was happening while she flipped through various cameras until she found Zander. The camera showed that he was out of his bakkie and examining the machinery that ran the ramshackle Ferris wheel. She remembered the reverend crowing happily over the gift of old amusement park rides. He’d had the engineering department working on them in their spare moments. She’d seen some of the rides running when they first arrived but not since. What did Zander think he could accomplish?

He fiddled with a box, and the wheel suddenly lit up in a colorful array of lights against the gray clouds.

She bounced happily in her seat. A twinkling amusement park ride ought to startle a few people into looking up. The criminals had to know they were being watched. Was that enough to make the rest flee? Only if they realized cops might ask to see what was behind the locked door.

She wished she had a camera behind the mountain to see what the bulldozer was doing. She flipped to a view of the front gate to see if anyone was leaving that way.

A fancy black sedan had stopped in the entrance, and a chauffeur was unfastening the lock. Reverend Arden drove a white bakkie like the one she’d stolen, so the sedan wasn’t his. Who else would have a gate key? All the teachers? The board?

She checked her phone. Had their frantic calls to Graham and 911 been heard? They hadn’t had time to do much more than cry for help and give a location. She couldn’t hear sirens from this sound-proof booth. Would police use sirens for runaway bulldozers?

The Ferris wheel began to creak into jerky motion in a bright glow of red, white, and blue. Cheering at this most excellent diversion, terrified for Lucas, Julie added her own touch. She slid a CD into the slot and played the gloriously dramatic tribute—“The Star Spangled Banner.”

Into the microphone, she announced the only other phrase she remembered from the dreadful American TV shows Zander liked. “Put down your weapons and come out with your hands up.”

She’d almost forgotten the rental truck racing for the fence. At least that driver believed her announcements. She caught its motion on the screen when it hit a fence post near the gap it had aimed for.

The image on the screen exploded in fire, flying mud, and truck parts.