Tunnel of Secrets Read online

  3

  LOST KEYS

  FRANK

  AS SOON AS WE SAW the ground open up and swallow the Admiral’s statue, Charlene and I sprinted across the town square. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw Deputy Hixson right behind us.

  The air was so thick with dust that it was impossible to see anything. Deputy Hixson ran up behind me and put a protective hand on my shoulder.

  “Stay back, Frank! It may not be safe.”

  “What do you think happened?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “Some kind of sinkhole? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  A crowd had started to gather, but the deputy kept everyone back until fire and emergency crews arrived.

  It took a long time for the air to clear enough to actually see the giant hole in the ground where the Admiral’s statue had stood and even longer to see inside the crater itself. The statue lay on its back fifteen or twenty feet below the surface amid piles of debris. Amazingly, the bronze statue seemed to still be in one piece. Well, almost; the oversize key that had been attached to the ring on the Admiral’s belt was gone.

  As I stared into the rubble-filled pit, I suddenly realized that the Admiral’s key wasn’t the only thing missing. So was Joe!

  I’d been so distracted by what had just happened, I’d forgotten that Joe was somewhere under the town square exploring the old tunnels with the Urbex club. If he’d been anywhere nearby when the sinkhole collapsed, he could be trapped underground or . . . I didn’t want to think about it.

  “Deputy!” I yelled. “My brother and some other Urbex members were underground exploring when this happened. They’re probably trapped!”

  A man started shouting. “I think somebody’s down there!”

  “Everybody, quiet!” ordered Deputy Hixson.

  CRRRRCK, CRRRRCK . . .

  A sound almost like rocks scraping together echoed upward from the sinkhole.

  “We’re going to get you out!” I cupped my hands and yelled down. “Help is on the way!”

  While the deputy organized and gathered tunneling gear, a small boulder rolled away from a pile of wreckage at the sinkhole’s bottom. A second later, Joe popped out. And he was carrying a giant two-and-a-half-foot-long bronze key.

  Joe looked up at me with a big grin.

  “Hey, bro,” he said. “Anybody lose their keys?”

  4

  THEY KNOW!

  JOE

  THE LOOK ON FRANK’S FACE when I emerged with the key was almost worth nearly being buried alive. It turns out that the shiny object I’d spotted lying in the debris had been the Admiral’s missing key. The underground chamber Keith had been exploring was just a few yards from the sinkhole; he was seriously lucky the entire thing hadn’t collapsed on top of him.

  The bottom of the sinkhole was crazy, like a bombed-out crater where a twenty-foot bronze giant was a taking a nap. I quickly examined the Admiral’s statue while the fire department hoisted Keith and me to the surface. Other than the lost key, the old guy looked none the worse for wear.

  Frank reached out to pull me back onto solid ground. My brother and I have this silent connection, sort of like twins (even though we’re a year apart), and I could tell that he was as relieved to see me as I was to see him. My excitement faded when I remembered that Keith and I hadn’t been the only explorers underground when the ground caved in.

  “Chris and Scott are still down there,” I told Deputy Hixson. “We have to go back to find them right now.”

  “Chris just texted me,” Keith said hastily, waving his phone at the deputy. “They made it out through another entrance.”

  The deputy let out a huge sigh of relief. Then he took the heavy bronze key from me and examined it curiously.

  “Lucky break everyone made it out okay,” he murmured. “Just make sure to have the paramedics check you out before you leave.”

  “I’m fine, but I think Keith sprained his ankle pretty badly,” I said. I looked around, but he was already limping away. He seemed pretty shaken up by the whole ordeal, and I couldn’t really blame him for wanting to skedaddle as soon as possible. By the time the adrenaline rush from our close call had worn off, I was feeling a little shaky myself.

  “Let’s clear the square until we can ensure the tunnels haven’t weakened the ground anywhere else,” Deputy Hixson announced.

  “Deputy, what makes you so sure the ground collapsed because of the tunnels?” Charlene asked, tapping the digital recorder she carried with her everywhere. “They’ve been there for hundreds of years, and this is the first time anything like this has ever happened.”

  Deputy Hixson looked skeptically at the recorder. “What else could it be? This is the first time people have explored many of them, so it probably just stirred up some of the old foundations.”

  “Can I quote you on that?” Charlene asked.

  “What? No!” the deputy said with a frown.

  “I don’t know what things looked like from up here, but underground it sounded like a series of explosions,” I offered.

  “It seemed that way from aboveground, too,” Frank agreed.

  “That doesn’t make a lick of sense,” Deputy Hixson said.

  “It’s rare, but pockets of combustible gas can build up underground, although they usually need to be ignited in order to actually blow up,” Frank said, going into Science Guy mode.

  “Maybe the Admiral ate too many beans today,” I suggested.

  The deputy laughed so hard he snorted. He quickly tried to cover it up, clearing his throat. “It’s probably just some sort of natural geological thing, like Frank said. We won’t know more until the experts take a look. Until then, I don’t want anyone else down in those tunnels.”

  The deputy shot Frank and me a hard stare that made it clear that last part was meant for us. He’d been around the Bayport PD long enough to know that we weren’t always the best at listening when Chief Olaf told us not to do something.

  “Anyone who ignores me on that is going straight to jail,” he added before turning to Charlene. “That you can quote me on.”

  Deputy Hixson handed the big bronze key to another officer. “This broke off when the statue fell. Let’s make sure it gets to whoever’s going to be putting the big guy back together.”

  “You know what’s weird?” I said. “It almost looked like the ring that was holding the key had been cut off the Admiral’s belt with a blowtorch. It was a clean cut.”

  I took the key from the officer and pointed out the dark spot on the top of the skeleton key where it had been looped onto the ring. “And this burnishing looks a lot like torch marks,” I pointed out.

  The deputy waved his hand dismissively. “Probably just a weak point in the metal left over from that restoration a few years ago.”

  Sirens blared from across the square as emergency vehicles arrived.

  “I’ve got to go. You kids stay away from that sinkhole,” he reminded us sternly before marching off with the other officers.

  They’d forgotten to take the key. I slipped it into my gear bag, hoping the Deputy wouldn’t mind if we borrowed it for a while.

  “All right, Hardy,” Charlene said to my brother. “Show me what you got.”

  “Um, okay, sure,” Frank replied not exactly confidently, turning around his camera and scrolling through the pictures he’d taken. Most of them were snapped before the press conference, with a few pictures of Deputy Hixson speaking. You could see the look on the deputy’s face change as the ground started shaking. After that there wasn’t much.

  “I wasn’t able to get the pic you wanted of Delia Hixson at the press conference because, well, the press conference didn’t last very long,” Frank said sheepishly.

  “Yeah, but what about the sinkhole?” Charlene asked. “That’s what everyone is going to want to see now.”

  “Well, I guess I was more concerned that everyone was okay. I wasn’t really thinking about pictures,” Frank explained.

 
; “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!

  5

  FAMILY SECRETS

  FRANK

  THEY 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 ey
es. “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.