No Way Out Page 8

  “So anyone who knows the schedule and knows that you handle the horses would know that you wouldn’t be in your flat during that time.”

  “That’s right,” Shorty said.

  “What do you know about the falconer who entertained the crowd on Friday night?” Joe asked.

  “He’s a good man,” Shorty said, “a personal friend. He’s employed by Mr. Horton, and lives not far from here.”

  “Does anyone else keep falcons in this area?”

  Shorty chuckled. “Yes, sir. We’ve got several. Believe it or not, a couple are still using them for hunting ducks, pheasants, and such.”

  “So it wouldn’t be too hard to find one or buy one or steal one around here,” Joe concluded.

  “Not if you knew what to look for,” Shorty agreed. “‘Course, you’d have to know a little bit about handling one too. If you want, I’ll ask around the falconers I know. See if anyone’s been selling lately or had one go missing.”

  “That’d be great, Shorty,” Joe said. “Thanks.” Joe felt himself drifting off into a drowsy state—not quite sleep and not quite unconscious.

  Shorty’s voice pulled him back. “Here we are,” he said. “Just lie still. I’ll get the medics.”

  Within just a couple of minutes, Shorty returned with two doctors and a gurney. They lifted Joe gingerly onto the mattress and wheeled him into an examining room. Another doctor and two nurses were waiting for him.

  The emergency team worked quickly, cutting off Joe’s jeans leg, cleaning and dressing the wound, taking a blood sample to check for infection and clotting factor, and giving him an IV boost of fluids and antibiotics to help jump-start his healing process.

  Then the doctor slowly, systematically stitched up the eight-inch slash.

  “You were very lucky,” the doctor told him after he’d finished and they’d moved Joe to a bed. “Those talons are like razors, but they missed the tendons, ligaments, and major vessels in your calf. You’re going to be really sore for a while and hobbling around with a crutch or cane. But the wound should heal up nicely.”

  “But I can leave now, right?” Joe asked. “I don’t have to stay here overnight or anything?”

  “No, you can go. I’ll give you some literature to read so you can watch for signs of infection. And I’ll need to see you again tomorrow and the next day to change the dressing.” He handed Joe some pamphlets and flyers about wild bird attacks.

  “You’re not local,” the doctor said. “Where are you staying?”

  “At EagleSpy.”

  “Ah, you’re part of the festivities going on out there, are you?”

  “Yes, sort of. My brother and I are actually guests of the Hortons. We’re old friends of Ray’s.”

  “Well, then, you’re really in luck. Penny Horton is a registered nurse. If she consents, I will allow her to change your dressing and monitor your vital signs. You won’t have to come back here unless there’s a problem.”

  “Perfect,” Joe said. He attempted to sit in the bed, but he felt woozy and fell back on the pillow.

  “We’ve given you some medication that will knock you out for a little while,” the nurse told him. “Your body needs rest after such a shock. You lost a lot of blood. We’ll lend you a crutch and a cane until you either get your own or no longer need them.”

  The nurse soon pushed Joe in a wheelchair out of the small emergency room. The pamphlets, flyers, crutch, and cane were draped awkwardly over his lap. He was glad to finally lie down on the backseat of Shorty’s car again, and he fell asleep almost immediately.

  Shorty had called ahead to Penny, and she and Frank were waiting for Joe when he arrived. Shorty and Frank helped Joe into a guest room on the first floor that Penny had fixed up for him.

  “No point in making you climb the stairs,” she said. “And you have your own bathroom right here.” She opened the door next to the closet.

  Penny looked over at Frank. “I can never thank you enough for rescuing Kay this evening,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for you, I might be fixing this room up for her recovery.”

  “That’s okay, Penny,” Frank said. “I’m happy everything worked out.”

  Shorty and Penny left while Frank helped Joe strip down to sleep shorts and shirt and pile into the comfortable bed.

  “Looks like you’ll need a new partner in the maze relay,” Joe said with a crooked smile. “What’s this about rescuing Kay?”

  “I’ll tell you about that in a minute,” Frank said. “First, tell me what happened to you.”

  Joe described his wait for Shorty at the stables and the subsequent peregrine attack. “I was set up,” he concluded. “Shorty’s going to check around and see who might have planted the falcon there. Probably Blackstone or one of his thugs.”

  “Blackstone’s in jail,” Frank announced with a big grin. He told Joe about tailing the fire-eater and Blackstone through the bazaar and rescuing Kay from the ring of fire.

  “Officer Chester called Penny a half hour ago,” Frank reported. “They caught Blackstone. He’s cooling off in the village jail. The fire-eater has agreed to spill everything. Both of them insist they had nothing to do with the arrow or Alan’s disappearance. But the police don’t believe that story. Officer Chester is having the arrow shaft traced. If he can prove a connection between it and Black-stone …”

  “What do you think?” Joe asked his brother.

  “I don’t know. The fire-eater seems willing to confess about the maze destruction and the vicious assault on Kay—although he swears he never meant that fire to get so out of hand.”

  “So you think he’d confess to the flaming arrow and to kidnapping Alan if he’d done those, too?” Joe said. “Kidnapping’s pretty serious—it might be more than he’s willing to admit.”

  “True, but he came pretty close to attempted murder or manslaughter with that fire. And he seems to be willing to do anything to keep himself out of prison. I just think that if he knew where Alan is, he’d tell the cops.”

  “Even if the fire-eater didn’t have anything to do with the rest of it, that doesn’t mean that Blackstone’s hands are clean. Maybe Vincenzo pulled off the kidnapping by himself—or hired someone else to do it.”

  “I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more going on,” Frank said. “Maybe when Shorty checks out the falconers, we’ll get a new lead that I can go after tomorrow. I also want to check out the caretaker’s cottage.”

  “Ray and I didn’t notice anything—except the smell of cooked fish.”

  “I know, but you didn’t have time to give it a real search. I’ve searched for Alan in every building on EagleSpy except that one. I need to tie up that loose end.”

  “I hear you,” Joe said, “and you’re right.”

  “Meanwhile, you get some sleep and get well,” Frank said. He propped up Joe’s leg with a pillow, turned out the light, and went upstairs to his own bed.

  Joe sat up suddenly. It was pitch black and the only sound he heard was the large grandfather clock. Bong … bong … bong.

  “Where am I?” he muttered, fumbling at the side of the bed for a light. He swung his legs around and sat on the edge of the bed. He felt dizzy for a few seconds, but then got his bearings.

  His left leg felt thick and clumsy … weird.

  He moved his hands around until he finally found a lamp, fumbled for the switch, and turned it on. It was only a sixty-watt bulb, so it illuminated just a small area.

  This isn’t my room, he thought, looking over to where Frank’s bed should be. There was a small chest there instead. Then he noticed the bottle of antibiotics on the table next to the bed. All of Sunday’s memories tumbled through his brain like a tidal wave. The message in his computer … the film footage … Blackstone and the fire-eater … the stables … the falcon.

  He reached down and gingerly touched his thick padded wound dressing. His leg was a little sore, but it wasn’t too bad. If the grandfather clock was right and it was three o’clock, he
figured he’d been asleep for about four hours. And now he was wide awake.

  He was also hungry. He couldn’t remember eating anything since the sandwiches and soup they’d had in the kitchen. And that had been more than twelve hours ago.

  He slid off the bed onto his good leg. Then he cautiously lowered his slashed leg and carefully transferred his weight onto it a little at a time. He felt a little pang when he stepped on it, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t tolerate.

  A stack of his clothes sat on the chair by the bathroom. Joe cleaned up a little, pulled on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and his cross-trainers, and limped into the kitchen. He didn’t hear a sound from the bedrooms upstairs.

  He headed straight for the refrigerator. “Mmmmm … turkey, roast beef, cheese, pickles,” he murmured, stacking it all on a tray. “I can fix one gigantic sandwich.” He added a piece of pie, a quart of milk, and a bottle of water. Then he took his food over to the long table and, perched on a stool, dug into his meal.

  While he ate, he looked out the wide window that captured the vista of gardens and meadow between the house and the maze. A full moon in a cloudless sky lit the landscape like a spotlight. In the distance, the outside hedge wall of the maze seemed capped in silvery moonshine.

  “Is that really moonlight?” he wondered aloud. He limped over to the window and picked up the binoculars sitting on the sill. An eerie glow hung over the maze. “I remember that glow,” Joe whispered to no one. “We saw it when Alan turned on the night-lights last Friday. But this time, the lights aren’t on, are they? Of course there was no moon on Friday, and there’s a big one tonight. But …”

  There’s only one way to find out, he thought. He wasn’t going to be in the maze races, anyway. There was no reason why he couldn’t check it out.

  He put the food back in the refrigerator, and got a flashlight, pen, and notebook from a drawer in the long table. Then he grabbed a barn jacket from the hook on the kitchen door and limped out to the vehicle court. All the golf carts still had the keys in their ignitions, so he started one up and headed for the maze.

  As he grew nearer, he saw that the glow above the hedges was different from how it had been with the night-lights on. And when he finally began limping through the maze, he saw that the electric lights were not on. It’s the moonlight, he thought. It makes it seem like a whole other world in here.

  The flashlight stayed in his hip pocket as he followed the hedge tunnels through the maze. He drew a sort of diagram of his trail in the notebook as he limped along, so he’d be sure to find his way back out.

  The maze was very elaborate, with lots of side paths, dead ends, and loop-backs. After backtracking out of several dead ends, he finally reached the repaired center of the maze. The only signs of the reconstruction were the new hedges. They were paler and not as full and lush as the others.

  The maze center was laid out like a small oval park, with carved wooden benches and clumps of flowers. The ground was littered with smooth black pebbles that crunched as he walked. A mailbox was near one of the benches.

  Joe remembered Ray telling him that clues for the maze scavenger hunt would be left in the mailboxes scattered along the paths. He opened the box and took out a piece of paper with lines printed on it in some sort of pattern. It looked vaguely familiar, but he was feeling very tired and the medicine had dulled his brain.

  He was also becoming acutely aware of his aching leg wound. He shoved the paper in his pocket, plopped onto one of the benches, and stretched his leg out on the seat. He even leaned his head back on the top of the bench and closed his eyes for a few minutes.

  The first rustling seemed far away, as if it was coming from the far outside wall of the maze. But when he heard it again, it seemed a little closer, then closer still. It wasn’t a loud noise, but more like someone blowing on the hedge leaves or turning the pages of a book.

  Opening his eyes, Joe looked toward the direction of the slight sound. The glow above the hedges was brighter there and seemed to be moving toward him along with the rustling sound.

  He watched and listened for a few seconds, then realized he was holding his breath. He let it out at once with a sigh. At that same moment, the rustling noise seemed to move across a path next to his bench, and the leaves in one tall hedge fluttered.

  Joe squinted and strained to see what was moving in the moonshine. And then, like a burst of greenish silver light, the ghostly specter of a man materialized from the hedge wall and floated over the pebbles.

  12 Cracking the Code

  The ghostly image never looked Joe’s way. He was dressed all in white: white shirt, white slacks, and white shoes. Balding at the front of his scalp, he sported a shock of pale hair that started halfway back and streaked out behind his head. He had deep-set eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache and beard. In his left hand he carried a cluster of sleek arrows. His right hand held a long white bow.

  Joe gasped as the specter slowly sailed over the path and was swallowed by the opposite hedge wall. His feet never crunched the pebbles.

  The glowing aura above the hedge seemed to recede, and it grew darker. Joe’s aching leg began to tremble, and he slowly lowered it to the ground. He stared at the path where he had seen the ghostly archer. Then he limped over to the exact places where the ghost had first materialized and then disappeared. The hedges were completely whole, no broken branches or fallen leaves. There was no sign that anyone—or anything—had passed through them.

  He hopped and limped around the end of the hedge wall and stared into the next row. He thought he saw a white leg curl around the corner, so he hustled as fast as he could to the end of that row and turned into the next path. It was one of the maze’s one hundred dead ends, and there was no man in white to be seen.

  Joe shook his head. “It’s the medicine,” he muttered. “It has to be.” He checked the diagram of the path he’d taken through the maze, but he could no longer read it clearly. Clouds had formed in the previously starry sky, masking the moon and forcing Joe to use his flashlight to see his way out.

  At last he reached the entrance again. He let out another sigh and climbed painfully into the golf cart. By the time he was finally back in his new bed, he had decided that the archer in the maze had been a hallucination. As he fell asleep, he wasn’t even sure he’d been to the maze at all.

  Monday morning, Frank woke early and cleaned up fast. He knew he had a lot to do—more than usual, since his brother was temporarily laid up. He took the stairs two at a time and went into the downstairs bedroom that Penny had fixed up for Joe.

  “Hey great, you’re awake,” Frank said. Joe was dressed and sitting on a chair.

  “Hey yourself,” Joe said.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “My leg’s a lot better, but my mind’s still kind of fuzzy. These antibiotics are better than going to the movies. I dreamed I woke up and was hungry, so I fixed a sandwich. Then I took a golf cart out to the maze, limped around inside, and saw this guy floating around through the hedges like a ghost.”

  Joe pulled on his shoes, and a smooth black pebble dropped onto the carpet.

  “What’s that?” Frank asked.

  “It’s a pebble,” Joe said, looking amazed, “like the ones I saw in my dream in the center of the maze. There are benches and these pebbles all over the ground.”

  “Are you saying it might have been real? You actually went to the maze?”

  “Maybe,” Joe said quietly, leading Frank out the door and into the kitchen. Joe was relieved to see that he was moving a lot better. His leg ached and was tender if he stepped on it a certain way, but it was more flexible than it had been the day before, and he felt stronger.

  “We’re having breakfast out here,” Penny called to the Hardys from the sunroom.

  Frank and Joe started down the small corridor toward the sunroom, but only Frank made it. He turned back to see where his brother was. Joe was staring at a small oil painting hanging in a corner beside the butler’s pantry. In
it, a tall man stood drawing back a bowstring and arrow in perfect archer’s form. He was dressed in a uniform of white shoes, white slacks, and white long-sleeved shirt with a banded collar.

  “He’s pretty impressive,” Frank said, walking over to examine the painting.

  “This is the guy in my dream,” Joe said. His voice was low, almost a whisper.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding. Don’t say anything to the others about it yet.” Joe walked slowly into the sunroom, and he and Frank joined the others around a table in the corner.

  “Wow. Joe, you’re walking so much better,” Kay said. “Amazing what a good night’s sleep can do.”

  “It sure is,” Joe said, helping himself to eggs and sausage. “I just noticed the painting in the hallway—the archer. Does he live around here?”

  “You might say that,” Ray answered with a chuckle. “He’s in a grave on the far end of the estate.”

  “Excuse me?” Joe said. He hoped the Hortons didn’t notice the goose bumps on his arms.

  “It’s the baron,” Penny said. “Baron Jackson Brighthall, the original owner of this property, the last in the long line of Brighthalls who lived here. He’s been dead for years. He was a champion Olympic archer in the last century—we think that’s what the painting is supposed to represent.”

  “Did you know him?” Joe asked.

  “No. He met his untimely death a decade before Dad bought the property,” Kay said.

  “What do you mean ‘untimely’?” Frank asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

  “He was murdered,” Kay said, crouching over her plate. “And the murder has never been solved to this day. No one lived here in the years before we bought it, and the place just decayed. But the baron’s presence was still very much around.”

  “How do you mean?” Joe asked, although he was sure he knew what she was going to say next.

  “Villagers would troop across the grounds to get to the beach or to go fishing from the jetty,” Kay continued. “Many of them reported seeing the baron’s ghost slipping around the crumbling walls and decaying topiary trees.”