Deprivation House Read online

  “A young actress lived here back then—,” Veronica continued.

  “Katrina Decter,” interrupted Kit.

  Veronica sighed, then went on. “She was married to an up-and-coming director.” She looked at Kit as if she was waiting for her to interrupt again. “His name was Phillip Jonell. They were very happy. They had a little girl. Then Katrina began to change.”

  “I remember where else I’ve heard of her now,” Bobby T said. “She was in and out of rehab a lot, right? One of my friends has this cool website. It has the whole history of celebrity rehab.”

  Veronica sighed again. “May I continue?” She waited until Bobby T nodded, then went on. “Her little girl knew the truth about the change in her mommy. Anna knew a demon had taken over her mommy’s body. Sometimes she could even see the demon’s face on top of her mommy’s face.”

  I really hated the way Veronica talked to us like we were kindergartners. Kindergartners who misbehaved a lot.

  “She saw the demon especially clearly one night when she was four years old. The night the demon tried to kill her,” Veronica said.

  “I’m lost,” said Ripley. “I thought the little girl testified that her mother tried to kill her father, and that her father killed her mother in self-defense.”

  “That’s what Anna said at the trial. She described in great detail the hideous demon’s face and how it attacked her father,” Veronica agreed. “But Phillip testified that Katrina went after Anna first.”

  Huh. So the little girl said the mother had attacked the father, and that’s why the father had killed her. But the father had said that the mother had tried to murder the little girl, so he had killed the mother to save the little girl.

  There was definitely a mystery to be solved there. But Katrina Decter was already dead. This case involved people we were trying to keep alive. It had priority.

  “Story time is over.” Veronica stood up. “Today we’ll be taking away cable television. We’ll also be replacing the plasmas with less luxurious TV sets. I bet some of you didn’t even know that television could be shown in black-and-white. And you will only be allowed to watch television at all between the hours of eight and ten p.m.”

  She started for the door, then turned back to face us all. “Oh, and meet me in the screening room in half an hour, please. It will be unsealed for the occasion.” She waited.

  “What occasion?” Mary asked.

  “It’s a sad one,” Veronica said. “I’m afraid it’s time for me to send one of you home. Can you believe a week has flown by already?”

  I don’t think the plush seats of the screening room were comfortable for anyone as we waited for Veronica to appear and give us the verdict. Joe and I had to stay in the house until we wrapped the mission. But it wasn’t as if ATAC could pull strings with Veronica. She didn’t know we were undercover. No one on the show did.

  It’s better that way. Safer. You never know going into a mission who is involved in the crime you’re investigating.

  The lights dimmed. The velvet curtain in front of the screen swished open. “What’s this about?” Joe asked from the row behind me. I shrugged in reply.

  Low alt-rock started up as clips from the house began to play. The film was of different quality, depending on whether it was from the handhelds or the cameras mounted in the rooms.

  Someone had gotten a close-up of Joe whimpering as he watched the pool getting drained. I laughed. He looked so pouty. Then I remembered. The person getting booted was the one who hadn’t been able to deal with losing the luxuries. Whimpering over the pool wasn’t exactly dealing.

  There was a shot of Ripley wrinkling her nose as she laid frozen Tater Tots on a baking sheet. And shots of almost all of us half gagging on the meal where James had been head cook.

  A camera had caught an iPod-less Brynn with her pinkies in her ears. She was humming. Loudly.

  I got to see the appetizing sight of myself spitting a big mouthful of James’s disgusting dinner into my napkin.

  No one made it through the week without some kind of not-dealing behavior, I realized as the film went on.

  Then came about twenty quick shots of Kit saying the word “coffee.” Not just saying it, actually. Screaming it. Shrieking it. Whining it. Whimpering it. Crying it. Howling it. Whispering it. Laughing it. Snarling it.

  The short movie ended with Kit declaring, “I can’t live without coffee!”

  As the lights came back up, Veronica strolled to the front of the room. “Eye opening, wasn’t it? And you all thought you would have no problem giving up a few little items.”

  I glanced over at Kit. About half the people in the room were glancing over at Kit.

  “Still, I think there was one performance that really stood out. I’m sure none of you will be surprised to hear what I’m about to say.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “Kit Elroy, you have been deprived of the chance to win one million dollars!”

  Veronica announced it with as much enthusiasm as if Kit had won the million. The woman was a seriously twisted human being.

  Kit stood up. “It’s been great getting to know—”

  “No speeches,” Veronica cut her off. “You aren’t accepting an Oscar. Go upstairs and pack your things. You need to leave immediately.”

  “Okay. Bye.” Kit rushed out fast, but I thought I saw tears streaking her face.

  “The rest of us have to take care of a little business,” Veronica said calmly, not giving us a chance to say a word. “James, you won the dog-washing competition. Did you decide what luxury you want taken away next?”

  “Yep. Junk food,” he announced.

  He was that kind of guy. He was all about finding his competitors’ weak spots. He knew Mikey really wanted to keep junk food, so he took it away.

  “Your body will thank me,” James added to Mikey. “If you last long enough in here, you’ll drop that gut.”

  Yeah. He was all about finding the weak spots.

  “The only other thing I have to say is, get some rest. We’re having a competition tomorrow,” Veronica told us.

  I bet everyone in the room was wondering the same thing. Was someone really going to die at the competition?

  That’s Extreme

  “We have to find out what the competition for tomorrow is going to be,” Frank told me once we were in the camera-free storage closet.

  “Definitely. We have to do a full safety check on all the equipment,” I agreed. “The problem is, the info on the competition has to be in—”

  “Veronica’s quarters,” Frank finished for me. “And she never lets anyone up there. We’re not allowed anywhere on the third floor.”

  “And there are cameras everywhere.” Like anyone in the house needed reminding of that.

  “Sounds like the perfect time to try out the latest ATAC technology,” Frank suggested. “They sent over that anticamera device about a month ago, remember?”

  “You brought it?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “It’s kind of conspicuous,” I said. It was cool, though. See, digital cameras—which the ones mounted around the house were—put out a beam of light. Either visible or invisible. The anticamera device can sense these beams. And when they do, they shoot back an infrared laser into the camera lens, and—camera neutralized.

  “It’s bulky, though. We’re going to look suspicious walking around with it,” I told Frank.

  “I can disguise it as a laptop. Bobby T wanders around with his open all the time. And James is always playing some game on his,” said Frank.

  “I was thinking about both those guys. And Hal,” I said. “I was thinking they all possibly have the computer savvy to put together the e-mails everyone got. James is really into hacking his games—so he can win faster. Hal is planning to design a video game after he designs his planet. And Bobby T, well, is Bobby T.”

  “That’s definitely something we should consider. But those three aren’t necessarily the only ones with the know-how to create the e-ma
ils,” Frank replied. “The problem is, we still don’t know the suspects that well. There are too many of them.”

  “And people keep trying to kill us. Well, me,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s a problem too.” Frank rubbed his face with his fingers. “Okay, let’s prioritize. There’s a competition tomorrow. We’ve been warned—threatened—that someone’s going to die then.”

  “I’d say finding out the competition plans is top of the list,” I said. “So we use the anticamera device to deal with the surveillance situation. And, by the way, anticamera device—could ATAC come up with a more boring name, you think?”

  “I just care that it works,” Frank answered. “That’s only step one. We’re also going to need Veronica out of her quarters for a while.”

  “She usually stays in her lair the whole night.” I thought for a minute. “She did come down pretty fast when Rosemary decided to leave. And she didn’t go back upstairs until she’d gotten Rosemary off to the airport.”

  “We can’t make somebody drop out,” Frank said. “Can we?”

  “They’d get forty thousand. And a really good chance not to die young,” I reminded him. “Not that we’re going to let anyone die, but still.”

  “Good point. So who do we deprive of the chance to be a millionaire?” Frank asked.

  “I wish we could give James the boot, but no way could we convince him to leave,” I said. “Mikey? He really isn’t happy about losing his junk food. He might end up getting sent home next week anyway.”

  “Yeah, but I get the feeling he’ll be okay. I don’t think he’ll lose it the way Kit did over the coffee,” Frank reasoned. “Maybe Wilson?”

  “But he’s finally getting a girlfriend thing going,” I protested. “We can’t pull him and Olivia apart.”

  “Olivia’s only talking to him so much because she’s considering him as an alliance member,” said Frank.

  “He doesn’t seem to have another possible love connection on the back burner.” I thought about it. “Let’s give him the scoop on Olivia and tell him we’ll get Bobby T to do a blog entry about him that will get lots of girls interested in him. And remind him that forty thousand is a lot of lettuce.”

  I felt a little slimy about it, but Wilson actually sounded pretty relieved when he got on the intercom early that evening and told Veronica he wanted his check and a cab to the airport. Dropouts didn’t get limos.

  Frank and I got the anticamera device—I was going to work on that name myself—powered up. As soon as we spotted Veronica coming down the stairs to the third floor, we made our move.

  Her door was locked, of course. But we covered locked doors the first day of ATAC training. I handled it this time. I pulled out my lock pick. A few twists, a pull, and we were in.

  I couldn’t imagine Veronica being that comfortable in these rooms. They were too . . . cozy. More old-fashioned than the stuff downstairs.

  “There’s her computer. Let’s hope she didn’t take the time to log off.” I checked. “She did.”

  “Of course she did. Doesn’t she seem like someone who would?” Frank asked.

  “Someone like you?” I immediately held up my hands in surrender. “I take it back. She may have a few, uh, orderly qualities. If she wore jeans, she’d probably iron them. I mean, her shoes always match her dress—an exact match. But you, my brother, are a nice, good person. She’s a person who’d . . . give out sugarless gum on Halloween and laugh.”

  “If she is orderly, that means it’s going to take awhile to figure out her password. I follow all the advice on how to make them tough to crack.” Frank grinned. “But a truly orderly person would print out a hard copy of something as important as competition plans.”

  “I’ll check the baseboards and the—”

  “I doubt they’ll be hidden. Her quarters are really secure. Think what we had to do to get in here,” Frank said.

  “But she took the time to log off the computer,” I pointed out.

  “That’s different. It’s a habit.” Frank opened the top desk drawer and found the hard copy of the plans. Show-off.

  I tilted my head back and cracked my neck.

  He flipped through the pages. “I’ve got enough of it that we’ll know where we need to go to do a safety check,” he said as he returned the plans to the desk drawer.

  “I noticed that one of the ceiling beams is crooked,” I told him. “How’d that happen in the perfect villa?”

  “I don’t know. I do know we need to get out of here,” Frank answered.

  “Look at it for one second. It’s . . . not right.” My Spidey sense was twanging.

  Frank looked up. “Huh. Yeah. With the quality of work on this place, I don’t get how that happened. It’s only a little off, but still.”

  I checked out the other ceiling beams in the room. “I don’t think it’s actually weight-bearing,” I said.

  “It definitely wouldn’t have to be with the way the ceiling is constructed,” Frank agreed. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “I want to see something. I read something once about fake beams used as hiding places. People hollow them out and put stuff in them. I wonder if that could be the deal here.” I looked around for something to climb on that would give me a better look. Why did the ceilings in this place have to be so high?

  “Don’t even think about it, Joe,” Frank warned as I started toward a massive, freestanding closet thing. A wardrobe, they’d call it in England.

  “We’re detectives. We can’t pass this by. It’ll only take a second,” I said in a rush. “And I’m not leaving until I look, so give me a boost.”

  Frank came over and made a stirrup out of his hands. I put one foot in and he launched me up. Good thing the wardrobe was so heavy, or I’d have knocked it over. I shoved myself to my feet and sidestepped over to the beam. I probed it gently. I definitely didn’t want to bring it down if it turned out to be moveable.

  A panel in the bottom of the beam slid free—and fat stacks of money plopped down on the floor. I was shocked, and I was the one who thought the beam might have been used as a hiding place.

  Frank stared at the cash. “There’s a ton of money here,” he said.

  “Now what?”

  “I don’t get how this fits in with the case so far. But it’s got to be important.” Frank started gathering up the stacks and tossing them to me. “Let’s put it back for now. We don’t want anyone to know the money has been discovered.”

  “I couldn’t maybe keep one stack?” I asked as I slid the panel back in place. “I’m sure no one would notice. I doubt they count it every night.”

  Frank ignored me. I wonder if there is a Bonehead’s Guide for Developing a Sense of Humor.

  We kept the anticamera on even when we’d made it out of the house, flashlights in hand. We didn’t know exactly what the surveillance situation was outdoors. There were definitely some cameras positioned around the pool, but it would take hundreds of them to observe all the land that was part of the villa property.

  “The big thing tomorrow is a lawn mower race. We’re each going to mow sections of that field where we did the dog wash,” Frank explained. “But there’s going to be an obstacle course first. We’ll have to make it through to get to the mowers. The fastest people will get the best ones.”

  We began working our way around the course, checking everything. Ropes. Inner tubes. A trampoline. A zip line. Crawling tubes. A balance beam. An inflatable wall.

  “I can see how somebody might get hurt trying to make it through the obstacles too fast. But I didn’t see any signs of sabotage,” I said when we reached the end.

  “Me either. All we have left to go over are the mowers. I think if we don’t find anything, we should make another pass in the morning.” Frank’s face was troubled. “I think whoever sent the e-mail was serious. That doesn’t mean they’ll actually kill anybody. But they’ll do something.”

  “We should do a check as close to go time as we can,” I agreed. We started a
cross the field to the row of mowers at the far end. “It will probably have to be before breakfast. It’s going to be hard to get away after that. We have the cameras under control, but we can’t keep nine other people—plus maybe Veronica and some PAs—from asking questions about where we’re going.”

  Frank nodded. “Let’s get started on these. You might need a tetanus shot if you touch that one, but that’s probably it.” He pointed toward a rusted-out push mower.

  “Oh, man, this is the one I wanted Dad to get. It has some muscle. Twenty-six horsepower,” I said. I ran my hand over the garden tractor’s deep red paint job.

  “Our lawn doesn’t need twenty-six horsepower,” Frank replied. “It only needs the power of the Hardy boys. Isn’t that what Dad said when you asked him to buy it?”

  “Pretty much.” I was going to get a look at the engine. Not because I wanted to. I had to. For the mission.

  “Frank, come over here,” I said.

  “No time. I’m checking this one,” he told me.

  “Forget it! I found what we’re looking for.” My stomach twisted into a knot as I thought about what could have happened. “There’s a bomb wired to the ignition.”

  Frank dashed over. “Let’s get it out of there.” He leaned over the engine and studied the bomb’s connection to the mower. “I think—”

  He stopped abruptly as a beam of bright white light slashed across his face. I squinted as it cut across mine.

  “Come away from there immediately,” a familiar voice ordered. Veronica.

  “We found a—,” I began to explain.

  “I have no interest in hearing anything cheaters have to say,” Veronica told us as we walked over to her. “Why do you think you deserve an early look at what the competition entails? It’s completely unfair. You’re both out.”

  She raised a walkie-talkie to her mouth. “Mitch, I found them on the field. I want you to come and take them to your quarters.”