Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets (29 page)

Mattie took a deep breath, eyes half-closed, hand slightly lifted as if she were physically reaching back into her memories.

“To reach the vault, there was a curtain,” she said. “When you mentioned Finn crossing over, I saw steep stairs, a jukebox or an old record player, and the King Arthur Carrousel—especially this wild-eyed horse.”

“That last part matches what our friend Emily saw when she was spying in Walt’s apartment,” Jess said. “The music box. King Arthur. That’s how Finn crossed over into the past. We should be able to duplicate it.”

“Don’t change the subject, Jess,” Amanda said. “Joe saw a Dapper Dan. Mattie got a look at his face.” She aimed the words at her friend, eyebrows raised, expecting an answer.

“That’s true,” Mattie said.

“He doesn’t know us,” Amanda said. “The Keepers, maybe. Willa and Philby for sure. But not us. We find him, and maybe we find someone willing to help us like he offered to help them.”

“And maybe we get caught and are never heard from again,” Jess said. “Look, I know you want to get Finn back, but—”

“They…need…us!”

“But he could be Barracks 14, right?” Mattie said. “Maybe the thing to do is find him and let me read him. There’s no way he knows me.”

“It’s a risk,” Jess said.

“Worth taking,” Amanda said, her face alight with hope for the first time.

“Easy for you to say,” Jess said.

“I don’t mind,” Mattie said. “I want to help.”

“We can play backup,” Amanda proposed. “Something goes down, we’re there to stop it.”

“AMANDA LOCKHART, YOU HAVE A VISITOR IN THE LOBBY.” The announcement rang out through the dorm’s hallway.

“That’s interesting,” said Jess.

“That’s Nick,” said Amanda. “Who else?”

N
ICK
P
ERKINS WAITED,
legs crossed, arms outstretched across the back of the red-velvet couch in the dorm’s throwback lobby. He carried a thin briefcase, making him look official despite his youth. The three girls sat down, facing him.

“Mr. Mystery makes an appearance,” Amanda said.

“Mr. Mystery figured it out,” Nick said. “At least he thinks he did.”

“We’re listening,” said Jess.

“There are two Amery Hollingsworths,” Nick said. “Amery the first, and Amery Jr. A. the first was fired from Disney for stealing animation cells. You want to guess which ones?”

“Surprise us,” Amanda said.

“Villains.” The word exploded in their ears, hanging in the air, filling the room like a shock-and-awe grenade.

“He killed himself,” Nick said. “Amery the first. That angered his sons, as you can imagine, especially firstborn Amery Jr., who never liked being called Junior. He blamed it all on Disney. He moved to Baltimore.”

Nick opened the briefcase and withdrew a number of sheets of paper, some stapled, some not. “I ran some background information. The usual stuff: Web searches, credit scores, public company financials, investments. You can’t get everything, but no one can hide completely.”

He held one of the stapled stacks of papers to his chest, taking a moment to look at each of the three Fairlies. “You may find this painful, but I think between the three—four!—of us, we should be able to figure stuff out that we couldn’t decipher on our own.”

“Nick,” Amanda said, not bothering to hide her irritation, “just show us, would you?”

He passed her the information. “One of Junior’s companies entered a government auction twelve years ago. They won the bidding. It was for a piece of property, a former—”

“Army barracks and training facility,” Amanda said. She flipped pages, reading more quickly with each one. “Photos…” she muttered.

“Look! Look!” Jess said. “The number on that building!”

Mattie snatched the sheets of paper away. “Fourteen.”

P
HILBY READ WHAT HE’D
scribbled down from the encounter in Walt Disney’s backyard, the words inscribed on the back of Lilly Belle’s sign.

“What’s that even supposed to mean?” Finn complained to Philby as they walked toward the Jungle Cruise, dodging crowds as best they could.

“Focus on the first half, remember? One step at a time.”

“None of this makes sense.”

“It must mean something. It wasn’t hidden on the back of the sign for nothing, you know. Esmeralda’s fortune led us straight there! It’s Walt’s next clue.”

The first half of the riddle had led them here, to the Jungle Cruise. “Read for fun,” the Keepers had concluded, had to mean the things people read in the parks: signs, maps, souvenir books highlighting the attractions. To cover as much ground as possible, the five of them had split up. Finn and Philby went to check out Jungle Cruise and Snow White’s Adventures, while the girls and Maybeck headed to Mad Tea Party and King Arthur Carrousel.

Finn and Philby boarded a boat at the last second, doing their best not to attract the attention of their fellow passengers, though two Cast Members their age gave them an extra-long look.

The boat set off, the Cast Member “skipper” at the helm yelling his spiel through a megaphone. He warned his passengers about the “dangerous voyage” they were about to embark upon. To Finn’s surprise, no one laughed at his serious tone. It dawned on Finn then that it wasn’t meant to be a joke, that the audience was really buying into the idea that the animals lining the banks were real and ready to attack the boat. Such a strange thing to witness on an attraction that would become known for its comedy!

“Look for clues,” Finn whispered to Philby. “Remember the Stonecutter’s Quill; it’ll be tough. Keep your eyes peeled. Anything that can be read.”

The boat floated by Audio-Animatronics of tigers, a wrecked campsite. There were words on the side of some of the crates there, but none big enough to read. Throughout, to Finn and Philby’s amazement, the guests acted as though they were actually on a treacherous journey through the jungle.

Before the boys knew it, the boat had passed a shrunken-head trader and returned to the dock. Neither boy was any closer to solving the riddle.

“Well, that was a bust.” Philby sighed.

Together they set off toward Snow White’s Adventures. They were halfway across the hub of the park when Philby nudged Finn.

“Behind us.”

“Yeah?”

“Those Cast Members, they were on the Jungle Cruise with us.”

“Are you sure?” Finn glanced backward, trying to catch a glimpse.

“Absolutely. Besides, what are Cast Members in Frontierland costumes doing on the bridge to Fantasy-land? It doesn’t make sense. So what do they want?”

“We’re not going to stick around to find out.”

“Who knows? They could be on our side.”

“Philby, since when has any suspicious behavior
ever
been an indication that someone’s on our side?”

Philby shrugged at that. They were almost through the castle by now, and the Cast Members had shown no signs of wavering from their tail.

“We’re almost there,” Finn said. “Stick close and don’t get lost.”

They cut immediately left, past the castle, and stepped their holograms through the wall into the Snow White attraction, sliding into the empty backseat of a car departing the station.

The ride flew by in a blur of colors and lights, but no words. Emerging back into the daylight, Finn and Philby still had no more clue as to the riddle’s answer than when they’d begun.

What they did know was this: someone wanted them followed.

S
INCE THEY’D SOLVED
the Stonecutter’s Quill, the five Keepers had worked out the puzzles and mysteries that challenged them as a group. With this one still baffling them, they reconvened at an empty table, wedged in a cor-ner outside the Red Wagon Inn. Their attempts at getting some food had failed miserably. They were starving.

“You know what’s crazy?” Maybeck said. “Fifty years from now, we’re going to be seven years younger, sitting in a restaurant right next door to this one in Florida, and we’ll still be trying to solve crazy riddles that Wayne and Walt left us.”

“Shush. You’re making my head hurt,” Charlene said, playfully tapping him on the arm.

“Yeah, well, no veggie burgers in 1955, but we have everything we really need. Pen, paper, and the five of us,” Philby said.

“Let’s focus,” Finn said, grabbing their attention. “Charlene, Willa, Maybeck what did you find?”

“Nothing,” Willa reported. “We kept our eyes peeled for every little detail, but nothing stood out. I wrote some stuff down. None of it matters. I’d have thought after all these years, we’d be a lot better at this, but here we are. The carousel and Mad Tea Party don’t even have writing on them.”

“There was some writing on the Jungle Cruise, and books in Snow White’s Adventures,” Philby offered. “But I agree with Willa—nothing that mattered.”

He pulled out his ticket stubs and laid them on the table, fanning them back and forth as if they held the answers.

“So no one saw anything?” Finn asked.

“What if we’re too focused on the attractions themselves?” Willa said, brow wrinkled. “These puzzles are always about the bigger picture. So what led us to the attractions?”

Charlene was playing with Philby’s ticket booklet, spinning it on the table. Giving it an extra spin, she stopped—and gasped. “Wait a second! Check it out! The clue is ‘Until our guests read for fun.’”

“Yeah? So?” said Maybeck.

“‘Read for fun,’” she repeated, and tapped the table. “Get it?”

“Maybe not,” said Maybeck in a snarky voice. “I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”

Charlene tapped again, her fingers flicking the pages of Philby’s ticket book. A light went on in the professor’s eyes.

“It’s not about the attractions!” Philby cried. “It’s about the ticket books. You read to have fun. On opening day you bought different tickets for different rides. A-tickets, B-tickets, C-tickets! That’s brilliant, Charlie!”

Charlene smiled proudly. “But what exactly is the clue saying? I have no idea.”

“Anagrams,” said Willa. “It’s always anagrams when it comes down to a few letters. Remember Stonecutter’s?”

Philby said, “What I wouldn’t give for an iPhone right about now….”

Charlene, the Scrabble whiz, was already creating letter tiles out of a torn napkin.

“Acronyms aside, the only word in the English language formed only with ABC is ‘cab,’” Professor Philby said.

“But it’s never that simple,” Finn said.

“Maybe it is?” Maybeck said, helping Charlene with the letters now.

“If Walt was trying to guide Lillian or Roy to the pen, then it’s designed so they can solve it,” Willa said. “It’s not going to be impossible, just difficult. Tricky. Something the OTs or OTKs would have serious trouble with.”

“Okay…so CAB. Cab. Taxicab? An attraction with a cab?” Willa said.

“The Haunted Mansion! The invisible horse,” Maybeck said. “The hearse could be a cab.”