Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets (6 page)

Finn walked a delicate line between his friends. They saw him as the leader of the Keepers, which meant he had to express his opinions, sometimes boldly. He respected each of the others, but he also saw their weaknesses, as they no doubt saw his: Philby’s arrogance; Charlene’s vanity; Willa’s reservation; Maybeck’s overconfidence. His own insecurity. He couldn’t make enemies. He had to not only listen, but hear; not only speak, but say something. In every expression of his, every word counted.

To lose the trust of the other four Keepers would put Philby at the helm. By no means a disaster, but Philby’s soaring intellect often made him his own worst enemy; he dismissed others as not worthy of consideration. For the Keepers to be effective, they absolutely had to operate as a team. Individual efforts had failed miserably in the past.

The girls silently spoke to Wayne and searched the glove box. Then Charlene leaned out the window and passed a ballpoint pen to Finn. A moment later, the entire procedure was repeated: Charlene handed him a nearly blank page torn from the owner’s manual.

They stopped at a stop sign. They could see the roof of the Dodge, but not its license plate. A few blocks later, they picked up a partial plate number at a traffic light: 3A 13.

“It’s a Dodge Mayfair,” Maybeck proclaimed.

The Dodge sped away from the light. Wayne’s old truck lagged behind, and the boys lost sight of the car.

They passed near the Burbank Airport, which looked like any other street of low two-story buildings, its special status announced only by an American flag and a conning tower that looked like it belonged on the corner of a prison wall.

For the remainder of the drive, the presence of the Dodge kept nagging at Finn’s mind. Philby was right: the boys might have been some of those with counterfeit tickets to the park’s press opening; they might have had dinner or visited friends and then headed north later at night. All that could be explained, at least to some degree of satisfaction for Finn.

But what he’d noticed, and had deliberately not mentioned for fear of sounding paranoid, was that the two boys he’d seen—at a distance and only in profile—had both been wearing short-sleeved white shirts. Cast Members at the press day opening had also been wearing short-sleeved white shirts. But Cast Members turned in their costumes at the end of the day. So, if these boys were friends, all of whom worked at the new park and commuted from their homes north of the area, why hadn’t they turned in their costumes? He tried to explain this to himself repeatedly and had just come to the decision to share the conundrum with Philby and Maybeck when the truck rolled to a stop.

“Keep down!” Wayne called softly out the driver’s window. “We’re here.”

O
F
V
ILLAINS AND
V
ANDALS

Having directed the five Keepers to climb the fence behind the Property and Drapery warehouse, Wayne slowed his pickup truck to a crawl, but did not completely stop. The two girls slipped out of the cab, climbing the chain link immediately. Philby and Finn stepped over the truck’s tailgate to the back bumper and hit the ground running. Maybeck, who always had to be different, leaped onto the fence from the bed of the truck, shaking it so badly he nearly caused the two girls to fall. Higher than all the others, he was up and over and down the other side well before the rest of the Keepers.

The paper towel map Wayne had drawn for the girls had the Keepers coming around the warehouse, clearing the Set Lighting building, and heading straight forward, through what turned out to be a dark, narrow alley between the Operations Center and Cutting. At the end of the alley, they waited in shadow before crossing Minnie Avenue one at a time. They regrouped in the landscaping around the Animation Building. On the map, the long structure resembled two
H
s connected by a hyphen. The map showed an
X
in the lower left leg of the topmost
H
. Office 2-E 6, belonging to Roy Disney, Walt’s brother and partner.

“There’s security at the studio,” Wayne had warned from behind the wheel.

“Now you tell us?” Charlene had complained.

“My advice is to stay out of sight. If you were dressed as park Cast Members or had the correct identification I wouldn’t think twice about it. The clip-on badges I gave you all will look good from a distance. They’re the right color. They identify you as guests, and are typically given to actors or actresses on set. Some nights there’s a lot of activity here, so you don’t need to act like you have cooties or something. Gosh, no. It’s perfectly possible a bunch of kids would be in the studio this time of night. But I wouldn’t go getting too cozy, either. With a good look, those passes won’t fool security.”

Charlene reminded the others not to panic if spotted. Nearly in the same breath, she instructed them to keep their distance from all adults. “No one’s going to follow us into a bathroom stall. If we do hit panic mode, we head straight to the restrooms.”

Inside, it was deathly quiet. The lights were at half power, giving the space a dim and spooky feel. As keeper of the map, Willa pointed ahead to what turned out to be an exceptionally long hallway lined with Disney art. As a group, they turned to the right. Charlene pointed out the restrooms and nearly won a laugh from the others.

They reached a stairway and ascended to the second floor. Charlene automatically took up a position as guard. The others took an immediate left, which deposited them in a narrower hallway, right by the office marked as number six, its small business card–sized placard reading
ROY O. DISNEY
.

The door was locked. “If we were still projections,” Willa said, “we could walk right through.”

Maybeck unpinned the ID card Wayne had provided from his own suit coat. It was constructed of thick card stock, with a safety pin glued to the back. “Too bad no one in 1955 has figured out how useful plastic is. I’d have rather had a laminate.”

He placed Willa’s hand on the doorknob as he wrestled the edge of his ID card into the jamb between the knob and the molding. “One thing about these old locks…” he said, wiggling and pushing the bent card. Each time he nodded at Willa, she pulled on the door—but to no avail. Maybeck worked the card some more. With a good shove, most of the card disappeared into the jamb; Maybeck nodded, Willa tugged. The door came open.

“I’m glad you’re on our side,” Philby said. Without instruction, he placed his back to the wall by the door. He would stand guard, just as Charlene had.

Willa, Maybeck, and Finn entered the office. “No lights,” Willa whispered.

“It’s not going to be out in the open if it’s super important,” Maybeck said.

“You never know,” Willa said.

“Willa, you take the desktop, the coffee tables, and counters. Maybeck, the shelves and cabinets. I’ll take any drawers and the closet over there.”

No one countermanded Finn’s directive. They knew that in situations such as these, time was their biggest enemy. The sooner they were out of this office and off studio property, the better. A finely tuned team, they worked fluidly, their actions complementing one another’s. Willa began inspecting awards and papers and books on the desk while Finn opened and searched drawers. Maybeck was on his knees, digging around the inside of a cabinet below a set of bookshelves. They had no time to waste.

W
ALTER
E. D
ISNEY

At the top of the stairs in the dim hallway, a few strands of Charlene’s fine blond hair lifted and fell. The occurrence was enough to flash heat up her spine and direct her attention to the stairwell. At first she thought it might be her imagination—in situations like these her imagination went a little crazy—but after several seconds of concentration, she knew she was hearing the brush of clothing from down on the first floor. More than one person; possibly three or more, heading toward her, not away.

She took two steps, caught Philby’s eye, and made a walking motion with her fingers. She pointed down, indicating the floor below. Philby nodded and leaned his head into the office. Then he pulled the door closed and moved farther down the narrow hall, into shadow. Charlene found restrooms down the hall. She eased open the door marked “Minnies,” prepared to slip inside.

Focusing her hearing was not like training her vision on something, but she listened carefully all the same, and eventually picked up the sound of rustling cloth. She moved into the restroom, her hand on the inside handle, keeping the door open an inch. Spotting a small louvered vent in the base of the door, she let the door shut and kneeled, putting her ear to the slats. Again, it required all of her concentration to isolate the faint sound of people coming up the stairs—but coming up they were.

“Which way?” she heard a boy’s voice whisper faintly.

A different boy answered. “He said it’s called Public Relations. This hall, halfway down. They’re the ones doing the VIP thing.”

“This gives me the gosh-darn heebie-jeebies,” said a third boy. “Let’s get these stupid plans and blow this clambake. Hey, what’s a ‘logistic,’ anyway?”

“It’s the…How the heck should I know?” said the voice of the first boy. “’Sides which, he said ‘logistics,’ not ‘logistic,’ for your info.”

“As if that matters,” said the third.

Their voices faded as they passed. Charlene pressed her ear to the slats, then leaned back with a shiver of disgust. It was a bathroom, after all.

“Shut up, will youse?” The second boy again, barely audible now. “It’s the schedule for tomorrow, okay? He wants the schedule none of the guests ever see. Now mind your own beeswax and just stick to the plan.”

“Do we have a plan?”

“I said, shut your trap!”

“Shh!”

After a minute or two of silence, Charlene ventured a peek. Seeing no one, she hurried back to the narrow hallway, where she joined Philby. The short hallway formed a T at the end by a suite of offices marked
WALTER E. DISNEY
. A different sort of shiver crept down Charlene’s spine.

“For the record,” she whispered warmly into Philby’s ear, “this is way cool.”

“For the record,” Philby said, “I recognized one of those kids.”

“Just now?”

He nodded. “Yeah. From the Dodge we played tag with on the way up here. That kid was riding shotgun. Did you see their clothes? Their ID badges?”

Charlene shook her head.

“Cast Members from Disneyland.”

“Those guys? But they’re…I think they’re trying to steal the schedule for tomorrow’s opening. What kind of Cast Member would do that?”

“The fake kind,” Philby said, his face twisted with concern. “I’m going to tell the others. You hang tight.”

W
ILLA WORKED HER WAY ACROSS
the top of Roy’s desk, feeling hurried and under pressure. Despite the expression “hiding things in plain sight,” she didn’t believe for a moment that Roy would leave Walt’s pen lying around. A housecleaner, a visitor—just about anyone could accidentally walk off with it. If it wouldn’t be found lying around, that meant Finn had assigned himself and Maybeck the choice jobs of drawers and cabinets.

Let the girl have the meaningless task, she thought; if it makes her feel important, it’ll keep her off our cases.

She shook her head, reprimanding herself. This was no time to complain; the Keepers worked well as a team, which meant that sometimes you got the funky jobs. She inspected each and every object on Roy’s desk, looking for ways a pen might be concealed. The three framed photos offered her nothing. Nor the star-filled hemisphere of polished, clear glass that served as a paperweight. The two pens in plain sight were in a little stand, which held them like rabbit ears at the top of a leather blotter.

Next was a group of a half-dozen awards, several of them gold statuettes on a wooden stand. She picked up each one, studying them from all sides, including the bottom, looking for clever Walt Disney hiding places.

“Guys!” she called out, holding a heavy Academy Award in her hand. The gold-plated statuette was of a rigid man, his arms crossed. Finn and Maybeck joined her. She pointed to a small cork in the award’s stand. “Look,” she said, hoisting a second, similar award. Only the first had the cork in the bottom.

“That doesn’t look big enough for a pen,” said Finn, “but it does look like it was added.”

“Do either of you feel like a criminal digging around in Roy Disney’s stuff? Roy Disney, as in
the
Roy Disney. Criminal, as in definitely breaking the law.”

Maybeck picked at the cork and caught its edge. “We can argue about how we shouldn’t have done this later.” He pulled the cork free. No pen fell out.

“Okay,” Willa said. “No pen. We plug it back up and mind our own business.”

Maybeck shook his head. Using a long, tapered pen from the desk stand, he poked into the drilled hole. What looked like a tightly rolled dollar bill fell out onto the desk, along with a few flakes of sawdust.

The three kids stared at the money. Maybeck put his eye to the hole. “Empty.”

“What do you suppose…?” Finn unrolled what he now saw was half of a twenty-dollar bill. It had been torn neatly down the center. Its orange serial number was printed beneath an orange wreath. Gray engraved words identified it as a Gold Certificate. The back of the bill was printed in vivid green ink.