Kingdom Keepers VII (34 page)

W
HILE THE
C
RYPTOS INVESTIGATE
the possibility of invisible ink on the pages of the stolen Archives folder, the Keepers accomplish a preplanned Imagineer-approved crossover into Disneyland. Amanda is paired with Charlene while Willa goes with Philby, leaving Maybeck with Finn.

Jess intentionally stays awake so as not to cross over. Joe has asked her to study her most recent drawings and write down every thought she has for each image she’s drawn. He seems particularly interested in the grasshopper head, though when asked specifically about it, he denies any such preoccu-pation.

It is late afternoon. The Keepers randomly awaken from naps back at the Studio and find themselves holograms on the Plaza. Their DHIs, more than three years younger in appearance than they are themselves now, have been decommissioned for the night—with apologies to those families with reservations for guides. The Keepers have been warned that this could cause some irritation in the unlikely event that a canceled family spots them; they’ve been told to use the excuse that they’re currently undergoing testing.

Maybeck and Finn head off in the direction of New Orleans Square and the Court of Angels; Willa and Philby—the brains—are to gather any crime scene evidence that may remain in Toontown, while Amanda and Charlene go in search of Storey Ming. Total time of operation: one hour. No excuses. Philby carries the fob. In case of a missed return, manual returns will be performed at subsequent ten-minute intervals.

But neither Joe nor the Keepers wants to make a spectacle of kids vanishing from plain view. Once a day is enough. Repeats will only set the Disney blogs afire with speculation about the Keepers’ escapades; that kind of publicity won’t help anyone.

Finn and Maybeck work their way up the stairs in the Court of Angels, on the lookout for Storey. Better safe than sorry. They hurry up to the next floor and reach the location of Finn and Wayne’s final meeting. Finn feels heavy-hearted as he is reminded of their last conversation, but is determined to come away with something—anything!—to help explain the events that followed.

“You remember the plan,” Finn says, allowing Maybeck to walk in front of him to serve as a screen.

“I got it. No worries.”

“You sure?”

“Whitman, this is me we’re talking about. What do you think?”

Maybeck strides through the
CAST MEMBERS ONLY
door used by the waitstaff, Finn immediately behind. The two boys find themselves in the vestibule where Finn had hesitated and pretended to be a busboy, with the second dining room on their left and the “library” straight ahead.

“May I help you?” a waiter asks.

“You could help us find the men’s room, my man,” says Maybeck. “We ended up on some porch out there while we were looking for it.”

“Sure thing. Down the stairs and turn left.”

Finn keeps his head down, as if embarrassed by their mistake.

“No worries,” the waiter adds. “Happens all the time.”

Finn mumbles a thank-you but avoids lifting his head, fearing that someone might recognize the boy specter who had crashed through walls and raced through tables only days before.

Maybeck heads down the stairs, but instead of following him, Finn turns toward the dead-end hallway that houses the waist-high eavesdropping closet where he hid. The closet is newly padlocked. Finn has a choice to make: as an all-clear DHI he can jump or climb through the door, but he risks being seen on the way in or out. Unable to imagine there’s actual evidence in the closet and unsure exactly what he’s looking for, he reverses direction and heads to the table where Wayne sat in the library dining room. Wayne is—
was
, Finn corrects himself, registering a flash of deep pain—impossibly sneaky. There’s no telling what the man might have left behind.

The table where Wayne sat is unoccupied. Finn slips into Wayne’s chair. His chest tightens; his heart pumps wildly. Right here…so very alive…Finn grits his teeth, determined to get through this. He inspects the underside of the table with his fingertips: nothing. He leans forward to similarly investigate the underside of the chair seat: nothing. But looking down, Finn notices a small pile of wood shavings against the wall, apparently swept there by a broom; their red color contrasts with the dark wood floor.

“Are you waiting for someone? May I get you a something to drink?”

Finn sits up, feeling rattled and unstable, bumping his less-than-all-clear head on the table. As he rights himself, he glimpses, as clearly as if a spotlight were aimed at it, a scar of freshly carved wood on the table’s understructure. That explains the shavings. Finn’s head is spinning.

“No—I mean, yes. I’m waiting for someone.”

“And the reservation is under…?” The waitress is suspicious, or worse, perhaps she recognizes Finn.

“Kresky,” he says, already tingling as he returns to all clear.

Word has spread through the Disney community by now. The waitress focuses intently on Finn. He wants her to recognize him, wants another minute or two at the table.

“Uh-huh.” She sounds dubious.

He lowers his voice. “I need a blank piece of paper, small, and a pencil with a decent lead. I’ll be out of here in less than a minute. Please…”

She looks right through him; he imagines her mind whirling as she considers her options.

“It’s not for me. It’s for him. He left me something.”

“And you are…?”

Finn’s hand is palm down on the table. He drops his eyes there emphatically, trying to encourage her to follow his gaze. Deliberately, he moves his arm through the wood of the table.

Her eyes are wide as she gasps, “It’s true, then.”

“Yes,” Finn says.

“Oh my gosh!”

Finn has encountered this response so often that he has become immune to it. It’s nothing but a parlor trick, but it wins him allies and warns his adversaries, and thus serves its purpose.

“Paper. Pencil. One minute,” he says.

“Which one are you?”

“I’m Finn.”

She’s impressed. “No way! The leader?”

“I get that a lot, but I’m not really sure we have a leader.”

“And modest to boot!”

Finn has met with this response too: regardless of age, people he meets in his DHI form want to strike up a conversation and be his best friend. It’s embarrassing for both parties, seeing as they’ve only just met. He won’t be rude and shoo her away, so he purses his lips, nods, and waits, hoping she’ll come back to earth.

“Cool. I’m on it!” she says.

He would ask her not to tell anyone, but that never works. People like to be viewed as special, and they take every opportunity to single themselves out from others. Some resort to shoplifting; some get 4.0 GPAs. Waitresses run back to the kitchen and tell everyone they’ve just met a Kingdom Keeper.

A pair of chefs in white aprons and tunics appears at the maître d’s check-in table shortly thereafter. They pretend to be inspecting the reservation list, but Finn knows otherwise.

The waitress returns with a pad of paper and five pencils. This is another thing Finn has learned. People who want to help consider quantity a show of respect. He smiles wryly.

“Thank you.”

“Hey, it’s an honor.”

Finn wants her to leave him alone; he doesn’t want her to see what he’s about to do, doesn’t want to draw any more attention for fear the Overtakers might hear about his visit to the restaurant, putting an innocent bystander like this waitress in danger.

There is a clock running in Finn’s head. There’s plenty of time to make it back to the Plaza, he calculates, but he and Wayne were spotted in here by Security—and maybe by Overtakers too. What’s to stop that from happening again?

Maybeck’s arrival from downstairs sets off alarms. Maybeck draws attention wherever he goes; he’s one of those guys people like to notice, one of those guys who makes sure people like what they see.

Finn’s mental clock ticks ominously.

* * *

“Why wouldn’t have the Imagineers—or the Cryptos, whoever—have collected evidence right away?” Willa asks.

She and Philby are approaching the bent Mickey statue in Toontown.

“Maybe they did,” Philby says, his eyes narrowed. “Or maybe they tried to.”

“Then why not tell us?”

“How do you react if you’re about to do something and somebody tells you they’ve already done it? You do a half-baked job, is what you do. Joe’s a smart guy. He tells us what he thinks we need to know and skips the rest.”

“That’s kind of weird, all things considered.”

“He’s a grown-up.”

“Point taken.” Willa gives a short bark of laughter. “And we’re Peter Pan, I suppose.”

“In his eyes? Yeah, probably. Kids forever. Same old, same old.”

“I get so sick of that,” Willa says.

Philby says, “Do you feel them out there? I mean, we know they’re here, right? And vice versa. They didn’t just show up in Toontown by coincidence.”

“I don’t appreciate your trying to scare me, Dell. I was the one with a knife at my throat, remember? Why couldn’t someone else have taken on this assignment?”

“I’m not trying to scare you. And yes, I’m well aware this is not a casual stroll in Disneyland.”

“Don’t patronize me. It’s not your style.”

“Of course it is. It’s exactly my style.”

They reach the fountain and walk away from it at a measured pace, side by side, eyes on the ground. Fifteen feet away from the statue, Philby changes the pattern to the one he uses when he mows the lawn at home: big sweeps out and back. They cover the area between the fountain and the stretch of territory where the OTs stood during their showdown. It feels futile: Toontown has been swept, hosed down, and inspected along with every inch of the rest of Disneyland. Then—

“Got something,” Willa says. They kneel, and Willa traces her finger in the air above a black S-shaped mark on the pale walkway.

“Yeah? So?” Philby says.

Willa points a foot or two ahead, indicating another, similar line.

Philby inches closer, squints. “I’m feeling dense. I don’t get it.”

“Who stood here?” Willa asks. She looks up, trying to catch anyone looking. Philby has infected her with fear. Only a few yards from where they now stand, she nearly lost her life. She wants to run—
now!

“The OTs,” he says. “Not Wayne. Not us.”

“Correct. And who, if anyone, was barefoot?”

“Tia Dalma!”

“Correct.”

“You think—”

“I
know
that Tia Dalma’s feet looked dirty. Time practically stopped when I was standing there. Now I’m thinking it wasn’t dirt, because the regular cleaning would have removed any mere dirt she left behind.”

Philby traces the pattern and sniffs his finger. “Nothing.”

“They’ll get it off eventually. But not with water.”

“Because it’s oil,” Philby says. “I see what you’re saying.”

“Took you long enough.”

“Easy, prom queen.”

“Hah. You wish.”

“No, actually, I don’t. I like you just the way you are.”

“You pick the strangest times to say the things I always wish you’d say.”

“I’m not good at this, am I?”

“You’re good at everything. Don’t kid yourself.”

“Oil.”

“More like tar, given how black it is and how it won’t clean up. I remember when they tarred our school roof,” Willa smiles, eyes crinkling. “Some kids got up there and dumped some of the roofing tar down onto the playground. There’s still a stain.” She pauses. “It’s too
empty
here. I don’t like it. We need to hurry it up.” The surrounding attractions, gloomy and lifeless, seem to glower.

“Tar…” Philby taps a finger against his lower lip, staring into space. “So you think—what? She was on a roof?”

“Could be. Think about L.A. The La Brea Tar Pits, Philby.”

“The grave of saber-toothed cats and—”

“Full of black tar.”

“We need a sample,” he says.

“It won’t return with us.”

“Good point.”

The structures around them groan and creak. A breeze whistles through. Willa’s skin turns to gooseflesh; she crosses her arms self-protectively.

“The Cryptos will have to collect it,” she says.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “You’re nervous. You’re never nervous.”

“A good man died here, Dell, you know? I…things were a little scary for me as well. Not my favorite place to be.”

“Did I mention I can be insensitive?” Philby reaches out and takes her hand. “You’re safe. I’ll keep you safe.”

She bites back a quivering smile. Her eyes sting. She nods—the best she can manage without coming unglued.

“T
HIS IS DEFINITELY
messed up,” Maybeck says. “Where are they?”

He and Finn have been scouting the Plaza from a bench. It’s now several minutes past the scheduled rendezvous time, but no one has arrived.

“It’ll be fine. Study it again. You’re going to need to draw that once we’ve returned. It won’t come with me.”

Maybeck regards Finn’s drawings, a sketch and a rubbing of the freshly carved marks on the table in Club 33. “Yeah, yeah. I can make a copy of this.”

“It has to be perfect.”

“Finn, I mean…come on.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re God’s gift.”

“True story.”

“There!” Craning his neck, Finn points to Amanda and Charlene, arriving from the far side of the castle. The girls are out of breath; obviously, they’re not all clear.

“What’s wrong?” Maybeck asks.

“Nothing,” Charlene says.

“We thought we were late, is all,” Amanda adds.

“We were early—” Maybeck says.

“And we’re still here,” Finn says, completing Maybeck’s thought.

“Philby and Willa? Are they in trouble?” Amanda hasn’t taken her eyes off Finn; Maybeck can’t stop looking at Charlene.

Finn shrugs. “Every ten minutes. That’s what he said.”

“Yeah, but if Philby never gets here,” Maybeck says, “the clock never starts.”

“Toontown,” Charlene says, reminding everyone with only that one word of Philby’s destination, the events of the recent past, and the threat that part of the park represents to the Keepers.

“So, no Storey Ming?” Finn asks.

“The ride’s closed,” Amanda says.

“We had to do a hologram thing to convince a Cast Member we were for real. Word was, the whole area stank of burning wires. Some kind of short, maybe. So we slipped through a wall, if you know what I mean, and—”

“It really did stink,” Amanda says, interrupting. “We searched behind the final scene as you said we should. If Storey was there, she was hiding from us. And then we saw the burn on the scenery. A big black smudge, like a mark made by a laser—”

“More like by a blowtorch,” Charlene says, cutting her off. “There was this panel that was scorched. Fried. But just in one spot.”

“You think they got Storey?” Maybeck asks.

Finn is about to speak when his entire body starts tingling. He glances at his watch. It’s exactly ten minutes past the rendezvous time.

* * *

Finn wakes up in his bed at the Studios and sits bolt upright. No matter how many times he crosses over, the return always freaks him out.

“Quick!” It’s Philby, standing by Finn’s bed. Finn jumps about a foot off the mattress.

“Tell me I didn’t scare you,” Philby says, sounding disappointed.

“What? You scared the—”

“Shhh!”
Maybeck silences them both from the doorway.

“Get the door!” Willa says, instructing Finn, the last one through.

The theater they’re in was once used for movie premieres. The Keepers clump together in the aisle, about halfway down.

“The Cryptos know we’ve returned,” Philby says. “The server will show it. Sorry for leaving before you guys, but we had to get back fast.”

“Because?” Finn says.

“Tar, or oil, on Tia Dalma’s feet,” Willa says. “She left tracks.”

“We can’t possibly know that,” Finn says.

“There’s a high probability, okay?” Philby says. “Who else has been barefoot in Toontown, other than us? And we didn’t have beach tar on our feet.” He explains that he and Willa wanted to take a sample, but like Finn’s sketch, it wouldn’t have returned with his DHI.

“So, the question is,” Willa says, “do we tell the Cryptos or not? Philby and I didn’t want to make a decision without you guys.”

“Why wouldn’t we tell them?” Jess asks.

The Keepers turn toward her, sighing almost in unison. The naïveté of the question is refreshing.

Finn answers gently. “Sometimes the Imagineers go in a different direction than we would.”

Jess nods, still confused.

“How would we get down to Anaheim?” Maybeck asks. “That’s what you’re saying, right? That we do it ourselves?”

“Absolutely,” Philby says, speaking for himself and Willa. “Unless we could get someone to do it for us.”

“Like Storey,” Amanda says.

“Or that girl Brooke,” Finn suggests. Heads turn toward him. “She helped me. It’s a good possibility.”

“I like her,” says Willa, who stood guard with Brooke in the Court of Angels.

“I have her phone number,” Philby says. “We texted.”

Willa frowns; her face bunches.

“Regardless, we’ll still need lab work to know what we’ve got,” Philby continues. “The advantage of telling the Cryptos is that they could handle that for us.”

“Could you do it?” Willa asks Philby.

“If I had access to a lab.”

“Listen!” Charlene silences them all. “If it’s tar, if it’s Tia Dalma, then it’s either the beach, the La Brea Tar Pits, or an oil rig.”

“She was living on the beach on Castaway Cay,” Willa says.

“If she was at the Tar Pits, that can’t be good news. What’s she doing?” Maybeck asks. “Raising a dire wolf from the dead?”

“Wait!” Jess leafs through her diary to the last page, her most recent drawing, and points to an object they’d tentatively identified as a grasshopper head. “It’s not a grasshopper! It’s one of those things on an oil well.”

“The horse head,” Philby says. “It’s the business end of the beam in an oil rig. You had the right body part, but the wrong kind of animal.”

“Wayne,” Finn mumbles.

“Oh, Finn,” Amanda says, throwing her arm around his shoulders. But Finn ducks away from her offer of comfort, squinting tightly into the distance. “Wayne said…he said, ‘They must be stopped. Do not for a minute assume that earthquake in Mexico was a fluke. Be on guard to prevent it from happening again.’”

Silence shrouds the group. Maybeck looks at Finn as if he’s worried Finn might be losing his mind. Jess studies her sketch. Like Maybeck, Amanda is worried about Finn. Philby and Willa look at each other; a special energy seems to cross the space between them.

Willa says, “Oil well. Earthquakes.”

Philby says, “Fracking. ‘Induced hydraulic fracturing.’ September 2013. This small Ohio town.”

“Youngstown,” Willa says. “They had a hundred earthquakes, in a town where there’d never been one before.”

To the others, it’s as if they’re speaking their own language. It’s hard to piece together what they mean, the way they’re finishing each other’s sentences. They continue prattling on about other fracking incidents in Texas and elsewhere. Before anyone can interrupt, Philby turns to the other Keepers and says, “The earthquake in Mexico was no accident.”

“They’re planning another one here,” Willa says.

Finn fights for breath. “Wayne warned me.”

* * *

Philby being Philby, he’s figured out the bus routes to get him and Willa from Burbank to Pepperdine University in Malibu. It’s more difficult sneaking out of the Studios than traveling over the mountains and through Los Angeles to reach the school.

Philby and Willa stow away in the back of a small white panel van that makes routine courier runs between Walt Disney Pictures and the Disney-ABC television high-rise a few miles away. Getting in unseen is far easier than half the things the Keepers had to do on the Disney
Dream
; it’s all a matter of timing. Maybeck distracts the driver, and Philby and Willa climb into the back as the van is backing up to leave.

On one of the many city buses they have to ride, they make eyes and play face games with a small boy in a stroller. Willa clutches Philby’s upper arm and squeezes every time the boy smiles or coos. It’s the first quiet time they’ve had since coming out west. For both, it passes much too quickly.

Entering the university campus, with its green lawns, red roofs, and white buildings overlooking the Pacific Ocean, briefly lessens their sense of purpose. Only miles from the Hollywood Hills, this paradise disguised as a university is so surreally beautiful, it seems out of place.

Philby has never met Brooke in person though Willa has described her as tall, thin, and pretty. Willa tells him this in the way girls talk about one another, as if these qualities are defects of some kind. Brooke greets them brightly and passes Philby the sample of oil from Toontown; she also has stained chips of the concrete pavement where they found the oil.

“That took a little doing,” she says, grinning.

“I’ll bet,” Philby says, impressed. Beside him, Willa groans.

“There’s a chemistry lab open in ten minutes,” Brooke says, checking her Mickey Mouse watch.

Philby and Willa work in concert for the next ninety minutes. Brooke has lab experience as well; she sets up ahead of them, and cleans up after. Soon they have a wealth of data, but no way of knowing what it all means. Brooke summons a senior, Austin, who’s been trying to get on her good side. He helps them feed the data into three different systems and hits Print.

“Bitumen deposits,” Austin says. “Tar. I’ve compared the pure sample with the one containing the concrete, and dis-carded the inorganics we typically find there. Tar is basically oil degraded by bacteria, okay? So there are two things of importance to you in this sample: First, there’s identifiable bacteria here, which is a real find. If you follow the Web sites, the only place it’s been discovered recently was the excavation for the Black Gold Golf Club in Yorba Linda. Second, the contaminants mixed in with the bitumen include water, clay, and lauryl sulfate, a chemical used in—”

“Injection wells,” Philby says.

Austin smirks, confirming what Philby has said. “The bitumens are hard to extract because of their viscosity. It’s like heavy sludge. Lauryl sulfate thins the tar and allows high-pressure injection wells to pump it to the surface.”

“So if you were guessing where this sample was from,” Willa says, “would this golf course be at the top of your list?”

“Carbon Canyon, Chino Hills, Rowland Heights, Yorba Linda. Not the club itself. I don’t know if there’re any wells there.”

“This may sound stupid,” Philby says. That’s a word he rarely utters, and in a tone he rarely uses. “But are there any fault lines that run between that area and Anaheim?”

“Are you kidding?” Austin says. “Definitely. Anaheim’s located between two major fault lines.” He pulls up a geological survey map on his computer screen and points out areas as he talks. “The Newport-Inglewood and the Whittier-Elsinore fault zones—the Whittier-Elsinore is located just northeast of Anaheim.”

“You all right?” Brooke asks Willa, who has gone pale.

“What’d I say?” Austin asks. “What’s going on?”

Philby looks like he’s been frozen in place. Finally, his gaze shifts until he’s staring straight at Brooke.

“No,” Brooke says. Her eyes water, and she fights against crying by blinking rapidly.

“What?” Austin says. “Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?”

“You wouldn’t believe us if we did,” Philby says. He grabs his phone and texts Finn the news.

“We have no proof,” Willa says. “We need proof.”

“Do either of you have a car?” Philby asks.

“My roommate does,” Brooke says.

“I’m driving,” says Austin, intrigued.

* * *

Finn is no stranger to the power of playing for sympathy. He’s used the technique effectively on his mother for years (his father is far less susceptible), and he’s become not just capable, but competent, even skillful.

Now Finn dishes it out to Joe without having to play-act the grief he’s experiencing over Wayne’s death. Even talking about the event tightens his throat and fills his eyes with tears. He says he wants to “begin the process of closure,” though he has no intention of facing that demon for some time to come.

As usual, Finn’s instincts differ from Philby’s. Finn works off intuition, while Philby maintains a procedural, forensic approach. From the moment Philby raised the idea of oil-tainted footprints, Finn’s mind imagined the oil’s origin being within Disneyland. The most obvious source of grease and oil is park maintenance; lubricants of various kinds keep the rides working. While hanging off the back of the train with Willa, Finn smelled lubricant and oil too, so another possibility is wherever park staff work on the trains and carriages.

With Philby off playing chemistry professor, Finn’s impatience for answers about Wayne’s death propels him to manipulate Joe into offering him permission to travel to Disneyland. Several times a day, Imagineers head to and from the park. Finn asks to bum a ride, visit Toontown, and pay his respects. He promises to be punctual and meet up with whoever’s driving at the specified time. Joe is openly skeptical.

Finn says, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m going to do this with or without your help. I’d rather not break the rules if I don’t have to.”

This softens Joe, who nods and says, “Don’t make a habit of it.”

An hour later, Finn is on the freeway. Two hours later, the van parks backstage.

He’s in.

* * *

True to his word, Austin’s behind the wheel, driving Philby, Willa, and Brooke around north of Anaheim, looking for oil rigs.

“Nothing,” Philby says after thirty minutes.