Janet Evanovich - Wicked Business

Clara groaned. “Don’t wait until three o’clock. Leave now. All of you. If he stays here any longer, I’ll go into a coma.”

An hour later, we were standing in front of Old North Church.

“I’ll go in first,” Diesel said. “Give me five minutes to look around, and then all three of you can come in. When you see me go downstairs, make sure no one follows me.”

“Oh boy,” Morty said. “We’re pulling off a caper, aren’t we? Now, this is more like it. Don’t you worry. No one’s gonna get past me and go down those stairs. You can count on me.”

“Keep your eye on him,” Diesel said to me. “He’s sneaky.”

“You bet I am,” Morty said. “I’m a slippery old bugger. You turn your back on me, and- whoosh -I’m gone. Unless I’m with two hot chicks, like you girls, then I might hang around. I’m as old as dirt, but I still got it. One day last month, I almost had a boner.”

“The golden years,” Diesel said. “I’d like to hear more, but I have to rob a grave. Give me a head start and then come in and cover me.”

I watched him walk to the church and go through the red door. I timed five minutes and turned to Glo. “Morty and I will stand close to the stairs that lead down to the crypt. You position yourself more toward the middle of the church. If we see someone who looks official, we talk to them, ask questions, so they don’t go near the stairs.”

“Gotcha,” Glo said. “Let’s do it.”

A family of tourists stood in the center aisle, staring up at the pipe organ in the balcony. Someone who appeared to be a docent was talking to them and gesturing toward the organ. The docent was a pleasant-looking woman in her fifties. She was wearing sensible shoes, a brown skirt, and a tan sweater set. She had a name tag pinned to her cardigan sweater, but I couldn’t see it from this distance.

Morty and I moved toward the stairs, so we screened Diesel while he stepped over the rope that prohibited entry. In seconds, Diesel was out of sight and Morty and I were standing guard.

“What’s he after down there?” Morty asked. “It’s gotta be something real valuable. Like jewels or a bag of money or a treasure map.”

“He’s looking for a bell.”

“Does it have jewels on it?”

“No, but we’re hoping it has a secret message.”

“I like the sound of that. This is like Indiana Jones, where he goes into a tomb and he’s looking for a clue to something. I don’t remember all the details, but there’s spiders and a big boulder that could have crushed him, but it didn’t. It might not have happened in that order, but it was pretty darn exciting. I’ve seen all the Indiana Jones movies. And I’ve seen all the James Bond movies, too. That Bond was a cool cucumber. He knew what to do with the ladies.”

A man and a woman came into the church and joined the family listening to the docent. Morty and I pretended to be reading a plaque on the wall. Glo was still hanging in the middle. A couple minutes passed, and two women walked in and went to the docent.

Glo meandered over to me and studied the plaque Morty and I had been pretending to read. “We might have a problem,” Glo said. “I’ve been eavesdropping. There’s a crypt tour scheduled. They’re waiting for one more person to arrive.”

I glanced at the entrance to the stairs. No Diesel. Even with Diesel’s skills, it probably wasn’t easy to get into Charles Duane’s hidey-hole. I saw an older man enter the church and my heart skipped a beat. The tour group was complete. The nine people gathered around the guide, she gave a short speech, and she motioned for them to follow her.

Still no Diesel.

Glo shot me a panicked grimace and pantomimed hanging herself.

“They’re going to walk in on Diesel,” I said to Morty. “We need to do something to distract them.”

“What?”

“You need to have a heart attack.”

“I had one of them last year, but I had a stent put in, and now I’m good as new.”

“Fake it!”

“Arghh,” Morty yelled, staggering forward, lunging at the tour group. “Can’t breathe. Got pain.” He clawed at the air with one hand, and he had the other clamped to his chest. “I’m having a heart attack,” he said, eyes rolling in their sockets, tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. “It’s a big one.”

Everyone’s first reaction was stunned silence, and then it was utter mayhem.

“Call 911!”

“Who knows CPR?”

“Get him an aspirin.”

“Do something!”

Morty crashed into a pew and went down to his knees. “Heart attack!” he said, crawling to the middle of the church. “I’m dying. Somebody help me. I see the tunnel with the light at the end.”

Everyone, including Glo, was crouched around Morty.

“Loosen his clothes,” someone said.

“Let the cutie do it,” Morty said.

I was staring, open-mouthed, at the scene in the middle of the church, and Diesel slung an arm around me.

“He isn’t really having a heart attack, is he?” Diesel asked.

“No. They were about to take a tour group into the crypt. This was the best we could come up with on short notice.”

Diesel had his bulging backpack hung on one shoulder. “I have the bell. You need to rescue Morty before the paramedics show up and take him for a ride.”

I inserted myself into the crowd and stared down at Morty. “You look a lot better now,” I said to him. “You’ve got good color back in your face. I think the heart attack must have passed. I’ve got Dr. Diesel waiting to check you out.”

“Dr. Diesel’s here?” Morty asked.

“Yep.”

Morty got to his feet. “I don’t see the tunnel no more. I must be all healed. In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, I might have had gas.”

“Appreciate your concern,” I said to the tour group, grabbing Morty by the arm. “Thanks so much for your help. I’ll take it from here.”

“I’ll help get him to Dr. Diesel,” Glo said, on Morty’s other arm. “Thanks a bunch,” she called over her shoulder. “Have fun on your tour.”

Diesel was already on the sidewalk when we whisked Morty out the door. A Boston Police car turned onto the street, lights flashing, and we put our heads down and marched off in the opposite direction.

“I should get an Academy Award for that,” Morty said. “It’s a shame we didn’t get to record it. I should be on one of them doctor shows where people die every week. I was an accountant for forty-five years. What was I thinking? I should have been a movie star.”

We walked down Salem Street, turned onto a side street, and happened upon a small deserted park. We sat on a bench and looked around. No police. No one paying any attention to us.

“What was it like down there?” I asked Diesel.

“Cramped. Nothing fancy. Mostly brick walls with burial chambers sealed behind cement and small metal doors. Cement floor freshly painted. Fortunately, Duane’s tomb wasn’t completely cemented over, and the bell was right up front behind the door.”

“Was there anything written on the bell?”

“I didn’t see anything when I grabbed it.”

Diesel pulled the bell out of his pack and held it out for us to see.

“Are you sure you want to bring the bell out in the open like this?” I asked him.

“There’s no reason why anyone would suspect this bell came from the church. I put the door back in place, and it should be okay unless someone knocks up against it. With the exception of a little dust on the floor, there’s no reason to suspect anything weird happened.”

We all studied the bell inside and out, but we didn’t see any message. Diesel swished the bell back and forth. Clang, clang, clang . No message.