Janet Evanovich - Wicked Business

The building was a temple, a tomb, a forbidding gray stone bunker. It could have been a bomb shelter. It was nicely proportioned but cold and unwelcoming. And it looked forgotten, sitting forlorn in a scraggly copse of undernourished trees, perched on hardscrabble grass without a single azalea bush to soften its appearance. A hundred years ago, it had no doubt been the pride of a secret society when secret societies flourished. But that time had come and gone, and the Sphinx now looked like a beautifully designed but lone monument in an unattended boneyard.

Diesel found parking a block away, and we walked back to take a closer look. No sign of Wulf or Hatchet. No sign of Deirdre Early. No sign that anyone ever used the building. The heavy wood door looked completely unused. Diesel ran his hand over it and wasn’t able to find a lock he could open. There was no give when he pushed against it.

We circled the building and found a simple, unassuming door on the east side. It had a five-button security lock that had been pretty well bashed in and what appeared to be the tip of a sword wedged between door and jamb.

“Looks like Hatchet’s been here,” Diesel said.

“Can you open it?”

He put his hand to it. “It’s jammed.”

We circled the building several times but couldn’t find a way to get in. I had the scrap of paper with the hieroglyphics and scrambled letters on it. We compared the hieroglyphics on my paper to the markings on the tomb’s cornerstone and they were exactly the same.

“Do you get any vibes when you touch the building?” Diesel asked me.

I put my hand to the stone. “Nope. Nothing.”

I heard sirens and I turned to see a police car race down Wheelock, moving toward Main Street. It was followed by a fire truck and another police car. We left the Sphinx and went to the sidewalk. It was impossible to see exactly what was going on, but smoke billowed into the sky from somewhere on campus.

Diesel and I walked toward the smoke and saw that it was coming from a building on the far side of the Green. We crossed the Green and joined the crowd of students watching the building burn.

I was standing next to a guy with a two-day beard and hair that was in worse shape than Diesel’s.

“What building is this?” I asked him. “How did the fire start?”

“This is Parkhurst,” he said. “It’s an admin building. The Office of Student Life is in here. Don’t know how the fire started.”

An older woman who looked like she might work in the building leaned toward us. “I was told some crazy woman came in demanding a list of Sphinx members. And when she didn’t get it, she torched the office and ran away.”

“The gang’s all here,” Diesel said to me.

“Now what?” I asked him.

“Lunch,” Diesel said. “I’m starving.”

We crossed Wheelock, bypassed The Hanover Inn, thinking it looked too classy for us, and settled on Lou’s. My rule of thumb is always go with the diner that has a pastry counter right up front. Especially if the pastries are homemade and look like the ones in Lou’s case.

There was counter seating and booth seating and we were able to take our pick, since everyone else in town was gawking at the fire. I ordered a burger, and Diesel ordered something called The Big Green, which it turned out meant they emptied the kitchen onto as many plates as it took and tried to cram them onto the small booth table. It was the equivalent of ordering half a cow at Fat Bubba’s Steak House. Eggs, pancakes with real maple syrup, bacon, hash browns, sausage, English muffin, and whatever else was buried under the eggs and potatoes.

Diesel shoveled it all in and got a maple-glazed cruller on the way out.

“Impressive,” I said to him.

“The food?”

“That, too.”

We walked back to the Sphinx and stared at it.

“I’ve got nothing,” I said to Diesel.

“It bothers me that Hatchet and Fire Woman are here, and we’re not seeing them.”

“Are we talking about Deirdre Early or Anarchy?”

“I’m counting on them being the same person.”

“Works for me. We haven’t seen Wulf, either.”

“I’m sure he’s here, somewhere. He’s probably napping in his Batmobile, waiting for the moon to come out.”

“You don’t like him.”

“There was a time when I admired and envied him. His skills came earlier than mine. But we made different life choices, and it’s placed us in an adversarial position.”

There were some guys and dogs playing with Frisbees on the lawn of a neighboring fraternity.

“Is that Alpha Delta?” I asked Diesel.

“Yeah. It’s the fraternity that inspired Animal House .”

“It’s also mentioned in a lot of references as having a secret tunnel to the Sphinx.”

Diesel looked at the Sphinx, and he looked at the frat house. He shrugged and set out across the grass. “We’ve run down every other ridiculous idea, and some of them got us to this point. We might as well run down this ridiculous idea, too.”

“No stone unturned,” I said, jogging to keep up with him.

He went straight to the front door and walked in, with me trailing behind. Two guys turned to look at us.

“Is Scott here?” Diesel asked.

“Yeah, somewhere.”

“I’ll find him,” Diesel said. “Thanks.” And he walked toward the back of the house and down a staircase.

“How do you know where to go?” I asked Diesel.

“They’re all the same,” Diesel said. “There’s always a guy named Scott, and there’s always a downstairs party room. And if there’s a tunnel, it’s not going to originate on the second floor.”

The downstairs party room was deserted at this time of the day. The light was dim and the room smelled like beer and salami. It had a bar at one end. Some leather couches. Photographs, banners, plaques, and paddles hung on the walls.

I opened a door to a utility closet and found a trapdoor in the floor. “Trapdoor,” I said to Diesel.

Diesel poked his head in and looked down at the door. “Shows promise.”

There were flashlights on a shelf in the utility closet. We each took one, closed the door to the closet, eased ourselves through the trapdoor, and descended into the cramped, dark sub-cellar. Copper water pipes and electrical cables snaked overhead, the floor was dirt, and a metal box sat in a far corner. Danger-High Voltage was written on the box, but the box didn’t look like it connected to anything. Diesel pushed the box aside and uncovered a wooden hatch. He opened the hatch and flashed some light into it. There was a ladder going down about ten feet to another dirt floor.

I wasn’t feeling wonderful about where I was at present, and I really didn’t want to go down to another level.

“How about if I go back to the closet and stand guard,” I said to Diesel. “And you can push on.”

“Not necessary,” Diesel said. “No one knows we’re down here.”

“Did I ever mention my slight claustrophobia?”

“Yes. Did I ever mention my face your fears philosophy?” Diesel slipped into the opening and dropped out of sight. “There’s more headroom here,” he called up. “And it looks safe.”

I’d broken into a sweat, and my brain was screaming, Air! Get me fresh air! I turned toward the stairs that would take me back to the closet, Diesel’s hand wrapped around my ankle, and next thing, I was halfway down the ladder. His hands were at my waist, and I was the rest of the way down.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “You’re with me. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.”

“I don’t want you to get too offended by this, but that’s not doing it for me. I’m having a panic attack. I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating. It’s too much dirt. There’s dirt everywhere.”