Chris Grabenstein: The Smoky Corridor

The clues the boss had already pieced together had brought them this far, to the woods surrounding what had once been the Horace P. Pettimore estate near the town of North Chester, Connecticut. Now Eddie was counting on Mr. Johnson to tell him exactly where to head next.

Where to dig.

“The tip!” Johnson whispered excitedly. “Look! It’s bending down.”

“You found it?”

“That which we seek is close at hand!”

Some unseen force yanked Mr. Johnson forward. He sailed through the brambles and branches, hanging on with all his might to the stiff twig twitching in his grip. Eddie followed.

They stumbled out of the forest into a clearing. No, it wasn’t just a clearing. As they walked through the darkness across the dewy meadow, Eddie realized they had entered a cemetery.

“This way!” said Johnson, leading him through the rows of tombstones. They marched down a gently sloping lawn to the muddy edge of a river.

“This is the Pattakonck!” Eddie exclaimed. “Why, old Horace Pettimore could have sailed his steamboat straight up here from the docks down in North Chester. This is where he buried his gold! He buried it with all the dead bodies!”

“No,” said Mr. Johnson, his stick now hanging limply in his hands. “The effluvia emanating from the water’s surface must have overwhelmed the witch hazel.”

“Say what, sir?”

“The moisture from the river temporarily threw my rod off course!”

“Oh.”

The answer sorely disappointed Eddie.

“You’re joshing me, right?” he said as politely as circumstances allowed.

“No. We need to start over. Perhaps we ventured too far from the school. We’ll try again.…”

Eddie shook his head. “Nope. You, sir, are done.”

“What?”

“Your services are no longer required.”

“What? Don’t be preposterous!”

“Excuse me.” Eddie reached into his coat pocket. Pulled out his cell phone.

“What … what are you doing?” the dowser demanded.

“Calling my boss.”

The stick quivered in Mr. Johnson’s trembling hands. “Wait. As I said …”

“Sorry for disturbing you,” Eddie said when the boss answered. “This Johnson fellow? He is absolutely worthless.”

“What? How dare you!”

That was when Eddie pulled out his pistol.

“No! Don’t!” Mr. Johnson pleaded. “Tell your employer that we will try again … tomorrow night.… I know I can find the hiding place.… I’m positive!”

Eddie cocked back the brass trigger.

Mr. Johnson quit babbling.

“So, what would you like me to do, boss?” Eddie asked.

Eddie smiled. He liked what he heard:

Do it now.

Make it look like an accident.

3

“And now,”said Principal Scot Smith, “it gives me great pleasure to introduce George Jennings, a graduate of this school and now a partner with the New York City law firm that’s been the trustee of the Pettimore estate for over a century. George?”

Zack applauded wildly like everybody else as his father made his way to the podium.

“Thank you, Principal Smith. As most of you know, Captain Horace P. Pettimore chose to retire here at the close of the Civil War because he craved the peace and tranquility of our unspoiled surroundings. He never married, never had children. So he used his vast fortune to build the Riverside War Memorial Cemetery, where veterans and paupers could be buried free of charge, and later, at his death, he left us the land and first buildings for this school.”

More applause.

Zack wished his stepmom, Judy, could hear everybody clapping for his dad, but she was busy over in Chatham at the Hanging Hill Playhouse, where the musical she’d written, Curiosity Cat , was ending its run and attracting a lot of what they called “buzz” from producers who wanted to move the show to Broadway.

“Of course,” Zack’s dad continued, “if you grew up in North Chester, like I did, you also heard stories about Captain Pettimore’s other fortune, his buried treasure—all the gold he supposedly stole from the Confederate Treasury.” He put a hand to the side of his mouth as if he had a big secret to share. “If anyone happens to dig up a mountain of gold while you’re on a nature hike out in the woods, please give me a call. That gold belongs to the Pettimore Charitable Trust!”

More laughs mingled with a few shouts of “No way, man!”

“Okay, is Tony LaGuarino here tonight?” Zack’s dad scanned the auditorium.

“Over here,” a gruff voice boomed.

“Come on up, Tony. I’ve got something for you.”

Zack’s dad pulled out an oversized bank check while a big man in a firefighter uniform lumbered up to the stage.

“Folks, as you know, every year, the Pettimore Trust donates a sizeable sum of money to the North Chester Volunteer Fire Department to help them teach fire safety in our schools. I remember, when I went to Pettimore Middle, we had a saying …”

“Don’t be a Donnelly!” a parent shouted.

“Don’t play with matches!” shouted another.

Zack’s dad laughed. “Well, Tony, to help you guys do the great work you do, here’s ten thousand dollars for your education fund!”

The audience gave that a loud ovation.

Except for the two women seated directly behind Zack.

“Isn’t the Jennings boy the one who almost burned down his house?”

“Almost burned down the whole neighborhood, I heard.”

The first woman snorted. “Guess Mr. Jennings could use a little fire safety instruction in his own home.”

The second woman snicked her tongue. “I hear his son is worse than the two Donnelly boys combined. A real pyromaniac.”

“They’re not going to let him go to school here, are they?”

“I certainly hope not.”

Zack decided he needed to go to the bathroom.

Actually, he just needed to exit the auditorium.

Fast. Now. Immediately.

Head down, he worked his way out of his row.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled. “Need to find the bathroom. Sorry. ’Scuse me. Bathroom.”

He made his way up the aisle toward the swinging doors to the auditorium lobby. When he pushed through, he saw a pretty blond woman closing her purse.

“Hello, there,” she whispered with the softest hint of a drawl. “May I help you?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am. I need to find the bathroom?”

She pointed toward the doors that led from the lobby to a corridor. “Go out the doors and take a right. Go past the gymnasium, take a left, another right, and the bathrooms are right there.”

“Thanks.”

“To tell the truth, I had a hard time finding them myself. This school is like a twisty ol’ maze—especially since it’s my first year here and all.”

“Are you a teacher?” Zack asked.

The pretty lady smiled. “I sure am.”

Zack smiled back.

Hey, if this nice lady is one of my teachers , he thought, maybe school won’t be so bad here after all!

4

Pettimore MiddleSchool’s chief custodian, Wade Muggins, was putting in a little OT.

Overtime.

So while everybody else was all the way over on the other side of the so-called soccer green, having fun at Back to School Night in the auditorium, he was down in the cellar of the cafeteria, working late.

Earbuds stuffed in deep, he bopped into his office: the janitor’s closet, in the basement of the cafeteria. Actually, “janitor’s lounge” was more like it, because Wade had (without telling anyone) expanded the cramped room by busting through a wall to connect it to the root cellar of the old Pettimore mansion. He figured it might make a good rehearsal space for his rock band if he ever, you know, was in one. Nobody else knew about the root cellar. Heck, Wade only knew about it because one day, while nailing a Metallica poster to the back wall, he had accidentally swung his hammer too hard and bashed a humongous hole through the plasterboard wall.