Here Lies Linc (13 page)

I had thought he was ready to let the dogs in and say goodbye. But then he told me that he wanted to show me something, and he led me into his shadowy front room to the row of bookshelves next to the fireplace. The shelves were packed with glass figurines and old black-and-white photographs in fancy frames. I braced myself for what must be coming next: a personal introduction to each of the old-timey faces in the hazy photos. But instead, Mr. Krasny reached past the collection of treasures and pulled a book from a row of matching volumes that lined the back of the shelf.

He rubbed his gnarled hand gently across the red leather cover. “My father’s newspaper,” he announced.

“Huh?” I said, forgetting my manners for a second.

“The
Slovan Americký.
” He pointed to the foreign words printed in gold on the spine of the book. “Or in English—the
American Slav
. This was the weekly Czech newspaper. Published for all the immigrants in these parts. My father, he was a jack-of-all-trades, and sometimes he worked as a reporter for the publisher. Very proud of his stories, he was. He kept every issue. Stacked them up in our damp basement next to the potato bin. Foolish! Awful musty down there. To surprise
Tatínek, for his seventieth birthday we had them bound. He spent his last years reading and rereading each and every article. Dreaming of the olden days, I suppose.”

Mr. Krasny cracked the book open, and I peered down at the yellowed newsprint, trying to make sense of the words in the dim light. But the page wouldn’t seem to come into focus. I cocked my head for a better angle and stared at the mishmash of letters in one of the headlines:
Velký jarní ples
. The words looked … they looked a lot like that faded inscription on the Black Angel.

Before I could blurt out my next question, Mr. Krasny traced his finger under another bold headline, and suddenly his voice and accent transformed as he pronounced the words out loud. “
Farma na prodej!
Farm for sale!”

It was too good to be true. “You speak Czech?”

Behind his glasses, Mr. Krasny’s milky blue eyes shone with pride. “
Samozřejmě!
Of course. Tatínek always insisted we speak Czech at the dinner table. And when we were little, he sent us to Bohemian school. Held every summer morning in the elementary school down the street. We sang Czech songs, learned the old dances, recited poems—”

I couldn’t help cutting in. “Mr. Krasny, do you think you could translate something for me?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know, son. My Czech’s a little rusty—”

“It’s just a few lines. From the inscription on the Black Angel.”

His expression darkened. Maybe he was hearing that wheelchair again. That
squeak-squeak
in his head.

“Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try,” he finally said.

“Great! I don’t have the words yet, but I’ll get them to you as soon as I can.”

I couldn’t believe my luck. I was one giant step closer to solving the mystery of the Black Angel. And all it took was sharing a few shankies with Mr. Krasny.

M
AYBE
M
ELLECKER THOUGHT
it was a joke, I told myself. All that business about getting him the key to the Ransom vault. Or even better, maybe he and Beez would forget I ever proposed the idea in the first place. There was a big football game coming up on Saturday night. They probably hadn’t had time to give the Ransom key another thought.

But they didn’t forget. I knew it as soon as I filed out of the lunch line with my tray the next day. “Hey, Crenshaw, over here!” Beez shouted across the entire cafeteria. I glanced over at the BattleBots table, where I usually sat. I could see Cliff and his friends observing me as they hunkered over their trays, trying to figure out why the likes of Jake Beasley would be bellowing my name. If only I had been assigned to second lunch with Delaney. There was still more than a week to go before our stakeout at Oakland, but we could have used
lunchtime to plan the details. Then the next thirty minutes would have flown by.

Beez was still waving me over like a traffic cop. With one last glance of apology toward the BattleBots, I headed to the opposite side of the cafeteria.

Mellecker’s table was packed and a lot rowdier than my usual spot. When I walked up, three guys at the other end were finishing up a milk-chugging contest. They slammed down their cartons and wiped their mouths on the backs of their fists. Amy and some other girls scattered between them broke into giggling fits when one of the guys let out a nasty sound halfway between a burp and a yawn.

Mellecker smiled up at me as I stood there hesitating, clenching the sides of my tray. “Welcome to my office,” he said. Beez had already scooted over to make room for me at the end of the bench. Even on the very end, I still felt claustrophobic with half the table giving me the eye and Beez’s bulky shoulder brushing up against mine as he dove into his pepperoni pizza.

“How’s it going, Crenshaw?” Beez asked with his mouth full. “Any new developments?”

“Nope. Not that I can think of,” I answered. I took a bite of my own lunch and chewed very,
very
slowly. Not an easy task when the menu of the day featured something called Chicken Stix.

“Well?” Mellecker’s eyebrows lifted. “Did you get it?”

“Get what?” I stalled.
Think
, I pleaded with my brain.
Think
.

Mellecker let out a dry laugh. “The key, buddy, the key!”

“Oh,
that?
” I forced my voice higher with disbelief. “You’re kidding, right? You think I can get the Ransom key just like that?” I tried to snap my fingers, but my hands were too sweaty for any noise to come out.

Meanwhile, the gears inside my head were spinning into overdrive. There was no way I could get the Ransom key for Mellecker. A long time ago Jeeter had shown me where the keys to the mausoleums were kept: in the cemetery office … in a closet … in a wooden case that looked like an old-fashioned medicine cabinet mounted on the wall. No one ever used the keys unless they needed to get inside a vault to add another coffin after a funeral. And now that Kilgore was in charge, he had probably beefed up security with padlocks and alarms, maybe a hidden video camera or two.

Beez was watching me suspiciously. “Hey, dude,
you’re
the one who told us you could get the key. What’s the deal? Can you get it or not?”

I felt my cheeks catch fire. A few more kids down the row had started to listen, and across the table Mellecker’s face had frozen into a queasy expression—like he felt sorry for me. But what was I supposed to do now? Tell him the truth? That I had promised him the key only because I wanted him to like me? No way. Instead, all I could do was lift my shoulders in a pitiful shrug and stare down at the shriveled pile of Chicken Stix on my tray, shaking my head.

“I told you he’d never do it,” I heard Beez say under his breath.

“Just forget it, Beez,” Mellecker murmured.

The lunchroom racket swelled around me. Somewhere at a nearby table, Sylvie was ranting about a spitball. “Ewww, it touched my sandwich! You’re gross, Douglas Spratt! I’m gonna kill you!”

“Oh yeah? How’re you gonna do that?”

“I’m gonna hire a hit man!”

Hit man
. Sylvie, of all people, had given me an idea.

I lifted my gaze slowly, giving my features time to set into steel. Mellecker and Beez had gone back to eating their lunches. “Listen, you guys,” I hissed. They both looked up, disoriented by my sudden change in behavior. “I know I said I could get the key, but there’s something I didn’t tell you.”

The two of them traded wary looks as I motioned for them to lean in closer.

“Did it ever occur to you, Mellecker,” I began, “that maybe the reason you can’t find any information about the Ransoms is because they might not want people to know about them?”

Mellecker’s face went slack. “What are you talking about?”

Easy does it
, I told myself. I needed to make each word ooze with warning—just like Dad when he used to do his impression of those guys from Mafia movies.

“Well, I don’t want to jump the gun here,” I said cautiously. “But living right next to the graveyard, I see a lot, you know. I’m pretty close with the people in the cemetery office. And let’s just say … something about the Ransom vault is … different.”

Beez’s mouth hung slightly open. I could hear him breathing. “Different?” he asked uneasily. “Different how?”

I wiped my damp palms across my jeans under the table. It was nerve-racking making all this stuff up as I went along. But it was also kind of exhilarating, like a roller-coaster ride that you love and hate all at the same time.

At least I had a lot of good material to work with. “Well, there’s this real creepy guy named Kilgore, he’s the cemetery warden, and he keeps all the keys to the mausoleums in a steel box in his office. Every key is labeled and hung on a hook inside that box. Every key … except one.”

“Let me guess,” Mellecker said. “The Ransom key.”

I nodded ominously. “That’s right. Kilgore keeps that one separate, on a brass ring in his pocket, where he can be sure no one,
I mean no one
, can get to it.”

“Why?” Beez asked, keeping his voice hushed.

I pressed my lips together and narrowed my eyes. “I’m pretty sure the Ransoms are paying him off. I don’t know anything else about those Ransoms except they’re private and they’re powerful. And they don’t want anybody nosing into their business.”

I glanced over at Mellecker. He had leaned back from the table with his arms locked over his chest, still looking kind of skeptical. Beez, on the other hand, seemed seriously spooked. “Soooo …” I gave a little shrug. “What I mean is I can get you the key. But it won’t be easy. And once you have it, what are you going to do with it? I should be straight with you guys. I wouldn’t advise any friend of mine to mess with the Ransoms.
For all I know, they’ve got hit men out there, on the lookout for anybody who gets too close.”

I focused on Beez, waiting for him to crack a joke, cram his last wedge of pizza into his mouth, and call it quits. But that’s not what happened. All of a sudden he sat up, breaking our little huddle, with a knowing gleam in his eye. “That’s where they keep it,” he said.

Now I was the one looking baffled. “That’s where they keep what?”

“The goods!” he said louder, getting more excited by the second. “Cash. Jewels. Whatever! You say there’s something funny going on, right? The Ransoms sound just like one of those families in the Mob. And they’ve got the perfect place to hide all their money. A cemetery vault! Who would ever think of snooping
there
? Right, Mellecker?”

Mellecker’s mouth had spread into a slow smile. All at once I could see it. He was too smart to really believe any of this stuff. But he was having fun playing along. “Yeah, but what if the vault’s where they hide all the people they knock off?” he asked.

I bobbed my head up and down. “Yeah.”

Beez grimaced. “Oh, man. That’d be foul. But still … this project could definitely use some spicing up. You gotta get us that key, Crenshaw. We gotta see what’s inside.” A wicked look flashed across his wide face. “Hey, maybe we can even snag a little cash or a diamond or two.”

I felt my mouth opening and closing like I was some kind of beached fish gulping for air. My plan had backfired in a
major way. But before I could confess or interrupt with something sensible, the bell rang, and everyone was grabbing their trays, bolting for the door.

Beez pointed his stubby finger at me as he stood up to go. “Do this, Crenshaw,” he said. “Get … that … key!”

N
O WONDER
J
EETER WAS SURPRISED
to see me stroll into the cemetery office a couple days later. Even though Mr. Oliver’s graveyard project had brought us back together, I hadn’t set foot in the office for weeks. Jeeter was halfway asleep when I walked in, with his work boots propped up on the old oak desk in the corner and the soft buzz of a baseball game droning on the radio. He almost tipped backward in his swivel chair when he heard the office door creak open.