Mum's the Word
Chapter
Nine
Sept
28: Once…
“What the hell?” Scrabbling quickly to his
feet, Owen darted toward what now looked exactly like a grubby, flat wall.
The prospect of what… or who… lay on the
other side of that wall raised goosebumps on Izzy’s arms. “No!” Izzy grabbed
for his friend, but his fingers slid right over the fabric of Owen’s sweatshirt. He
missed and reluctantly chased after Owen, finally snagging a belt loop and
tugging impatiently. “What are you doing?” He stared incredulously at his
friend. “Are you…” Insane, he finished the thought.
“There’s got to be a secret door of some
kind.” Owen insisted, shaking Izzy off and reaching out to the wall. His
fingers traced a line down its length, a thin nearly invisible crack that he
wouldn’t have seen at all if it hadn’t just recently been illuminated so
brightly. “See if you can find a latch or something.”
“With someone on the other side of it!”
Izzy protested, flinging his hands in the air. “Someone who obviously doesn’t
want us to know they’re here.”
Owen glanced over his shoulder, flashing
Izzy a wicked, heart melting grin. “Yeah… someone who shouldn’t be here
either.”
Becoming aware that he’d been bouncing in
frustration at Owen’s risky behavior, Izzy stilled himself with conscious
effort. “What do you mean?”
“Only three people we know of are
authorized to be in this building, right? The professor who’s upstairs
apparently moving furniture.” Owen held up three fingers and ticked one off.
Izzy nodded. He remembered that scare,
yeah. “Okay. Yeah.” The reminder that they were alone but for a potential
maniac did nothing to ease his concern.
The other two fingers waggled madly then
pointed back and forth between Owen and Izzy. “Us. The Professor, you and me.
That’s it.”
“All the more reason not to go chasing
after some guy who isn’t supposed to be here in the first place!” Izzy declared, eyeing the secret door nervously. “That… intruder… could be anybody. A thief, a
serial killer…”
“Don’t you want to know who it is? More
important, don’t you want to know why there’s a secret door in the basement of
the museum? What’s so awesome that it had to be hidden instead of just parked
in one of these gazillion dirty, dusty, musty spider filled rooms?”
A spark of interest flared to life. It was
true, what Owen was saying. There were maybe not a gazillion rooms, but there
was plenty of storage for anything the university wanted to store. “But… The
professor--”
“You’re right. We’d better wait until
tonight. And that way, we can be sure whoever just peeked in at us is gone
too.”
“Right…” Izzy agreed reluctantly, torn
between the possibilities of artifacts and certain danger.
“So…” Owen looked at the floor. “Damn. I
hope that wasn’t valuable.”
Izzy followed his gaze to the shards of
glass and the dried hand. “Oh…”
“Mr. Nichols, Izzy.” Clattering footsteps
followed the professor’s voice, and Izzy instinctively scooped up the hand and
shoved it into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie.
Owen hastily scraped the broken bits of
glass into a pile and stood awkwardly in front of them. Shoulder to shoulder,
they stood, stiff. Beads of sweat broke out on Izzy’s brow and his palms grew
damp. This was an all-new fear, different from the potential serial killer
lurking on the other side of the wall. This was a fear of ramen and knock off
cereal and suffering through a winter without heat just as they’d struggled to
get through a summer without air conditioning. The professor may not have fired
them instantly for taking the box of letters home, but destroying property was
an entirely different matter.
In the dim corridor he fancied that the
professor’s dark eyes were narrowed, and all knowing. Was he looking over
Owen’s shoulder at the wall? Did he see some fragment of glass that escaped
Owen’s foot? Was the outline of the hand visible through Izzy’s jacket?
“Izzy?” The professor approached, and for
the first time since meeting the man, Izzy was chilled instead of warmed by the
glint of white teeth in his wide lipped smile.
“Yes, sir?” He sidled closer to Owen,
seeking warmth instinctively, like a baby penguin huddling in at his father’s
feet, which given how he felt about Owen, and the things they’d done, was kind
of a creepy thought to have.
“Professor?”
Izzy didn’t have to look at Owen; he could
tell by the pugnacious tone of voice that his roommate’s jaw was lifted at a
challenging angle.
“What are you two doing? What was that
noise?” The professor stepped from the shadows by the stairwell into a pool of
light provided by a single overhanging bulb a few feet ahead of them.
“Nothing. I thought it came from
upstairs?”
“Did it? I didn’t see anything, and I just
came from there.”
“Uh… professor, do you have any duct
tape?” Izzy blurted, trying to stave off what sounded like a confrontation in
the offing. Though he couldn’t imagine what the professor and Owen would be
fighting about, the atmosphere in the hall had taken on the feel of a family
Thanksgiving dinner, where his Aunt Rachel and Uncle Connor sniped at one
another until the third bottle of wine passed before turning their venom on
their family and sending first cousin Lucy then Rose running from the room in
tears.
Not that he thought Owen or Micahn were
going to run from the room sobbing, but the scent of blood was in the air, and
that scent always made Izzy tense and nauseous.
“Duck tape?”
“Duct… uh. Never mind. It’s gray and about
two inches wide?”
“There maybe be such a thing in the office
supply cabinet in the office. Why?”
“We need to reseal some of these boxes.”
Izzy hunched a shoulder toward the clothes on the floor.
“This is the extent of your morning’s
work? A wedding gown and a morning suit?” The smile vanished and his thick
brows drew together in a scowl. “You are not making as much progress as I had
hoped.”
“We’re working as fast as we can.” Owen
interjected. “It’s not our fault that these people saved every damn piece of
paper the mailman brought.”
“Nevertheless, we must come up with
something fresh. The university archaeology department relies on funding from
donors, and the donors want something more.”
“We can’t invent things that aren’t here.”
“I am not asking you to. I would just like
you to get through these rooms faster.”
The professor crossed his arms and Izzy
had the impression he was trying to coach them, encourage them, as though there
were anything he could say that would fill those endless boxes with anything
other than useless paper. “Once we find at least three concepts, we can build
exhibits around them.”
