Once they made the decision, the day dragged.
“We’ll go, but can we hang around the stores while you’re at the grocery?” asked Jack.
“You can go as far as the pet store. Deal?”
“Deal,” said Jack.
“Okay, you got money?” Jack asked Ben.
“Yeah, what are we getting?” asked Ben.
“Stud finder,” said Jack.
They were walking down the aisle of the last remaining small hardware shop in town. After the Home Depot came to town, the other hardware store and lumber yard had closed. His parents still came to this small place because it was close and they knew the owners.
Stephen was testing the measuring tapes. “Doesn’t your dad have one of those?” he asked.
“Yeah, but this one has a deep scanning mode,” answered Jack. “He told me he was going to buy it so he could find power cords in walls before he drilled. I was going to get it for him for Father’s day, but then I forgot.”
“So why do we want it now?” asked Ben. “That thing’s like forty bucks.”
“We can use it to find out what that button’s hooked up to,” said Jack. “Besides, I’ll pay you back — I’m going to give it to my dad for his birthday.”
“So it finds power cords, and you think we can follow the power coming off of the button?”
“Yeah, why not?” asked Jack.
“It just doesn’t sound like something that would work,” replied Ben.
“Well then maybe it will be able to tell if there’s concrete behind every window,” said Jack.
“That would be cool,” said Stephen. “Would it really do that?”
Jack paused — “I don’t know, but the plastic comes off without ripping, so I can just put it back in the package and give it to my dad in August.”
Ben laughed — “Good enough for me.”
They paid for the stud finder and made their way outside where Jack’s mom was waiting.
“What did you buy?” she asked.
“Birthday present for dad,” Jack replied.
“A little early, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t want to forget again,” said Jack. His mom smiled.
Late that night at the hotel, they huddled again on the porch roof and tried to decipher the nature of the button. Jack’s deep-scanning method was only slightly successful. He would get a firm idea of the direction of the wire and then lose the signal.
Pressing the button yielded much better scanning results, but after the grinding sound stopped and the button clicked, it stopped showing up on the detector.
“This is pointless,” said Stephen.
“You heard the noise,” reminded Ben. “There’s got to be something going on when it makes that noise.”
“My grandmother used to have a doorbell that sounded like dogs barking,” retorted Stephen. “Do you think there was something going on with that as well?”
“You know,” started Jack, “the more I think about it, he can’t be hiding something valuable. If what he’s hiding was worth anything, he wouldn’t spend money to build a hotel, set up a trust, and then give up. It’s got to be something bad he’s hiding.”
Ben sat down on the roof with his back to the wall and looked out into the night. “Like what?” he asked.
“Maybe he buried bodies here,” said Stephen and sat down next to Ben.
“Yeah, like that,” said Jack. “He was pouring money into this to keep a secret that would have hurt him.”
“Must be a really bad secret,” said Ben.
“Yeah,” Jack said as he sat next to his friends, “maybe it is bodies. Well, whatever it is, it looks like he might have sealed the place up with concrete to keep…”
“Shhh!” ordered Ben. “Listen,” he whispered as he pressed his ear to the wall.
All three pressed their ears to wall and listened carefully to the same grinding sound they had heard earlier. It continued for several seconds and then ended with a thump and a loud click.
“That click is coming from up there. It sounds like a latch or something,” said Ben as he pointed up. He shone his light on the wall about seven feet up from where they stood.
“We have to get up there,” said Jack.
“Yeah,” agreed Stephen, “do you have a ladder?”
“Of course,” said Jack. “But we can’t carry it all the way out here.”
“See — there’s a secret door up there,” said Ben. “I told you guys.”
“Maybe,” said Stephen. “Hard to prove without a ladder.”
“Hey,” said Ben, “don’t you have a step-ladder in the garage?”
“Yeah,” said Jack. “Do you think that would be tall enough?”
“We can find out,” said Ben. “Let’s go.”
“Tonight?” asked Jack. “You want to go back to the house and come back here tonight?”
“It won’t take that long,” said Ben.
“Yeah, but by the time we back here we won’t have any time even if we do find something,” said Jack.
“Come on,” said Stephen, “we have hours until dawn.”
“Less than two,” said Jack. “The sun rises at 5:10 today. And it takes us twenty minutes to get back to the house from here.”
“We’ve got to get that restriction lifted,” said Stephen. “Then we could be here all day.”
“We doing this or not?” asked Ben.
“We’d have to jog the whole way,” said Jack. “And we have to leave here by quarter of five.
“Let’s go,” said Ben, “what’s stopping us?”
“Just sanity,” laughed Stephen.
“What do you see?” asked Jack.
Ben got to go first up the ladder. The folded ladder leaned against the building for support. Ben was on the next-to-last step while Jack and Stephen held it in place.
The mission to retrieve the ladder had gone almost perfectly. To avoid using the noisy garage door, they used the back door of the garage which was very close to the neighbors house. When leaving by the basement door they had the advantage of a hill that blocked the neighbors view and a deck that shielded them from above.
With the ladder in-hand, they felt naked crossing the yard. The neighbor’s dog barked. Jack kept his calm and moved at an even pace which forced Ben to suppress his urge to run. Even moving slowly, they had a couple of sketchy moments where they almost crashed into objects in the yard.
Now, at the hotel, Ben stretched up to determine if the wall had a hidden door build into it.
“Press the button,” said Ben.
“Hold on,” said Stephen. “You got it?” he asked Jack.
“Yeah, I can hold this,” answered Jack.
Stephen reached through the bottom steps of the ladder and pressed the button. After an initial click, the grinding sound began almost at once.
“Hey!” said Ben, “I can hear it — it’s right here. Keep pushing.”
“Like I was going to stop?” asked Stephen.
As before, the grinding stopped after several seconds, and Stephen felt and heard a loud click.
“Oh shit!” yelled Ben, atop the ladder.
“What? What is it?” asked Jack, trying to see around Ben in the night.
“The wall moves,” answered Ben. “It swings inward. It looked completely solid until that last click and then it gave way.”
