Page 80 of S.O.S. Mizzay

“Maybe Oliphant was a dumb spy,” Chuck countered without a twitch of his lips.

“Touché,” Missy snickered, and started looking for a mechanism that would open the ill-fitting pieces.

Several minutes in, she’d had no luck.

“I’m going to go with the old-fashioned method,” Chuck stated, walking over to pick up a crowbar from the workbench.

“Wait,” Missy told him as he came back and was about to place the end of the prying implement into the crack. “We’re not supposed to be here, remember? We need to pad that tool so none of the cement crumbles and gives us away.”

Grabbing a thin dishtowel from the stack of clean laundry on the dryer, she was attempting to stuff it in the small crack as a buffer, when her fingers hit something small and pointy.

With nothing to lose, she gave the protrusion a firm tap. The wall seemed to separate a bit more, and…

“Damn. It’s just a facade thatlookslike the rest of the blocks,” Smalley marveled.

Missy hooked her fingers into the gap and gently pulled.

A section of cement-facing, less than an inch in depth, approximately three feet wide and six feet tall, swung easily away. A flat plywood door lay behind.

“Looks like we’ve found the Holy Grail,” Missy grinned.

Even Chuck, normally taciturn, couldn’t hide his glee. “Looks like it. You want to do the honors?” He made a courtly gesture toward the recessed door where a small ring-opener was carved flush into the wood.

Missy smiled, reached forward to tease out the round pull, and tugged.

Shit.

The door didn’t budge, and Smalley actually laughed this time, but good-naturedly. “It’s a pocket door, Missy. It slides.”

It was then Missy noticed the lack of hinges, and she wanted to smack herself in the head. “Thanks. I guess I was too excited to notice.” Was she losing her edge? She hoped not. Being predominantly on desk-duty these daysmighthave dulled her edge in the field.

“Second time’s a charm.” She grabbed the latch again, and this time the door slid.

An automatic light went on inside.

Chuck whistled.

“It looks like we’ve found the Holy Grail.”

On one far wall, atop a long wooden desk, sat a bank of three computers. Several filing cabinets also dotted the room, but the thing that caught both their attentions at once was the large rock that sat atop one of the cabinets.

It was big. Very big, and had clearly been cracked or cut down the middle for display purposes.

Missy was no expert, but she assumed that the bright flecks, flakes, and veins running throughout the rock were gold.

“Is that…?” she questioned.

“Oh, yeah,” Smalley confirmed. “Definitely gold quartz. Oliphant must have kept it as a display piece to remind him how rich he was getting off his ill-gotten gains.”

Missy shook her head in awe, but remembered to pull her phone from her pocket and take several pictures of it.

“You want the computers or the files?” Smalley asked, once she was finished.

“I’ll do files. I’m better with paper, and you’re the computer expert.”

They both got to work rapidly, since they’d already wasted so much time on the upper floors of the house. Who knew how long they had to get everything documented and get out; how much time Baskins had bought them?

With that in mind, they used an economy of movement, uncovering potentially damning documents to photograph, and down-loading off hard drives.

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