Edison's Gold (24 page)

She placed her hand on the gold circle, sliding the latched piece of metal to the side to reveal a small light switch underneath.

“Let's go, princess!” Mancini snapped. “While we're young.”

Curious, she flipped the switch on, but nothing happened.

“Strange,” she said to herself after Mancini had none-too-gently shoved her out of the elevator. “I wonder what light that was supposed to turn on.”

O
ut of nowhere, emerald light shot from the winged horse's eye, surprising Tom's dad as it bathed the entire terminal in a soft green that gave it an otherworldly glow. The emerald beam descended in a perfect line, connecting the Pegasus to the top of the four-faced brass clock above the station's circular information booth.

Every single person standing in the concourse gasped in collective wonder, and then the whole giant crowd went silent. All of their faces were turned toward the ceiling, and the only sound came from the whirring motors of the escalators.

“Tom!” His dad called down from the ceiling, his finger pointing toward the terminal clock. “The circled rose will light your course!”

He didn't even need to say anything, though, because Tom was already sprinting toward the information booth as fast as his feet could carry him. Up ahead, he could see Curt Keller's wiry frame vaulting the balcony stairs, and to his left Lieutenant Faber was pushing her way past pedestrians.

Tom leaped onto the information desk, sliding along its glassy surface past two confused attendants until he was face-to-face with the clock. Circling its wide base, he noticed that a thin door, no taller than his baby sister, was slightly ajar. It must've been opened by some unseen mechanism built into the clock.

“Fifteen years I been working here,” gasped one of the attendants as Tom crouched down and pushed the mini door open a little wider. “And I've never even noticed that little hobbit door.”

“Must be some Keebler elves living in that clock,” joked the second attendant.

Nestled inside was an old Louisville Slugger baseball bat, browned and grimy from use. Tom snatched it from the clock's base and crawled to the other side of the booth, ducking out of Keller and Faber's sight. An inscription was burned into the barrel of the bat, just under Babe
Ruth's signature. But there was no time to read it.

As Tom peered over the desk, he was met with a familiar face.

“I should thank you once again for doing my dirty work.” Curt Keller reached out a bony hand to grab Tom's arm, and without thinking, Tom wound up and cracked the old man's ribs with the bat.

Slipping out of his grip, Tom hurdled over the desk and tore off down the concourse.

“Thief!” Keller shouted, and in the blink of an eye, an army of security and police were chasing after him. Tom skidded along the floor, eluding two uniformed guards before breaking toward the escalators. Down he ran. There was daylight on the lower floor, until two officers stepped into view at the bottom of the stairs.

Tom hurdled over the side and leaped onto the up escalator, only to see Lieutenant Faber was now at the top, waiting for him.

He was trapped on all sides, every escape route cut off. Tom walked up a few steps, clutching the bat in his sweaty hands. He glanced down at its inscription:
Here your search will terminate. So pop the cork and celebrate!

Down the escalator continued. If he was going to solve
this riddle, he had to do it right now. Tom's eyes darted for an escape while his mind raced. This was the end of the line.

Here your search will terminate?
What did that mean? What was his double-great-grandfather trying to tell him?

He couldn't figure it out.

“Okay, okay. You got me.” Tom raised his hands just as the stairs dropped him off right in front of Faber. She calmly held out a hand for the bat.

“I believe that's stolen property.”

“Lieutenant Faber, wait!” Tom protested, stepping back as Keller limped to her side. “You don't understand what this guy's after!”

But he understood in one look that Faber's loyalty rested with the bigwig CEO, not the troublemaking seventh grader.

Faber took another step toward him, causing Tom to retreat a few more feet. The baseball bat was now tucked behind his back, out of view. His fingers crept along the top of the barrel, where he could feel a small indent at the top.

Pop the cork!

“I'm through playing games here, Edison.” Faber shot him a dark glare as Tom retreated several more steps, buying a couple precious moments as his fingernails pried a cork stopper from the top of the bat. A tiny metal object, about the size of his pinkie finger, fell softly into his palm. Tom quickly replaced the cork and tucked the piece of metal inside the cuff of his shirt seconds before an approaching police officer ripped the bat right out of his hands.

Like a loyal Labrador, the officer handed the bat to Faber, who presented it to Keller.

“Nice work, Lieutenant,” said Keller, turning the bat over in his fingers.

“ ‘Here your search will terminate. So pop the cork and celebrate,' ” he read, then knocked the bat's barrel with his fist, holding it to his ear as if he were expecting it to whisper the Sub Rosa's secrets to him. “Hard to believe a lifetime of searching ends here, eh?”

Tom did his best to look hopelessly crushed, even though his heart felt like it was about to burst through his chest. He prayed Keller wouldn't discover the cork at the top of the bat. At least not until Tom was safe at home with his dad, although the chances of Keller cracking
the next clue anytime soon didn't seem too likely. Keller's greatest asset was also his weakness: he paid other people to do his dirty work.

“Nothing personal, kiddo,” said a gleeful Keller, and he was about to turn toward the exit with Faber when something stopped him. “Ah, who am I kidding?” he added with a cocky shrug. “It's a little personal.”

At the other side of the terminal, a team of firefighters flooded through the doors carrying several extended ladders to rescue Tom's dad.

“We're not done with you, son.” A cop grabbed Tom by the collar and led him toward a waiting squad car out in front of the train station. As they pushed him through the main doors, Tom kept his eyes on his dad for as long as he could.

He was so far away, though, that he couldn't even make out his father's sad smile.

S
pring break was drawing to a close.

Tom, Colby, and Noodle waited quietly around the kitchen table for Tom's mom to return from Manhattan's Midtown South Precinct, where Mr. Edison had spent the last day and a half, answering questions about how he ended up hanging from the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal.

Just like the three kids had done, he told them everything he knew: how they were in search of Thomas Edison's secret formula to create gold, how Lieutenant Faber had planted the stolen book in Tom's room, and how Curt Keller and Nicky Polazzi had been the ones who'd kidnapped Tom and Colby.

The detectives didn't believe a word about any secret
alchemy formula, but since so much of their stories checked out, they had no choice but to order a department-wide investigation on Faber, as well as on Sergeants Gilbert and Mancini, and have a judge issue a restraining order on Curt Keller for the time being.

But the old CEO's whereabouts were currently unknown.

The sound of keys jiggled in the lock, and Tom's parents entered the kitchen. His mom set Rose down and headed toward the fridge to make her lunch. She looked tired, Tom noticed. Not that he blamed her. She'd had the scare of her life when Tom went missing and now had to deal with fines, cops, and a delinquent son and husband.

Since it was their second strike with the police, Tom, Noodle, and Colby had been given mandatory community service, and their families each had to pay a five-hundred-dollar fine. Still, they hadn't been sent to “the big house” as Noodle had feared, and had even received an e-mail of appreciation from the mayor for their help in uncovering an elevator that supposedly led to a private room in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel next door. What exactly that “secret suite” was, the kids had no idea.

Tom's dad took a seat at the table. Nobody spoke.

Noodle finally broke the silence in typical Noodle fashion. “So you beat the rap, Mr. E?”

“Decent fine. License suspended,” he answered with a sigh. “All in all, though, I'd say I got off easy.”

Tom's relieved eyes met his mom's. She smiled. Or at least it looked like a smile. It was hard to tell with her sometimes.

“Your father explained everything on the way home from the station,” she said. “I'll just never understand how the two of you get yourselves into these situations.”

“But,” Tom's dad piped up, “your mom and I have also decided that even though the outcome wasn't what we'd hoped, the adventure itself had given us something.”

He reached across the table and placed his hand over his wife's. “Something this family had been missing for a while, and I think, when we're in Wichita, that we need to remember how—” He broke off, confused. “Tom, what are you smiling about?”

“You've got exactly the look on your face that always worries me,” added his mother. “So spit it out. What do you have to tell us?”

All eyes were on Tom, who grabbed a notepad and
started writing, then slid it across the table toward his father.

Here your search will terminate. So pop the cork and celebrate
, it read.

“Yeah, yeah, we all know what the baseball bat said,” sighed Colby with a glance toward Tom's note.

You're not getting it
, he wrote in huge, underlined print, shaking his head no like a mime as he gestured toward the ceiling. Tom was certain there were still a couple of Keller's listening devices hidden somewhere.

“What's to get?” whispered his dad.

Tom then reached into his pocket and placed a tiny metal key on the kitchen table. He'd hardly been able to contain his excitement while he'd waited for his father to come home from the station.

This was inside the baseball bat
, wrote Tom.

His dad picked up the key, slowly turning it over in his hands to read its message. They could all now see that engraved into its side were the coordinates 41° 2' 47.42” N, 73° 51' 50.12” W.

“I can't believe you held out on us for this long,” said Colby, smacking him on the arm.

“I wanted everyone to be together,” he whispered.

Tom's mother scooped up the key and turned it over in her palm.

“Mommy, lemme see!” Rose's round fingers wriggled for it, and Mrs. Edison held it close for her daughter to get a good look.

“Pretty,” Rose pronounced.

Tom's dad sprang to his feet. He had his Swiss Army knife out and used it to slice open one of the storage boxes that was marked Mise
—DESK DRAWERS
.

“What are you looking for?” asked Tom's mom. “I spent all week organizing those boxes.”

“Something we accidentally packed,” he answered.

After a few moments of searching, Mr. Edison pulled out a large map of the United States.

He was determined to figure out where those coordinates led.