Wicked Business (Lizzy and Diesel 2)

“You bet I am,” Morty said. “I’m a slippery old bugger. You turn your back on me, and—whoosh—I’m gone. Unless I’m with two hot chicks, like you girls, then I might hang around. I’m as old as dirt, but I still got it. One day last month, I almost had a boner.”

“The golden years,” Diesel said. “I’d like to hear more, but I have to rob a grave. Give me a head start and then come in and cover me.”

I watched him walk to the church and go through the red door. I timed five minutes and turned to Glo. “Morty and I will stand close to the stairs that lead down to the crypt. You position yourself more toward the middle of the church. If we see someone who looks official, we talk to them, ask questions, so they don’t go near the stairs.”

“Gotcha,” Glo said. “Let’s do it.”

A family of tourists stood in the center aisle, staring up at the pipe organ in the balcony. Someone who appeared to be a docent was talking to them and gesturing toward the organ. The docent was a pleasant-looking woman in her fifties. She was wearing sensible shoes, a brown skirt, and a tan sweater set. She had a name tag pinned to her cardigan sweater, but I couldn’t see it from this distance.

Morty and I moved toward the stairs, so we screened Diesel while he stepped over the rope that prohibited entry. In seconds, Diesel was out of sight and Morty and I were standing guard.

“What’s he after down there?” Morty asked. “It’s gotta be something real valuable. Like jewels or a bag of money or a treasure map.”

“He’s looking for a bell.”

“Does it have jewels on it?”

“No, but we’re hoping it has a secret message.”

“I like the sound of that. This is like Indiana Jones, where he goes into a tomb and he’s looking for a clue to something. I don’t remember all the details, but there’s spiders and a big boulder that could have crushed him, but it didn’t. It might not have happened in that order, but it was pretty darn exciting. I’ve seen all the Indiana Jones movies. And I’ve seen all the James Bond movies, too. That Bond was a cool cucumber. He knew what to do with the ladies.”

A man and a woman came into the church and joined the family listening to the docent. Morty and I pretended to be reading a plaque on the wall. Glo was still hanging in the middle. A couple minutes passed, and two women walked in and went to the docent.

Glo meandered over to me and studied the plaque Morty and I had been pretending to read. “We might have a problem,” Glo said. “I’ve been eavesdropping. There’s a crypt tour scheduled. They’re waiting for one more person to arrive.”

I glanced at the entrance to the stairs. No Diesel. Even with Diesel’s skills, it probably wasn’t easy to get into Charles Duane’s hidey-hole. I saw an older man enter the church and my heart skipped a beat. The tour group was complete. The nine people gathered around the guide, she gave a short speech, and she motioned for them to follow her.

Still no Diesel.

Glo shot me a panicked grimace and pantomimed hanging herself.

“They’re going to walk in on Diesel,” I said to Morty. “We need to do something to distract them.”

“What?”

“You need to have a heart attack.”

“I had one of them last year, but I had a stent put in, and now I’m good as new.”

“Fake it!”

“Arghh,” Morty yelled, staggering forward, lunging at the tour group. “Can’t breathe. Got pain.” He clawed at the air with one hand, and he had the other clamped to his chest. “I’m having a heart attack,” he said, eyes rolling in their sockets, tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. “It’s a big one.”

Everyone’s first reaction was stunned silence, and then it was utter mayhem.

“Call 911!”

“Who knows CPR?”

“Get him an aspirin.”

“Do something!”

Morty crashed into a pew and went down to his knees. “Heart attack!” he said, crawling to the middle of the church. “I’m dying. Somebody help me. I see the tunnel with the light at the end.”

Everyone, including Glo, was crouched around Morty.

“Loosen his clothes,” someone said.