Chapter 151 – The Lockbox – Silver Brooks

The metal lockbox that Holly found slid out of its housing compartment with ease. It was bulky, but lightweight enough for Holly to put inside the backpack she had with her. Mrs. Mitchell wasn't at all concerned that Holly was taking it. She wanted to know what was inside too, once it could be opened.

Holly's mother arrived just in time to intercept Mrs. Mitchell as she was leaving the house. The two talked about Angel's passing for a few minutes before falling quiet. They were both still upset about everything they learned about her and decided to cut their conversation short. I felt bad for them.

Ms. Hayfield took Lilith and Alyssa back to school so that Alyssa could retrieve her scooter from the school parking lot. Alyssa would give Lilith a ride home from there. Ms. Hayfield took Holly and I to the public library. We told her we'd be studying, but that was an alibi.

Alyssa arrived to pick me up and take me to Autumn Eden Elementary School. She dropped me off and immediately drove off to pick up Holly. It was up to me to find my way through the dark and decaying school building. Trying to recall the building’s layout from memory was failing me.

The sound of sudden shouting from one of the hallways told me where to go. It was clearly Helga’s voice, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. She didn’t sound like she was in pain or trouble. This sounded more like frustration. Curious, I decided to follow her voice to look for her.

Once I got closer I could make out the angry expletives that she was shouting from one of the rooms. I walked into the empty classroom to find something more akin to a maintenance room. She was slaved over a wheeled gas generator. The generator came on momentarily and then promptly shut off.

Helga kicked the pitiful machine in its side. Her kick did more damage to her foot than to the machine. She reflexively held the foot in pain and started hopping on one leg.

“Damn it!” She shouted. “Of all the times to stop working, it had to be now?!”

She was yelling at no one in particular because she hadn’t even noticed me standing in the doorway. When she did, her entire facial expression warped and she laughed nervously.

“Oh…! Silver!” She said excitedly. “Don’t tell me you saw all that...”

“I saw all that.” I said with a sly smile.

“Damn it, how embarrassing.” She said more casually.

She collapsed back into the chair not far behind her and sighed in resignation. She was wearing only a pair of pajama pants and a light undershirt, both of which were covered in grease and oil stains. Her hair was frizzy, some of it matted to her sweaty forehead. The room was illuminated only by a few small candles.

“Generator problems?” I asked curiously.

“Generator problems.” She confirmed drearily. “And not for the first time either. It looks like my cheap tricks won’t be able to bring it back to life this time.”

“You have experience as a mechanic?”

“Not formally, no… I just know some tricks that a friend taught me a few years back. That knowledge saved me a number of times, but not now it seems. Damn… I don’t want to spend the money I saved up from working at the school to replace this thing. I just started working again.”

“Won’t Holly and Alyssa help you pay for it? I assume the three of you have some sort of agreement.”

“We kinda do.” She said. “We all rely on the electricity this generator produces to power our rooms. They’ve been helping me pay for fuel, which has helped me out a lot. I doubt either of them have enough money to help me finance a replacement though.”

I smiled at her.

“Maybe they do.” I said. “Holly just found a secret lockbox that Officer Morelli had stashed away beneath her floor boards.”

Helga jumped out of her seat to come and put her greasy hands on my shoulders in excitement.

“Did it have money in it?” She asked. “How much was inside?!”

I pushed her hands away and laughed.

“Calm down scrooge! We haven’t been able to open it yet. Holly doesn’t know the code. She said she’ll think about it and try to open it again when she gets here.”

“Damn! That figures…”

“With any luck Holly will be able to guess the combination based on her knowledge of Angelica Morelli. They should be pulling up any minute now. The library we were at isn’t that far away.”

“Hmm... Might as well get some candles ready for their arrival then. Come on, there’s a room I use for situations like this.”

“I’ll follow right behind you. This place is a little confusing.”

“Ha! The more confusing it is then the less likely some random strangers will come waltzing through!”

“Isn’t that how you met Holly though?” I asked. “She told me that she found this place due to someone from our school coming to her for help about a ghost. I honestly wasn’t sure if she was pulling my leg when she said that.”

Helga laughed.

“Yep! I’m the ghost. How else am I supposed to scare off the annoying brats that come wandering around on a dare?”

The room that Helga brought me to was a bit of an unexpected surprise. It was the school’s former cafeteria. It had cafeteria tables and chairs, but nothing of noteworthiness beyond that. The door leading into the kitchen area was closed off with boxes blocking it.

The room was reasonably large, the same as any other school cafeteria. And just like in the halls, this place had holes at various spots in the ceiling where the sunlight was able to shine through. We wouldn’t need many candles in here for the time being, but Helga brought some from another room anyways.

The primary reason we were coming here, I realized, was because this room had a fireplace. There were already two tables and three chairs near the fireplace, meaning that the three of them had probably used it recently. There was additional evidence of this in the form of freshly cut logs. Helga pointed them out as we walked over.

“Can you believe that Holly cut all of that by herself? The old adage about big things in small packages must be true.”

“She’s not that short. But yeah, it is surprising since she doesn’t have a lot of muscle mass from what I could tell.”

“She didn’t cut them all at once of course. She said that cutting these things was part of her physical training as the Killing Cat. That girl has some serious work ethic. Just thinking about it makes me tired.”

I placed the candles onto the two tables while Helga prepared the fireplace for a new fire. This corner of the room was quite cozy compared to the rest of the cafeteria. There was a small rug, shelving units containing stacks of folded blankets, and two additional candle holders on either side of the fireplace. We lit both of them after starting the fireplace.

Helga wrapped one of the spare blankets around me once I sat down. The warmth from the fireplace was just now beginning to reach me. Helga and I spent this time talking a little bit more about her generator problems. This wasn’t the first time she had to make due with a lack of necessities.

She was self-employed for years without a steady source of income. This building allowed her to live independently without worrying about rent payments or asking her family for assistance. They never approved of her questionable career choices and so roughing it in a place like this was a desperate gamble to maintain her path.

She still hoped to get her web show going again once she had enough money saved up to rent a normal place. She went through with a job at the school at Holly’s advice. Holly led her to believe that the salary the school had to offer her was worth the step away from her web show goal. So for now, she’d put that aside.

Holly and Alyssa walked into the room not long after we changed topics. Eventually Helga started asking about my situation and about how I was abducted. Their arrival was convenient timing because now I could go over my abduction in detail. Holly then asked about how my father was doing now that he was back at home.

“I’m glad he’s alright.” Holly said. “He was brave to try protecting you, but perhaps foolhardy to intercept someone with a gun.”

“I don’t think he realized that Angelica was carrying a weapon.” I said. “He thought that she was trying to break into the house at first. She shot him when he tried pushing her out of the doorway.”

“That makes more sense.” Holly said before turning to face Helga. “I guess since you’re in here that means the generator is kaput?”

Helga threw her hands up dramatically.

“It’s totally kaput! Absolutely fubar! I’ve been working on it since I got back from school and haven’t had any luck.” Helga said.

“Hm… We should be glad that it lasted as long as it did. It was something that you found, after all. It was a miracle that it worked to begin with.” Holly said.

Holly took a seat beside me and pulled the portable lockbox out of her bag. It fell onto the table with a loud ‘bang’, a testament to the box’s endurance. This thing probably couldn’t be opened by strength alone. It had considerably thick walls for something the size of an office briefcase.

“Why not try that firewood axe?” Helga said with a wicked smile. “You’ve got plenty of experience with that thing by now.”

Holly smiled back.

“I’m not that strong. I don’t think the axe would be a good choice against something like this. We’d probably just ruin the axe head trying to get it open.”

“Fair point,” Helga said.

“Instead, I want to try something else.” Holly said. “Maybe I can use one of my daggers to shiv it open by stabbing through the opening crease.”

“Are your daggers thin enough to fit through there?” Helga asked.

“I recently bought one online that is.” Holly said. “I’ve been trying to expand my collection and experiment with new things. I’ll go get it out of the other room.”

Holly turned to walk out of the room. Alyssa started to back away in the same direction.

“I’m going to go to the store.” Alyssa said. “I’ll grab us something nice to eat.”

Helga got up out of her chair.

“Come with me to my room,” Helga said to Alyssa. “I’ll give you a few dollars. I don’t want you spending all of your allowance on us.”

I was alone in this room now with the fireplace still raging behind me. It was interesting to be in a strange building like this. Perri, Jin, Brianna, Casper, and I used to frequent haunted areas and ‘creepy’ places for fun. Now Casper and Brianna weren’t even on speaking terms with Jin and Casper.

I was spending less and less time with any of them. The whole ‘sharing’ of the old science wing didn’t descend into chaos, but it did feel quite segregated. I’d be happy for the vote to be done and over with as soon as possible. No matter the outcome, it would solve a lot of problems.

I was fiddling with the rotary combination lock on the lockbox when Holly returned. I jumped in my seat the moment I saw her. She was wearing the Killing Cat’s trench coat, knives, black pants, gloves, boots, and turtleneck. Holly raised an eyebrow at me.

“It was cold.” She explained. “Don’t think too much about the getup. I usually wear this while I’m inside this building. It helps me get in the frame of mind to plan.”

“Uh-huh…” I said somewhat nervously. “You could’ve warned me first.”

Holly grinned.

“And deprive myself of that funny reaction you just had?” She asked mischievously.

“Jerk,” I said.

She laughed and pulled out one of her daggers. She spun it around in her hands, letting it fall between her fingers only for her to catch it again and spin it around some more. She was incredibly dexterous! This represented hours and hours of practice just for some stupid flashy knife skills she’d never show most people she knew.

“Show off!” I said and laughed. “This is the real reason you went to get your knives, isn’t it?”

“A little bit, I admit it.” She said with a smirk.

She spun the knife around one more time and then suddenly thrust it into the crease of the lockbox’s mouth slot. This razor thin knife didn’t go in very far, but Holly was still pushing it in quite forcefully. She went as far as to change the angle of the lockbox so that she could bear her entire weight down on it.

She was surprisingly adept at this type of thing. At least that was what I thought until the moment that the knife’s blade snapped and she fell indignantly against the table. She recovered quickly and brushed herself off, backing away to stand by the fireplace.

“Damn, I knew it couldn’t be that easy.” She said as she kneeled down and put her hands in front of the fire. “It looks like we’ll have to guess the combination after all.”

“Back to square one…” I said.

She kneeled down and stared into the fire, lost in thought deeply. I didn’t want to interrupt her by trying to start up a conversation. Besides, she felt like an entirely different person inside that outfit. Her light brown hair was also tied up in a sporty ponytail. She looked so focused, so determined.

She emanated an aura of strength and coolness, unlike the honor-student version of Holly that I was used to talking to. I wanted to sit beside her in front of the fireplace. Considering how cold it was in here she probably wouldn’t mind. It would be nice to-…

Wait.

I had to stop that train of thought. My mind was wandering into a weird place by just staring at her! I couldn’t believe myself. Was I actually attracted to this version of her? Thinking about it carefully, I was interested in her for largely the same reasons that I was initially interested in Perri for.

Maybe I just had a thing for dangerous girls. Of course, I’d never tell her something like this since she was a literal killer. Now I knew there was something wrong with me at this point. The fact that I was even here, still willingly involved with her was proof. I wasn’t any better than Alyssa.

I slapped my forehead so hard that Holly turned towards me with a worried look.

“You uhh… You okay?” She asked. “Forget your homework or something?”

“Inner demons,” I said. “I just had to put them to rest.”

“O-okay…” She said uncertainly and stood back up. “I’ve got an idea for a new line of attacks on the lockbox. When I was entering combinations on it earlier I was only using numeral passwords that she frequently used. Instead, I want to try something more personal…”

She sat down beside me and got to work. I didn’t have any ideas of what the code could be so I was just content to watch her work. She was going at this rather casually, seeing as she wasn’t writing down the codes she tried. She probably wasn’t expecting to get it unlocked on the first day of receiving it.

So when it ‘popped’ open we were both taken by surprise.

“Holy hell, you did it!” I said excitedly.

“I… I did…” She said, clearly surprised herself.

“What was the combination code?”

“It was the two-digit date format of Malorie’s birthday. That must mean that she expected for Ms. Sampson to be the one to find this.”

Holly threw open the lockbox, revealing multiple stacks of rubber-banded hundred dollar bills. The box contained thousands of dollars. I had never seen so much physical cash in a single spot. Holly didn’t seem as interested in the money as I was. She simply started brushing the money aside so that she could continue searching the box.

Beneath the cash there were stacks and stacks of folded paper. This was Holly’s real goal. She picked them up and started looking through them, standing up in excitement as she read.

“This is glorious!” She said. “This is exactly what I needed! She has all the dirt that I need on her other contacts to start investigating them seriously.”

“What is it?”

“Letters,” She said, “Back and forth letters… I already know that she and Ms. Sampson were given the cold shoulder by some of their past accomplices, but now I have more evidence of who was proactively involved in suppressing information about Malorie. I was down to two targets before, but I may add a third.”

I tossed some of the stacks of money around on the table.

“Helga’s going to be happy to see all this. She was just worrying about how she was going to pay for a replacement generator.”

Holly turned back to the money and finally gave it a serious look.

“Most of that money is going to her family.” Holly said. “They have funeral and moving services to pay for. It’s only fair that Angel’s money go into funding that. Hopefully there will be enough left over for a replacement generator. I’ll talk to Helga and see how much I can set aside for it.”

“That sounds reasonable.” I said.

I stood up to look at the letters that Holly was flipping through in her hands. The stack in her hands was surprisingly large, and all of it handwritten by Angelica Morelli herself. Holly stopped once she reached one letter labeled ‘Please give this to my mother and father’. Holly opened it up.

“She tried explaining things to her parents in this letter.” Holly said. “It seemed that she always planned to tell them about her involvement in Malorie’s murder. She puts things more defensively and spur-of-the-moment than they really were, but that’s to be expected. There’s also no mention of Mrs. Duluth.”

“Look at how much of this is crossed out.” I said. “It looks like it took her a few tries to write this. Given that this is a confession of murder, how did she even plan to send this?”

“She probably hoped that Ms. Sampson would find the lockbox before we did, but Ms. Sampson probably doesn’t even know the lockbox exists. I’ll give this letter to her parents myself. No matter what their daughter is guilty of, her parents deserve to see this. They can decide what to think about her for themselves.”

“I’m glad that you’re not the angry ball of hate and vengeance that I once thought the Killing Cat was.” I admitted. “You’re actually considerate. I mean genuinely considerate, not just as part of your good-girl act.”

“Hey now,” Holly smiled and pinched my side, “Careful what you say. I’ve still got plenty of daggers on this belt.”

I smiled back at her and lightly pushed her hand away. She started flipping through the collection of letters again, but immediately stopped when we both noticed something.

‘Please give this letter to Holly Hayfield.’