Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets Read Free Page B

but decided to tread carefully. The fact that the two girls were looking for a wand—Mickey’s wand?—interested her. “Does anyone think we should be looking for Mickey’s wand instead of Walt’s pen?”
    “Mickey doesn’t have a wand,” Wayne said. “A tail, but no wand!”
    “He does in
Fantasia
,” Philby said, reminding him.
    “You mean his conductor’s baton?” Wayne said. “True enough. I hadn’t thought of that one.”
    Maybeck turned to Wayne. “Where does Walt do the most drawing? His favorite place?”
    “He always seems to have a pen or pencil in hand. But a pen like that?” Wayne shook his head. “If I were him, I’d want to be able to use it when I needed it, but keep it safe, too, put it someplace where I wouldn’t lose it.”
    “But someplace easy to get at,” Maybeck said, “if he still uses it, that is.”
    “There is something else to consider,” Wayne said. “He’d have to make sure that Lillian, his wife, would be able to find the pen if anything happened to him. Mr. Disney travels a lot. Airplanes. Trains. He’s a practical man. He’d want either Lillian or Roy, his brother and business partner, to be able to find it. Maybe both.”
    “Which leaves us where, exactly?” Finn asked.
    “We’re toast.” Maybeck shook his head.
    “Toast?” Wayne asked.
    “An expression,” Willa said. “We have a lot of strange expressions. It means we’re cooked—we’re in trouble.”
    “Ah! Well, I like toast,” Wayne said. “Buttered, with cinnamon.” He licked his lips. “Gee whiz, that made me hungry!” He looked out at five dumbfounded expressions. “What I’m trying to say is that I doubt very much if Mr. Disney would leave any mention of such a special pen in any kind of will or note or legal thingamajig. No lawyers or stuff like that. Gosh, the person he’d trust the most to get the pen to Lillian would be Roy. Mr. Disney trusts Roy with everything. Rumor is Disneyland wouldn’t have been built if it weren’t for Roy believing in Walt. His own board of directors didn’t want Mr. Disney to build this place.”
    “Where’s Roy’s office?” Charlene asked.
    “At the studio in Burbank,” Wayne answered.
    “I don’t mean to be Mr. Negative,” Philby said, “but given that our projections seem to barely work inside the park, I don’t see how the five of us are going to get to Burbank to search an office.”
    “He also has a day office above the Story Book Shop on Main Street USA. And I can drive. I could go to Burbank and snoop around for you.”
    “We can’t ask you to do that, Wayne,” Finn said immediately. Then he caught himself. “It’s super-duper nice of you to offer,” he added, trying to sound like young Wayne, “but if you got caught, if you lost your job…well, let’s just say it’s incredibly important you keep this job for a very long time. It’s probably more important than the pen.”
    Wayne whistled as the five others nodded. “Golly, that’s a nice thing to say, Finn.”
    “It’s the truth,” Philby told him. “We need to protect you, Wayne. If anyone’s going to snoop around, it’s got to be the five of us. You have to keep doing your job like always.”
    “We could look in Roy’s office here,” Charlene said.
    “Walt does all his real work at the studios,” Willa said. “I don’t know about Roy.”
    “Roy, too,” Wayne said. “Though his office here is more convenient in a lot of ways, I’m sure.”
    “Walt might keep it here,” Maybeck said, “to help with construction plans. It must have taken more than a little magic to get something like this started.”
    “You can say that again,” said Wayne. “Just look around, would ya?”
    They did, and Willa saw a Disneyland so different from the one she knew that it made her catch her breath. It was, in many ways, like looking into the eyes of a baby. All the sparkle and promise of great things to come. Sure, the flowers and trees needed time to grow. There