The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 3

by Roy MacGregor

  “Same with me,” said Sarah.

  “Maybe there’ve been complaints about other globes that don’t work,” suggested Nish.

  “Maybe,” said Travis, but he didn’t think so. Surely the man with the earring would have said something about faulty snow globes when he was looking at his. But instead, he’d acted as if he’d never seen one before, even though Travis was sure Sarah had left before Travis and Nish.

  “This guy shaved practically bald, with a big earring?” Travis asked Sarah.

  “Yeah,” said Sarah. “Why?”

  “I don’t know–just wondering.”

  Nish was still gazing at his perfect new snow globe when the doors to the motel burst open and Sam roared in, brandishing the morning newspaper.

  “There’s something weird going on here!” she announced. She seemed both angry and determined at the same time.

  “What is it?” Sarah asked.

  “Just look at this!” Sam said. She spread the newspaper out on the lobby coffee table and her teammates clustered around, peering down at the place on the front page where she was tapping her finger.

  “TIME OF DEATH A PUZZLE,” said the headline.

  Sam read out loud:

  “Medical experts have concluded that Brad Cummings, the twenty-seven-year-old marine biologist found murdered off Victoria Bay last weekend, died as much as three hours before the dolphin found shot in the same waters. Early investigation had been based on the assumption that the dolphin had been killed first.

  “It had previously been presumed Mr. Cummings got into an argument over the fate of the dolphin, which led to a confrontation between the marine biologist, a known environmental activist, and fishermen who may have snagged the dolphin in illegal nets.

  “The dolphin, Vancouver Aquarium scientists confirmed today, showed faint signs of abrasion on one side, consistent with injuries found among fish and animals that have struggled in fishing nets.

  “Both victims, RCMP sources say, were killed with the same weapon, a Lee Enfield .303-calibre rifle once popular with local hunters.

  “No weapon has been found, nor have any witnesses stepped forward in the case.”

  Sam finished reading and stood nodding with great satisfaction. “I knew there was something fishy about this whole thing,” she said.

  “Of course there was,” Nish shot back. “They murdered a fish, remember?”

  “You’re too stupid to bother with,” Sam said, dismissing him.

  “I don’t understand,” said Fahd.

  “Why would they kill Brad first?” Sam said. “It makes sense if he’d come along right after they’d shot the dolphin. Maybe he was even filming it. But why kill him and then, hours later, kill the dolphin?”

  Everyone thought about it a while. No one had any idea why.

  “Maybe they thought the dolphin knew something?” suggested Andy.

  “Or had something?” offered Lars.

  Sam looked up from the paper. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lars. “It just seems they must have had to chase the dolphin. Maybe it had run off with the nets?”

  “I doubt that,” said Andy.

  “Well, something,” said Lars.

  “What?” Nish demanded.

  “I don’t know,” said Lars. “Something.”

  It doesn’t add up, Travis kept saying to himself. It just doesn’t add up.

  Let’s get naked!”

  Nish was at the open window, ducking low to stare up into a soft blue sky. The sun had been out all morning, and the air pouring in was warm and filled with the promise of summer.

  Nish was in his boxer shorts, visible to anyone in the parking lot who happened to pass by.

  “Let’s just get to the rink,” Travis said. “You do what you want later–by yourself!”

  “I think you should go see a psychiatrist,” said Lars, flossing his teeth as he walked out of the bathroom.

  “You can talk!” Nish barked back. “Only a nut would floss when there’s no one to make him. I don’t even brush my teeth when I’m on the road!”

  “Or shower!” shouted Andy, who was just coming in from the hallway.

  “Or use deodorant!” called out Wilson, right behind Andy.

  Nish drew himself up and puffed out his chest. “That’s because I believe in the cleansing power of nature. You see, I am a nudist!”

  “You’re a nudist and a nut,” said Travis, surprising himself by saying so. “Now let’s get dressed and get out of here. We want to see Gordie’s group up against that team from California, don’t we?”

  “I’d rather see Wreck Beach!” protested Nish.

  “You’re pathetic!” said Andy.

  The Owls had almost reached the little 3-on-3 rink when Travis, slightly ahead of the rest and helping push Data along, saw the quick flash of a Screech Owls sweater as someone ducked around the far corner of the arena, where the Zamboni came out to dump the snow.

  “They’re out back,” Travis announced, turning and walking backwards as he informed the others.

  With Travis and Data leading the way, the group headed down the side of the arena and around the corner to the rear of the building. Travis expected to find all four of the Owls who would playing that afternoon–Fahd, Andy, Sam, and, in goal, Jenny–but when he turned the corner he realized there was only the one.

  Sam…smoking.

  She turned when she heard them and coughed out a lungful of cigarette smoke. Travis could see she was trying to hide the burning cigarette behind her back, but then, realizing it was only the boys, she slyly drew her hand forward and attempted to look natural.

  But it didn’t look natural at all. It looked ridiculous. Especially with her dressed for a game of hockey.

  “You’ll stunt your growth,” Data said.

  “Mind your own business,” said Sam.

  Travis winced. He hadn’t expected such a sharp response to Data’s comment. He watched her face as she dragged deep on the cigarette. Her eyes were red; she looked like she might be on the verge of tears.

  Was it the smoke? Or the murders? None of the Screech Owls had seemed as caught up in and upset about the murders as Sam had. Each morning she was up at dawn to grab the early papers. She listened to the newscasts. She had even phoned the Aquarium to see if there was any more information on the death of the dolphin. Twice she had exploded at teammates for talking about the “murder,” as if the word could only apply to people. She referred to the “murders,” and she grieved as much for the poor dolphin as she did for Brad Cummings.

  Sam flicked the still-burning cigarette away. She coughed once but then held the smoke for some time before expelling it in a long, elegant plume that rose over her head and vanished into the air.

  “Muck catches you, you’re dead meat,” said Nish.

  “Muck catches me, I’ll know who told,” she said, and stomped in through the Zamboni doors towards the dressing room.

  “What’s with her?” Nish asked.

  “She’s upset,” said Andy. “She’s been like that ever since the whale watching.”

  “What can we do about it?” said Wilson. “The police are working on it.”

  “They’re not getting anywhere,” said Andy. “I think that’s what’s wrong with Sam. No one seems to care about the dolphin, and no one seems to be getting anywhere on the murder.”

  “Murders,” corrected Data.

  “Murders,” agreed Andy.

  “We better get inside,” said Travis. He started to turn Data’s chair around, but Data held up his hand for Travis to stop.

  “Just leave me here,” Data said. “I can get in the Zamboni entrance easier than the front.”

  “You’re sure?” asked Travis.

  “I’m sure. I want to check out something anyway.”

  Travis shrugged. He knew better than to hound Data about what he was up to. If Data wanted him to know, he would have said.

  “Suit yourself,” Travis said. “
You know where we’ll be.”

  Data was happy to be left alone, to move at his own pace on Nish’s great puzzle, which Data found both confusing and fascinating. Too many voices tended to cloud the issue, too many ideas sent his own mind in wild circles–but always, always returning to the one point that made no sense to him: the hockey bag that had no owner.

  He kept his brain locked on that one troublesome fact. He wouldn’t let his thoughts drift off to puzzling over why, or how, the man in the water might have died before the dolphin. He refused to think about the snow globes and why the organizers would have a man checking the players as they left the rink. These were significant factors–they might even turn out to be critical clues–but Data had a gut feeling he couldn’t shake about the mysterious hockey bag.

  Everything else might have an explanation. The man and dolphin might have been murdered by different people. The autopsy reports might even be wrong. And there might have been a problem with kids stealing from the tournament, even if Data had trouble believing they would do such a thing.

  But there could be no easy explanation for the hockey bag. It wasn’t Nish’s, even though it was exactly the same as the one he’d been given and had his number on it. A mix-up would have been understandable, and at first that’s what it had appeared to be. But once it turned out that the Panthers had no number 44, and the only trolley Nish could have gotten mixed up over was the Panthers’–all the other teams’ equipment being locked up–it seemed to Data to make absolutely no sense at all.

  But he had a notepad and he had a hunch. He rolled his wheelchair down past the dripping Zamboni, over a hose line, and down a corridor towards the large storage area at the back of the rink.

  He could hear the high, dry song of a skate-sharpening machine. It didn’t sound like Mr. Dillinger’s, and he hoped it wasn’t. He was looking for another equipment manager, from another team altogether.

  He rolled as fast as he could towards the sound.

  Travis, Nish, and the rest sat in the stands, cheering on their teammates–Fahd, Gordie, and Sam–against a tough, quick team from California, the Arrowhead Rangers.

  “Fahd may finally have found his game,” said Lars.

  Travis nodded in agreement. It was somewhat surprising to see, but Lars was correct: in 3-on-3, Fahd was two or three times the player he was in regular hockey. Fahd had always moved so slowly and deliberately on the ice, but here, with more space to work in, his slowness worked at times to his advantage. It was just as Lars had said. And Fahd seemed able to keep track of his opponents far better when there were just three of them instead of five. He suddenly seemed smarter, niftier, slicker, and if he still lacked speed it was hardly a disaster, because, unlike in other games, he was always moving the puck just before an opposition player caught him.

  Gordie and Sam were playing as expected. Gordie’s long reach was a great advantage on the smaller rink, and he was able to read his teammates well. And Sam, by sheer desire, was able to drive directly for the net from almost anywhere, panicking the Rangers so much they put two checkers on her, which only opened up either Fahd or Gordie for an easy pass and shot. And if the puck found Gordie, with his hard, quick wrist shot, it seemed to end up in the net every time.

  The Owls’ threesome, with Jenny in net, was up 5–2 at the break. Mr. Dillinger had come around and was sitting with the others, and he started up a great cheer for the skaters before the puck dropped again.

  “Muck’s betting they make the finals,” said Mr. Dillinger when he sat back down beside Travis.

  Travis looked to make sure Mr. Dillinger wasn’t joking. He wasn’t. He wasn’t even looking to see Travis’s reaction–if he had, he would have seen Travis’s jaw drop.

  The finals? Travis thought he had a pretty good fix on which threesomes were moving ahead, and he’d already figured on his own group, with Sarah and Nish; the Panthers’ top threesome; the Owls’ other elite team, Dmitri, Andy, and Lars; and perhaps a team from Winnipeg battling it out to see which two met in the “A” championship. He’d never for a moment considered one of the teams from the Canucks Division jumping up, even though they’d been told from the start that crossovers were possible. He’d figured the Elite Division had been given its name for a reason.

  And yet he had to admit, they were playing extremely well. It was as if he was seeing skinny little Fahd for the first time. Fahd combined with Gordie’s shot and Sam’s strength made a formidable team, and the way Jenny was playing goal for them was equally astounding. Perhaps Muck was on to something.

  Travis began watching his fellow Owls more closely. He was scouting them, even though he knew the four players on the ice almost as well as he knew himself.

  There was something different about Sam. He began to focus on her, watching her even when she wasn’t directly involved in the play, and it took him several minutes to realize what had changed.

  Sam was running out of gas. She was gasping when the play left her. And she was coasting when she should have been skating.

  It was as if she had no breath left.

  Data found who he was looking for. The equipment manager was in charge of the California team, the Arrowhead Rangers. His name was Mr. Williamson–sort of a skinny Mr. Dillinger, with a full head of grey hair–and he was both very friendly and helpful.

  “Funny you should bring that up,” the Arrowhead equipment manager said when Data got around to asking his one important question. “We had the same thing happen here. I do my morning check–I like to sharpen all the kids’ skates right away–and I pull out the bags and then restack them when I’m done. Same darned thing happened to us.”

  “What do you mean?” Data asked.

  Mr. Williamson studied his nails as he thought about it. “We had one too many bags. I figured one of the equipment guys from one of the other teams simply got mixed up and put it with our stuff. All those new tournament bags look exactly the same. So I just handed it back in.”

  “To who?”

  “The organizers. They seemed pretty darned glad to get it, too.”

  “What number was it?”

  “Huh?”

  “The number–do you remember the number on the side?”

  Mr. Williamson ran a hand through his thick hair. “Oh, that number. Yes, as a matter of fact I do, son.”

  “And it was?”

  “Number 17. And you know what? We don’t even have a 17 on the Rangers.”

  Data nodded and scribbled down the number on his notepad.

  A number the Rangers didn’t have. Just like the Panthers never had a number 44.

  What did it all mean?

  Travis could tell Fahd was starting to understand his new abilities in 3-on-3. With time running out on the Rangers, Fahd picked up the puck behind his own net, began coming out the left side, then twisted back to the right. The Rangers’ quickest player swept around the net, chasing.

  Fahd seemed so cool it was almost as if he was moving in slow motion. He tapped the puck back against the boards and turned again, just as the checker flew by and slashed his stick. It didn’t even matter; the puck wasn’t on Fahd’s stick anyway.

  He picked off his own pass and began to move up ice at such a leisurely pace it looked like he was on a public skating rink instead of in a high-pressure hockey tournament.

  Andy slammed his stick hard, calling for a pass on the other side. A second Rangers checker tried to take the pass away, and went down on one knee as Fahd casually faked the pass to Andy. The checker lost his balance and twirled off into the boards.

  Fahd kept the puck and moved directly to the net. He motioned as if to make a drop pass–the pass that was working so well for the Owls–and again a Rangers player went for it, lunging behind Fahd in the hopes of plucking the puck away from Sam, who was waiting to pick it up.

  But again no pass. Fahd still had the puck, each of the Rangers now out of his zone and only the goaltender left. Fahd held on, waiting, moving slowly past the net until the Rangers’ goa
lie flopped and kicked high with his pads in desperation.

  Just as Travis had done against the Panthers, Fahd kept the puck and slowed even more, waiting while the goaltender drifted helplessly out of his own net, and then backhanded the puck high under the crossbar.

  The stands exploded in appreciation. Travis could feel Mr. Dillinger’s big hand pounding into his back. He could hear a wicked, high-pitched giggle as Nish pumped a fist for Fahd. He could see Sarah dancing with delight.

  He felt good for Fahd. He felt, for a moment, as if he no longer knew Fahd. Fahd, the star of the game? Never before–but he sure was now.

  They couldn’t all crowd into the little dressing area, but they tried. Fahd was grinning from ear to ear. Andy was drained, his sweater off and his face still dripping with sweat. Sam was sitting with her helmet off and head stuck down between the tops of her shin pads, sucking for air. She looked pale and in pain.

  Travis felt a finger poke in his back. He turned around quickly. It was Lars. “Data wants to see you,” he said.

  Travis backed out of the dressing room, the door muffing the sound of the happy players and their fans as it closed.

  Data was sitting a little way down the corridor. He had his notepad on his knee, and looked extremely worried.

  “What’s up?” Travis asked.

  “The snow globe that came out of that bag Nish carried back to the motel,” Data said. “What became of it?”

  Travis thought about it for a moment. “We put it in one of the drawers,” he said. “Lars was going to exchange it, I think.”

  “Did he?”

  Travis shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think it’s still there.”

  The worry lines on Data’s face deepened. “I think we’d better go back to the motel as quickly as possible,” he said.

  Data explained on the way back. He had discovered that the confusion over Nish’s bag wasn’t an isolated incident. The Arrowhead Rangers’ equipment man, Mr. Williamson, had also found a bag that didn’t belong with his team’s equipment. An extra bag, and a number on it that didn’t connect to any of the Arrowhead players. A bag number 17, but no 17 on the team.