Olaf rolled his eyes. “Deeply held suspicion,” he said finally, “of you two. But it seems that everything you’ve told us about Principal Gorse is true. After we got him at the school, we have been interrogating him for a few hours, and he’s confessed to being the mastermind behind Bunyan’s attack, the blackmailing of Pettigrew Macken, and the explosion at Paul Fumusa’s yet-to-be-named restaurant.” He paused and looked down at his notes. “He had his connections set up hi-tech surveillance and carry out the actual attacks, since he couldn’t.”
“See, that’s the one I don’t get,” Frank said, shrugging and leaning back in his chair. “Why Paul Fumusa?”
Officer Olaf looked at him. “Because he wouldn’t pay a ‘protection fee’ to the Red Arrow to avoid these types of attacks,” he said, and sighed. “Which is apparently a form of extortion that the Red Arrow has been pulling in Bayport for years.”
I leaned forward. “Has Gorse always been the Red Arrow?”
Officer Olaf signed a paper and frowned. “Well, we still aren’t positive the Red Arrow actually exists.”
“You said he confessed to everything,” I pointed out.
“Correction. He confessed to everything he did,” Olaf clarified. “He won’t talk about the Red Arrow. At all.”
Just then we heard the door to the interrogation room open, and two police officers led Principal Gorse out in handcuffs. He had a strange expression on his face that I can only describe as disturbed. He was staring at his clasped hands like they held the secrets to the universe, and I was just waiting for him to rub his hands together and cackle, Mr. Burns–style.
Olaf startled and looked at us. I got the distinct sense that Principal Gorse was not meant to see us there.
He looked up and caught sight of Frank and me, still damp, but very much alive. His eyes bugged, and he pointed one bony finger at us (dragging the other hand with it because, you know, handcuffs). “You!” he shouted, in that low, gravelly voice from before.
The cops leading him tried to hustle him along, but Gorse dug in his heels. “You think you’ve stopped it,” he said, “but the Red Arrow cannot be stopped. Cut off its head, and another will grow in its place. It’s only a matter of time, boys. I wasn’t the first, and I won’t be the last!”
The cops had succeeded in dragging him down the hall by then. But Gorse twisted his neck to fire one last parting shot.
“Good luck sleeping tonight,” he said, his voice a snakelike whisper. Then the cops dragged him around the corner to the lockup, and he was gone.
I looked at Frank. Seriously, had the whole kindly principal thing been an act?
“Yeesh.” Sometimes there are no other words.
Frank nodded. He looked at Olaf. “Do you believe us about the Red Arrow now?”
Olaf was still focused on his paperwork. He took out an actual rubber stamp and brought it down on the top of a form. The corner of his mouth quirked up as he replied, not lifting his eyes, “I suppose anything’s possible in this town.”
RETIRED
19
FRANK
YOU WANT TO OPEN WITH A JOKE,” JOE suggested, leaning back in his chair and taking a sip of his Maximum Mocha. We were at the Meet Locker, trying to get some studying done. “It disarms the audience. Puts them on your side.”
“As opposed to whose side?” I asked, my pencil hovering over my notebook. What do flies wear on their feet? I wrote, just beneath the title of my newly assigned speech. Answer: Shoos.
Joe leaned over and read what I’d jotted down. “I’d keep thinking.”
Right. Well, luckily, I had a whole two weeks left to work on this one. Ms. Jones had forgiven me for going off on a tangent during my last speech. She understood that I was trying to vanquish a longtime Bayport menace. She hadn’t completely let me off the hook, though. I’d been assigned a new speech.
Topic: Justice.
Joe suddenly grabbed his phone from where it sat on the table. “Ooh, ooh, ooh,” he said, staring into the screen. “I just got service! Look, I have a voice mail.”
“Some people ignore their phones while they’re studying,” I pointed out.
“Some people weren’t on the receiving end of a wink from that cute Daisy Rodriguez in algebra this morning,” Joe fired back, going into his voice mail. “Why yes, Daisy, I would be willing to explain parabolas in a closer setting. Oh.”
Joe wrinkled his nose and replayed the message on speakerphone. We were the only two people in the Locker’s back room.
“Hi, Joe. Listen, this is Megan Willensky. You know—Spanish class? Anyway, I’m calling because I have a problem that I think, um, you and your brother could help me with.” She paused and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I heard what you did for Sharelle Bunyan?” Her voice rose back to a normal level. “Anyway, call me back. We can meet and I’ll, um, tell you all about it. Thanks.”
Joe looked at me unhappily. Principal Gorse was in jail, awaiting trial. It took some convincing, but Seth, Neal, and Pett had all gone on record with their stories. Olaf came through with some forensic evidence that tied Gorse to the explosion.
That was all good news, of course. The bad news was that Frank and I had been called into Chief Gomez’s office with our dad to go over the Deal again in excruciating detail. We were being watched now, he told us. No more shenanigans. And absolutely no more investigating.
We were well and truly retired.
I looked at Joe sadly, then glanced at the time on his phone. “We’d better go,” I said. “Aunt Trudy’s making eggplant curry tonight. And you know she’s still mad at us for lying to her about my ankle.”
Joe nodded and wordlessly put his phone in his pocket. I picked up my notebook, and as I was putting it into my backpack, a tiny piece of paper fluttered out and landed on the table.
It landed faceup, staring back at us like an accusation.
The Red Arrow.
I looked at Joe. Neither of us said anything for a minute. Was this real? Or was somebody messing with us?
“Who?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Could be anybody,” I said. “I had this notebook at school all day. Every class.”
His brows furrowed. “It has to be a stupid joke. Right?”
I didn’t say anything. I grabbed the paper and tossed it in a nearby trash can. I wanted to make a statement, in case anybody was watching.
Frank and Joe Hardy were not controlled by the Red Arrow.
“Let’s go,” I said to Joe.
Together, we hoisted our book bags onto our backs and sauntered out through the main room and into the sunny air.
Joe pulled his phone out of his pocket and kept playing with it the whole way to the car. Clicking it on, clicking it off. Checking for more messages. Fiddling with the volume.
When we climbed into the car and shut our doors, I put the key in the ignition and turned to him.
“You going to call her back?”
Joe looked at me, hopeful. “Should we?”
I nodded.
There was no use denying it. Sleuthing was in our blood.
Joe grinned and dialed the phone. He waited a few seconds for an answer, then said, “Hey, Megan, it’s Joe Hardy returning your call. I heard you have a problem that my brother and I might be able to help you with?”
READ ON
FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF THE NEXT MYSTERY IN THE
HARDY BOYS ADVENTURES:
MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM HEIST
FRANK
YOU’VE GOT TO SEE THIS, FRANK!” JOE said. “You too, Chet. It’s totally sick.”
Help, I thought as my brother held up his prized possession, a tablet, for the gazillionth time. Not another lame clip on YouTube!
It was the last thing I wanted to look at as we sat inside the swanky Peyton mansion. I wanted to check out the two slick cabin cruisers docked outside the bay window!
“Will you give us a break already, Joe?” I told him. “I think we’ve seen enough skateboarding squirrels and break-dancing babies to la
st a lifetime.”
Our friend Chet Morton cracked a smile. “Yeah, but those rapping sock puppets you showed us before were pretty sick,” he admitted. “Got any more of those?”
Joe shook his head. “Check it out—it’s serious stuff,” he said, practically shoving the tablet in our faces.
“You, serious?” I joked. “Since when?”
Joe knew what I meant. Our ages were only one year apart, but our personalities—worlds apart. Joe was always high-strung, fast-talking, and unpredictable. Me—I’m more the strong, silent type. At least that’s what I like to think.
“Will you look at the clip already?” Joe urged. “I can’t keep it on pause forever.” He hadn’t put down that fancy new tablet since he got it for his birthday. I couldn’t really blame him. We couldn’t have smartphones until we were in college, so the tablet was the next best thing. It surfed the Web, got e-mails—even took pictures and videos. Speaking of videos . . .
“Okay,” I sighed. “But if I see one squirrel or sock puppet—it’s over.”
Chet and I leaned forward to watch the clip. There were no skateboarding squirrels or sock puppets—just a clerk at a fast-food take-out window, handing a paper bag to a customer. The clerk looked about sixteen or seventeen. The person behind the wheel had his back to the camera, which was probably being held by someone in the passenger seat.
“Bor-ing!” Chet sighed.
“Wait, here it comes,” Joe said. He turned up the volume just as the clerk said, “Six dollars and seventy cents, please.”
The driver reached out to pay. But then he yanked the lid off his jumbo cup and hurled what looked like a slushie all over the kid at the take-out window!
“Keep the change!” the driver cackled before zooming off. I could hear another voice snickering—probably the creep filming the whole thing.
I stared at the screen. “Definitely not cool,” I said.
“And a perfectly good waste of a jumbo slushie,” Chet joked.
“Not funny, Chet,” Joe said with a frown.
“How did you find that clip, Joe?” I asked.
“Lonny, a guy in my math class, forwarded it to me,” Joe explained. “Lonny was the poor clerk who got slushied.”
“Did they ever find the guys who did it?” Chet asked.
Joe shook his head and said, “The burger place called the cops, but so far the slushie slinger’s still on the loose.”
“You mean it’s a—cold case?” Chet joked. “Cold . . . slushie—get it?”
“That’s about as funny as those skateboarding squirrels, Morton,” I complained. “What we just saw was someone’s idea of a dumb prank.”
“Yeah, but whose?” Joe asked.
This time Chet heaved a big sigh. “Time out, you guys!” he said. “You promised your dad you were going to slow down the detective work, at least for now.”
“Slow down?” Joe asked. “From something we’ve been doing since we were seven and eight? Not a chance, bud.”
Of course, what Joe didn’t mention was that we were one wrong move away from reform school. No one knew about the Deal except our family, the police, and our former principal—who had his own issues to deal with now!
“Yeah, but a promise is a promise,” I said. “So put that thing away already, Joe.”
“Before somebody comes in and sees it,” Chet added.
“What would be so bad about that?” Joe asked.
“Because,” Chet said, smiling, “surfing clips on YouTube isn’t the thing to be doing in the parlor of one of the über-richest homes in Bayport.”
Glancing around the posh room we were sitting in, I knew Chet got the über-rich part right.
“Check out the pool table, you guys,” I said.
“As soon as I finish checking out those little beauties,” Chet said, nodding toward a nearby table. On it was a silver platter filled with fancy frosted pastries.
“Don’t even think of taking one,” Joe said, pointing to a portrait hanging on the wall. “Not while he’s watching us.”
I studied the portrait in the heavy wooden frame. The subject was a middle-aged guy in a blue blazer and beige pants. His hair was dark, with streaks of gray, and he was holding a golf club. I figured he was Sanford T. Peyton, the owner of the house, the boats, and the pastries.
I didn’t know much about him, just that when the multibillionaire dude wasn’t living large in Bayport with his wife and daughter, he was opening hotels all over the country and maybe the world. The guy was crazy rich. And right now, crazy late!
“We’ve been waiting in this room almost half an hour,” I said as I glanced at the antique clock standing against the wall. “Can someone please remind me why we’re here?”
“Gladly!” Chet said. He stood up with a smug smile. “My friends, we are about to be interviewed by Sanford T. Peyton for the honor of working the hottest party of the decade—at least here in Bayport.”
With that, Chet turned to another portrait hanging on the opposite wall. This one showed a teenage girl with light brown hair, wearing a white sundress and holding a Cavalier King Charles spaniel with huge eyes.
“His daughter Lindsay’s Sweet Sixteen!” Chet declared, pointing to the portrait with a flourish.
“Cute,” Joe said with a grin. “And I don’t mean the dog.”
Chet and Joe were definitely psyched about this party. Too bad I couldn’t say the same for myself.
“You guys, we weren’t good enough to be invited to Lindsay’s Sweet Sixteen,” I said. “So why should we work it?”
“Two words, my friend, two words,” Chet said with a smile. “Food and—”
“Girls!” Joe blurted out.
“Got it!” I said with a smirk.
The only thing I knew about Lindsay was that she didn’t go to Bayport High with Chet, Joe, and me. Which was no surprise.
“Most of the kids at this party will be from Bay Academy,” I said, referring to the posh private school in Bayport. “And you know what they’re like. Total snobs—”
Chet cleared his throat loudly as the door swung open. Joe and I jumped up from our chairs as Sanford T. Peyton marched in, followed by his daughter, Lindsay. Walking briskly behind Lindsay was another girl of about the same age. She had long black hair, and her dark eyes were cast downward at her own tablet she was holding. As she glanced up, she threw me a quick smile. I caught myself smiling back.
Hmm, I thought, still smiling. Maybe this job isn’t such a bad idea.
“Have a seat, boys,” Sanford said as he sat behind his desk, facing us. Lindsay and the other girl stood behind Sanford, looking over his shoulders at us.
As we sat back down, I could see Sanford studying the applications we’d filled out.
“I see you all go to Bayport High,” he said gruffly.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Chet and I are seniors, and my brother Joe is—”
“Daddy, they’re cute, but not gladiator material,” Lindsay cut in.
The three of us stared at Lindsay.
“Say what?” Joe said under his breath.
“Gladiators?” Chet said. “I thought you needed waiters. You know, to pass around the pigs in blankets.”
“There will be no pigs in blankets at this party, boys,” Sanford said.
“What kind of a party has no pigs in blankets?” Chet asked.
“Daddy.” Lindsay sighed as she checked out her manicure. “Just explain.”
Sanford folded his hands on the desk.
“You see, boys,” he said, “the theme of Lindsay’s Sweet Sixteen is No Place Like Rome. Four strong young men dressed as gladiators accompany Lindsay into the hall as she makes her grand entrance.”
“You mean Empress Lindsay,” Lindsay emphasized. “And the gladiators will be carrying me on a throne designed just for the occasion.”
Joe, Chet, and I stared at Lindsay as she flipped her hair over her shoulder. Was she serious?
“Got it, I think,” Joe said. “But you’ll
still need waiters, right?”
“For sure,” Lindsay replied. She turned to the girl with the tablet and said, “Sierra, make sure you get the music I want for my grand entrance.”
“ ‘Hotter Than Vesuvius,’ ” Sierra said, tapping on her tablet. “Got it.”
So her name was Sierra. Nice name for a nice-looking girl. I watched Sierra busily taking notes until Sanford’s voice interrupted my thoughts.
“If we do hire you as waiters,” Sanford said, “there’ll be a dress code.”
“That’s no problem, sir,” I said. “Joe and I own suits.”
“Oh, not suits,” Sanford said. “Togas.”
“Togas?” I repeated.
“You mean those sheets the guys in ancient Rome used to wrap themselves up in?” Chet asked, wide-eyed.
I glanced sideways at Joe, who didn’t look too thrilled either. Was this Sweet Sixteen really worth it? But when I turned to look at Sierra, I got my answer. You bet!
“I’m sure we can get togas,” I said.
“Or some white tablecloths from our mom,” Joe added.
Lindsay tapped her chin as she studied us one at a time. She pointed to me, then to Joe.
“Those two can be waiters,” Lindsay said.
“Just me and Frank?” Joe asked, surprised. “What about Chet?”
Sanford didn’t even look at Chet as he went on with the party details.
“The Sweet Sixteen will be held this Sunday night, being that the next day is a holiday,” Sanford said. “That gives us a whole day on Saturday to prepare food, the decorations—”
“My outfits!” Lindsay cut in.
I could see Chet making a time-out sign with his hands. “Excuse me,” he said. “But what about me? Aren’t I going to work this party too?”
“Maybe,” Lindsay said. She turned to Sierra. “Put that one on the B-list. We can always call him if we get desperate.”
“B-list?” Chet muttered.
Sanford looked at Joe and me and said, “Well? Don’t you want your job instructions?”
I glanced over at Chet, who looked like he’d just been kicked in the stomach.
“No, thank you, sir,” I said, standing up. “It’s either all of us or none of us.”
Secret of the Red Arrow Page 11
