Boardwalk Bust
Page 1
Time to Hit the Beach …
“Um, Mom,” I said as I toyed with my scrambled eggs, “Joe and I would like to go down to the Jersey Shore for a week. Could we go?”
“By yourselves?” Aunt Trudy broke in.
She was sitting between us, looking from one of us to the other like we were out of our minds.
“I don’t know, Frank,” Mom said. “You boys just got back from a trip, and now you want to go away again so soon? Fenton, what do you think? Shouldn’t they be spending more time at home?”
Dad lowered his newspaper—the one he likes to hide behind whenever there’s a family dispute—and looked straight into my eyes.
I tried to signal him that this was important.
He seemed to get it. Turning to Mom, he said, “Well, dear, it is the summertime, after all. I think the boys are old enough to go to the beach on their own.”
“Probably get themselves into more mischief,” Aunt Trudy grumbled.
“It’s true,” Mom said, balling her napkin up into a knot. “Fenton, they only just got back—why do they have to leave again? Can’t it wait till next week?”
I gave Dad another look. This couldn’t wait.
THE HARDY BOYS
UNDERCOVER BROTHERS™
#1 Extreme Danger
#2 Running on Fumes
#3 Boardwalk Bust
Available from Simon & Schuster
#3 Boardwalk Bust
FRANKLIN W. DIXON
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If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS
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Copyright © 2005 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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THE HARDY BOYS MYSTERY STORIES and HARDY BOYS
UNDERCOVER BROTHERS are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Lisa Vega
The text of this book was set in Aldine 401BT.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Aladdin Paperbacks edition June 2005
10 9 8 7 6 5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2004116378
ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-0004-7
ISBN-10: 1-4169-0004-7
eISBN-13: 978-1-439-11357-8
1. In Too Deep
2. Ride Like the Wind
3. Shore Thing
4. Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
5. Beach Bound
6. Ocean Point
7. All in a Day’s Work
8. Scene of the Crime
9. X Marks the Spot
10. Buried Treasure
11. Gold Rush
12. The Richest Man in Ocean Point
13. Stakeout!
14. Neck-Deep in Trouble
15. Miracles from on High
16. A Bump on the Head
17. Up in the Air
18. Defying Gravity
19. There’s No Place Like Home
Boardwalk Bust
1. In Too Deep
Being buried alive is no fun. No fun at all.
Let me set the scene:
A waterfall of corn was raining down on me. The grains felt like millions of BBs as they bounced off my head.
A mountain of grain was rising like sand dunes all around me. It was at least ten feet deep. It had the consistency of quicksand. I was sunk into it almost up to my knees, and it was trying really hard to suck me down.
Meanwhile, the falling grain was sending up a billowing cloud of dust. I was totally choking on it.
Nice, huh?
It was mostly dark inside this grain bin, except for a distant square of light high above that threw faint shadows here and there. Corn was pouring through the hole—coming through the conveyor belt that a certain bad guy named Bill Pressman had started.
His intention? To kill me and Frank.
Why? That’s a long story. But right now we were in trouble.
I could just make out my brother Frank. He was about twenty feet away from me, but it might as well have been twenty miles. He was well out of reach, and buried even deeper than I was.
“Joe!” I heard him yell over the roar. “Where are you?”
“Over h-here!” I shouted back, choking on the dust. “We’ve got to do something!”
“No, duh. Ya think?”
“Okay, genius,” I said. “What’s your brilliant plan?”
And, as usual, Frank had one. Over the years, I’ve come to count on his uncanny ability to pull impossible schemes right out of his ear.
“Joe, you’ve got to get out of here and shut off the conveyor!”
Uh, hel-lo. Anyone see me stuck in a pile of corn?
“I’m up to my knees in corn, bro,” I said. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“Hey, I’m up to my chest! Just figure out a way—you’ve got to get over to that ladder … up there on the wall.”
“Are you kidding me? I can hardly move—”
“J-Joe,” he gasped, “I feel like I’m gonna be ccrushed if it gets much higher…. It’s … gonna have to be you.”
I could tell he wasn’t joking now.
Desperately, I tried to wiggle free. I swung my body back and forth. When I had a little play, I shifted my weight to my right leg, which was on the low side of the corn pile, and twisted myself loose.
Then I rolled over, so I was lying with my back against the ever-shifting mountain. That way I could do things like breathe and see.
All right, so it wasn’t so hard.
Meanwhile, the corn kept raining down, adding to the pile. The dust made it hard to see anything.
“Okay,” I shouted. “Now what?”
“Shine your flashlight on me.”
I pulled out my light wand—sort of a combination laser cutter and flashlight—and pointed it at him.
I could make out Frank now. He was holding up a pretty sweet gadget of his own.
“Use this grapple line,” he said. “Catch!”
He tossed it to me. Luckily, I didn’t miss it. It would have been buried under the corn for sure.
By this time I’d gotten Frank’s intention. I aimed his gizmo at the ladder and fired.
The strong nylon line shot out and wound itself around one of the rungs of the wooden ladder. The hook at the end of the grapple dug into the wood.
I pressed another button on the handy-dandy contraption, and it reeled itself back in, drawing me forward. I was pulled up the slippery slope, gliding with ease. Before I knew it, I was on the ladder, climbing free of the death trap that still held my brother.
I kept climbing until I got to the door in the wall. The door was locked, of course—from the outside.
These guys thought of everything.
“I’ll just use my laser cutter,” I said, pocketing the grapple line and pulling out my other gadget.
“No!” Frank
screamed. “Joe, grain dust is highly flammable—explosive, even! You’ll blow us both to smithereens!”
“Hmmm,” I said, stuffing it back in my pocket. “All righty, then. No lasers.”
I tried brute strength instead.
Luckily, the lock was old and rusty, and it popped after five or six solid hits from my well-developed shoulder.
“ Yes! Hang in there, Frank—I’ll just be a second.”
I scrambled down the ladder attached to the outside of the grain bin. As soon as I hit the ground, I hustled over to the switch that shuts off the conveyor belt. The machinery ground to a halt.
There.
I was surrounded by an eerie silence, broken only by the sound of my own heart pounding.
Luckily, Farmer Pressman seemed to be nowhere in sight. I realized with a sharp pang that he was probably gone for good, escaping justice in spite of all we’d done to catch him.
But there was no time to think about that now—I had to help Frank. I just hoped he was still breathing.
Along the side of the grain bin, I spotted a strange-looking yet familiar device. I recognized it from a newspaper article I’d read the week before. It was one of those new safety devices—what did they call it?
Oh yeah, a grain rescue tube!
But there was a complication. Between me and the rescue tube stood a cow. And not just any cow, but the cow that had kicked me in the eye just about an hour before.
Don’t even ask. I was lucky it didn’t blind me, and I’d be luckier still if I didn’t have a black eye to show for it.
I yelled at the cow to move, but she didn’t seem to get it. Cows are not the brightest.
Finally I lost my temper. I ran at the cow and shoved her out of the way.
“Moooo,” she complained. But at least she didn’t kick me this time.
I hooked the two halves of the rescue tube to the grapple line. Then I climbed to the top of the ladder, pushed the button on Frank’s gizmo, and dragged them up after me.
Inside, the grain was no longer pouring off the conveyor belt. But Frank was now buried up to his neck, and I had to be careful coming near him.
One false move and I could have set off an avalanche, burying Frank in corn. Once I had the two halves of the rescue tube in place around him, I hammered down both sides with my fists, so that Frank was surrounded by a sort of plastic cocoon.
“Now start scooping out the grain,” I told him.
“Can’t,” he gasped. “Can’t move. Can barely … breathe….”
I could see that the remaining grain inside the tube was squashing him pretty good. I realized I was the one who was going to have to get that corn out from around him and give him the space to haul himself out. So I hurried back outside, found a small shovel, took it back inside, and started digging him out.
Finally, after about fifteen minutes, Frank was able to wiggle himself up by the handles and get out. “I’m never eating popcorn again,” he told me as we climbed the ladder out of there.
“No cornflakes for me.”
“Corn muffins?”
“No way.”
“I’m with you, bro.”
We planted our feet on solid ground, and boy, did it ever feel good.
“No corn chips either.”
“Okay,” said Frank. “Glad we’ve got that straight. Now let’s go get our bikes. We’ve still got a criminal to catch.”
2. Ride Like the Wind
We peeled out of there on our motorcycles, Joe and I, leaving a cloud of dust behind us.
We raced down the farm’s driveway—really more like a long dirt road—zipping past the cornfields of Pressman Acres toward the main road.
The corn really was “as high as an elephant’s eye,” but Farmer Pressman, that no-good crooked slimebucket, was not going to be around to reap the benefits. That is, not if the sheriff had done his job and set up the roadblock like I told him to.
I couldn’t really get a good breath till we were back on the asphalt of the main road again, tooling toward home.
About those bikes of ours. Just so you know, these are not just ordinary sport bikes. They’ve got 600 cc engines, huge twin caliper brakes, digital gauges, titanium-tipped exhaust pipes, twin front ram-air scoops—and that’s just for starters. Add in a few nifty little trick gadgets straight out of James Bond, along with a whole lot of style—like the flaming double red Hs painted on the sides—shake well, and you’ve got yourself one outstanding ride!
I looked to my left at Joe and felt a rush of joy go through me. We’d almost been buried alive in that grain bin.
Breathing was good.
When Joe saw the flashers up ahead, he shot me a look—I could see the surprise on his face even under the visor.
I just nodded, trying not to be too much of a wise guy. But it was me, after all, who’d insisted on putting that phone call in to the sheriff—just in case we were walking into a death trap (which it turned out we were).
Joe had called me a wimp for bringing in the police. Now I was tempted to rub it in—but I controlled myself If you’re intelligent, like me, you don’t bait people—especially when they’re muscle-bound and temperamental, like Joe, and thus likely to knock you flat on your rear.
We slowed down as we passed. Three squad cars were blocking the road, and Pressman’s huge SUV was slung sideways in front of them.
There were skid marks where he’d hit the brakes. Soon there would be burn marks on his wrists, too. Those nylon handcuffs were chafing him as he sat with his back against a tree, trying unsuccessfully to work himself free.
Joe and I didn’t stop to chat. We had been working undercover on this case. It wouldn’t look good for the local sheriff—or for ATAC—if the newspapers found out that a couple of high school kids were involved.
This wasn’t Bayport, after all. It was western New Jersey, and I doubt if they’d ever heard of Frank and Joe Hardy, “amateur teen detectives,” around there.
It was just as well if the police took all the credit. ATAC is allergic to publicity. And as card-carrying members of ATAC—American Teens Against Crime—so are we. As we roared by the roadblock, Joe gave the sheriff a little salute. I didn’t want to look like a jerk, so I saluted too. The sheriff smiled and waved.
Farmer Pressman saw the exchange, and it must have dawned on him who the guys under the visors were, because his eyes lit up like fireworks.
“Hey, you lousy kids!” he screamed.
The rest of what he said I couldn’t hear. Sport bike engines are really loud, especially when you gun them. I really didn’t want to hear what he had to say, though, to tell you the truth. It wasn’t going to be anything nice.
We left him to choke on our dust, and to meditate on the fact that crime doesn’t pay.
I could tell Joe was laughing by the way his chest was bobbing up and down. It was funny now, sure—but I myself wasn’t ready to start joking about it. We’d come pretty close to getting smothered.
Very uncool.
Pretty soon Joe stopped laughing. His eye was probably starting to hurt where that cow kicked it. Talk about embarrassing.
For the rest of the ride back to Bayport, we just concentrated on the highway and the wind in our faces.
Of course, at that point, we would have settled for a beat-up old Volvo. Anything was better than eating corn dust. It was good to be alive and on the way home.
We pulled into the driveway and parked behind Dad’s old Crown Vic—the one he took with him when he retired from the police force.
It’s an oldie but goodie, if you know what I mean. It’s still got all the super-charged extras police cruisers have (and some others that they don’t).
Dad was leaning against the fender with his legs and arms crossed and a sarcastic expression on his face. He’d been waiting for us.
“Well, nice of you two to show up. I was beginning to worry about you. What in the world happened?”
“We were reaping what we sowed,” Joe said with a grin, shak
ing the last stray grains of corn out of his pants.
“Lucky you didn’t meet the grim reaper,” Dad answered. I could tell he was not amused. He stood up and started walking over to us as we put our kickstands down and our visors up.
“I just got a call from Chief Collig. He says the sheriff over in West Hoagland, New Jersey, reported the capture of a major drug smuggler.”
Dad came up right between us and stopped. He crossed his arms again and continued, “This guy was a well-known local farmer, apparently. That factoid rang a bell. I remembered something about you two going off to visit a farm somewhere.”
He looked at Joe, then at me. “Do you boys have something you want to tell me?”
Joe and I couldn’t help grinning at one another. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re untraceable.”
“Nice work,” Dad said, finally giving us a smile.
“Glad you’re okay. Now go inside and get cleaned up. Your mom and Aunt Trudy have been waiting for you, and you look like something the cat dragged in.”
Dad really does worry about us. It’s not because he doesn’t think we can handle ourselves in a tight spot. He knows we can.
It’s just that he knows he’s responsible for everything.
He’s the one we took after, the one who taught us everything we know—up to a point. He’s the one who inspired us to become amateur detectives years ago, when we were still little kids.
But most importantly, he’s the one who founded ATAC and made us its first two agents. So like I say, it’s not that he doesn’t trust us—it’s that he hates putting kids in harm’s way. Especially his sons.
“Oh, and also,” Dad added, “Trudy said something about sheets.”
Sheets?
“Ugh,” Joe said, putting a hand to his forehead. “I forgot—it’s our day to help with the folding!”
Oh, right. Joe and I exchanged a quick look.
Our clothes were a mess, all ripped. I had scratches all over my arm from fending off Farmer Pressman’s Dobermans. And Joe had the beginnings of a really magnificent black eye.
No way did we want to face Mom—and especially not Aunt Trudy—when we looked like we’d just been through a torture chamber.