The Dead Season

by Franklin W. Dixon

  Joe agreed and started down the beach toward the Tyler Inn.

  Frank walked slowly to the car he had borrowed from Gary and Janet. Many pieces of the puzzle were beginning to come together for him, but he still had a lot of unanswered questions.

  And only two days left to break this case if we're going to save Runner's Harbor for Gary and Janet, he thought as he turned the ignition key.

  The sound of the engine was drowned out by the deafening volley of gunfire.

  Chapter 13

  A bullet tore through the windshield, slid past Frank's right cheek, and slammed into the backseat of the car.

  The glass from the windshield exploded into hundreds of tiny rocklike pieces that showered into his lap.

  He ducked under the steering wheel, taking cover, waiting for another shot to be fired. As he crouched there he did a mental check and decided he was okay.

  Several seconds passed, and still there was no more gunfire. The only sound Frank could hear was the engine idling quietly. Slowly he reached his hand up and turned the key, and there was silence.

  Frank could hear Callie, Gary, and Janet rush onto the front porch of the hotel.

  "Frank?" cried Callie.

  "Stay inside!" he shouted.

  "Are you okay, Frank?" asked Gary.

  "Yes. Just stay there."

  More time passed, and Frank took the chance to peer outside the jeep. No one was in sight in any direction. Slowly he eased himself out of the jeep and stood beside it.

  He was staring at a nearby palm tree when Callie raced up behind him.

  "Frank! Frank!"

  She put her arms around him and hugged him tightly. There were tears in her eyes, and she was shaking.

  "It's okay," he said quietly, comforting her. "Really. I'm fine."

  "Oh, Frank, I thought they really got you this time."

  Gary and Janet approached them slowly.

  "Are you sure you're okay?" asked Janet.

  "I'm fine, really," said Frank.

  "What happened?" asked Gary.

  "Someone took a shot at me but missed."

  Callie said, "This place is really scaring me now."

  "That's exactly how someone wants you to feel," said Frank. "And we've got to stop him."

  "But how?" asked Janet.

  "I think Joe and I are close to the solution," he said. Frank started walking toward the palm tree he'd been studying. "And just so everyone can stop worrying about ghosts, come over here."

  He stopped next to the tree and pointed at a metal box taped to the trunk.

  "It's just as I thought," he said, pointing at the box.

  "What is it?" asked Callie.

  "I'll let the police take it down, in case there are any fingerprints on it, but I'm pretty sure it's a small radio device triggered to fire a shot when I turned the key in the ignition of the jeep."

  "You can do things like that?" asked Janet.

  "Yes," answered Frank.

  "What should we do?" asked Gary.

  "Call Sergeant Wrenn and tell him what happened. Show him the box. I'm sorry about what happened to your jeep."

  "We're just glad you're okay," said Janet.

  "Janet's right," said Gary. He stared at his damaged jeep. "I guess you'll need the other car."

  "We won't be long," said Frank.

  Callie said, "We?"

  "If you'd like."

  "Definitely," said Callie, giving him another hug. "I think you need someone to watch over you, Frank Hardy.

  ***

  Joe Hardy knocked softly on the door to cottage number seven at the Tyler Inn.

  "I think he'll be in his room. He seemed to have a lot of unpacking to do," the desk clerk, a portly islander, had said. He also told Joe that Gaines had checked in just two hours earlier.

  Number seven was off by itself and did not have an ocean view. Joe suspected it was cheaper than the other rooms and wondered how much money Games had.

  There was no response to his knock, so Joe rapped harder on the door and said, "Mr. Gaines? It's Joe Hardy. Can I come in?"

  From inside he heard feet shuffling, then the door finally flew open. "Welcome, my boy. Welcome," the old man said. "Come in, come in. You're my first visitor in my new home."

  Joe entered the small cottage and tried to find a place to sit or even stand. Boxes were stacked in every conceivable place, and most of the stacks reached to the ceiling.

  The only things that Gaines seemed to have unpacked were his art supplies. A blank canvas was already resting on an easel in the only vacant corner in the room.

  Apparently Joe had arrived just as the old man was about to begin a new painting.

  "Sit anywhere," said Gaines as he himself took the only seat, a small stool that was set up in front of the canvas.

  "Thanks," said Joe, standing in place by the door. "I'm fine right here."

  "Suit yourself," said Gaines. The old man picked up a brush and began to dip it into the splotches of paint on a nearby palette. It seemed as if Gaines was going to ignore Joe's presence.

  "Mind if I ask you a few questions?" asked Joe.

  "Of course not, my boy," answered Gaines cheerfully. "I enjoy our little chats." He made a stroke with blue paint on the empty canvas and paused to consider it.

  "Why did you check out of Runner's Harbor?" asked Joe.

  "That's a fair question. Fair question." Gaines stared at the blue paint.

  "And?"

  "And what, my boy?"

  "What's the answer?"

  "Oh, of course, of course. You want answers. I'm being rude." He put down his paintbrush and looked Joe in the eye. "You want to know why I left Runner's Harbor. It's very simple really. Millicent asked me to."

  Joe was too stunned to say anything, but Gaines didn't appear to notice Joe's reaction.

  "She was very nice about it," Gaines continued. "Said that they needed the rooms and couldn't afford to keep giving me the special rate I had always had. Actually, she found me this room here and was able to work out a special deal with the owners. I'm paying less now than before."

  Unsure how to respond to this, Joe simply held out the gold cufflink for Gaines to see.

  "My cufflink, thank you. Where did you find it?"

  "In the tunnels beneath the hotel."

  "How strange," said the old man, fitting the gold G into place on his cuff. "That was where I had the conversation with Millicent when she asked me to leave."

  "When was that?" asked Joe.

  "Oh, two or three weeks ago. She said I could finish out the month and I did."

  "You saw Millicent in the tunnels?" asked Joe.

  "Yes."

  "Millicent. Not Heather," Joe continued.

  Gaines paused a few seconds before responding. "May I confess something to you?"

  "Of course," said Joe.

  "You know that I am the one who painted the portrait of Millicent that hangs in the lobby at Runner's Harbor." Joe nodded his head yes. "Well, my boy, I have been in love with Millicent Reed for more than sixty years. Believe me. It was she."

  ***

  Frank and Callie spent most of the day in the library. Frank's research added a few more pieces to the puzzle, but try as she might, Callie couldn't get him to tell her what he had discovered.

  "I want to have proof before I tell you or anyone anything," said Frank.

  "Even me?" asked Callie.

  "Even you."

  At the dinner table that evening Callie and the Hardys discovered that Gary and Janet had been busy during the day, too.

  Despite the fact that they could lose Runner's Harbor, both of them seemed upbeat and cheerful.

  "We decided," said Janet, "that if we had to leave here, we'd at least leave with a bang."

  "So we're having a party tonight," said Gary.

  "A party?" asked Callie.

  "Yes," said Janet. "A big dance in the pavilion."

  "And we invited everyone in town," Gary said.

  ***
>
  By eight o'clock that night it seemed that everybody on the island had accepted the invitation.

  The pavilion was cool as a mild breeze blew in off the ocean. The decorations that Janet and Callie had hung swayed gently in the wind. They had arranged several tables around the edges of the floor and placed trays of food and bowls of punch on each one. Gary and Janet were running around, making sure that everyone had a good time.

  The guests, meanwhile, were milling about idly.

  "Why isn't anyone dancing?" Callie asked Joe and Frank.

  Frank looked at her with a curious grin on his face. "There's no music."

  As if on cue, Earl Logan walked to the piano and sat down. He calmly took out a batch of sheet music, chose one, and began to play.

  "Frank," said Callie, "it's the same song we heard our first night here. 'Someone to Watch Over Me.'"

  "Is it?" asked Frank.

  "You know it is, don't you?"

  "I know many things," teased Frank.

  "Did you ask Logan to play it?"

  "You ask too many questions. Would you like to dance?"

  "What's going on here, Frank Hardy?"

  "I'm on vacation and I'm at a party and I'd like to dance with the prettiest girl here."

  "Flattery will get you everywhere," said Callie as Frank led her to the dance floor.

  Meanwhile, Joe saw Heather walk onto the dance floor. She seemed distracted, as if something was wrong. Joe approached her. She smiled when she saw him and immediately said yes when he asked her to dance.

  "Everything okay?" asked Joe.

  "It is now," Heather whispered.

  After a few slow circles Joe stopped dancing and pulled away from Heather. "Do you hear it?" he asked.

  "What?" she replied.

  "Someone's screaming."

  The warning cries seemed unreal at first. They seemed especially out of place at a friendly dance on a warm night in an outdoor pavilion overlooking the ocean.

  But there they were. "Fire!" someone was shouting.

  "Fire!" screamed another person, and then the whole crowd took up the cry.

  One whole corner of Runner's Harbor was engulfed in flames.

  Chapter 14

  The music stopped, and the crowd ran toward the hotel.

  "Come on, Joe!" shouted Frank. "Let's go!"

  The Hardys ran in the direction of the fire, and most people followed them.

  Bright orange waves of flame billowed out from a second-story window.

  Frank saw Gary standing by the building, staring anxiously at the blaze. Gary said, "I called the fire department. They should be here in a few minutes,"

  "Good," said Frank. "If we can just contain it, we should be okay. Is anyone inside?"

  "No. I checked."

  Frank turned to the people who had gathered nearby. They all stood still, watching Runner's Harbor burn.

  "We need your help till the fire department gets here," Frank told them. "Divide yourselves into smaller groups and find buckets and hoses. Let's try to contain this fire if we can't put it out."

  The people in the crowd began to mumble to one another. In a few moments they began to take action, and Frank said, "Joe, Gary, show them where to find things and what to do."

  "Right," said Gary, and he motioned to a group of six men to follow him to get tools to fight the fire.

  Joe said, "Come with me," to another group of men. He led them around the side of the hotel to a garden hose, and they started spraying the fire with water.

  In just a few minutes the dance crowd had been organized into a fairly efficient fire-fighting team, and Frank, who was working next to Gary, felt more hopeful that they would save most of the hotel.

  "Any idea how it started?" asked Frank.

  "No," said Gary. "I was in the kitchen getting more food when I smelled gasoline."

  "Gasoline?" said Frank.

  Gary nodded. "Then I heard a sort of whooshing sound. I called the fire department, then I started upstairs. I got to the landing, saw flames, and came back down."

  "Is there any chance it could have started by accident?" asked Frank.

  "A chance, I suppose, but somehow I doubt it. Somebody just doesn't want us here," said Gary. "And it looks like they're going to get their way."

  Joe appeared from the darkness. His face was bright red from working so close to the flames. His red cheeks were smudged with soot and dripping with sweat. "I think we're winning," he said.

  Before Frank and Gary could respond, there was a noise in the shadows.

  At that moment the Ghost Gunman dashed from the hotel, waving a pistol. He paused in the doorway, his black figure a silhouette against the flames.

  He fired a single shot in the air and then raced into the darkness in the direction of the beach.

  Earl Logan shouted, "It's Wiley! Stop him!" and he ran off after the mysterious figure.

  Without saying a word, Joe gave chase.

  "No, Joe!" cried Frank. "Stay and help with the fire."

  It was too late. If Joe heard his brother, he gave no sign of it, and soon all three of the running figures were gone.

  "What should we do?" asked Gary.

  "We have to contain this fire," said Frank. "It's not over yet."

  "But what about Joe?"

  "He can take care of himself."

  ***

  Joe took off through the darkness behind a ghost runner.

  The light from the blazing fire behind him cast long flickering shadows on the ground that stretched across the sand and disappeared into the churning black surf, which was an aftermath of the storm the day before.

  Logan was just a dim shape in the distance, and he had a big lead on Joe despite the fact that he was much older.

  Joe told himself he had to catch Logan because, somehow, Logan was a key to the Ghost Gunman.

  For several seconds he lost sight of the older man, but he knew Logan had been heading for the boathouse.

  Joe stumbled over a huge piece of driftwood as he heard a voice in the darkness that reassured him and made him feel uneasy at the same time.

  "I'll find you, Wiley!" Logan screamed into the night. "You can't escape again!"

  Logan was near the boathouse.

  Joe ran on toward the sound.

  He found Logan on the long wooden dock that jutted out from the boathouse into the water.

  Although he was alone, the older man was still shouting at the top of his lungs. 'Not fair! Not fair! Not fair!"

  Joe approached him cautiously.

  "What's not fair?" Joe asked quietly.

  Logan did not hear him at first and continued to rail in the night.

  "Not fair! Not fair! All those years, it isn't fair!"

  Joe spoke louder this time. "What isn't fair?"

  Logan stopped and stared at Joe as if he'd never seen him before. "Wiley, of course."

  Joe walked slowly along the rickety dock toward Logan, who was leaning on the railing on the ocean side of the old wooden structure. Joe said, "What about Wiley isn't fair? Wiley's dead."

  "No!" screamed Logan. "He's alive. Didn't you see him?"

  "I saw someone, but how do you know it was Wiley?"

  "It had to be him!"

  "But why?"

  Before Logan could answer, the turbulent water made the dock tremble violently beneath them so that both men were knocked off their feet.

  Struggling to stand up, Joe said, "Let's go someplace and talk about this."

  "No. He'll get away. He always gets away!"

  The storm the day before had apparently severely damaged the old dock, and Joe was afraid it wasn't going to hold up much longer. He knew Logan was in no condition to be reasoned with. He said, "What brought you to Runner's Harbor?"

  "The jewels," said Logan.

  The dock shook again, and both men grabbed hold of the railing to steady themselves. This time the simple act of holding the rail seemed to calm Logan. He collected his thoughts and said, "You spend twenty
years in prison, you hear all kinds of stories, but this one - "

  "Why were you in prison?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "Does it?" asked Joe.

  "Do you mean, was I guilty?"

  Joe nodded.

  Logan said, "I did twenty years in Joliet for robbing a bank, and yes, I was guilty." He seemed proud, not that he had robbed a bank but that he had the honesty to admit it. "And I don't think a day went by in those twenty years that I didn't hear about the great Wiley Reed."

  "From whom?" asked Joe.

  "My cellmate," said Logan.

  "Who was that?"

  But Logan seemed not to have heard the question. He was lost in his memories.

  Whoever Logan's cellmate had been, he had filled Logan with stories about the great Wiley Reed. In particular, about the cache of jewels that Wiley supposedly had with him the night of his last run. The night he vanished.

  "It's all over for me now," said Logan.

  "What do you mean, 'It's over'?" asked Joe.

  Logan stared at him as if Joe were the one who was crazy.

  "It's over. I'm tapped out. Broke. Busted. I haven't got a cent to my name. Tonight was it. I was gonna find that treasure and be on easy street, but instead, he got away again, and I'll never find the treasure. They said he always got away, and he's done it again. You saw him. What could I do?"

  "Nothing," said Joe, trying to make sense of everything he was hearing.

  "Nothing is right."

  "Tonight," said Joe.

  "Uh - huh."

  "You played the piano tonight."

  "Learned in the pen. Practiced that song for twenty years."

  "And you played it in the middle of the night when we first got here," said Joe.

  "I played it a lot," said Logan. "I had to try everything to lure Wiley out of hiding." Why give up now?"

  "Told you. Got no money. The treasure was my only hope."

  "There's always hope. You can find work."

  "Who's going to hire a fifty-year-old ex-con?'

  "A lot of people," said Joe, noticing that the dock was beginning to sway beneath them.

  "You could play the piano sometime. Here at the hotel, maybe."