The Hunt for Four Brothers (3 page)

Chet yawned wide, and Frank noticed dark circles under his eyes. “I never fell back asleep after that thing broke into the Sweatbox,” Chet said through a second yawn.

“Mr. Craven thinks it's one of the guys pulling a prank,” Frank said.

“That was an animal we heard and saw last night, Frank,” Chet said.

“I think you're right, Chet,” Frank said. “I just don't know how to make Mr. Craven believe it.”

“Maybe after there are a few more break-ins,” Joe said, half kidding.

A thought struck Frank. “How do we know there haven't been?”

“What do you mean?” Joe asked.

“The thief and his dog, or wolf, came prowling into Mrs. Gregory's place during the evening, when there are always major activities planned at Konawa. Most people are away from their cottages,” Frank explained. “If the thief has been stealing only soap, he may have already slipped in and out of other cottages, unnoticed.”

“Interesting idea,” Joe said, “but what can we do with it?”

“If we could find out that soap is missing from other cottages,” Frank replied, “Craven might take the matter more seriously.”

“Julia Tilford is on the housekeeping crew,” Joe recalled. “She and Chet are friends.”

“Maybe you could offer to help her clean the
cottages this morning,” Frank suggested, “and snoop around in the bathroom cabinets.”

“I was planning to take a nap before lunch duty,” Chet said, rubbing his chin, “but if it'll help solve this wolf mystery, okay.”

“Thanks, Chet,” Joe said, patting his friend on the back.

“I have only one question,” Chet said. “Why soap?”

“Chet,” Frank replied, “when we can answer that, I think we'll have the answer to this whole weird thing.”

“Hey, Joe,” Katie Haskell called as she stepped into the kitchen to grab a box of orange juice. “My sister's looking for one of you guys. A new guest just checked in.”

“You want me to take this one?” Frank asked his brother.

“He looks like a big tipper,” Katie added before exiting through the swinging door.

“No, I'll take this one,” Joe said, smiling.

•   •   •

Joe hurried into the main lobby, where a man with black hair and sunglasses, wearing a gray suit, was waiting.

“Joe!” Jen Haskell called, relieved. “Could you take Mr. Alvaro's luggage to his room?”

“Sure!” Joe replied. “How are you doing, Mr. Alvaro?”

Alvaro said nothing, but just turned and motioned
for Joe to follow. Opening the trunk of his luxury car with a remote control, Alvaro pointed to two large suitcases.

“Sorry if you had to wait. We're always on front desk duty Saturdays when most guests arrive and depart,” Joe explained as he grabbed the two suitcases and placed them on a rolling luggage rack. Joe noticed a rental agreement from a rent-a-car company in the trunk and LGA airport tags on his luggage. “Are you on vacation?” he asked, smiling.

“Right,” Alvaro replied.

“Where are you from?” Joe asked, reaching for the last bag, a maroon briefcase.

“I'll take that,” Alvaro said, snatching the briefcase away from Joe.

Joe rolled the luggage cart through the lobby, down the outer corridor running beside the main guest dining hall, and into the wing of guest rooms.

“I'm supposed to be on the third floor,” Alvaro said, checking his room key.

“Yes, sir,” Joe replied. “Because the inn is on a hillside, you enter on the third floor and have to take an elevator down to the first two floors. Pretty strange, huh?”

Alvaro unlocked his door without responding. Joe set the two suitcases inside. “Which room is Milo Flatts in?” Alvaro asked.

“I believe I took his luggage to the corner room at the end of the hall,” Joe replied.

“The corner room?” Alvaro repeated. “Fine.”

With that, Alvaro closed the door, leaving Joe in the corridor with no thank-you and no tip. This was not the typical Konawa guest, someone in a happy vacation mood. Alvaro was cold and businesslike. And why is he looking for Milo Flatts? Joe asked himself.

•   •   •

An old dump truck pulled into the gravel parking lot beside the inn.

“Hop on,” Sandy called to the Hardys, who stepped up on the back bumper and grabbed the top of the tailgate.

“Clear!” Frank shouted, giving Sandy the signal it was safe to pull away. The ancient truck pulled out of the parking lot and onto the two-lane private road that ran through Konawa. After turning off the main road, the truck began winding its way up the dirt road that ran behind the cottages.

As the truck stopped behind the first two cottages, Joe hopped off, grabbed the garbage cans set out behind each, and handed them to Frank, who dumped their contents into the bed of the truck and then passed the empty cans back to Joe. Joe hopped back on the bumper, Frank yelled “Clear,” and Sandy drove to the next stop.

Thirty-nine cottages later, they headed up Lake Konawa Road. After turning off onto a gravel road, the truck reached a massive pit.

Frank and Joe unlatched and lowered the tailgate,
hopped off, and stood to each side of the truck. Sandy starting backing the truck up to the edge of the pit.

“Keep coming!” Frank yelled over the sound of the engine. “Back, back, and stop!” The truck tires stopped at the very edge of the pit, leaving the rear end hanging over the pit. Sandy pulled the lever, and the hydraulic system tilted the truck bed up, dumping the mass of garbage into the pit.

Sandy, Joe, and Frank climbed down the dirt embankment and set the trash on fire, then scaled the embankment and watched from a safe distance as the small fires joined and became one giant bonfire.

“We can't even burn leaves in our yard back in Bayport,” Joe remarked.

“We're twenty-five miles outside the city limits of Konawaville and forty miles from the nearest dump,” Sandy explained. “So we have a special permit to burn our garbage.”

An empty aerosol can sizzled and exploded.

“Somebody's hair spray.” Sandy grinned. Joe watched, while glass bottles shattered from the intense heat. Thirty minutes later the fire had burned out, and it was safe to leave.

Frank and Joe were surprised when Sandy slowed and turned right off Lake Konawa Road onto a side road.

“Wonder what this is about?” Joe asked. Frank shrugged. Sandy turned down a long dirt driveway, and Frank spotted the name Jons on the mailbox
and the number 100. Several No Trespassing signs were hung on the barbed-wire fence surrounding the property.

Sandy stopped the truck in front of a cabin with a rusted tin roof. Frank noticed that the paint on the cabin was peeling and that the yard didn't look as if it had been mowed in months. An old brown pickup truck was parked beside the cabin.

“Here, Joe,” Sandy said, pulling a parcel off the front seat and handing it to him.

“What's this?” Joe asked.

“We have a new postman,” Sandy explained. “He delivered this to the resort by mistake.”

Joe read the address on the package. “One hundred Konawa Lake Road. Isn't that our mailing address?”

“No, the resort is one hundred
Lake Konawa
Road,” Sandy replied. “That little cabin is one hundred
Konawa Lake
Road. Craven wanted to be neighborly and asked us to deliver this.”

Joe took the parcel to the cabin and stepped up to the front door. Through the screen, Joe could see a suitcase and two large pet carriers with airport luggage tags on each. The tags read ASH, the code for the Asheville, North Carolina, airport that he and Frank had flown into. Also written on the tags were Flt. 414 and IEV. IEV was a code Joe had never seen before.

Joe started to knock, then noticed a small sign taped beside the door. The sign had detached at
the top and folded over. Joe lifted it up and read it: “Beware of Dog.” Paws scraped across the wooden floor and a huge black Doberman pinscher leaped at Joe from inside the cabin. Joe threw his weight against the screen door just as the dog crashed against it, nearly knocking Joe off his feet.

Before Joe regained his balance, the Doberman had pried the door open with its snout. Holding the door with one hand, Joe reached for a heavy rain barrel and dragged it beside him. Shoving the Doberman's snout back inside with his foot, Joe set the barrel in front of the screen door, blocking it. The Doberman barked viciously.

Joe closed his eyes and leaned against the barrel, trying to catch his breath. When he opened his eyes, a man in camouflage fatigues was standing ten feet away, holding a rifle. “You poked your nose in the wrong hole, boy,” the man said, leveling the rifle at Joe.

“Mr. Jons!” Sandy yelled, running up from the truck with Frank.

Seeing Sandy, Jons lowered his rifle. “Shut up!” he yelled to the Doberman, which finally stopped barking and retreated into the back of the cabin.

Frank helped Joe to his feet. “Are you all right?” he asked. Joe nodded.

“Sorry, Mr. Jons. We were delivering a package,” Sandy explained. Joe picked the parcel up off the ground, brushing the dirt off it.

Jons snatched it away from him. “What are you doing with this?”

“The new mail carrier delivered it to Konawa Lake Inn by mistake,” Joe replied.

“That's twice now!” Jons yelled, kicking the dirt. “I'm gonna see to it that guy gets fired!”

Frank noticed two stripes on the shoulder of Jons's uniform and a small flag sewn over the pocket of his shirt: a yellow star in a white circle against a blue background.

“What flag is that?” Frank asked, pointing at his shirt.

“Who are you?” was Jons's answer.

“This is Frank and Joe Hardy,” Sandy said. “They're on the summer staff.”

“Name's Gus Jons. I'm a soldier of fortune,” Jons said to Frank. “I like to collect things from the different places I visit.”

“Is there a war going on in Konawa Valley I don't know about?” Sandy asked, nodding at the rifle Jons was still holding.

“Sorry if I scared you,” Jons said to Joe. “I thought you were a thief. I heard about the break-in at the resort last night.”

“How did you hear about the break-in?” Joe asked.

Jons hesitated. “I know one of the cooks there. We figure it's that Daniels fella.”

“Why do you figure that?” Sandy asked, his mouth tightening.

“He likes to pester tourists,” Jons replied. “Thinks he's the only one that has a right to be on that mountain. Well, thanks for the package,” Jons added with a smile, and went into his cabin.

“That was strange,” Sandy said. “Mr. Craven
never mentioned that the mail mix-up had happened before.”

•   •   •

Riding on the back of the dump truck, Frank and Joe talked about the encounter with Gus Jons. “He got very nervous when you asked how he knew about the break-ins,” Joe said. “Maybe he knew because he and his Doberman pinscher were the culprits.”

“Mrs. Gregory thought it was a gray wolf, and Mr. Flatts thought it was a reddish tan dog,” Frank pointed out. “Hard to believe it was a black Doberman.”

“Still, I want to talk to the cooks,” Joe said. “See if one of them really is Gus Jons's friend.”

“IEV,” Frank said, thinking aloud, mulling over what Joe had told him about the tags on the luggage. “I've never seen that airport code either,” Frank said. “Jons said he was a soldier of fortune, so maybe he just came back from another country.”

“But why would he have two pet carriers with him?” Joe wondered.

Frank was stumped. Back at the Sweatbox, he and Joe changed into swim trunks, hoping to squeeze in a dip before lunch.

Chet walked into their room and stood at the foot of one of the beds.

“Hey, Chet,” Joe greeted him. “How'd it go this morning with the housekeeping crew?”

Without answering, Chet teetered forward and fell facedown on the bed. Joe and Frank laughed.

“Any news about the soap?” Frank asked.

Chet raised his head. “Julia says she's replaced soap in five cottages the last two days. This morning we found three more cottages that were soapless, even though she knows they were stocked yesterday.”

“Either Konawa's on a bathing craze, or your hunch was right, Frank,” Joe said. “Mrs. Gregory's isn't the only cottage the thief has been to.”

“But why does he need a wolf to steal soap?” Chet asked.

“To warn him, to protect him?” Joe guessed.

“Or to guide him,” Frank said. “To guide him to the soap.”

“Then we're back to my first question,” Chet griped. “Why soap?” His face dropped back into the pillows.

•   •   •

Joe decided not to show off and did a simple dive into the cool, deep lake. He was swimming back to the surface when his foot caught on something. As Joe struggled to break free, he realized someone's hands were wrapped around his ankle, holding him underwater.

Joe had just begun to panic when the hands suddenly released him. Joe broke the surface and saw Frank standing on the diving board.

Frank was frowning and shaking his head. He
nodded to the right of Joe, where Joe saw Katie Haskell treading water and smiling. “Did you think the salamader-man had you?” she asked.

Joe shook his head and swam to the ladder. Frank gave him a hand up. “I was about to start kicking whoever it was in the head,” Joe complained. “One of us could have drowned.”

“Katie enjoys practical jokes as much as she enjoys flirting with boys,” Frank told him.

“If that's her sense of humor, maybe it's not beyond her to go on soap raids in the cottages,” Joe suggested.

“Sorry, Joe,” Katie said as she climbed up the ladder behind him. “I didn't mean to scare you. The lifeguards are throwing a swimming party down here tomorrow night. I hope you'll come. And Frank, too, of course.”