The Alaskan Adventure (9 page)

“Who?” Frank asked.

“The guy we were chasing,” Joe retorted. “Duh!”

Frank shrugged. “Will he be here?” he said. “I'd say that's a sure thing. But will we recognize him? Have you noticed how many green parkas there are in this town? Not a chance!”

The room was already crowded. They found seats in one of the back rows, just as a man Frank didn't know called the meeting to order.

“That's Reeve Anderson,” Justine whispered. “Gregg's father.”

Mr. Anderson explained that Curt Stone was there to answer any questions people had about the ThemeLife project and that there would be plenty of time for discussion from the floor.

Curt gave a short speech about the benefits his company's plans would bring to Glitter. Frank found his eyelids starting to droop. Then Lucky got to his feet and started to speak. Frank sat up straight, wide awake again.

“If I could make a go of mining,” Lucky said, “I'd do it. And if you could make a go of hunting and fishing, you'd do it. But you know we're all about two inches from starving. These days the gold isn't in the riverbeds, it's in the tourists' pockets. But to get it into
our
pockets, first we got to get the tourists to Glitter. That's what this project is going to do, and that's why we ought to get in back of it one thousand percent!”

A lot of the audience—about half of them, by
Frank's estimate—started clapping loudly. The ones who weren't clapping looked confused and troubled.

Peter stood up. “Lucky's right,” he said. Frank heard some gasps and a murmur of disbelief from around the hall. Was Peter, one of the strongest opponents of the plan, changing his mind?

“Lucky's right,” Peter said again. “About one thing, at least. Our town's in trouble. We all know it. And we've got to do something about it. We all know that, too. But is Curt's project the right thing to do about it? I don't think so.”

Frank heard Justine, next to him, give a deep sigh of relief.

“For hundreds of years,” Peter continued, “we've lived in harmony with the land. We've hunted moose in the fall and fished for salmon in the summer. In the long winter months we've trained our dog teams and passed on our traditional crafts, which museums all over the world want to have in their collections. Do we want to give up all that for the sake of putting on a show for tourists? If we do, this won't be our town anymore. It'll be what some stranger in an office thousands of miles from here thinks our town
ought
to be. I don't think that's what we want.”

Peter sat down. Again, Frank estimated that about half the audience clapped and cheered . . . the other half, this time.

From the front of the room Curt said, “Peter, I have a lot of respect for your views, and I understand your worries. But remember, the reason ThemeLife wants to come here is that you've managed to hold on to your traditional way of life. Would we do anything to interfere with that? We'd be cutting our own throats! No, I can assure you—”

Whatever he was going to assure never got assured. An explosion rocked the assembly room, sending people jumping out of their seats.

“Is anyone hurt?” someone shouted.

A torrent of questions and exclamations rushed through the crowded room. “Let's get out of here!” someone else cried. A stampede headed toward the only door.

“Everybody, take it easy!” Anderson shouted from the front of the room. “Calm down! Don't push! There's no danger! The explosion was outside.”

Joe and Frank pulled Justine out of the way of the panicked crowd, then linked arms with her between them to keep her from being trampled. Throughout the room levelheaded townspeople were talking to people and holding them back
from joining the rush to the door. Gradually the panic died down.

Joe heard Peter shout, “Away from the door, everybody! Give people air!”

Joe looked around. Peter was standing on a chair with his hands cupped to his mouth. “Let the firefighters out first,” Peter continued. “Come on, neighbors, back off!”

With sheepish looks the people around Joe and Frank inched back, leaving a path clear to the door. A dozen people Joe recognized from the bucket brigade the day before ran outside, followed by an orderly stream of others.

“Come on,” Joe murmured to Frank. “Let's try for that gap in the line.”

The Hardys let themselves be carried outside by the crowd. As he passed through the narrow doorway, Joe felt like a grain of sand in an hourglass, but an instant later he was outside. He took a deep breath of the cold, pure air.

Not so pure. A layer of gray smoke blanketed the town. The source was not far away, near the riverfront. It looked like—

“My store!” Jake shouted, pushing through the crowd. “My store's on fire!”

He broke into a run. Joe and Frank were close behind him. When they had closed half the distance, Frank gasped, “I don't think it's Jake's store. It's something out back.”

Joe could see that Frank was right. The flames and smoke were coming from a wooden building the size of a one-car garage, about twenty feet from the rear wall of the store.

The volunteer firefighters were already hard at work, passing buckets of water and throwing them through the shattered windows. Just as the Hardys joined the crowd, they heard a crash. Flames shot up to treetop height as part of the roof fell in.

His face pale, Jake was standing in the crowd near Joe and Frank. “Well, at least it isn't the store,” he said.

“What's in there?” Frank asked.

“A lot of junk a little too good to throw out,” Jake answered. “Might as well let it burn.”

“It's pretty far from the store,” Frank said. “But you don't want the fire to spread.”

“It sounded to me as if it started with an explosion. What do you suppose caused it?” Joe asked.

Jake shrugged and said, “I don't know. There might have been a couple of old five-gallon jerricans in there. You heat one of those up, and if there's a little gasoline left in it, the vapor can turn it into a bomb.”

“So you think the fire came first, then the explosion?” Frank pursued.

“How do I know? I wasn't here. I was at that
meeting, same as everybody else,” Jake said, sounding irritated. He took a couple of steps sideways and turned half away from the Hardys.

Joe looked over at Frank and rolled his eyes. After the fire was out, Joe and Frank went back to their cabin to talk over their investigation.

“The explosion has to be part of the pattern,” Joe insisted. “And if it is, it means that the motive isn't to keep David from doing well in the race, the way we thought. It's to intimidate people who are against the ThemeLife project.”

“Jake isn't against the project,” Frank pointed out. “And it was his shed that blew up.”

Joe thought for a few moments, then said, “What if the arsonist is out to make everybody realize how shaky their way of life is without something like the theme park? Then it wouldn't matter whether the target is someone like Peter, who's been speaking out against the project, or someone like Jake, who says he's neutral.”

“That's a really nifty theory, Joe,” Frank said. “And if the explosion
is
part of the pattern, we can narrow down our list of suspects  . . . a little too much. Just about everybody in town was in the hall when the shed blew up.”

“I didn't see Gregg there,” Joe said.

“Or David,” Frank added.

“Get real, Frank! You can't tell me you suspect David!”

“Of course not,” Frank replied. “All I meant is, whether somebody was at the meeting doesn't tell us much. Jake might be right, that the explosion happened
after
the fire started. Or, if it was a bomb, it could have been set off by a timer. If that's so, then anyone could have been responsible, whether he was at the meeting or not.”

Joe felt his spirits start to droop. For a moment he had been sure that they were near a solution, but now the answer to the mystery seemed as far away as ever.

He heard a knock on the door and opened it. David was standing there.

“I wanted to tell you,” David said, after coming in and taking off his parka, “I got Big Foot back, unhurt.”

“That's great!” Joe exclaimed.

“Yes, it is,” David replied. “But I'm really upset. When I took Big Foot back to the kennel, I found out somebody had cut his tether rope.”

Frank nodded. “We noticed that,” he said. “I didn't have a chance to tell you.”

“I can't believe Gregg would go that far,” David continued, pacing up and down in the little cabin. “What does he want, to start a feud? He knows I could hurt his dogs as easily as he can hurt mine, and then we'd both be out of the running.”

“Have you seen Gregg lately?” asked Joe. “We'd like to ask him some questions.”

David shook his head. “He must be out training every minute he can. I'd do the same, but I've been distracted by the fire and everything else that's been happening. I'm nervous that my team is starting to lose its edge.”

•  •  •

Early the next morning Frank and Joe went to look over the burnt-out ruin of Jake's storage shed. The charred timbers of the shack smelled sooty and acrid. Large cans were blackened and deformed by the heat. A metal bed frame sagged in the middle where the heat had softened the steel.

“What are we looking for?” Joe asked as he and Frank shifted a fallen roofbeam out of the way.

“Anything that looks out of place,” Frank replied.

Joe chuckled. Pointing to the wreckage of an ancient snowmobile, he said, “With all this junk
nothing's
going to look out of place.”

After twenty minutes of rummaging, Frank gave a triumphant shout. “Joe, look at this!”

Frank was holding the remains of an old-fashioned windup alarm clock.

“More junk,” Joe said.

“Maybe,” Frank said. “But look—there's a metal pin sticking through the face at twelve o'clock, with the minute hand touching it.”

“I get it!” Joe exclaimed. “You run one wire to the minute hand and another to the pin, hook it up to a battery, and you've got a timer for a bomb!”

“Looks that way,” Frank replied. “And I think I saw clocks like this on Jake's shelves. I wonder if he remembers selling one recently.”

Joe said, “Come on, let's ask him.”

Jake was sweeping the floor when Frank and Joe went into the store.

“Find anything?” Jake asked. “I saw you looking through the mess. I'll have to clear it up come spring.”

“We found this,” Frank said. He held out the burned clock.

“Oh, that,” Jake said. “What about it? I must have thrown that out ten years ago.”

“Nobody bought one of these clocks from you recently?” Joe asked.

“I wish they had,” Jake replied, pointing to a row of identical clocks on the shelf. “This isn't the big city, you know. People in Glitter don't have much use for alarm clocks.”

As the Hardys left the store, Frank saw Curt up the road, heading out of town. The ThemeLife
official gave a furtive glance over his shoulder, as if checking whether anyone was watching him.

“What's he up to?” Joe asked.

“Let's find out,” Frank said.

They let Curt get a good lead on them, then followed him. Five minutes later Joe said, “We know this road. The only thing out this way is Lucky's placer mine.”

“Why is he going there?” Frank asked. “He already knows Lucky is voting for ThemeLife. Why waste time trying to persuade somebody who's already persuaded?”

“Good point,” Joe said.

At the cabin Lucky opened the door before Curt had a chance to knock.

“It looks as if he was expected,” Joe whispered. “Let's see if we can get close enough to hear what they're saying.”

The two brothers crept around to the side of the cabin and positioned themselves on either side of a window.

They were just in time to hear Curt say, “I don't want any more of these fires and bombings. You hear?”

“Why tell me?” Lucky demanded in an angry voice.

“You're giving the company a bad image, and I want it stopped,” Curt said.

Lucky started yelling. “Who do you think you are, coming out here and telling me what to do? I'll do what I want to do. If it's bombing and fires, then it's bombing and fires. If you and your big-deal company don't like it, you can go jump in the Yukon!”

Frank looked over at Joe and raised his eyebrows. It sounded as if one of their prime suspects had just confessed.

“Where'd you get the idea that you're helping the situation?” Curt continued. “We've got too much at stake to put up with this. If it doesn't stop, right now,
I'll
stop it. You hear?”

“You don't come onto my property and order
me
around,” Lucky shouted.

Curt retorted, “I'm not ordering you around. But if you think I'm going to let some crazy old coot of a prospector ruin a multimillion-dollar project, you're wrong—dead wrong. Anything that has to be done,
I'm
the one who'll do it.”

Frank and Joe looked at each other again.
Another
prime suspect had just confessed!

Frank stiffened. Something was moving through the underbrush behind them—something big. He looked over his shoulder and a chill ran down his spine.

A brown bear was lumbering out of the bushes. It stopped when it saw the Hardys. Then it reared up on its hind legs, bared its enormous white teeth, and let out a growl that rattled the window of the cabin.

“Oh, no,” Frank said. “What do we do now?”

Joe straightened up slowly, keeping his eyes on the bear. He heard Curt, inside the cabin, ask fearfully, “What's that noise?”