The Hunt for Four Brothers (10 page)

Joe rose up to protest, but he felt a little weak and dizzy and settled back on the bed.

•   •   •

Frank quickly found out that the kitchen staff worked just as hard as maintenance. Just minutes after he had filled the last serving dish, the dirty plates and dishes started returning from the dining room and piling up. Frank loaded them into the plastic racks and put them onto the conveyor belt as fast as he could.

Phil Dietz, the waiter at Tony Alvaro's table, slammed through the swinging door and talked to Frank while he unloaded his service tray. “Mr. Alvaro's from New York City; he says he's a traveling salesman and decided to stop at Konawa Lake Inn on a whim.”

“What does he sell?” Frank asked, loading Phil's dishes directly into one of the racks and sending it through the industrial dishwasher.

“I can't ask anything else. He's already suspicious and getting testy,” Phil told Frank, then grabbed a tray of desserts and headed back into the dining room.

As the swinging door popped open, Frank had a clear view of Tony Alvaro seated at his table. Milo Flatts was standing next to him, and both were staring through the open kitchen door at Frank. If looks could kill, Frank thought to himself, I would be dead.

•   •   •

“Yoo-hoo!” someone called, waking Joe from a light dose. “Joe Hardy, are you in there?”

Joe stepped into the hallway and saw Mrs. Gregory outside the front screen door of the Sweatbox holding a plate of food. “Hi, Mrs. Gregory,” Joe said, and went out on to the porch with her.

“I heard what happened this afternoon,” she explained. “I didn't want you to miss this good dinner.”

“Thank you,” Joe said, smiling.

“Oh, and here's today's newspaper,” Mrs. Gregory added, handing it to him. “I'm finished with it.”

“The newspaper,” Joe said, thinking. “Mrs. Gregory, do you remember the article you mentioned to me a few days ago? About Kormia.”

“Yes, about signing a treaty ending the civil war,” Mrs. Gregory replied.

“I meant the other part of the article,” Joe clarified. “About the national museum being looted.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Gregory said, pointing to the issue in Joe's hand. “There's a follow-up article in section A, toward the back.”

Joe turned on the porch light and riffled through the pages until he found the article.

“They're looking for three men seen leaving the area on the night of the robbery,” Mrs. Gregory told him.

“Two members of the peacekeeping force and a
Kormian army officer,
” Joe said, skimming the article. “It doesn't say what items were stolen.”

“I think more was written about that in the first
article,” Mrs. Gregory recalled. “But I only glanced at it.”

“Do you still have that newspaper?” Joe asked.

“No, but Konawa recycles,” Mrs. Gregory said. “It might be bound up and stacked behind the laundry room.”

Joe thanked Mrs. Gregory, then hurried toward the inn, his heart pounding with excitement. He was hardly aware of his hornet stings anymore.

Dialing from the pay phone in the lobby, Joe soon reached his party. “Dad, it's me,” Joe said when his father, Fenton Hardy, answered the phone back in Bayport.

“What in the world is going on down there?” Fenton asked. “Mr. Craven called me this morning ready to give you two your walking papers.”

“Everything's under control now, Dad,” Joe assured him. “I survived the hornets, and they got the shrapnel out of Frank's leg.”

Fenton paused. “You call that being ‘under control'?”

“Dad, I've got an important favor to ask,” Joe told him, checking over his shoulder to make sure no one was near the pay phone listening. “I need a list of all the soldiers who served in the Kormian peacekeeping force.”

“I have a friend in Washington who could get me the list of Americans,” Fenton said. “I don't know where I'd get the others.”

“What others?” Joe asked.

“The French, the British, and the Russians,” Fenton explained. “They all had troops on the peacekeeping force.”

“The Russians,” Joe repeated, pondering something. “If one of the two peacekeepers was Russian, that could explain a lot.”

“One of which two peacekeepers?” Fenton asked.

“The men who looted the national museum in Kormia,” Joe told him.

“You think they're behind your break-ins in North Carolina?” Fenton asked.

“It's a long story, Dad,” Joe replied, and quickly told his father as much as he could about his suspicions. “See if either Milo Flatts or Tony Alvaro served on the force in Kormia. If you can call back before midnight, it would be a huge help.”

Fenton agreed, but before hanging up, he added, “Joe, be careful. If you're right about who these men are, they'll do whatever they have to to recover what they've stolen.”

“Thanks, Dad. We'll be careful,” Joe replied. After hanging up, Joe left the inn and headed for the loading dock in the back. A truck parked there had the sign Konawa County Recycling on the side.

“Hold on!” Joe shouted to the man loading stacks of newspapers onto the truck. “Please, I need to find an article.”

“I'm on a schedule,” said the driver.

“I won't take more than five minutes,” Joe promised.

The driver sighed, then handed Joe a razor-sharp utility knife. Joe sliced through the bindings on the stacks of newspapers and began doing his best job of speed-reading. Six, then seven minutes went by, but Joe had not found the article.

“I'm sorry, son,” the driver said, “but I have to go.”

Just then Joe spotted the corner of a photo sticking out of the last stack of newspaper. It was a picture of a ruby. Pulling that section of paper from the pile, Joe read the caption beneath the photo. His mouth dropped open in astonishment.

•   •   •

“Good night, Frank!” the last cook called before tossing his apron in the laundry hamper and leaving. Frank was alone in the kitchen now, the last to finish his work. Once the last three racks of dishes went through the washer, he could stack them and leave.

Suddenly the lights went off. “Hey, I still need those on!” Frank shouted toward the hallway through which the cook had exited. Frank heard nothing except the churning and spraying of the dishwasher.

Without warning someone grabbed Frank, then slapped one hand over his mouth. Heaving him backward onto the conveyor belt, the attacker pushed Frank head first toward the scalding water of the dishwasher.

Frank braced his elbows against the outside of the opening and pulled his chin to his chest, keeping his head out of the scalding spray just inside the dishwasher. The powerful attacker had his feet square on the ground, giving him leverage over Frank, and Frank knew he couldn't outmuscle him for long.

Frank felt a rack of dirty dishes beneath his legs on the conveyor belt. Pushing his attacker back with one foot, he snatched a heavy porcelain serving dish from the rack with one hand and smashed it over his attacker's head.

The man cried out and released Frank, who rolled off the conveyor belt and onto the floor. Frank heard a rolling service tray crash to the floor as his attacker retreated toward the dining room.
Frank got up to give chase, but he slipped in the pudding that had splattered on floor.

The lights flashed on. “Frank?” Joe called from the back entrance to the kitchen.

“Over here, Joe!” Frank called back. “Follow me!”

Frank searched the dining room for any sign of the attacker, but he appeared to have escaped. “What's going on?” Joe asked, joining him.

“This way,” Frank said. Heading out of the dining room, he nearly bumped into Sandy, who was pushing a cart filled with numbered bingo balls. “Howdy, boys! You playing bingo tonight?”

“No,” Frank replied. “I was attacked in the kitchen.”

“What!” Sandy exclaimed. “Any idea who it was?”

“I didn't get a good look at him, but on the basis of the hand-to-hand combat, I can tell you that he was tall and very strong.”

“That's not much to go on,” the tall, strong maintenance chief remarked.

Frank looked at the cap covering Sandy's head. Taking a step forward, Frank tripped himself, knocking Sandy's cap off his head as he steadied himself against him.

Frank saw no sign of a bump or a cut on Sandy's head. “Sorry, Sandy. I guess I'm still a little unsteady after that fight.”

“No problem,” Sandy replied, snatching his cap
off the ground. “Report this to Mr. Craven right away,” Sandy told them. “Guests will begin arriving shortly. I have to stay here to set up.”

As Joe and Frank moved toward the lobby, Joe whispered. “What was that pratfall thing all about?”

“I hit whoever attacked me pretty hard with a serving dish,” Frank explained. “I thought it might have been Sandy, but I didn't see a bump or a cut.”

“So if it wasn't Sandy,” Joe asked as he and Frank headed into the lobby, “who was it?”

“Milo Flatts, or one of the four brothers,” Frank guessed.

“It couldn't have been one of the four brothers,” Joe said, stopping Frank and showing him the newspaper clipping in his pocket.

“Why not?” Frank asked.

“Because the four brothers aren't people, Frank,” Joe replied. “They're priceless gems.”

Frank read quickly as Joe filled him in. “A red ruby, a blue sapphire, a green emerald, and a white diamond. Four stones, some of the largest of their kind, and all identical in shape and size.”

“ ‘Worth millions,' ” Frank read aloud, then turned to Joe. “Now I think I understand the signals we decoded. ‘Take second brother to LT' means that the man holed up at the asylum must have found the sapphire, the second brother.”

“And he was getting instructions to take it to the lieutenant, Gus Jons,” Joe filled in.

“Right. And ‘found third brother in inn' means they recovered the emerald from one of the rooms in the guest wing,” Frank added, recalling the second part of the decoded message.

“Tonight at midnight,” Frank went on, “they're meeting to discuss the first and fourth brother, which are still missing.”

“We've got a strong hunch that Borda's red ruby is the first brother,” Joe reminded Frank.

“And since the other crooks don't know about it, it means Sandy and Borda probably aren't involved with them,” Frank deduced.

“But where's the fourth brother?” Joe asked. “The diamond is the most valuable stone of all, and we've accounted for all the Russian soap on the premises.”

“Or we think we have,” Frank said.

“Maybe someone else found the fourth brother?” Joe followed Frank's drift. “Has Borda been searching for it, too?”

“Julia Tilford works with Borda on the housekeeping staff; maybe she noticed something,” Frank suggested.

“The staff swimming party starts in fifteen minutes. We can find her down at the lakefront,” Joe said, knocking on Mr. Craven's office door. No one answered.

“Jen?” Frank called, walking up to the desk. “Do you know where Mr. Craven is?”

“No,” Jen Haskell replied, pulling a note off the
corkboard behind her. “But I have a message for Joe from your dad. He says, ‘Tony, no. Other one, yes. Unit Twelve. On thirty-day leave.' Does that mean anything to you?”

“Yeah. It means we got a bingo without even playing,” Joe said to Frank, smiling. “Jen, when you see Mr. Craven, tell him we have to talk to him as soon as possible.”

“Where will you be?” Jen called after the boys as they left the lobby.

“The waterfront!” Joe called over his shoulder.

•   •   •

Frank and Joe trotted down the hill toward the lake, discussing the new information. “All the clues point to Lieutenant Gus Jons as the Kormian soldier and Milo Flatts as the American peacekeeper involved in the theft of the four brothers along with a third man, a Russian.”

“Who I'm guessing is the one smoking the Russian cigarettes who came from Kiev with the huskies to try to track down the lost shipment of soap,” Frank added.

“But why take the gems to Russia first?” Joe asked. “And how do you manage to sneak four gems into bars of soap from a manufacturing plant in Kiev?”

“The Russian accomplice must have had close connections there,” Frank guessed.

“Prossk,” Joe said.

“What?” Frank asked.

“Prossk Home Products,” Joe explained. “That's the Russian company that manufactured the soap.”

Frank thought a moment. “After we talk to Julia, I think we need to call on Dad for one more favor. To find out if there was a Russian peacekeeper named Prossk.”

Most of the staff had already swum out to the raft at the edge of the roped-off swimming area. Night had fallen fast and the Hardys couldn't identify exactly who was out there. “Julia Tilford?” Frank called.

“Who wants to know?” a voice called back.

“Frank Hardy!” Frank replied.

“Come on out. The water's great!” Julia yelled.

Frank was still fully dressed from kitchen duty. Joe wore shorts and a T-shirt. “Are you up for a swim?” Frank asked.

Joe removed his T-shirt and shoes. “These hornet stings are starting to itch like crazy. Maybe the water will make them feel better.”

Joe dove off the diving board and was happy to discover the cold water deadened the itching sensation from his stings. When he reached the raft, Katie Haskell, Phil Dietz, and Julia Tilford were already there, swapping stories and laughing.

“Julia,” Joe said quietly. “Have you noticed Borda Jones taking any soap from the rooms at the inn?”

“Oh, no,” Julia cried out, joking. “Not more of the Great Soap Caper!”

“Are Sherlock Holmes and his brother on the trail again?” Phil chimed in. The others laughed.