Warehouse Rumble (12 page)

Rusting metal machines and crumbling plaster walls pressed in around them. The atmosphere was heavy and smelled of mold and decay. They tired quickly and their breath came in labored gasps.

“You know,” Joe said, pausing for a second, “I’m starting to wonder why we signed up for all this abuse.”

“Let’s just keep going,” Frank said. “We’re almost to the finals.” He and his brother began running again.

An eerie, mournful wail stopped them in their tracks. “He-e-elp!”

The Hardys couldn’t see who was yelling, but the cry came from the out-of-bounds area, beyond the course. Joe and Frank looked at each other, wondering—for a moment—whether they should risk leaving the game.

“It could be part of the contest,” Joe said. “A trick.”

The cry came again, more desperate this time. “Help!”

Without further hesitation, the two of them leaped a rusting barrier and raced forward.

“Where are you?” Frank called. “Shout again so we can find you!”

No reply came, but Joe spotted a bulkhead in the floor ahead of them. “Maybe someone got trapped down there,” he said.

The brothers ran across the worm-eaten planking toward the bulkhead. They were moving so fast and concentrating so hard on listening for another cry for help that neither one of them noticed the rotting floorboards creaking under their weight.

Suddenly the floor gave way, and the Hardys plunged down into darkness.

“Frank? Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I think so. How about you?”

“I think so. I can’t see anything.”

“Me neither.”

“Good,” Joe said. “I was worried that I might be blind.”

“We must have slid into the basement of the warehouse,” Frank said. “Hang on. I have a flashlight in my pocket.”

“Isn’t that against the rules?”

“I don’t think we’re on the clock right now.” Frank pulled a small penlight out and shone it around.

The area looked a lot like the portion of the basement they’d raced through previously—except for the heap of rubble nearby. Thick heating and cooling
pipes ran along the walls and ceiling. Oily puddles covered the dirty floor. Dust filled the air.

Through the dust they saw the holes they’d made in the rotting boards above them. Luckily neither Hardy had been hurt. They pushed some pieces of plaster and rotten wood off their legs and stood up.

“Is anybody down here?” Joe called.

“Yes! Help!” came a strangled cry from beyond the rubble.

The Hardys pushed their way through the debris and discovered Lily crouched on the floor. She looked dirty and frightened, and her leg was caught beneath a big section of pipe that had fallen from the wall.

“I think I’m okay, but I’m stuck,” she said.

The brothers grabbed the pipe and heaved with all their strength. Slowly they managed to bend the conduit up, and Lily crawled out from under it. “Thanks,” she said, brushing the dirt from her hands.

“What are you doing down here?” Frank asked.

“I took a wrong turn somewhere and lost my partner,” she said. “We thought we’d have a better chance of winning if we split up. I guess that was pretty stupid.”

“Any idea which way is out?” Joe asked.

Lily shook her head.

Frank shone his light toward both ends of the tunnel. “Pushing through that rubble again might
be dangerous, but we know there was a bulkhead somewhere in this direction.” He pointed in the opposite direction from the way he and Joe had come.

“Let’s go,” Joe said.

They groped their way through the semidarkness for a long time, but found no sign of the bulkhead leading to the surface.

“Maybe we got turned around when we fell,” Joe said.

“Could be,” Frank replied. “Wait! Listen!”

They all paused and heard a loud siren coming from somewhere close by.

“This way,” Joe said. He sprinted down a corridor that lead toward the sound. Frank and Lily followed.

At the end of the passage they found an ascending stairway. They paused just long enough to make sure the stairs were sturdy, then they ran up and out of a door on the first floor of the warehouse. Once they were out, they found that they weren’t too far from where the Hardys had started the event.

Lily’s face brightened. “The sound was the Klaxon!” she said. “Bo must have made it to the center of the maze!”

The Hardys’ spirits fell, but they tried not to show their disappointment. Lily raced off to find her partner. A few minutes later, Ward Willingham came by to speak to the brothers.

“Where did you disappear to?” he asked. “You were doing really well, then all of a sudden you left the course.”

“We heard Lily call for help,” Joe said. “We went to find her.”

“She’d gotten caught in the underground,” Frank added.

Willingham shook his head and sighed. “Boys, I’ve made quite a few allowances for you in the past, but I’m afraid this is the end. You left course—and even if it was for good reason, your opponents sounded the Klaxon first.”

“We left the course to
save
one of our opponents,” Joe protested.

“I know,” Willingham replied, “and that’s a great story. It’ll make an interesting side story for the show. You’ve been great contestants—really great. But the show is about
winning
the competitions, and this time you lost. I can’t keep rerunning games on your behalf. I’ve done that a couple of times already.”

“We understand,” Frank said, though Joe didn’t look as willing to accept defeat. “Come on, Joe. Let’s get something to drink.”

“That’s the spirit,” Willingham said. “Watch the rest of the competitions, if you like. Your friends, Morton and Soesbee, are still in the running.” He shook hands with both brothers. “Thanks, guys. You can check with Ms. Kendall about your consolation prizes.”

“Sure,” Joe said glumly.

He and Frank adjourned to the break area and got themselves sodas. The number of people getting refreshments had thinned considerably, since the competition was entering its final stages. They saw Lily and Bo briefly. Lily waved and mouthed the words, “Thank you.” Bo grinned like the cat who had eaten the canary.

“Let’s go find Chet and Daphne,” Joe said, “before I take my anger out on those two.”

From the staff the teens discovered that Chet and Daphne’s event was being held on the infamous toxic-pool set. They headed in that direction, but ran into Ms. Kendall on the way.

“Sorry to hear you’re not advancing,” she said sympathetically. “You really livened up the show.”

“The show livened up our lives a bit too,” Frank replied.

Ms. Kendall gave them their consolation packages: clothing and accessories with the show’s logo, discount coupons from local merchants and attractions, and a one-thousand-dollar scholarship bond. She thanked them again, then ran off to her next assignment.

“Pretty good for a couple of days’ work,” Frank said.

“Nothing to put us on
Lifestyles of the Rich and Spoiled,
though,” Joe said.

Loot in hand, they found a convenient spot from
which to watch Chet and Daphne compete. By the time the brothers arrived, the game was nearly over. Chet and Daphne had built a bridge over the pool from scrap metal and other debris that had been strewn around the set. Missy and Jay began putting the final pieces on their own bridge as Chet and Daphne stepped onto their construction.

The Hardys’ friends tottered across the rickety apparatus toward the far side of the pool. As they neared the end, Chet lurched and almost lost his footing. For a moment it looked as though he would topple into the bubbling green water.

Missy and Jay stepped onto their makeshift bridge.

As Chet teetered on the brink, Daphne reached out and grabbed his hand. She gave a hard yank and pulled him across the bridge—and over the finish line. A golden band rested on a rusty pedestal nearby.

Chet grabbed it and shouted, “Yes!”

Ward Willingham appeared and congratulated them, then offered his condolences to the losers. Missy and Jay stuck their tongues out and skulked away.

“Class, all the way,” Joe said, rolling his eyes.

Since setting up for the finals would take some time, Chet and Daphne had the rest of the afternoon off. The four friends stopped at the Town Spa restaurant to celebrate Chet and Daphne’s success. They used one of the Hardys’ consolation coupons to pick up some pizzas for cheap, then
headed back to the Hardys’ home for an early dinner.

“You know,” Chet said as they ate around the kitchen table, “I think this is the first time I’ve finished a contest ahead of you guys.”

Frank and Joe laughed. “This time, the better team won,” Frank said.

“Yeah,” Joe agreed. “I hope that turns out to be true in the finals, too. But someone is definitely messing with
Warehouse Rumble.
And the big question is: Why?”

“Have the problems on the sets been accidents, or are they sabotage?” Frank asked. “Who was lurking around the warehouse with a flashlight the other night? Who was the masked mutant that jumped Chet?”

“How did the dead guy—Joss Orlando—get in the chimney?” Chet added.

“And what, if anything, does his skeleton have to do with the rest of the trouble?” Daphne asked.

“Clark Hessmann and Ms. Allen would both profit if
Warehouse Rumble
goes under,” Frank said. “Willingham’s publicity-hungry, so the news reports—even when they’re bad—might benefit him too. Bo Reid, Jay Stone, and Missy Gates were all helped by the accidents—even though Missy got hurt.”

“She seemed okay today, though,” Daphne said.

“Right. So we can’t rule any of them out as suspects,” Frank said.

“If Missy and Jay were the masterminds, it didn’t
stop them from being eliminated,” Chet noted.

“How does it all tie together?” Joe asked, clearly frustrated.

“How did Ms. Forbeck’s ring get in the warehouse?” Daphne asked. “Could someone have planted it there for publicity?”

“The chance of you stumbling on it seems pretty slim, given where it was,” Chet said.

“We don’t even know how long that ring had been there,” Frank said. Then his brown eyes lit up. “Wait a minute! That’s something we haven’t looked into.”

“How long the warehouse has been abandoned?” Joe said, picking up his brother’s thought.

“I bet we can find out on the Internet,” Daphne suggested. “The
Bayport Journal-Times
has its archives online.”

All four of them pushed aside their food and headed for the Hardys’ computers. A few moments later both brothers were surfing the Net as their friends looked on and offered advice.

“You were right, Frank,” Joe said. “Those warehouses have been closed for more than twenty years. That ring couldn’t have gotten dropped by someone who worked there—it wouldn’t have just been sitting in a puddle.”

“That suggests it was dropped by the thief—and the thief must have been in the building sometime after the robbery,” Frank said.

“There’re fifteen years between the robbery and now, though,” Chet said.

“Yes,” Joe replied, “but none of the other jewels have been recovered. The police or insurance company would have spotted them if they’d turned up on the market. If the thief didn’t dispose of the jewels, the question is: Why not?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to sell them,” Chet suggested.

“Why steal them if not to sell them?” Joe asked.

“And if the thief stole them for himself, why lose one in an old warehouse?” Daphne added. “You’d think he’d put them someplace safe.”

“You’d
think,
” Frank said. “So either he didn’t sell them because he was lying low for fifteen years . . .”

“ . . . or he didn’t sell them because he
couldn’t,
” Joe said. “Either because he lost them, or . . .”

“. . . because he died shortly after stealing them.” Chet blurted. “The skeleton in the chimney!”

“You think Joss Orlando stole the jewels?” Daphne asked.

Both brothers nodded.

“Get a load of this,” Frank said, reading from his computer screen. “It’s from fifteen years ago: ‘Bayport resident Joss Orlando has been missing for over two weeks now. Police are baffled as to his disappearance. His wife and small children haven’t seen Mr. Orlando since the night of April sixteenth,
when he went out to get some groceries—’”

“April sixteenth!” Chet put in. “That’s the night of the Forbeck robbery!”

“Exactly,” Frank said. “But there’s more.” He and the others continued to read silently as Frank scrolled through the rest of the article.

“So,” Joe said after they finished reading, “the trouble on the set of
Warehouse Rumble
isn’t about the game—it’s about the missing jewels.”

“Aside from Chet’s accident, the real trouble only started after the news broadcast about the skeleton in the chimney,” Frank said.

“So the thief was never caught because he was dead in that chimney the whole time,” Chet said.

“And the jewels weren’t found because he still had them—either in the chimney, or somewhere nearby,” Daphne concluded. “Maybe near where I found the ring.”

“That seems likely,” Frank said, “even though the police searched that tunnel. I’m betting that the lights the exterminator saw in the warehouse came from people who were looking for the jewels.”

“But who would even know where to look?” Chet asked.

“They
don’t
know where to look,” Frank said. “Which is why they’re trying to clear everyone out of the warehouse.”

“That explains the accidents,” Daphne said.

“Here’s something else,” Joe said, pulling up
another article onscreen. “‘Demolition of the warehouse is scheduled to begin next week,’” he read aloud, “‘after shooting ends on the show.’”

“So if the jewels are in the warehouse, the thief doesn’t have much time to retrieve them,” Daphne noted.

“I bet they’ll try again tonight,” Frank said. “Let’s check Orlando’s background a bit more, then head down to the warehouse and see what’s up.”

•  •  •

By the time the Hardys and their friends drove up the dirt road toward the old warehouse, stars were peeking out of the cloudy sky overhead. The
Warehouse Rumble
crew had already departed for the night, and the warehouse complex stood dark and still.