Warehouse Rumble (13 page)

“Look—a light!” Chet said, pointing. “Out on the old docks.”

“Joe,” Frank said, “turn off the headlights so they don’t spot us.”

“Check,” Joe replied. He switched off the headlights and pulled over as close to the docks as he could without being seen. “Chet, you and Daphne go get the cops while Frank and I check this out.”

“I wish we had your cell phone,” Daphne said.

“Those are the breaks,” Frank replied, shrugging. He and Joe got out of the van. “Come back as quickly as you can. We’ll make sure the thief doesn’t escape.”

“Right,” Chet said. “See you in a couple of minutes.” He slid behind the wheel and drove back they way they’d come. The Hardys sneaked down toward the old docks.

Knee-high weeds and tangled bracken made traversing the hillside between the road and the docks tricky, but the Hardys’ Scout training enabled them to move quickly and almost noiselessly through the brush.

As they drew closer they saw figures moving on the third wharf over.

“I only see one guy,” Joe whispered.

“That’s surprising,” Frank whispered back. “I was expecting two.”

The man prowling the docks wore black clothing and a ski mask. He was careful about using his flashlight—but not careful enough. The brothers easily kept track of him as they crept closer. He seemed to be tying a rowboat to one of the pylons.

As the Hardys crept up behind him, someone yelled, “Look out!”

The masked man turned, a big oar in his hand, and rushed toward the brothers.

The oar caught both Hardys in the chest as the thief pushed them toward the edge of the dock. Within seconds the rotten boards gave way beneath their feet, and the Hardys sank to the dark waters below.

Frank and Joe both managed to grab the edge of the dock as they went down. Splinters of wood stabbed their hands, but they held on tight. The thief continued swinging his oar at their heads, showing no mercy.

The Hardys ducked, and the burglar missed. His effort nearly sent him over the brink with them. With a snarl, he threw the oar at the brothers, then turned and ran toward the warehouse. The oar missed Frank, but it smashed Joe across the fingers.

Joe yelped and lost his grip on the dock. Frank reached his hand out just in time, and grabbed the back of Joe’s shirt. The younger Hardy’s feet splashed in the chilly water for a moment before he grabbed on to a nearby pylon.

Just when Joe was in the clear, Frank’s remaining fingers slipped off the decaying wood. He thrust his other hand up just in time to prevent himself from falling. With a mighty effort he heaved himself onto the rotten planking once more. Then he stuck his hand down and helped Joe up.

“Thanks,” Joe said. “Did you see which way he went?”

Frank edged across the dock and glanced at the boat. “No loot here,” he said, “and he wouldn’t have had time to collect it before running. I’m betting they’re still searching the warehouse for more buried treasure.”

“We’d better go after them,” Joe said. “They won’t try to escape this way now. And you know, they probably stole the rowboat to begin with.”

The brothers left the decaying docks and raced toward the warehouse. The heavy chain that locked the back door had been cut. The dilapidated property had no electronic security system, despite the fact that TV sets and expensive equipment were stored inside.

“Lucky for the thieves—and us,” Joe noted.

While escaping the wharf, they’d lost sight of the burglar. Fortunately the noise of his movements echoed through the eerie silence of the warehouse. It didn’t take the brothers long to home in on the sounds.

They climbed through a bulkhead door and
carefully descended a rickety stairway into the basement. Frank’s penlight gave them just enough light to see by.

“Weren’t the furnace rooms this way?” Joe whispered.

“That would make sense,” Frank whispered back. “A furnace below that broken chimney.”

Joe nodded.

“Keep moving!” said a voice echoing through the darkness. “Those guys know we’re here! They can’t be far behind. They might have even called the cops!”

“I knew they were trouble,” a second, higher voice replied. “It’s too bad our tricks didn’t put them out of commission for good.”

Joe held up two fingers and mouthed the word
two
to his brother.

Frank shot him a smile. Their original suspicions had been right.

A light shone out of a doorway on the right side of the dark tunnel ahead. Frank motioned that they should try a flanking maneuver. Joe nodded and pressed himself against the wall opposite the door. He crept quickly to the far side of the door, staying out of the light.

“Give me a hand, here,” said the first voice. “The bag is wedged in.”

“Cut the bag if you have to,” said the second voice. “We only want what’s inside.”

Joe peeked into the room and then mouthed to Frank,
No way out.

Guns?
Frank mouthed back.

Joe shook his head.

Frank nodded and called, “We know you’re in there. The police are on the way. You might as well give up!”

A masked figure charged out of the room toward Frank’s voice. He held a sledgehammer, and was clearly looking to pound someone. His eyes narrowed as he spotted Frank.

Quick as a flash, Joe darted out of the shadows and grabbed the thief from behind. He slipped his hands up behind the burglar’s neck, locking him in a full-nelson wrestling hold. The sledgehammer slipped from the burglar’s grasp and clanked onto the tunnel floor. “Help!” the thief gasped.

A smaller masked figure ran out of the furnace room, crowbar in hand, and headed toward Joe and the struggling burglar.

Frank dropped into a spin-kick and swept the second thief’s legs out. The smaller burglar landed hard on the damp concrete floor. Frank pinned the thief to the ground.

Within moments the Hardys had subdued both intruders and tied them with their belts. The sound of police sirens approaching the warehouse echoed through the dank passageway. Frank and Joe looked at each other and grinned.

“Lily and Todd Sabatine, I presume,” Joe said.

He and Frank pulled off the intruders’ black ski masks.

Todd growled something incoherent; Lily spat at them.

The brothers dusted themselves off and peered into the room that the Sabatines had just exited. Inside lay the rusting hulk of the old furnace at the bottom of the broken chimney. A black leather valise was caught in the iron grating that covered the furnace door.

Rats had eaten several holes in the old case. Even in the dim light of the basement the gold and gemstones inside glittered.

“I’m sure,” Frank said, “that Ms. Forbeck will be glad to have her jewels back.”

•  •  •

The impromptu celebration at the Hardy house lasted until well after midnight. Callie and Iola had shown up, and the Hardys’ parents joined the party too. As they discussed the Hardys’ case, Aunt Gertrude continuously replenished the supply of milk and cookies.

“You four sure can get into a lot of trouble without Callie and me,” Iola said, smirking.

“Trouble or no,” Fenton Hardy said, “you did well. I’m very proud of you both.”

“So, Clark Hessmann, Stacia Allen, Bo Reid, and
even Missy and Jay had nothing to do with the problems?” Callie asked.

“Amazingly, no,” Joe replied. “They were just being opportunistic. The Sabatines were behind all the trouble.”

“The thing that made them hard to catch,” Frank said, “was that the two of them worked together.”

“For instance, Todd never even went to the cast party,” Joe continued, “and that’s where Willingham’s prescription sleeping pills were dumped into the punch bowl. Lily did that.”

“And at other times, Todd would cause trouble while Lily had an alibi,” Frank said. “Occasionally they even created alibis for each other, and tried to throw suspicion on someone else.”

“Like Bo, or Missy and Jay,” Daphne said, “who all were pretty suspicious anyway.”

“I guess the Sabatines figured that anything that slowed down the production was helpful to them,” Chet said.

“Right,” Joe agreed. “They needed time to find the lost jewels. Joss Orlando—the thief—was their father. As we saw in the newspaper archive, their mother remarried after he disappeared, and changed the family name to Sabatine. Todd and Lily were just little kids at the time. Because of that, no one connected them to the skeleton in the chimney. When Todd and Lily heard that their father’s body had been
discovered, they knew the jewels he had stolen had to be hidden somewhere in the warehouse.”

“My police contacts believe the Sabatines’ mother knew where Joss Orlando had gone the night he disappeared,” Mr. Hardy said. “She knew he was a thief—even though his police record was clean. The story that he went out for groceries and never came back was something she fabricated for the press. She didn’t worry at first, because she knew the Forbeck robbery had been successful; it was in every newspaper. But when her husband didn’t come back or even call, she reported him as missing. She probably hoped the police would bring him home so she could get her cut. She died a couple of years ago, without ever finding out what had happened to him.”

“The Sabatines’ mom must have told her kids the truth about their father’s disappearance,” Frank said. “When Orlando’s body turned up, Lily and Todd auditioned for
Warehouse Rumble
just so they could search the warehouse. They appeared late for auditions, remember?”

“So Todd’s ankle injury was a sham,” Daphne said, nodding.

“Yeah,” Joe said. “It allowed him to hang around the set, without having to participate in any of the games. He must have taken the opportunity to both search the warehouse and sabotage some of the games.”

“The police found a ketchup-stained sock at the Sabatine house, as well the mutant costume he used to attack Chet,” Fenton Hardy added.

“He nearly hurt his sister with that falling-tower stunt,” Chet said.

“Clearly, that didn’t go quite as they’d planned,” Joe said.

“I remember at the time how mad Lily looked,” said Daphne.

“That might have gone wrong,” Joe said, “but her near-miss did avert suspicion from them. If not for that and his ‘injury,’ we might have connected Todd with that accident
and
the reappearance of the sleeping pills much earlier. He was responsible for both—though he tried to pin the missing prescription on us. Turns out the falling catwalk was his work too.”

“The confusion and the media circus both worked to Todd and Lily’s advantage,” Frank said. “In all the chaos, no one gave any thought to either of the Sabatines being missing.”

“No one but you and Joe,” Iola corrected.

“I did think it was strange when we rescued Lily from the cellar,” Frank said. “Why was she there? We now think she was searching for the jewels while Bo was continuing with the game. He never suspected he was her alibi.”

“She got caught under the pipe by accident,” Joe said. “The warehouse is a pretty dangerous place,
despite what Willingham wants people to believe. We found her pretty close to where Daphne discovered the Forbeck ring.”

“What I wonder,” Laura Hardy asked, “is how did Joss Orlando’s body end up in that chimney?”

“The police sent some cops out to search for the thief after the robbery,” Frank said. “Joss must have hidden in the old warehouse to escape them.”

“Forensic tests are already showing that Orlando had numerous broken bones when he died,” Fenton Hardy said. “Apparently he fell into the chimney—and that’s probably what killed him.”

“He must have been up on the roof, trying to escape the police,” Joe suggested, “when a portion of the chimney gave way and he fell in.”

“Just like it collapsed when I fell against it,” Chet said.

“But with more fatal results,” Frank noted.

“And the bag with jewels slipped down through the chimney into the furnace below,” Callie said. “I guess rubble covered it up until the Sabatines—and Frank and Joe—found it.” She sighed. “If only we got to
keep
some!”

“There should be a reward,” Fenton Hardy said, “which would surely help your college funds.”

“But why wasn’t the ring Daphne found with the rest of the treasure?” Iola asked.

“The holes in the leather bag the jewels were stored in give us the answer to that,” Frank said.
“We know a lot of rats are living in the warehouse. We saw them the other day, when Todd Sabatine stirred them up with a smoke bomb so the TV crew would flee.”

“The holes in the valise containing the jewels were surely chewed by rats,” Joe continued. “They pulled out that ring and dragged it to where Daphne found it. It wasn’t far from the furnace room—at least not for a crawling rat. Some rats like shiny things.”

“And teens like Lily and Todd Sabatine,” Chet quipped.

All of them laughed.

“Those kids would have been better off if they hadn’t followed in their father’s footsteps,” Fenton Hardy said.

“It’s so sad when young people go wrong,” Aunt Gertrude added, arranging some cookies on a plate.

“They’ll have a long time to think about their mistakes,” Laura Hardy remarked.

“And they’ll see it all played back on TV when
Warehouse Rumble
debuts,” Iola said.

“With all this publicity,” Frank said, “the Sabatines may be catching themselves on reruns for a long time.”

“You mean,
we’ll
be catching them in reruns,” Joe said. They all laughed again.

Daphne let out a long sigh. “I’m beat,” she said.
“I don’t think I have any energy left to compete in the finals tomorrow!”

“With Lily Sabatine in jail, whom will you compete against?” Iola asked. “Bo Reid is now one teammate short.”

“I’m sure Ward Willingham will dig someone up to replace him,” Frank said. “He hasn’t come all this way just to quit now.”

“Of course he’ll find a replacement,” Chet said. “The TV show must go on!”

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.