The Camp Phoenix Caper

by John V. Madormo

  I watched as a series of blotchy red spots began to appear on Henry’s neck. Within seconds, his face would be beet red. He was about to explode. I had seen this before. It wasn’t pretty. Whenever he got like this, he always managed to say something he would later regret. I needed to save him. I needed to protect him from himself. I needed something that would distract him—but what? He was so zoned in on Scarlett right now that I couldn’t think of anything that might divert his attention.

  And then I had it. Of course. He wouldn’t be able to resist. I dug into my pocket and pulled out the business card my grandma had given me yesterday.

  “Hey, guys, did you see what my gram made up for me?” I said. “And would you believe it—we now have our own agency website.”

  As if on a turret, Henry’s head spun around. “What did you say?” The verbal assault on Scarlett was now ancient history. “Let me see that.”

  I handed him the card.

  “So let me get this straight,” he said. “Charliecolliersnoopforhire.com is ours?”

  I nodded and grinned.

  “I gotta find a computer. I gotta see this thing,” Henry said.

  “Well, there’s nothing there right now,” I said. “All you’ll find is a page that says Under Construction.”

  “And who’s designing the website?” Henry asked.

  “My gram suggested we do it ourselves.”

  Henry threw his arms into the air. “Yessssss. This is so awesome.”

  I didn’t remember ever having seen Henry quite that excited before.

  “Charlie, I am all over this,” he said. “Let’s get started immediately.”

  “Wait a minute,” Scarlett said. “Let me see that card.” She slid it out of Henry’s hand and studied it for a moment. Then she looked up and pointed to something on the front.

  “What’s this?” she said. She was pointing to the line that read Charlie Collier, Proprietor. “You want to explain that?”

  “Well, sure,” I said. “A proprietor is kind of like the owner—”

  “I know what a proprietor is,” she snapped. “I want to know how come our names aren’t on there.”

  I expected this reaction. I decided to have a little fun with Scarlett.

  “It doesn’t have your name on there because it’s my card,” I said.

  It was clear that Scarlett didn’t care for my answer. And even Henry bristled a bit.

  “I have to tell you, Charlie,” Henry said, “I was wondering the same thing. How come you left us off?”

  “I didn’t leave anybody off,” I said. “My gram had these made up. Did you expect her to buy business cards for you guys too…on her meager fixed income?” There it was—the guilt trip—and played effectively, I might add.

  Scarlett stared at her shoes. “I guess not,” she said.

  Since I had gotten the reaction I had hoped for, it was time to surprise them. I dug into my pocket and pulled out customized cards for each of them.

  “Here,” I said with a chuckle. “My grandmother did make them up for you guys too. There’s a whole box for each of you at my house.”

  “That was a dirty trick,” Scarlett said as she examined her card. “But under the circumstances, I’ll forgive you.”

  Henry stared at his card and smiled. “It’s a beaut,” he said. “You gotta thank your gram for me.”

  “Me too,” Scarlett said. “Better yet, I’ll write her a thank-you note.”

  From the corner of my eye, I could see Henry busily at work. His brain kicked into gear. He was so excited about his new card that he was ready to burst. He needed to let it out some way. And for Henry, that could only mean one thing. He was about to unleash a brain buster.

  “Okay, fellow detectives,” he said, “let’s see if we’ve earned the right to carry these cards.” He grinned. “What five-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?”

  I wasn’t sure I was ready to test out the old noodle. I had spent so much time on this missing persons case that I was a little out of practice at solving riddles these days. What five-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it? I knew immediately that it was a trick question—if you add letters to a word, it will undoubtedly become longer. There was something else going on here. But what? I stood there for a good minute trying to figure it out.

  “Give up?” Henry said.

  “I’ll get it,” I said. “I just need another minute.”

  “Take all the time you need,” he said.

  Scarlett seemed to stare out into space for a moment, and then a smile began to form on her face.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “I think I know the answer.” She glanced in my direction. “Do you mind?”

  “Be my guest,” I said. Although I didn’t really expect her to enlighten us.

  “The word you’re looking for is short,” she said. “If you add two letters to it—namely an e and an r—it becomes shorter.” She turned to Henry. “Is that it?”

  Now, normally Henry would have stewed for a while after someone had solved one of his brainteasers, but this time it was different. This was a celebration brain buster.

  “That’s it exactly,” he said, extending his hand to Scarlett. “Congratulations.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Henry and Scarlett, who had been at each other’s throats for as long as I could remember, were actually shaking hands. Could a simple business card have produced harmony? Had their squabbles finally come to an end? Were my days as a referee over? Only time would tell. I called to mind a situation that Sam Solomon had once found himself in. It was Episode #28—The Fresh Heir Caper.

  In this particular case, Sam had been hired by Reginald Worth, an arrogant, abrasive socialite who believed he was destined to inherit an industrial fortune. He wanted Sam to prove that he, and not his sister, was the rightful heir. Once Sam began his investigation, he soon realized that the details of the case were so complicated that even a team of lawyers would be lucky to unravel it. If the siblings continued to fight, their court battle would gobble up all of their resources and leave both of them penniless. Sam convinced them that they would live happy and comfortable lives if they learned to work as a team and share the proceeds of the company.

  And that’s exactly what I had been trying to do for as long as I could remember—end the feud between Henry and Scarlett. It was hard to believe it might actually be over. And I owed it all to Gram.

  Henry and I met up at the bus stop after school as usual.

  “I don’t see Scarlett,” he said. “I thought she was coming with us today.”

  “There’s been a change of plans,” I said.

  “What’s her excuse this time?” he asked.

  The bus pulled up and we hopped on.

  “At the last minute, one of her friends told her about a pedicure special at the mall,” I said.

  “A pedicure special?”

  “I guess she couldn’t pass it up,” I said. “Ten toes for the price of eight.”

  Henry thought for a minute. “But what if you only have eight toes?” he said. “Then what? No freebies?”

  Now, I would have expected any number of reactions from Henry at that moment, but this wasn’t one of them. In a million years, I couldn’t have predicted that response. I simply had no answer for such a bizarre question.

  “Uhhhh…”

  “Oh, never mind,” he said. “On to more important things.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his new business card. “Let’s talk about the website. So, who’s the hosting company?” he asked. “And is this one of those sites where you pick from a bunch of website templates or can we develop our own from scratch? And how many gigabytes of disk space do we have available? And can we set up our own blog? And how many e-mail addresses will we have?”

  “Um, I’m afraid you’re asking the wrong guy,” I said. “But I’m sure we can call and find out. I’ll ask my grandmother for their number.”

  Henry was all smiles.


  “But first things first,” I said. “There’s another call—a more important one—we need to make before that.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, but that was just to shut me up. “I’ve been thinking about using some flash technology on the site. Now picture this—we’ll have this magnifying glass that you can control with your cursor. And then wherever you move it on the page…”

  And on and on he went for the entire ride home. Most of what he was saying could just have easily been in a foreign language as far as I was concerned. Henry was the techie—not me. He was certain that our presence on the web would drive business in our direction. He even had himself convinced that we would someday have a client on the other side of the globe.

  When we got to my house, we encountered both good and bad news. The good news—my mom was baking cookies. The bad news—my mom was baking cookies. As tasty as her famous raisin-filled cookies were right from the oven, I would have preferred an empty house right at that moment. We had to call the boot camp, and the last thing we needed was an audience. Henry and I sat down at the kitchen table for an after-school snack, but I only managed to down three of the tasty morsels before my mom pulled the plug. She was counting calories for me. It was probably a good thing that one of us was acting in a responsible manner.

  Minutes later Henry and I snuck down to the basement to use the extension phone.

  “So do you want me to call or do you want to?” Henry said.

  “I’ll do it.” I dug into my pocket for the phone number and began dialing.

  “Do you know what you’re gonna say?” Henry asked.

  “Not really,” I said. “I was just going to wing it and hope for the best.” Within a few seconds, I heard the phone ringing on the other end.

  “Camp Phoenix, may we help you?” a female voice said.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’m wondering if you can tell me if a young man by the name of Joshua Doyle is currently residing at your facility.” I tried to make it sound as official as possible.

  “Are you a relative?” she said.

  “Well, not exactly,” I said. “I’m a friend, you might say, a pretty close friend.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the woman said, “but Camp Phoenix policy strictly prohibits me from divulging that sort of information to non-family members. I’m sorry.”

  I held the receiver so that Henry could hear as well.

  “I don’t need to talk to him or anything,” I said. “I just want to know if he’s there.”

  “I’m afraid I’m unable to share the identity of our residents with you,” the operator said.

  I somehow needed to convince this woman that I wasn’t trying to be nosy or anything.

  “You see, his mom is really worried about him,” I said. “And she just needs to know where he is. That’s all.”

  “Then have her call us,” the woman said. “But I seriously doubt your friend is here. If he was, his mother would already know. Before any of the young offenders are brought here, their parents or guardians are informed. So the fact that his mother was never contacted tells me that he’s not with us. Good day.”

  “Wait a minute. Don’t hang up,” I said. I couldn’t let her blow me off like that. I needed to keep her talking. There had to be some way of finding out about Josh. “Would it be okay if we were to stop by the camp sometime and look around for ourselves?”

  “Absolutely not,” she snapped. “Unauthorized guests are strictly prohibited from entering the Camp Phoenix compound. If you came, you’d just be turned away at the front gate. Don’t waste your time. Now…good day.” And she hung up.

  I glanced at Henry. “How do you like that?”

  “Real friendly, huh?” Henry said. “So now what?”

  I wasn’t sure myself. I hadn’t counted on this. “I guess all we can do for now is share our findings with Sherman and his mom,” I said. “Then she’ll have to call the camp.”

  “So that’s it, then?” Henry said. “We’ve gone as far as we can? We’re done?”

  But for some reason, it just didn’t feel like we were done. This whole thing had ended rather abruptly. Henry and I agreed that the only thing to do was to run over to Sherman’s house and try to convince his mom to make the call. I slipped the phone number into my pocket and we were off. Twenty minutes later, we were approaching Sherman’s house. We weren’t in what you would call the safest part of town. The neighborhood was kind of run-down. I didn’t plan on telling my parents where we spent the afternoon. But at least we were in familiar territory. Henry and I had actually been here last month when we were following Sherman to see if he had anything to do with the bird heist.

  We climbed the front steps of his house and were just about to ring the bell when we noticed a sign that read Doorbell out of order. Please knock. Henry shrugged and rapped on the front door. We stood there for a good minute before the door opened. Sherman stood in the doorway.

  “What are you guys doing here?” he said. And then something seemed to click. Sherman suddenly seemed hopeful. “Is it about Josh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You got a minute?”

  From inside we could hear Sherman’s mother. “Who is it?”

  “Just a friend,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door closed behind him. “So, what’d you find out?”

  I pulled a pad of paper from my back pocket. It was blank, but I wanted to make it look like we had been taking notes throughout the investigation.

  “Here’s what we think,” I said. “We have reason to believe that Josh was arrested in Clifton City for protesting at a restaurant that was serving…” I knew I was probably going to mispronounce that goose liver thing. “For protesting something.”

  “Sounds like Josh,” he said. “Then what happened?”

  “Then we think he slipped away from the police and was eventually taken to a place called Camp Phoenix. Ever heard of it?”

  He leaned against the door. “I think so,” he said.

  “It’s a place where they rehabilitate teenage hoodlums,” Henry said.

  Sherman didn’t seem to appreciate the suggestion that Josh was a criminal. “My brother is no hoodlum.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Henry said.

  I decided to defuse the situation before things got out of hand. I flipped a page on the notepad just to look official.

  “So we called over there to confirm his whereabouts, but since we weren’t family, they wouldn’t tell us if he was there or not. They did say, however, that if someone like your mom called, then they would tell her.”

  Sherman peeked through a small window in the door to see inside the house. He must be looking for his mom.

  “So you want me to ask her to call this place to see if Josh is there?” he said.

  “Precisely,” Henry said.

  Sherman sighed. “I was hoping not to have to bother her with any of this.” He paused for a moment and seemed to be thinking. “But if it means finding Josh, then I’ll do it,” he said.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the phone number. “Here you go.”

  Sherman turned and opened the door.

  “We’ll wait out here for you,” I said.

  Sherman nodded and disappeared. Henry and I plopped down on the front steps. We tried to imagine the scene taking place inside—where Sherman had to explain to his mom that he hired us to find Josh and how he needed her to call some camp that she probably never heard of. We were anxious to learn the results of the phone call. It could either mean that we were close to wrapping up another case or that we needed to go back to the drawing board. About five minutes later, Sherman reappeared. He looked frustrated.

  “He’s not there,” he said.

  “You’re sure?” I asked.

  “They said there was no one there by that name.”

  I shook my head. “I just don’t get it. I was so sure.” I didn’t like the idea of failing a client.

  Sher
man sighed. “Well, thanks anyway, Collier. At least you tried.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was acting as if I was about to give up. He apparently didn’t know me very well. I would never throw in the towel.

  “Sherman, what are you talking about?” I said. “The investigation has just begun. We still have a lot of leads. So…one didn’t pan out. Big deal. We’re not done by a long shot.”

  “Really?” he said.

  “Of course. You forget who you’re talking to—Charlie Collier, Snoop for Hire. And we won’t rest until we deliver Josh to your front door. Got it?”

  “Got it,” he said.

  I could see a smile slowly beginning to form on Sherman’s face. Oh, how I loved a satisfied client. Now I only hoped I could actually keep my promise.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Write a Wrong Caper

  If he’s not there, then where is he?” Henry said as we walked back to my house.

  “Who said he’s not there?” I said.

  “Huh?”

  The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that we were still on the right track.

  “I think Josh is exactly where we thought he was,” I said.

  “So, what are you saying?” Henry replied. “You think that lady from the camp lied to us? And to Sherman’s mom?”

  We stopped walking. “Not necessarily,” I said. “She might have been telling the truth.”

  Henry shook his head. “Now I’m completely confused.”

  “Have you forgotten? Josh doesn’t always tell people his real name. He could have given them a phony one.” I smiled. “There’s only one way to know for sure. We’re going to have to go over there ourselves.”

  “Ourselves?” Henry said. There was a nervousness in his voice. “Why can’t we get someone like Eugene to go over there?”

  We resumed our walk back to my house. “Don’t you remember what that woman told us? That no unauthorized guests are permitted on the compound? They’ll never let Eugene in. But they just might let us in.” I smiled. “And they might not even know they did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I felt the wheels spinning in my brain. “All we have to do is figure out a way to get into that camp. Once we’re there, we can blend in with the other kids. Then we can find out, once and for all, if Josh is there.”