The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 5

by Roy MacGregor

  Police are concentrating search efforts in the Las Vegas and Reno areas, with suspicion mounting that the intricately planned kidnapping might be connected to organized crime.

  The accounts of the body were somewhat vague – the stories hinting that police knew who it was but had yet to confirm the identity of the dead man – and confusing. One account said the victim had been shot, another had him being stabbed. Police, the newspaper said, were to drag the nearby shoreline of Salt Lake that day in search of the murder weapon.

  Late in the afternoon, the media had the name of the murdered man, confirmed through dental records as Ebenezer Durk, and the radio and television broadcasts were already filling with speculation as to why anyone would want to kill a gentle old man who worked part-time as a volunteer giving tours in Park City.

  According to one rumour, Ebenezer Durk was a holder of vast wealth, inherited from his bootlegger father who had apparently made a fortune during Prohibition days when alcohol was illegal throughout the west. The money was believed to be buried in Durk’s yard or simply hidden under his mattress.

  One report, however, said there had been no sign of an intruder at Durk’s humble little home just outside Park City. Nor had neighbours seen Durk with anyone lately. Apart from his volunteer work, he went out very little.

  The most intriguing report was on the six o’clock news, when the CBS affiliate reporter, standing in front of the morgue, announced that not only had the police been unsuccessful in their search for a murder weapon, the chief coroner’s office did not even know what they were looking for.

  “Sources tell CBS News,” the reporter said, “that the elderly man was killed with a weapon so far unknown to criminal investigators. Both a gun and a knife have been ruled out by forensic experts, and the investigation now centres on what it was that fatally pierced the heart of Ebenezer Durk.”

  “What the …?” said Nish, who was near tears.

  “Some experts!” said Andy. “They don’t have a clue!”

  “All they have to do is find the weapon,” said Fahd, “and then they’ll know.”

  Data, who had been sitting in his wheelchair saying nothing, suddenly hit the remote control to turn off the television. Everyone turned at once to him, wondering what on earth he was doing.

  Data seemed nervous, frightened. He swallowed hard.

  The others all waited, almost afraid to breathe.

  Finally, Data spoke. “They won’t ever find the weapon.”

  A look of incredulity came over each and every face in the lobby – Data’s excepted.

  “What do you mean ‘won’t ever find the weapon’?” Sarah asked.

  “Because it doesn’t exist,” Data said.

  “Doesn’t exist?” Sam all but shouted. “What the heck does that mean?”

  “It doesn’t exist,” Data insisted.

  “How do you know?” asked Travis.

  “Because,” Data said carefully, “I think I know what killed Ebenezer Durk.”

  10

  The Owls gathered in Data’s room and waited patiently while he and Fahd hooked the laptop up to

  Data’s digital camera. Data used the mouse to race through the photographs he had taken since the team left Tamarack for the long bus ride to Salt Lake City: shots of the players sleeping, shots of various sites along the way, a great photo of Nish sound asleep with a sagging top hat of shaving cream on his head, shots of their arrival, the mountains, the hotel, the rinks, and then photos of the tour of Park City the Owls had taken with Ebenezer Durk.

  Travis waited patiently as Data flicked through the shots of the old buildings and the small underground jail, then began racing through a series of photographs of the snowfall and the walk around to the stables behind Main Street.

  Data stopped, backed up, and settled on a photo of the stables with the icicles hanging from their eaves reaching nearly to the ground. Travis shivered just remembering that astonishingly cold day.

  Data used the mouse to zoom in on the icicles, the long swords of ice glistening deep blue in the sun.

  It was a lovely photo, a postcard.

  “There’s your murder weapon,” Data said.

  “Where?” Nish asked.

  “Right in front of your eyes.”

  “He was killed with a laptop?” Nish said, his eyes widening.

  Data sighed deeply. Fahd giggled and then bit back the giggle.

  “The perfect murder weapon,” Data said. “An icicle. The only murder weapon known that is guaranteed to melt away and never be seen again.”

  Travis held his tongue in the turmoil that followed. The Owls excitedly talked about how ingenious it was to use an icicle to stab someone. The murder weapon could be laid right on top of the body and by the time the police arrived it would have turned into a puddle from the warmth of the body alone. A little longer under the right conditions, and the murder weapon might vanish entirely – evaporated into thin air.

  “Brilliant,” Jesse said.

  “But wouldn’t it break?” asked Liz.

  “Not if the stab was straight on,” said Data. “An icicle would work if it was long enough and thick enough.”

  These icicles were both long enough and thick. Fahd kept zooming in and out on them, his teammates leaning behind him now and shivering – even though the room was perfectly warm.

  “They found his body by the lake, though,” said Simon. “The storm didn’t hit there, did it? Wasn’t it just here, in the mountains?”

  “I think he was killed right here and taken to that gravel pit,” said Data. “That way the police would never figure out how they’d killed him.”

  “But …,” said Sam, her pause capturing the attention of all the Owls, “but if that’s what happened … who killed him?”

  “That’s the next part of the mystery,” said Data, “and we don’t have a clue.”

  Travis cleared his throat. He knew he was blushing, almost afraid to say what he knew had to be said.

  “Maybe …,” he began, waiting while the others turned to listen, “maybe we do have a clue.”

  11

  With the rest of the team hanging on his every word, Travis told the tale of wandering away from the stable doors and bumping into the two men, at least one of them a bodyguard he’d recognized from the fancy hotel lobby when the Prince family had first arrived in Park City.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Derek asked.

  “I just thought they’d taken a wrong turn or something. Maybe they had.”

  “I doubt it,” said Data, who more and more was taking control of the investigation. “I think they were there looking for Ebenezer and didn’t expect us to be there.”

  “But why?” asked Jenny.

  Data considered a moment. “If they came looking for him, he must have had something they wanted, or needed. And it’s just a guess that he was killed by them with one of these icicles – but what else could it be?”

  “The question still is why?” said Dmitri. “I can’t follow it at all.”

  “Well,” said Data, “consider this: they came for a reason, they didn’t expect to find us there, and they came back later. Then, for some reason or other, they killed Ebenezer and took his body off to that gravel pit.”

  “Why would they do that?” asked Andy.

  “Presumably,” said Data, “so no one would connect the murder to the location.”

  “I think they wanted to know about the tunnels,” Travis said suddenly.

  Everyone turned, listening.

  “They needed Ebenezer to explain how the tunnels worked,” Travis continued. “He knew everything about them. Those two must have been involved with the bodyguard in the kidnapping. Maybe they wanted to sneak up on Brody Prince using the tunnels. And when Ebenezer wouldn’t tell them, they got mad and killed him.”

  All around, the Owls were nodding. All except Nish.

  Nish was red-faced, close to tears. “Or maybe he did tell them,” Nish said, “and they killed him
anyway.”

  Several of the Owls turned fast on Nish, their faces filled with confusion.

  “That makes no sense,” said Sam.

  “It does,” argued Nish, “if they wanted to keep using the tunnels.”

  Everyone considered that possibility for a moment. It was so unlike Nish to come up with any insight, to think of something possible – not something bordering on the insane – that no one else had considered.

  And yet …

  “But that would mean they never left Utah with Brody,” Data finally said.

  “Exactly,” said Nish.

  “But there are witnesses,” Fahd countered, shaking his head at Nish’s failure to remember the reports of the limo and later the helicopter.

  “Maybe the witnesses were part of the plan,” said Nish.

  “What?” Fahd howled. “ ‘Fake’ witnesses – give me a break!”

  “No,” countered Nish. “I’m saying there was a limo and even a helicopter – but maybe they were diversionary tactics.”

  “Where are you getting this from?” demanded Fahd. “The movies?”

  “Well,” said Nish, beginning to enjoy the fact that he now had the attention of every Owl in the room, “think about it. They set up the limo and the chopper and instantly everyone thinks that Brody has been whisked away and the police start looking for him in another state – when all along he’s right below us!”

  For a long time, no one said a word. Then, dramatically, Data snapped down the lid of his laptop and turned to the red-faced Nish.

  “I never thought I’d say this as long as I lived,” he began.

  “What?” Nish asked quickly, worried about what might be coming.

  “Nish – you’re a genius!”

  12

  The Salt Lake City police gave the Screech Owls short shrift when they heard the team’s ideas on what might have happened to Ebenezer Durk. Mr. Dillinger had offered to make the phone call – it being fairly obvious that the police would pay more attention to a responsible adult than to a twelve-year-old defenceman with a ridiculous name like Nish – but even Mr. Dillinger seemed to carry little weight with the police. They listened to the theory about the icicles and said it was highly unlikely, but nothing had been ruled out yet and forensic tests were continuing. They dismissed outright the theory that Brody Prince was being held in the tunnels and caverns underneath the Main Street of Park City, saying the area had been searched carefully at least three times and police were satisfied with the eye-witness accounts of the dark limousine’s run out to the little airport to meet the helicopter.

  Mr. Dillinger seemed deeply discouraged by the response, and sagged visibly at the end of his brief talk with the police community-relations officer.

  “They’re not much interested in what we think,” he told the Owls, who had assembled to listen in on the conversation they had believed would, as Derek put it, “blow the case wide open.”

  “They’re making a big mistake,” said Data, who seemed particularly hurt by the response.

  Mr. Dillinger picked himself up and shook his head. “Well, we can’t dwell on it. At least we’ve told them what we think – now let’s get organized. We have a hockey game to play!”

  Mr. Dillinger’s words were like a splash of cold water in the face for the Owls, most of whom had all but forgotten about the tournament.

  Travis checked his watch. Less than two hours to get to the rink and get ready – really ready.

  The Owls were about to play the dreaded Toronto Towers, the team that had beaten them in overtime to win the Little Stanley Cup tournament a few months earlier.

  Win this match, however, and the Screech Owls were guaranteed a place in the medal round.

  Lose, and there was no chance at all of any medal – let alone the cherished gold.

  “We’re here to play hockey,” Muck told the Owls as they were getting dressed for the game. “We have to remember that. All the stuff that happens away from the rink – no matter how bad it is – has nothing to do with the game we play as a team, understand?”

  Several of the Owls nodded. Travis pulled his jersey over his head, making sure to kiss it just as the captain’s “C” slid by.

  “You can let yourselves dwell on what has happened, have no focus, and if we lose we’ll head back home,” Muck continued. “Or you can win one for Mr. Durk, in his memory, and make sure we stick around to watch out for him – because no one else seems to be doing it.”

  With that, Muck turned abruptly and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  No one said a word.

  All Travis could hear was the sound of Mr. Dillinger polishing the skate-sharpening machine as he very lightly whistled.

  “How many words in the Gettysburg Address?” Gordie Griffith suddenly asked the assembled Screech Owls.

  Only one of them, however, would know. “Two hundred and seventy-two,” Willie Granger, the Owls’ trivia expert, immediately answered.

  “How many in what Muck just said to us?” Gordie asked.

  Willie shrugged. “I dunno – a hundred?”

  “Well, it adds up to just as much,” Gordie said, and began banging his stick on the cement floor.

  The other Owls grabbed their sticks and began pounding on the floor as well, a rising drumbeat of support for poor Ebenezer Durk, who, as Muck had just said, had no one else to look out for him, and for the Screech Owls of Tamarack – hockey team extraordinaire.

  “They should be checking birth certificates,” Nish mumbled to Travis after the warm-up.

  Travis nodded. The Towers seemed even bigger, if anything, than they had back in Toronto when they’d beaten the Owls in the championship game. All of them except the slim girl who’d been the Towers’ entrant in the Fly on the Wall event literally towered over the Owls, with only Andy Higgins, Samantha, and Nish looking as if they’d fit on the Toronto team, the rest of the Owls either too small, too short, or too slight even to belong on the same ice surface as this hulking group of skaters.

  But the Owls had size of a different kind. They had hearts so big it evened out the differences in body size the moment the puck was dropped.

  Sarah won the opening faceoff and dropped a backhand through her legs to Nish, moving up fast, and Nish immediately whipped a backhand pass over to Dmitri, who’d circled back of his right wing.

  The Towers, caught flatfooted, seemed to lose composure instantly. One defenceman lunged to catch Dmitri, who proved far too quick on his turn, thereby trapping the defender in the wrong zone as the Owls broke over the Towers’ blueline four abreast, with Nish joining the rush.

  Dmitri flipped a high pass that floated right across to Travis and landed at his feet. Travis kicked the puck ahead onto his stick blade and dug hard for the corner.

  Nish read Travis perfectly. The Toronto players figured Travis would scoot behind the net and try the wraparound as he looped to the other side, but Nish and Travis had practised the reversal so often it was second nature for Nish to sprint to the opposite side of the net as everyone else focused on where they expected the puck to end up.

  Travis played it just right. With the goaltender already drifting across the crease to cut off the wraparound, Travis dropped a quick pass from behind the net back to the corner he had just rounded – with Nish cutting fast across the ice to slap it home into an empty side.

  The Owls had drawn first blood.

  The Towers never recovered from that opening faceoff. Sarah scored a second goal on a brilliant rush where she split the defence, Dmitri scored one of his patented flying-water-bottle goals, and Travis scored on a deflection to give the first line a goal each.

  The Towers scored only once in the first period and once in the second, but then little Simon Milliken, from his knees, chipped a puck in under the Toronto crossbar to make it 5-2.

  Late in the third period, with the Towers failing to draw the Owls into penalties and growing ever more discouraged, Travis picked up a puck in his own end an
d broke hard up his wing. He looked back to see what was assembling on the ice: Sarah clear at centre, Dmitri breaking, Nish hustling to join the rush.

  Travis hit Dmitri with a long pass and Dmitri jumped around the defence as if the other player were tied to a kitchen chair. Instead of cutting for the net, however, Dmitri turned sharply towards the boards, circling back and putting a perfect pass on Sarah’s stick as she came across the blueline.

  Travis raised his stick for the shot. He saw Nish out of the corner of his eye, moving hard towards the net on the far side.

  Sarah passed perfectly.

  Travis swung his stick at the puck – deliberately missing it! He heard the quick bark of a laugh from the Towers’ bench – a player or coach thinking Travis had fanned on the shot.

  The puck went through his legs and straight to Nish, who was also ready. He hammered the puck with all his strength, the puck flying hard off his stick, up over the shoulder of the Towers’ goaltender.

  And off the post!

  It didn’t matter. The game was soon over, the Owls were the winners, and they were headed for the championship round.

  “Perfect!” a sweating, red-faced Nish shouted as he clicked helmets with Travis.

  “We missed!” Travis giggled, not caring.

  “We won’t next time.”

  13

  Travis missed the ice the moment he stepped off it.

  Sometimes the game seemed to him like another world, another dimension, where life was protected from everything else. There was no homework in a hockey game, no garbage to carry out, no lawn to cut, no crime – apart from tripping and interference – and most assuredly no murder.

  On the ice, time was frozen. Off the ice, it seemed speeded up. Reporters from around the world were still staking out the Prince family, and the news was filled with stories of kidnapping and murder. The television news said that forensic scientists working on the murder of Ebenezer Durk had ruled out a knife and were looking for some other form of very sharp object, perhaps plastic, perhaps wooden – not even a mention of ice.