In the morning, as I drove to school, Joe suddenly piped up. “It was revenge,” he said decisively.
“What?”
“The whole deal at Neanderthal’s house last night,” he said. He was looking out the window thoughtfully, watching Main Street fly by. “It has to be some cockamamie plot of his to get revenge for being put away somehow, I’ve decided.”
I snorted. “Well, if you’ve decided, it must be true,” I said sarcastically.
Joe turned away from the window. He looked stung.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just not so convinced.”
“What else could it be?” Joe asked, holding out his hands in a beseeching gesture. “I’ve run though everything in my head. The Mafia. Zombies. Killer robots.”
“I think it could be killer robots,” I muttered, pulling into the parking lot. But he wasn’t paying attention, which was sort of why I’d said it. I didn’t think there were killer robots. In Bayport.
“Unless you believe there’s a force out there that could scare Neanderthal Bunyan into total submission,” Joe went on, “which I don’t . . . the only logical explanation is revenge.”
I pulled the car into our usual parking space, put it in park, and turned off the engine. Neither one of us made any move to get out of the car just yet.
“It could be Seth Diller,” I said finally.
Joe wrinkled his nose. “Pfft,” he said. “Seth Diller.”
I looked at him. “You were the one who thought he was sinister enough to pull this off.”
Joe was staring out the windshield now. “That was before last night,” he said.
“Before the beating?” I clarified.
“Before I saw Neanderthal Bunyan with the poop scared out of him,” he corrected me.
I looked out the windshield. A bunch of freshman cheerleaders were running around with “spirit boxes” they’d made for the football players. They contained cookies, usually. I noticed Sharelle among them, carrying a shoe box decorated in the BHS colors. Maybe it was just me, but it looked like some of the pep had been sucked out of her. She seemed to walk a little more slowly and carefully, like something was pressing her down from above.
Maybe Neanderthal’s situation—whatever it was—was weighing as heavily on her as it was on us.
“We should still talk to Seth when he’s back,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt and grabbing my backpack. The first bell was going to ring in three minutes. It occurred to me that since the bank “robbery,” I’d made absolutely no progress on my speech.
Detective work and schoolwork never mixed well. Which was part of the reason for the Deal.
Joe sighed and unbuckled his seat belt. “Great,” he said, taking his turn at sarcasm. “I’m sure Seth will be really psyched to talk to us.”
• • •
“Hey, Seth.”
Joe and I had caught up with our favorite prankster in the hot-food line in the cafeteria. When he was back three days later, he seemed to be torn between the ravioli and the meatballs.
“Go for the special of the day,” Joe advised. His tray was already piled high with it.
Seth looked at both of us like he’d just lost his appetite. He looked at Joe’s tray and his expression worsened. “What is it?” he asked Joe.
Joe looked down. “Mostly peas,” he replied neutrally.
Seth sighed and shook his head, turning back to the line. “Ravioli, please,” he asked the lady behind the trays.
“Bad choice,” Joe said, looking disappointed. “Did you hear about when Winnie Maxwell found a tooth in her ravioli?”
Seth grimaced. “A human tooth?”
Joe looked at him frankly. “Does it matter?”
We had made it to the cashier now, and Seth paid first, then promptly tried to lose us by running off to a table in the back. The Hardy Boys are pretty quick with cash, though. We paid and were able to catch up to Seth within seconds.
“We need to talk to you,” I said, not interested in wasting any more time.
Seth looked straight ahead. “I’m not interested in talking to you,” he replied.
“Come on,” said Joe. “In my opinion, you still owe me for making me walk all the way home from where that police cruiser dropped me off.”
Seth glared at him. “And in my opinion, you can never repay me for making me spend four hours in jail last night.”
Four hours? What an amateur. “What, your parents wouldn’t pick you up?”
Seth sighed and nodded. “My dad is not talking to me this century,” he said. “As of yesterday. Thanks to you.”
“Really, thanks to you, Seth,” I pointed out. “As I have mentioned before, you did kind of rob a bank.”
“And as I have mentioned before,” Seth replied, “it was a harmless prank.”
Hmm. The three of us had reached the end of the cafeteria, but stubbornly, Seth made no move to sit down, probably not wanting to invite a long conversation. I gestured to the table behind us. “Shall we?”
But Seth shook his head deliberately back and forth, like a kindergartener. “Can you just say what you need to say and we’ll be done with it?”
Joe was frowning, thinking about something. “Hey, how did you get access to the cruiser?” he asked.
“What?”
“The police cruiser,” he clarified. “For your little harmless prank.”
Seth raised his chin defiantly. “I know people.”
Interesting. “What kind of people?” I asked.
“Important people,” Seth replied. “City people.”
“And they were willing to go along with your dangerous prank?” I asked. “Who was this?”
“I’ll never tell,” Seth replied. “I protect my allies. Look, can we get to the point?”
I glanced at Joe. “Neal Bunyan,” I said simply.
Automatically, Seth’s eyes went to the table toward the front where the football players—even former ones like Neanderthal—always sat. But Neal wasn’t there today. He hadn’t come to school. I wasn’t sure whether to be worried about that.
Seth looked confused. “What about him?”
I put my tray down on the nearest table, pulled out my phone, and went into my e-mail. I still had the message Neanderthal had forwarded to me the day before, with the link to the video footage. I clicked on it and held it up for Seth. “See that?”
Seth squinted, then frowned. “Is that Neal?” he asked. “Sleeping?”
“Someone’s been breaking into his house to film him sleeping and broadcast it on the Web,” Joe explained.
“What? Why?” said Seth.
“I don’t know,” I said, giving Seth an accusing look. “Why?”
“Wha-what are you . . .?” Seth looked down at the video again. “Why would I want to film Neal Bunyan sleeping?”
Joe leaned closer, lowering his voice. “Maybe so that when a couple of masked goons broke into his bedroom last night and beat him up, you’d get the whole thing on video.”
Seth stared at Joe, stunned. “What?”
“Tell us the truth, Seth,” I said, leaning in. “Is this part of the Panic Project? Are you hoping we’ll see Neal’s beating on the big screen someday?”
Seth looked at my phone, horrified, and shook his head. “No!” he insisted. “Look, we might disagree about the bank heist prank, but I would never plan a prank for Panic Project that involved someone really getting hurt.”
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Joe asked.
“Well, for one,” Seth said, “I was at the police station until midnight last night, and then my parents took me right home.” He paused. “As you might imagine, they were keeping a pretty close eye on me. I think they’ll vouch for me being home all night.”
Hmm. The beating had started a little after midnight. Admittedly, it would be pretty hard for Seth to get out of jail, put on black clothes and a mask, and run to Neal Bunyan’s house to beat him up.
But Joe looked less than convinced. “
That doesn’t mean you couldn’t have gotten someone else to do it,” he pointed out. “Maybe one of the important people you know?”
He had a point. “What else have you got?” I asked.
Seth sighed. “I—I—” He stopped and looked at the screen on my phone. The video had stopped. He put his tray down, reached over, and restarted the video. Then he smiled and pointed. “Aha!”
“Aha?” asked Joe.
“That’s not my camera,” Seth said, pointing at the video. “It’s way higher quality video than the one I have. This was made with a pretty expensive camera. See?”
He pulled out his own phone and played the bank robber video. Indeed, it was much grainier and less sharp than the video of Neal.
But Joe still looked skeptical. “That doesn’t mean you only have one camera,” he said.
Seth sighed. “Look,” he said, pulling up his website on his phone. “Watch any video. Any movie I’ve made. I guarantee you, none of them will match the picture on this video.”
We clicked through a few. Seth was right. Some of the video quality was better than his phone’s, but none of them were as sharp as the video of Neanderthal.
“And how do we know you didn’t buy this camera especially for the Neal project?” Joe asked. But I could tell from his tone that his heart wasn’t in it. Seth had convinced him.
“That’s, like, a thousand-dollar camera,” Seth replied. “You can ask my parents. For real, I don’t have that kind of money. If I was saving up for a camera like that, they’d know.”
I looked at Joe. I could tell we were both thinking the same thing: Seth was telling the truth.
“Okay,” Joe said finally. “We believe you. I guess the Panic Project is dead.”
“As a doornail,” said Seth bitterly. “Thanks to you guys.”
“But let me ask you something.” Joe put his tray down and grabbed his napkin. Then he pulled a pencil out from behind his ear—a Joe-ism, to make sure he always has something to write with in school—and sketched something on the napkin. “Do you know what this symbol is?”
Joe held up the napkin and I swear, Seth paled visibly. I grabbed the napkin to get a look myself and realized that it was the triangle-with-legs symbol we’d seen over Neal’s door last night. Or early this morning, technically.
Seth seemed to pull himself together with effort. “Nope,” he said finally. “Anything else?”
“You sure you’ve never seen that symbol before?” I asked, pointing at the napkin. “This one right here?”
Seth swallowed hard and shook his head. “Nope. Well, gotta go.”
“Never?” asked Joe, seeming to pick up on Seth’s reaction too.
Seth looked from Joe to me, his expression squirrelly. He was kind of a squirrelly guy in general, but this was a particularly squirrelly moment. “You guys have never seen that symbol before?” he asked.
“What does that mean?” Joe asked.
“What does what mean?” asked Seth. He gave an exaggerated shrug. “Where did you see it?”
“Over Neal’s bedroom door,” I said.
Recognition sparked in Seth’s eyes, as if what we were telling him suddenly made sense. But just as quickly as it appeared, Seth buried it. “Well, I don’t know what it is,” he repeated. “Look, if you’ll excuse me, I want to eat my ravioli now.” He picked up his tray, and before Joe or I could decide whether to stop him, took off in the direction of the AV room.
SECRETS
8
JOE
YOU SAW IT, RIGHT?” I ASKED MY BROTHER as we finally settled down at the table in the back of the cafeteria with our food. My peas were cold.
“What am I, blind?” asked Frank, poking at his turkey sandwich. Frank has this inexplicable distaste for the hot food in the cafeteria. He doesn’t know what he’s missing, in my opinion. “Of course I saw it. He was scared. The minute you showed him that symbol, whatever it is, he got scared.”
I forked a few more peas, then tapped them against the tray. I was about to respond when Janine Kornbluth walked by on her way out of the cafeteria. When she saw me, she smiled and gave a little wave. I stared after her, unable to pull myself together enough to wave back.
I’ll admit it wasn’t the first time I’d been distracted by the thought of Janine Kornbluth. I’d noticed her a few weeks ago, her dark hair and pale face with the little crease between her eyebrows that meant she was thinking. We were in the same French class. I liked how quietly she did everything. Right down to the way she closed her locker, which she did quietly, instead of slamming it like I always did.
Good sense told me she was completely out of my league. I was too noisy, for one thing. But still, there had to be some way I could “sell her” on Joe Hardy. Although the perfect idea hadn’t occurred to me yet, I was actively brainstorming.
“Joe?” Frank was saying. “JOE? HELLO?”
“Right. Sure. Triangle with legs,” I responded, hoping he hadn’t totally changed the subject and started talking about electrons or something. (This was Frank, after all.)
Frank looked amused. I was pretty sure he’d seen Janine pass by. “So we’ll take a cab ride this afternoon,” he said, and took a sip of lemonade.
Cab ride. Oh, right. “Sure,” I said.
A cab ride was definitely in order to get to the bottom of this whole triangle business.
• • •
After school, Frank and I parked the car near the bus station, then hoofed it over to the cab stand. Bayport’s bus station is not exactly a metropolitan hub, so it was quiet, between buses, and Frank and I were the only ones waiting for a cab. We had to wave away a couple (that is a surefire way to annoy a cabbie, by the way) before the cab we were looking for, from the Red Apple fleet, medallion number N567, pulled up to the curb.
Frank slid into the backseat, and I followed.
“One conference fare, please,” Frank said as I slammed the door behind us.
The driver pulled the cab back onto Main Street, then drove slowly out of the downtown area, toward the more woodsy part of town where houses were few and far between.
“What can I help you boys with?” Professor Al-Hejin said after about ten minutes.
Professor Al-Hejin has been a trusted friend and confidant to Frank and me since we were just starting out this investigation thing. As a full-time cabdriver, the prof hears all the town’s most salacious dirt. He knows everything about everything in Bayport. And he’s usually willing to share it with Frank and me, because he knows we’ll use it for good.
“If I show you a symbol,” I said, “can you tell me if you’ve ever seen it before?”
Professor Al-Hejin met my eyes in the rearview mirror, thoughtful. “I believe so,” he said. “Shall I pull over so you can hand it to me?”
I nodded. He pulled into the driveway of an abandoned house, as though he was going to turn around, then idled near the overgrown lawn. I pulled out my triangle-with-legs sketch from lunch that day and passed it through the glass divider to the prof.
Professor Al-Hejin held the napkin up so he could see it. He made no reaction at all. He didn’t jump, or gasp, or turn around. In the rearview mirror we could see that his eyes were serious, completely focused on the drawing.
After a few seconds he took his hand off the wheel and very carefully folded the drawing in half. He handed it back to me through the divider, sketch on the inside, not meeting my eyes.
He put the cab in gear and was back on the road, headed back into town, before I could get the question out.
“Professor Al-Hejin? What is it?”
He didn’t answer for a few seconds. I could see that his expression was grave, his mouth pulled into a tight line. “I will drop you back off at the bus station,” he said quietly.
“What? Why?” asked Frank.
Silence. The woods whizzed by.
“Professor Al-Hejin, please talk to us,” I begged as we drew closer to town.
More silence. I looked at Frank, and he looke
d as confused as I felt. What was going on?
“Professor Al-Hejin,” said Frank, “if we insulted you, we didn’t mean to. We’re just trying to figure out what this symbol means.”
“We have no idea,” I added.
Professor Al-Hejin remained silent. After a few seconds, though, he pulled over to the side of the road. He sat still for a moment before catching my eye in the rearview mirror.
“Where did you see this symbol?”
I leaned forward. “Over the doorway to our friend’s bedroom,” I replied.
He looked stung, like that was terrible news. He shook his head, reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and wiped his forehead.
Frank and I were quiet for a while, wanting to give him whatever time he needed.
Finally he cleared his throat. “This is a bad symbol,” he said simply.
“But what does it mean?” Frank asked.
The prof just shook his head. “Bad men,” he said.
“What bad men?” I asked.
Professor Al-Hejin sighed loudly and took his foot off the brake. Within seconds we were back on the road to town.
“Professor,” I pleaded as we sailed past factories and warehouses, “whatever you know, you can tell us. Whatever you’re afraid of, we don’t know anything about.”
“We’re just hoping to find out what the symbol means,” Frank added, “so we can help our friend.”
Professor Al-Hejin seemed to think that over. After a minute or so, he looked in the rearview mirror again. “Do you know what it means,” he said quietly, “to be marked?”
“Marked, like, for punishment?” I asked. “For death or—I don’t know—”
“Your friend is marked,” the professor said, just as quietly. “You had best steer clear of him.”
I met Frank’s eye: What?
“How do you know about being marked?” Frank asked. “Were you marked?”
The cab jerked as Professor Al-Hejin suddenly pulled into a gas station. He pulled up to the convenience store and hit the brakes.
“You get out here,” he said simply.
I looked at Frank. I had never seen the professor like this. He usually answered all our questions without hesitation. He knew us.
Secret of the Red Arrow Page 5