Sarah was obviously much better rested. On the first shift, against the slower but bigger Duluth team, she picked up the puck behind her own net and skated out so fast she caught two Duluth forwards back on their heels and beat them cleanly. The Screech Owls had a four-on-three at their own blueline.
Then, in a move Travis had seen her try only in practice, Sarah did a spinnerama move past the opposing centre, turning around in a full circle at full speed as the checker went for the puck and found himself skating helplessly toward his wingers who were, like him, caught badly out of position. It was now a four-on-two, with big Nish steamrolling right up centre to join the play.
Sarah handed off to Dmitri, who dropped back to Nish, who hit Derek perfectly coming in from the side with the goaltender guarding against the other side, where Sarah was coming in backwards, looking for a tipped shot. Derek had the whole empty side to shoot at and he roofed the puck in off the crossbar, the ring announcing the Screech Owls’ first goal and, by the reaction in the stands, the sweetest goal of the tournament.
Travis was caught between cheering wildly and burning with envy. If he hadn’t fallen–been tripped?–it would have been him, not Derek, putting it in off the crossbar. Just as he always scored in his imagination. It would have been him, not Derek, they were all high-fiving, his number, not Derek’s, that the scorers–and the scouts!–would be writing down on the sheets, his name, not Derek’s, that would be bouncing around the arena walls from the public address system, his name, not Derek’s, that they would be tying to this spectacular goal for the rest of the tournament.
Sarah Cuthbertson did not take the next shift of this line. Either Muck was juggling–and why would he juggle when the Screech Owls were so obviously superior?–or else something was wrong. Muck shifted Derek over to centre and moved Matt Brown up onto the first line.
Travis was on the opposite side of the rink, but he could see Sarah bending down, working on her skates. He saw Sarah handing her skates back to Mr. Dillinger, who left the box with them, jumped over the sideboards and hurried down the side of the rink with the dressing-room key in his mouth and entered the dressing room. Sarah, her head down, expression hidden by her helmet and face-mask, still looked forlorn as she sat and waited.
Another shift later, Mr. Dillinger returned with the skates. They had probably just needed sharpening. Sarah missed a good part of her next shift tying them up, but made it out in time to see Derek pot his second goal, a beautiful slapshot from the point set up when Nish pinched in and Derek dropped back and Nish magically tucked the puck back between his own legs to where Derek was turning at the blueline.
On her next shift, Sarah barely made it down the ice before she was hustling back to the bench clutching her sweater out from her back and screaming something through her face-mask. Again, Mr. Dillinger went to work. There now seemed to be something wrong with her shoulder pads.
She missed another shift as Mr. Dillinger worked frantically with tape to put the pads back together again. He finished, pulled her jersey down tight, and Muck sent her back out–just as the buzzer went to end the first period. The game was half over, and Sarah had one assist and, at the most, thirty seconds of ice time.
How could something so dreadful happen again to Sarah? Travis couldn’t understand it. Some of the fathers were saying somebody must have cut her equipment. Mr. Brown, moving restlessly down in front of the glass, was unusually silent, studying the Screech Owls’ bench for some indication of which line his son was going to be playing on for the rest of the game.
The idea that someone might have doctored Sarah’s equipment seemed impossible to Travis, right up until her second shift of the second, and final, period, when Sarah came racing out from the corner, slamming her stick furiously on the ice as she headed for the bench, and Matt Brown, the sweat of double-shifting turning his sweater a different colour from Sarah’s, jumped over to take the left wing while Derek moved quickly to centre again.
This time it was her pants. Mr. Dillinger tried tape, but tape wouldn’t adjust, so he had to race, again, for the dressing room and come up with replacement braces.
Fortunately, the Screech Owls didn’t seem to need her–or Travis, for that matter. Derek set Matt Brown up for a one-timer and, ten seconds later, sent Dmitri in on a break to put the Owls up 4–0. Derek Dillinger was well on his way to being chosen, for the second time in a row, the most valuable player of the game.
And all Travis could think was: It could have been me.
But no one else was moping for him. Travis looked around and could see that Sarah’s parents were furious. The men along the back wall were angry and talking and shaking their heads. They hardly looked like parents of the winning side.
Down along the glass toward the other side, Travis could see several members of the Panthers standing watching. The little blond defenceman was there, as well as the big dark centre. The Panthers were on the ice next. The big dark centre was pointing at Mr. Dillinger struggling with Sarah’s braces, and he was laughing.
Travis couldn’t help but think that these laughing Panthers had something to do with what was happening. But what? And how?
“Someone cut it. You can see for yourself.”
Mr. Dillinger was surrounded by a large crowd of parents, tournament officials, other coaches, and Screech Owl players. He had the laces he had replaced, the shoulder pads, and the braces for the pants, all cleanly sheared for a bit, then torn.
“Whoever did it knew what they were doing,” Mr. Dillinger continued. “Nothing broke while she was dressing, but as soon as enough stress was put on it on the ice, everything started snapping.”
“Who had access to the equipment?” a man in a suit asked.
Muck answered. “Coaches and manager. Players if they wanted, but no players came around.”
“You kept all your equipment at the rink?” the man asked.
“Everything,” Muck said. “We were assigned one of the figure-skating rooms across from the dressing rooms.”
“Locked?”
“Of course locked.”
“And no idea who?”
“No idea at all.”
Travis wondered if perhaps he should talk with Muck about the Panthers, but what would he say? That one of them had winked at him during the first game when Sarah couldn’t play? That some of them were laughing during the second game when Sarah couldn’t play? That one of them had made a crack about Sarah during the scuffle last night?
When Travis tried to make sense of it, he could make little, but he could see why the Panthers might want Sarah out of the way. If they had got her out of the first game then they would have had a chance to grab first place right from the start and could probably have hung onto it for the rest of the tournament. On the final day, first and second place would play in the final, with the gold medal going to the winner and silver to the loser. Teams coming third and fourth in the standings would play off for the bronze, just like in the Olympics.
It made some twisted sense for the Panthers to get Sarah out of the Screech Owls’ second game as well. If the Screech Owls had somehow lost, with only one point from their first-game tie, the Owls might well have been eliminated at that point from playing in the final. This would have meant the Panthers would end up playing one of the weaker teams for the championship. Crazy, but possible.
Travis decided he would talk to Mr. Dillinger. He had a chance when everyone else was still showering and dressing and Muck had gone off with the tournament officials to discuss what they should do about the situation.
Mr. Dillinger listened carefully while Travis stumbled through his confusing explanation about the cut equipment. He was no longer the laughing, kidding guy Travis had come to expect. Mr. Dillinger was dead serious.
“You’re talking sabotage,” he said when Travis was finished.
“What’s that?”
“Deliberate. They’d sabotage in order to win the tournament.”
“I guess.”
M
r. Dillinger considered this for a long moment. “Makes some sense, Travis,” he said, finally. “Makes some sense.”
“What can we do about it?”
“Well,” Mr. Dillinger said thoughtfully. “We’ve obviously got no proof and we’d need proof. Why don’t you and some of the guys keep an eye out on the Panthers, particularly that guy who dumped you last night, and see if maybe they say something or do something that gives us a lead.”
“Spy on them?”
Mr. Dillinger laughed, the old Mr. Dillinger back. “Not ‘spy’–watch. Just watch them if you see them around the rink. And tell me or Muck if you see anything suspicious.”
“Okay.”
“Good.”
The swelling around Travis’s eye was going down quickly. He could see clearly again by evening, and the colour was now more like that of a bad orange than a threatening thundercloud. Even the stitched area was tightening and shrinking. It was wonderful to have stitches when they no longer hurt. He felt closer to Terrible Ted than ever.
Travis and Nish had called the players together in the afternoon to discuss what was going on with the sabotaged equipment. Later on, there was to be a parent get-together, a mid-tournament party that Mr. Dillinger had set up when he booked the rooms, and Nish and Data and Derek had already helped Mr. Dillinger carry several cases of beer from the van into the Skyroom at the back of the Holiday Inn. The players knew that the main topic of conversation for the parents would be the same one the kids were meeting to discuss.
The players met by the Jacuzzi, now clean and clear and watched periodically by a nasty-looking woman from the front desk. Nish and Travis and Data set up the pool chairs around the hot tub, which, for once, wasn’t full of parents, the kids turned off the noisy bubbles, and Travis, much to his own surprise, pretty well carried the meeting.
He detailed what he knew about the Panthers. He told them everything he had already told Mr. Dillinger. The wink. The laughter. The trip. The obvious fact that Sarah stood between the Panthers and the tournament victory.
“Ridiculous,” Sarah said when Travis was finished.
“No,” Nish argued. “It makes sense.”
“You’re saying they were the ones sending the pizzas.”
“Yeah.”
“And the ones who cut my laces and straps.”
“Yeah.”
“No way. No kid would ever do something like that.”
Travis butted in: “Their big centre would. He’s got a mean streak.”
“And what about the little defenceman?” Data added. “What’d he wink at you for?”
“Because he fell in loooove with Travis!” Wilson shouted. Everyone laughed.
“Who could fall for something that looks like that?” Sarah teased.
“blmoHqu’!” said Data. (“You look very ugly.”)
Everybody laughed again. Travis was falling in love himself: with his stitches.
“It makes sense,” said Nish.
“It only makes sense because we don’t know what happened,” countered Sarah.
“Well,” Nish said, his back up, “you tell us what you think happened, then.”
“I don’t know.” Sarah stopped for breath. She seemed on the verge of tears. “I just…want it to stop.”
“So do we all,” said Travis. “That’s why we’re talking about what to do. I think we should set up a watch.”
“A watch?” Wilson asked.
“We should keep an eye on the room where the equipment’s stored.”
“We can’t,” Gordie Griffith offered. “We’ve got a ten o’clock curfew. They’d never let us stay up and they’d certainly never let us stay out at the rink.”
“We’ll tape it!” Norbert shouted.
“What?” a half-dozen of the Screech Owls asked at once.
“Tape it,” Norbert said, suddenly totally assured. “My dad has his Camcorder here. I can rig it up on a timer.”
“You mean set it up in the equipment room?” Nish asked.
“Sure. Then, if anything screwy happens, we’ll see it when we play it back.”
“Won’t work,” Gordie said, certain.
“Yes, it will,” Norbert countered, equally sure.
“You’d need lights.”
“No way. This new one takes available light. No flash, nothing. It can pick up things in the day you can’t see. You shoot outside at nine o’clock at night, it looks like noon.”
“That’s true,” Wilson said. “I’ve seen it.”
“But how would we set it up?” Sarah asked, ever practical.
“Yeah,” Nish added, suddenly giving up. “How can we get in?”
“There’s still a game on,” Travis said. “We can get into the rink.”
“But what good does that do us?” Nish asked. “The equipment’s under lock and key.”
“Oh yeah,” Travis said, now as disheartened as his friend.
Derek Dillinger cleared his throat. He didn’t usually say anything when there were more than three or four others around. “I can get the key,” he said.
“You can?” Nish asked.
“My dad’s going to be running the bar at the parents’ get-together. The keys will be in our room. I can get them.”
The kids all looked at Derek with new respect. Finally, Travis spoke for everyone.
“Let’s do it.”
They decided that only some of them would go on the mission. Derek had to go because he had the key. Norbert had to go because he had the camera. Travis went, and so did Nish, Data, Willie, Sarah, and Wilson. They had no trouble getting into the rink. As players, all were wearing tournament pins that allowed them to come and go as they pleased. And no one thought anything of a bunch of kids coming into a hockey game as a group, one of them carrying a video camera.
“You fellows on a scouting mission?” the elderly gentleman at the front desk asked.
“You bet,” Nish answered, giggling.
The gatekeeper waved them through. They headed into the rink area where a game was under way: the Panthers versus the Toronto Towers. Everyone had figured the Towers would be one of the dominant clubs at the tournament, but the Toronto team was already down 5–2 with time still to run in the first period. The Panthers scored again as the Screech Owl players came out into the stands at the far end. With the parents behind the Panthers’ bench stomping and blowing on plastic horns, the little blond defenceman was being mobbed by his teammates at centre ice, the big dark centre high-fiving him as the others rapped his helmet and slapped his back.
“Perfect timing,” announced Nish. “They’re probably planning a raid right after the game.”
“I still don’t think it’s them,” said Sarah.
The Screech Owls watched to the end of the first period. Then, with the people in the stands heading for the snack bar and the teams huddling at their benches, the Owls casually walked out through the dressing-room doors, with no one paying them the slightest attention.
Data raced ahead and set up a watch. At the far doors, he signalled back with his hand for the rest to go ahead. They checked for the equipment storage room they’d been assigned on arrival–the men’s figure-skating dressing room, which was not being used during the tournament. The rooms had small windows on the big orange steel doors, and from the light of the corridor they could see their logo–The Screech Owls–where Mr. Dillinger had taped it during the team’s first practice.
Derek yanked the keys out of his pocket and quickly opened the door. The players slipped in.
Data flicked on the lights and they came on in stages, the room dimly taking shape, then coming brilliantly alive. It hurt Travis’s black eye at first, but his pupils soon adjusted and the pain vanished.
Their room was in perfect order, just as they would expect from Mr. Dillinger. They quickly checked what they could: Sarah’s straps, skate laces, sticks, the equipment of a few other key players, including Travis’s, which made him glow with pride, and then decided everything was fine.
“What about the camera, though?” Nish asked. “Anybody comes in here it’s the first thing they’d see.”
Norbert had an answer. “We place it under the bench, low, out of sight and in the dark. Then I tilt it to catch anything near Sarah’s stuff. No one will ever see it.”
“Will they hear it?”
“Runs dead silent.”
“What about the batteries? How long will it run?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Norbert said. He pulled a small black attachment out of his windbreaker pocket. “This is an automatic activator. After I set it and we leave, it activates after a thirty-second delay. Any movement and it instantly turns the camera on–no lights, no sound. It’s used for wildlife photography.”
“So if anything happens,” Sarah said, “the camera will catch it?”
“You got it.”
Travis liked what he heard. “Set it up,” he said. “We have to clear this place.”
Norbert moved with an efficiency they never saw on the ice. He set the camera on a special holder and adjusted everything and checked the lens and set up the special activator. Satisfied, he stepped back.
“Perfect,” he announced. “Now let’s get outta here. We’ve got thirty seconds.”
Travis first peeked out the door and down the corridor, where Data was still keeping watch. Data gave him the all-clear sign and Travis waved everyone out after him. Derek shut the door and locked it.
“How could they get in without a key?” Nish hissed.
“Maybe they have a master,” said Wilson.
“Maybe some of the keys are the same,” said Derek.
“Maybe they do it when Mr. Dillinger’s around working,” suggested Norbert.
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 1 Page 7