Feeding Frenzy

by Franklin W. Dixon

  “I’m going to make it do math that’s too hard. Computers go crazy if they try to create a numeric value that’s too big for the available storage space,” Vijay answered. “I’m going to give it a piece of data that’s too big to handle. That’ll make it overwrite some metadata, which will let me overwrite a little data of my own. And, oooh, they have a guest book on the site. That’s always a nice place to inject a piece of code. You’d think a few lines of space to write ’Hi there, loved your hotel’ would be harmless. But you’d be wrong.”

  Frank tapped me on the arm and raised his eyebrows.

  “He’s doing … stuff,” I told him.

  “And I’m in. That was too easy,” said Vijay. “I was just starting to have fun, and it cracked open like an egg. Now what exactly do you need?”

  “Security footage. From today. Sixteenth floor of the Miami hotel,” I told him.

  “I’ll get it to your laptop ASAP,” Vijay promised.

  Frank shut the laptop. “That gave us nothing.”

  “And after Vijay got his guru on,” I said.

  We’d isolated the footage of Vern’s door and watched it. We’d fast-forwarded through every minute since Vern checked in, slowing down to regular speed any time anybody was close to his room. My eyes felt as dry as cotton balls. But we hadn’t seen anything useful.

  No one had gone into Vern’s room since he arrived, except Vern. Not until Angie, Frank, and I ran in there after he screamed. He’d kept the DO NOT DISTURB sign on his door the whole time. That meant not even one of the maids had gone in.

  I was about to start tapping on my forehead again when Frank said, “Wait.”

  “What?” I asked, my hands halfway to my head.

  “The front door isn’t the only way in to the room. We should know that better than anyone,” said Frank.

  I got it. “The balcony.”

  Frank leaned forward. “Yeah. Maybe we weren’t the only ones climbing around out there today.”

  “We pretty much know we weren’t, actually,” I said. “We know the Mystery Girl was on Angie’s balcony. We didn’t mess that up. We were on the balcony right next to Douglas’s. And Angie’s room is right next to his.”

  “But Angie had no idea who we were talking about when we described the Mystery Girl to her, even though she came out of Angie’s room.”

  “Maybe she was moving along the balconies and saw us coming. So maybe she just pretended Angie’s room was hers,” I suggested. “We didn’t see her come out of there. She could have already been on the balcony. In the shadows.”

  “Makes sense to me. And now that we know no one went into Vern’s room through the front door, the Mystery Girl is at the very top of our suspect list,” Frank announced.

  “We’ve got to find her,” I said.

  “Fast,” Frank agreed. “Before she has the chance to go after anyone else.”

  11

  The Secret Identity of Mystery Girl

  Joe and I stared at each other. “So how are we supposed to do this extremely fast finding?” he asked.

  I tapped my fingers lightly on my keyboard. It’s my version of Joe’s forehead tapping. “Well, when you want to find a lost dog, you put up posters with a picture on them. and lost kids get their pictures on milk cartons.”

  “The Sketch program,” Joe said, just as I was clicking on the icon.

  “Face shape first. Round, oval, triangle, inverted triangle, or square?” I asked.

  Joe studied the outlines of the basic faces. “It’s hard. Her face on the YouTube clip was really small, and she was mostly in shadow on the balcony. But I’m thinking inverted triangle. She had one of those cute pointy chins, didn’t you think?”

  I should be good at remembering faces. It’s part of being a good detective and ATAC agent. And usually I can recall every mole and line. It’s just with a certain kind of subject …

  “Sorry, forgot we were talking teenage girl,” Joe said. “Your Kryptonite. So use the inverted triangle.”

  I clicked on it and brought up a selection of eye shapes. Joe frowned at them. “Go with those.”

  I selected the wide-set eyes, with the somewhat hooded lids, and we moved on to lips. Joe had way too many more words of description for those than I needed. “You’re forgetting the fast part of extremely fast finding,” I told him.

  “Okay, those.” He tapped the screen. “With that awesome full perfect curvy part on top. Too bad there’s not a way to put an accent on the screen. I thought her accent was cool.”

  I shook my head as I clicked the lips. We ran through eyebrows and noses. Joe chose brows that were “kind of pointy, but not Jack Nicholson scary pointy,” and a nose that was “Ashlee Simpson pre-surgery.” He had problems with the cheekbones, so we tried four in the face we’d been creating, and he finally chose a fairly narrow pair. We skipped ears, because her long hair had covered them, but we played around with the hairline for a few minutes. Different hairlines really change the face shape.

  “What do you think?” I asked Joe when our most current version came up on the screen.

  “I think if you’d seen the Mystery Girl, you’d recognize her from this picture,” he said. “At least I hope.”

  “Let’s give it a shot.” I faxed the picture to the front desk. Then we rushed to the lobby to pick it up.

  “Have you seen this girl in the hotel?” Joe asked the tall guy—oval face, straight brows, wide cheekbones, eagle nose, small mouth, receding hairline—when he got the fax for us. See, I am good with facial details when I’m not in my trouble area.

  The guy eyed the computer-generated sketch for a moment. “Sorry. Can’t say I have.”

  “Anybody else?” Joe called. He held the sketch up so everyone working behind the registration desk could see it. “Does she look familiar to any of you?”

  We got a variety of ways to express no. We headed to the concierge desk. Got a “nope.” We circled the lobby, checking with all the guests, except the ones who were in line to check in. More no’s.

  We checked with the people poolside—both indoor and outdoor pools. Nothing and nothing.

  “Man, this is getting to be like washing your hair,” Joe muttered.

  “What?” I figured I’d heard him wrong.

  “You know. Lather, rinse, and repeat,” explained Joe.

  I must have still looked like I had no idea what he was talking about. “The instructions on the shampoo bottle,” he said. “I thought you read the instructions for everything. I know I saw you reading the instructions for opening the milk carton the other day.”

  This was another one of those times where Joe just has to be ignored. “I think we should try the maids and the room service people,” I told him. “They see a lot of hotel guests.”

  It was true. They did. But none of them we talked to remembered seeing the Mystery Girl. “The gym?” I suggested.

  “We don’t have any other leads,” Joe said. “We might as well keep showing the sketch around.”

  The gym was feeling pointless when we’d worked through the free-weight section, three Stair-Masters, and two elliptical trainers of no’s. Then we hit the Lifecycles. First one, we got a hit.

  “Isn’t that Savannah Harris?” the woman riding the bike to nowhere said, a little breathless.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Savannah—I think that’s her name. Maybe Cheyenne? But definitely Harris. She’s the daughter of this big money guy who lives in Atlanta. That’s where I’m from. She’s always in the paper there.”

  Atlanta. That matched up with Mystery Girl’s Southern accent.

  “Thanks,” Joe told her. “That was a big help.”

  Joe and I rushed back to our room and got back on the laptop. When you’re an ATAC agent and you’re not in the middle of fighting a forest fire or a shark, you’re on the computer. I typed the name “Savannah Harris” into the Google search bar.

  “She seems to be somebody,” Joe commented, checking out the number of hits.
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  I clicked on the first link. The article that opened—a short little piece from an Atlanta gossip column—had a picture of a girl with long blond hair, wide-set eyes, pointy eyebrows. I glanced over at Joe. He’d gotten a better look at the Mystery Girl … for reasons I don’t need to go into again.

  “I’m not a hundred percent positive. The dress doesn’t show the bumblebee tattoo. But I’m ninety percent,” he told me. “So what’s her deal?”

  “Sixteen-year-old Savannah Harris, daughter of Matthias Harris, helps out at the DAR’s silent auction to raise money to fight world hunger,” I said, reading the caption under the photo. I hit another link. There was another photo of Savannah. This time the bumblebee had made the picture. So had Savannah’s dad.

  “Mystery girl—I mean Savannah Harris—just got motive,” Joe burst out. He pointed to the words “Matthias Harris, owner of the multinational company Stadium Franks” in the middle of the new article.

  I nodded. “Right. Her father’s company is in competition with Football Franks. Bad publicity for the contest equals bad publicity for her father’s competitor.”

  “And dead people—or even just canceled competitions—that’s what I’d call bad publicity,” said Joe. “Is there something higher than the top of the suspect list? Because if there is, Savannah Harris should be up there.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “The only problem is, even though we know who the Mystery Girl is now, we still don’t know where she is.”

  “Let’s check with the front desk, just in case she’s staying here and registered under her own name,” Joe suggested.

  A couple of minutes later, we were back in front of the tall, oval-faced, straight-browed, wide-cheek-boned, eagle-nosed, small-mouthed, receding-hairlined desk clerk. “Hello again,” he said. “Expecting another fax?”

  “No,” I told him. “We just wanted to see if a friend of ours is checked in. Savannah Harris.”

  The clerk clicked a few keys on his computer. “We have no one by that name registered.”

  “Thanks anyway,” Joe said.

  “Just a minute,” the clerk called as we turned away. “Let me get you some club soda. It should get that stain on your sleeve right out.” He hurried off.

  Joe glanced at the splotch on his sleeve. “Didn’t even know it was there.” He brushed at it, then glanced at his fingers. “This stuff is funky-looking. What do you think it even is?” he asked me.

  He held his hand up in front of my face. The gunk on his fingers was tan and bumpy. I shook my head. “I don’t know. It looks like your fingers are breaking out.”

  “There’s no way I’m getting zits on my hands,” Joe said. He rubbed his fingers together. The bumps collapsed and smeared. He frowned, then wiped his hand on his shirt.

  I winced. Joe can be such a slob.

  “What?” he asked. “It had that gunk on it already.”

  “Here you go,” the clerk said, returning with the club soda. He didn’t know my brother. Joe’s only method of stain removal is his own spit, if he even bothers to try that.

  “Thanks,” Joe told him.

  “I don’t have any idea what to do next,” I admitted as we headed away from the desk.

  “Me either.” Joe flopped down on one of the pale green sofas in a corner of the lobby away from everybody else. I snagged the chair across from him.

  “I hate to admit it, but I wouldn’t mind hearing Dad’s advice right about now,” I said.

  Joe pointed at me. “You are never going to let him know those words came out of your mouth. And anyway, we both know what he’d say. He’s given us every piece of advice he has about a hundred times.”

  “So give it to me. What would he say?” I asked.

  “If you’re at a dead end, go back to the beginning,” Joe told me.

  I leaned my head back and stared up at the ceiling. “The beginning. We got the game cartridge with the mission on it in the box of Underoos.”

  “That’s a little too much detail,” said Joe. “There are some things I’d like to forget.”

  “You never know which details are important. That’s another thing Dad’s told us a hundred times,” I reminded him.

  “Okay, okay, so we got the deets on David Cole’s death. It was murder. And we got assigned to go undercover as gurgitators. We did some research, did a little practicing, arrived here. You wouldn’t let me hit the pool. You had me do more research. We gathered info on the other contestants.”

  I lifted my head up so I could look at him. “You left out the part about the death threats,” I said. “Then we went to dinner. We met Jordan. Who seemed a lot more interested in football than—”

  “Anything else in life,” Joe finished for me.

  “Definitely more interested in the Super Bowl than in the contest,” I agreed. I concentrated on getting the sequence of events right. “Then Kyle showed.”

  “Frank Hardy!” Joe said, doing the Kyle Skloot finger point at me.

  “Yeah. He made himself real popular, bragging about how hard he’d trained and how he was absolutely going to win,” I continued.

  “Angie and Douglas were next up.” Joe was counting off the contestants on his fingers. “Douglas hardly said anything.”

  “And Angie went after Kyle, remember?” I asked.

  “It was great!” Joe answered. “She was all, ‘You wouldn’t even be here if that other guy hadn’t died.’ And she kept snapping her gum at him.”

  “That mix of watermelon and peppermint,” I said. “I could smell it from where I was sitting.”

  “Say that again,” Joe demanded.

  “What? Watermelon and peppermint?” I shrugged. “It is a weird combination. But no weirder than some of the food other people were combining that night. I was eating oatmeal and cabbage myself.”

  “Watermelon and peppermint. Fruity and spicy. That’s how the Mystery Girl smelled to me when we were talking to her on the balcony,” Joe told me. “That’s kind of bizarre. Like you said, it’s a weird combination.”

  “She was on Angie’s balcony,” I said slowly. “Angie’s the other one with the smell. But I don’t get what that could mean.”

  “Do you think they know each other?” Joe asked. “Do you think that room is really Mystery Girl’s—I mean Savannah’s—and Angie’s? If you share a room, it’s normal that you’d share packs of gum.” He paused. “Could they be working together?” Joe’s eyes began flicking back and forth, the way they do when his brain is piecing together connections.

  “What would Angie’s motive be for that? Savannah wants bad publicity for the competition, because bad publicity for Football Franks is good publicity for her father’s company. And bad publicity on TV during the Super Bowl—that’s a lot of bad publicity. More people watch the Super Bowl than almost anything else,” I said. “But Angie just wants to win the contest and go to film school.”

  “Doesn’t seem like their motives go together. One wants to pretty much bring the contest down. One wants to win it. If we have their motives straight,” agreed Joe.

  “But the weird smell thing, and Savannah being on Angie’s balcony … I’m not ready to let that go,” I admitted.

  “Why don’t we go show our drawing of Savannah to Angie?” Joe suggested. “When we described Savannah to her, she said she hadn’t seen anyone like that. But I’d be curious to see her reaction if we stick the sketch in front of her face and use the name Savannah Harris.”

  “Can’t hurt. And we’ve got nothing else to go on right now.” I got up, and we took another ride in the glass elevator.

  Joe gave a couple of loud knocks on Angie’s door.

  No answer.

  Not even a whisper of movement from inside.

  “That’s strange.” Joe tried the door. Locked. “Angie said she was going to stay in her room all night. She sounded like she was too scared to go out for anything.”

  I knocked on the door. “Angie!” I called. “Are you okay?”

  “She might be pr
etending she’s not there because she thinks anyone in the contest—including us—could be the killer,” said Joe. “I don’t know why I thought she’d just open up to look at the picture.”

  “Or maybe she’s in there, but the killer’s already gotten to her.” I pulled the lock pick out of my pocket. A few twists, a jerk, and the door swung open.

  Angie lay on the floor. A bowl of salad, two apples, and some carrots were scattered next to her.

  “I don’t think she’s breathing,” Joe said.

  12

  She’s Not Breathing

  I dashed over to Angie and dropped to my knees next to her. I pressed my ear to her chest. It felt … bulky. Bunchy. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not.

  I realized her sweatshirt had a layer of padding sewn into it. Another technique to sweat without burning calories? Didn’t matter right now. I ripped out as much of the padding as I could and pressed my head to her chest again.

  She definitely wasn’t breathing.

  Airway. First I needed to clear the airway. Gently I tilted her chin up. That made her head fall backward. Her glasses fell off, and I pushed them aside. Okay, now with her head back, air should be able to flow into her nose and mouth.

  But I didn’t see her chest rising and falling. And I should be able to tell now that the padding was gone.

  I brought my ear close to her lips, getting a whiff of that mint and watermelon. I listened for inhaling and exhaling.

  Nothing.

  “She’s not breathing,” I yelled to Frank.

  “Check her pulse. I’ll call 911.” He scrambled for the phone. I pressed my fingers against Angie’s throat. For a moment, all I could feel was my own wild heartbeat pounding through my body. I took a deep breath. Focused.

  “She’s got a pulse,” I told Frank. “Erratic, but there.”

  “Start rescue breathing,” he said.

  I nodded. We’d both had serious EMT training through ATAC. I made sure Angie’s head was still tilted back, then I pinched her nose closed with my thumb and index finger. Breathe slow, I coached myself as I pressed my mouth over Angie’s. As my breath entered her, I watched to see if her chest rose. It didn’t.