“Attempts to kill—or at least hurt—you and Jordan were made too. The only connection you, Jordan, and Angie have is the competition, right?” I asked.
“We may as well add David Cole in there too,” added Joe.
“Fine. And David. Was there another connection among the four of you?” If there was, that would take our case in a whole different direction.
“I never met Angie or Jordan before Friday. Never talked to them or anything,” Vern said. “And I never met David Cole. I knew who they all were, because of the contest, but that’s it.”
I looked over at Jordan. He gave a helpless shrug. “Same for me.”
“Then it seems like the only thing the victims have in common is the eating contest. And it seems like the only motive is reducing the competition. Or am I missing something?” I looked around the table. “Can anyone else think of anything?”
No one said anything. I turned to Vern. “Then I guess you’re probably right. The only people who could benefit from Angie getting poisoned, and all the other stuff, are all of us sitting here.”
“But it’s over, right?” Jordan asked again.
“It’s not over until the contest is over,” Kyle shot back. “Do you have the memory of a goldfish or something? David Cole died practically in the middle of the contest. That could happen to one of us today.”
“Then why are we even doing this?” exclaimed Vern.
“Don’t start with that again,” Kyle told him. “All I care about is who has been doing this to us. I know it’s not me. You and you got attacked”—he pointed to Jordan and Vern—“so I figure you’re both out.”
Kyle stood up and began to pace around the table. Like he was playing some extreme version of duck, duck, goose. “That leaves you.” He paused behind me. “You.” He paused behind Joe. “And you.” He stopped behind Douglas and put both hands on Douglas’s shoulders. I could see him digging his fingers in.
“Now, this guy seems like too much of a wimp to kill anything, right?” Kyle asked. “Maybe a fly or something, but that’s about it.” He jerked his chin toward me and Joe. “Those two look more like the type who could figure out how to kill someone if they wanted to.”
Joe and I exchanged a what’s-going-on glance. Kyle kept on ranting. “But my money is still on this guy. Let’s not forget, he was in L.A. when David was killed.” Douglas tried to get to his feet, but Kyle held him in place.
I wasn’t going to let this get too out of control. But I wanted to see it play out a little further. Maybe Joe and I could learn something about Kyle or Douglas that was vital.
“And you know how it is with killers. Their neighbors and the people who work with them and everyone are always saying that they were so surprised because the psycho seemed so nice and quiet,” Kyle continued. “Now, doesn’t that just about describe our friend Douglas here?”
“You’re the one who’s acting psycho,” said Jordan.
“You want to win bad, don’t you, Dougie?” Kyle asked. “I saw your sister prancing around yesterday, getting all the attention. I know that had to burn you. You want to show her that she’s not so special, am I right?”
“Yes!” Douglas shouted. “I hate her. I hate how she’s always dragging home trophies. She thinks she’s so much better than me.”
I heard Vern suck in his breath with a hiss.
Douglas gave a vicious twist and managed to get away from Kyle and onto his feet. He faced off with Kyle. “I do want to win. I want to show everyone I’m not nothing. But I didn’t kill anyone.”
Kyle crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t believe you. In fact, I’m even more convinced you’re the killer after your little tantrum. So why don’t we go find Mr. Poplin? You can confess everything, and then you can go take a nap in a place with nice, soft walls. And the rest of us can compete without worrying about being offed.”
“Is it true, Douglas?” Jordan asked.
“It’s obviously true,” Kyle answered for him. He reached for Douglas’s arm. Douglas shoved him back—hard. I sprang to my feet.
“You were in L.A. too,” Douglas spat. “You’re trying to turn this all around on me, but you were sitting right next to David when he died.” He gave Kyle another push. “And you’re the pathetic one. You had this great life. You had a girlfriend. You had friends. You probably even have some trophies for your chess. And you gave it all up so you could eat a lot of hot dogs. You’re the psycho.” He started to push Kyle again.
Kyle hauled back his fist. I was there before he could use it to smash Douglas’s face in. I kept Kyle’s arm pressed behind his back. “You don’t have any proof of what you’re saying, do you?” I asked.
Douglas shook his head. I looked around the table. “None of us knows who’s behind the attacks, am I right?”
“I wish I did, but no,” said Jordan.
“No,” Douglas said, his voice back to its usual softness.
Joe and Vern shook their heads.
“Kyle?” I asked.
“Fine. I don’t have proof,” he muttered. I let him go and he sat down. I got back in my seat too.
“Hey, guys, we’re going to the Super Bowl,” Jordan called out. “Woo-hoo!” But his voice was flat, and I could tell he was scared. We all were.
Make that all but one. The murderer was still in control. What did he have to be afraid of?
That’s going to change, I promised myself. I’m not sure exactly how. But the killer is going to be the one feeling fear before this day is over.
Second quarter. Fourth down, with two yards to go. Close game. The kind of game that could become legendary.
And our seats. Front row. Front row at the Super Bowl. You could hear the bones crunch. You could smell the sweat.
But Joe and I could hardly enjoy it. We were on high alert. There wasn’t much time left if the killer planned to make another move. We had to be ready.
I scanned our group again. Jordan seemed out of his mind—with joy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person as happy as he was right now. Once when I was at the park, I saw this woman open a brand-new can of tennis balls and give all three to her golden retriever at once. That golden retriever might have been as out-of-its-head happy as Jordan was right this second. Maybe.
Vern was hardly watching the game. Most of his attention was on working his way through two gallons of aloe vera juice.
Kyle wasn’t watching the game at all. His eyes were closed, his hands palms up on his thighs. The guy was meditating. During the Super Bowl.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Vern announced.
“Me too,” said Joe, following Vern out of our row, with a longing look toward the field. We’d agreed that none of our suspects was going anywhere unescorted. We didn’t want any of them to have a chance to get near where the food was being prepped.
There were three of them, and only two of us, but it wasn’t the kind of situation where the group really split up much. By the time Joe and Vern got back, the people running the contest wanted us in the locker room getting ready.
How cool is that? We got to use the home locker room. It was painted turquoise. It had a carpet with a huge dolphin wearing a football helmet on it. And it smelled … exactly like locker rooms always smell. Jordan was sucking in such deep breaths of the odor I started to think he might hyperventilate.
“Man, I’m lovin’ this,” he gasped.
“Okay, kids, it’s almost show time,” Mr. Poplin announced. “Here’s Tommy the Tiger, Miami’s most popular DJ. He’ll be hosting.”
A massive guy who looked like he could be a football player himself gave us a wave. “Nobody puke on me!” he warned with a smile.
“And you’ll each have three of the Dolphins cheerleaders rooting you on,” Mr. Poplin continued. “The blimp will be overhead flashing the number of dogs you’ve eaten. The counters will be radioing them up.” He smiled. “And it will also be flashing the Football Franks logo, of course. We’ll start things up—”
He was drowned out by the thundering sound of the Patriots returning to the locker room. Up close, it was almost like they were a different species.
“We’ll get out of your way,” Mr. Poplin called. “Kids, line up by the door where we came in. Tony’s going to call your names one by one, and you’ll run out to the table that’s going to be set out on the fifty yard line.”
“Good luck,” one of the players said as I trotted toward the door. He slapped my shoulder. It was like getting whacked with an iron skillet. But it was cool.
“Hey, y’all, it’s Rockin’ Tony the Ti-ger.” Tony’s voice blasted through the locker room’s sound system. “Get yourselves ready for some truly hard-core competition. Something that takes true physical ability.”
“Hey!” yelled one of the players in mock anger. At least I was hoping it was mock.
“You’re about to see six young men go head to head. Or should I say stomach to stomach, in the final round of the Football Franks Hot Dog Eating Contest! Give it up!” Tony yelled. And the crowd roared in response.
For the first time it hit me—really hit me—that all those people in the packed stadium who’d been watching the game were going to be watching me in about a minute. The thought didn’t do much for my stomach. All I could think was, please don’t let me hurl on national television.
“First up, we’ve got Jordan Watnabe.” Mr. Poplin opened the door for Jordan and he jogged out, waving to the crowd as they cheered for him.
“Now here’s Vern Ricci!”
Vern shoved his bangs out of his face, then walked through the door.
“Next up, Kyle ‘the Cannibal’ Skloot!”
“See you out there, losers,” Kyle said to the rest of us with a grin.
“Don’t worry,” Joe told me as Kyle ran out the door. “I came up with excellent eater names for us.”
“What?” I demanded.
But Tony was already talking again, introducing Douglas to loud applause.
“Now we have a pair of cousins,” Tony went on. “We have Joe ‘the Wood Chipper’ Hardy,” Tony cried.
“You put a cannibal in a wood chipper, one dead cannibal comes out the other side,” Joe explained. Then he grinned and trotted out the door, doing the prize fighter handclasp over his head.
“And Frank ‘the Vacuum Cleaner’ Hardy!” Tony yelled out.
That’s it? I thought as I ran out into the blazing Miami sunlight. He gets to be a wood chipper and I get to be Aunt Trudy’s favorite household appliance?
I scowled at Joe as I sat down at the table between him and Jordan and across from Kyle. He gave me a wide-eyed what’s-the-prob-bro look in response. As if he didn’t know.
Tony started to give the rundown of the rules, as the piles, and piles, and piles of hot dogs were brought out and placed in front of us. I tuned out his voice. I knew all the rules by heart. Instead I concentrated on making sure I knew exactly where Kyle’s hands were. Joe would be watching Douglas’s. There was still time for one of them to try to add a little poison to the food we were about to shovel down. Or, in my case, I guess it should be vacuum up.
The cheerleaders right behind me were shouting. The crowd was shouting along with them. Kyle’s hands, I told myself. That’s all you care about. Kyle’s hands.
Then bang! The starter pistol went off. And all Kyle’s hands were doing was getting the hot dogs from the plate to his gaping mouth. It was on.
I ripped the buns off ten hot dogs. Then I used both fists to crush the buns into balls as small as vitamins. I’d decided I liked this method better than dunking. I shoved all ten little bun vitamins into my mouth and swallowed them with the help of a swig of water.
Now the dogs. I wasn’t crazy about the Solomon method. My throat still didn’t feel two-conveyer-belt wide. But I hadn’t found anything I liked better. I broke the first dog in half and put the pieces in my mouth side by side, then I raised my arms over my head and snaked my body back and forth. It wasn’t a shimmy. It was more like a sway. But it got the dogs down with minimal chewing time.
I repeated the process. Break. Put the dogs on the belt. Sway/swallow. I tried not to think. About anything. Especially not how the dogs felt going down. They weren’t bad once they were in my stomach. But if I thought about them on the way down, they immediately wanted to come back up. And that would get me eliminated.
Break. Put the dogs on the belt. Sway/swallow. I was very, very glad when I could return to the bun removal and crushing portion of my routine.
The back of my neck started to perspire. Then my eyes started to sting as sweat ran into them. Meat sweats? Or just regular sweats from sitting in the sun? Didn’t matter. I wasn’t stopping now. No one was. I could see blurs of motion all around the table.
I was back to the dogs again. Break. Put the dogs on the belt. Sway/swallow. And repeat. It’s like what Joe said about shampooing your hair, I thought wildly. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
“One minute, guys,” Tony shouted. “One minute remaining.”
Time to cram. I did one last sway/swallow. Then I started using my teeth to shred the dogs into tiny bits like I was a human, yeah, wood chipper. I shoved the bits into my cheeks, then did the lather, rinse, and repeat. My cheeks were bulging when Tony called time.
My counter leaned close and watched as I slowly, very slowly, managed to transfer all those hot dog bits from my cheeks to my throat to my belly. The cheerleaders gave it up for me as my counter added up all the hot dogs I’d eaten, making sure to check under the table to make sure none had ended up there instead of in my stomach.
I had no idea how many I’d eaten. It was like I’d turned into a machine during the twenty minutes. A machine that couldn’t do anything but eat. Not even something basic like count.
The counters gathered in a cluster with Tony and Mr. Poplin. “I’ll spare you the stress of waiting,” Kyle told us. “I won.”
Joe rolled his eyes. “Wood chipper beats cannibal, dude,” he muttered.
“And the winner is—” Tony made us wait for it, then gave it up. “Kyle Skloot!”
“Nothing beats the Cannibal,” Kyle said with a smile.
Joe reached across the table and shook his hand. So did Jordan, Douglas, and I. Vern looked too ill to move.
“Kyle, come back to the locker room with me,” Mr. Poplin said as he came up to the table. “We have a press conference set up.” He smiled at the rest of us. “You boys did an amazing job. Enjoy the rest of the game.”
“Have you heard anything about Angie?” I asked. It seemed less complicated not to admit we knew who she really was.
“Her parents are with her. Strange situation there …” Mr. Poplin let his words trail off, clearly wanting to keep the family’s secrets. “But her condition is stable. She’s going to be fine. The family’s going to be fine. They’re working everything out. I just wish I knew who did that to her. And I’m still thinking about that device on your surfboard, Jordan. They’d never seen anything like it at the surf shop.”
Joe and I were still thinking about the device too. And the rattler. And the poison that had been put in Savannah’s salad. And David’s murder.
After the game, we’d all be heading back to the hotel to get our stuff, then we’d be going home. Our suspects would be flying off to different states. Joe and I were running out of time to solve this.
“We probably shouldn’t keep the reporters waiting,” said Kyle.
Mr. Poplin frowned but said, “Probably not. We’ll be back in a bit,” he added.
Jordan led the way back over to our amazing front-row seats. He didn’t seem very upset over losing. Douglas looked pretty bummed, but not homicidal. It was hard to tell about Vern. He looked pale and sweaty and out of it, but that could be from eating all those dogs in such a short time. I was pretty sure I didn’t look that good myself.
“Hey, Vern, you came in second!” Jordan called. He pointed to the blimp. He was right. Kyle had eaten sixty-three hot dogs. Vern had eaten sixty-two and a half
.
“Oh, man, so close,” Joe sympathized. “You did great. The next competition you enter, I’m sure you’re going to win.”
“I’m not entering another one,” Vern snapped just as Kyle’s giant head appeared on all the screens around the stadium.
“Our hot dog eating champ, Kyle Skloot!” Tony cried over the sound system. “Tell us how you feel, Kyle.”
“I feel awesome!” Kyle exclaimed. “Just the way I knew I’d feel. I’ve been visualizing this moment for months. That was one of my techniques. Visualizing how I’d feel when I triumphed. Hearing my victory applause. Seeing the faces of my defeated competitors.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Joe said. “And it has nothing to do with eating”—he checked his numbers on the blimp—“thirty-one hot dogs. Hey!” He turned to me. “You beat me. How could that happen. Wood chipper definitely beats vacuum.”
I shook my head at him. “Have you forgotten? Older brother definitely beats younger brother.”
“The game’s about to start!” Jordan announced. “They’re getting Kyle off the screen.”
“But everybody watching the game on TV, which is more than a hundred and thirty-seven million, had to hear what he had to say,” Vern told him.
“A hundred and thirty-seven million? Wow, I knew it was a lot, but I didn’t know it was that many,” I answered as the teams ran back onto the field.
“Do you want to go to the bathroom, Vern?” Joe asked. “You’re not looking too well.”
It was true. Vern was looking even worse than before. His eyes were darting around feverishly. “I’m okay. Maybe I’ll just have some of my aloe vera juice.” He picked up the plastic jug and uncapped it, but managed to spill it before he got it to his mouth.
I grabbed some napkins out of my pocket and started to mop it up. I didn’t want my feet to end up stuck to the ground. I might need to move fast at some point—if Joe and I did finally get a break in the case.
Vern crouched down next to me and helped. One of his shirtsleeves had gotten soaked, and he shoved it up. I didn’t know why he was wearing long sleeves in Miami anyway.
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