The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 2

by Roy MacGregor

  And yet the dressing room was half full. Sarah was there, already dressed but for her skates and sweater. Fahd was there. And Lars, sitting quietly with his Owls sweater hanging above him. Mr. Dillinger was busy at the back of the room, sharpening Sarah’s skates.

  Travis came in and set his bag quietly on the floor. He rested his sticks against the wall and moved to his own seat. Still, no one had said a word. He looked over at Sarah, who was biting her lip. She pointed back at her sweater. She wanted him to see something.

  Travis looked at his own sweater, number 7, hanging at the back of his stall. There was a new little crest sewn on it over the heart, just to the side of his C. It was a small four-leafed clover, with the number 6 in the centre.

  Data’s number.

  Travis looked back at Sarah, who jerked her thumb towards Mr. Dillinger, busy as ever at his sharpening machine. Of course, Mr. Dillinger would have had the crests made, would have stitched them on himself and hung the sweaters up without a word. Good old Mr. Dillinger.

  Soon the team was all there, each player entering in silence, then sitting in silence. Some even with their helmets pulled on. There were two sweaters still hanging up untouched. Data’s number 6, of course, but also number 3: Nish.

  Still no one had said a word.

  The door opened and Muck came in. And right behind Muck–with his arm in a sling poking out through the opened zipper of his Screech Owls jacket–was Nish. Nish’s cast had a green four-leafed clover painted on it, with a number 6 in the middle.

  “We have a new assistant coach, tonight,” Muck announced.

  Nish beamed from ear to ear and took a ridiculous bow in Sarah’s direction. Sarah rolled her eyes.

  “And we have another one who can’t be with us,” Muck added.

  He said nothing else, just turned and walked out, staring straight ahead. For once, Fahd didn’t have to ask the obvious: who? It was Data–tonight the Screech Owls were playing for Data.

  “Let’s go!” Sarah suddenly shouted, jumping up and pumping a gloved fist in the air. She grabbed her stick from the wall and slammed it, hard, into Jenny’s big goalie pads.

  “Stone ’em, Jen!” Sarah shouted.

  “Let’s do it for Data!” Andy called.

  “For Data!” Lars yelled.

  “Data!”

  “Data!”

  “And Nish!” someone called.

  Travis turned to look. It was Nish calling for himself.

  Nish shrugged sheepishly, and Travis smiled. He swung his sticks back as he plucked them from the wall, and tapped his good friend lightly on the shins.

  “For Data and Nish,” he said.

  What was it about this game of hockey, Travis wondered, that sometimes everything could feel wrong–even the way your feet fit into the skates–and a day later everything could feel exactly right? He felt this Friday night as if skating had somehow become the natural way of human movement. He felt as if the ice were at his mercy; he was in no danger of slippery corners or too great a distance. If he reached for the puck, it seemed to reach back for him, puck and stick blade seemingly magnetized. He put his first two warm-up shots off the crossbar.

  Muck and Nish and Barry worked the bench. Ty was out of town, so Nish pretty much handled the defence on his own, taking signals from Muck and using his good arm to tap the backs of sweaters to indicate line changes.

  When Sarah’s line was out, Muck wanted Sarah to go in hard with one winger on the forecheck and try to stop the good Orillia defence before they could get out of their own end with the puck. The other winger was to lie back around the blueline, hoping to intercept any pass that Sarah and the other winger might force.

  Travis was first in on the top Orillia defenceman, and he came in hard, skating as well as, if not better than, he’d ever skated before. Was it because of their day of shinny in the open creek? Was it because of Data? He didn’t know; all he knew was that as soon as he saw where he needed to be, he was there. He flew into the Orillia end, racing towards the other team’s best puckhandler. He had no idea how he knew, just that he knew. He came in hard and then dragged his right skate just as the defender tried to slip the puck between Travis’s feet. The puck caught, and Travis, instantly, came free with it on the other side.

  He kicked the puck up onto his stick, dug hard to turn towards the net, and then deked back again to the near side of the net, forcing the Orillia goalie to shift tight to his post. A quick little pass across the crease and Sarah had buried the puck with a quick snap of a shot.

  First shift, and the Owls had already scored.

  The Owls on the ice mobbed Sarah but she shook them free. She hurried to where the linesman was digging the puck out and held out her glove for it. He handed it over with a smile. Perhaps he thought it was her first-ever goal.

  “For Data,” Sarah said when she got back to the bench.

  She handed the puck to Nish to hold for her. Nish took the puck in his good hand and jammed it into his pocket.

  “Ouch!” Nish yelped, and yanked his hand out, fast. His thumb had caught on something. It was already beading blood.

  Mr. Dillinger quickly grabbed a towel to press against the cut. He dabbed quickly and looked carefully at the damage.

  “Not deep,” he said. “I’ll get a bandage.”

  Travis’s line was back out for another shift. When they got back, Mr. Dillinger was just finishing up. With the scissors he carried on his belt, he snipped off the last wrap of bandage.

  “Great!” Nish said. “Now I’ve got no hands!”

  If they thought the game against Orillia would be easy, they were wrong. The Owls had scored first, but the Orillia goalie had no intention of letting in any more goals after Sarah’s.

  Travis had rarely worked harder in a game. He skated well and had plenty of good chances, but it was as if a huge plywood board had been nailed over the other team’s net. He was robbed twice on glove saves. Dmitri failed on two breakaways.

  Something was wrong with Owls. They were giving fine individual efforts, but they weren’t working like a team. Travis thought it was as though they were missing something–and then he shut his eyes and shook his head hard.

  They were missing something: Data.

  Inspired by their goaltender, the Orillia players slowly mounted their comeback. Playing magnificently–everyone working together–they tied the game in the second period and went ahead, to stay, early in the third. Muck pulled Jenny in the final minute, but even with an extra attacker the Owls could not get past the splendid Orillia goalie.

  The game over, the Screech Owls headed for their dressing room in silence, heads down. Travis felt he had failed Data even more than he had failed the team. They had wanted to take him a win, but instead they had lost, and Orillia were now the top team in their division.

  But at least they had the puck from Sarah’s one goal. It wasn’t much, but it was something to take to Data.

  Sarah asked for Data’s puck, and Mr. Dillinger had to reach into Nish’s jacket pocket to get it.

  “Watch your hand,” Nish warned, holding out his bandaged thumb as proof of the danger.

  “Okay,” Mr. Dillinger said, “I got it.”

  Mr. Dillinger carefully pulled out the prized puck and flipped it to Sarah, who caught it easily.

  But Mr. Dillinger wanted to find out what it was that had cut Nish’s fingers.

  “You’ve got something caught in here, son,” he called.

  Carefully, Mr. Dillinger pulled a sliver of shiny metal out of Nish’s pocket.

  “That’s what I cut my hand on!” Nish shouted.

  Mr. Dillinger blinked at the piece of chrome, turning it over and over. He handed it to Muck, who took it and carefully looked himself.

  “Looks like a piece of trim,” Muck said.

  “Off a car,” Mr. Dillinger said.

  Nish shot a surprised and excited look at Travis.

  A clue.

  It took two days for the police laboratory in Toro
nto to report back on the piece of metal that had turned up in Nish’s pocket. It was side stripping from a car, all right. The car would have been a Chevrolet, but there were two different models it might have come from, and those models had been in production for three years. In other words, there were tens of thousands of cars the piece of metal could have come from. Dozens around Tamarack alone.

  “They say the car might not even have come from here,” Mr. Lindsay told Travis and Nish.

  Travis sighed deeply. “What are they going to do?” he asked.

  “They’ll check similar cars in the area,” Mr. Lindsay said, “see if one of them’s missing some stripping from up around the front left side–but don’t get your hopes up too high, boys. Travis’s grandfather drives a Chevrolet. So does Mr. Dillinger. It’s almost too common a model to do us any good.”

  Travis and Nish tried to play video games to pass the rest of the day, but Nish claimed he couldn’t play up to his usual high standards with a cast on, and after a while they simply paused the game and talked.

  “It can’t be from out of town,” Travis said.

  “How do you know?” asked Nish. “It could have been driven here from anywhere. It’s a car, after all.”

  “Yeah, but don’t forget the day. It was so slippery, cars couldn’t get anywhere. No one would drive any distance that day.”

  Nish was only half listening. “Maybe.”

  “And don’t forget where he was. The back streets. No one would drive up here from Orillia or someplace like that and be driving around our back streets drunk, would they?”

  “Probably not–but who knows what a drunk will do?”

  “And that’s significant, too,” Travis almost shouted. He was excited; his brain was really working.

  “What’s significant?”

  “He was drunk.”

  “Obviously.”

  “But he had to get drunk first.”

  “Obviously again.”

  “So, think of the direction he was headed.”

  Nish thought for a moment. “Towards Main Street, I guess.”

  “Exactly! Which means he was coming from…?”

  Nish looked at Travis, bewildered. “I don’t know. There’s nothing much up Cedar beyond the curling rink and the baseball diamonds…Mr. Turley’s farm…a few houses on the other side of the road…”

  “An out-of-towner wouldn’t come along that way. But somebody who lives up here would. Or maybe somebody who was at the curling rink, drinking.”

  “There was a bottle that fell out, remember. He didn’t have to go to the curling rink to get drunk.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. But maybe it was an old bottle, already empty. Or maybe he was already drunk and then continued drinking in his car. There’s a good chance he was either someone from around here, maybe even up Cedar Street, or someone who’d been at the curling rink.”

  “That’s not much to go on,” said Nish, unimpressed.

  “But we have something else,” Travis protested.

  “What’s that?”

  “The Chevrolet. We can find out who drives one who also lives out that way. Maybe even who has one and belongs to the curling club.”

  “Didn’t you listen to your father?” Nish said, absentmindedly. “He said there were dozens of them.”

  “There are,” said Travis, grinning with satisfaction. “But only one is missing a strip of metal.”

  Nish looked back at Travis, finally prepared to admit Travis might be right. “Let’s get some help,” he said.

  They raised whatever Owls could be located quickly by telephone calls and knocking on doors. Sarah was there. And Jenny, Lars, Andy, Fahd, Dmitri, and Liz. Travis outlined what it was they were looking for: a mid-sized Chevrolet at least three years old but no more than six years old, colour uncertain.

  “I can’t tell one car from another,” said Sarah.

  “Don’t worry,” said Travis, “we can wipe off the snow until we see if it’s a Chevrolet or not. And if it is, it’ll just take a second to check the driver’s side near the front for missing stripping. That should be simple enough.”

  They marked out an area of approximately six blocks, plus the curling rink, plus the new houses across from Turley’s farm. Then, setting out in pairs, they arranged to meet back at the curling rink in an hour.

  Travis and Nish found two Chevrolets that fit the description, but one was Travis’s own grandfather’s–and Harold Lindsay had never touched a drop of drink in his life–and the other was in perfect shape, its stripping as good as new. Sarah and Liz found three. One of them had a bashed-in side, but the damage was on the passenger side. The other two were in perfect shape, trim intact. Andy and Dmitri found only one, but it belonged to Mr. Dickens, who owned the Shell station at the corner of River and Main and who had coached most of the Screech Owls in atom. Like Travis’s grandfather, he was one of the most respected men in town, and anyway, there was no damage on his car. Jenny and Fahd found none.

  Six cars, and no suspects. But they still had the curling-rink parking lot to do.

  “What if someone catches us?” asked Fahd, who was always worried about something.

  “We’ll pretend we’re having a snowball fight,” suggested Sarah. “Get your snow off the backs of the cars–that way you can check the make out.”

  “No fair!” complained Nish. “I can’t pack.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “It is not a real snowball fight, Nishikawa. We are pre-tend-ing.”

  Sarah’s idea worked brilliantly. They packed snowballs and checked for Chevrolets. They ducked down and, while they were hidden between cars, checked for missing metal stripping. One man even came out of the curling rink, saw them, and started laughing at their game. Little did he know he had just walked into the middle of a criminal investigation.

  Finally the Owls had worked their way through all the rows and all the cars. They were snow-covered and exhausted.

  “Four Chevrolets,” said Travis, summing up, after they had all reported.

  “And nothing missing,” said Andy, dejected.

  “Well…,” mumbled Fahd, seeming to search for the right words.

  “You found something?” Travis asked.

  “Not really, but–”

  “But what?” Nish said impatiently.

  “I think we need to look at one of them again,” said Fahd.

  He led the seven other Owls along one of the rows of cars, dipped between two of them, and in the next row found the one he wanted.

  Andy checked carefully along the driver’s side.

  “It’s in perfect shape,” he announced.

  “But,” said Fahd, swallowing, “that’s the point.”

  “What’s the point?” Nish asked in a challenging voice.

  “It…it’s too perfect,” Fahd mumbled. “This is not a new car.”

  They all leaned closer around Andy. Travis took his glove off and rubbed it along the side of the car. Andy knocked the snow off further along. He wiped the metal clean, so it shone.

  “This guy’s had bodywork done,” said Andy.

  “And recently, too,” said Travis.

  “We’ve got something,” said Sarah.

  A second clue.

  All eight Screech Owls scrambled up and over the high snowbank at the end of the lot. They lay on their stomachs, watched, and waited.

  “I gotta be in by nine,” Fahd warned.

  “I’m good till nine-thirty,” said Sarah.

  “Nine.”

  “Nine-thirty.”

  “Nine.”

  “Nine.”

  “Nine.”

  “Midnight.”

  Travis turned to his side and looked crossly at Nish, who was beaming from ear to ear. Nish, the Man About Town, who would tell them he and his uncle sometimes enjoyed a good cigar after dinner. Who once maintained he’d driven the car around the block. Who in his imagination would stay up all night long, drinking and smoking and partying, but who would wake up in his T
oronto Maple Leafs pyjamas in the morning and expect his mother to bring him in a bowlful of Fruit Loops while he watched the Saturday-morning cartoons.

  “In your dreams,” Sarah said.

  How late they could all stay mattered. What if this really was the car they were looking for, and what if the driver was going to be curling and drinking until midnight? Would Nish still be on watch for him? Whoever it was who drove this Chevrolet with the new bodywork, he had to come out before the Owls went to bed.

  They waited and talked. About the loss to Orillia. About the team. About Data. Strangely, though they couldn’t help thinking about Data, none of them wanted to talk about him for long. Someone would say something about how well he was doing–how he could sit in a wheelchair now and was learning to drive it with his right hand, which he could move a little–but then, just as quickly, someone else would change the subject.

  “I signed up for the Mock Disaster,” announced Fahd.

  “You are a disaster,” said Nish.

  “What is it?” asked Travis.

  Fahd told them that Mrs. Wheeler’s class had volunteered to work on an emergency drill the fire department and the hospital were putting on. It was basic training for the ambulance drivers and emergency-room hospital staff. They were going to simulate a bus accident, and some of the kids from school were going to be made up to look like they’d been injured in the wreck.

  “I’m doing fake blood and broken bones,” said Fahd. “It’s fantastic!”

  “Only you would think so,” said Sarah, clearly relieved she wasn’t in Mrs. Wheeler’s class.

  “Look!”

  It was Lars’s voice, low and urgent. The Owls shut up immediately and turned flat on their stomachs to peer over the bank. There was a large man moving out among the parked cars, headed in the general direction of the Chevrolet.

  “It’s Booker!” hissed Nish.