The Caribbean Cruise Caper Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  1 Flight to the Islands

  2 A Warm Welcome Aboard

  3 Along Came a Spider

  4 Let the Games Begin!

  5 Shutting the Barn Door

  6 Slipping and Sliding

  7 A Telltale Chime

  8 Throwing Up Clues

  9 In the Bag

  10 If the Frame Fits . . .

  11 Fitting Out

  12 The Timetable’s Tale

  13 Joe Takes a Tumble

  14 A Criminal Record

  15 Race to the Finish

  1 Flight to the Islands

  * * *

  Eighteen-year-old Frank Hardy slowly turned his head to the left, then to the right. He shrugged his shoulders forward and back, then winced. The flight south from New York to the Caribbean had left him with a major crick in his neck. Airline seats were not very friendly to six-footers like him and his younger brother, Joe.

  Joe, seventeen, scanned the crowd of eager vacationers in the San Juan, Puerto Rico, airport. He brushed his blond hair back from his forehead. “Can you spot David anywhere?” he asked.

  Frank shook his head. A little jab of pain at the base of the skull made him wish he hadn’t.

  “Nope,” he replied. “Don’t worry, though. He’ll turn up. He didn’t bring us all this way just to strand us.”

  David Wildman, their host, was a playwright. His suspense thriller, Stairway to Oblivion, had been an off-Broadway hit. He was now running Teenway magazine’s teen-detective contest. The five teenage finalists were to spend a week on a luxurious yacht in the Caribbean. There they would compete in solving a series of staged mysteries. The grand prize was a college scholarship.

  David had asked Frank and Joe to come along as expert consultants. He knew about their skill and growing fame as detectives from a fellow playwright they had helped.

  “This won’t be nearly as exciting as tackling real crimes,” he had explained apologetically. “These are more like complicated puzzles. But your presence, your experience, will be enormously helpful. You’ll love the yacht, the Colombe d’Or, and the islands are beautiful this time of year.”

  The Hardys had agreed. Now here they were in Puerto Rico, and the Colombe d’Or was waiting for them and the other passengers a few islands away.

  Frank glanced at his watch, then studied the Arrivals column on the overhead TV monitor. “David and the others should be here by now,” he remarked. “The flight from Miami landed a few minutes ago.”

  “Joe, Frank,” someone called. “Over here!”

  Frank looked around. David was easy to pick out from the crowd of brightly clad tourists. He was wearing his usual outfit of black jeans, black T-shirt, and thick-soled black workboots. His sandy hair, receding at the temples, was pulled back into a little ponytail. He had a leather case for a laptop computer slung over one shoulder.

  The Hardys threaded their way over to him. He put his hands on their shoulders and turned to the little group around him. “Gang, meet Joe and Frank Hardy, superdetectives,” he said. “I’m hoping they’ll tell us about some of their cases later.”

  Frank had looked over the list of contestants during the flight down. As David introduced them, he tried to pin mental tags on them. He would get to know them better pretty quickly.

  Elizabeth Wheelwright was a tall, slim, blond preppie from Virginia. She was standing a small but noticeable distance apart from the others. She gave Frank and Joe a cool nod. She seemed to take it for granted that David would introduce her first.

  Cesar Ariosto, standing next to her, noticed this and gave her a mocking grin. He was about five nine, with long black hair and the shadow of a mustache on his upper lip. He wore a silver-and-turquoise bracelet on his left wrist and had a bad case of nail biting.

  “Cesar’s from Albuquerque,” David said. “And this is Jason MacFarlane, from Fort Worth.”

  “Yo, what’s happening, dudes?” Jason said. He was wearing baggy jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt with the picture of a hot heavy-metal group. His dark hair was cut very short on top and long in back.

  A boy of about ten in shorts and a long green soccer shirt tugged at David’s elbow. “Hey, what about me?” he demanded.

  David smiled. “This is my son, Evan. Evan is currently in the doghouse,” he added, with a pretend scowl.

  “Oh? Why?” Joe asked.

  “A little matter of some black plastic bugs,” David replied. “On the flight down, they somehow found their way into our salads. The flight attendants were not amused.”

  “They were so,” Evan said. “They laughed like anything when you couldn’t see them.”

  “Evan—no more practical jokes. Is that clear?” David said.

  Evan nodded. His expression made Frank wonder if his fingers were crossed behind his back.

  “And these are our remaining finalists, Sylvie de Carabas and Boris Lebidof,” David continued. “Sylvie is from near Montreal. Boris was born in Russia and now lives in Brooklyn.”

  “ ’Allo,” Sylvie said, with a charming accent. Her blue eyes twinkled at them. “We will have much fun, no?”

  Boris nodded to them. He had a narrow face topped by unruly blond hair. From the look of his shoulders and upper arms, Frank guessed that working out was a major hobby of his.

  “Hold it,” someone called. A light flashed. When the spots cleared from Frank’s eyes, he saw a guy of about seventeen with straight black hair and almond eyes. He had two fancy cameras slung around his neck. He was wearing jeans and a khaki photographer’s vest over a Day-Glo orange Teenway T-shirt.

  “Meet Kenneth Lee,” David said. “He’ll be part of our band, too. He and Lisa are working as interns at the mag.”

  “Hi, Kenneth,” Frank said. He looked over at Kenneth’s companion. Lisa was also about seventeen, with pixie-cut light brown hair. Her brown eyes were partly hidden behind thick black-framed glasses. In one hand she held a slender black microcassette recorder.

  “Lisa Burnham,” she said. “I’ll be covering this event for the magazine. Tell me, Joe, Frank—you guys have tackled real crimes. How does it feel to be part of the Teenway teen detective contest?”

  She pointed the recorder at Joe.

  “Great!” Joe said, grinning.

  When the recorder was swung around to Frank, he said, “Joe’s our spokesperson.”

  “Come on, guys, loosen up,” Lisa said. “You can do better than that.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to interview them later, Lisa,” David told her. “Right now we have a plane to catch. Anyone see the sign for our gate?”

  The group started down a corridor. David explained, “For this last leg, we’re on a real puddle jumper,” David told Frank and Joe. “We’ll take it as far as St. Hilda, where we rendezvous with the Colombe d’Or.”

  “The column door?” Jason asked. “That’s a dumb name for a boat.”

  Sylvie giggled. “Don’t be so silly,” she said. “It is French. It means ‘pigeon of gold.’ ”

  “ ‘Golden dove,’ ” Elizabeth remarked, just loud enough to be heard.

  Sylvie gave her a sidelong look but didn’t say anything.

  Jason moved up next to Sylvie. “Will you teach me some French?” he asked. “It’s such a beautiful language.”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes. Frank grinned at Joe. This was starting to look like an interesting bunch.

  The airplane was a small two-engine turboprop that seated about twenty passengers. Frank and Joe followed the others up the steps and down the narrow aisle to the rear half of the cabin. Frank grabbed a seat across from Lisa.

  “So . . . how long have you worked at Teenway?” he asked her.

>   “Oh, I don’t really work for the magazine,” she replied, coloring. “I’m just there on a two-month internship. The lowest of the low.” She laughed nervously.

  “But you said you’re covering the teen-detective contest,” Frank reminded her. “That’s a pretty important assignment, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a terrific opportunity,” Lisa said. “But there’s no guarantee they’ll print my article. One of their staff writers could whip something up out of my information.”

  The plane taxied to the foot of the runway, and Frank gave up trying to talk over the noise.

  He enjoyed takeoffs, partly because of the thrill he got from the element of danger. The pilot released the brakes. The engines roared, pressing him back into his seat. Then the ground dropped away.

  The plane banked steeply to the left, out over the water. Frank was looking almost straight down. The parallel lines of surf and the V-shaped wakes of powerboats seemed to spell mysterious messages on the blue sea. The plane leveled off before he could decode them.

  It seemed only minutes later that the island of St. Hilda came into sight. It looked like three steep, wooded hills edged by cliffs and a narrow beach with a huddle of buildings clustered around a small bay. Nowhere could Frank spot a patch of level ground large enough for a plane to land.

  David, in the seat behind him, leaned forward. “This island is a big hit with people who design flight simulator games,” he remarked. “Players go nuts learning how to land here.”

  “How about our pilot?” Frank asked.

  David laughed. “He must have been nuts in the first place even to take the job! The nice thing is, the difficulty of flying in has kept the place unspoiled. There’s no way to bring in anything much bigger than this. Oops, hold on. White-knuckle time!”

  As the plane banked, Frank saw a short, narrow landing strip cupped by a curving hillside and bordered by the sea. The pilot coasted over the near hilltop and abruptly put the plane into a steep descent. Across the aisle, Lisa gasped loudly.

  An instant later the wheels touched down. The propellers screamed in reverse pitch, bringing the plane to a quick stop. The passengers in the front of the cabin started to clap.

  “If I were the pilot,” David said, “I’d pass the hat after every landing here. I bet I’d make out like a bandit!”

  The plane taxied to the terminal, a small building with white stucco walls and a red-tiled roof. The group climbed off the plane and walked across the landing strip.

  Frank noticed an outdoor café on one side of the building. A slanted roof of palm fronds shaded the tables from the tropical sun. He nudged Joe. “I don’t think we’re in Bayport anymore,” he murmured.

  Joe grinned and put on his sunglasses.

  Inside, the terminal was one big, airy room. Near the entrance, in a roped-off area, an official checked the travel documents of the arriving passengers. After David explained to the man who the group was, he waved them through.

  A young woman came over. Her polo shirt was embroidered with a palm tree and sun. “We’re unloading your luggage now,” she told David. “We’ll bring it straight to your van.”

  “Thanks,” David said. “We may as well wait outside, then.”

  He led the group out to the curb. Just then two shiny taxis pulled up with suitcases strapped to their roof racks. While half a dozen passengers got out and started inside the terminal, the drivers lifted down the baggage and stacked it on a nearby wheeled cart. A uniformed porter whistled as he waited next to the cart.

  A man with thinning gray hair and a bright Hawaiian print shirt met David’s eye. “Hi there,” he said. “Just arrive?”

  “Right,” David replied. “Good stay?”

  “Fantastic,” the man said. “We hate to leave. You kids will have the time of your life!”

  His wife was juggling two straw baskets and a big yellow gourd. “Come on, Charles,” she said. “We don’t want to miss our plane.”

  He smiled. “That’s not going to happen, Nora. I bet we’re the only group flying out right now.”

  With a nod and a wave, the couple went inside.

  A dusty white van turned into the drive and stopped. The driver leaned out to ask, “You are for the yacht club?”

  “That’s us,” David said. He started to bend down, then frowned and looked around sharply.

  “Hey!” he exclaimed. “Where’s my laptop? It’s not here!”

  2 A Warm Welcome Aboard

  * * *

  Joe quickly scanned the sidewalk from the curb to the wall of the terminal. He saw nothing that looked like a laptop case.

  “What was it in?” he asked David.

  “A black leather attaché,” David replied. “This isn’t funny. All the information about the contest is on my hard drive.”

  “Maybe you left it on the plane,” Boris suggested.

  “I’m sure I didn’t,” David said. “I had it on my shoulder when we came out here. Then I set it down.”

  He looked around. “Evan?” he continued. “Do you know anything about this?”

  The boy looked scared. “No, Daddy, uh-uh,” he said. “Not a thing. Really.”

  “No one in our group has wandered away since we came out here,” Frank pointed out. “And no one who isn’t in our group has come close enough to us to steal something.”

  “Frank, are you saying this is an impossible crime?” Lisa asked, pointing her recorder at him.

  “There’s no such thing,” Frank retorted. “If it’s really impossible, it can’t happen.”

  “I read a story once . . .” Boris began.

  “Whoop-de-do,” Jason muttered.

  Boris ignored him. “This thief had a suitcase with a trick bottom. All he had to do was set the suitcase down on top of whatever he wanted to steal, and whoosh! the object vanished.”

  “I’ve heard of that gimmick, too,” Joe told him. “It sounds pretty clever. But as Frank said, no one came over here with a suitcase. And as for us, we don’t even have our suitcases yet. It’s probably just some mix-up.”

  “Here comes our luggage now,” Elizabeth said. “It’s about time. The workers must all think they’re on vacation or something.”

  “You guys don’t seem to understand,” David said tensely. “If I’ve lost all the files on my laptop, that’s it for the contest. Finito! Kaput!”

  Everyone crowded around him and started protesting. Lisa thrust her recorder into the center of the group. Kenneth circled around them, taking one shot after another.

  Joe glanced at Frank. “We’d better do something, quick,” he said.

  “Yeah . . . like find that attaché case,” Frank replied. “It couldn’t have just walked away.”

  Joe glanced at the approaching luggage cart. His jaw dropped. “No,” he said tautly. “But it might have rolled away. I’ll be right back.”

  Joe sprinted into the terminal and across to the runway side. A little cluster of departing passengers was walking across the concrete apron toward the plane. The cart with their baggage was sitting next to the open cargo hatch.

  Joe started through the door. A police officer in a light blue uniform, white helmet, and white gun-belt blocked the way. His name tag read L. Mallet.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said in a soft, Caribbean-accented voice. “Are you cleared to board this aircraft?”

  “No, officer. I just came in on it a few minutes ago,” Joe replied. “But I think my friend’s computer case got put on that cart by mistake. Do you think you could check for me, please? His name is David Wildman.”

  Mallet glanced over his shoulder at the plane. Then he said, “Please wait here, sir.”

  He went over and spoke to the luggage handler. Together they checked the tags on the twenty or so suitcases. Mallet picked up a black leather case and showed it to the group of passengers. They all shook their heads. He returned to Joe, carrying the case.

  “Your friend will have to identify this as his property, sir,” Mallet said.

&
nbsp; “Believe me, he’ll be happy to,” Joe promised. “I’ll go get him.”

  Joe hurried out and came back with David. After showing Mallet his passport, David unzipped the attaché case to check the contents.

  “It doesn’t look as if anything’s been disturbed,” he told Joe. As they started across the waiting room, he added, “What a weird thing. I guess the porter saw my case and thought it belonged to those people who were leaving.”

  “It could be,” Joe said doubtfully. “The way I remember it, though, the porter didn’t load the cart. He just stood by. It was the drivers who carried the suitcases from their taxis to the cart. I guess one of them must have picked up your case by mistake.”

  “Well, however it happened,” David said, “I owe you one. If it hadn’t been for your quick thinking, my computer and all the contest plans would be on their way back to San Juan by now. I’m tempted to complain to the airport authorities. But we don’t know who’s responsible. Maybe it’s better to let it go.”

  The moment they returned to the group, the others crowded around. “Oh, good,” Elizabeth said. “You found it. An airline lost my bag once in London. I was devastated. I had nothing to wear for four entire days.”

  “What happened?” Cesar asked Joe. “Where was it?”

  Joe laughed. “About to be loaded for a return flight to San Juan.”

  “So you won’t have to call off the contest?” Jason said. “Cool. Let’s get going.”

  “Wait a minute,” Boris said. “This is a serious matter. Somebody’s dirty trick almost ruined everything for us. We must discover who stole David’s computer.”

  That did it. Five minutes later Joe was seething with frustration. Everyone in the group was a wannabe detective. Each one had his or her farfetched theory about what had happened, who had done it, and why.

  Boris was the worst. After explaining that one of the departing passengers must be in the pay of Teenway’s competition, he repeatedly demanded, “It is possible, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

  Finally Frank told him, “Anything is possible, but it just isn’t very likely.”