Camping Chaos Page 2

  Joe nodded. “Oh, yeah! That was awesome!”

  “We can do the same thing here. If we can inspect the bottoms of everyone’s shoes, we might be able to find the lightning-bolt pattern,” Frank explained.

  Joe considered this. “Yeah, but how? We can’t just go around asking people if we can check out their shoes!”

  “Yeah, we can. I have a plan. Follow me!”

  Frank stood up and started walking up to the other campers one by one. Joe followed. With each camper, Frank explained that he had lost his supervaluable lucky coin somewhere in the vicinity, and that he and Joe needed to search the ground underneath the campers’ feet.

  The plan actually worked. Each camper lifted his or her feet so the Hardys could look for the “lucky coin”—and at the same time secretly examine the soles of everyone’s shoes.

  None of them had the lightning-bolt pattern, however. And Beatrice and Lina had left breakfast early, so the boys hadn’t been able to see their shoes.

  “Now what?” Joe asked Frank as they returned to their tree stumps.

  Just then Ranger Gil’s son, Garrett, strolled by, flipping through a pile of superhero cards. He wore a fleece jacket that was several sizes too big for him over his dinosaur pajamas.

  Hmm, Joe thought. Garrett had pranked Joe at the movie the night before with the ice-cold soda can. Could he have pulled a second prank by stealing the snakes?

  “Hey, Garrett!” Joe called out.

  Garrett turned. “Oh! Hi!”

  “Hi! Listen, did you come by our tent last night? Say, around midnight?” Joe asked him with a friendly smile.

  Garrett scrunched up his face. “No way! My bedtime’s eight o’clock. Which is waaaay too early, because I’m six now—almost six and a quarter!”

  “Wow, six and a quarter!” Joe exclaimed. He looked down at Garrett’s sneakers. They were green with orange stripes. “Hey, I like your shoes! Are they that new kind with the really cool design on the soles?”

  “What?” Garrett lifted his shoes. The soles had a polka-dot pattern.

  Frank and Joe exchanged a glance. No lightning bolt.

  Garrett waved good-bye and wandered over to the pancake station. The Hardys finished their food in silence. They had to come up with another plan if they were going to get Perry the Python, Bob the Boa Constrictor, and Andy the Anaconda back. After all, the deadline for decorating their tent was lunchtime. Besides, Perry, Bob, and Andy belonged to them.

  • • • •

  After breakfast Joe and Frank headed back to their campsite along with Phil and Chet. Mr. Hardy stayed at the lodge to help Ranger Gil and the counselors with cleanup.

  Phil held up his cell phone. “My compass app says that our tents are this way,” he said, pointing at a trailhead.

  “Uh, thanks, Phil. We’d all be totally lost without your app,” Joe joked.

  “What will you do if you don’t find your missing snakes?” Chet asked the Hardys.

  “We’ll find them,” Frank replied. But he didn’t look so sure.

  “Phil and I could let you borrow some of our decorations, but our space alien theme doesn’t really go with your snake theme,” Chet offered. “Unless you want to do a killer-snakes-from-outer-space theme. That could work!”

  Joe dropped down onto the ground and pretended to slither on his stomach. “Take . . . me . . . to . . . your . . . leader! Ssssssss!” he hissed.

  The other boys cracked up.

  They soon reached the end of the trail. Their campsites were just ahead.

  As they got closer to the campsite, Joe noticed something strange.

  A girl was hovering around his and Frank’s tent. She held several toy snakes in her arms.

  The snake thief!

  5

  The Six Ws

  There’s our thief!” Joe yelled out to Frank.

  The two boys took off running. Phil and Chet followed.

  When they got closer to the tent, they could see that the girl had long black hair and glasses. Lina!

  “Hey! Put those snakes back right now!” Frank shouted.

  Lina whirled around, clutching the snakes to her chest. “That’s what I’m doing. Why are you yelling at me?”

  “What do you mean, that’s what you’re doing?” Joe demanded.

  “I’m putting your snakes back,” Lina explained.

  Frank saw that she was holding a toy python, boa constrictor, and anaconda. “Hey, that’s Perry, Bob, and Andy. Where did you get them?”

  Joe’s eyes widened. “Oh, now I get it! She stole them last night. And she’s trying to sneak them back so she won’t get into trouble.”

  “I didn’t steal them!” Lina protested. “I found them near my tent. I went around to all the campsites to see who they belonged to. I just got here.”

  She handed the snakes to Frank. He took them from her.

  Frank tried to read Lina’s expression. She wouldn’t look him in the eye. Did that mean she was lying?

  “I’m missing some decorations from my tent too, and so is Beatrice,” Lina continued. “Someone stole them from our tents last night. We thought it was you guys.”

  “What?” Joe gasped. “You think we’re the thieves?”

  “What kind of decorations are you and Beatrice missing?” Phil asked Lina curiously.

  “Beatrice is missing her doll, Princess Petunia. She’s decorating her tent with a princess theme,” Lina replied. “I’m missing my toy tiger, Mr. Truffles. I’m decorating my tent with a safari theme.”

  “Is anyone else missing decorations?” Frank asked.

  Lina shrugged. “I don’t know. Anyway, I’m glad I found your snakes. I just hope someone finds Mr. Truffles soon—and Princess Petunia, too.”

  • • • •

  Inside their tent Frank dug through his backpack. He pulled out his camping book, a pair of socks, some comic books, and a Space Raiders T-shirt and dumped them onto his sleeping bag. The socks were kind of smelly; he wadded them up and tossed them into the corner.

  “What are you looking for?” Joe asked.

  “These!” Frank pulled out an old notebook and a stubby pencil with no eraser, and showed them to Joe. “We can use these for our six Ws, since we don’t have our whiteboard here.”

  He opened the notebook to a clean page and wrote:

  WHO

  WHAT

  WHEN

  WHERE

  WHY

  HOW

  Next to the What, Frank wrote:

  Someone stole three of our snakes and put them over by Lina’s tent. The same person (?) stole her toy tiger, Mr. Truffles, and Beatrice’s Princess Petunia doll. They’re still missing.

  Next to the When, he added:

  Sometime between Friday bedtime and Saturday morning.

  Finally, he wrote next to the Where:

  At our campsite and Lina’s and Beatrice’s campsites.

  Joe read the notes over Frank’s shoulder. “Now we just need to figure out the Who, Why, and How,” Joe murmured. “Any ideas about the Who?”

  Frank mulled this over. “Lina could be lying. Maybe she pretended Mr. Truffles is missing, as a cover-up,” he said after a moment.

  “Or it could be Beatrice,” Joe suggested.

  “Or Beatrice and Lina together. They’re, like, best friends,” Frank pointed out.

  “And don’t forget about Ranger Gil’s son, Garrett! He’s a troublemaker,” Joe added.

  “Yeah, but his shoes didn’t have the lightning-bolt pattern,” Frank reminded him.

  Joe considered this. “Maybe he was wearing different shoes last night.”

  Frank nodded. “Hmm, true.”

  Next to the Who, Frank added:

  Lina?

  Beatrice?

  Garrett?

  At this point they had more questions than answers.

  • • • •

  That afternoon Fish and Wendy led the campers on an animal-tracking expedition through the forest. Animal tracking involved
finding tracks, or prints, on the ground and identifying what animal they belonged to.

  Ranger Gil wasn’t there. He was back at Gooseberry Lodge with Garrett, who was in a time-out because he’d smeared pancake batter all over the lodge windows.

  Joe’s right. Garrett is definitely a troublemaker! Frank thought.

  “Being a good animal tracker is like being a detective,” Fish explained as the group hiked along a winding creek. “You have to ask yourselves a lot of ‘what,’ ‘where,’ ‘when,’ ‘how,’ and ‘why’ questions to get to the ‘who.’ ”

  Frank and Joe grinned at each other. That sounded just like the six Ws!

  “First step: Look for tracks on the ground. Then ask yourself, how many toes does the animal have?” Fish said.

  “I see a track! I see a track!” a camper said, jumping up and down excitedly. “It has two toes!”

  Fish nodded and gave a thumbs-up sign. “Good, Zack! Two toes means that it could be a deer or a moose—”

  “Or a deadly two-toed flesh-eating swamp monster,” Wendy cut in with a mischievous smile.

  Several campers shrieked.

  “Wendy’s kidding,” Fish said quickly, then turned to her. “Really?” he asked her in a low voice.

  Wendy shrugged. “Just trying to keep it fun, dude.”

  “Okay, well . . . back to our animal-tracking questions,” Fish went on, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Ask yourselves, are the tracks spaced far apart? That will tell you if the animal is big or small, and how fast it was going. Also, do the tracks have claw marks? Do they stop at a tree, which would tell you that the animal is able to climb?”

  He added, “If there was snow on the ground, we’d be able to figure out a lot more. For example, did you know that you can sometimes identify a fox by the trail of yellow pee that it leaves behind?”

  “Ewwww!” some of the campers groaned. Others cracked up.

  “Ohmigosh!” Beatrice cried out suddenly.

  “Did you find a track, Beatrice?” Fish asked her.

  Beatrice shook her head and pointed to a large boulder in the middle of the creek. “No, but I found something else. There’s Princess Petunia!” she exclaimed. “Somebody save her!”

  6

  The Legend of the Headless Ghost

  Joe stared. A doll was perched on a rock in the middle of the creek. She wore a sparkly gold crown on top of her long blond hair, and a fancy purple dress.

  How did Princess Petunia end up there? Joe wondered.

  “I’ll get her!” Wendy volunteered.

  She pulled off her pink hiking shoes and rolled her jeans up to her knees. She stepped into the water and waded out to the boulder. “Brrr, it’s cold!” she said with a laugh.

  “This is epic,” Phil murmured. “Camp counselor rescues missing doll in the middle of a raging river!” He pulled out his camera phone and snapped a couple of pictures.

  Wendy emerged from the creek and handed Beatrice her doll. “Thank you!” Beatrice said happily. “Princess Petunia, you’re back!”

  On an impulse Joe headed over to the bank of the creek. As he passed a bush, a deer burst out and bounded away, startling him.

  He bent down and inspected the ground. There was a jumble of different footprints—human footprints.

  There were several footprints with a lightning-bolt pattern!

  “Hey, what’s up?” Phil asked, joining Joe.

  Joe nodded at the footprints. “We think these belong to the person who’s been stealing stuff,” he explained.

  Phil aimed his camera phone at the footprints and took a picture.

  “Joe! Phil! We need to keep moving,” Fish called out. “Did you guys find an interesting animal track?”

  “I guess you could say that,” Joe replied with a sly smile.

  • • • •

  Later that night everyone met at Gooseberry Lodge for make-your-own tacos, followed by ghost stories and roasted marshmallows around a roaring bonfire.

  After dinner Joe and Frank grabbed a couple of long sticks and a bag of marshmallows and sat down on a log. The evening was especially chilly, so the warmth of the fire was welcome.

  Joe speared a marshmallow with his stick and thrust it into the fire. It immediately sizzled and burst into flames.

  “Whoa!” Joe frowned at the blackened blob at the end of his stick. “Marshmallow fail!”

  “You have to be patient, Bro. Hold it away from the fire a bit,” Frank suggested.

  Joe sighed and tried again with a new marshmallow. As he waited for it to cook, he thought about their case.

  So far he, Frank, Beatrice, and Lina seemed to be the only victims of the thief. At dinner the Hardy boys had gone around and asked the other campers if they were missing any decorations, and they’d all said no.

  Perry, Bob, and Andy had been found, as had Beatrice’s Princess Petunia doll. But Lina’s toy tiger, Mr. Truffles, was still missing.

  The footprint with the lightning bolt was their only clue so far, and they’d seen it twice—once this morning at their tent, and once this afternoon by the creek. Joe and Frank had managed to check out the bottoms of Beatrice’s and Lina’s shoes at dinner, using the same lucky-coin story they’d used that morning. Neither had the lightning-bolt pattern. Although maybe the girls had brought more than one pair of shoes for the weekend?

  Joe frowned. He felt as though they were missing something important. Maybe it was the Why part of the equation. Why would the thief do all this? Was he or she trying to win the tent-decorating contest? If so, that would point to Beatrice, who’d bragged to Joe the day before that she would definitely win. She could have pretended to steal her own doll—and Lina’s tiger, Mr. Truffles, too—just to confuse everyone.

  Or was the thief simply trying to make trouble? That would point to Garrett, who seemed like a Troublemaker with a capital T—first with the soda can incident last night, and then with the pancake batter incident this morning.

  Or did the thief have another motive altogether? Was it someone Joe and Frank hadn’t even thought of?

  A hush fell over the group as Ranger Gil leaned closer to the bonfire and began telling a scary story. “According to an old legend these woods are haunted by a headless ghost,” he said in a low, spooky voice.

  “A headless ghost? Cooool!” Garrett piped up eagerly.

  “Don’t interrupt, Garrett. Anyway, legend has it that the ghost wanders around the park in search of his missing head. No one knows how he lost it. But many people have reported seeing him, especially when there’s a full moon. . . .”

  Joe glanced up at the sky—and gulped.

  There was a full moon tonight.

  • • • •

  Joe tossed and turned that night, unable to fall sleep. Again. He missed his and Frank’s bunk bed back home. He missed being in a warm, cozy house. He missed his mom’s cooking. He even missed Aunt Gertrude, who lived with them, nagging at him and Frank to clean up their room.

  And he definitely missed not having to worry about headless ghosts.

  It’s just a dumb made-up story, he told himself over and over again. Still, he wished there weren’t a full moon tonight.

  He had almost fallen asleep when he heard a scream outside.

  It sounded like Chet!

  7

  A Spy in the Bushes

  Frank bolted up in his sleeping bag at the sound of the scream. For a second he didn’t know where he was. “Where are we? What’s happening?” he demanded.

  “Someone’s in trouble. I think it might be Chet!” Joe said, scrambling to his feet.

  “Oh!”

  Frank grabbed a flashlight, and the two boys rushed outside in their pajamas and socks. Mr. Hardy was already outside with his own flashlight. Miniature glow-in-the-dark UFOs and martians shone eerily on Phil and Chet’s tent.

  “Everything’s fine,” Mr. Hardy told Frank and Joe immediately. “I think our poor Chet had a nightmare.”

  “But it wasn’t a nightmare,
Mr. Hardy,” Chet said, pulling a hoodie over his T-shirt and sweatpants. “I heard a noise outside, and I peeked out. I saw a headless ghost! I swear it!”

  “It could have been an animal,” Frank suggested.

  Chet shook his head. “No way. It was definitely a ghost!”

  “Did you see it too?” Joe asked Phil.

  “Nope. I was fast asleep—until Chet started yelling, anyway,” Phil replied, zipping up his parka.

  “What did this ghost look like?” Frank asked Chet.

  Chet shuddered. “It was white and superscary. You know, like a ghost! And it was moving around!”

  Frank waved his flashlight around. Leaves stirred, and a small animal skittered away.

  And then Frank noticed something on the ground—something white. He walked over and pointed his flashlight at it.

  “Here’s your ghost, Chet,” Frank announced, holding up a blanket. “I think you got pranked.”

  • • • •

  The next morning Frank, Joe, Phil, and Chet built a campfire in the fire pit by their tents and drank hot chocolate with little marshmallows in it while Mr. Hardy went for a jog. They inspected the blanket they’d found the night before.

  There was a label sewn onto one corner of the fabric. It had three letters on it: HOF.

  “What’s ‘HOF’?” Chet asked. He pronounced it like “hof.”

  “Maybe it’s the name of the company that made the blanket?” Phil guessed.

  Joe pointed to the letters. “They’re written in Magic Marker. So maybe they’re initials?”

  “Like the initials of the person who owns the blanket,” Frank spoke up. “Aunt Gertrude sometimes sews labels onto our clothes. She writes our initials on them.”

  “Yes!” Joe said eagerly. “Now all we have to do is figure out which camper has the initials H-O-F.”

  The boys mulled this over. “Let’s make a list of everyone who’s here for the weekend,” Frank suggested. “Okay, so there’s the four of us, Beatrice, and Lina . . .”