Dungeons & Detectives Read online

  Charlene promptly ignored him, pushing her way forward as she clicked away with her camera.

  “I mean, uh, everybody else,” Frank mumbled.

  I shook my head. My brother tends to get a little tongue-tied when he has a crush.

  “This article keeps getting better and better,” said Charlene.

  “Now I’ll never get to see the missing page,” Murph moaned.

  Robert sounded like he was trying to say something, but all that came out were whimpers.

  “Wow, somebody must have critted their sleight-of-hand check to break in here with all this security,” Dennis observed nonsensically.

  “Was that English?” I asked.

  “In RPGs like S and S, you have to roll skill checks with the D20 to perform different actions,” Frank explained. “Sleight of hand is the skill a rogue or a burglar might use to pick a lock. A ‘crit’ means a critical hit.”

  “Well, no one touch anything, in case this rogue of yours got sloppy,” I said. “The police will want to dust for prints.”

  “No police!” Robert finally managed to blurt.

  Frank, Charlene, and I each gave him the same curious look.

  “I, um, well, let’s just say I didn’t always have the best experience with local law enforcement back home in Edinburgh,” he sort of explained. “I’d just rather handle it privately, and you boys are practically better than the police anyway. Everyone talks about the Hardy boys and all the cases you’ve solved. You can get the comic back for me, can’t you? You have to! Please! Before the party!”

  I looked at Frank. Robert’s nervousness about the police was a little suspicious, but we did have a long history of beating the Bayport PD to the chase. Chief Olaf might not be happy about it, but…

  “We’ll do our best,” Frank told him.

  “Not if I beat you to the scoop,” Charlene said.

  “Maybe we can work together to solve the case,” Frank said hopefully, but Charlene already had her sights on Robert.

  “How did they get in and what else was taken?” she demanded.

  She could have been nicer to my bro, but I had to hand it to her, she had good investigative instincts.

  Charlene’s question must have triggered alarm bells in Robert’s head, because his mouth dropped open and he sprinted for the door marked PRIVATE at the back of the shop. He emerged a moment later and quickly opened the cash register, revealing a drawer full of tidy, entirely un-stolen bills. He sank down in the chair with a dejected sigh.

  “The back-door lock is broken, but they left the register and the safe untouched,” he said. “Not that it matters much. It’s all pennies compared to that comic.”

  “Doesn’t look like anything is gone from the shop, either,” Xephyr commented, giving a look around.

  “Were you working last night?” I asked her. I’d been around the shop enough to know that Xephyr helped out behind the counter part-time.

  “Nah, Rob worked the late shift. Dennis and I were at the big annual LARP camping trip over in Bayport Heights,” Xephyr answered.

  “Awesome costumes, by the way, guys,” said Frank. “The live updates everyone posted online were great, especially the pics of Xephyr’s werebear.”

  Charlene and I both cleared our throats at the same time. Leave it to my brother to nerd out about a costume in the middle of a crime scene.

  “What? They were really cool,” Frank said defensively.

  “Speaking of pictures,” I said, pointing at the security camera over the counter and changing the subject back to the crime at hand. “Why didn’t the alarm go off when they broke in the back door?”

  “Oh, well, um, that is curious…,” Robert mumbled.

  “Let’s check the security footage and see just how good this burglar’s sleight of hand was,” Frank said.

  Robert suddenly turned a shade paler, then leaped up and pointed toward the front door. “Out! Everybody but my detectives out! The shop is closed until further notice.”

  There were grumbles from Murph and the rest of the LARPers, but Robert marched out from behind the counter and forcibly shoved everyone out the door.

  Everyone but Charlene. She hadn’t budged.

  “The footage,” she demanded.

  “Yes, well, I’m not sure it’s really necessary to check the video,” Robert fumbled.

  “Dude, someone just stole your prized super-valuable comic book right in front of your security camera. Of course it’s necessary,” I said.

  “Unless there’s something you don’t want us to see.” Charlene said what we’d all been thinking.

  “Off the record?” Robert asked her.

  “As long as I still get the exclusive on the theft,” she said.

  Robert sank back into his chair. “You won’t find anything on the tapes.”

  You could practically feel three sets of teenage eyebrows rise at the same time.

  “The cameras aren’t hooked up. None of it is. It’s all for show,” he admitted. “I never paid to have any of it turned on.”

  3 LAW AND DISORDER

  FRANK

  BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE times you bragged to everyone about how expensive and high-tech your security system is?” I asked Robert, who was suddenly too busy fiddling with his hands to look me in the eye.

  “Must keep up appearances, you know,” he said. “Talk the walk, as it were.”

  The shop door jingled behind us before I had chance to ask him what else he’d been lying about.

  “Got a call about a theft,” a familiar voice said as I turned around to find Bayport’s top cop, Chief Olaf, standing in the doorway.

  “Hi, Chief!” Joe chirped with a grin. “Nice costume.”

  “Costume?” the chief replied. “What are you talking about, Hardy? This is my uniform.”

  “And a handsome uniform it is, sir,” Joe said enigmatically. I had a feeling my brother had something up his sleeve. I just wasn’t sure what it was yet.

  Chief Olaf eyed Joe and me suspiciously.

  “Hello, officer,” Robert greeted Chief Olaf nervously. “No need for you to trifle with such a small matter as ours. I’m sure you have more important police business to attend to.”

  “A small matter?” the chief asked, staring at the conspicuously blank rectangle where the case on the wall behind the counter had been. “You and I must have a different definition of that phrase, because the caller said the thief took a comic worth more than fifty grand.”

  Robert scrunched his eyes shut and groaned, as if the number had punched him in the stomach. “More than that, actually, but I wouldn’t want to worry you with my troubles. I’ve already hired an investigative service. Save the taxpayers some money, you know?”

  Chief Olaf looked from Joe to me and growled, “Investigative service my rear. How many times do I have to tell you boys to stay out of police business?”

  “It’s probably been about three hundred so far, so maybe three hundred and one?” Joe asked innocently.

  “Out!” shouted Olaf, holding the door open with one hand and pointing with the other.

  “Care to make an official statement about the theft, Chief?” Charlene asked, holding up a small digital recorder as Joe and I made our reluctant exit.

  The chief sighed. “You again. You’re almost as troublesome as these two. If you want a quote, you can call the station after the report is filed. Now I want everyone except the proprietor out of my crime scene.”

  “Let the professionals handle this,” he told Robert as Charlene followed us out the door. “A theft of this magnitude isn’t for amateurs.”

  I could see Robert squirming in his chair. We were going to have to finish our conversation later. His nervousness about the police was more than a little shady, and I wondered what else he wasn’t telling us.

  I turned to Charlene to ask her if she wanted to pool our resources and partner up to solve the case together, but she was already halfway down the block, cell phone to her ear. I sighed. I had a h
unch she was a lot more interested in being the first to break the story than being part of the team.

  “Sorry, bro,” Joe said sympathetically. “I think she’s only got eyes for the scoop.”

  “You guys are gonna find it, right?” I heard Murph ask meekly.

  I looked down to see him still sitting on the curb, with one of his elf ears missing, looking forlorn.

  “I don’t know who’s more broken up about this, Robert or you,” Joe said.

  “I’ve been dying to see that missing page since Comic Kingdom opened,” said Murph. “Being the first to witness something like that unveiled is a collector’s dream. Not to mention all the online speculation that the missing page might contain clues to Filmore’s disappearance.” Murph looked around furtively and lowered his voice. “And maybe even real treasure.”

  “Let’s walk and talk,” Joe said. “I want to know more about this comic.”

  Murph hopped up to follow us. Like I’d told Charlene, Murph hadn’t gotten the nickname “the Collector” by accident. Collecting wasn’t just a hobby for him, it was an obsession. From games to comics to Japanese toy robots to dinosaur fossils, if it could be collected, there was a good chance he either collected it or knew a ton about it. His expertise had come in handy on cases before, and his mastery of comics and gaming history made him more of an expert than possibly even Robert.

  “Okay, Murph, I’ve seen the rest of the comic from the pictures the other owners have posted online too. I agree that the story line suggests that the missing page is a treasure map,” I said. “But even if it is, it’s still part of a make-believe story. It’s just a rumor that it could lead to actual treasure. It may drive up the comic’s value, but there’s no evidence to back it up.”

  “What if Angus and Filmore just wanted you to think it was a make-believe story?” Murph asked cryptically.

  “Um, doesn’t this game have wizards and magical monsters?” Joe asked dismissively. “Sounds pretty make-believe to me.”

  “What if the fantasy is a smoke screen?” asked Murph, undeterred by our skepticism. “Everyone knows that Angus used Castle McGalliard and real artifacts he found there as the inspiration for the game, right?”

  I nodded. Filmore’s illustration of the castle was even on the comic’s cover in the background, behind a sword-wielding knight entwined in the coils of a nasty-looking sea serpent.

  “Okay, so I always had a feeling there might really be something to the legend of the treasure because of that. Then one day I was flipping back through my old Butterby catalogs,” Murph began.

  “You read auction catalogs?” Joe asked.

  “Of course. Doesn’t everybody?” Murph replied earnestly. “They’re highly collectible. I have a whole library of them. Anyway, so I discovered that the last copy of S and S #1 Butterby’s sold was part of a local estate sale. It didn’t have the treasure map, obviously, but it did show up in an old trunk full of miscellaneous stuff found by a lifelong Dumpster diver from Bayport. There’s no way to tell where or when the guy found everything, but it looked like this guy was a frequent visitor of Filmore’s neighborhood trash cans. I’m guessing he came across the trunk when Filmore’s place was cleaned out after he disappeared. There were a few crumpled sketches from an earlier comic book Filmore had illustrated and an engraved watch with his initials, but most of the stuff besides the comic was auctioned off for next to nothing.”

  “If there’s still no map and the rest of the stuff was worthless, then what’s the big deal?” asked Joe.

  “I didn’t say it was worthless,” Murph corrected with a sly grin. “I just think I’m the only one who saw the value. No one else seemed to make the connection to Sabers and Serpents, but there was also a beat-up eighteenth-century shipping ledger written in Gaelic bearing the initials PMG. Well, I did a little digging into the town records, and Paul Magnus McGalliard happens to be the original owner of Castle McGalliard.”

  “So you think the ledger belonged to Robert and Angus’s first American ancestor?” I asked.

  “Not only that, I think Angus and Filmore used it to come up with part of the story for the comic.”

  Murph pulled out his phone, flipped to his bookmarked photos, and pulled up a picture of the open ledger from the auction catalog.

  “Hey, I recognize those words!” I exclaimed, examining a familiar series of cryptic words made of archaic letters and accents that looked kind of similar to the English alphabet, but were impossible for me to understand. I turned to Joe. “See those strange letters? They’re written in Gaelic, an ancient language that was native to Scotland. Some of those Gaelic words appear in both the game and the comic.”

  “They sure do,” Murph concurred. “The entire ledger is written in Gaelic, but thanks to the magic of the Internet, I was able to translate a lot of it into English. From what I can tell, it isn’t just an innocent merchant’s shipping ledger, it’s a smuggler’s ledger. The ledger is dated 1774. That was still colonial times, right after the Boston Tea Party, and it looks like ol’ PM McG was hiding goods he didn’t want to pay taxes on to the English government.”

  “Whoa, if that’s true, then it’s an amazing artifact from Bayport’s early history,” I observed.

  “Some of it also uses a pretty basic code, but it wasn’t hard to decipher,” Murph continued eagerly. “From what I can tell, some of the made-up Gaelic words that appear in the game are really code words taken from the ledger. Most of these code words stand for everyday goods like fabric, spices, and tea. But can you tell which one is different from the rest?”

  I examined the picture and scanned my memory for the words I recognized from the game.

  “Each of them shows up in the comic except that one,” I said, pointing to an unintelligible three-letter word.

  “Exactly,” said Murph with a twinkle in his eye. “Makes you wonder why only that one is left out of the comic and where else it might appear. Especially when you decode it. Because that’s the one that stands for gold. In the ledger that code word appears in an entry cataloging eight crates of gold.”

  Joe and I went silent as we processed what Murph had just told us.

  “You think Angus and Filmore took the Gaelic words in the comic from Angus’s ancestor’s smuggling ledger—” I began.

  “And the missing page could be a map with the code word for gold on it?” Joe jumped in to finish the question.

  “Not just the word,” Murph said. “I don’t know if Angus and Filmore realized the significance of the ledger they found, and no one but them and Robert know what was on that missing page—”

  Joe cut him off before he could finish.

  “But what if one of those things was clues to a smuggler’s stash of real gold?”

  4 INK STAINS

  JOE

  WHOA, SO THIS COULD BE a clue to a real-life treasure hunt?” I asked. I was developing a deeper appreciation for role-playing games, that was for sure.

  “In the ledger, the sentence above the word for gold translates to ‘Beneath the windmill I lay awaiting, a drop in the bucket and a chain afar,’ ” Murph said. “What if there’s a windmill on that map that marks the spot where it’s buried?”

  “Could be, but we’ve still got the more immediate mystery of who stole the comic to solve first if we ever want to find out,” Frank reminded us. “And a fifty-thousand-dollar-plus price tag is a big enough treasure to start with.”

  “What’s our suspect list look like?” I asked. “The comic was displayed front and center in the shop, and Sir Robert isn’t the most discreet guy in the world, so I’m guessing plenty of people knew about it.”

  “It definitely wasn’t a secret,” said Frank. “He boasted about it pretty much constantly.”

  “Not just in person, either,” Murph said. “He was all over social media and comic forums, blabbing about it to promote Comic Kingdom’s website.”

  “Well, ‘the entire Internet’ is a pretty big suspect pool, so let’s narrow it down,”
I suggested. “Do you guys know if Robert had any enemies? Or maybe someone who’d expressed an unusual interest in the comic recently?”

  “It wasn’t me!” Murph exclaimed, and Frank and I both laughed.

  “Besides you, Murph,” Frank assured him. “We should probably talk to this Wendell Leadbetter fellow from Butterby Auctioneers. Robert probably won’t want us spilling the beans about the theft, but it’s bound to get back to them, and it’s possible Butterby’s recent interest is somehow connected.”

  “So what do you know about this Leadbetter guy, Murph?” I asked.

  “Oh, I mean, nothing really, just that he works at Butterby’s is all,” Murph replied. “But I do have an idea about one of Rob’s enemies. Inkpen’s Ink Pen has taken a real hit since Rob showed up in town, and word is Don Inkpen isn’t all that happy about it.”

  “The rival comic shop owner across town—that makes sense,” Frank said.

  “DM Dennis used to run his games out of there before Comic Kingdom opened up, so Rob stole Inkpen’s top game master along with a lot of his comics business,” said Murph.

  “Okay, so we’ve got two leads to start with,” I said.

  Murph’s phone buzzed.

  “Gotta go, guys. There’s an online auction for some rare gubernatorial campaign buttons from the 1960s that’s about to end. You’ll let me know as soon as you find out anything?”

  Frank nodded and typed something into the search bar on his phone. Then he looked up at Murph and said, “And you let us know if you think of any other leads.”

  Murph nodded in return and hustled down the street, his lone elf ear wiggling elfishly. Frank had his phone to his regular-person ear immediately.

  “Hello, Mr. Leadbetter, my name is Frank Hardy and I’m calling regarding Robert McGalliard’s copy of Sabers and Serpents #1. Please call me back as soon as you get this. It’s urgent,” Frank said into the phone, then left his number and clicked off.

  “That leaves Inkpen,” I said.

  * * *

  Inkpen’s Ink Pen didn’t look that different from Sir Robert’s Comic Kingdom. Racks and bins full of comics, glass cases full of collectible toys and figurines, and shelves full of games, with tables set up in the back for kids to play their favorite RPGs on-site. The one thing there was less of?