Trouble at the Arcade Read online

  “Give Adam a wedgie until he admits he took the cash?” Joe suggested.

  Frank rolled his eyes. “No. He’d say that a good detective needs to figure out the Ws.”

  “Huh?”

  “Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.” Frank ticked each word off on his fingers.

  Joe laughed. “Come on,” he said. “Even I know ‘How’ doesn’t start with a W. ”

  “No, but it ends with one,” said Frank. “I guess that counts. Anyway, Dad always puts it on the list.”

  Joe nodded. “Okay. So we already know What—the What is that someone took that money.”

  “Right,” Frank said. “And we know Where. Right here at Fun World, in the office.”

  “Why’s pretty easy too,” Joe pointed out. “Everybody likes money.”

  “True. So all we need to do is figure out the rest. Especially the Who.” Frank thought for a second. “I guess there are a few people who could be the Who. Let’s go back to the arcade so we can keep an eye on them while we think about the other Ws.”

  Soon the brothers were huddled behind a video game near the center of the arcade’s main room. Adam was nearby, bragging about how he was going to win that contest if it ever started again. Callie was leaning against the wall by herself. Mimi had stopped crying after Chet traded in one of his tickets to buy her a lollipop.

  “Okay, let’s figure this out.” Frank dug into his pockets. He found a scrap of paper and a stubby pencil and pulled them out. “We should start by making a list.”

  “Are you kidding?” Joe snorted. “Who needs notes? This isn’t school—it’s a mystery! We should just go question people like Dad would do.” He glanced around. “Starting with Adam Ackerman.”

  “Do you really think he could be the thief?” said Frank. “His pockets were empty—we all saw them.”

  Joe shrugged. “I still think he could’ve done it. He’s always pulling rotten stuff at school, like stealing people’s lunches.”

  “True,” Frank agreed. “But when he steals a lunch, he can hide the evidence in his own stomach. I don’t really think he ate that money.”

  Still, Frank wrote down Adam’s name at the top of a list under the title “WHO?” Beside that he wrote down the other W words.

  “Hmm,” he said, staring at what he’d just written. “We know What, Where, and Why. We’re trying to figure out Who and How. But what about When?”

  “We know the crime must have happened between when we got here and when Mr. Fun announced that the money was missing,” Joe said.

  “That’s not very specific,” said Frank. “We were here for a while before he came out and said that. Maybe we should go ask Mr. Fun about when the cash actually disappeared.”

  They headed for the office. But when they got close to the door, they heard the sound of yelling.

  “Yikes,” Joe whispered. “Sounds like Mr. Fun’s still yelling at Darryl.”

  “It’s not my fault!” Darryl was yelling inside the office. “The stupid box was already half broken!”

  Frank was still creeping closer. The door was standing partway open, and when he looked inside he gasped. “Look!” he exclaimed.

  Joe came closer too. “Whoa!” he whispered.

  Frank nodded. The wooden cash box they’d seen earlier wasn’t on the table anymore. It was lying on the floor, smashed to smithereens!

  8

  A New Suspect

  Check it out,” Joe whispered. He kicked at a chunk of wood on the floor by his foot. “There are even pieces of that box way out here in the hall.”

  Frank nodded. “But why would someone bother to smash the box? It was wide open. All the thief had to do was grab the cash.”

  “Maybe the thief accidentally knocked over the box while he was running away,” Joe guessed. “It was pretty old, so it might have gotten smashed up just hitting the floor.”

  Just then there came the sound of stomping feet. A second later Darryl charged out through the door. He almost ran into the Hardys.

  “Get out of my way!” he yelled. Then he stormed off down the hallway.

  Joe peered into the office. Mr. Fun was sitting on the edge of the table.

  “What is it?” he said when he saw the boys. “Did you come to tell me you found my money?”

  “No,” Joe said. “We were just wondering something. When exactly did you find out the money was missing?”

  Mr. Fun frowned. “When do you think?” he snapped. “It was about two seconds before I started yelling that the money was missing!”

  Joe glanced over at Frank. They could both tell that Mr. Fun wasn’t in a very good mood.

  They ducked back out into the hall. “Should we go talk to Darryl?” Frank suggested. “Maybe he can tell us exactly when he left the office earlier.”

  Joe had a feeling Darryl was in just as bad a mood as his father. But he nodded. “Let’s go find him.”

  That turned out to be harder than they expected. Darryl wasn’t anywhere in the arcade. But the Hardys finally spotted him in the bumper car arena. The other riders had left by now, and Darryl was the only one out on the floor. He was driving a bright purple bumper car around, smashing it into the parked cars as hard as he could.

  “Hey, Darryl!” Joe called out. “Can we talk to you?”

  Darryl didn’t even look up. He just spun the purple car around and drove it straight toward the wall. It bounced off and crashed into another parked car.

  “I guess he’s not in a talkative mood,” said Frank in a low voice. “Maybe we should wait.”

  “I have a better idea.” There were two bumper cars parked along the wall right by where they were standing. Joe vaulted over the wall and jumped into one of them. “Come on!” he told Frank. “If we can catch up to him, maybe he’ll talk to us.”

  Frank didn’t look too sure. But he shrugged and jumped over into the other car.

  Darryl looked over when he heard them coming. “Hey,” he snapped. “This ride costs five tickets, you know. You can’t just jump over the wall like that.”

  “We’ll pay your dad back later,” Frank said. “Right now we want to talk to you.”

  “I don’t feel like talking. I feel like doing this.” Darryl leaned over the steering wheel and drove straight toward Frank’s bumper car. Frank tried to steer away, but it was too late. Darryl’s car crashed into his so hard that Frank’s car jerked back and bumped into Joe’s car.

  “Whoa!” Joe cried.

  Darryl’s car bounced off the wall nearby. As soon as he could, he spun it around and took off for the opposite end of the arena.

  Frank’s car was stuck in the corner between a couple of parked cars. He was having trouble getting it turned around.

  But Joe’s car was still okay. “I’ll go after him!” he called. Then he stomped down on the go pedal. He steered after Darryl, dodging parked cars along the way.

  He was almost caught up when Darryl heard him coming. “Leave me alone!” he yelled.

  But Joe didn’t slow down. He ran right into the back of Darryl’s car. That made it bounce forward and get stuck between two parked cars along the wall.

  “Hey!” Darryl shouted. He managed to spin his car around so it was facing out.

  Joe didn’t want to let him get away again. So he steered his car over to block the way.

  “Get out of my way!” Darryl yelled. “Or I’ll hit your stupid car so hard you’ll end up on Mars!”

  “I don’t care.” Joe clutched the steering wheel tightly, just in case. “I really need to ask you some questions.”

  By now Frank was steering toward them. “We’re just trying to help your dad get his money back,” he called.

  Darryl glared at both of them. For a second Joe thought he was going to follow through on his threat to ram them again.

  But then the teenager slumped in his seat. “Whatever,” he muttered. “My dad already thinks it’s my fault the money is gone, and he won’t listen to anything I say. So what do you want to know?”<
br />
  “Well, to start with, what happened?” Frank asked.

  “It was just like I said. That lady stopped in and offered me big bucks to help her carry some shopping bags out to her car, and I said yes. But, um, on the way out I might have knocked the cash box off the table.”

  “Might have?” Joe echoed.

  Darryl glared at him. “Okay, I did,” he said. “But it was an accident. I was so psyched to make that much cash for doing something so easy that I jumped up too fast. That stupid box was so old it smashed when it hit the floor.”

  Frank leaned forward on the steering wheel of his bumper car. “What happened to the money?”

  “I didn’t take it, if that’s what you mean,” Darryl said. “The money fell under the table. I was going to get it out from under there and clean up the box pieces as soon as I got back.” He frowned, revving his bumper car. “But it took way longer than I thought to carry all that lady’s stuff, and by the time I got back . . . Well, you know what happened.”

  “And you and your dad checked under the table, right?” asked Joe.

  Darryl nodded. “The box was still there,” he said. “And the roll of tickets, too. But not the money.”

  Joe was starting to feel impatient. “Come on,” he said, swinging one leg over the edge of his car. “Let’s go question some other people.”

  “Wait.” Frank steered a little closer to Darryl’s car. “We believe you didn’t take the money. But we need more information so we can figure out who did. How long were you gone, exactly? And what time did you leave to help the lady?”

  Darryl revved his car again. “What do I look like, a stopwatch?” he snapped. “If you want to know that stuff, you should ask that little brat with the blond braids. She was standing right there when the box broke.”

  “Huh?” Frank said. “Wait, do you mean Mimi?”

  Darryl shrugged. “I don’t know her name. She’s been pestering me all day about tickets. She finally came back with a grubby dollar bill she wanted to use to buy some, but I didn’t have time before I left.”

  Joe’s eyes widened. He jumped the rest of the way out of his bumper car. “Aha!” he cried. “It was Mimi—she must have seen that money under the desk and taken it!”

  9

  Lost and Found

  It didn’t take long to find Mimi. She was in the arcade with Chet. The contest was still stopped, but a lot of kids were playing the different games. Chet was playing pinball while Mimi sucked on her lollipop nearby.

  “Hi,” said Chet when Frank and Joe raced up. “Where have you guys been?”

  Joe didn’t bother to answer. “Hey, Mimi,” he said. “You didn’t really find those tickets on the floor, did you? You found a bunch of money.”

  “Huh?” Chet looked confused. He turned away from his game. “What are you talking about?”

  Mimi scrunched up her face. Her cheeks went red. “I might have found some money,” she said. “But don’t worry, I returned it to its rightful owner.”

  “What?” Chet squawked.

  Frank leaned closer to Mimi. “What rightful owner?”

  “I don’t know his name.” Mimi started playing with her bracelets. “He said he lost it. And then he gave me a big reward. I think he might be a secret prince or something.”

  “That’s not what you said earlier, Mimi!” Chet exclaimed.

  Frank and Joe traded a look. It was no surprise that Mimi’s story had changed. She was always making things up and exaggerating. Usually it was harmless stuff, like pretending her dolls talked to her. Or that she was a princess. But this was different.

  “So what did you do with the rest of the money?” Joe demanded. “Even all those prizes couldn’t have used up more than a little of it.”

  Chet grabbed her by the arm. “Let’s see in your pockets,” he ordered his sister.

  “Wait,” Frank told them both. He’d just thought of something. “The Prize Pavilion doesn’t take cash. Mimi had to use tickets to buy her prizes. And Darryl said he hadn’t sold her any tickets.”

  “Duh!” said Mimi with a frown. “That was my reward, dummy. That secret prince guy gave me a whole bunch of tickets! Don’t you know anything?”

  She stomped away. Chet raced after her.

  “Stop!” he called. “You’re supposed to stay with me from now on, remember?”

  The Hardys watched them go. “Do you think Mimi’s telling the truth?” Frank asked.

  “Who knows?” Joe said. “But if she is, it sounds like someone tricked her into giving him that money.”

  “It would have to be someone with a lot of tickets.”

  “Yeah. And you know who had access to lots of tickets?” Joe tapped his fingers on the pinball machine. “Darryl. Maybe he didn’t get that cash from some mystery lady after all. Maybe he stole it himself!”

  “Maybe.” Frank wasn’t too sure. “But if that’s true, why would he walk right up to his father, waving the cash around? Besides, there are tons of other people here with plenty of tickets. Like Adam, for one.”

  “But if he took the money, where is it now?” Joe said. “His pockets were empty, remember?”

  Frank nodded. That part was bothering him, too. “Maybe he hid the cash somewhere to pick up later.”

  Joe looked dubious. “I guess it’s possible,” he said. “Adam’s always up to no good.” He sighed. “I thought solving this crime would be easy. But it’s not.”

  “Let’s think about what Dad would do next,” said Frank. He thought for a second. “He’d probably say to look for alibis.”

  “You mean figure out where everybody was at the time of the crime?”

  “Yeah. That will help us figure out who might have done it and who couldn’t have done it.” Frank pulled out his list again and checked it. “For instance, Adam was at the Snack Shack getting a soda at the time.”

  “Except when he came back, he didn’t have a soda,” Joe recalled. “That seems kind of suspicious.”

  Frank tucked his list back in his pocket. “Definitely,” he agreed. “Let’s go check with the people at the Snack Shack and see if he was really there.”

  When the Hardys got to the Snack Shack, they found a college-age girl wiping the counter with a rag. Her name tag read SANDY.

  “Hi,” Frank said. “Can we ask you something?”

  “Sure,” Sandy replied. “As long as it’s not for free food. You need tickets to buy.”

  “It’s not that,” said Joe. “We were just wondering if you saw a kid earlier. He’s wearing a red long-sleeved shirt with a wide stripe on it and black high-tops.”

  Sandy stopped wiping and looked at him in surprise. “You know, I don’t usually pay much attention to you younger kids,” she said. “You all look alike to me. But I do remember him. I had to chase him away, like, three times to stop him from stealing all the napkins.”

  Frank glanced over at his brother. Stealing napkins? That sounded weird even for Adam. But it did mean that he’d been over at the snack bar just as he claimed.

  “I guess Adam does have an alibi, after all,” Joe said as Sandy hurried around behind the counter to wait on someone. “Let’s go question Darryl again. Or maybe that Callie girl—I still think it’s weird that she ran away earlier. Although I don’t know if even Mimi would call her a prince. . . .”

  Frank was staring at the napkin dispensers. There were two of them sitting at one end of the counter. They were big and made of shiny metal, with napkins sticking out the front through a large slot.

  “Stealing napkins?” he mumbled. “Why would Adam do something like that? Unless . . .”

  He raced over to the nearest dispenser and started pulling out the napkins. There were tons of them in there.

  “What are you doing?” Joe said, sounding surprised.

  “I have an idea.” Frank kept yanking at the napkins. Soon they were all out. He peered inside the dispenser. Nothing.

  He stepped over to the second dispenser. By now Sandy had looked over and not
iced what he was doing.

  “Hey!” she yelled. “What’s wrong with you twerps today? Stop messing with the napkins!”

  Frank hesitated. He usually obeyed adults when they told him to do something—or not to do something. Besides, what if his theory was wrong? He would probably get in big trouble for wasting napkins.

  But Joe had finally figured out what he was doing. “I’ll check the other one!” he cried. He raced over and dumped the dispenser over. The napkins all came fluttering out.

  So did a huge wad of cash!

  10

  Secret File #1: Solved!

  Thanks for the ride, Mom,” Joe said as he and Frank climbed out of their mother’s car. “Where’s Dad? We want to tell him about the video game tournament.”

  That wasn’t all they wanted to tell him about. During the whole ride home, Frank and Joe had kept quiet about the mystery they’d solved at Fun World that day. They wanted to tell their dad about it first.

  Mrs. Hardy smiled. “I’m afraid that will have to wait. Your dad went to the home improvement store to pick up some more flooring for the spare room.”

  “Oh,” Joe said. He and Frank traded a look. In all the excitement at Fun World, they’d almost forgotten about their secret bet. “Um, guess we’ll go out and play in the woods, then.”

  “All right,” his mother said. “But make sure you’re back in time for dinner. Your dad is planning to grill some burgers tonight.” She hurried toward the front door.

  “I guess neither of us gets dibs on the spare room,” Frank said as he and Joe headed around the side of the house. “After all, neither of us won the tournament.”

  Joe nodded. Adam had been kicked out of the video game tournament after Mr. Fun found out he’d stolen that money. When the contest had started up again, Iola had ended up winning first prize.

  Frank had come in right after Iola, with Joe trailing right behind Frank. Frank could practice all he wanted—but he’d forgotten that Iola won at almost everything.

  Joe looked up at the spare room as they passed the garage. He really wanted that room. But he wasn’t sure he should get it anymore.