Boardwalk Bust Read online

  “Right,” Frank agreed, but I could tell he was starting to get suspicious.

  * * *

  SUSPECT PROFILE

  Name: Arnold “Bump” Rankowski

  Hometown: Ocean Point, New Jersey

  Physical description: Age 48, 6′, 230 lbs., ruddy complexion, deep suntan, graying hair, always smiling, big teeth.

  Occupation: Mayor of Ocean Point

  Background: Wealthy entrepreneur/ politician who was born in Ocean Point and wound up as its mayor. Never married. No children.

  Suspicious behavior The sense that he’s got a secret.

  Suspected of: Is he hiding what he knows about the jewel thefts?

  Possible motives: Saving his town’s reputation, maybe?

  * * *

  “Has the thief been caught yet?” Frank asked.

  “Not yet,” Bump said, staring straight ahead as he pointed us toward the landing strip. “But we’ve got the best police department on the whole shore, and they’re on the case. Don’t you boys worry. Ocean Point is as safe a spot as you’ll ever find.”

  He brought us in for a perfect landing, and we taxied to a stop outside the small terminal building. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll drive you to your hotel. Where are you staying?”

  “Well, we hadn’t figured that out yet,” I said. “Any suggestions?”

  “Are you kidding?” he said. “I’ve got a million of them.”

  He drove us to the Surfside Inn, just half a block from the boardwalk. “Here you go,” he said, pulling over. “Best spot in town if you’re on a budget—and most kids your age are.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Rankowski,” Frank said. “I mean, Bump.”

  “Don’t be strangers, now. If you need anything, you can find me at City Hall, over on Main Street.”

  “Well,” Frank said, as Bump pulled away in his big black Lincoln. “That was interesting.”

  “Weird,” I said. “What did you think of our new friend?”

  “He’s definitely a politician,” Frank said. “You’ve got to take everything he says with a grain of salt.”

  “Did you see how he froze up when you mentioned the robberies?”

  “Definitely.”

  “I guess he’s not happy that the news is getting around.”

  “Would you be, if you were the mayor?”

  “Good point,” I said. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m beat. Let’s check in, get some supper, and hit the sack.”

  “What, no partying?” Frank said, giving me an elbow in the ribs.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  6. Ocean Point

  I woke up the next morning when the sun rose over the horizon and shone right smack into my face. It glinted over the ocean, magnifying the light till it was blinding. There was no way to keep on sleeping.

  “Oh, man,” I said to Joe, who was holding his pillow over his head to keep the light away. “You forgot to close the curtains!”

  “I forgot?” He threw his pillow at me. I threw mine at him.

  “Close the curtains,” he said.

  “Me? Why me? You’re closer to the window.”

  “Because, dude,” Joe groaned. “I hurt all over.”

  “You hurt? Hey, I’m the one who almost got crushed in that grain bin!”

  “Big deal,” Joe said. “I’m the one who got kicked by a cow!”

  “I’m the one who went out on the wing of the plane!”

  “Okay, okay,” Joe said, hoisting himself up and going to close the curtains. Half a minute later he was back in bed and passed out.

  Despite my victory, I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I took a hot shower instead. It took some of the soreness out of my muscles. Then I went downstairs to check out the scene.

  It was a gorgeous summer morning. The hotel was only half a block from the boardwalk. In between was a miniature golf course, already packed with kids and their parents.

  It was a little early for swimming, but by ten o’clock, lots of people would be on the beach and in the water. It was going to be a hot one.

  I had some pancakes at the restaurant up the block, then went back up to the room to wake Joe. Time was a-wasting. We had to get started if we wanted to nail our serial jewel thief.

  Joe was already up, out of the shower, and in his bathing suit. “Time to check out the scenery!” he said. “I’m feeling ir-res-istible today. Hey, how does my eye look?”

  “Better,” I lied. “It barely shows. Still, you’d better come up with a good story to explain how you got it.”

  “Whatever I do come up with, you’d better back me up.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Come on, let’s hit the beach.”

  “Joe, don’t you think we’d better do some investigating first? I mean, we’re here on a case, remember?”

  Joe gave me a look. “All work and no play makes Frank a dull boy.”

  “How ’bout we go to the jewelry stores that got hit, and see what we can find out?” I suggested.

  “Later,” Joe said, admiring himself in his new bathing suit. “Gotta take a swim first.”

  “Joe …”

  “Maybe do a little surfing … we could rent boards….”

  “Joe …”

  “Hey, there’s information to be dug up on the beach, too, right? Right?”

  I sighed, shook my head, and went to get my suit on.

  There’s no arguing with Joe sometimes. Like when the surf looked this good.

  Hang on, I’ve got to step in.

  In his heart Frank knew I was right. There was no better way to get the lay of the land than to go out and do what everyone else was doing.

  In Ocean Point that meant swimming. It meant surfing. It meant beach volleyball, cruising the boardwalk, hitting the arcades and amusement park rides, finding cool junk and funky T-shirts in the gift shops and stores. It meant checking out the sidewalk artists and performers who were everywhere in this honky-tonk beach town.

  And ah, yes, taking in the bikini parade. Awesome.

  It meant eating at pizza joints and soft ice cream stands, hot dogs and pretzels and cotton candy …

  Suddenly I realized I hadn’t eaten breakfast. “Frank,” I said. “Let’s stop and get something to eat.”

  “No thanks,” he said. “I already ate.”

  “Huh? When was that?”

  “While you were sleeping.”

  Frank can be so annoying sometimes.

  “You didn’t bring me anything back?”

  “I didn’t know what you’d want.”

  Yeah, right. “Okay, well, I’ve gotta eat something. Now.”

  “Whatever,” he said.

  We went outside and headed for the boardwalk. Right away I spotted a sign that read: SALTWATER TAFFY—HOMEMADE!

  Sounded good to me. I always like to sample the native cuisine. We started heading over.

  Over at the amusement park on the nearby pier, we saw some kids screaming on the Ferris wheel. There was a tattoo parlor called Rat-a-Tattoo, and a sign that read: FREAK SHOW—TICKETS $10!

  As we entered the saltwater taffy place, we saw this guy behind the counter who—I swear—looked like he was made out of saltwater taffy. He was fat, and flabby, and bald, and slightly green. He was reading the morning paper.

  “Hi, I’d like some taffy,” I told him.

  He lowered his paper and slid off his stool. “What flavor you want?” he asked. He had an accent—Russian, it sounded like.

  “I don’t know… the pink,” I said.

  “Strawberry … good choice. How much you want?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Enough for breakfast.”

  He didn’t bat an eyelash.

  With a big, scary-looking knife, he sliced off a piece of the sticky stuff, slipped it into a plastic bag, and handed it to me. “Six-fifty,” he said.

  While I was fishing out my wallet, Frank asked him, “Is there really salt water in saltwater taffy?”

  The guy sm
iled. His teeth were all rotted out and black, naturally.

  “Nah!” he said. “Good question, though. Most people assume it’s made out of salt water. Americans, they aren’t very curious. You’re a smart boychick.”

  “Smart what?” Frank said.

  “Boychick. Russian for boy. So you want some taffy too?”

  “No, thanks,” Frank said. “My brother’s the one with the sweet tooth.”

  “Smart kid,” the man said, chuckling. “Thinks about his teeth, they shouldn’t get cavities.”

  He turned to me. “You should be more like your brother. Maybe then you won’t get black eye.”

  “How do they make taffy?” Frank asked him, before I could tell the guy where to get off.

  “They? I make it! Right here in the store.”

  He pointed to a big machine in the back of the shop that was churning a load of gooey green taffy in spirals, over and over and over again. “That’s how we do it. Gotta spin for four hours to get the right softness. You buy it in supermarket, it’s not the same thing.”

  “I bet it isn’t,” Frank said, looking at the man’s newspaper. “So, what’s all this about robberies in town? Any idea who’s behind it?” Frank asked, pointing at the front page.

  Now I saw why he’d been wasting his time on this slob. Frank never stops thinking.

  “If you ask me, everybody here has racket. This is just the same thing, only big-time. Everybody is con artist.”

  I bit my lip. What were Frank and I, if not con artists? Making people believe we were just here for a little fun in the sun, while all the time we were really tracking down a brazen thief?

  While they were talking, I was trying to break off a piece of taffy to start chewing on. It didn’t want to stop stretching, though, and pretty soon I was fighting with it, backing up toward the window.

  Suddenly something grabbed me by the hair.

  “Aaargh!”

  “NO!” the taffy man shouted. “Don’t go there! You’ll get stuck!”

  “Thanks for the warning,” I said, holding onto the hair that was now stuck to one of the big wads of fresh taffy hanging in the shop window. “A little late, but much appreciated. Could you please help me get free of this?”

  Frank came right over, but the guy just stood there shaking his head. “You not gonna get it off like that,” he said.

  He came toward us with his big knife. Before I could stop him, he cut me loose from the hanging taffy. Now there was just a small piece of it stuck to my hair.

  “Don’t pull on it, or your hair’s gonna come right out,” he told me.

  “Well, how am I supposed to get this off of me?”

  “Joe, don’t panic,” Frank told me.

  “What do you mean, don’t panic?”

  “Salt water,” the guy said.

  “What?”

  “With salt water, will come right off You’ll go in the ocean, bim-boom, it comes right off you hair.”

  “Whew. What a relief,” I said, backing out the door. “Well, bye. Nice talking to you. Come on, Frank—I’ve gotta get this off right now.”

  We crossed the boardwalk and went down the wooden stairs to the beach. There we were, surrounded by kite flyers, Frisbee flippers, volleyball players, and boogie boarders. Everywhere we looked, there were blankets spread out, with cute girls busy getting tans.

  “Hi!” one of them said as we passed.

  For a fatal moment, I forgot what was attached to my hair.

  “Hi yourself,” I said, putting on my smoothest move. “What’s up? Looking for some company?”

  She giggled, and now both she and her friend were checking us out. I sat down next to the one who’d said hi.

  I could tell Frank wanted to get on with our job here, but he saw that I was determined not to be rude to our fine new friends, so he sat down too.

  Within ten seconds the two girls were surrounding Frank—as far from me on the blanket as it was possible to be. “What is that thing in his hair?” I heard one of them whisper in Frank’s ear.

  “And what happened to his eye?” the other one asked, looking at me.

  “Um, it’s a long story,” I said, standing up before they could see how red my face was getting. “Frank will tell you all about it. I’ve gotta go cool off in the water….”

  I ran for the ocean as fast as I could.

  What a doofus! How could I have forgotten how geeky I looked with that taffy sticking up from my hair?

  Later, I promised myself, I’d go back to that store and get my money back.

  The water was cold when I dove into it, but after ten seconds of screaming, I started to get used to it. Then I got busy scrubbing the stupid taffy off. Lucky for that guy, he wasn’t kidding. The taffy came right out.

  Too bad I still had that black eye. Frank was right—I should have gotten some makeup for it.

  I came out of the water, feeling embarrassed but ready to get on with my life. I saw that the two girls both had their arms around Frank and were laughing their heads off. Frank looked like the cat that ate the canary.

  I was about to go over there and remind him that we were supposed to be fighting crime when I noticed something I’d never seen before. It was a huge drawing in the sand, probably created with rakes. Very cool.

  I looked at it more closely and saw that it was really an advertisement, THE SHORE THING: FINE JEWELRY, it read.

  There was a guy with a metal detector walking across the beach, slowly waving it back and forth. He was about to step right on the embossed ad—on the Y in Jewelry, to be exact.

  “Hey!” I called out to him. “Watch where you’re walking!”

  He stopped and looked up at me with a face that would freeze a furnace.

  This was perhaps the ugliest dude I’d ever seen. And his expression was even uglier. He kept staring at me as he marched forward, stomping right through the artwork.

  I made a mental note to tell Frank about him. A mental note that I immediately proceeded to forget.

  “Come on, lover boy,” I told Frank when I reached the little threesome. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “Sorry,” Frank said to the girls as he rose. “Joe’s right. We do have to go.”

  “Aw, what’s your hurry?” the taller of the two girls said.

  “Wait a second,” said the other. Whipping out a pen from her beach bag, she wrote her phone number on Frank’s palm. “See you soon?”

  “S-sure,” Frank said.

  I pulled him away before he could say anything to embarrass himself.

  We were about to hit the boardwalk, looking for the first of the jewelry stores on our list, when we heard someone screaming behind us. We turned around to find a whole group of people shouting.

  “That little girl out there!” I heard someone say, pointing toward the ocean. “She’s drowning!”

  There were lifeguards on this beach, but I didn’t see any of them running to help. In fact, the lifeguard chair nearest to us was empty. But it wouldn’t have mattered if there were six lifeguardsswimming toward the drowning girl. Frank and I were already racing toward the water.

  I could see her now—a little girl of about eight, drifting way out over her head, flailing her arms and screaming for help.

  Just as Frank and I were about to dive in, we heard a loud voice behind us.

  “EVERYBODY OUT OF THE WATER!”

  It was the lifeguard. He was standing on the ladder that led up to his chair, holding on with one hand. In the other he was holding a megaphone.

  “Out of the water!” he repeated. “Sharks! Sharks!”

  Suddenly, like a human wave, all the people in the water—most of whom had been swimming toward the drowning girl—were turning back and heading for shore.

  But not me and Frank. Sharks or no sharks, somebody had to save that little girl’s life.

  7. All in a Day’s Work

  Joe and I are both on the Bayport High swim team. He does short sprints and relays. I hold the school record in
the 4 × 400 medley. But it doesn’t matter how fast you swim—sharks can swim faster.

  The best thing to do was not to think about the danger. We just had to focus on saving that little girl. Every few strokes I’d stop and try to get a bead on where she was. But by the time we were within thirty yards or so, all I saw was the fin, sticking up out of the water.

  “You dive down and get her!” I heard Joe shout from somewhere to my right. “I’ll fend off the shark!”

  I wanted to argue with him, to take on the more dangerous job myself, but there was no time. The little girl’s lungs would be full of water by now, and she’d sink like a stone if I couldn’t grab her first.

  I dove underwater, keeping my eye out for a sinking girl or a swimming shark.

  There she was, sure enough. There were still bubbles rising from her mouth and nose, which meant she still had enough air to keep her suspended in the water. But that wouldn’t last long.

  I strained every muscle in my body to get to her before it was too late.

  There!

  Throwing her over my shoulder, I held her tight and made for the surface. My own lungs felt like they were going to burst, but I just kept kicking, hoping I’d get some air before I passed out and sent both of us to a watery grave.

  I broke the surface just as I was starting to see stars. The world went white for a split second, and then I could hear myself gasping.

  Not a peep from the girl, though.

  I looked around for Joe, and saw him swimming toward me, holding something by a rope.

  A surfboard!

  “Some shark,” he said as he got near us. “It was turned over, with the fin sticking up.”

  He brought the board over, and I hoisted the little girl onto it. Then Joe and I got on opposite sides of the board and swam for shore.

  I only hoped it wasn’t too late to save our little surfboarder.

  No sooner had we got to the beach than a crowd gathered around us. I flipped the girl over onto her stomach and pushed down on her abdominal area. Water gushed out of her mouth. I pushed again, and she started coughing her lungs out.

  She was going to make it!

  “Make way!” I heard the lifeguard’s angry voice barking through the megaphone as he pushed his way through the crowd.