Trouble Island Read online

  “Well, there’s a big community garden where the inn tends a plot,” Polly explained, “and there’s also a greenhouse for off-season gardening. Farm-to-table may be trendy now, but on Rubble Island it’s a necessity. Without it, it would be difficult to get high-quality fresh vegetables here, especially in the winter.”

  “What a great solution,” Aunt Trudy mused, and then a yawn slipped out. “Oh, excuse me! How rude!”

  “No, not at all!” said Jacques. “You’ve had a long day. You must be exhausted.”

  While we tried to shake our heads politely, Jacques wasn’t wrong. We’d had to get up really early for our flight. Arriving at the Portland airport seemed like it had happened a million years ago. Now that I was full of delicious food, I could feel my eyelids getting heavy.

  “I am a little tired,” Colton agreed. “Perhaps we should get our rest. Trudy and I have to be up early tomorrow so we can get to work! Come, Trudy—I believe the food from the dock has been delivered. Let me show you what we’ll be working with.” He led her into the kitchen. When they returned a few minutes later, Aunt Trudy looked a little bewildered.

  “How many people will be working with us?” she asked Colton.

  He waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, don’t worry. We’ll have a few extra hands. But really, I want to use the awards banquet as an opportunity to teach you everything I know! Aren’t you lucky?”

  I caught Joe’s eye. Lucky, I mouthed. He shook his head and mouthed back, Is he serious?

  Polly pushed away from the table. “Jacques, show these exhausted people to their rooms,” she said with a grin. “I’ll clean up here.”

  “Oh, no, Polly,” Aunt Trudy protested. “You made us such a wonderful meal! I can—”

  “Don’t be silly. I don’t have an early flight tomorrow, and I didn’t spend all day on a plane, then a car, then a boat. Go up to your rooms and get some rest. It’s been a real pleasure to host you all.”

  We thanked her, and after a few minutes, Jacques led us back into the lobby and grabbed some keys from behind the reception desk. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show each of you to your rooms.”

  As we sleepily followed Jacques up the stairs, a terrible thought occurred to me. “Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I sort of remember from my brochures that not all the rooms have electricity?”

  Jacques laughed. “Oh, yes—that’s true. This inn dates back to 1916. Did you know that?”

  “I, uh… I read something like that,” I replied. But what I was thinking was, Old things are cool and all that, but I was really hoping to charge my phone.…

  “Some of the summer guests don’t mind—they come to Rubble Island to get away from it all,” Jacques went on. “But your party will be staying in the main building, where all the rooms have full amenities. The outbuildings are closed up for the season. We don’t get many guests in March.”

  Phew!

  “Are there any other guests here now?” Joe asked.

  Jacques nodded. “Only two right now. It’ll be very quiet.”

  We’d arrived on the second floor, where a long hallway with a plush red carpet led past a series of ten or so rooms. Jacques guided us to a door on the right. “This will be you, Frank and Joe—I hope you don’t mind sharing? The inn is mostly in hibernation mode at this time of year, and when Gemma sent word that you’d be coming, I wanted to make sure your room had time to warm up. If you need separate rooms, I can have one prepared tomorrow.”

  “This is fine,” Joe said with a sleepy grin. “If it has beds in it, I’m sold.”

  Jacques laughed. “Two beds, in fact! What luxury.”

  He pushed open the door and we walked through a narrow foyer into a charming wood-paneled space with two double beds, each covered in a puffy white duvet. On the far end of the room, two windows looked out into the darkness. It was hard to tell what our view was, but I was excited to find out in the morning.

  “This is perfect,” I said sincerely. “Thank you for having us.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Jacques said, retreating to the door. We called our good nights to Aunt Trudy, Colton, and Gemma, and then Jacques pulled the door closed behind him.

  We didn’t take long getting into our pj’s, brushing our teeth, and climbing beneath those cozy cream-colored duvets. The bed was soft and warm, and the pillows were excellent. Joe clicked off the lamp. “Good night, Frank.”

  “Night.”

  After a few seconds, I chuckled. “Do you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “The waves.” I was quiet so that Joe could listen to the water slapping against the rocky shore.

  “Oh, wow. We must be really close to the ocean!”

  “I know. I can’t wait to explo—”

  But I never finished what I was saying, because right at that moment, we heard a loud crash, followed by a bloodcurdling scream. Joe flicked on the light, and we stared at each other in alarm and spoke at the same time:

  “Aunt Trudy?”

  4 PETTY SQUABBLES

  JOE

  IN SECONDS FRANK AND I had tossed off our covers and jumped to our feet. Frank threw open the door and we raced out into the hallway. A little farther down the hall, our aunt emerged dressed in her bathrobe, looking just as concerned as we were.

  “Who was that?” she asked. “I heard someone scream.”

  “Me too!” I cried.

  A few seconds later, a third door opened, and Gemma, still in her street clothes, stepped into the hallway. “Are you all okay?” she asked. “That sounded like Colton.”

  “Colton?” Frank asked, sounding puzzled. “That’s funny. I thought it was a woman.”

  Gemma was already leading the way to the end of the hall. “Colton has a very high-pitched scream,” she said mildly. I didn’t ask how she knew that.

  With the three of us close on her heels, Gemma knocked briskly on the door of room 208. “Colton? Is everything all right?” she called.

  There was no answer, but we could hear someone moving around inside.

  “Colton?” Gemma shouted in a louder voice. “We’re worried about you. I need to know—”

  Thunk. Suddenly the door was yanked open, and Gemma lurched forward. Colton, standing on the other side in a plaid bathrobe, caught her. Behind him was a room bathed in golden light. But from the small amount of bed and rug we could see, nothing appeared out of place.

  “Colton,” Gemma said again, recovering quickly and getting back to her feet. “Is everything okay? We heard a crash.”

  He shook his head, his eyes slightly glazed. “Well—it’s—I just—”

  I glanced at Frank, and we pushed past him into the room. Something had clearly happened—maybe something dangerous—and I was losing patience. The crash had been too loud to be a lamp falling off a table or a glass breaking. It had sounded heavy, almost like a body falling to the floor.

  “Oh my gosh,” Frank muttered. Over the antique-looking desk, which faced the huge king-size bed, was a large bay window, with its central pane shattered, like something small but heavy had been thrown through it. Now that we were closer, we could hear the waves pounding the rocks outside.

  I spun around to face the bed, and there it was, right on the edge, ringed with tiny glass shards.

  “Someone threw a brick through your window,” I said, stating the obvious, just as Jacques appeared.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “I heard a— Goodness!”

  Colton held up his hands. “It’s fine! Or I should say, I’m fine. I’m sorry, Jacques.”

  Why is Colton apologizing to Jacques? But before I could ask, Jacques pushed his way into the room and came over to investigate the window.

  “Oh my,” he said. “Did it hit you?”

  “No, no,” Colton replied. “It startled me. Some of you probably heard me yell. I was lying in bed at the time. I felt the brick hit the foot of the mattress, but it didn’t make contact with me.”

  Jacques looked from the window to
Colton, then shook his head. Without another word, he ran out of the room and down the hallway.

  “What’s he doing?” Frank asked.

  “Who cares?” I replied. “Come on, Frank. Let’s follow him.”

  Before anyone could object, I ran out of the room just in time to see Jacques disappearing down the stairway. With Frank hot on my heels, I followed him down the stairs, through the lobby and dining room, and then out to the covered porch. Jacques maneuvered around the tables and chairs, down another short staircase to the wide lawn. He curved around, ran about twenty yards more, and stopped, looking up at the main building and panting.

  “Look.” Frank pointed to the second floor, where we could see the shattered pane. “The break is in the upper left corner of the window. To hit it hard enough to break, the person must have thrown the brick from around where we’re standing.”

  “How do you know that?” Jacques asked, clearly surprised.

  “Physics,” I replied after a moment. And way too much experience investigating broken windows. For now, I figured we’d better keep our sleuthing to ourselves.

  Jacques shook his head. “You must like science more than my teenager, Dev.”

  “Should we call the police?” I asked. Back home in Bayport, the police were sometimes helpful, sometimes not. After some back-and-forth about whether Frank and I were allowed to investigate cases, I’d learned it usually paid off to do things the “right” way, and report crimes that should be reported.

  “Rubble Island doesn’t have any police,” Jacques explained.

  “What?!” I sputtered. I knew every town was different, but… no police at all? In Maine? In the twenty-first century?

  “Well, technically we’re overseen by the force from East Harbor, but nothing really ever happens on the island… and the people here prefer to handle petty squabbles among themselves.”

  “Does a brick through the window count as a ‘petty squabble’?” I asked. I was wondering what sort of Wild West ridiculousness Aunt Trudy, Frank, and I had signed up for.

  Jacques didn’t answer. Instead he held up a hand to get our attention, then very slowly pointed to something on the lawn. I followed his finger. Footsteps in the grass! It was a single set—so not left by us—and they led down a short hill to a gate in the fence around the property, one that was still swinging.

  “That has to be where the perp went,” Frank whispered. “Our brick thrower!”

  I didn’t need to hear more. Every second counted! I raced down the hill, following the footsteps. I could hear Frank right behind me. The gate exited onto a small path, where old stone steps led to an uneven gravel road. We were behind the inn now, on a road that ran parallel to the water. I could see a few houses along the road ahead, some with lights on inside, but there were no streetlights—no outdoor lights of any kind, really. I wished I had a flashlight.

  “Hold on,” Frank said, panting as he stopped at my side. “I grabbed my phone on my way out of our room.”

  Meanwhile, Jacques was calling from the lawn. “Frank! Joe! Come back! It’s dark! You’ll get lost!”

  “We’ll be fine,” I yelled back.

  Frank pulled out his phone from his pj pocket and tapped on the screen to activate the flashlight feature, but it was like a teaspoon’s worth of light when we needed about ten gallons.

  “Turn it off,” I said, looking around. “Remember what they told us in Boy Scouts? Once your eyes adjust, you can get more light from the moon.”

  Frank flicked off the phone, but my scouting wisdom didn’t totally pan out. The moon and the stars did look bright up above us—much brighter than at home—but it was still hard to make out anything at ground level against the tall line of dark trees. Still, we followed the gravel road past a few houses. It was impossible to make out footsteps along the well-traveled road, so now we were just guessing about the brick thrower’s escape route.

  It was eerie; even the houses with lights on were locked up tight. Thick curtains or shutters covered the windows. In the third house down, I could’ve sworn one window was illuminated, and from a distance we could make out a small living room inside, but when we were a few feet from the path that led to the porch, a hand suddenly snapped the curtains shut.

  How do they even know we’re here? I wondered. I couldn’t help remembering what Colton had said… that the islanders didn’t care for outsiders.

  The gravel road intersected with another at a small building that seemed to be a closed post office. Ahead, the road we were on passed a meadow and led into the dark forest. The other road curved around in the direction of the pier, passing a few more houses and businesses along the way.

  A sound like a twig snapping shattered the silence, then something moved through the brush. I looked at Frank.

  “This way!” he cried, pointing down the curving road.

  I rushed after him, trying to make as little noise as possible, but of course that was hard on a gravel road. After we’d run about thirty yards, Frank held up his hand.

  “Do you hear that?” he whispered as he tried to catch his breath.

  And then I heard it too: the sound of a body shifting just on the other side of a small storage shed behind the closed ice cream stand. I caught Frank’s eye and nodded in the direction of the noise.

  Frank’s eyes widened. I could feel my body flooding with the adrenaline that always preceded a bad-guy capture. My muscles felt buzzy, and I suddenly felt like I could run for miles. I hoped the perp didn’t have a weapon, but even if they did, Frank and I have gotten pretty good at disarming crooks.

  Frank held up one finger, Wait, and then, after a few seconds, nodded.

  Let’s go!

  We leaped into action, bolting for the shed and splitting up to trap the culprit behind it. As I turned the corner, I saw Frank blinking back at me in confusion. There was no one there. But I was sure I’d heard something!

  “Rrrrrrroooooowwwww!”

  Out of nowhere, a loose collection of paws, teeth, and claws, dark as the night, leaped at me.

  “Auuuuuuggghhh!”

  I was so stunned I went over like a toy soldier. Before I knew what was happening, I was sprawled on the damp ground with this evil force hissing and scratching at my face.

  “Rrrooow!”

  “It’s a cat,” Frank said after I’d batted at the demon for a few moments, unsuccessfully trying to dislodge its claws from my face and neck.

  “Oh, is it?” I could feel blood welling up in the corner of my eye where I’d suffered a particularly nasty scratch. “Tell me more, Professor!”

  That seemed to shake my brother into action. He pushed at the beast with his foot, which the cat did not like, but at least seemed to respect. Finally, with a last, highly insulted Mrrrow!, it jumped off me and disappeared through some low bushes into the night.

  Frank’s face appeared above mine, looking concerned and, honestly, a little disappointed.

  “You could help me up,” I snapped as I wiped blood off my cheek.

  He held out his hand and I grabbed it, pulling myself to my feet. My whole back was damp with dark, cold mud, from the neck of my T-shirt to the cuffs of my pj pants. I couldn’t see what I looked like, but I could feel the scratches and bites crisscrossing my face and chest.

  “I guess the island cats don’t like outsiders either,” Frank said. He was trying to be deadpan, but the corner of his mouth kept twitching.

  “Hilarious,” I muttered. “Look, I’m guessing we just scared off our vandal, if they were even out here in the first place.”

  Frank nodded. “Yeah. Whoever they are, they probably know the island better than we do—which means they know where to hide. The best thing we can do now is go home and clean you up.”

  We stumbled back to the road, trying to retrace our steps to the inn. When we got to the intersection, I looked both ways, unsettled by the idea that we were surrounded by houses filled with people, and yet not a single soul had come out to see what was going on, even
when they must have heard us yelling. In fact, in one house a ways up the road leading into the woods, I could have sworn I saw a face peeking out a window. But just as quickly as I spotted it, it disappeared behind a dark curtain.

  What sort of place was Rubble Island? Bricks through windows, no cops, evil man-eating cats, and no one to help you when one of those evil cats attacked?

  Frank led the way back to the inn. We could see that the lobby was lit, and that figures were sitting around a long wooden table inside. When we stepped onto the porch, all eyes turned toward us, and Aunt Trudy stood and let out a cry of relief.

  “Boys, you’re okay! Oh—what happened to you, Joe?”

  I pushed open the door. “A monster masquerading as a cat,” I explained. “Bad timing on our part. We didn’t find whoever threw the brick.”

  Aunt Trudy clucked in sympathy while Jacques jumped up. “Let me get some bandages, and a cloth to clean you up. Have a seat.” He disappeared down a hallway that I assumed led to his living quarters.

  Colton and Gemma were already sitting at the table. Colton hugged a cup of what smelled like chamomile tea. “It was brave of you boys to go after the guy,” he said, looking up.

  Frank shrugged. “It was no big deal. It’s kind of what we do.” Then he frowned. “Is there a reason you think it’s a guy?”

  Colton looked startled, but he glanced down into his mug again and shook his head. “No, no. I have no idea who it was. I suppose I’m being sexist.”

  Gemma chuckled. “Yes, Colton. Petty vandals can be women, too.”

  Jacques came back with a box of Band-Aids, a damp washcloth, and a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He took the seat next to mine and motioned me to face him. “This will sting,” he said, washing my face and neck with the cloth and then putting some hydrogen peroxide on it and gently patting the wounds. For a little while, I concentrated on not yelping at the burning sensation as the hydrogen peroxide touched each scratch and bite.

  “Is there a lot of vandalism on the island?” Frank asked. “I mean, is it unusual for you to have a brick thrown at the inn?”