The Gray Hunter's Revenge Page 5

  “Why are you sneezing?” I asked.

  There was a long silence. “It’s a long story,” Joe finally said.

  I hung up with Joe and turned to Mrs. Foxwood. “I think I’ve got what I need for now,” I told her. “Thanks for all your help.”

  “But of course,” Mrs. Foxwood said with a smile. “Here, let me walk you out.” She led me back out through the lab to the lobby and out the front door. We said our goodbyes, but before I could turn away, Mrs. Foxwood grabbed my arm. “Mr. Hardy,” she said. “Look. I can see you have a scientific mind, like me. I know that you dismiss what you cannot explain. But I have seen things that defy logic and reason—I am convinced that those things killed my husband. Like a scientist, I know you must follow the evidence where it leads you. But whatever you do, please . . . just be careful. I don’t want someone else to get hurt.”

  It was strange and unsettling to hear such things coming out of the mouth of a scientist, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me a little nervous about stepping foot inside the manor ever again. But I quickly shook off the feeling, assuring myself that this was a brilliant woman who had just endured quite a trauma, so it was understandable that she would choose to project those fears onto something like a ghostly presence. It gave her someone to blame for her sorrow.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Foxwood,” I said. “We’ll be careful.”

  She nodded, and I turned to walk away, deciding to hang out at a café a few doors down to wait for Joe to arrive. I had only made it about a dozen steps before I heard someone’s voice call out, “Heather—wait!”

  I turned to see a tall, older man dashing across the street toward the lab building. Mrs. Foxwood was halfway through the door when she stopped and caught sight of him. “Edwin?” I heard her reply.

  The man stopped in front of the building, and Mrs. Foxwood stepped back out to meet him. Curious, I slipped into a somewhat stinky and rat-infested alleyway next to the lab building to eavesdrop on the conversation.

  “What are you doing here?” I heard Mrs. Foxwood say. She sounded somewhat impatient.

  “I had to see you,” the man replied. “I wanted to talk at the memorial, but there wasn’t any time.”

  “I have to get back to work, Edwin,” Mrs. Foxwood said. “Please, whatever it is, make it quick.”

  Suddenly it came to me that this must be Edwin Queen, the writer Joe had told me about at the memorial. Joe had said that Mr. Queen had a grudge against Nathan Foxwood.

  There was a pause. I almost felt sorry for poor Mr. Queen—I could imagine those piercing blue eyes of hers didn’t make it easy for him to think. “Um,” he finally managed. “Well, I know it’s only been a week since Nathan passed, but I know things haven’t been safe in the manor ever since. I don’t know where you’re staying, but I just wanted you to know that there’s a guest room at my place, should you ever need it.” He said the entire speech quite rapidly, as if he was both trying to obey her command to be fast, and also get it over with as quickly as possible.

  “That’s . . . very sweet of you, Edwin, thank you,” Mrs. Foxwood said, her tone gracious. “But my accommodations are set for now. If anything changes, I’ll be sure to let you know. It was nice to see you again.”

  After a moment, I heard the click of the lab building door closing. I peeked out of the alleyway to see Mr. Queen standing in front of the door, looking like a dog left out in the cold. He stared into the building after Mrs. Foxwood for a moment, and then took off back across the street, viciously kicking a rock as he went.

  My mind awhirl, I entered the café and ordered a hot chocolate. As I sipped, I wondered about Max Kingsley, Gavin Cook, and Edwin Queen. Edwin Queen certainly was an interesting character—could Joe have unwittingly hit upon the truth when he said Queen might have lost a lady to Nathan Foxwood? It certainly seemed like Queen was going after Mrs. Foxwood with her husband so recently gone. And his mention of things not being safe in the manor lately was suspicious too—could he be doing all this in order to drive Heather Foxwood back into his arms?

  It was all possible, but the fact was—at the moment it was Max Kingsley and Gavin Cook that the evidence pointed to. I couldn’t ignore the fan club pin, not until we had an explanation for it.

  I saw the car pull up outside and quickly went back to the cashier to order another hot chocolate. I knew better than to climb into the car without a hot beverage for each of us. Tracking down suspects works up quite a thirst.

  7

  THE TRAP IS SET

  JOE

  THAT’S IT,” FRANK SAID, POINTING to an ordinary-looking house at the end of the road. “Max Kingsley’s house.”

  I pulled the car slowly up to the curb and parked. “I don’t know about this, Frank. I still think Peter is a better bet.” I’d filled Frank in on my adventure at Peter Huang’s office and my suspicions about his involvement in the crimes.

  “Well, well, well,” Frank said, turning to me. “We’ve got no shortage of suspects, it turns out.” He then told me what he’d seen with Heather Foxwood and Edwin Queen. “Queen looks pretty good for it too, in my book. I agree that Peter’s got a lot of motive also, but you said yourself that he couldn’t have been the one up in the house during the memorial. In fact, neither could Queen. He was at the memorial too—you saw him. Furthermore, neither of them could have been the one who shoved you over the cliff side and dropped the fan club pin.”

  “True,” I admitted. “But they could have had an accomplice. Two people could have pulled this off, easy.”

  “Well then, what if one of those accomplices was either Max Kingsley or Gavin Cook? That doesn’t fit as well for Edwin Queen, but if Peter had the list of fan club members, he might have known a few of them himself.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Oh!” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Frank elbowed me in the ribs. “See? You just have to have a little more faith in your big bro.” He folded his arms and looked insufferably proud of himself.

  “Humph,” I huffed. “Don’t get a big head about it. You just came up with the idea right now!”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t make it any less awesome. So we’ll talk to these superfans, and then go from there.”

  “Now, are you sure that these are our guys?” I asked.

  “I made a few assumptions in my deductions, so I’m not a hundred percent certain,” Frank admitted. “But they sure do look good for it. The pin fits, and this house—and Gavin’s, down the street—are only a couple of miles from Cliffside Manor. And for what it’s worth, Max already has a record, I checked. Minor stuff like petty larceny, vandalism . . . but still. It shows the potential for criminal activity.”

  I nodded. “It’s enough for us to check these guys out, at least. You got a plan, bro?”

  Frank bit his lip. “Well—”

  “No?” I broke in. “Good, because I do.”

  Frank rolled his eyes. “Can you not go all James Bond on this situation, please? Can you just not?”

  “Frank, Frank! ” I replied, feigning offense. “Come on, now. Don’t you trust me? When have I ever let things get out of hand?” Frank looked down and started counting silently on his fingers. “Don’t answer that!” I snapped. “Anyway, it will be fine. You’ll see. I’m going to infiltrate the house—you just stay here and keep watch. If something does go awry, I’ll give you the signal for backup. Now, just let me have the pin.”

  Frank dropped the pin into my hand, giving me a don’t screw this up look.

  Pfft, I thought, getting out of the car. I got this. I pinned the little skull to my jacket, walked straight up to the door, and knocked. After a minute or so, the door cracked open and a face appeared. The kid was about my age, tall and lanky, sporting a crooked, slept-on black Mohawk and a red T-shirt. “What?” he said, without ceremony.

  “Hi, there. You’re Max Kingsley, right?” I asked.

  “So?” he replied.

  Quite the master conversationalist, I thought.<
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  “My name is Owen Hadley, and like you, I’m a member of the Foxwood Fan Club.” I gestured to the pin on my jacket.

  Max eyed it. “Okay,” he said.

  “I just joined a few months ago, and some of the other members and I are trying to put together a film project about Nathan Foxwood’s life. The president of the fan club mentioned that we should use you as a resource and told me where to find you—she said that you’re an expert on this stuff. Sorry to just show up like this, but I was in the neighborhood and was eager to meet you. Would it be cool if we talked for a bit?”

  As soon as I’d said the word “expert,” I could see the expression on the kid’s face change. “Yeah, man, of course,” Max said, throwing the door wide open, suddenly full of enthusiasm. “Come right in. I happen to consider myself a preeminent Foxwood scholar, so you’ve come to the right place.”

  This guy, I thought, resisting a hard eye roll and walking inside.

  Max led me to his room, where another guy with curly brown hair reclined on a ratty couch, rocking out to some grunge metal playing on his laptop. Framed posters of Nathan Foxwood’s movies lined the walls, and I could see a bunch of well-read paperbacks peeking out from under an empty pizza box. The one window in the room was pushed open, probably to air out the smell of old food and two guys who probably didn’t shower enough. The guy on the couch sat up when I came in, pulling the earbuds from his ears. “Who’s this?” he asked Max.

  “Owen,” Max replied, “from the fan club. He’s making a movie and wants our expert opinion.” He turned back to me. “This is my buddy Gavin. He’s a scholar too—knows everything there is to know about the early Foxwood books, the stuff he wrote before he got famous.”

  Gavin nodded sagely. “It’s very experimental,” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” I mumbled, meanwhile thinking what a coincidence it was that our two suspects were friends. Then something else grabbed my attention. “Hey, Max,” I said brightly. “That is a killer watch you’ve got.”

  Max glanced at the wristwatch he was wearing. It was all black except for the silver, bone-shaped hands and the silver outline of a skull on its face. “Oh, this?” he said, a hint of nervousness creeping into his voice. “Yeah, I got it for my birthday.”

  Liar, I thought. You got it from Cliffside Manor. That’s Nathan Foxwood’s watch. I remembered it from the picture that Adam Parker had shown us. “I bet experts like you guys have some first editions, too, don’t you?” I said, trying to lure some of the other stolen items out into the open. “Man, what I’d do to get my hands on an original Foxwood!”

  Max hesitated, but Gavin barreled forward, spurred on by my enthusiasm. “Heck yeah, we’ve got one!” he said, launching himself off the couch and opening up Max’s closet. He rummaged through some stuff in a pile before emerging with an old but well-preserved book in his hand. “Check this out.”

  “Wow,” I breathed, genuinely impressed. It was an original copy of The One I Left Alive, the book that made Nathan Foxwood a household name about twenty years ago. “This has got to be worth thousands of bucks by now.”

  “It sure is,” Gavin agreed. “Pretty cool, right?”

  Max, meanwhile, said nothing. He was looking at me with a strange expression on his face. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before, Owen?” he asked.

  Uh-oh.

  “Me?” I asked, all innocence. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe at one of the fan club meetings?”

  Max shook his head. “I haven’t been to a meeting in ages. And you said you just joined a few months ago.”

  I nodded. “That’s true. Maybe at school? Do you guys go to Bayport High?”

  “No . . . ,” Max mumbled, still staring at my face, deep in thought.

  I had to get out of there and regroup before things went south. These guys were definitely our perps, so now all we had to do was call the cops to collect them. “Well, hey, you guys look like you’re pretty busy, so maybe I’ll come around again later to ask you about the movie stuff.” I turned around to beat a hasty exit when Max’s voice stopped me in my tracks.

  “Wait,” he said.

  I swallowed and turned around.

  “Now I know who you are,” Max went on, all the friendliness gone from his face. “I’ve seen your face in the paper. You’re one of those brothers, the Hardys. You guys caught that jewelry thief a couple of months ago.”

  Gavin looked down at the book in his hand. He leaned over to set it down carefully on the couch, before picking up a baseball bat from the floor.

  Well, things certainly had taken a turn.

  “Listen, guys,” I said with a warning in my voice. “It’s over. If you turn yourselves in now, it will be better for you. Don’t make things worse than they already are.”

  “The way I see it,” Gavin replied, slapping the meaty part of the bat into his palm. “You’re outnumbered, Hardy, two to one. If it’s gonna be over for anybody, I think that’s you.”

  Without a word, Gavin lunged, bringing the bat swinging down toward me. I sidestepped out of its trajectory, and as it whiffed past my body I reached out and grabbed Gavin’s right wrist, twisting it backward and forcing him to drop the weapon. He cried out in pain but recovered quickly, yanking his arm away and barreling into me like a linebacker. The momentum slammed me into the wall of the room, causing a couple of the movie posters to fall from the wall with a crash.

  The force took my breath away, but only for an instant. I spun out to prevent him from pinning me to the wall, putting some space between us. His next move was to reach out with his right hand and grab me by the collar.

  Big mistake, buddy.

  If the martial arts classes I took taught me anything, it’s that if an opponent is dumb enough to give you a gift, you should take it.

  I grabbed his wrist with both my hands, whirled around to put my back into him, and threw him over with one fluid motion. He hit the floor with a resounding boom. His mouth opened, but no sound came out except a long, low groan.

  Max took one look at his friend laid out on the floor and turned tail. He dashed from the room and pounded toward the front door. I was about to take off after him when, from the floor, Gavin reached for my ankle and pulled it out from under me. I went down.

  “You just don’t give up, do you!” I said through gritted teeth as Gavin tried to put me in a chokehold.

  I heard the front door slam. Max had flown the coop! I had to stop him.

  “Frank!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. Thank goodness that window was open. Hopefully my voice would carry for some distance. “Quick, Frank! Don’t let him get away!”

  8

  ON THE RUN

  FRANK

  IT HAD BEEN A GOOD ten minutes since Joe had walked into Max Kingsley’s house, and I’d had my fill of waiting. I was walking across the flagstones up to the front door, working out a plan in my head, when Joe’s shout shattered the silence of the suburban street.

  “Quick, Frank!” Joe’s voice seemed to be coming from the side of the house. “Don’t let him get away!”

  For about five seconds, I wondered who Joe was talking about. Then the answer came rocketing out of the front door and crashing straight into me. Max—for that’s who it was, I recognized him from the fan club picture—had enough momentum going that with one shove, I went sprawling into a flower bed. “Hey!” I yelled, leaping back up the moment after I hit the ground. But even still, I wasn’t fast enough. Max had already made it to a motorbike that was leaning against the garage and jumped on. By the time I got close, Max had revved the engine and was tearing down the driveway toward me. I dived out of the way at the last possible moment and found myself reclining in yet another flower bed while Max sped down the street toward a dirt path leading into a thicket of trees.

  Knock me down once, shame on me.

  Knock me down twice . . .

  Getting back to my feet, I spied a second motorbike leaning not far from where the first one had been. I ran over,
threw myself astride it, and caught another break—the key was in the ignition! With a roar of the engine, I took off in pursuit.

  The dirt path into the woods started out smooth but quickly became steep and treacherous with rocks and fallen branches. I gritted my teeth and white-knuckled the handlebars, fighting to keep the bike steady as I sped to catch up with Max. I could hear his engine in the distance and could see flashes of his red T-shirt up ahead through the trees, veering off to the right. I was gaining, but he was still too far ahead. He was probably only one or two sudden turns away from losing me altogether—I had to act fast.

  Catching a glimpse of an opening through the trees, I jerked the bike off the trail and crashed through the underbrush, swerving to avoid exposed roots and boulders that jutted out into my path. I climbed up and up a steep rise, branches and leaves slapping my arms and sticky spiderwebs clinging to my face. From the sound of Max’s bike, I could tell I was getting closer, cutting him off at the pass as I’d intended to do. But then I saw the gully ahead.

  It was a few feet deep, and I couldn’t see any way around it. Not without losing my mark in the process. Only one thing to do.

  I took a deep breath and gunned the engine, pointing my wheel straight toward the narrowest part of the gully. At the last possible moment, I yanked up my front wheel and clenched the bike between my legs as I sailed through the air, my stomach doing somersaults all the while.

  It was the longest two seconds of my life.

  But then it was over, and my bike—not my face, thankfully—hit the ground on the other side of the gully. I stumbled a bit but righted myself quickly and kept riding. I found myself at the top of a rise, looking down at the dirt path running below. Sure enough, I caught sight of Max’s red shirt in the distance, flying down the path toward me.

  I crouched down into the bushes out of sight, waiting for just the right moment. Then, just when Max was about to ride past me, I tore down the hill at top speed and came to a stop right in front of him.

  “Ahh!” Max shrieked in surprise. He jerked his bike to the side to avoid a collision and toppled over, the bike pinning his leg to the ground. Max looked up at me, his face a mixture of rage and disbelief.