High-Speed Showdown Read online

  “You got it,” Dennis replied. “Wouldn’t you know I had the rotten luck to draw the number one spot for the time trials.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” Joe asked.

  Dennis made a face. “Believe it. What you want to do is go just fast enough to beat the others, but without straining your engines. But if you don’t know how fast the others go, because they haven’t gone yet . . . well, you get the idea.

  “I’d better get moving,” he continued. “Hey, why don’t you bring your boat around and follow me out? That way you’ll get a good spot to watch.”

  “Great!” Frank said. “We’ll be right back.”

  He and Joe hurried to Sleuth and got under way. They reached the other side of the marina just as the sharklike shape of Adelita nosed out of its slip, moving barely faster than a walk. Frank circled around and came onto a course parallel to the other boat. Dennis waved one hand in a circle, then pointed toward open water. A V of white water began to form under the bow as Adelita picked up speed. Frank adjusted his throttle to keep pace with Dennis. He sat back and smiled as the breeze ruffled his hair.

  They were coming abreast of the harbor mouth when Joe let out a startled shout. Frank looked around. What was wrong?

  Just at that moment, a gigantic ball of orange flame surged up from the stern of Dennis’s boat.

  9 Racing the Clock

  * * *

  The flames billowed up from Adelita’s engine compartment, topped by a growing column of black smoke. For one moment Joe was too startled to react. Then he lunged forward and grabbed Sleuth’s fire extinguisher from its bracket on the forward bulkhead.

  “Pull alongside!” he shouted to Frank. As the distance between the two boats narrowed, Joe shifted the extinguisher to his left hand and picked up a boat hook. The instant he was close enough for the long pole to reach, he hooked the other boat’s gunwale, pulled the two craft closer together, and leaped across the foaming gap onto the deck of the racing boat.

  Miguel had already managed to unlatch the cover of the engine compartment. He used a long-handled wrench to raise it a few inches, while Dennis sprayed foam through the opening. Joe pointed the horn of his extinguisher at the opening, too, and pressed the thumb lever. The hiss of the two extinguishers was even louder than the angry rumble of the fire. The color of the smoke shifted to white, and suddenly the flames vanished.

  Joe and Dennis continued to spray the engines with foam for another thirty seconds or so. Then, as if on signal, they both stopped at the same moment. The only sound was the slap of the waves on the side of the boat and the muffled putt-putt from Sleuth’s idling motor.

  “Whew!” Dennis said, wiping his forehead. “That was nasty. Thanks for your help, Joe.”

  “I think we skip the time trials,” Miguel observed.

  “I think you’re right,” Dennis said in a choked voice.

  Joe asked, “Does that mean you’re out of the race?”

  Dennis shrugged and continued to stare down at the engines. “It depends on how much damage was done. If we can get the engines back in shape fast enough, we can still run in one of the elimination heats tomorrow and get a spot that way.”

  “What happened?” Joe continued.

  “I’d like to know the answer to that one myself,” Dennis replied. “You think you guys could give us a tow back to the dock?”

  Joe swallowed. He was ready to try, and he knew Frank would be, too. But taking a forty-foot boat under tow in a crowded harbor was no job for casual boaters. Luckily, before he had to answer Dennis’s request, a tugboat approached. Its captain had seen the smoke and offered to help. Miguel scrambled up to Adelita’s bow, caught the towline, and fastened it securely to the bow cleat. Then he raised his clasped hands over his head to signal to the tugboat crew that the tow was securely attached.

  The note of the other boat’s powerful diesels rose in pitch. The thick rope came dripping out of the water and straightened out. For a long moment, nothing seemed to happen. Joe realized that the line must be stretching. Would it hold? Then Adelita started to move.

  Joe looked around. Frank was following at a safe distance. He caught Joe’s glance and waved. Now that the emergency was past, Joe began to wonder. Had the fire been an accident? Or was it part of a real and increasingly dangerous plan to wreck the regatta?

  Once back at the dock, Joe helped Dennis and Miguel maneuver Adelita into its slip. Frank tied up Sleuth nearby and joined them, just as a blond guy in white coveralls came running up.

  “Dennis!” he exclaimed. “I heard what happened. Are you two okay?”

  “We’re fine,” Dennis replied. “I’m not so sure about the engines, though. Joe, Frank—meet Pavel, one terrific mechanic.”

  The Hardys said hi to Pavel, who nodded briefly and went immediately to the boat’s engine compartment. Pulling a small, powerful flashlight from a side pocket, he shone the beam on the soot-blackened engines.

  “It’s not too bad, thanks to the automatic fire-extinguishing system,” Pavel said after a few moments. “The fuel cutoff worked, too, I see. That’s good. One of the fuel lines became loose. If the flow had not stopped at once, we’d still be watching the flames.”

  “A loose fuel line?” Dennis questioned, his voice heavy with disbelief. “Didn’t you check those fittings when you tuned the engines this morning?”

  Pavel looked up over his shoulder at Dennis. “Yes, I did. They were tight,” he told him.

  “Then how . . . ” Dennis fell silent. It seemed to Joe that his face turned pale.

  Frank asked, “Was there someone with the boat all morning?”

  “What? Oh—” Dennis thought for a moment. “Let’s see, we came back from that practice run where Joe saved our bacon. We hung around for a while. Then Pavel showed up to give the engines a final tweak or two. Miguel and I watched him for a little while. Then we went up to the inn to get a bite to eat. When we came back, we ran into you and Joe. So yes, somebody was here the whole time.”

  Joe noticed Pavel stare down at the ground, twisting his hands together. “You have a right to be very angry at me,” Pavel began. “While I was working on the engines, I needed a torque wrench I had left in the car. I went back for it, and I think I might have left the engine hatch open while I was gone.” Pavel ran his hands through his blond hair. “I guess you’ll want to fire me for this.”

  Dennis stared at him. “Fire you? Don’t be silly, Pavel. You’re a mechanic, not a watchdog. How could you know?”

  “What time was this?” Frank asked.

  Pavel shrugged. “Half an hour before Dennis and Miguel returned? More? I didn’t notice.”

  Joe looked around. All the neighboring slips were empty. Their occupants were either out watching or taking part in the time trials. “Was anybody else around at the time, Pavel?” he asked.

  “I didn’t notice,” Pavel repeated, almost choking on his words. “I was working on the engines! That was all I paid attention to.”

  “Look,” Dennis said to Joe and Frank, “I know you’re just trying to help, but that’s enough. Pavel’s got a big job ahead of him, and I don’t want him upset. Why don’t you guys go out and watch the time trials, while we try to figure out if we can fix my engines?”

  “I guess we’ll do that,” Frank said after glancing at Joe for his agreement. “We’ll see you later. Good luck with the engines.”

  The Hardys returned to Sleuth and started out again. Even before they had cleared the harbor, they could hear the distant snarl of high-powered engines running at peak revs. On the other side of what looked like a solid wall of spectator boats, the rooster tails of spray thrown up by the straining rivals glistened in the sunlight.

  “We’re not going to see a thing,” Joe complained. “And even if we do, we won’t know who won unless we find out the lap times of all the entries.”

  “We’ll find out who won soon enough,” Frank replied. “We’re here to soak up atmosphere and keep an eye out for anything that might help
us break this case. Besides,” he added with a grin, “practically everybody we might want to question is out here. Why just sit around on the dock, waiting for them to come back, when we can have a fun afternoon on the water? See if you can find the sunblock, would you?”

  • • •

  It was almost six o’clock when the trials came to an end and the flotilla of boats started back to Bayport. Frank and Joe went back to shore with the crowd. Once they’d docked Sleuth, they walked around to Dennis’s slip. They found him on the dock next to Adelita, sitting in a folding chair, reading a computer magazine. He looked up alertly as they approached.

  “Oh, hi,” he said. His shoulders relaxed. “You guys got some sun this afternoon.”

  Frank winced and said, “I know. We left the sunblock in the van. What’s the story with your boat?”

  A grim smile appeared on Dennis’s lips. “Pavel says he was able to fix the damage,” he reported. “We’re running in the second elimination heat tomorrow. And we’re going to be taking turns sitting right here until then. Nobody goes near Adelita.”

  Frank was on the point of telling Dennis that he and Joe were detectives and offering to help Dennis track down the saboteur. Then he reflected that Magnusson had asked them to keep their role secret. Unless he changed his mind, Frank and Joe had an obligation to follow his wishes.

  “Any word on how the time trials came out?” Joe asked. “Who won?”

  Dennis made a face. “It’s Mine took first,” he said. “That’s the name of Barry’s boat. Fits, doesn’t it? But Carl Newcastle came close to edging him out. If I’d had a chance to try, it would have been a real race. But you know what they say. It’s not over till it’s over.”

  A bright yellow boat powered by three big outboards entered the channel, slowed almost to a stop, and eased into the slip next to Dennis’s. Once the boat was tied up, the driver, a woman in a bright yellow jumpsuit, leaped onto the dock and called, “Hey, Dennis, did you hear? We took first in our class.”

  “That’s great, Margot,” Dennis called back. “Since you don’t have to race tomorrow, you can take the day off and come cheer me on.”

  “It’s a date,” Margot replied.

  Joe turned to Frank and said, “I wonder . . . ”

  “Me too,” Frank said. “Let’s find out.”

  They walked over to Margot, who was talking to her throttleman about their run that afternoon. She looked up. The Hardys introduced themselves and congratulated her and her partner. Then Joe asked, “Before you went out this afternoon, did you happen to notice anybody hanging around Dennis’s boat?”

  Margot frowned. “Not to notice, no. Pavel was over there, fine-tuning the engines,” she said. She turned to her throttleman. “How about you, Bob?”

  Bob was a guy in his twenties, with a long, narrow face and a lock of dark hair that fell down over his forehead. “Hmm,” he said. “You know, now that you mention it, I did. I noticed her going along, looking over the boats, just rubbernecking, you know? Then when she got to Adelita, she stopped and walked out alongside. She looked like she wanted to climb aboard and see how it felt to be at the helm.”

  “Did she go aboard?” Frank asked, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice.

  “I can’t say,” Bob replied. “Sorry. I got busy with something else and stopped watching her. Cute kid, but way too young for me.”

  Joe asked, “What did she look like?”

  Bob said, “I don’t know . . . brown hair is all I really noticed. Oh . . . and she was wearing a T-shirt with a slogan on it in big letters. Something about saving the sea.”

  10 Connie Stonewalls

  * * *

  “Brown hair and an ecology T-shirt?” Joe said, as he and Frank walked quickly toward the head of the dock. “Come on, give me a break—of course it was Connie!”

  “All I’m saying is, we don’t know for sure,” Frank replied. “We didn’t see her by Dennis’s boat. We don’t know what she was wearing. And if somebody wanted to undermine what she and her group are doing, what better way than to get some girl in a shirt with some kind of environmental message to go around acting suspiciously?”

  “Doubtful, if you ask me,” Joe grumbled. “We practically caught her and Angelo red-handed this morning, and now we have a witness who saw somebody just like her casing a boat that was sabotaged. Isn’t that enough?”

  Frank sighed. “Enough to question her, sure,” he said. “But not to accuse her. For that, we need proof.”

  As they crossed the street, Frank noticed a big white van parked at the curb in front of the Waterside Inn. “Look, Joe,” he said. “There’s a crew from World Sports Today here. They must be planning to do a segment on the races.”

  “Yeah, and look who’s hoping to get equal time,” Joe replied.

  Just ahead were Connie, a tanned man in a blue blazer holding a microphone, and a three-person camera crew. A little half circle of spectators watched and listened. Frank and Joe joined them.

  “ . . . crazy enough to hold a sports car race in a public park,” Connie was saying. “But this is the same thing. These boats go over a hundred miles an hour, spewing exhaust fumes and spreading oil slicks across the whole bay. They call it sport. I call it pollution.”

  Some of the spectators started to boo. In response, others cheered. As arguments started among them, the announcer handed the mike to the sound engineer, saying, “Let’s head down to the dock and get some footage of race preparations.”

  As the camera crew packed its gear, Frank and Joe edged through the crowd toward Connie. Frank noticed that her T-shirt read Save the Ocean. He also noticed that it was spotless. Could she have fiddled with Dennis’s engines and kept her shirt from getting oil-stained? It didn’t seem likely. But then, she might have changed shirts. She probably had a whole drawer full of identical T-shirts.

  Connie was talking earnestly to a woman in tennis clothes. She glanced over and saw Frank and Joe coming. Her face hardened, and she turned away, as if she had just seen something that made her feel sick.

  Frank hadn’t noticed Angelo in the crowd. Suddenly he was facing the Hardys, blocking their approach to Connie. His jaw was set, and his fists, though still at his sides, were clenched.

  “You guys better leave us alone,” he said.

  “What’s your problem, Angelo?” Joe demanded.

  Angelo glared at him. “You’re nothing but a couple of snoops,” he declared. “You’re working for the polluters, trying to pin something on us.”

  “Something like cutting the cable on that buoy this morning?” Frank asked.

  “There you go,” Angelo said, with a snort. “Just what I expected. Get lost, will you? We’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  Frank looked over Angelo’s shoulder and met Connie’s gaze. She looked half scared, half defiant.

  “Connie?” he called. “What were you doing hanging around Dennis Shire’s boat today before the time trials?”

  “Don’t tell him a thing,” Angelo spat out.

  “We were there when Dennis’s boat caught fire,” Joe said. “It’s just good luck that nobody got killed. Is that what you call protecting the environment?”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you sneaks,” Connie replied. “You hear? Nothing!”

  She turned and walked away. When Joe started after her, Angelo put out his arm to block the way. Joe looked down at the arm, then stared Angelo in the face. Before the face-off could get rough, Frank pulled Joe back.

  “It’s not worth starting something,” he told Joe, loudly enough for Angelo to hear, too. “If they don’t want to talk to us, fine. I wonder how they’ll like talking to the cops instead.”

  Angelo glared at them for a moment, then turned and followed Connie.

  “I hope we never want anything from student government,” Frank said. “Come on, let’s go find Magnusson. It feels like weeks since we’ve given him a report.”

  The race chairman was in his office off the lobby, talking on the
phone. When he saw the Hardys in the doorway, he placed his palm over the receiver and said, “Come in, boys. Sit down. I’ll be right with you.”

  “Don’t worry, George,” he said into the telephone. “I’ll have all this sorted out by Monday. Yes, I’m a hundred percent sure. I’ll be back in Cleveland Sunday afternoon. If you’re so anxious, you can always come by the house that evening and pick up a check. But I really think it can wait until Monday morning. Yes . . . all right. Have a good weekend.”

  Magnusson replaced the receiver and sighed. “Some people expect any new idea to fail, no matter how many times they’re proven wrong,” he remarked. “Oh well, their loss is someone else’s gain. I’ve been hoping to see you fellows. Have you made any progress?”

  “Yes and no,” Frank said, after taking a chair. “We’re almost certain that someone is trying to sabotage the meet. And we can make a pretty good guess who it is, too. The trouble is, we don’t have a bit of evidence to back up our suspicions.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?” Magnusson suggested, settling back in his seat.

  Frank and Joe took turns telling him about the missing buoy at Cooley’s Ledge, Barry Batten’s broken oil seal, Dennis’s loosened fuel line, and the apparent attempt by Connie and Angelo to cut loose one of the marker buoys.

  “Coming on top of those threatening leaflets,” Frank concluded, “it’s pretty obvious that somebody is out to stop the meet, or at least to throw a lot of sand in the gears.”

  Magnusson raised an eyebrow. “Somebody? You mean Earthquest.”

  “It was their leaflet that was used,” Frank said. “And they’ve made it clear that they’d like to see the races canceled. But that doesn’t prove that they’d do anything dangerous or illegal to make it happen.”

  “We need more evidence,” Joe added.

  “Yes, I can see that,” Magnusson said, nodding slowly. He glanced at his watch. “Are you lads free this evening? I’m giving a small dinner party, and I’d like it if you could join us. You might find it, ah, helpful as well as pleasant.”