Bonfire Masquerade Read online

  Nicole turned on Joe.

  “Who are you? Your face seems familiar. You and she have worked together in the past, haven’t you? On a case involving that singer from the Royal We, and the mercenaries that were sent after her. What’s your story?”

  Yikes! The last thing I wanted to do was blow Joe’s ATAC cover.

  “He’s just a friend. Really.”

  Nicole didn’t look convinced. But she let go of my hand.

  “Well, regardless, you don’t have to come around here anymore. I’m no longer interested in Daniel’s old warehouse.”

  This was news.

  “What? Why?” said Joe.

  “It no longer suits my needs. And as soon as I can get Aaron on the phone, I’m going to tell him that as well. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have real customers to help.”

  It sounded a little fishy to me, but that was all Nicole was willing to say.

  “Do you think she’s telling the truth?” I asked Joe.

  “Maybe. But it certainly sounds suspicious. Why would it suddenly not be suitable? She doesn’t seem like the sort of person who would bid on a building before she was certain it was what she needed.”

  I had to agree. Nicole’s strange behavior just added one more mystery to the mix.

  CHAPTER 10

  FRANK THE CASE HEATS UP!

  Getting to the New Orleans Police Department central station took over an hour, thanks to the Mardi Gras celebrations.

  “I think this is the first time I’ve been in a traffic jam caused by people dressed as Vegas showgirls—at ten in the morning!” said George, marveling at the people on the streets.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “In Bayport, the showgirls don’t usually block up traffic until noon.”

  She laughed. I liked George. She was one of the few girls I knew who didn’t make me feel like a total geek all the time—maybe because she was just as much of a geek as I was.

  “Before I forget, take this.” I pulled a laminated badge out of my backpack. It had a photo of George on it and said in big letters TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT. There was no agency name on it—ATAC liked to keep a low profile—but if any police agency across the country scanned the badge, or called the number on the back, they would find that George now had higher security clearance than most police chiefs.

  “What’s this?” George asked as I passed it to her.

  “It’s your credentials. You’ll need it to get into the evidence room at police headquarters.”

  “Cool!” said George. “Man, in River Heights all we’ve ever had to do to get access to police headquarters was sweet-talk Chief McGinnis.”

  We talked about the cases they’d worked on recently, and George told me all about the radio hookups and wireless microphones she’d built to help foil a pair of shoplifters. It wasn’t often I got to geek out about spy stuff with someone my age who wasn’t from ATAC.

  “It’s amazing how much you guys do!” I said admiringly. “I don’t know if Joe and I would have been able to solve half your cases without ATAC’s support.”

  “Flatterer,” said George. “I’m sure you would have. You’d figure it out. You guys are pretty resourceful.”

  We traded stories until the taxi finally made it to the police station. The desk sergeant recognized me at the door. I guess they don’t see that many teenagers with national security clearance. He raised an eyebrow at George, but once he scanned her badge, he waved us both in.

  “What do you guys need?” he asked.

  “Andrew Richelieu’s phone. And if you have it, a spare office with a big desk?”

  “It’s Mardi Gras,” the desk sergeant grumbled. “Almost all the desks are empty, other than mine.”

  “Sorry, man,” I said.

  “So what’s the story on this phone?” asked George, as we sat down in a bare office, home to a desk, two chairs, a single dead plant, and nothing else.

  “It was stolen during a parade. Andrew didn’t even notice it was gone until the police called him about it. Apparently, he’s so rich, he has half a dozen different phones.”

  “And you guys got something off it?”

  “It wouldn’t power up when the police found it, but Joe managed to get it on. The only thing we found was a video, which led us to the Bywater, and a dead end. Here, I’ll show you.”

  I powered up my laptop and played the video, which I’d copied off the phone just in case it stopped working entirely. Right as it finished, the desk sergeant appeared.

  “One cellular phone, bagged and tagged. Make sure you put it back the way you found it.” He handed us a plastic bag. Inside was Andrew’s phone.

  George took it out and began examining it. She weighed it carefully in her hand.

  “It’s superlight,” she marveled. She looked at the make and model. She frowned. “Mind if I use the laptop for a second?”

  “Go right ahead,” I said, pushing it toward her.

  She tapped on the keyboard and pulled up a search engine. After a few seconds, she was deep into the world of technology blogs.

  “That’s what I thought!” she exclaimed.

  “What?”

  “The phone is so light, and I didn’t recognize the make or model. So I did a little searching—it’s a beta version of a phone that won’t even be on the market until next year. A few have surfaced on the Internet, and people have been blogging about them, but this is definitely something you can’t get in stores. This thing is worth a small fortune. I’m surprised it survived being stolen and dropped, really. These beta version phones tend to be pretty flimsy.”

  “That explains why the thieves went out of their way to steal it. It breaks with their pattern, but they must have seen him using it and known what it was.”

  Already I was glad George was there. I fired up the phone and showed George how most of the menus were inaccessible. Together, we began working on it, connecting it to my laptop to try and bypass its broken operating system and get right at the data stored inside.

  It was hours of painstaking work, trying different pathways, all of which ended unsuccessfully. But each time we came a little bit closer. Finally, after nearly four hours, we had a breakthrough.

  “Got it!” I yelled excitedly. A bar popped up on the desktop, showing the download progress of Andrew’s contacts, text messages, and recent calls. It was going v-e-r-y slowly. It would probably take at least an hour, and there was a good chance it would damage the phone’s hard drive and wipe the information off it forever. But we had done it!

  “High five,” said George.

  “Want to leave that downloading and grab some lunch?” I asked.

  Before George could answer, the door burst open.

  “Hey! You’re working on those robbery/arson cases, right?” the desk sergeant asked breathlessly.

  “Yes, why?” I said.

  “Because we just got a call, and there’s one going down right now! We’ve got a squad car and a fire engine on their way, but they’re stuck in Mardi Gras traffic!”

  George and I shot out of our chairs. We got the address of the call from the sergeant, grabbed my laptop, and ran out the door.

  To save us time on the busy streets, the sergeant lent us two New Orleans Police Department bikes. It was much, much easier to navigate the busy streets full of partygoers, musicians, and performers on a bike than in a car. We went ten times faster than we had on our way to the station.

  Finally we made it to the address we had been given, which turned out to be a small home in an area of town known as Tremé. It was right across the street from a large park.

  The block was quiet, with only a few costumed revelers milling around on the street, the remains of a recent parade. There was no sign of a robbery, or of a fire.

  “False alarm?” wondered George.

  “I guess so,” I agreed bitterly. This might have been our chance to catch them red-handed.

  Suddenly the door to the house burst open, and a stream of masked men came bursting out. They all wor
e very traditional costumes, like jesters with long-nosed masks. There were at least a dozen of them. In their arms and on their backs they had bags loaded down with possessions from the house. Behind them, a wave of smoke poured out of the door.

  “Stop!” I yelled. Fat chance. They streamed off in different directions, creating a chaotic swirl that had clearly been planned ahead of time.

  I reached out and grabbed the arm of the nearest one. He yanked back, nearly pulling me off balance.

  “Not so fast, buddy,” yelled George, as she grabbed him by the backpack. He pulled this way and that, but between the two of us, we had him firmly in hand.

  I reached up to pull his mask off, and he head-butted his face directly into mine. The long beak nose of his mask slammed into my forehead. An inch to either side and he would have pecked out my eye. As it was, he managed to pull his arm out of my hand. He tried to run, but George still had a death grip on his bag. He fell backward to the ground.

  Just then there was the sound of breaking glass from the house, and a scream. I looked up to see a small boy leaning out the window above the decorative balcony on the second floor.

  “Help!” he screamed.

  George and I hesitated, unsure of what to do. In that moment, the thief rolled away from us. I looked at George. We could still stop him—but who knew how long that kid had before the fire reached his room. Without a word, we both ran toward the house, hoping we weren’t already too late!

  CHAPTER 11

  NANCY HOT PURSUIT

  On our way out of Nicole’s Voodoo Emporium, Joe’s phone rang. From the expression on his face, I could tell instantly it was important.

  “That was the New Orleans Police Department,” he said as he hung up. “There’s a robbery in progress that matches the MO of our suspects!”

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “Not far,” said Joe, tapping away on his phone to pull up a map. “If we run, we might be able to get there in time to stop them.”

  He took off through the crowd of costumed people. Every block in the city was a never-ending maze of shifting human bodies. Beads rained down on us from above. Live music and giant speakers assaulted our ears.

  I grabbed Joe’s hand so we wouldn’t be separated, and we wormed our way through the congested city.

  “Look,” said Joe, after about ten minutes. A plume of smoke was rising up from behind a house not far from where we stood.

  “We’re too late!” I said.

  “Maybe not. Come on!”

  We pushed harder, and finally popped out of the crowd of revelers onto a street that was relatively calm. Smoke was pouring from a small wooden house in the middle of the block, and the few people on the street were standing around staring. From inside, I heard a child scream.

  “There’s someone in there,” I yelled.

  We ran for the house. As we did, Frank and George burst through an upstairs window carrying two unconscious small children. They teetered on a decorative balcony that was barely big enough to hold them. It didn’t look very strong to begin with. With the fire raging inside, who knew how much longer it would hold up?

  “Stand still,” yelled Joe. “We’re coming.”

  We stood beneath the balcony. There was no way we could reach them, and it would be impossible for them to climb down while carrying those children. I had an idea.

  “Joe, if I get on your shoulders, they can lower the kids down to me.”

  Joe squatted, and I swiftly climbed up his back and balanced carefully on top of him. One by one, George and Frank lowered the kids down to me, I passed them to one of the bystanders, and he set them on the ground. Once that was done, Frank and George climbed down quickly. Parts of the balcony were already beginning to collapse inward as they descended.

  “What happened?” Joe asked. In the distance, we could hear the siren of an approaching fire truck.

  Frank told us what we missed.

  “They’re gone now,” said Joe. “Darn! If only we had gotten here sooner.”

  “We’ve still got a chance,” said George. “Quick, Frank, hand me your computer.”

  Frank gave George a quizzical look, but he did as she asked.

  “I slipped my cell phone into the pocket of the guy we tackled,” she explained. She pulled up a map of New Orleans, with one glowing blue dot.

  “There he is!” she said joyfully. “This will let us track him in real time—at least until he realizes what I did.”

  Firefighters were on the scene now. Two rushed over to the children.

  “Things look to be in hand here,” said Joe. “Let’s go after the robbers before we lose them!”

  “We’ll never catch up with them on foot,” I said.

  “On it,” said Frank. He spoke quickly into his phone.

  “Lenni and the Krewe de Crude are nearby,” he explained. “They said they’ll bring us bikes we can use.”

  We waited five long minutes, watching the blue dot recede into the distance on the map. It was torture. Finally the Hardys’ friends showed up with the bikes.

  “What’s going on?” asked Lenni, after Frank had introduced us.

  “No time to lose! We’ll explain on the way.”

  The Krewe members had to leave, but Lenni stayed with us. We all hopped onto the spare bikes. Each was cobbled together from lots of different bikes and they were as heavily decorated as many of the costumes I had seen. The bike I was on had a unicorn’s head built between the handlebars, and a fake tail coming off the seat!

  George tried to balance the laptop on her seat and pedal at the same time and nearly fell.

  “Here, let me!” said Lenni. Somehow, she made biking while holding the computer look effortless.

  Soon we were in hot pursuit of the little blue dot. On our bikes, we were able to catch up with it ever so slowly. Every time I managed to get next to Lenni, the blue light was a little closer.

  Please, I said to myself, don’t let him find that phone! It was our only link to these crimes. Any other clues they might have left behind were just ashes now.

  “There he is!” shouted George suddenly. She pointed into the crowd ahead of us.

  “Which one is he?” I yelled back.

  “The one with the mask!”

  “Which mask?” There were hundreds of masks out there!

  “The weird beak-nosed one. In the dark purple outfit!”

  I saw him. He was maybe two hundred yards away, in the thickest part of the crowd. We tried to ride our bikes into the street, but it was no use. We all hopped off and left them at the curb.

  George led the way as we burrowed deeper into the mass of people. Feathers and fake fur brushed up against me at every turn. My toes were stepped on, my back was elbowed, but we were gaining on him.

  “There he is,” said Frank, spotting our quarry in the crowd again.

  Unfortunately, it looked like he’d spotted us as well. He yelled something I couldn’t hear, and suddenly the crowd around me erupted.

  Hands were pushing me, hitting me, shoving me. Someone slammed Joe and me together, and my head started ringing from the impact. It was impossible to tell where all the blows were coming from, or who was doing it. The crowd must have been full of the rest of his gang.

  “He’s getting away down that alley!” I heard Frank yell. I stumbled toward his voice, just trying to stay on my feet. My impact with Joe must have been harder than I thought, because my nose was bleeding slightly. If this turned into a stampede, someone could easily be trampled to death.

  Finally I broke free of the crowd and burst into a tiny alley. It was empty. I hoped it was the alley Frank had seen the guy go down. I raced to the end of it—only to find another huge crowd and no sign of our guy.

  “Where is he?” Joe’s voice came over my shoulder.

  “I don’t see him anywhere!”

  We peered this way and that. Lenni, Frank, and George all caught up with us. None of us had escaped the crowd uninjured. Frank looked like he had the be
ginnings of a black eye, and George was half limping.

  We searched the alley anxiously, looking for any place our costumed gang member might be hiding. Joe grabbed my shoulder and pointed to two large garbage cans halfway back up the alley.

  Silently we approached them.

  One … two … three, mouthed Joe.

  On three, we simultaneously pulled the lids open to reveal … yesterday’s trash.

  “Over here,” yelled Frank, back at the head of the alley. “I think I found him. Or at least, what’s left of him.”

  In a small pile on the ground, underneath an empty plastic bag, lay the thief’s mask and costume. George shoved her hand into one of the side pockets and pulled out her phone.

  “Darn,” she said. “I guess it was too much to hope he would somehow find it and decide to take it with him. We were so close!”

  We stood dejectedly around, staring at the costume. I carefully used the plastic bag to pick it up.

  “Maybe this will have some more information for us,” I said. “And if there’s anyone who can learn about a person from their clothes, it’s Bess. We need to get this to her ASAP!”

  “Let’s get back on the bikes and get out of here,” said Joe. “Maybe we can still catch up with them.”

  We hurried back through the alley and into the dense crowd. Even without a gang of masked men trying to slow us down, it was tough going. But finally we broke through to where we had left the bikes.

  But they were gone. Someone must have stolen them in the few short minutes we’d left them unwatched—probably other members of the gang.

  “Oh no,” cried Lenni. “I left the laptop with the bikes!”

  “That had all the information from Andrew’s phone!” cried George. “Now we’ll never know what was on there!”

  Things had just gone from bad to worse.

  CHAPTER 12

  JOE A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

  “I can’t believe we lost those bikes,” said Lenni, for probably the hundredth time.

  “I told you,” I said. “ATAC will pay to replace them.”

  “It’s not the same,” replied Lenni. “Your bike is like … part of you. They made those bikes out of pieces. Decorated them. Loved them! It’s going to be hard to tell them we lost them. We owe them big-time.”