Rocky Road Read online

  “Huh? What are you two doing here?”

  The door was thrown open, and Frank and I tumbled out into the hallway, twitching from the cold. We hopped up and down and rubbed ourselves to get warm, while Loretta stared at us like we were a pair of Martians.

  “I thought you were . . . you know . . .”

  “Yeah, it’s okay, Loretta,” Frank assured her.

  “An honest mistake,” I agreed.

  “You boys were playing detective again, weren’t you?”

  Loretta Rivera has been a friend of ours for a few years now. Once or twice she’s covered for us when we had to leave school in a hurry, hot on the trail of some criminal. But she’s always thought of us as amateurs—and this latest escapade wasn’t going to do our reputation any good.

  “You boys ought to let the cops do their thing,” she said, wagging a finger at us.

  “Come on, Loretta,” I said. “If the person behind this is a student here, we’re the perfect ones to break the case.”

  She sighed. “Kids—you can’t talk sense to them. They think they already know everything.” She shook her head. “You could have died in there. I was gonna call the cops, but what if I wasn’t such a nice person? What if I’d just left you to freeze?”

  “We thought the school was deserted,” Frank explained. “We didn’t expect anyone to be around.”

  “Oh, well, you know me,” she said with a little smile. “I was just tidying up—you know, with all the mess here, I couldn’t just leave it to rot and stink. I came in here, and it was dark, and then I saw something moving, and two shadows going into the freezer. . . . I just put two and two together, you know?”

  “That’s okay, Loretta,” Frank said. “You did the right thing.”

  “No harm done,” I said. “Don’t feel bad. You were just trying to do the same thing we were—catch a criminal.”

  “I’m glad you understand,” she said, relieved. “So we’re still friends?”

  “Totally,” I said.

  “Hey,” Frank added, “if you see anything suspicious, could you call us?”

  “Okay—after I call the cops.”

  We had just said good-bye to Loretta and stepped outside into the warm evening air when Frank’s cell phone started playing its tune. He fished it out and flipped it open.

  “Hello? Oh, hi, Dad. What’s up?”

  There was a long silence as Frank listened. “Oh . . . uh-huh . . . I see . . .”

  At first he seemed relaxed, but then I saw his whole body stiffen, and I knew that this was something important.

  “Okay, we’ll be right there.” Frank snapped the phone shut.

  “Well?”

  “You want the good news or the bad news?”

  “Start with the good.”

  “Okay. Dad checked out Captain Creamy, and he really is with ATAC.”

  “Uh-huh. And . . . what’s the bad news?”

  “Remember George Guthrie?”

  I nodded. Who could forget our homeless friend?

  “Apparently, he walked out of the shelter last night, took all his stuff with him, didn’t tell anyone where he was going, and hasn’t been heard from since.”

  “Okay . . . but lots of homeless people do things like that. It doesn’t mean—”

  Frank cut me off with a wave of his hand.

  “And now there’s a school bus on fire at the yard!”

  14.

  FAMOUS LAST WORDS

  When we got to the Board of Education complex, the fire department was already there in force. Everyone seemed to be shouting at once as they hosed down the buses next to the one that was in flames.

  Other firefighters were trying to get to these buses and drive them away before they exploded from the heat. It wasn’t going to be easy—and it was definitely dangerous work.

  Black smoke poured from the inside of the stricken bus, billowing through its shattered windows and from its engine. There wasn’t much left of the bus—just a charred frame.

  Dozens of bystanders were gathered around the outside of the chain-link fence, looking into the bus yard.

  At the gate, Chief Collig stood with Officer Reilly and a few others. He was talking to the fire chief, who seemed distracted. Every now and then he barked orders into his walkie-talkie.

  Then I saw Dad. He was out at the curb, obviously looking for someone—probably us. “Come on, Joe,” I said, and we went over to him.

  “Well,” he said when he saw us, “so much for your instincts about George Guthrie.” He looked as unhappy as I felt.

  “Sorry, Dad,” I said. “I guess you were right about him. We should have listened to you.”

  I still had trouble picturing George Guthrie as a dangerously psycho criminal. But Dad was obviously convinced, and at this point, who was I to argue with him?

  “Well, the police have an all-points bulletin out on him,” Dad said. “I imagine they’ll catch him before too long, and that will be the end of this rash of incidents. Too bad we didn’t arrest him when we had the chance.”

  I felt lousy. Because of me and Joe, another school bus had been destroyed, and brave men and women were now risking their lives to move other buses out of harm’s way.

  “Well, come on,” Dad said, motioning to us. “Let’s go try and find out how this happened.”

  We went in through the gates and tried to get as close as we could to the fire without getting in the way. It wasn’t easy.

  We had been there for a minute or so, just watching them douse the flames, when one of the firefighters nearest to the bus shouted, “Hey! There’s someone inside!”

  An instant megajolt of adrenaline went through me—but I didn’t move. Not right away.

  Whoever was inside the bus, I knew there was no safe way of getting him or her out. Not yet—not while flames were still blocking the doorway. I may be brave, but I’m not stupid.

  Joe, on the other hand . . .

  Well, let’s just say it wasn’t two seconds before he was climbing the rear bumper of the bus and diving in through the broken back window.

  What did I do, you ask?

  What else could I do? I followed Joe through the window, ignoring the shouts of alarm from the firefighters and police (Dad, too, I’m sure, although I couldn’t pick out his voice).

  Instantly, thick black smoke blotted out my vision, and I started coughing my guts up.

  The fire was mostly out, but that didn’t make it any safer. Inhaling smoke can kill you just as easily.

  Assuming someone was really in here, we were going to have to get him or her out in a hurry.

  I could hear Joe coughing and gagging nearby, but I couldn’t see him at all. My eyes burned something fierce every time I opened them. I kept feeling around with my hands instead, hoping to run across something human.

  “Frank!” I heard Joe shout between coughs. “I’ve got him! Help me . . . get. ..”

  The rest was lost in a cascade of coughing. But following the sound, I soon found Joe, and together we dragged the dead weight of the victim to the rear of the bus, hoisted him out the window, then tumbled out ourselves.

  I fell straight to the ground, about to pass out. If a firefighter hadn’t shown up with an oxygen mask just then, I might not have made it.

  After a minute or so, I felt much better. That’s when I saw Joe. Dad was bent over him, looking upset—but I could see that Joe was basically going to be okay.

  Then I looked around to see what had happened to the guy we dragged out of the bus.

  There was a knot of paramedics kneeling down in a circle. I walked over there, still woozy, and saw them giving CPR to the unconscious man.

  I froze in my tracks.

  It was George Guthrie!

  Even a crazy man wouldn’t set himself on fire, would he?

  And how did he get in? I guess where there’s a will, there’s a way. . . .

  I wished I could talk with him, ask him face-to-face. But it was too late now.

  Or was it?<
br />
  “Hey, he’s coming around!” one of the paramedics yelled.

  Sure enough, good old George started coughing and wheezing, coming back to life.

  I edged closer, listening to the paramedics talking.

  “Is he going to make it?” I asked one of them, a young guy with a mustache.

  He looked at me and sighed. “Not likely,” he said. “Burns over most of his body. Plus the lung damage. He’s barely hanging on.”

  “I have to talk to him!”

  “No way, man.”

  “Listen, it’s really, really, REALLY important!”

  “Sorry. He’s on his way to the emergency room as soon as we can get the ambulance over here.”

  Sure enough, here came the ambulance, sirens and flashers going full blast.

  With it came Joe, now walking and breathing on his own.

  “What the—? Hey, it’s George!”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  Then I turned and saw that the paramedic had gone off to speak to the ambulance crew.

  There wasn’t a second to lose. I eased my way through the people surrounding George and knelt down beside him. Joe was right behind me.

  “Hi, George,” I said. “Hang in there, big guy, you’re gonna make it.”

  It was hard to lie to him like that, but I didn’t know what else to say.

  He looked right through me for a second. Then he seemed to focus on my face, because his eyes opened wider. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he recognized me.

  His lips started moving, but I couldn’t hear anything.

  “What’s that you’re saying, George?” Joe asked.

  Again, the moving lips, but no sound. I bent over closer to listen.

  “Sleeping . . . in bus . . .” he whispered in my ear, in between gasps and wheezes.

  I remembered George had said he had asthma. All that smoke could only have made things worse.

  “George, you didn’t do this, did you?” Joe asked.

  He shook his head weakly. “Never . . . hurt anyone . . . just . . . couldn’t stand . . . living in the shelter anymore. . . .”

  He winced and stopped talking.

  I reached for an oxygen mask and placed it on his face so he could breathe. I didn’t hold it there long, though. There was no time to lose. The paramedics were setting up the stretcher and the IV tubes. In about thirty seconds, they were going to take George Guthrie away. In his condition, I knew this might be our last chance to talk to him.

  “Do you know who did it?” I asked him, getting right to the point.

  His eyes drifted away, and I was afraid we were going to lose him before he could say another word. But then he seemed to recover and refocus.

  “I . . . missed living on the bus . . . so I went back. . . .” he said. “I was just minding . . . my own business. . . .”

  More wheezing and coughing. Our time with him was running out fast. “George—who did this to you?” I asked again.

  “Somebody . . . threw something . . . through the window . . . explosion . . . fire . . .”

  “Did you see who it was, George?”

  He shook his head, and my heart sank. But then he said, “Heard it, though. . . . ”

  I came instantly to attention. “Heard what?”

  “Just before the explosion . . . strange sound . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Song . . .”

  “Song? What song?”

  He took a deep, painful breath—and then he started to sing.

  “I’ve . . . been working on . . . the railroad. . . .”

  Then a deep, rattling sound came from George Guthrie’s throat—and he was gone.

  15.

  WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM

  I have seen people die before. It’s never easy, and most times, it isn’t pretty.

  But watching George Guthrie die made me angrier than I’d ever felt in my entire life. Some idiot decides to set a fire somewhere, and some other poor slob gets burned to a crisp!

  Ernie Bickerstaff—alias Captain Creamy—and I were definitely having words.

  I heard a sniffing sound coming from nearby. I turned and saw that Frank was crying. He wiped his eyes a couple of times, but he never stopped staring at poor, dead George.

  I don’t cry much myself, but I knew Frank felt the same way I did.

  I paid my respects to the dead—quickly—then pulled Frank away from there before he lost it altogether.

  Dad saw us go, but before he could come after us, Chief Collig put a hand on his shoulder and started talking to him. I could see Dad wanted to break away and come after us, but he didn’t. Obviously, whatever the chief was saying, it was pretty important.

  After all, a man was dead. What had started out looking like a case of simple mischief was now a case of murder.

  “I knew he was innocent,” Frank said. His jaw was tight, and his voice was husky. “I knew it all along.”

  “You did, Frank. You had him pegged.”

  “Yeah. But I never connected all this with Captain Creamy,” he said, slapping himself on the forehead. “How stupid am I?”

  “Hey, man, the guy’s with ATAC. You had to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “No, I didn’t—that’s just the point! I assumed he was okay, and he wasn’t.”

  “So did Q.T., and Dad, and everyone else at ATAC. They hired him, right? I mean, if they were fooled, how can you blame yourself?”

  “Joe, they hired you and me because we understand teens better than they do—or we’re supposed to, anyway.”

  He stared right through me. “We should have known, Joe. We should have. No getting around it. We just plain blew it.”

  What could I say? He was right.

  “Well, at least we can help bring Ernie Bickerstaff to justice,” I said.

  “All the clues were there, right in front of us,” Frank said. “Remember he said he was having money problems?”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “He must have vandalized the schools and the buses to delay the opening of school, so that he could keep selling ice cream right into September.”

  “For that, he goes and kills somebody?” I was about ready to explode with rage.

  “No. Remember, Ernie didn’t know George was inside that bus. He was just up to more of the same mischief—except this time, he messed up royally.”

  “Hey, remember how he robbed the cafeteria freezer?” I said. “It would have been full of ice cream, right?”

  “Right! Good thinking, Joe. I don’t remember seeing any ice cream in there, do you?”

  “Now that you mention it, no.”

  “And remember he said he was a computer programmer—that he did that kind of thing for ATAC?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He must have created the fake missions for us himself, just to get us out of town while he committed his crimes. A guy like him would know exactly how to do it.”

  I looked at Frank, and he looked back at me.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” I said. “Let’s go get him!”

  “Don’t you think we should tell the police what George told us?”

  “Fine.” That’s Frank for you.

  So we went over to Dad and Chief Collig and told them what George had told us.

  “That’s a very fine theory,” the chief said. “There’s just one problem.”

  “Problem?” I repeated.

  “Yes. You’ve got no proof. None at all.”

  Frank’s jaw dropped. I’m sure mine was down to the floor as well.

  “But—George said he heard the song. . . .”

  “Your friend George was a little bit loony, if you didn’t notice,” Chief Collig pointed out. “From what they told us at the shelter, he had quite a history of mental illness.”

  I wanted to say something to protest, but I could see it wouldn’t do any good. Chief Collig and the Department were determined to put an end to this rash of incidents. And there was no quicker way to do it than
to blame George Guthrie—a dead man—for everything.

  Well, that would be just fine and dandy, at least until the next time school property got trashed. The trouble was, Frank and I believed George Guthrie. And if we were right, it meant George’s killer was still out there.

  Not okay.

  “What are we going to do now, Frank?” I asked as we walked away from the crime scene.

  “There’s only one thing to do, Joe. We’ve got to track down Captain Creamy ourselves and make him confess to his crimes.”

  Ha! Easier said than done. We had no address or phone number for a Captain Creamy, or even for Ernie Bickerstaff. A quick call to Information revealed that the number—and address—were unlisted.

  “We ought to go home and get our bikes,” I suggested. “We could cover a big slice of Bayport in a couple of hours that way—and if one of us finds the truck, he can call the other on his cell phone.”

  “Good idea, Joe—but we’ll be able to cover even more ground if we have help.”

  He punched in Chet Morton’s number. “Hi, Chet, Frank here. Listen, we need you to help us out, okay? Yeah, right now . . . you’re eating dinner? What time is it?”

  I checked my watch. It was dinnertime, all right. Six o’clock on the nose. We only had a couple of hours till sunset, and a whole lot of ground to cover!

  Frank was busy explaining to Chet how we wanted him to search the streets in his car. He got his license a couple of months ago and has access to a nice set of wheels.

  “You’d better get Iola and Callie in on this too,” Frank said. “Yeah, I know they don’t drive yet—but they can each go jogging on a different route. . . . We need as many people on the lookout as we can get. I know it’s last minute, but this is important, okay?”

  Frank finally got Chet to skip the rest of his meal and get moving—not an easy task.

  “Okay, let’s go, Joe. You cover the east side of downtown, I’ll get the west side. We can meet up at the corner of Main and Maple.”

  Enough said. I took off on my bike, looking for the innocent-looking ice-cream truck that harbored a maniacal murderer.

  Now, Bayport is a big town—or a small city, depending on how you look at it. Either way, there’s a lot of ground to cover. It took me almost an hour to scour the streets of my half of downtown. I didn’t find anything—until I hit Maple Street.