Murder To Go - Stine Megan (книги бесплатно без регистрации txt) 📗

12

Unwrapping a Clue

Pete and Jupe sat silently on top of Twin Peaks with the motor running. They were waiting for the purple Cavalier with Mr. Sweetness in it to burst through the fog to the top of the hill. Now that they were out of the fog themselves, and surrounded by a few dozen sightseers who could back them up, Pete felt less frightened and a whole lot more angry. In fact, he was burning mad.

“The guy’s got a lot of nerve,” Pete said, hitting his fist repeatedly on the steering wheel. “I’d like to meet him in a fair fight, I’ll tell you that.” Pete mentally ran through all the karate moves he knew and would use on Mr. Sweetness if he got the chance. “Why doesn’t he show up? What’s he doing on that road, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Jupe said thoughtfully. “There are a lot of possibilities. ”

They waited about thirty minutes and still the Cavalier didn’t show up.

Suddenly Jupe slammed his fist into the dashboard. “We’ve got to get to the airport,” he said.

“But what about Mr. Sweetness?” Pete said.

“He’s not coming,” Jupe said. “He probably turned around and went back down the hill.”

Pete slapped the steering wheel with his palms and put the car in gear.

“Look on the bright side,” Jupe said. “Now at least we know exactly what he looks like.”

Pete drove quickly to the airport and pulled into the Rental Car Returns area. They left the keys in the car, as instructed, and then rushed into the rental office to pay. But just before they got to the office, Pete spun Jupe around by the arm.

“Look!” he said, pointing to a returned car parked near the front.

“A purple Cavalier!” Jupe exclaimed. “But is it the one we’re looking for?”

They walked over and circled the empty car.

“It’s the right license plate,” said Jupe. “Quick! Go into the office and see if he’s still in there, and stall him. If he’s not there, try to find out from the clerks what Mr. Sweetness’s real name is. I’ll be there to help you in a minute.”

As Pete left, Jupe opened the purple car’s passenger door and leaned inside. Was there something in the car that might be a clue? Jupe started searching, meticulously checking the carpeting behind, under, and in front of the seats. He checked the ashtrays and the glove compartment, and even squeezed his hand into the narrow space between the pedals to check under the floor mats. Then he stood up, puffing a little from being bent over for so long.

But it had been worth it. He had found something, something crucial. It didn’t tell him who Mr. Sweetness was. But it told him the next best thing — where he might go to find out. Jupe rushed to the rental office and met Pete coming out.

“What did the clerk say?” asked Jupe.

“Have a nice day,” Pete said.

“About the purple car,” Jupe said impatiently.

“Have a nice day,” Pete repeated. “That’s all it says. It’s a computer.”

“Look what I found,” Jupe said, pulling out a small crumpled piece of paper, shiny foil on one side and plain white on the other.

“A candy wrapper,” Pete said, smoothing it until he could read the name written in silver ink. “Miracle Tastes! It’s like the candy Don Dellasandro handed out at Big Barney’s party!”

“Yes, exactly,” Jupe said. “Free samples of a product not on the market yet. This creates two possibilities. Mr. Sweetness could have been at the party and gotten candy samples as we all did. Or — and this would be considerably more interesting—perhaps Don Dellasandro and Mr. Sweetness are in league together.”

“We’re just a plane ride from finding out,” Pete said. “Let’s go home!”

It was midnight when Jupe returned to the junkyard and too late to do anything except work on his latest electronic project — the lock combination decoder. When he got too tired to tinker with it anymore, he turned off the workshop light and started to lock up.

Just then the phone rang.

“Hello?” Jupe said in the darkness.

“Hello, Jupe, it’s Pete. Kelly wants to talk to you. Tell him, babe.”

Jupe flipped the lights back on.

“Hi, Jupe!” Kelly said with an awful lot of energy. “Well. like. you know, Juliet Coop took me out to lunch today. ” she began.

Jupe could picture Kelly twisting one long brown piece of hair, and he knew this was going to be a long story. He put the call on the speaker phone so he could walk around while he listened.

“. but she doesn’t remember where she was or where her briefcase might be,” Kelly was saying. “But she remembers something about a car behind her that night. but it’s still fuzzy. Anyway, after lunch she gave me a ride home, and it was great. Big Barney just gave her a new Mustang convertible.”

“You know the one,” Pete interrupted in the background. “The baby with the five-liter V-8 engine and the — ”

“Pete, please,” Kelly said. “Jupe wants to hear this story. So anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. So before she got in the car, she opened the trunk and threw in her purse. Hey, I said to myself, that was weird. So I asked her, ‘What’d you do that for?’ ‘Habit,’ she said. She was riding with the top down once in her old Mustang and someone reached in and grabbed her purse. So do you get the picture, Jupe?”

Jupe’s eyes lit up. The trunk! Juliet’s briefcase might be in her trunk!

“Yes! A brilliant observation, Kelly. You’re learning a lot from me,” Jupe said.

Kelly sort of snorted a laugh.

“Let me talk to Pete,” Jupe said. “Pete, first thing Monday morning, we’re going to the auto salvage yard to check out the trunk of Juliet’s car.”

“Knew you’d say that,” said Pete. “Okay, see ya.”

At 9:00 Monday morning, Pete and Bob showed up in the VW. But Jupe wasn’t quite ready. He picked up the phone and dialed the number of police headquarters. When Chief Reynolds got on the line, Jupe announced he was calling about Juliet Coop’s briefcase.

“A briefcase is news to me,” said the chief.

“Of course, you searched the scene of the accident thoroughly for all personal property,” Jupe said.

“Of course,” the chief answered patiently.

“And the car?” asked Jupe.

“Jupiter, I have uniforms that are older than you are,” said Chief Reynolds. “I know how to do my job. My guys said the car was empty.”

“I was just checking loose ends,” Jupe said.

“Grasping at straws, you mean. You wouldn’t want to put a little wager on this case, would you, Jupiter?” asked Chief Reynolds with a laugh. “Loser buys the winner a Big Barney dinner?”

“Chief, if I lose this one, Big Barney’s chicken may be the last thing you’d want to eat,” Jupe said. “Talk to you later.”

Then Jupe joined his friends and the Three Investigators drove over to the Miller Auto Wreckage Yard. It was the size of two city blocks and surrounded by a tall wooden fence. The far side of the yard was piled high with newly wrecked cars just waiting to be stripped. Scattered elsewhere throughout the lot were piles of various sorts: tires, fenders, cars that were too damaged to be used for parts, and so on. In the left rear corner of the lot there was a huge compactor machine and a 200-foot crane.

Almost as if it had been planned by a television action-adventure show writer, they arrived at the exact moment when Juliet’s little blue Mustang was being lifted into the air by the enormous electromagnet on the end of the crane.

“He’s going to drop it in the masher!” Pete shouted. “It’ll squeeze the metal into a solid block!”

“We’ll never get anything out of the trunk then,” Bob said, breaking into a run.

They ran as fast as they could to the crane, shouting and waving at the crane operator. When they got there, they saw it was Dick Miller, the owner’s son, who had just graduated from Rocky Beach High School a year ago.

He shut down the motor and stepped out on the big yellow painted platform around the operator’s cage. “What’s your problem?” he shouted down to them.