No Way Out (11 page)

While he ate, he looked out the wide window that captured the vista of gardens and meadow between the house and the maze. A full moon in a cloudless sky lit the landscape like a spotlight. In the distance, the outside hedge wall of the maze seemed capped in silvery moonshine.

“Is that really moonlight?” he wondered aloud. He limped over to the window and picked up the binoculars sitting on the sill. An eerie glow hung over the maze. “I remember that glow,” Joe whispered to no one. “We saw it when Alan turned on the night-lights last Friday. But this time, the lights aren't on, are they? Of course there was no moon on Friday, and there's a big one tonight. But …”

There's only one way to find out
, he thought. He wasn't going to be in the maze races, anyway. There was no reason why he couldn't check it out.

He put the food back in the refrigerator, and got a flashlight, pen, and notebook from a drawer in the long table. Then he grabbed a barn jacket from
the hook on the kitchen door and limped out to the vehicle court. All the golf carts still had the keys in their ignitions, so he started one up and headed for the maze.

As he grew nearer, he saw that the glow above the hedges was different from how it had been with the night-lights on. And when he finally began limping through the maze, he saw that the electric lights were not on.
It's the moonlight
, he thought.
It makes it seem like a whole other world in here.

The flashlight stayed in his hip pocket as he followed the hedge tunnels through the maze. He drew a sort of diagram of his trail in the notebook as he limped along, so he'd be sure to find his way back out.

The maze was very elaborate, with lots of side paths, dead ends, and loop-backs. After backtracking out of several dead ends, he finally reached the repaired center of the maze. The only signs of the reconstruction were the new hedges. They were paler and not as full and lush as the others.

The maze center was laid out like a small oval park, with carved wooden benches and clumps of flowers. The ground was littered with smooth black pebbles that crunched as he walked. A mailbox was near one of the benches.

Joe remembered Ray telling him that clues for the maze scavenger hunt would be left in the mailboxes scattered along the paths. He opened the box
and took out a piece of paper with lines printed on it in some sort of pattern. It looked vaguely familiar, but he was feeling very tired and the medicine had dulled his brain.

He was also becoming acutely aware of his aching leg wound. He shoved the paper in his pocket, plopped onto one of the benches, and stretched his leg out on the seat. He even leaned his head back on the top of the bench and closed his eyes for a few minutes.

The first rustling seemed far away, as if it was coming from the far outside wall of the maze. But when he heard it again, it seemed a little closer, then closer still. It wasn't a loud noise, but more like someone blowing on the hedge leaves or turning the pages of a book.

Opening his eyes, Joe looked toward the direction of the slight sound. The glow above the hedges was brighter there and seemed to be moving toward him along with the rustling sound.

He watched and listened for a few seconds, then realized he was holding his breath. He let it out at once with a sigh. At that same moment, the rustling noise seemed to move across a path next to his bench, and the leaves in one tall hedge fluttered.

Joe squinted and strained to see what was moving in the moonshine. And then, like a burst of greenish silver light, the ghostly specter of a man materialized from the hedge wall and floated over the pebbles.

The ghostly image never looked Joe's way. He was dressed all in white: white shirt, white slacks, and white shoes. Balding at the front of his scalp, he sported a shock of pale hair that started halfway back and streaked out behind his head. He had deep-set eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache and beard. In his left hand he carried a cluster of sleek arrows. His right hand held a long white bow.

Joe gasped as the specter slowly sailed over the path and was swallowed by the opposite hedge wall. His feet never crunched the pebbles.

The glowing aura above the hedge seemed to recede, and it grew darker. Joe's aching leg began to tremble, and he slowly lowered it to the ground. He stared at the path where he had seen the
ghostly archer. Then he limped over to the exact places where the ghost had first materialized and then disappeared. The hedges were completely whole, no broken branches or fallen leaves. There was no sign that anyone—or anything—had passed through them.

He hopped and limped around the end of the hedge wall and stared into the next row. He thought he saw a white leg curl around the corner, so he hustled as fast as he could to the end of
that
row and turned into the next path. It was one of the maze's one hundred dead ends, and there was no man in white to be seen.

Joe shook his head. “It's the medicine,” he muttered. “It
has
to be.” He checked the diagram of the path he'd taken through the maze, but he could no longer read it clearly. Clouds had formed in the previously starry sky, masking the moon and forcing Joe to use his flashlight to see his way out.

At last he reached the entrance again. He let out another sigh and climbed painfully into the golf cart. By the time he was finally back in his new bed, he had decided that the archer in the maze had been a hallucination. As he fell asleep, he wasn't even sure he'd been to the maze at all.

Monday morning, Frank woke early and cleaned up fast. He knew he had a lot to do—more than usual, since his brother was temporarily laid up. He took
the stairs two at a time and went into the downstairs bedroom that Penny had fixed up for Joe.

“Hey great, you're awake,” Frank said. Joe was dressed and sitting on a chair.

“Hey yourself,” Joe said.

“How are you feeling?”

“My leg's a lot better, but my mind's still kind of fuzzy. These antibiotics are better than going to the movies. I dreamed I woke up and was hungry, so I fixed a sandwich. Then I took a golf cart out to the maze, limped around inside, and saw this guy floating around through the hedges like a ghost.”

Joe pulled on his shoes, and a smooth black pebble dropped onto the carpet.

“What's that?” Frank asked.

“It's a pebble,” Joe said, looking amazed, “like the ones I saw in my dream in the center of the maze. There are benches and these pebbles all over the ground.”

“Are you saying it might have been real? You actually went to the maze?”

“Maybe,” Joe said quietly, leading Frank out the door and into the kitchen. Joe was relieved to see that he was moving a lot better. His leg ached and was tender if he stepped on it a certain way, but it was more flexible than it had been the day before, and he felt stronger.

“We're having breakfast out here,” Penny called to the Hardys from the sunroom.

Frank and Joe started down the small corridor toward the sunroom, but only Frank made it. He turned back to see where his brother was. Joe was staring at a small oil painting hanging in a corner beside the butler's pantry. In it, a tall man stood drawing back a bowstring and arrow in perfect archer's form. He was dressed in a uniform of white shoes, white slacks, and white long-sleeved shirt with a banded collar.

“He's pretty impressive,” Frank said, walking over to examine the painting.

“This is the guy in my dream,” Joe said. His voice was low, almost a whisper.

“You're kidding.”

“I'm
not
kidding. Don't say anything to the others about it yet.” Joe walked slowly into the sunroom, and he and Frank joined the others around a table in the corner.

“Wow. Joe, you're walking so much better,” Kay said. “Amazing what a good night's sleep can do.”

“It sure is,” Joe said, helping himself to eggs and sausage. “I just noticed the painting in the hallway—the archer. Does he live around here?”

“You might say that,” Ray answered with a chuckle. “He's in a grave on the far end of the estate.”

“Excuse me?” Joe said. He hoped the Hortons didn't notice the goose bumps on his arms.

“It's the baron,” Penny said. “Baron Jackson Brighthall, the original owner of this property, the
last in the long line of Brighthalls who lived here. He's been dead for years. He was a champion Olympic archer in the last century—we think that's what the painting is supposed to represent.”

“Did you know him?” Joe asked.

“No. He met his untimely death a decade before Dad bought the property,” Kay said.

“What do you mean ‘untimely'?” Frank asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

“He was murdered,” Kay said, crouching over her plate. “And the murder has never been solved to this day. No one lived here in the years before we bought it, and the place just decayed. But the baron's presence was still very much around.”

“How do you mean?” Joe asked, although he was sure he knew what she was going to say next.

“Villagers would troop across the grounds to get to the beach or to go fishing from the jetty,” Kay continued. “Many of them reported seeing the baron's ghost slipping around the crumbling walls and decaying topiary trees.”

Frank and Joe exchanged glances, but stuck to their mutual agreement to not tell the Hortons yet about Joe's maze adventure.

“So what's on the schedule today?” Frank asked the Hortons.

“More of the same,” Penny said matter-of-factly. “More competitions, a couple of races, the bazaar. If Vincenzo kidnapped Alan, I'm hoping he or the
fire-eater will tell the police where he is today, so we can bring him home.”

“You said ‘if' Vincenzo kidnapped him,” Joe repeated. “Do you have another theory?”

“No … no, not really,” Penny said, with a forced smile. “And what about you two? What's next in the investigation?”

The Hardys told the others about checking over the film footage and what they had seen. “Black-stone and the fire-eater insist they had nothing to do with the flaming arrow,” Frank reported. “It could be true. If they were trashing the center of the maze, there's no way they could be shooting the arrow from the other side too.”

“So you're back to the man running into the woods?” Ray said.

“He's all we've got at this point,” Joe told them. “Everyone else in the crowd was gathered at the maze entrance. He was the only one seen first hanging around the stands and then running away.”

“But Blackstone hired the fire-eater,” Kay said. “Couldn't he have hired the flaming arrow archer, too?”

“That's what we thought at first,” Frank said. “But he told Officer Chester that he was thrilled to hear about the flaming arrow because he figured that guy would also be blamed for trashing the maze, and all suspicion would be diverted from Blackstone's team.”

“He usually loves to take credit for ruining someone else's creation,” Penny said.

“Yes, but he's been in a lot of trouble lately—and is about to be charged here,” Joe pointed out. “So maybe he can't afford to take on any more—especially if it's someone else's crime.”

“Like I said, we're back to the guy running away,” Ray said.

“Has anyone seen Bruce MacLaren around since Alan threw him out of the stadium and off the property?” Joe asked. “The running guy was built a lot like MacLaren, although since he was in a costume, I can't be sure. The
B
on the arrow could fit, though.”

“No one's reported a sighting of him to us,” Penny said. “Alan alerted all the security people to watch for him and not allow him on the property again.”

‘Well, I'm off to talk to Shorty about Joe's falcon incident,” Frank said. “Maybe we can get a lead there.”

“Joe, you're staying in and resting, I hope,” Penny said. “The doctor has placed you in my charge. You'd better be a good patient!”

“I'm going to stay down for a while, at least,” Joe said. “You three go on out and run the show. But let's all keep in touch by phone.”

“Don't forget the baron,” Kay called after them as the Hardys left the sunroom. “He was an ace archer. Maybe his ghost shot the flaming arrow!”

Back in Joe's room, the Hardys closed the door for a private strategy session. “So the baron's ghost was hanging around the maze last night,” Frank said, shaking his head. “I'm not going to accept that explanation until we cancel out the other possibilities.”

“Like someone pretending to be a ghost to try and scare people off,” Joe offered.

“Exactly,” Frank said. “And when we find out who, we'll find out why.”

“Or vice versa.”

They decided that Frank would check in with Shorty about the falcon and with the falconer himself if necessary. Then he was going to search the caretaker's cottage. Joe would call Officer Chester and get an update on Blackstone.

‘Would you bring me my computer before you leave?” Joe asked. “I want to dig up some more stuff on Bruce MacLaren.”

Frank brought the computer down for Joe. “Did I tell you Blackstone admitted to hacking into your computer and leaving that message?” Frank asked.

“Guess we showed him who the amateur is, didn't we?” Joe said with a broad grin. Frank returned the smile and left for the stables.

Joe called the police station immediately. Officer Chester was still there. He reported that Black-stone and the fire-eater were sticking to their stories about what they did and didn't do. He also said the arrow Frank had found was a true antique,
but they'd had no luck tracing it to Blackstone.

Joe fired up his computer and spent the next several hours gathering data. He was still clicking away when Frank slammed into the room. “Look!” he said, waving some brochures at Joe. “Look what I found at one of the bazaar booths.”