Secret of the Red Arrow (2 page)

As I walked past the alley behind the bank, a big guy in a Michael Myers mask—just like the one I was wearing now—darted out from behind a car and yanked me off my feet. Now, before you call me a wuss, I do know judo (I’m a green belt). But the business end of a nine-millimeter Glock was pressed right up against my gut, so I played along.

It was not the first time I’d had a gun trained on me by some hoodlum. Frank and I had been solving crimes since we were little. We had to keep it on the down low nowadays,
of course, because we kept getting sued. But the situation wasn’t completely unfamiliar to me.

Mr. Glock dragged me over to a van. The door was wide open. Inside, a woman was squirming and whimpering, and when I took a closer look I recognized Mrs. Steigerwald, the owner of Bayport’s bowling alley, Seaside Lanes. A big guy was holding another gun and had a hand clamped over her mouth, but he lifted it just long enough for her to shout, “Joe! Help m—”

She was wearing a baseball cap and these big, 1970s-style sunglasses—her usual getup—and she was so terrified, her glasses seemed to be fogging up. It was awful. The other gunman told me I had to help them rob the bank . . . or she’d “get it.” Their partner hadn’t shown up, he said, so they were a man short. Then the first guy tossed a big, greasy-looking army jacket at me and handed me another
Halloween
mask and the BB gun.

I racked my brain, but I couldn’t see any way out. Poor Mrs. Steigerwald was about to hyperventilate.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. S,” I assured her, putting on the army jacket and the mask. “It’ll all be over really quick. Then I’ll come right out to check on you.”

“All r-right . . . J-Joe,” she answered through chattering teeth. Which surprised me, since she normally called everybody plain old “you.” I didn’t think she knew my name. I was always “You—the blond Hardy.” But I let it slide, thinking she was just terrified.

Sixty seconds later, I was a felon.

Have you ever tried to hold up a bank with the sole aim of keeping anyone from being hurt? It’s quite a high-wire act.

“Hey!” one of my accomplices barked at me now, snapping me back into the present. I’d been staring at Frank, trying to figure out how to communicate with him. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

There was no chance to team up with my brother at the moment. It was too risky. I just needed to get this ordeal over with as soon as possible. I took Frank’s wallet and moved on.

The next customer in line brought me to a halt. This time I couldn’t hide my shock.

“Um . . . Mrs. Steigerwald?” I said. My voice was muffled through the mask.

Mrs. Steigerwald looked freaked out—and mad. She wasn’t wearing her hat and glasses now, and her bright-red hair stuck out at crazy angles. Her green eyes—a really memorable shade—stared at me suspiciously. She clutched her purse, getting ready to hit me with it. “What do you want, you?” she asked.

Now I was really confused. How was Mrs. Steigerwald standing right in front of me? If she was in the bank, who was out in the van being held captive? How could she be in two places at once?

“Were you just outside?” I asked her.

She looked confused. “When?”

“Like, two minutes ago.”

“No,” she replied. “I’ve been here for the past half hour, discussing Seaside Lanes’s bank loan with Tom Baines.” The color started returning to her cheeks as she got going. “Which I wouldn’t need to do if the young people in this town would tear themselves away from their screens once in a while for some good, clean, healthy bowling!”

I took a deep breath, set my gun on the floor, and stepped away from it. Then I raised my hands over my head.

Frank nearly knocked the wind out of me when he tackled me and wrestled me to the ground. My brother looks skinny, but he has some power. I didn’t resist. The bank erupted in chaos. People screamed. I caught a glimpse of the other two robbers ducking out the side door. The security guard ran over and put a knee in my back.

Frank ripped the mask off my face. To his credit, he didn’t say anything. He just frowned.

“There’s a really good explanation,” I said.

“I bet there is,” Frank answered.

Before I could get that explanation out, though, Bayport’s finest were on the scene. Our town might have lousy cell phone reception, but I guess the landlines worked just fine.

I was in cuffs and out the door before I could say another word.

Frank offered some good parting advice: “Joe, don’t say anything until Dad and I get to the station.”

I nodded and gave him a behind-the-back thumbs-up.

The police cruiser was waiting at the curb. The officers put me in the back, slammed the door, and took off.

Now, I know Frank told me not to say anything, but I didn’t see any harm in being friendly. I’m a people person. Besides, I was just relieved the whole ordeal was over without anyone getting hurt. I figured together, we would sort this whole thing out.

So I said, “I know it sounds funny, but I am so glad to see you guys.”

They didn’t answer. No problem. For the present, I was a robbery suspect, caught in the act. Not the kind of person most cops would want to be friendly with. I wasn’t offended.

Then a thought occurred to me. “How did you guys get there so quick?” I asked. “Was there a silent alarm? Or were you just passing by?”

Unsurprisingly, they kept up the silent routine.

As we cruised down Orchard Street, my gaze shifted out the window to a familiar yellow scooter, parked in a driveway. I felt a little tingle in my chest. She was home. Janine Kornbluth, that is.

The police cruiser took the corner at Starboard and Main. We were a block from police department headquarters. I began preparing myself for booking and getting my mug shot taken. (Sadly, this was not the first time I had been inside a jail cell.) But instead we sped up.

“Hey,” I said. “You missed the turn.”

We passed the station, gathering speed. Main Street
leads straight out of town and becomes State Road 17. We passed the last houses. Then there was nothing but pine trees growing tall and straight all around us.

Was I being kidnapped? I stared hard at the police officers, then noticed a detail about the hefty one behind the wheel. He had a scar on the back of his left hand—kind of a pink crescent moon. One of the guys in the bank heist had had the same scar! I should’ve noticed it sooner.

These guys weren’t the police—they were the bank robbers!

Now I realized what had happened: The gunmen must have been wearing these police uniforms under their jackets. They had rushed out of the bank, dumped their masks, jackets, and the loot, and then dashed right back in to “arrest” me. No wonder the cops had been so quick.

My ordeal wasn’t over after all.

A sharp pain in my wrists made me wince. I made an effort to relax my arms. I’d been straining at my handcuffs. Crazy, I know, but I was just starting to realize how mad I was.

These hoods had hijacked my morning, scared a bunch of innocent people witless, robbed a bank using me as a dumb accomplice, and now were getting clean away. And who knew what they planned to do with me now? What if their cruel tricks weren’t over?

At Satellite Road, five miles outside the Bayport city limits, the cruiser slowed to a stop. The gunmen got out, pulled me out, and uncuffed me. “Start walking,” the hefty
one said. He pointed back into town. “That way.” They got back in and drove off in the opposite direction.

I followed them. Admittedly, not very fast. But I was jogging along well enough.

Ahead of me, the cruiser stopped. The reverse lights came on. They backed up until they were beside me again. The driver’s-side window rolled down.

“What do you think you’re doing, kid? We told you to walk the other way.”

I stared back at them without answering. I didn’t open my mouth. I didn’t even blink. I was done cooperating with these clowns.

They looked at each other and shrugged. “He’ll never keep up on foot,” the skinny one said. “Not if you gun it.”

The hefty one nodded and stomped on the accelerator. The cruiser spit gravel and shot away. Within ten seconds it was gone from my view.

I sighed, turned, and began the slow walk back into town. Oh well, at least it had stopped raining.

When I got home, dirty and tired, the real cops were waiting for me. Luckily, after I told my story I avoided the booking, the mug shot, the taking the laces out of my shoes. I was told I wouldn’t be charged with anything, and they left.

After they were gone, waiting for me on the kitchen table was a treat from Aunt Trudy: some kind of delicious sauce on top of homemade, ribbony pasta. I didn’t know what it all was, but it was terrific.

Aunt Trudy lived in a little apartment above the garage. We called our aunt Green Thumb Trudy because she was crazy for gardening. She went to meetings on the subject of gardening and belonged to several gardening societies in the area. She also had a wicked sense of humor. My late lunch had come with a note attached:
For the Jailbird
.

Frank sat with me and gave me the final pieces of the puzzle while I ate.

After all I’d been through, here’s the kicker: It all turned out to have been some sort of prank!

Mrs. Steigerwald was never under any threat. The woman I saw in the van must have been a double who’d gotten hold of a similar baseball cap and sunglasses. She may have even been wearing a bright-red wig. I’d been completely fooled.

All the loot from the holdup was found in the alley next to the bank in a cake box with a note that said,
Just kidding! LOL!
The police would return all the personal items and cash once they’d had a chance to dust for fingerprints.

Frank watched me as I finished up my lunch special and rinsed my plate. “Are you okay?” he asked after a moment. “You must have had a crazy day. I was worried about you.”

Sometimes it’s nice to have a brother.

A
FTER THE FIFTH SIGH, I PUT THE
photos down. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

Joe had been looking through the Frank Hardy Known Criminal Index, a collection of mug shots and wanted posters I kept in my briefcase. But his eyes had glazed over, and his leg was bouncing in place.

“Did you ever stop and ask yourself
why
, Frank?”

“Why what?”

“Why people do the things they do . . . Why the Earth revolves around the Sun . . . Why we get involved in every kind of crazy trouble that crops up around here . . .”

I couldn’t hear the rest of his answer. The decibel level in
the Bayport High cafeteria was, as ever during lunch period, at the hollering point.

Joe toyed with his meal for a bit. He’d ordered his usual: the special of the day. I don’t think he actually prefers one dish over another. He just likes variety.

I knew something was bugging him. After the cops left Saturday, he’d been in typically high spirits. But later, his mood had shifted, and he’d barely spoken two words since.

My blond-haired, blue-eyed brother is an unlikely one to sulk. In fact, he’s one of the sunniest people I knew. But every once in a while something would get under his skin. He wouldn’t bring it up right away. First he’d talk about something else. Finally he’d work his way around to what was really going on in his head. I knew I didn’t have long to wait.

I was right.

He had been staring at a stack of photos of various white males between the ages of twenty and forty, but I could tell he wasn’t really seeing their faces. (We’d been hoping he would be able to identify the phony cops who had briefly kidnapped him after the bank holdup on Saturday, but so far no luck.) All at once, he looked at me in alarm and said, “Am I a major-league sucker or something? Sort of Mr. Gullibility?”

“No.”

“Do I have a sucker’s face?”

I wanted to laugh. But I didn’t. “A sucker’s face? No. Why?”

“Well, look what happened: First I got taken in by a bunch of phony bank robbers. Then I got tricked by someone pretending to be Mrs. Steigerwald. And then I let myself get busted by fake cops!”

So that was it.

I was about to tell him I didn’t think he was any more gullible than I was, whatever that was worth, but a voice interrupted our conversation:

“Dude, that was sick!”

Laughter echoed from the table next to ours. I looked up and saw a bunch of football players staring down into somebody’s smartphone screen. As I looked, one of the players—Neal “Neanderthal” Bunyan—glanced up and met my eye.

Uh-oh. Neanderthal, Joe, and I were not exactly friends.

“Yo, Frank!” he yelled now, grabbing his friend’s phone and holding it up so I could see it. “You seen this? It’s your big movie debut!”

Big movie debut? I looked at Joe, who seemed to share my sense of wariness. Last I’d checked, I didn’t have a feature film in production.

“What do you mean, Neander—er—Neal?” Joe asked.

Neanderthal got up from his table and walked over, still holding the smartphone. “Someone just messaged this link to my buddies,” he said, holding it up so we could see the screen. It was a YouTube clip. He hit play, and Joe and I frowned at each other and watched.

The second the picture came up, my mouth dropped
open. It was me—at the bank yesterday. First I was shot from behind, standing in line, minding my own business. Then the screen moved to capture the “robbers” entering the bank, brandishing their “guns.” Everyone screamed, and the bank robbers yelled at us to stay calm, then that they’d shoot anyone who didn’t cooperate.

After a few more seconds, the screen dissolved to black, and then words flashed up in bright-red capital letters:

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

And then:

PANIC PROJECT!

COMING THIS SUMMER!

I frowned again and looked up at Joe. He looked just as puzzled as I felt. “What was that?”

“That,” I replied, handing the phone back to Neanderthal, “is what I think is supposed to become a viral video.”

Neanderthal was laughing. “So, let me bet on what happens next,” he said, turning around to make sure his buddies were watching. “Frank, I’m going out on a limb to say you pee your pants. Sorry, maybe I should have said ‘spoiler alert.’ ”