The Prime-Time Crime (11 page)

“Where's Steve now?” Joe asked. “Has he already finished doing all of this?”

“He's in the engineering room next to Studio A,” Debbie said. “He's adjusting one of the monitors in there while the engineers aren't looking. Any minute now, we'll be able to get a look into Ted's office.”

“Come on,” Frank said, running toward the studio. “It might not be too late to stop him.”

“Nothing's blown up yet,” Joe said, hurrying after his brother.

“I don't understand,” Debbie said. “Why do you want to stop Steve? I thought you were interested in finding Clarence.”

The Hardys didn't stop to answer Debbie as they raced toward the studio. But before Frank and Joe could reach their destination, they saw Marcy Simons pull open the door to the engineering room from the inside and stagger out into the hallway. A puff of black smoke followed her out. She was coughing loudly.

“Thank goodness you're here,” she gasped when she saw the Hardys racing toward her. “You've got to do something, quick. The engineering room's about to explode!”

“What do you mean, explode?” Frank asked. “Is something on fire?”

“The wires are burning . . . melting. . . . Everything could catch,” Marcy said. “Get the fire extinguisher. Quick!”

Frank ran to the glass case on the wall, reached through the remains of the glass that he had shattered the day before, and grabbed the fire extinguisher. He shook it to reassure himself that it was full, then ran to the door of the engineering room and pushed his way inside.

The smoke was pouring out of a bank of TV monitors on one wall. Frank sprayed the fire extinguisher at the source of the fire, and after a few moments the smoke began to clear.

“Uh, hi, Frank,” the older Hardy heard a nervous voice say below him. He looked down and saw Steve sitting on the floor in front of the monitors, several tools at his side.

“Guess it really wasn't much of a fire,” Steve said, getting up off the floor. “Thanks for putting it out, though.”

“Let me guess,” Frank said coolly. “Did you have something to do with this, Steve?”

“Well, I must have put two wrong wires together,” Steve said uneasily. “There were a few sparks and then suddenly all this smoke. Everything's okay now, though.”

“Yeah, sure,” Joe said, coming up behind Frank. “You could have burned the whole building down.”

On the opposite side of the room, a pair of engineers watched the three teens closely. One was the young brown-haired engineer Frank and Joe had seen the day before. The other was a middle-aged man with thinning gray hair.

“What's going on, anyway?” the man asked. “Were you the ones who caused that fire? What are you doing in here?”

“Our friend Steve will be doing the explaining,” Joe said. “Right, Steve?”

Suddenly the brown-haired engineer looked up at the bank of TV screens in front of her and cried out, “Hey, what is this? That's not supposed to be on the air. Don't we have a game show scheduled for this half hour?”

The older engineer turned to look at the screen,
too, as did Frank, Joe, and Steve. Debbie Hertzberg, who had just entered the room, peered over their shoulders.

On each of the seven televisions was the same image: the inside of Ted Whalen's office, with Whalen sitting behind his spacious desk, leaning back comfortably in his padded chair.

“Well, if it isn't Ted the Tyrant,” said the brown-haired engineer. “What's he doing on there? We don't have a feed from his office, do we?”

“Not that I know of,” the other engineer replied.

“Isn't that the picture from the camera we put in Ted's room?” Debbie whispered to Steve.

“Uh, yeah,” Steve said. “I think it is.” He leaned forward and talked to the two engineers. “That's not actually on the air, is it?”

“You bet it is,” said the brown-haired engineer, staring at the image in astonishment. “Somehow this picture has been patched directly into the broadcast signal. Television viewers throughout the Bayport broadcasting area are watching this right along with us.”

“We'd all better run for our lives when Ted figures out what's happened,” the second engineer said.

“So that's what that red cable did,” Steve said. “I'll have to remember that next time.”

As the people in the engineering room watched Ted on the monitor, the station manager picked up a sandwich from the desk in front of him, started to take a bite from it, and spilled lettuce and mayonnaise
down his shirt and tie. Several of the workers in the engineering room laughed and clapped, and someone let out a loud whistle.

With an exasperated expression, Whalen looked down at the mess he had made. Then he glanced up at the banks of television screens on his wall, and his expression began to change. His jaw dropped and his eyes grew wide. The lettuce and mayonnaise dribbled slowly from his tie to the top of his desk.

“What do you think he's looking at?” Steve asked.

“Himself,” Joe replied. “On TV.”

The brown-haired engineer smiled. “Maybe we shouldn't cut this off the air after all.”

“Yeah,” said the older engineer. “Sure beats our regular programming. Old Ted's never looked better.”

Ted Whalen, staring straight at the TV screen, began to flush with anger.

Then he said, in a low and menacing tone, “I'm going to
kill
those kids!”

“You don't suppose he means us, do you?” Debbie asked.

“I think we'd better get moving,” Frank said to Joe.

“Right,” Joe said. “It looks like things are about to get pretty nasty around here.”

Frank and Joe stepped out of the engineering room and into the hallway as quickly as they could.

“Now, where were we?” Joe asked.

“We were talking about Clarence and whether that was really his voice over the intercom,” Frank said.

“It might be time to ask a few people where they were when that message was broadcast,” Joe said.

“Here comes one of them now.” Frank pointed down the hallway. Matt Freeman was striding toward them.

“Where are you headed, Matt?” Joe asked. “You look like you're in a hurry.”

“I've got a special edition of ‘The Four O'Clock Scholar' to host this evening,” Matt replied. “And, as I recall, your brother Frank is a contestant on it.”

“Oh, right!” Frank exclaimed. “The championship tournament is tonight, and I'm on the team. I was planning on doing a little cramming before the show. I haven't had a chance to study since Sunday.”

“Calm down,” Joe said. “You were great on Sunday, and you'll probably blow them all away tonight.”

“If you two don't mind,” Matt said, “I've got to get moving. Good luck to you.” He continued down the hallway toward the studio.

“Listen,” Frank said. “I've got to start getting ready for the show, too. You go talk to Marcy Simons and tell her to have the basement searched for Clarence.”

“You still think he's down there?” Joe asked.

“I'm not sure,” Frank said. “But we have to cover all the bases.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “Anything else?”

“Just keep trying to find Clarence,” Frank said. “I'll compare notes with you as soon as the show is over.”

Frank turned and headed for the greenroom, leaving Joe alone in the hallway. After watching his brother go, Joe walked to Marcy Simons's office.

Marcy was startled when Joe told her about hearing Clarence in the basement, and she agreed to send a pair of guards down to search. She then excused herself, saying she also had to get ready for “The Four O'Clock Scholar.”

Joe wandered back out into the hallway. Well, it's up to me now, he thought. I've got to figure this one out on my own.

Joe found an empty office and settled down into a comfortable-looking chair. It felt good to sit down after a day of running around looking for Clarence.

He remembered what Frank had started to say earlier about Clarence's voice. It was so distinctive that—what? What had Frank been about to say?

That someone could easily have imitated Clarence's voice?

Sure, thought Joe. That made sense. What if the voice they had heard over the loudspeaker and in the basement was someone doing a Clarence Kellerman impression?

So who did a Clarence Kellerman impression?

“Hello, everybody,” Joe said out loud, trying to
make his voice sound as much like the quiz show host's as possible. “It's your old buddy Clarence!”

Nah, he thought, with a shudder. That was a lousy Clarence Kellerman impression.

But maybe somebody who made his living talking on television could do a better one. Maybe somebody like—

Joe stood up abruptly, almost knocking over the chair as he did. He realized he knew who did a great Clarence Kellerman impression. Joe had heard Fred Dunlap do it just the previous morning, on the set of the Home-Shopping Extravaganza.

And Fred had been in the basement the second time they had heard Clarence's voice. He could have made it sound as though Clarence were hidden away somewhere in the stacks of boxes.

Joe raced back out into the hallway—and froze. Where were Fred and Al anyway? He always saw them in the hallway or on the stairs or in the studio, but he had no idea where their office was.

Joe ducked his head into an office and asked the man who sat at the desk where he could find the Dunlaps.

“I just saw them outside,” the man said. “On the loading dock down at the end of this hall. They're unloading a bunch of merchandise that just came in.”

Why would the Dunlaps be outside unloading their own merchandise? Joe wondered as he headed for the dock. Shouldn't they have other people do that job for them?

He and Frank had seen Fred carrying boxes up from the basement. Why did the Dunlaps handle the merchandise entirely by themselves?

Maybe, thought Joe, they don't want anybody else to see it. Maybe there's something funny about the boxes and boxes of merchandise that the Dunlaps kept in the basement.

And maybe, just maybe, Clarence had gotten too close a look at the merchandise. . . .

Joe threw open the door to the loading dock. There was a large truck backed up to the dock, but nobody was in sight around it. Joe walked up to the open, rear door of the truck and looked inside. There were piles of boxes in the truck, similar to the boxes he and Frank had seen stacked in the basement.

Joe stepped inside the truck and took a closer look. A couple of boxes were marked HSE, but most were marked with the names of Bayport area stores. Were these the places where Fred and Al bought their merchandise? Joe wondered. Hadn't Fred said on the show that they bought their merchandise wholesale, to keep the prices down?

Joe cautiously opened the lid on one box. Inside were all types of gold chains, like the ones that Fred had been hawking on the show the previous morning. The box next to it contained assorted jewelry, which had been tossed carelessly into the box.

This stuff didn't look as if it had been bought wholesale, Joe thought. This looked like—

“Can I help you?” said a voice. Joe spun around to see Fred and Al Dunlap staring into the truck.

“Where'd you get this stuff?” Joe asked the brothers. “Where does it all come from?”

“What business is it of yours?” Fred asked. “I thought you kids were looking for Clarence Kellerman, not a good buy on gold chains.”

“This stuff is stolen, isn't it?” Joe snapped. “That's why you never let anybody get near your merchandise or unlock your truck for you. Clarence found out that this stuff-was stolen and that's why he's missing now, right?”

Fred and Al exchanged glances. “This kid is pretty smart,” Al said with a scowl. “And his brother, too. Real sharp detectives.”

“You guys are running a fencing operation right out of this station, aren't you?” Joe went on. “You sell the stuff to the viewers of your show, who never suspect they're buying stolen merchandise. You must get this stuff from every petty crook in town.”

“That's about the size of it,” Al said. “We're the hottest fences in Bayport. And the thieves don't even have to come to us. We come to them, with this handy truck.”

“And you've been trying to get rid of me and my brother all along, not to mention Steve and Debbie,” Joe continued. “You dropped that camera on us, didn't you? And which one of you tried to knock me off the catwalk Sunday evening?”

Fred gestured to Joe and smiled. “This kid really is smart, Al.”

“You even locked all four of us in the basement and tried to asphyxiate us with smoke before we discovered anything important,” Joe said.

“Believe me,” Fred said, “it wasn't much fun knocking those two other kids over the head with a crowbar after we'd turned out the lights on them in the basement. Fortunately, they never shut up for even a second, so it was easy to find them in the dark.”

“You know,” Al added, “this kid is so smart, I think I'll give him a little present.” He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a gun.

“I guess you've solved the mystery after all, kid,” Al said, pointing the gun at Joe. “Too bad. ‘Cause it looks like your detective career is over.”

Joe looked around desperately. No one else was in sight. Frank, Marcy, and Matt—and even Steve and Debbie—were all getting ready for “The Four O'Clock Scholar.” That left Joe alone on the loading dock with a pair of armed criminals.

For the first time in days, Joe wouldn't have minded seeing Steve and Debbie show up.

“Well, kid,” Al Dunlap said, waving the gun, “are you coming quietly? Or do we have to carry you?”

“I'm coming,” Joe said, stepping out of the back of the truck. “Where exactly are we going?”

“Just follow me,” Fred said. “Al will be right behind you, so don't try anything funny.”