Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter! I'd especially like to thank Cherylann Rivers and max2013 for your reviews!

Chapter II

Several people screamed as the explosion still echoed in their ears. Instinctively, Joe dropped to his knees, dragging Terry with him, since he was the only one within reach. Joe glanced around to see if the shooter was in sight. He wasn't.

Given a chance to catch his breath and collect his wits, he realized that the sound hadn't been a gunshot and that it had come from the cafeteria's kitchen. He got to his feet and ran back there to see what had exploded.

"What happened?" Iola asked him. She and Callie and a couple of the braver kids had followed him.

Joe stopped them all in the doorway as soon as he saw what was inside. Tiny shards of glass lay everywhere – on the floor, on the counters. Two big pieces of glass were still lying on one of the burners of the stove, which Joe could see was turned on.

"Somebody must have left that burner on with a glass dish on it," he explained. "You'd all better stay here. There's glass all over the floor."

He carefully walked over to the stove and turned the burner off, just barely touching it. His detective instincts told him not to ruin any fingerprints, even though it had most likely been an accident.

"But would that have caused the dish to explode?" Callie asked. "You bake in glass dishes."

"It can happen," Joe assured her. "I've seen it before." He didn't mention that on that other occasion, he had been the one to turn on a burner on his mother's stove and forget about it, which had fortunately resulted in nothing worse than the destruction of one of his mother's glass pie plates.

"But how did it happen?" Iola interjected. "I mean, how did the stove get turned on? None of us touched it."

"Are you sure?" Joe asked. "None of you were in here?"

Everyone denied it. While they were still chattering about it excitedly, a security guard came bursting into the cafeteria.

"What's going on here?" he demanded.

Several kids began explaining at once and it took several minutes for the guard to get a clear picture of what had happened. By that time, everyone was so worked up that Julie told them all to go home; they could rehearse more tomorrow.

HBHBHBHBHB

"Where have you been, Joe? You're almost late for supper," Laura Hardy greeted her younger son as he came in through the kitchen door.

"Hanging out with Iola and Callie," Joe replied, quickly taking his place at the dinner table.

"Aren't they at rehearsal for the school play?" Frank asked.

"About that," Joe said. He explained about Iola's request and then told them about the mishap at rehearsal.

All of the members of the Hardy family listened with interest to what Joe had to say. Fenton's sister, Gertrude, who lived with the family, shook her head when Joe had finished.

"I don't understand why you boys can't do something as simple as helping out at a rehearsal for a play without some disaster happening," she said.

Frank and Joe exchanged grins.

"I wouldn't call it a disaster, Aunty," Joe replied. "And whether it was or not, I don't see how it's my fault. Unless, of course, I really did bring down the curse of the Scottish play on the production."

"What are you talking about, Joe?" Fenton asked.

"Oh, one of the kids was trying to convince me that if you say the word Macbeth while you're working on a play, you're play will be cursed with bad luck," Joe explained.

"What nonsense!" Aunt Gertrude said. "I've always heard that theater people were superstitious, but I've never heard of such a thing. What if the play you're putting on is Macbeth?"

Joe shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't ask. I doubt anyone in the school play actually believes it anyway."

"People usually have that much sense, Gertrude," Fenton told her.

"I wonder why Jason didn't show up," Frank mused. Any hint of a mystery always intrigued him, even if it was one that probably had a mundane solution like this one.

HBHBHBHBHB

Later that evening, when Frank and Joe were working on homework in Frank's room, both of them were still thinking about what had happened at the rehearsal. Joe was playing with his pen, clicking the point in and out absent-mindedly. After several minutes, Frank couldn't take the clicking sound any longer.

"Joe, could you cut it out?" he asked.

"Huh?" Joe replied, startled out of his thoughts.

"Could you stop clicking the pen?" Frank spelled it out.

"Oh." For the first time, Joe realized that that was even what he was doing. He glanced down at the pen in his hand and then back up at Frank. "I was just thinking about that glass dish again. I've been trying to figure it out and I just don't see how it could have happened. All the cafeteria people left hours before that when lunch was over. That dish couldn't have been sitting on a hot burner all that time without exploding earlier."

Frank nodded. "Obviously someone else came in and turned the burner on, but I don't see why anyone would do that."

"Then there's also Jason not showing up and Trevor not being able to carry through on the music," Joe added. "You don't suppose someone is sabotaging the play, do you?"

"I really don't see why anyone would do that," Frank replied. "What would anyone have to gain by it?"

"Unless they're just being a jerk," Joe pointed out.

Frank shook his head. "If that was the case, I could see the exploding dish, but they wouldn't go so far as to waylay Jason and they couldn't cause Trevor's family to move."

"That's true," Joe admitted.

"According to Occam's Razor, the simplest answer is usually correct," Frank said, "and the simplest answer is that it's three unrelated events. Of course, if anything more happens, then that won't be the simplest answer anymore."

"Whose razor?" Joe asked.

"Occam's Razor," Frank repeated. "You know, the fourteenth century monk who said that if there's more than one hypothesis, the one with the fewest assumptions is probably correct. Haven't any of your teachers mentioned that?"

"Oh, sure, probably. Maybe," Joe said. "Anyway, I'll be keeping an eye out for anything else that happens at the rehearsals."

They both fell silent as they turned to their homework again, although neither was able to focus on studying very well. They knew it would be better for everyone else if the odd events really did turn out to be nothing, but at the same time, the prospect of another mystery to solve excited them.

Joe's phone buzzed, alerting him to a text message. He saw right away that it was from Iola, and his heart skipped a beat. Every time she started a conversation with him, he always half-hoped that it was because she wanted to tell him that she felt the same way about him as he felt about her.

When he opened the message, he saw that it was completely unrelated to that: There won't b rehearsal tomorrow. Jason can't b there.

Why not? Joe texted back to here.

About half a minute went by before the reply came: Didn't say. Just said wouldn't b in school tomorrow.

"Hmm," Joe said aloud. "Looks like another strange thing has happened already."

"What?" Frank asked.

"Jason Reid is skipping out on rehearsal and school tomorrow, too," Joe told him. "Anyway, the rehearsal tomorrow is canceled. I guess they didn't want me to stand in again."

"I wonder what's going on," Frank mused.

He and his brother were thinking the same thing. If there was someone purposely causing problems to the play, they would need to find out what was going on with Jason to solve the mystery. On the other hand, they had found out from experience that it didn't win them any friends to pry into people's personal lives only to find out that there was no mystery to be found there.

HBHBHBHBHB

As Frank parked his and Joe's shared car in the school parking lot the next morning, an ancient yellow jalopy pulled in next to him with a clank and a cough of its engine. Frank and Joe grinned as they got out of their car.

"My hat's off to you, Iola," Frank said to Iola Morton as she got out of the driver's seat. "You've survived another ride in the Queen."

"If I were you, I'd have started walking instead of riding in it," Joe added. "It'd probably be faster."

Iola laughed, but her brother Chet, who had been driving, shook his head. The Queen, as Chet had named his car, was his pride and joy, although it was also the cause of a lot of teasing from his friends. He knew that their teasing was all in good fun and didn't really mind it, but it was part of the game that he could never let on.

"Aw, come on, Joe," Chet said. "The Queen's not an 'it' – she's a 'her'. Besides, if you were going to walk all the way from our farm for school, you'd have to start getting up a lot earlier than you do."

"It would be worth it to keep from being rattled to death riding around in her." Joe, still grinning, emphasized the pronoun. "Not to mention what that would do to my image."

"It would improve it," Chet asserted. "The Queen's a real classic, the sort of car that gets entered in parades."

"For demolition derbies," Joe shot back.

"Okay, okay, you guys," Iola cut in. "Enough about Chet's car. You'd think after all this time you'd run out of things to say about it."

"Some things will never change," Frank told her. "But, seriously. We'll be late if we don't hurry up."

As the four of them speed walked toward the school building, Joe positioned himself so that he was beside Iola.

"Say, did you ever find out why Jason's not going to be around for rehearsal tonight?"

"No." Iola pursed her lips thoughtfully. "To be honest, I don't know why Julie called the rehearsal off. I mean, everyone needs to practice, not just Jason. We could just have someone stand in for him again. It seems like a waste of time to completely call it off."

"Who has the sheet music for the play?" Joe asked. "I might as well get started looking it over, at any rate."

"I think Chris Havens, the producer, has it," Iola replied. "I'll ask him to give it to you before the end of the day."

Before she had finished the sentence, Frank's phone began to ring. He looked at the screen, which showed Callie's name, and fell behind his friends a few steps to answer.

"Hi, Callie," he said. "What –"

Callie cut him off. "Are you at the school yet?" Her voice was edged with urgency and concern.

"Yeah," Frank told her. "Is something wrong?"

"I'll say," Callie replied. "Can you come over to the art room? You and Joe should see this."

"Sure, we'll be there in a minute."

Callie ended the call on her end, and Frank trotted for a few steps until he caught up to the others.

"Hey, guys," he said. "Callie wants us to meet her at the art room. Something's wrong."

Chet and Iola followed along behind the Hardys as they hurried to their rendezvous with Callie. When they arrived, they saw her standing in front of what was clearly meant to be the backdrop for a stage. The edges showed an elaborate painting of an ocean cove, but the center was covered with huge blotches of red and blue paint.

"What happened, Callie?" Frank asked.

She turned and looked at the newcomers. "It's the scenery for the play. Someone dumped paint all over it."