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Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Hardys.
It was six in the morning, and Lach and Frank were sitting in the Jamesons' room at Sleepy Hollows. Their door was open slightly in order to hear any noise from the hallway, and particularly anybody leaving room 212. "Can I at least go to the lobby and get a newspaper?" asked Lach. "I'll be really quick, and I can't quite fathom anybody else being crazy enough to be up at this hour on a Sunday morning anyway."
Frank sighed. "Sure, go ahead, I guess. It'll keep us from getting quite so bored."
It was almost eleven before the Marriott pair, whom Joe had dubbed Long and Tall – in honour of one man's gorilla-like arms and the other's six-foot-six frame – left the breakfast room and approached a doorman.
"It's very odd that construction workers would be staying at a hotel like this," Joe commented to his father as they sat on a big, comfortable couch in the lobby, drinking Starbuck's coffee. They slowly got up and sauntered towards the front doors. They watched the doorman flag down a cab, and they hurried to their own car, parked down the block in a fire zone. Fenton muttered as he removed the ticket from the windshield and shoved it into his pocket.
"We'll let the agency deal with this," he said. "Keep your eye on that cab, Joe, see if you can get the ID number and the plate; maybe we can speak to the driver later and get some info…"
They followed the cab and its occupants to the port warehouse. The Hardys parked around the corner, then set out down the street, passing by the warehouse. It appeared as deserted as it had the day before. "Let's investigate," said Fenton, and the two approached the front door.
Joe cracked it open. He listened intently, and peered into a small anteroom. He shrugged at his father, and they entered in. A glass door led into an office, and a metal door was labelled Bay One.
"Office first," whispered Fenton. He tried the door, but it was locked. Removing a lockpicking set from his pocket, he soon opened the door and the Hardys began a quick and thorough search.
Joe began at a filing cabinet and soon found a small key taped to the bottom of the top drawer. It was labelled, in felt-tipped pen, 348. Odd, Joe thought to himself, and committed the number to memory.
Fenton, meanwhile, was having no luck at all. The warehouse apparently belonged to a courier company called, imaginatively, Overseas Shipping, Ltd. He found numerous sales slips, dated in the previous six months, from places mainly in coastal Europe. He tried the next desk drawer and smiled. Here were more records, this time to places in Asia. They seemed innocent enough, except that it didn't make any sense at all for a company to send anything by boat from the Eastern Seaboard to Asia. You don't go around the Cape of Good Hope if you can help it. Fenton didn't quite know what this meant, but it probably was important.
Lachlan looked at Frank. "I don't think anybody's in there. By now, the guy would have left for food, because his other choice would be starvation. Which I'm near, by the way."
"It is two in the afternoon," he agreed.
Lach nodded. "Why don't we phone his room, see if there's an answer. If he picks up, we can always make something up."
Frank considered. "Okay. But we can't use our phone. We'll – I'll – go down to the lobby. You stay here."
A few minutes later, Lach was standing in the hall across from 212, pretending to wait for the elevator. She strained to hear a telephone ring.
Suddenly, room 212's door was flung open, and Lach nearly died from shock. She tried to non-chalantly study the man who exited and joined her in waiting for the elevator.
Today, he was dressed in a pinstripe suit with an overcoat and hat, as if it were January. He carried a black leather briefcase. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and Lach couldn't decide whether he belonged with Merrill Lynch or the mafia.
The elevator door opened, and Lach and the man stepped in. At the ground floor, the man headed for the front door. Lach looked hurriedly around for the phones and Frank. She didn't want to lose the man. She vaguely heard somebody shouting, and it took her a moment to realize that it was she who was being summoned.
"Chris, Chris!"
Lach turned to the front desk, where Lacey was standing and waving. Lach plastered a smile on her face and approached. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you."
"How was last night?" grinned Lacey.
Lach's mind was blank. She saw Frank walk into the room and she waved at the door. "Last night? Oh, right, wedding night. Oh! It was great! But I'm afraid Jack's here now… we've got a busy day of sightseeing! Bye!" she called cheerily while grabbing Frank's arm and sprinting out the door.
Confused, he stumbled after her. "What are you doing?"
"He left!" cried Lach. "Room 212! He went out, carrying a suit and wearing a briefcase!"
Frank stared. "Oh. Well. Where'd he go?"
"I don't know! Lacey started talking to me –"
"Who's Lacey?"
"Nevermind! Let's find that guy!"
"Calm down, Lachlan. You're making a scene. I see him."
Lach nearly shouted, "Where?"
"Calm down. There, at the corner, waiting for the light. Oh, uh, he might have seen us."
Lach paused, properly reproached. "What do we do now?"
Frank shrugged. "Follow him anyway. Even more discreetly. Let's you and I stay together for a bit, because he's seen us together."
"All right."
"Oh good, you're still here. Chris!"
Lach responded quicker this time. She turned to find Lacey looking at her curiously, and wondered how much she'd heard. "You dropped your keys."
"Oh! Thank you. Well, see you later!" Taking Frank's hand, she began walking down the street.
Joe was sorting through a telephone directory when he heard voices. "Dad, listen."
They were silent for a minute. Fenton went to the door and peered out. He leaped back. The Hardys looked around for a place to hide. The best they could do was crouch behind the desk.
The voices were distinguishable now, and angry.
"The boss wanted them a week ago. Why haven't your people got them here yet?"
"It's supply and demand," soothed the other voice. "Happens to the best of us. There's lots of demand –"
"I'll say."
"- but only so much supply –"
"Your job is to supply! Why can't you do that?"
"I am!"
"You haven't supplied anything!"
"Who got you that last batch of high-grade stuff?"
"What's past is past, and what's present ought to be present, not future! Tomorrow, okay?"
"Wednesday at the latest."
"Tomorrow!"
"All right, all right."
The front door opened, and the supply man left. Fenton watched the other guy sit down in an armchair in the anteroom and remove a sandwich and the morning paper from the bag he was carrying. He sat and ate and read, and Fenton and Joe crouched behind the desk. Fenton was getting stiff. I'm too old for this, he thought to himself.
"We're going to the warehouse," Frank commented, and Lach concurred.
But they didn't. The man stopped in a park on the way, and settled himself on a bench and made some calls on the cellular phone. Much to his dismay, Frank couldn't get near enough to eavesdrop.
The man shuffled through some papers in his briefcase, then removed some and held them in his hand. He basked in the sun for several minutes, glancing at his watch.
The man nicknamed Long wandered up the path, and the bench man rose. Together, they returned to the street. They brushed by a woman pushing a double stroller, and a piece of paper fluttered to the ground. Lach waited an agonizing two minutes before pouncing on the scrap. Frank, in the meantime, followed the men.
Lachlan studied the note hard. It read: Greyhound Depot, Monday at 10, Thursday at 12.
Lach glanced up, saw that Frank was almost out of sight, and hurried to catch up.
After the man finished his lunch, he'd hailed a cab. "The Marriott," he'd said, and Fenton and Joe decided to head back to their own hotel. There might be a note from Frank and Lachlan.
Lach caught up to Frank in time to see Long enter an expensive restaurant. "What meal would he be eating now?" she asked Frank.
"Supper. It's five-thirty," he pointed out.
"It is? Wow. How time flies when you're… chasing people all over Boston."
"Let's go back to the hotel."
Over a room-service dinner, the Hardys and Lach discussed the case.
"We'll be at the bus depot by eight-thirty tomorrow morning," said Fenton.
"I'm glad we don't have to get up at five again," said Joe. "And we can watch the Yankees' game tonight."
Everyone nodded, worn out from a long day of surveillance.
"They've been gone almost three days," said Lach quietly, staring at her plate.
Fenton sighed. He didn't know what to day. Frank patted her on the shoulder. "We'll find them. Look how much progress we've made already."
Lach stared at him. "We don't know anything more than we did on Friday."
Joe spoke. "We confirmed the things that we'd thought. That's something. And there's the meeting tomorrow."
"Usually until the very end of a case, nothing makes any sense. You don't know what's important and what's not. But you poke around long enough, and eventually things slide into place." Lach glanced up at Fenton. She gave a half-nod, keeping her tear-filled eyes downcast, and rose from the table. She went into the washroom.
The Hardys watched her go. They each felt her pain, and vowed to catch whoever had kidnapped the James boys.