"I'm going to drive back to Ms. Westerman's house, Phil, and check around to see if she might have left any clues as to where she might take Joe and Vanessa!" he said, and proceeded to do just that. Frank wasn't buying the cave angle - he knew that Ms. Westerman very likely knew that he and Joe had figured out her scheme, and that meant that the clues in the story were no longer valid. She'll do something entirely different this time! he thought. She won't tell the truth in those last chapters, not unless she's really stupid!
He knew she wasn't stupid, but he was beginning to doubt her intelligence just a little bit. She had left a long trail. Proof from the receipt for the ads…proof with the message on the sidewalk - we should have seen that before, it was a literary quote, from 'Oedipus Rex' by Sophocles, for Pete's sake! Why didn't I pick up on it? Now that Frank thought about it, he remembered Ms. Westerman spending time on that line when they had read the play in class last year! Stupid, Hardy - stupid! How could you be so blind? The pictures of the chalked message and her handwriting should match, if an expert worked on them, he thought. And the fingerprints on the china hutch - jeez, she was really getting careless, there at the end! His heart thudded. At the end? That had definitely been a poor choice of phrase….
Frank pulled into Ms. Westerman's street and parked the van in front of her house. There were two police cruisers in the driveway. Frank leaped from the van and ran up the steps.
"Hey, you can't barge in here like that!" A uniformed officer moved to halt Frank's progress as he charged through the front door. Frank opened his mouth to try and explain the situation, when, to his utter relief, Con Riley walked out of the kitchen!
"Con! Boy, am I glad to see you!"
Riley gazed at him impassively, but his eyes were full of sympathy. "Frank…"
"Con, let me look through her things, please! I might pick up on something you won't!" Frank implored.
Riley nodded. "All right, so long as you share any findings with us - got it?"
I will!" Frank promised, and feverishly set to work as Con brought him up to date.
"Garner finished his analysis," he told Frank. "The rag the chloroform was on had the same chemical residue as the perfume. It even held traces of the wash powder she uses. Some hairs that were found in the vacuum sweep of Joe's room has the same DNA as the hairs found in Ms. Westerman's hairbrush."
"You already have it analyzed?" Frank asked in surprise. "I thought that took a lot of time."
"Garner has connections," Riley told him. "When we got the call from the park, we came straight here and he went after the hairbrush and her perfume at once and left with it. I just got the message through dispatch before you got here."
Searching through Ms. Westerman's belongings, Frank found her address book, and began to leaf through it. He noted a couple of URL's listed, along with regular street addresses, and on impulse, he booted up her computer.
Logging on to the Internet, he checked the first URL, and to his dismay, but not much surprise, found it was a site that taught people about do-it-yourself car repair. So that's how she knew what to cut, with the brake lines!
The second URL led him to a site that sold anti-terrorist CD's. "I've seen one of those," Con Riley, watching grimly over Frank's shoulder, spoke. "Their version of anti-terrorism is to teach people to make their own bombs, and the like."
"She learned how to make the bomb that was in Joe's backpack - and the one that blew up his locker!" Frank faltered.
"Raoul, Cliff, keep an eye out for this disk!" Riley ordered Officers Perez and Willkins, and explained to them what they were looking for. "It's definitely evidence that she had the know-how to make a bomb."
The search went on. One of the officers found a half-used box of fat sidewalk chalk, the color matching that which had been used to put the message on the sidewalk at the Hardy home.
Frank remained at the teacher's desk, certain that if anything might provide a clue, he could find it there. He began going through her receipts and bank statements, and found a deposit slip for $97,500, dated the previous month. I wonder why, if she received that much money for something, is she so desperate for more? He kept digging, searching furiously for any indications as to where she had taken Joe and Vanessa.
More papers, more receipts…Frank found himself wading through monthly bills, paid and unpaid. He was beginning to see an ugly picture: Ms. Westerman was deeply in debt. He found statements for four different credit cards, two maxed out at their $10,000 limits, two more also crowding their $5,000 limits. She was really hurting for money!
He dug deeper into the desk drawers, and came up with a sheaf of papers concerning the sale of a piece of property - a house, on the outskirts of town, about three miles from the Morton farm. Here was the source of the $97,500 deposit, although it didn't seem to have made much of a dent in her debts.
Frank wondered briefly if she had a gambling problem. But no - he recalled her mentioning how ill her mother had been before she died. The hospital bills must have been exorbitant for her to get so far behind.
"Con! I think we should try looking here!" Frank thrust the paper with the address printed on it beneath the police officer's nose and shook it impatiently.
Con glanced at the papers and then looked at Frank. "Long shot, kid."
"It's better than nothing," Frank answered him dismally. "And it's all I've got!"
"Okay, I'll take one of the cruisers out there; you take your van." Con made up his mind. "Cliff, you two keep searching here." He activated his two-way radio, and reported where he was going to Dispatch. Frank called Phil, and told him of their intent.
As they sped toward their destination, Frank kept tightly on Con's tail. Riley wasn't using his siren, but he flashed his light bar a time or two when they came to intersections, and people pulled over to let the cruiser pass. Frank swept past them in the squad car's wake as if held there with a magnet.
A mile or so outside of town, in the growing dusk, Frank spotted a vehicle approaching them, and as it neared, he realized it was an older-model dark blue Chevy van. He flashed his headlights at Con, and saw that the police officer had grasped the importance of the van, for he was swinging the cruiser into a U-turn, preparatory to following it.
Frank hesitated a moment, then decided to keep on heading for the house. He was horribly afraid that Ms. Westerman had done something terrible to Joe and Vanessa, and was frantic to reach them.
As he neared his destination, Frank saw dark smoke billowing up into the sky, clear against the sunset light. Heart hammering, he grabbed for his cell phone and punched 9-1-1, to report a fire. He continued driving as he talked, and had just completed the call when he spotted the burning house, and screeched to a halt in front of it. Just to be sure, he checked the address on the paper against the house numbers…they were the same.
Frank leaped from the van and stared at the structure. To his dismay, he saw that the whole roof was afire! The front porch was blazing; impossible to get in that way. Frank ran around the side of the house, hoping against hope that he would find the fire less widespread toward the back.
Joe's gotta be in there! Joe and Vanessa both!….But are they still alive? Frank could feel the heat as he neared the house. He spotted a window which still looked dark - no flames licking at the sill as yet! He tried to open it, but it was locked. Desperate now, Frank pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket, wrapped the tail of his jacket around his hand, and used the phone to smash a hole in the window near the lock. He reached his hand through the hole and unlocked the window, then shoved it up in the casement and wriggled through into the house. His cell phone dropped to the floor, but he didn't bother to retrieve it.
No lights were on, and when Frank flicked a wall switch, there was no answering light, but towards the front of the building there was entirely too much light - light provided by the flickering flames!
"Joe! Vanessa!" Frank shouted, and began his search. "Joe!" Smoke was filling the rooms now, making vision nearly impossible, and Frank began coughing as it filled his lungs. The frightening sounds of the fire filled his ears.
There! There they were! Tied to chairs, just as he and Laura had been! Frank stumbled through the smoke and dropped to his knees, fumbling for the cords that bound Joe's hands. Neither teen seemed aware that he was there; Vanessa was hanging limply against her restraints, and Joe was coughing violently through his gag, his eyes shut.
"Joe!" Frank shouted it again, trying to make himself heard over the roar of the flames which were threatening to engulf the whole room. He managed to get the ropes confining Joe's hands untied, and he shook his brother sharply as he pulled the gag from Joe's mouth. "Joe, untie your feet while I get Vanessa!"
Joe gasped, caught a breath, and focused on Frank for a second, shaking his hands to restore the feeling in them. Then he nodded, and bent forward to do as Frank had instructed him, still coughing hard. Frank yanked at the cords around Vanessa's feet, and clawed them loose at about the same time Joe freed himself.
"Can you walk?" Frank bellowed. He lifted Vanessa over his shoulder into a fireman's carry, and then, balancing her precariously, tried to give Joe a hand. Joe staggered to his feet, clinging to the chairs, doubled over in a spasm of coughing.
"Come on, this way!" Frank tugged at his brother's arm, and led the way towards the window he had entered at the back of the house - at least the fire hasn't spread back there yet! he thought, with relief. He gently lowered Vanessa out the window, dropping her to the ground, then turned back to help Joe. Before climbing out himself, he picked up his cell phone from where it lay on the floor, and tossed it out onto the grass.
Once out in the fresher evening air, Joe was able to stagger unaided away from the burning building, as Frank once more scooped Vanessa into his arms and carried her to safety. As they stumbled forward, they could hear sirens blare, and then two fire engines arrived on the scene - followed by an ambulance, and a police car.
Late that evening, still husky-voiced and exhausted but pronounced well enough to leave the emergency room, Frank, Vanessa and Joe lounged in the Hardys' family room, watched over by an attentive Laura, Andrea Bender, and Callie Shaw. Although Andrea had wanted to take Vanessa home immediately from the hospital, the blonde girl had insisted that she be allowed to be in on the whole 'wrap-up,' and Andrea had reluctantly acquiesced. Now, Mrs. Bender was listening avidly with her daughter, as the whole story was told.
Laura had scrambled together some sandwiches for everyone, and made tea and cocoa, and now was content to sit quietly and listen to the discussion. She was happy to have her sons both home, and safe, and in one piece. Well, relatively in one piece, Laura thought, surveying Joe's still-wan face and heard his raspy voice.
"Why, if Ms. Westerman got so much money from selling her parents' house, did she go to all the trouble of getting the paltry amount from advertisers at her web site?" Callie was asking now.
"Two reasons." Frank replied. He had talked with Con Riley at the hospital, while they had waited for Joe and Vanessa to be released. Con had caught up with Danielle Westerman and taken her into custody while Frank was rescuing Joe and Vanessa from the fire, and told Frank that she had confessed to everything. "First of all, she was terribly in debt, with credit card companies and stores and lending companies. She had fallen behind when her mother was ill and wasn't able to get her head back above water. Second, she was being blackmailed by Mr. Bartlett, the history teacher…"
"What?" The exclamation came from several points around the room, followed by a spate of coughing from Vanessa.
"She was being blackmailed by Mr. Bartlett," Frank repeated. "That's why she killed him. He saw her setting up the picture prank on the bulletin board in the hall, and started teasing her about it - but she got so upset, he knew there was something else going on. So then he threatened to tell me and Joe who was responsible for the pranks, if she didn't pay him."
"Wow…" Callie whispered, shaken by this revelation. "But - it was just pranks! I mean - why kill him?"
"She screwed up, too-" Joe picked up the thread, without answering Callie's question. "When she did the thing with Mom's car, she intended to cut the fuel line. But she goofed, and cut the brake line, instead. She hadn't meant for me to nearly be killed…but once it happened, she couldn't back out."
"Yes, she could've." Frank muttered resentfully.
"All because she wanted her web site to be popular - immensely popular." Laura sighed.
"She changed bits and pieces in the story all along." Joe noted. "Brake line in the story was supposed to be fuel line in real life…only she messed up and actually did cut the brake line. And once she realized she had gone too far, and actually endangered my life, she increased the intensity of the attacks, instead of stopping them. The bomb in my backpack was supposed to go off with no one around, but they had finished searching the van and I found it too soon."
"But the bomb in the locker occurred after Bartlett had found out and by then she felt threatened and was trying to eliminate us. She just went after Joe first," Frank put in.
"So money wasn't the only motive at all, to begin with." Laura said.
"No, she just wanted to be one of the most popular sites online, and thought this was a sure-fire way to do it…." Frank paused, and then added regretfully, "…It all got away from her. She smashed her own window, of course - there never was an intruder at her house. She had Caramel trained to attack…"
Joe shuddered, remembering how the dog had relentlessly herded him into the van. Yes, Caramel would have savaged him, had Ms. Westerman given the signal!
"Why did she take my teddy bear, and the other things?" Callie wanted to know. "She didn't do anything with them!"
"She was probably planning to use them for more pranks, but decided against it." Frank speculated. "The police have your bear, Callie, and Vanessa's gold locket, and the photos. You'll get them back, after Ms. Westerman's trial."
"Well, I for one, am glad this week is over!" Laura stated firmly. "It's been a horrendous few days!"
"Going to keep reading those mystery stories online, Mom?" Joe asked teasingly, and she blushed.
"Well…we'll see." she murmured. "I'd like to not read any that remind people of you two, that much I know!" She sighed. "Now, if your father would come home…."
"He said he'd be here on Wednesday-" Joe reminded her, but before Laura could reply, a deep voice interrupted Joe.
"-but I made it home earlier!" Fenton Hardy announced, walking into the room. He had come in quietly through the back door, and was smiling with satisfaction at surprising his family, but as he looked around at the persons gathered in his family room, the smile faded a little. "Why does everyone look so serious? Have I missed something?"
The End