CHAPTER 1

"Arrgghhh!" Joe Hardy shielded his head with his arms after he realized a little too late as tons of frozen sardines were dumped on his head.

"Joe, where are you?" his older dark-haired brother, Frank, called out from the catwalk, somewhere dozens of feet above him.

"I'm here. Ugh!" He swiped away a tiny sardine stuck on top of his wavy blond hair.

"Did you get him?" Frank's footsteps descended quickly down the stairs.

Joe looked up at his brother and fumed. "Do I look like I've caught him?"

"Oh." Frank looked up at a large overturned vat on a platform about a dozen feet above and grinned when he realized what had happened. "You got sardined."

"Ha-ha." Joe rolled his eyes at his brother.

"Did you see where he went?"

"The loading dock." He pointed to a wide sliding door at the side of the plant.

Seeing that his brother was all right, Frank hurried to where Joe had pointed.

Sighing, Joe muttered under his breath, "Why do these things keep happening to me?"

He stared at the scattered sardines all over the floor, and circled around the mess. Once Joe was outside of the processing plant, he saw Frank towing Mack Hughes — the thief that both of them had been trying to locate for days, towards their van.

On Sunday, the parking lot at the plant was deserted and Joe reached both of them in no time. Looking up at the beautiful and bright afternoon sky, he'd rather be spending time with Iola instead of chasing a small-time thief. He couldn't wait to get this case over with.

"Good thing we punctured his bike," Frank said to his brother. "He didn't get very far."

"Now, you can tell us where you hid that painting," Joe said to Mack.

"I don't know what you're talkin' about. What painting?" Mack, who looked to be in his mid-twenties, looked innocently at Joe. His short sandy brown hair was pointing at every direction.

"The Durville painting you stole from Bayport Art Museum a few days ago."

"I think you got the wrong guy, buddy. I don't steal paintings. I'm just a truck driver who delivers fish."

"Just a truck driver…" Joe smacked a fist into his palm.

"Hey, no need to get crabbed," Mack said, raising his arms in surrender.

"You think you're funny–"

"Joe," Frank cautioned, stepping in as his hot-headed brother advanced toward Mack in a menacing manner.

"You can't arrest me for something I didn't do. You boys are not even cops."

"Maybe not, but we can take you to the station," Frank told him. "I'm pretty sure Chief Collig would be interested to look at the security footage we have of you switching the original painting with a fake one."

"You're bluffing," Mack scoffed. "There wasn't any footage."

"And how do you know that?" Joe caught on. "Unless you disabled the alarm system."

"You're getting in the van, Hughes." Frank slid the van side door to one side and shove Mack onto the backseat. "Call Chief Collig, Joe."

Joe reached for the mobile phone in the van and dialed–

"All right. All right. I'll tell you," Mack cried out.

"You'll tell us what?" Joe lowered the phone.

"About the painting."

"Okay. Tell," Frank prompted in a firm tone. He pulled out a mini voice recorder and turned it on.

Mack stared at the recorder. "Wow, you guys are really prepared."

"Well?" Joe prompted, getting a tad annoyed.

"I did switch the painting," Mack began, "and then I lost it."

"Are you kidding me?" Joe grabbed the lapels of Mack's jacket.

"Joe." Frank placed a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to calm him. He turned to Mack, and said, "Why don't you start at the beginning?"

Mack exhaled deeply and leaned back against the seat. "I found this ad on the Internet — it's a dare to switch paintings at the Bayport Art Museum. I would get paid 5G if I could pull it off. I thought to myself, why not." He grinned.

Joe glared back.

Mack's grin wavered. "So, uh, I put in my reply and a few days later I got an e-mail telling me to get the first payment and the fake painting at the school parking lot with instructions on how to disable the security system."

"You didn't think it was a prank?" Frank asked.

"Maybe at first," Mack admitted. "But no harm tryin', right? Sooo… The next day, I hid inside the museum until the closing time. Do you realize how cramp it was that broom closet? No? Anyway, after I disabled the security camera and the alarm system, I made the switch, put the painting inside a casing. Then I suffered more hours of stiff joints in that broom closet till the next day."

"Why didn't you get out right after the switch?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. Something went wrong. The security system must have reset itself or somethin' and it turned back on."

Frank and Joe exchanged knowing looks. The museum manager, Mr. Winston, had asked the Hardys a few weeks ago to test the new security system and made sure it was foolproof. They had recommended to add some extra features on the system. It seemed Mr. Winston had taken their advice. That was how they had caught Mack's face in the security footage on the next day after the theft.

Mack went on. "The next morning, I walked out of the museum. All that time I told myself just be cool, be cool, ya know? I almost freaked out, man, but luckily nobody noticed someone dressed as a maintenance man. When I got home, I reached out to that guy and demanded for the second part of the payment."

"It was a guy?" Joe prompted.

Mack looked taken aback. "Actually, uh, I'm not sure. Let's assume it was a guy, 'kay? Moving on, I got the same location to drop the painting. I went there, dropped the casing, and went home. You'd think this person would stick to his words, right? But nooo… He contacted later and claimed the painting wasn't there. He accused me of double crossing and refused to give me the second payment. Why would I wanna do that if I knew I'm not gettin' paid?"

"When you realized the painting is worth more than the payment you were supposed to be getting," Joe pointed out.

"If I did that, I certainly wouldn't stick around Bayport, knowing there's a target on my back."

He's got a point there, Joe thought.

"So, the casing was empty?" Frank asked.

"That's not exactly what he said," Mack hedged. "He said somethin' about garbage sketches stuffed inside the casing. So, I went back to the drop spot and found the casing thrown into some bushes. I checked it and it was true."

"So, you were pranked."

Mack looked sheepish.

"You still have that casing?"

"At home."

"Quite a nice setup," Joe commented. "You never actually met this person face-to-face."

"I'm curious," Mack spoke up. "How did you find out the painting was switched?"

"By luck. Mr. Winston noticed the Durville painting was a little bit crooked. So, he took a closer look…" Joe let the sentence hang and shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, well." Mack slumped on his seat.

"What about the number when he contacted you?" Frank asked.

"No number," Mack mumbled. "Everything went by e-mails."

Stuffing the tape recorder back into his jacket, Frank pulled out a laptop from the back of the van. "Any chance you remember the website, Mack?"

Mack leaned forward and typed in the website address on the keyboard. A second later, the website server returned with an error message.

"I guess this person's pulled the site down," Frank replied. "What about those e-mails?"

"I still have 'em. Here, I'll show you." Mack accessed his e-mail account and a few seconds later, he showed them a few e-mails from someone called Cepheus.

"Sounds like Greek to me," Joe quipped as he looked over Frank's shoulder to read the e-mail.

"It is," his brother said. "From Greek mythology."

"Great. A bad guy, who thinks he's a Greek god."

"King," Frank corrected him, "and it's also a constellation's name."

"What?"

"You said Greek god. Cepheus is a mythological king in the Greek mythology."

"Thanks for the lesson, genius." Joe waved it off. "Can you trace the e-mail with that tracker thing you usually do?"

"'Fraid not," Frank replied after typing some commands onto the screen. "The e-mail account came from an anonymous service. It's designed to delete itself once it's completed its purpose."

"Meaning?"

"It's a dead end."

"You guys believe me now?" Mack spoke up.

"I believe so," Frank replied.

"So, that means you'll let me go?"

"Nope," Joe said, and picked up the phone again. "First, we're gonna get the casing you found. Then I'm gonna call your boss. You just caused a loss of revenue to your employer by dumping those sardines."