J.M.J.
Author's note: Thank you for reading! Thanks especially to everyone who has reviewed! Chapters are going to be a little less frequent during September (but still at least one or two a week), but we may be beginning to get close to the end. The next chapter will be September 8. God bless!
September 2 – Saturday
"The first thing you've got to do is find the logarithm," Casey was explaining. "After that, it's just basic algebra."
"Mm-hmm," Callie replied absently, barely looking at the notebook that Casey was holding out toward her.
The weather was still summer-like and the campus wasn't crowded on Saturdays, especially since it was Labor Day weekend, so they had decided to have their study session out on the large, shady lawn next to the college library. No one else was making the same use of the summer weather, and so apart from a few people walking past now and then, the only distraction to Callie's thoughts was Casey droning on about math. Right at the moment logarithms and variables and formulas and Dr. Weirmarten and the looming exam were some of the furthest things from her mind.
"Hey, earth to Callie. Earth to Callie." Casey waved his hand in front of her face, breaking her out of her thoughts. He grinned at her when she turned a confused face on him. "Looked like you zoned out for a minute there."
"Sorry," Callie said. "I just have a lot on my mind."
"I take it it's not Weirmarten's exam." Casey grinned.
Callie picked up her pencil. "It should be, if I want to pass this class, and I really don't want to have to retake it. What were you saying?"
Casey gently pushed the edge of her notebook downward. "Hey, Callie, there are more important things than classes. If you want to talk, I'll listen."
"I don't…" Callie started to say, but she wasn't sure how to explain what she was thinking. She was sorry that she had shown such a vulnerable side of herself to Casey so soon after meeting him. Now he was always being so sympathetic, which was nice, but she just wanted someone to treat her normally. She just wanted things to be normal again. But they couldn't be. Normal was back in another lifetime, with Frank. She shook her head. "Let's just study. That's what we're here for."
"I know you're away from your family, Callie," Casey continued, ignoring her request. "You don't have any friends here, and with what happened to your boyfriend…"
"Please," Callie pleaded. "I don't want to talk about it."
"I'm saying that you need friends," Casey insisted. "You need something to get your mind off everything. If your whole life is just work and school, you're never going to recover. Since there's no class on Monday and we're both apparently going to be in town, maybe we should go and do something fun."
Callie looked at him suspiciously, unsure whether this was a request for a date or not.
Casey guessed what she was thinking, because he quickly clarified, "It would just be hanging out, as friends."
"Well, okay," Callie agreed reluctantly. She didn't want to, but maybe Casey had a point. Maybe she did need to do something fun for once.
HBNDHBNDHB
"It's so hard to explain, especially to you. I mean, I realize how much I have to be grateful for," Mollie Morton was saying. She set her coffee cup on the patio table on her front porch and looked up apologetically at Laura Hardy. "It feels like I've lost both my children sometimes, but at least I really do still have one. Iola has just been so different ever since it happened, and now…"
"I know," Laura reassured her. "The rest of us have given ourselves more time to accept it, so naturally this is going to be harder on Iola."
Mollie drew in a shuddering breath. "I don't think there is enough time to accept it. I've been trying not to think about it, you know, actually happening, but now…"
"I understand," Laura assured her. "It's been the same for me. I almost wish Fenton wouldn't have told us all about finding that recording, but he thought it was most fair to let all the families know."
"Especially after the way Iola has been," Mollie added dolefully. "She told me last night about Fenton catching her in his office and the talk he gave her. I can't believe she did that."
"It's all right," Laura said. "She didn't do any harm, and I can understand why she tried it. She's not the first one to snoop around in that office when she shouldn't have."
"She also told me that she accused Fenton of not trying to find the boys and just…leaving them to their fate."
Laura looked down at her own coffee cup. "Fenton didn't tell me that part of it."
"I didn't think he would have." Mollie shook her head. "Iola never would have said something like that to anyone before all this. It's just been so hard on her. She and Chet were so close, and she grew up playing with all those boys just as much as Chet did. And then Joe…You know, I used to worry a lot about the kind of boyfriends Iola might wind up with. I was so relieved when she started dating Joe. I always hoped…Well, it can't happen now."
"There are a lot of things that won't happen now," Laura said regretfully. She stared into her coffee cup, but all she could see was a bleak, empty future.
"I used to worry sometimes, though," Mollie went on. "Those kids got into a lot of trouble, and sometimes, I thought maybe they'd get into some trouble they couldn't get out of again." She took in a deep breath. "I guess maybe I was right to worry."
"As it turned out, I guess so," Laura agreed. "I tried not to worry too much, but I don't think I was very successful. It must have driven the boys crazy."
"All that worrying didn't do any good in the end," Mollie admitted. "It wouldn't have even helped to convince them to find a safer hobby than solving mysteries. A vacation to Hawaii should have been safe enough."
"It didn't seem to matter what Frank and Joe were doing," Laura said. "They were always running into things like this. It makes me feel responsible, in a way, for all the other boys."
"No, no one's to blame for this but those criminals," Mollie said. "The boys did a lot of good for a lot of people. Allow me that comfort, at least."
Laura smiled faintly. "Yes, they did do that."
HBNDHBNDHB
Don Cameron took a few seconds to psyche himself up before he knocked on the door to Lieutenant Hikialani's office. He wasn't really afraid of Hikialani, but he was afraid of making a fool of himself, and he didn't know how to do this without making a fool of himself. But he had told Nancy he would do it, so he had to try. He knocked on the door.
The door was glass, and Hikialani looked up. When he saw Don, he gestured for him to come in. "I thought you were leaving for the mainland," he commented as Don entered the room.
"Not yet," Don replied. "Probably not till the end of the year or maybe next summer. I didn't have enough time to transfer to a different school. As it is, maybe it's just as well."
"Oh? Why's that?"
"Nancy asked me to come and talk to you in person," Don replied. "She has some questions about the investigation."
"Does she? Sit down."
Don did as the officer asked and began relaying as much of the story about how Fenton had found the USB drive as she had been able to explain. "So Nancy is thinking that this fake Roger Stanley guy might have actually been working with the FBI."
"What makes her think that?" Hikialani asked.
"Well, obviously, he wasn't trying to lead Mr. Hardy into some kind of trap or anything like that. It could still be one of the gang trying to throw him off the trail, but one of the gang wouldn't have shown his face, right? If Mr. Hardy or Mr. Wayne sees him again, they'll recognize him right away. I mean, it could be, but she thinks it's also possible that it was someone who was actually trying to help, but the only honest people who would have the USB or Frank's knife would be investigators."
"That's true, especially since Frank's knife was one of the items we recovered from Coswell's boat. I don't know anything about this recording, but it could be something the FBI found and didn't want to share."
"Then that practically proves that this guy was FBI."
"But why ask for Mr. Hardy's help that way?" Hikialani asked. "If the FBI wanted his help, they would only have to ask straight out."
"Nancy doesn't think it's the FBI as a whole, just one, individual agent, who did on his own. In any case, Mr. Hardy wants Nancy and Mr. Drew to try to identify him. If he's an agent, Nancy thought that you would be the best chance of being able to identify him."
"I don't know all the agents involved in the investigation, but we might get lucky. Do you have a picture?"
"No, just a description." Don gave him the description that Nancy had gotten from Fenton.
Hikialani scratched his chin as he listened. "We might be in luck after all. You remember that the first agent assigned to the case was Fiona Delmont, but then she was removed and replaced?" When Don nodded, he continued, "The agent that replaced her was named Chris Hammon. He fits that description almost perfectly. I don't see what he'd be doing, but I have his business card. You can get Nancy the phone number."
"That would be great," Don replied. "Thanks."
HBNDHBNDHB
The sound of hammering and chopping was making any conversation at the cabin on Barmet Island impossible. Eli hadn't had many nails, but apart from fixing the door, the castaways hadn't had any need for them yet. Once this idea had been suggested, they agreed that it was worth using some of the nails on it. Besides, if they needed them again later, they could always pull them out and reuse them.
"I don't suppose there's any way we could actually make this thing work?" Chet asked in one of the lulls between Tony's hammering.
"Of course it will work," Tony defended his project. "It just wouldn't work to put it out on the ocean, so it won't do us any good."
"That's what I meant by it working," Chet replied.
"Oh well, if it did work to try to take it to Hawaii, we'd all feel pretty dumb for being stuck here for so long," Joe pointed out.
The three of them were working on building a raft. They hadn't the time or the materials to make it into a better boat, which they all regretted a little. If they could make something better, then maybe they could attempt to escape the island. At the same time, they all knew that none of them would have any idea what they were doing, trying to pilot a small craft out in the open sea. The venture would most likely be disastrous, and so it was probably just as well that it wasn't in their power to even attempt it. At the same time, they couldn't help wishing it was possible.
None of them, however, had any particular concerns about taking a raft out a short distance from shore, well within swimming distance should anything go wrong. After a lot of brainstorming, it was the only idea that the castaways could come up with for something to give Biff for his birthday. If nothing else, it would be a new activity to paddle around near the island. What was more, the five castaways who were in on the secret were having fun working on something that required the cooperation of all of them. Tensions had ebbed, and even Katina seemed to have picked up on the improved morale. In any case, she was acting much less aloof today.
Once the idea had been thought of and agreed on, the castaways were making excellent progress, especially since they had only been working on it for two days, and one or two of them always had to be distracting Biff so that he wouldn't see what they were doing. Frank and Phil were on that duty right now. They had taken Biff down to the beach to fish. Meanwhile, Joe, Tony, and Chet were cutting wood and fashioning it into a raft. Katina was sitting a few yards away, watching them and even occasionally asking what something was.
They had been back at their noisy work for about another ten minutes when Phil came running up the path from the beach.
"Hurry!" he directed them. "Hide everything! He's coming!"
"Already?" Chet protested.
Phil shrugged. "They had a lot of luck fishing. Come on! Frank can't stall him off much longer."
Joe was already scrambling to pick up tools and nails. Tony and Chet picked up the raft between them and quickly hauled it out of sight behind some trees, while Phil kept a look-out. They had barely hidden everything when Phil spotted Biff and Frank through the trees.
"Here they come!" he warned the others. "Everybody act normal."
There is nothing quite like being instructed to act normal to make a person forget what the most basic of human behaviors look like, including simply standing. There was something so unnatural in the way they were all standing there that Biff noticed as soon as he caught sight of them.
"Uh, is something wrong?" he asked uncertainly.
"Of course not," Chet replied in a very unconvincing tone. "Why would anything be wrong?"
Joe hid a grin by pretending to cough. "Phil told us you caught a lot of fish."
"Yeah, he seemed really excited about it, running off to tell you guys like that," Biff commented wryly. "As if we haven't had fish lately."
"They look like some really great fish," Phil defended himself lamely.
"In any case, we need to get them cooking for lunch," Frank said, sounding the most normal of any of them yet. "Biff and I were talking about doing some exploring this afternoon."
"That sounds fun," Joe agreed. "We haven't done as much exploring as we should have. By this time, we should have every square inch of this island explored."
"You guys can go if you want," Tony spoke up. "You can count me out until we're sure that anaconda didn't have any friends."
"Hey, that's right," Biff said. "Maybe we'd better not go."
"Oh, I'm sure it's safe," Tony attempted to mend his blunder. "I mean, we haven't seen any more snakes."
Biff raised an eyebrow suspiciously. "Then why don't you want to go?"
"Uh, well…" Tony stumbled around, trying to think of some answer.
Chet jumped in before he could. "Do you really have to ask, Biff? Tony's the one who doesn't even like garter snakes. Do you really think he'd go out in the jungle if there's even a possibility of there being a thirty-foot, man-eating snake?"
"But we all just went to the northern end of the island last week, and Tony came with us then," Biff pointed out. When no one could think of a response, he shook his head. "You guys are acting weird."