J.M.J.

Author's note: Thank you for reading and reviewing! The next chapter will be September 25. God bless!

September 22 – Friday

Bess was holding a sundress in each hand, alternately holding them up against her. Nancy was attempting to advise her which one to buy, but it was all George could do to try not to look too bored. She didn't really mind going clothes shopping, but Bess's indecision usually tried her patience, especially when she knew perfectly well that in the end, Bess would decide that the sale was too good to pass up and just buy both dresses.

"Going on vacation in the southern hemisphere in October is a great idea," Bess was saying. "It'll be summer there—almost anyway—and all the fall sales on summer clothes are going on here."

"Going there in September would have been better," George commented wistfully. "I can't believe I didn't even think of it."

"No, September might be too early," Bess replied. "I don't know for sure what the seasons are like there, but that's early fall here, so it's probably early spring there, so it would basically be like going on vacation in March here. It would be too cold to wear a sundress."

"Two weeks probably wouldn't make that big a difference for the weather, and if we would have gone just two weeks earlier, we could have been in New Zealand today," George pointed out.

"So?" Bess asked, still looking at the dresses.

"You're forgetting what day it is," Nancy told her.

Bess thought about it for a moment and then she said, "Oh, right. That means we're going to have to watch the whole Fellowship of the Ring tonight, doesn't it?"

"It is tradition," Nancy reminded her.

"But see, the thing is, if we would have thought this out better, we could have been in Hobbiton on Hobbit Day," George said.

"Hmm, that's true," Bess conceded. "But honestly, that place is probably overrun with wild superfans today. We'll have way more fun looking around in a couple of weeks."

"Maybe," George begrudgingly admitted.

The idea of being in New Zealand a couple of weeks earlier appealed to Nancy, too, but for different reasons than George. It had only been a month since she had seen Ned—thirty-six days, to be exact—but it seemed like it had been much longer. It would be good to see him again. Hopefully, once he came back in December, they wouldn't have to be parted for so long again.

Bess noticed that Nancy seemed to be lost in her own thoughts, which usually meant that she was thinking about some mystery. "We are going to be leaving on the second, right, Nancy?"

"Of course we are. Why do you ask?"

"You just have that look in your eyes, like you've got some mystery cooking," Bess replied.

Nancy grinned and shook her head. "No. I was just thinking about the future. I just got my acceptance email from Emerson this morning. I'll be going to college there in the spring."

"That's great!" George said. "Not much of a surprise that they'd accept you, but it's great anyway."

"Emerson, huh?" Bess replied thoughtfully.

"Is something wrong with Emerson?" George asked.

"No, nothing's wrong with Emerson," Bess replied. "What are you going to major in, Nan?"

"I could change my mind later, but for now I'm going to be in pre-law."

"You've never talked about wanting to be a lawyer, Nancy," George reminded her.

"I know, but I want to give it a fair chance. It's a good job."

"But what's your dad going to do without you to investigate for his cases?" Bess asked.

"If I do become a lawyer, I'll probably work with him, and I'll probably still be investigating cases," Nancy said. "It might be just the right solution to all my dilemmas about what to do with my life."

HBNDHBNDHB

The one activity on the island that wasn't exhausted by this point was exploring. Even though it was a small island, there was a lot to see, and in between all the work they had to do to survive, the castaways hadn't had as many chances to explore as they had expected. Whenever they did go out exploring—usually only two or three of the boys while the others stayed at the cabin to do the daily chores—Katina always followed them. She had eventually been persuaded to peer inside the cabin, and seeing that there was nothing harmful there, she had even gone inside on occasion, but she clearly didn't like it, and any chance she had to leave the vicinity of the cabin, she did so. She would even wander away by herself sometimes, which worried her companions, but they had no way of explaining to her that they thought it might be dangerous for anyone to explore alone. They were less concerned about snakes now, since they hadn't seen any since Frank and Joe's encounter with that one. However, there was always the looming possibility of the return of the people who had come on the island, prowled about the cabin when no one was there, and then left again without even trying to speak to the castaways, whom they must have surely realized were stranded. Whoever those people were and whatever they had wanted, none of the boys wanted to take the chance of meeting them alone.

That was why Joe, Biff, Chet, and Katina were all together as they made their way to the western side of the island. They weren't planning on simply going to the beach this time. Instead, they were going to try exploring the jungle to see what it might hold. Although Katina always came along, she never seemed especially curious or surprised about anything they found. The boys assumed that was probably because she had explored every inch of the island during her long solitude there.

Traveling through this part of the jungle was difficult because it was so overgrown and they had to use their machete to clear the way for every step they took. That meant slow progress, although with only one machete, they could trade it off enough that they didn't have to spend much time simply resting. They did, however, stop for lunch. At least, the boys did. Katina ate a bit of lunch and then she went on ahead.

"Hey, wait!" Joe called after her.

She turned and gave him a puzzled look and then she kept going.

Joe sighed in frustration. "You know, she is really tough to keep track of sometimes."

"She seems pretty excited to be going wherever we're going," Chet commented. "Maybe there's something good up ahead."

"We might as well go and see," Biff said.

Their progress was slow enough that they weren't especially tired, so giving up their rest wasn't too much of a hindrance. Katina's enthusiasm seemed to grow when she saw that the others were following her. She darted ahead, crawling underneath or through the thick growth rather than waiting for her companions to clear the way with the machete. If there were any more snakes on the island, this looked like the sort of place where they would be, so the castaways worked harder than ever to clear the way quickly.

Chet was wielding the machete when they finally broke through into a comparatively open place. Of course, it wasn't really very open, but they could actually see a few paces ahead without cutting through more vines. Katina was there and once she saw that the boys had arrived, she pointed out what looked like nothing more than a heap of vines and vegetation. When she saw how puzzled they looked, she began pulling the vegetation away.

It was only after she had pulled a large portion of it away that the boys saw that there was something made of rotting wood underneath. That piqued the boys' interest, and they began helping her. They had the object uncovered in a few minutes, and then they stared at it in astonishment.

Chet was the first one to say a word. "Guys, it's a boat."

"I'm afraid it's more like it was a boat," Joe replied.

The remains of a skiff were uncovered beneath the vines. The wood was rotten enough now that the boys could have easily pulled it apart with their hands if they had wanted to, and it certainly wouldn't have supported any weight, even if there hadn't been a jagged hole in the bow, as if it had run aground. One oar was still lying in the bottom on a heap of something slimy and bulky.

"I guess it's no good now," Chet said wistfully.

"Clearly," Joe agreed. "It's funny, though. Eli wrote in his journal that he scuttled the boat he came in. Although I suppose it must have been something a little bigger than a skiff."

"Katina knew about it," Biff pointed out. "Maybe she came in this boat. I mean, obviously it didn't cross the ocean, but if she was left here intentionally, she might have been rowed to shore from a larger boat."

"Then why wasn't it rowed back to the larger boat?" Joe asked. "I doubt she could have rowed herself. She must have been pretty young then."

He bent down and carefully picked up the oar. The wood was damp and squishy, so Joe quickly set it aside. Whatever was bunched up in the bottom of the skiff looked disgusting, but Joe picked up a corner of it between two fingers and lifted it up. It partially unfolded, allowing them all to see that it was made from some kind of fabric. What was more, the fabric underneath the folds was in much better condition than what was outside, revealing a familiar pink color.

"That must be the rest of that pink tent we found," Biff said as soon as he saw it.

"Right." Joe began spreading it out on the ground. It did appear to have once been a tent, but more had been torn off than the small piece that they had found. In fact, several long tears ran most of the way through it, as if someone had slashed it with a knife or another sharp object.

"What do you think did that?" Chet asked, pointing at the rips.

"Who knows?" Joe replied. "This whole thing is weird. Someone either ran aground in that skiff or smashed its hull open with an axe or something. Then they dragged it all the way up here in the jungle, and maybe the vines grew over it by themselves, but maybe it was also hidden on purpose. Why? And why rip up a tent and wad it up in the bottom?"

"Katina probably knows." Biff nodded at the girl, who was watching them curiously, although much of her enthusiasm had waned. In fact, she looked grim, as if some dark secret was being revealed. "It's too bad she can't tell us."

Joe watched Katina's face thoughtfully, but he couldn't gather anything from her expression besides what was already obvious. "You know, it wouldn't take long for wood like this to start rotting, all covered by vegetation and in a humid climate like this. It's probably only been here a couple of years, which means I'll bet it was our mysterious beer-drinkers who left it here."

"You mean, they had a pink tent?" Chet asked.

Joe shrugged. "Who knows? But we're not going to find out from just staring at it."

HBNDHBNDHB

Nothing had been going right during this investigation. Fenton had thought that he had Pavel Morales that night after seeing him in the bar. However, Morales had never returned to his house. While the police had been able to seize the laptop, the evidence it afforded did little good without having Morales in custody. After nearly a week, they still didn't have that, nor did they have Gaspar Santana. They had both disappeared that night, and the hindsight that provided made it easy to guess why Morales had dragged Santana out of the bar that night. Morales must have realized that the investigation was getting close to them and he had been warning Santana to get out of town.

One of the most frustrating things about this was that Morales was the only one who could say for certain what the initials DR stood for. There were a lot of possible names with those initials, and they might belong to someone whom Fenton hadn't heard of. It just seemed overly coincidental that the one person Fenton knew to be involved in all this who had those initials was also the most recent casualty in the case: Devin Reynolds, Brock Garret's agent.

Sam Radley had arrived in Mexico to help with the case, and Fenton was telling him about this detail as they were driving between more small towns where Morales or Santana might be hiding. Sam listened, frowning most of the time.

"That would mean that Reynolds was the one hiring Morales on those contracts," Sam pointed out. "Up to now, we didn't even think Reynolds was an important person in the gang."

"But maybe we should have," Fenton replied. "He's the one who supposedly 'discovered' Brock. At any rate, it clearly wasn't Dallas, so Reynolds looks like the most likely one. If he was, then he allowed Dallas to supplant him in the gang's eyes. That would make sense for someone who doesn't want his followers to know who's really leading the gang."

"True," Sam agreed, "but all of that would indicate that Garret is more important to all this than we thought."

"We should have seen that, too," Fenton said ruefully. "He was able to step in and rescue Carson and Don. It could have gone the way he told the story, or he might have had his orders from Reynolds to intervene. We already know that Weston, who had Carson and Don kidnapped, was acting on his own and without the information that Reese had been recaptured after escaping. Reynolds might have had his own reasons for not wanting Carson or Don killed."

"That could be," Sam agreed. "But if Reynolds was really the head of the organization, why was he killed and by whom?"

"I'm not sure about why, although there are several possible motives, but one suspect definitely stands out to be the killer."

"Brock Garret?" Sam guessed.

"Right. He's completely vanished. He could have intended to kill Reynolds and fake his own death at the same time," Fenton pointed out. "If we could only find him, then we could find out."