J.M.J.
Author's note: Thank you for reading! Special thanks for all the reviews! The next chapter will be out tomorrow. God bless!
August 25 – Friday
The plane flew as low as Jack dared over the Stanley ranch while both he and Fenton peered from the windows. They didn't want to spend too much time in the area for fear they would attract attention, since a low-flying plane probably wasn't a very common occurrence here, but they wanted to see if they could see anywhere that Reese might have been held prisoner. In the condition that he had been in, he couldn't have walked far, so his prison must have been somewhere nearby.
"There's some kind of building down there." Fenton pointed it out, although all they could see from here was the roof.
"There are no roads leading to it," Jack added after taking a glance at it. "That could make it a little difficult to get a prisoner there, but it would make uninvited visitors less likely."
"It will make investigating more difficult," Fenton noted. "It must be miles from a road. There's no place we can land the plane nearby, either."
"No. I guess we'll just have to hike in."
Fenton frowned. "I don't know about that. I don't like this whole business. The more I think about that talk we had with Stanley, the less I like it. I don't think we should go in there on foot."
"What other option do we have?"
"We might be able to use horses. That would speed it up a little if we have to get out of there."
"We'd have to find some that we can rent. I know we're in Montana, but it might be tough to find some anyway."
"Maybe not," Fenton replied. "I didn't want to take him up on the offer, but Dave Gregory said he'd help any way we needed it, and he owns a ranch. I'll bet he owns some horses."
"He might even be able to tell us something about Roger Stanley," Jack added. "They are practically neighbors."
Fenton nodded. "That would be helpful. Let's go back and talk to him."
HBNDHBNDHB
Katina had been more aloof than usual all day. The boys were disappointed and discouraged that what they had thought was just a bit of harmless fun had upset her so much, and they were disturbed by the implications of it. It was looking more and more like Katina's problems hadn't begun when she had become stranded on the island. They hadn't stopped talking and conjecturing over what her story might be for over twenty-four hours.
However, even on the island, problems didn't stop coming up. It was getting close to evening and Joe was coming out of the cabin. He swung the door closed behind him, not thinking about it, and it slammed more loudly than he expected. He jumped and was barely in time to avoid the door hitting him as it fell.
Phil was just outside and had seen the whole thing. "What did you do?" he demanded, running to take stock of the damage.
"I didn't think I did anything!" Joe replied defensively. "I just closed the door."
"Hard enough to break my hinges!" Phil insisted.
"It's not like I did it on purpose," Joe snapped.
"I wasn't saying you did," Phil retorted. "But you could have been more careful."
Fortunately, Frank and Tony were on the scene to intervene before a fight could start. Equally fortunately, Katina had followed Chet and Biff down to the beach where they were fishing. The raised voices probably wouldn't have done much to reassure her that she could trust these boys.
"Phil figured out how to make hinges in the first place. It'll be a lot easier to replace them this time," Tony said. "It's not that big a deal. Come on, Phil. Let's get to work on it."
"It wasn't easy to make in the first place," Phil grumbled.
"Well, sorry," Joe said, still in an aggrieved tone. "You should put a 'handle with care' sign on that door."
"Joe, calm down," Frank told him. "Like Tony said, it's not a big deal. Come on."
He was able to persuade Joe to follow him, and so all temptation for Joe and Phil to continue arguing was removed. Tony calmly picked up the door and examined the hinges.
"It looks like opening and closing the door strained them," Tony said. "This was just one time too many for one of them and it broke, and then the weight of the door broke the other one. We would have had to replace them soon anyway."
Phil sighed. "Yeah, I guess so." He glanced over to where Frank and Joe had disappeared into the trees.
"Don't worry about snapping at Joe," Tony told him with a shrug. "We're all getting used to constantly being at each other's throats."
Phil chuckled wryly. "I thought we had agreed not to go all Lord of the Flies."
"It's not quite that bad yet," Tony replied. "Just apologize and I'm sure it'll be fine."
"I wish it was that easy."
"What makes you think it's not?' Tony asked.
"Because it keeps happening over and over," Phil replied. "I thought we could get along reasonably well, but every little thing that happens…"
"It's just being stuck here. We're tired of it and we don't want to be here and there's no relief in sight. It's no wonder if we're all on edge. But we're not going to take it any farther than just some arguments now and then. We're friends. Even we're driving each other crazy, we don't actually want to hurt each other."
"No, but there's more than one way of hurting someone. In fact, speaking of apologies, I've owed you one for awhile now."
"Oh?" Tony said. "It must not have been anything too bad. I don't even remember it."
"It was the day I decided to stop going to church. I wasn't very polite."
Tony nodded slowly. "Ah. It wasn't that bad. As a matter of fact, you made a good point. I should be braver about talking about faith. The worst anyone ever does is think it's weird and get uncomfortable. Kind of silly to be so afraid of that."
"You really do believe what you were saying? About the Eucharist?"
"Yes, I do."
"Why?"
Tony paused. "Huh."
"Don't you know?"
"Well, yes. I've just never thought about debating it with someone who's not already Christian about it."
"What difference does that make, if it's true?"
"Oh, come on, Phil," Tony objected. "You know as well as I do that if you're going to explain something well—anything—you have to take into consideration how much the other person already knows about it, their assumptions and biases, all that kind of thing. If I'm talking to another Christian, then we've already got a lot of the same assumptions. So let me think for a second." He considered the problem for a few moments while he began removing the broken hinges from the door. "Okay. I don't think I'll be able to convince you, but I think I can show you that it's reasonable for someone who is already Christian and already accepts the Gospels as trustworthy to believe it. I'll have to get the Bible first."
HBNDHBNDHB
Frank and Joe walked along one of the paths they had made toward the southern end of the island, neither saying a word. They didn't use this path often, as it only led to the salt deposit, and they had brought so much salt back the first time they had gone to it that they hadn't had to get any more. Eventually they would need to, and there was so little on the island to do that they had made a path to the deposit for the eventual purpose. But right now, salt wasn't on either boy's mind.
"Do you have something you want to talk about?" Frank asked after they had been walking for some time.
"No, I'm fine. Look, Frank, I didn't slam that door on purpose," Joe insisted.
"I'm not saying you did," Frank replied mildly. "Even if you did, it's not that big a deal."
"I know, I know." Joe sighed. "I'm just in a bad mood today, I guess. I used to think I wasn't a very moody person, but anymore…"
"You also used to not be stranded on an island," Frank reminded him. "I know of a case study that indicates that does take a toll on a person's mood."
"You don't say," Joe said. "It's been two months, Frank."
"I know. Believe me, I know. I do have to keep reminding myself, though. It seems so much longer."
"We haven't even seen a plane in all that time."
"We're just…" Frank began to say, but he forgot about his platitudes as he noticed a flash of light reflecting off something on the beach. He went to pick it up and found it was another glass bottle. "That's funny. I wonder where all these bottles came from."
"Maybe Eli had a drinking problem," Joe replied.
"But there weren't any bottles in the cabin, at least, not like these," Frank reminded him. "If they were Eli's, there should have been some there."
"Say, that's right," Joe agreed. "I doubt Katina brought them. Whose could they be?"
Frank stooped to pick the bottle up. "It's not broken and there's something inside."
Joe took a step back. "It's not snails, is it?"
"Not unless they melted. It's liquid." Frank shook the bottle to demonstrate. It was still sealed and there was a label on it, but it was so faded that he couldn't read it. He handed it to Joe. "Could you get it open?"
The top screwed on, and so Joe didn't have any difficulty getting it off. He held it up to his nose and sniffed it. "Definitely alcohol. Probably beer. But I'm not tasting it to make sure."
Frank also sniffed the bottle and agreed with Joe's assessment. "That's strange. I wonder how it got here. It's starting to look like our island is more mysterious than the one Jules Verne wrote about."
"Didn't that island turn out to have somebody living there, unbeknownst to the castaways?"
"Yeah." Frank shook his head. "He didn't sit around on the beach and drink beer, though."
"So we can rule out fictional characters, Eli, and Katina as suspects for being the mysterious beer-drinker," Joe said. "I think we can rule out the people who may or may not have been on the island several weeks ago. All the bottles we've found have definitely been here longer than that."
"Unless that's not the first time those people have been here," Frank pointed out.
"In which case, we can be fairly sure they'll come back." Joe folded his arms. "And in that case, either we'll get off the island or we'll have bigger things to worry about than a broken door."
"I hope not."
HBNDHBNDHB
It wasn't what Iola wanted to be doing, but it was better than sitting around, and she was helping someone. She had gone to the Hardys' house, hoping that there would be some news, but she found that Mrs. Hardy was out doing errands and Joe's Aunt Gertrude hadn't heard from her brother that day.
"I'm not expecting to hear from him either," Aunt Gertrude had explained. "This Montana trip is all just a wild goose chase, if you ask me. But I don't blame him, really. He has to do something, and he's not used to not being able to do anything. Poor Laura is still in shock, too, and all she does is sit around the house. That's why I sent her to do some errands. It might help get her mind off it. And while I have her out from underfoot, I'm going to get some work done around this place. It's absolutely falling into shambles."
Iola had grinned at this assertion. The Hardys were tidy people, and the house looked just as immaculate as it ever had, even if it was emptier. She had offered to help, if there was anything she could do, and so Aunt Gertrude had put her to work weeding the flowerbeds. Aunt Gertrude was also working in the yard, and she kept up a steady stream of conversation. Iola had the feeling she had been lonely for someone to talk to.
"What I really think Fenton and Laura need is to take some time and go on vacation for a little while," Aunt Gertrude was saying. "Traveling is the best thing for getting their minds off this. Of course, the only traveling Fenton wants to do is running around to investigate, and Laura wouldn't go without him, but it would be much better for her than staying here, where there are so many memories."
"But isn't it important to catch the people responsible?" Iola asked.
"Of course. There's nothing I'd like better. Well, actually, there are two things I'd like better. I'd like best for it to turn out that all of this some big mistake and there wasn't any murder, but if that's not possible, I'd like for Fenton and Laura to find some happiness again. They're not going to as long as Laura is sitting here alone and Fenton is running around, chasing shadows."
Iola stopped her work and looked down at her hands. "Don't you think it's possible that the boys are still alive?"
Aunt Gertrude paused her work long enough to run her hand through her hair like she was readjusting it. "If they were, it wouldn't make any difference…"
"What?" Iola broke in.
"It's a bad habit to interrupt people when they're talking," Aunt Gertrude told her. "As I was going to say, it wouldn't make any difference to the investigation. Fenton still wouldn't have any leads to go on and he wouldn't be working any harder. I doubt he would even have a clearer head. It would be more urgent to solve the case then, and if there's one thing I know about detective work, it's that the old saying about haste making waste definitely holds true here."
"Maybe it doesn't matter to the investigation, but doesn't it matter what's true?"
"Yes, of course, but you can't simply decide a thing is true because you want it to be true or because you feel like it's true. You have to look at the evidence, and if you're really interested in the truth, then you have to accept it even when it isn't what you want."
Iola sighed. "Okay, okay. But is it really so bad if I can keep hoping?"
"No. But you need to understand that it's going to hurt the people around you if you insist that they need to hold onto your same hopes. No, we don't have absolutely conclusive evidence, but that's impossible to get in this case. We all have to deal with that fact in one way or the other. You have your way, and acting as if you're the only who cares because you're the only one who's still hoping isn't helping anyone." Aunt Gertrude paused, watching the girl's face. "But maybe you really just want to be reassured that what you're hoping for isn't impossible."
Iola opened her mouth and then closed it again. "How did you guess that?"
Aunt Gertrude smiled slightly. "You've been hanging around here practically since you were able to walk. You don't think I'd know you by now?"
"It might have more to do with you being a Hardy," Iola commented. "But I'm afraid you're right. I keep saying that I'm trying to hold onto hope, but I don't think I have much left. I just…I feel like if I give up hoping, then it will really be true that the boys are…are…"
"I know you feel that way, but whatever you believe won't change the truth. Either the boys are alive or they're not, and believing one way or the other isn't going to change that."
"I guess that might be a relief, depending on which way it goes," Iola said.
She pulled up a weed and stared absently at it. Aunt Gertrude went back to work, but they were distracted a few minutes later when Laura's car pulled into the driveway. Laura got out and greeted Aunt Gertrude and Iola. Then she began unloading groceries and the mail from the car. Aunt Gertrude went to help her, and Iola was following when she saw an envelope slip out of Laura's hand. Iola stooped to pick it up. She was about to hand it back to Laura when she saw that it was addressed to Fenton Hardy in block letters written with a permanent marker. It looked like the sort of envelope that a greeting card would be in, but there was no return address and Iola didn't like the way those block letters looked.
"What is this?" she asked Laura.
Laura barely glanced at it. "That's probably just another sympathy card. We've been flooded with them."
A permanent marker seemed like a strange choice to write a sympathy card, and no return address seemed strange. "Would it be all right if I opened it?" Iola asked.
"If you want to." Laura looked at her and wrinkled her forehead. "Is something wrong?"
"Probably not. This envelope just looks strange."
Iola slid her finger under the flap and opened it. The card inside was an ordinary sympathy card which had originally had the words So Sorry for Your Loss printed on the front. However, somebody had crossed out Sorry with the permanent marker and written Happy instead. Inside, the pre-printed verse had been crossed out. The permanent marker had been used to write Karma couldn't have picked a more deserving person.
"What is it?" Laura asked, watching Iola's face.
Iola quickly stuffed the card back in the envelope. "It's obviously from somebody sick."
Laura nodded slowly. "It wouldn't be the first one of those that we've gotten."
"What's wrong with people?" Iola asked.
Laura shrugged. "Some of them might just be twisted pranks. But then Fenton and the boys have a lot of enemies. Some of them are probably taking the opportunity to get a little petty revenge."
"Isn't Mr. Hardy going to do anything about it?"
"That would mean taking him away from the main case," Laura said. "If any of these mean anything at all, it's only as a distraction. They would want to get his attention away from where it belongs."
