Hardy Boys Fan Fiction - A Summer Storm by Anya (Hardy Detective Agency)

Frank nodded, "She was Louise Sandler before she got married and left for New York. George Sandler’s daughter. The same George Sandler who owned the biggest house on the Point."

"And never moved out even after everyone else living there left for the mainland." Con finished.

"Yes, he used to sail around the harbour in his boat, all day, I believe. After he died, the house and his boat came to his daughter, and after her death to her children. According to dad’s file, the last time, when Walker was trying to get away from the police, he was trying to reach the house. They caught him just outside Bayport I think. He planned on using the boat to leave. And he’d made full preparations for a long journey."

Frank paused for a breath, and then listened quietly as Con said, "You guys have been out for a while, so I don’t know if you know… the harbour patrol came across a new boat a few days ago… moored in one of the bays in Bartell Point."

Frank stared at him.

"It’s a rarity to see boats there nowadays, so they checked it out. It was brand new boat and everything was alright, papers and all, just a young man and his sister out on holiday."

I wonder how many brother sister pairs there are in town with an interest in Bartell Point and boats.

"You think he might try the same routine again?" Frank asked, "But then, what does he plan to do with Joe?"

Con didn’t reply. He’d been wondering about the same thing. They knew Joe had spoken to Laura some time back but … he just hoped Joe was alright.

"They can’t have left by the boat in this weather anyway," Con tried to reassure Frank, when Fenton re-entered the room.

Fenton spread a huge map of Bayport on the kitchen table, and sat down with Con and Frank to study it.

Con called the patrol cars near the Point access road to see if they’d noticed anything and also let Chief Collig know about their findings. Judging by what the patrol cars had reported, the usually deserted access road had seen some traffic earlier that day.

As Con and he quickly went over it, trying to see if they could pinpoint the location of the suspected house, he noticed Frank sitting with his chin cupped in his hands looking so pensively out of the window at the rain still coming down thick and fast that he stopped his work and went over to him.

"Frank?" he said gently, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder, "Why don’t you try and get some sleep?"

"Sleep?" Frank almost shuddered when he heard that. Joe had been gone for hours now, stuck with that miserable lunatic who might have done anything to him by now. He might even have… Frank shuddered again, not even wanting to consider that possibility.

Fenton noticed the shudders and thinking his son was feeling tired, tried to make him get up and lie down for a while. "You’ll feel better if you lie down for a while, I’ll wake you up when we’re ready to move."

Con murmured in agreement, "We’ll have to wait till there’s enough light to do anything."

Wait for daylight? Till then, Joe’s going to be with that creep?

But he knew they had no other choice, they’d never be able to do anything fruitful in the dark with all those woods and the weather. If anything, they’d probably only succeed in alerting those people that they were there.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, "I’ll be fine," he said, and then put his head into his hands to brook further discussion.

Fenton nodded and went back to work.

They planned to reach Bartell Point as soon as there was enough light, and check the house as well as the small jetty where the boat had been seen by the coast guard.

But there was another problem now.

"This map won’t be much help navigating us inside the Point even in the daytime. They haven’t charted that area out much since everyone left."

"The local Hiking Club might have a map," Con suggested, as the phone rang.

"I wonder what time they open? Or if there’s anyone we know in it…" Fenton said thoughtfully, as he answered the phone. It turned out to be for Con so he gave it to him.

Frank had been sitting by silently, listening to everything around him and idly looking at the map. He was worried about Joe. But, he also had this strange feeling somewhere deep down that Joe was still alive. He took some comfort in that, for once abandoning his clinging to logic and rationality. He’d go by his gut instinct this time, he thought to himself.

And it was screaming now, Joe’s alive; help him…before it’s too late.

Now he got up abruptly, "I think I know how to solve that problem," he said abruptly and was out and on the stairs before his father could react.

"Be right back!" he yelled out over his shoulder.

Naturally! Fenton thought despairingly as Frank vanished with his ideas and thoughts locked up inside him and then noticed Con staring at him. He had just hung up the phone.

"Be right back? Your son spends way too much time in chat rooms!"

Frank meanwhile had gone to his room, picked up the extension in his room and dialed a number.

*****

Joe’s eyes instinctively flew open as the light was shined on his face. He backed away from the figure kneeling in front of him, and then made an incoherent noise when he saw whom it was.

"Shh… don’t make so much noise," Irene Walker hissed. She shrugged off a bag slung over her left shoulder and put it down on the floor quietly, all the while the torch in her right hand trained on Joe. She was wearing a dripping raincoat.

She placed the torch on the floor, so that it cast a weird pale glow over part of the room, leaving the other part swathed in shadows, took off her dripping raincoat and placed that too on the ground.

Joe stared at her, wondering why she’d come, and what the bag contained, as she now knelt down in front of it, and rummaged through it’s bulky contents.

He thought her face looked really spooky in that dim light. It looked pale and yellowy and the light reflecting off her grey eyes made them look tawny instead. Like some kind of weird wild creature from a horror movie, Joe thought, and then shook himself to stop his mind rambling off on a tangent.

*****

The phone rang shrilly permeating right through the sleep of the dormant figure buried under the covers.

"Wha..?" the stocky figure sat up wildly and then looked at the clock by his bed, and groaned.

He picked up the phone, "Dad, it’s the middle of the night here!"

"Chet?" Frank asked, confused.

"Frank! When did you return? I thought you were dad, he keeps forgetting the time difference and calls at the oddest hours!" Chet Morton said. He was wide-awake now. A call from Frank Hardy at that time wouldn’t be just to say that he’d returned from his vacation.

Frank suddenly remembered that Chet’s parents had decided to celebrate their 20^th wedding anniversary that year with a fortnight-long Mediterranean cruise.

"Chet, I need your help," Franks said urgently.

"Anything" Chet replied loyally, his interest piqued.

Frank quickly related everything that had happened to an increasingly dismayed Chet.

"So, what do we do now?" Chet asked once he’d finished with his story.

Frank told him what he wanted and listened to Chet’s one word response with a sinking feeling.

"You mean there are no copies?" he demanded.

"I didn’t say that," Chet said quickly, "Phil might have his. Do you want me to call him?"

"No, I’ll do it."

Frank dialed another number wondering whether his friend Phil Cohen would be up. His call was answered on its third ring by a sleepy Phil Cohen, who immediately sounded wide-awake when Frank’s voice came across.

"Frank?"

Frank told his friend what he wanted.

"Sure, I have it, want me to bring it over right now?" Phil asked.

"If you could," Frank said noticing that it was still raining.

"Not a problem," Phil assured him. "I’ll call Chet and we’ll come right over."

Downstairs Con was passing on some more news to Fenton, "We have a slight problem," he said unhappily.

*****

Irene Walker foraged inside her bag, and finally pulled out what she wanted.

Joe had been wondering whether he should free his hands and try to escape now, when he saw what she had pulled out of the bag. He groaned silently, this whole family is nuts! There can’t be any other explanation for it.

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Disclaimer

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boy Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.