"Hey, Joey, how is it going?" Paul Stevenson asked seeing his son.

Although Paul was 41 years old, nobody could guess, because he looked younger. There were several situations when Joe introduced his father as his…brother and he was believed! He looked like his father, although Paul was somewhat darker: his eyes were gray-blue and his hair was light brown. Mr. Stevenson was only an inch taller than his son, which made him 6`1. There was nothing unusual about his face, but still, most women considered him handsome.

"Dad?" Joe asked, taking his jacket off. "What are you doing here?"

"What do you mean? I live here," Paul replied with a smile on his face. "Or has something changed since today’s morning and I'm wrong?"

"No, I didn’t mean that," Joe said. "It’s only 4.30 p.m., I thought you’d be working till seven or eight. Are there any problems?"

"No, I had a very boring meeting with some stupid clients today, they refused understand anything that I tried to explain, it took me 3 hours to make them understand the simplest things, and it took even more time to make them sign a contract and get rid of them…. When they finally left I felt like a dray-horse," Paul yawned. "If you only knew how tired I am! The headache was so terrible! Fortunately, my boss is a great guy, he could understand me and told me to go home. There was little I should have done today, so I thought I would do that when I'd be better on Monday."

"Are you ok now?" Joe asked a bit worriedly.

"I'm fine, don’t worry. I had a headache, but after some aspirin I'm feeling ok. Enough about me. Say, how was your day?"

"Great." Joe went past him and into the living room.

His father raised his eyebrows as he watched him go. "Wow! That was very exhaustive…." He shook his head and followed Joe, "The youth becomes less and less loquacious. Come on, is "great" all you can tell me? How about your teachers, new friends, stuff like that?"

Joe stopped at the entrance and without turning around to face his father, said, "Okay, I met some guys today, they seem to be fine, but I don’t know them too well yet which, of course, is no wonder. The first person I met was Vanessa Bender, she is….."

"Vanessa Bender?" Mr. Stevenson significantly re-asked, interrupting his son, a huge Cheshire smile on his face. "The first one?" he slowly approached his son.

Joe for some reason felt his ears burning, "Yeah, Vanessa, we’re in one class…."

"In one class? Joey, I hope I will not become a grandfather soon!"

"Dad! What are you thinking about?" Joe modestly asked, he turned around to look at his father who wore an innocent look in his eyes.

"You know, I was a teen, too," Paul replied in a ‘what-is-wrong-with-that’ tone.

"I see," Joe nodded, his face had a sheepish smile. "Anyway, then there are Chet Morton, his family owns a farm near Bayport, Phil Cohen, Biff Hooper and Tony Prito. The Pritos have their own restaurant somewhere on the beach. Then there’s this guy, Frank Hardy, his father is a private investigator. Frank’s girlfriend is Vanessa’s best friend, her name is Callie Shaw. They all seem to be nice guys actually."

"Well, I hope there’ll be more people you get to know soon."

"Me too. How is your work?" Joe asked as he finally flopped down on a sofa in the living room.

"Great," Mr. Stevenson replied, imitating Joe.

Joe only rolled his eyes, "Don’t follow my example. Come on, what else?"

"There’s nothing else, actually. The people I’ll have to work with are quite nice, I have already told you about my boss. Everything seems to be fine here. In my opinion, the only problem about Bayport is that it’s very small, don’t you think? After living in Chicago for 16 years it looks like a…erm…a farm?"

"Totally agree."

"Anyway," Paul yawned again and rubbed his forehead, "if I work well and everything goes the way I want it to go I’ll get promoted 2 years later when you graduate and then we can move to Detroit or Seattle."

"I still don’t understand, why did we have to come to Bayport? Why not stay in Chicago? Or why will we have to move to elsewhere?"

"They offered more money…." Mr. Stevenson started.

"Don’t you earn more than enough?" Joe interrupted him in his mid-sentence. "I think that we have even more money than we need, why more?"

"They offered more money," Paul continued, "and the further promotion. But to be honest with you, I think I had agreed because I got bored of living in the same place with the same people doing the same job, so I thought we needed to change something in our lives. You may think I'm getting old, but I want to have new impressions from life."

"You mean, the place of habitation," Joe derisively said.

"Kind of."

"I just hope everything will be fine here."

"Hey, what’s wrong?" Mr. Stevenson instantly asked as he sensed that Joe may have problems. "I sense that something is bothering you. You know that we can move back to Chicago if anything is really wrong. So, what’s up?"

"No, it’s nothing you should worry about, I guess it was just a stupid joke," Joe shook his head, but looked down to avoid his father’s stare.

"What joke?" Paul demanded. If Joe wasn’t open enough he did his best to make him speak his mind.

"Well, I didn’t want to tell you, but if you want to know…. Yesterday I found an envelope on the windscreen of my car. It happened at the school’s parking lot. So, there was a letter, and whoever wrote it he desperately wanted us out of Bayport. And today someone called and ‘advised’ me and you to leave Bayport ASAP."

Mr. Stevenson grew serious. "Do you know who was that joker?"

Joe shook his head, "No, but I think it’s nothing serious. You know, some teenagers don’t like newcomers."

"Let’s hope it was a joke, but if there are more jokes we’ll have to inform the police…. Let’s change the subject. When I came home I looked into our refrigerator. Guess what? We have almost nothing to eat!" Paul said.

"Nothing??!" Joe asked, somewhat disappointedly.

"Nothing! Of course if you’re willing to drink milk which has gone sour you’re welcome. But I have another suggestion. What if we go and buy something? Besides it can be our chance to see more of Bayport. At least, we’ll see where the food shops are."

"Ok, let me get rid of my backpack and I’ll be ready."

Some hours later Joe, replete with food and thus satisfied, was sitting in the living room, watching TV. Paul had already gone to bed, tomorrow, as he said, he had a lot of things to do. "I need to be as fresh as possible!" he told his son before going upstairs to his room. However he didn’t say why he needed to be as fresh as possible on Saturday.

Joe glanced at his watch and yawned — it was almost 10 p.m. He turned the TV off and was heading for his bedroom when he heard someone knock on the door.

He turned around and went to open the door, but when he did so, he saw no one standing there. There was only a lonely white envelope lying on the porch. He looked around, hoping to see the one who could possibly leave the envelope, but the street was empty.

"Jokes again?" he said mostly to himself and sighed, but picked up the envelope and closed the door. Then he looked at what he was holding in his hands — it was a usual white envelope with no address written on it. "Paul Stevenson" was the only thing that told him that the letter was meant not for him but for his father.

"Very nice," Joe mumbled under his nose. Then he made his way to his father’s bedroom. He quietly knocked on the door and peeped in, "Dad, are you sleeping?" he quietly asked.

"Not anymore," was the reply. Paul reached out his hand and switched on the lamp which stood on his night table, as light filled the room he narrowed his eyes against it, "What’s wrong?"

"Somebody left it on the porch five minutes ago," Joe gave him the envelope, curiosity taking the best of him.

"And what can it possibly be?" Paul asked as he yawned and looked over the envelope. "Did you see who’d left it?"

Joe shook his head, "No, I didn’t. What is it, Dad?" Joe asked, watching him open the envelope and read the letter that was enclosed.

Paul looked at it and, after reading it again, he swallowed. He looked up at his son, "Who could send this?" he asked, his voice a bit wavering.

"I've no clue," Joe replied, shrugging his shoulders. He expected Paul to show him the letter, but, to his utter surprised, he didn’t give it to him. "What is it, dad? Can I take a look?" Joe asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"I…I don’t know," Paul shook his head and looked down at the paper again. If he didn’t show it to Joe it would seem that he didn’t trust him, which wasn’t true. The father-and-son relationships were strong in his family. So, unwillingly, Paul gave the letter to Joe.

"If you don’t leave this town I’ll reveal your secret," Joe read out loud. He frowned. "Reveal your secret?" he asked his father, looking at him. "What secret?"

Paul shrugged his shoulders.

"Who could have sent you anything like this? What was the purpose?" Joe wondered mostly to himself. "Hm, are you sure you don’t have a secret?"

"Yes, I am sure. I am not a top secret agent from the FBI, if you want to know."

Joe chuckled, "I don’t like it. Don’t get me wrong, but this paper indirectly says that you have something to hide from me. And I don’t want to think it’s true," Joe looked his father in the eyes.

"Then don’t think so. It isn’t true," Paul replied, looking back at his son.

Joe frowned, "What does he want from you? And what does he have to do with you?"

"Joe, please, don’t try to blame me for something I don’t know!" Paul looked him in the eyes. "I don’t even have friends here in Bayport, but I already have an enemy whom I don’t know but who knows me, so search me, but I don’t know anything about what is going on and why!"

"I just don’t like it when people whom I don’t know try to threaten me or you, promising to say something that none of us knows…." Joe sighed.

"Yeah, I don’t like it, too," Mr. Stevenson managed a smile. "I think we’ll have to inform the police about what is happening. Today is too late, but we can do it tomorrow, right? I want to stop that joker, ‘cos I'm already tired of him playing tricks with us."

"Me too."

"But I think that at the very moment we need to sleep. Have you put the alarm system on?" Mr. Stevenson asked.

Joe shook his head, "I'll do that now. Night."

"Same to you."

Later that evening, when all the Hardys were in their beds, the telephone in the living room began ringing. "Who can that be?" Fenton asked as he crawled out of the warm blanket and went out of the bedroom just in time to find Frank do the same. "Go to bed, I’ll answer," Mr. Hardy said to his son. Frank nodded and disappeared.

"Hardy residence," Fenton said into the receiver. He was almost sure it was wrong number. One glance at the watch told him it was past midnight.

"Fent, I'm sorry, I know it’s late but this couldn’t wait," Chief Collig’s voice said. "I thought you should know it as soon as possible."

"What’s up?"

"Luis Antoneskou is said to have been seen in Bayport."

"What??" the name of the criminal made his sleepiness vanish as if by magic. "In Bayport? Where exactly?"

"No details yet," Collig replied, sounding disappointed. "It was one of our officers who told me he had seen him near the Bayport Mall and then there was another officer who said he’d seen him later that day near one chemist’s."

"Are you sure it was him?" Fenton asked, feeling both happy and worried. Happy because now he knew that Antoneskou was somewhere near and there was a chance to catch him, worried because he was afraid something could happen to his family.

"Not really. It may be someone who looks like him. The man I told you about ran away from those two officers, it means he didn’t want the police to see him which is suspicious. All our officers have been informed, so if anything we’re ready."

"Thank you, Ezra."

"Anytime," came the cheerful reply. "We’ll catch him, don’t worry. We won’t let him slip away if he’s in Bayport."

Mr. Hardy closed his eyes, praying to God for the Chief to be right, "Sure… We won’t."

The street was empty and dark, the houses that stoot on each side of the street had no lights in their windows and people in the houses slept. No one saw a man, dressed in all black, who looked at one particular house. He stood near a dark window, clasping one thing in his right hand.

"You’re not gonna meet each other," he thought to himself. "Fenton Hardy won’t get what he wants, not after what he’d done to me."

He made 3 steps back, lifted his hand and threw the thing into the window. Then, before the owners could see him, he disappeared into the darkness of the night.