Hardy Detective Agency featuring Hardy Boys Fan Fiction

Chapter 6 – Iola

Brooding in a chair was getting me nowhere, so I decided to ring Dad, and see where he was. I was cut short however, by the sound of the front door opening and shutting quietly.

It was 5 a.m.

Dad came and stood at the door of my room. He looked exhausted; I could see the red lines around his eyes and the strain on his forehead. He was obviously thinking along the same lines that I was, as usual.

Three days. The last person died after three days. Joe was already missing for close on 20 hours.

That left two days. Two days isn’t much time when you have absolutely nothing to go on, save a list of people with motive as long as my arm, and another list of police department employees stretching back three months. It wasn’t going to be an easy task.

Fenton Hardy walked into his son’s room and sat down heavily on the bed. He was tired to the bone, both mentally and physically, and Sam Radley’s phone call had disturbed him more than he liked to admit.

“Hey Dad,” Frank’s voice was somber and subdued. “Any luck? You said you were going to talk to someone?”

Fenton sighed heavily. “Maybe, I don’t know really. Sam give me all the details of the case that we worked on previously and I followed it up as much as I could, but to be honest, I can’t see how the two cases are linked. All the people that could possibly have been involved are dead, in jail, or out of the country.”

“Which leaves us with zero, nothing.” Frank continued. “Not exactly what anyone wants to hear is it?”

Fenton wanted to be positive, to come up with some words of support and encouragement, to miraculously come up with the answer to the case. But he was too tired, and he knew they wouldn’t help, not this time.

“What about the police, what did they say, and Biff and Tony, are they back yet?”

Frank relayed the conversation he had at the police station and showed his father the list of employees and casual workers, all of whom potentially had access to the keys of all the police cars at one time or another.

He had received it from the officer he spoke to at the station via email about a half hour previously. As it turned out, after his conversation with Frank, and the emotional plea made by the Hardy, the officer had stayed back after his shift for three hours compiling and emailing the list.

“Phil’s checking it against any old cases that we have, and anything else that he can find, trying to come up with something. Biff and Tony got back an hour ago, but they more or less drew a blank. Maybe if they had photographs of possible suspects, they might be able to get a positive ID from someone.”

Frank moved out of the chair and sat over on the bed beside his father, and the two sat close together side by side, each drawing unknown, silent comfort from the other’s presence.

“Is there any name on this list that you recognise?” Frank asked hopefully.

“I don’t know Frank, but I’ll have a look.” He glanced up from the paper and his son’s dark brown eyes met his own hazel ones.

“You want to tell me that everything will be okay, Dad, don’t you?” he managed a wan smile.

“There wouldn’t be much point I guess,” Fenton replied. “You aren’t a kid anymore, and you know as much as I do, most of the times there’s no happy ending.” He put his arm around Frank’s shoulders and gave a brief squeeze, before standing up and walking out of the room.

Joe always says that he when he’s in trouble, he thinks about Iola. Back home in Bayport, whenever anything big happened, if Vanessa and he had an argument, or we solved a particularly tough case, Joe would always go out to the cemetery and visit her.

I think he misses being able to do that out here. He had never said anything, but sometimes I catch him looking into space and I just know that he is thinking about her.

For some reason, after Dad left, I started thinking about Iola too.

I’ve never told Joe, I don’t want to encroach on his space but sometimes, when things used to go wrong; if we had an argument or Joe went off on some half-assed rescue mission leaving me to pick up the pieces, I would go and visit her, visit her grave.

Now I can’t, so instead I just think of her and imagine what she would say to me if she were around.

You see there was something about Iola, something so, well…good, almost too good. It was a kind of innocence, a belief held deep inside her that everyone was essentially good and that everyone, no matter what they did, deserved a second chance.

Sometimes I wonder if Iola hadn’t died six years ago, would she and Joe still be together. And you know what? Honestly, I don’t think so. Don’t jump down my throat here, just let me explain;

Iola was sweet and pretty and had grown up under the protective shadow of her big brother. Chet made sure that no one ever hurt her, that she was never exposed to danger. And all that meant that Iola was fun-loving and outgoing, but she was brave too, in her own way.

It’s just that she couldn’t handle other peoples’ pain too well; she just wasn’t used to it. It’s tricky to explain, but I almost felt that every time Iola heard of a particularly gruesome new story, maybe a murdered child or a little baby abandoned, part of her heart broke for them.

She needed to be stronger inside, to be able to face up to life’s darker side, even though it might be heartbreaking. Perhaps I’m being unfair, but somehow, even though she never openly cried or displayed much fear, Iola needed someone to protect her.

Joe would have protected her forever and was happy to do so, but I wonder, would it have been enough? He never really talked much about Iola to me; it’s the one area of his life that he has managed to keep intensely private. I understand why though, it’s easy to talk about someone that you love when they are sitting beside you, but it’s a lot harder to talk about someone that you love when they aren’t around anymore. It almost seems like you are betraying them.

Eventually, the sun started rising, and I figured I had enough of sitting and brooding, it was time to actually do something, I was going to go through that list with a fine tooth comb and if necessary I would do background checks on every single person on it.

There had to be something, there had to be. I went back downstairs and found everyone else in the house was awake too. Biff and Tony, like me, hadn’t slept. Callie, Ness and Chet had gotten a couple of hours’ rest, and poor Phil had spent almost all night stuck in front of a computer screen.

“Frank, I narrowed the list down as much as I could,” Phil began. Frank walked over and sat down beside him. His friend gave him a small but comforting smile, before handing him a piece of paper from the printer.

“There were 268 people in total on the original list. I took out all the police officers to begin with, and will look at them separately. That leaves 94 people, who are either cleaning staff, kitchen workers or occasional cleaners, repairmen, etc. Of that 94, 14 have a criminal conviction, but all are misdemeanours, unpaid parking fines, stuff like that. There is no one on the list that matches anyone in your files, at least from what I can see.”

Again frustration and anger started creeping into Frank Hardy’s head. He wanted to smash the computer, and the printer, he wanted to throw things, break furniture, and destroy everything, anything to ease the growing feeling of absolute helplessness.

But before he did anything, even before he spoke, his father walked into the room, and Frank didn’t miss the look of determination in Fenton Hardy’s eyes.

“Listen” he began, “I think I might have something here….”