Hardy Detective Agency featuring Hardy Boys Fan Fiction

Finding Jimmy Harris was easier said than done, mind you. I knew that even before Vanessa told me that Frank wanted to talk to me.

‘Hey Cal,’

“Hey Frank, how are you holding up? It’s not going that well, is it?”

It might seem a little insensitive, but I knew that Frank wouldn’t mind; he’s gotten used to me by now!

“No Callie, it’s not.” Frank sighed. “It’s like he disappeared into thin air, honestly. I thought we had something definite when Dad recognised this Jimmy Harris guy, but now he seems to have vanished also.”

“Just a second, Frank.” Callie stood up, shook her left foot about, as if it had gone dead, and then motioned to Vanessa that she was going to walk around for a while to get the circulation back. In truth there was nothing wrong with her foot, but she wanted to talk to Frank in private, and certainly didn’t want to worry Vanessa anymore than she already was.

When she was outside the back door, Callie continued talking. “You’re really worried this time Frank; I mean more than other times. This isn’t the first time that someone’s taken Joe, and hasn’t been much more than a day. What’s different this time?”

There was a pause, as if Frank was searching for the best way to articulate his answer.

“I…I think that something’s really wrong this time, Callie. Every other time, there was some kind of explanation; we were working on a case, or had recently sent someone to prison for life or something; there was a definite motive, either revenge, or to scare us, whatever. This time, well, this time there’s nothing, you know? We haven’t worked on anything dangerous for a couple of months. Everything was going so well and now…now….” Frank trailed off.

“Now you’re scared, right?” Callie’s voice was quiet as she spoke.

“I guess so,” Frank admitted. “I think that maybe it’s something closer to home, something more personal.”

“Well you’re entitled to be Frank Hardy, you can’t spend your whole life being Superman, you know? But even if you are scared Frank, that doesn’t mean anything. That doesn’t mean that you won’t find him. It just means that you are going to try even harder."

“Callie Shaw, did I ever tell you that I love you?” Frank’s voice was calmer now; Callie’s words were exactly what he needed to hear.

“Yeah, but you can tell me a lot more if you want,” teased Callie.

So that was it. It was almost lunchtime on Day 2. There was no sign of Joe; Frank and his Dad were off to find this ‘Jimmy Harris’ person, and there wasn’t really much that the rest of us could do.

Except sit around and wait. I hate sitting around, it really gets to me, and I’d rather be working, preparing food, cleaning up, anything rather than just sitting and waiting. And yet I seem to spend so much of my time doing just that, sitting around and trying to comfort people, Vanessa, Frank, whoever.

It’s funny you know, but every time that this happens, every time that one of them ends up in trouble, I always end up being the ‘strong one,’ the supportive one, you know. And I don’t mind, I don’t resent it or anything; I just can’t understand how it ended up being that way.

Way back when I first met Frank I was a spoilt brat, I admit it freely. But the minute that I saw Frank Hardy, I can’t explain it really, but I was hooked!! And the minute I met his younger brother I knew there was going to be trouble.

But you know what, Joe and I worked though our ‘differences’…although maybe I should say our similarities, because that’s really the main problems, Frank’s brother and I, we are just too alike and both fiercely protective of Frank.

Now, well now he’s like my brother too, which isn’t a bad thing; we still argue a lot, but it’s usually over silly things, and there’s never really any ill feeling. And he sticks up for me now too, which he never used to do before. I think maybe he realises that my intentions are good, and that I really do care about Frank, and about him for that matter.

But at times like these, I guess I worry about Frank too, because he seems to be spending an awful lot of his time lately worrying about other people. I think he needs to worry about himself a whole lot more. But then, I guess that’s my job isn’t it?

Just before we finished talking, Frank had asked me to phone his Mom; I think he knew that she would want to know what was happening. I knew that Sam Radley, Fenton’s oldest friend was there with her, but I guess Frank thought she might still need some reassurance.

So I called her.

“Hey Mrs. Hardy, it’s Callie, how are you holding up?”

“Oh, hello Callie. It’s nice of you to call. Have you any news for me? Fenton called a while back and said that they had a definite lead but he always tries to paint a positive picture for me, even though he stopped fooling me a long, long time ago.”

There was a pause before Laura continued. “I know he means well, but sometimes I just want to know the absolute truth, good or bad.”

Callie couldn’t help smiling at the thought of Frank’s mother standing there, one hand on her hip, the other holding the phone, and an expression of utter disbelief on her face. She knew that the Hardy men always played everything down where their mother was concerned, it had almost become a habit with them.

So she relayed the conversation that she had just had with Frank to his mother, telling her about the man Jimmy Harris and about the fact that he disappeared into thin air. She was almost finished speaking when Laura Hardy interrupted her.

“Actually, it seems that Sam has heard of this man too; he thinks that he heard his son, Fenton, mentioning his name before. It seems that Fenton worked with the man briefly. Sam’s going to call Fenton now and talk to him. It’s funny isn’t it, I mean, what are the odds of someone that I know so well knowing this boy?”

But she didn’t sound surprised, she sounded suspicious, and worried. And suddenly I did too.

Fenton Radley. I’d heard Frank and Joe talk about him before, apparently he’s around their age, and they used to be friends when they were kids, but I think that they kind of drifted apart in the last couple of years. Frank once told me that he thought that Fenton was quite resentful of Joe and his success in crime fighting; he had no interest in the area himself, and left home as soon as he turned 18.

Frank also mentioned that Fenton was working out on the West Coast; it seems that Joe literally bumped into him one day in a coffee shop. And for some reason, the more that I thought about it, the more that alarm bells started going off in my head, and I couldn’t really understand why. I mean Fenton was at home in New York, had been for the last few days.

But there was something weird about it all, Joe always talks about working on instinct, ‘If you have a bad feeling about something, go with it’.

And this time I was going to. I had to ring Frank……