Hardy Detective Agency featuring Hardy Boys Fan Fiction

Max strode casually into the roadside eatery, ordered a light meal and then settled comfortably down at the corner table with his daily papers. An observant eye might notice his feet tapping impatiently under the table. And Max was impatient. He wanted to be with his team at Cohen Tech Solutions working on locating the Candyman's lair. But his gut instincts said to meet this informant.

Fortunately, it wasn't long before another figure wearing a long brown trench-coat joined him at the table.

"Maxwell?" A female voice enquired at exactly four in the late afternoon.

"Yes, and you are?"

"I worked under you in your forensic department, Director Kendall," an amused voice replied.

Max raised his brow and took another look at the middle-aged woman seated before him. He shrugged; he could not be expected to know everybody who worked under him. He did not recognize her, yet there was a familiarity about her.

"They said I looked like him. My brother died thirteen years ago," she said.

It clicked. "Sean Garret. You're Serena."

Serena chuckled. "I knew you'd remember. Especially given what's been happening recently." Then her expression turned serious. "I was never satisfied with that serial killer explanation given for those murders thirteen years back, Maxwell."

"I remember how hard you protested against us closing the case back then, Serena. But that was what the evidence said."

"Do you still believe that?"

"Do I believe that the Candyman killed them? Yes. Do I believe that the Secret Service wanted the Candyman for their purposes? The answer is also yes. Do I believe that the Candyman survived that explosion thirteen years ago? Given what we've seen in the last few days, that is a distinct possibility," Max answered carefully.

For a moment, Serena kept quiet and merely stared at the cup of coffee before her. She seemed to be in deep thought. Then, "Maxwell, do you trust your forensic department?"

Now, that's an interesting question, Max thought. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Serena stared at him long and hard. “I'm making the decision to trust you, Maxwell," she finally said. "These are the REAL results of the test for those thirteen pieces of candy. And all the key information I managed to gather on the Halloween Project twenty-six years back."

She pushed a thick yellow manila envelope across the table. "I could only get you the photocopies. Make good use of it. And remember, you still have me on the inside. I have to go."

Before he could react, she stood up and left.

Max stared at the contents of the manila envelope, stunned.

oooooo

Fenton was close to gnashing his teeth in frustration. The terror he felt ever since he found out that the Candyman had his sons hovered ever closer to the surface, ready to burst out of him. It was worse now that the psycho had Laura too.

It had been over fifteen minutes since they arrived at Bayport City Library, and they had spent ten of those fifteen minutes in a fruitless hunt for that mysterious unidentified book. No such book existed. How could that be!? Fenton cursed once again.

At this point in time, every second slipping by without any progress was as if he was watching his sons' and wife's blood dripping away drop by drop. It was morbid, it was macabre, but he could not help those images popping up in his mind.

He forcibly willed those thoughts and images away.

Fenton knew it was sheer exhaustion and the fact that the eight of them were at saturation point where information on this case was concerned, that was causing them to miss the clearly simple task of finding the books they needed. He hoped fervently they would 'see light' soon, or he would never be able to live with himself, should anything happen to either his wife or sons. He took a deep breath and returned his focus to the screen before him.

Fenton was so tense, his hand shook against the keyboard. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned; it was Mathew. They could see the desperation in each others' eyes.

"They found nothing on the shelves, but still searching. Kane and Emilio are still searching through the Reserved Section. Have you got anything here?" Mathew asked as he peered over Fenton's shoulder into the LCD screen.

"Nothing," Fenton growled and gave up on the Library catalogue; he made his way online.

Let's try Google, what have I got to lose? he thought philosophically to himself. He googled '404418705217', and had to stifle a miserable laugh. There was only one hit, and it was a useless hit.

Track FedEx Package 404418705217

Fenton could not help but to let out a string of curses. He was about to try the second number 728097306VE31 when they heard Madeline call out to them.

"Fenton? Matthew?"

They could hear the excitement in her voice, and they both stood up, hopeful expressions on their faces. She did not fail them.

"We found the first book. The call number of the book is 728.097306VE. It was the '31' at the end that threw us off. It's an old book called 'Medieval Castles in America’," Madeline said with a hint of self-loathing in her voice.

Fenton understood that feeling perfectly. They had wasted valuable time on a perfectly simple and clear-cut clue. And in that unguarded moment, the horror of the twelve perfect bodies flashed through Fenton's mind again. Were his boys still alive? He remembered from the old autopsy files that the agents died a long, slow death. God forgive him, but Fenton hoped the Candyman left his sons for last, and he hoped that the Candyman would take his time. He was selfish; he wanted to find his sons and wife alive. He needed them alive, and he would devote the rest of his life to helping them recover if he had to. But he needed his family to be alive, for him.

Then the guilt factor stepped in. He hoped his loved ones lived, at the expense of others' families. He knew that from now on, he would have a hard time meeting any of the other detectives' eyes. His guilt and selfishness would always be there, like a forbidding impenetrable wall between them.

A hand reached for his chin and directed his face towards her. Ah, Madeline. She was perceptive, as always. He refused to look at her. But she persisted and he finally had to meet her eyes. He could see the pain and the understanding in them.

"We are all thinking the same things, Fenton," she said simply. "But we cannot afford to feel guilty over each other right now."

It was then Fenton realized that all of them had been sort of avoiding each other for a while now. No wonder they had not been making any progress on the case. He felt a little better.

"She's right. First we find our families and make sure they are safe, and then we can beat each other up for our selfishness. Meantime, we work as a team. Agreed?" Mathew asked.

Everyone nodded. And that felt good.

"Now, let's get to work and see what we have here," Madeline proposed in a forcefully cheerful voice, and eight pairs of eyes focused on page 31 of the book before them.

It told a sad tale of a little haunted castle in the heart of Transylvania belonging to the Barony of Anton. It was the story of the love of a father for his daughter. A love so deep it twisted him. When the daughter passed on from an unknown illness, the father had chosen to abandon God and turn to the occult. He built the castle in accordance with the specifications of an ancient spell: The power of the Thirteen. The Baron's obsession with the occult grew as he failed to bring his daughter back to life each Halloween, and he grew madder by the year as his daughter 'slept' on in the thirteenth tower of the castle. That tower was eventually called Sleeping Beauty's Tower. One Halloween night, the villagers could take no more and burnt down the castle. The Baron's and the daughter's remains were never found, but it was rumored that the Baron's screams of fear and fury could still be heard every Halloween.

Fenton could almost hear everyone's heart pounding harder and louder as they read on:

The story went on to tell of another very wealthy man, Peter Arkenay, whose love for his sister ran equally deep, so deep he was devastated when she fell to the yellow fever epidemic that hit New York City, killing 2086 people in 1908. It was said that Arkenay, being a student of the occult, had the very stones of Sleeping Beauty's Tower shipped across the Atlantic, and that he reconstructed the tower in an effort to recreate that powerful ancient spell. It was also said that he had the tower constructed atop a labyrinth within which he kept his pets for his otherworldly experiments. No one knew where the tower was located, though many had searched and failed. Arkenay disappeared with his sister's body and his fortune in gold, into his tower in an unknown location.

There was a moment of quiet while the detectives digested the story of the tower. One could not miss the significance of that reference to 'Sleeping Beauty's Tower', nor the reference to the 'power of the thirteen'. Fenton again marveled at the amount of planning that the Candyman invested. How the heck did he manage to even find this story? And that castle too! For Fenton had no doubt that was where his family was being held. The only problem was, he had no idea where that tower was and how to find it. He turned to the others and was greeted by blank faces with equally bleak smiles.

"Now, anyone have any idea how we could find that mystery tower before tomorrow night?" Mathew asked.

Fenton forced his mind back to the case. By sheer willpower, he distanced himself from his loved ones. Yes, this was just another case, and he could do it. He could solve it. He took a deep breath and let his mind wander back to the start of the chase. The maps, the crossroads, the little Red Riding Hood, and now, this occult fairytale. What's the connection? Everything, he thought. Everything flows, fits in smoothly.

Lateral thinking, Fenton, remember lateral thinking, he told himself as he swiftly sifted through his data in his mind. Then he started fitting the pieces together like he would a jigsaw puzzle; the blue for the sky, the white for the clouds, and the green for the trees. Aha! Therein lies the problem: did those blue pieces belong to the sky or to the seas? No, it belonged to neither, for it was the wrong shade altogether. Yes, there were still unused pieces of the puzzle for him to solve!

"Mathew, I need that map from the car that took us to the crossroads!" he called out. "And hurry, the library's closing in fifteen minutes. Every minute counts!"

Mathew rushed off.

Fenton walked swiftly back to the Internet terminal, at the same time requesting: "Can someone go borrow a pen and a long ruler from anywhere?"

He was glad to see Kane and Gaby nod and walk off, presumably to search for those items.

"What have you got, Fenton?" Madeline asked.

Fenton shot her a quick smile as he quickly surfed his way online to a national navigational site.

"Those twelve numbers were the coordinates of a location, Maddy. They stood for 40° 44' 18" of latitude, and 70° 52' 17" of longitude. So I am now searching for its exact location on this latitude and longitude lookup site….And here we go!" Fenton finished with a hint of a triumphant tone in his voice.

But that moment of exhilaration lasted only a second in time, and his smile faded as he once again remembered his family. 'Don't worry Laura, Frank and Joe…I'm getting there, I'll find you, I promised. All you have to do is to hang on' Fenton thought grimly to himself.

He returned his attention to the computer screen before him. The location was a spot in the Great South Bay. He clicked on the function to enlarge the map and silently gave thanks to computers and digital technologies. The coordinates lay directly over an East Fire Island.

Fenton then googled for the island and found a Wikipedia entry on it, describing it as "an uninhabited island larger than West Fire Island, but much smaller than Fire Island, just east of West Fire Island in the Great South Bay. Half the island is swamp land and the other half heavily forested. The best way of getting there is by seaplane."

"Fenton, I think you have the location of our Sleeping Beauty Tower," Madeline whispered in awe.

"The only problem now is, how are we going to get there?" Jude wondered out loud.

"Don't worry about that. The Candyman planned it all, down to every single detail. But here comes our clue as to where to go next," Fenton said as he saw the others returned with the map and the ruler.

"Remember our little Red Riding Hood at the crossroads?" Fenton asked.

The others nodded.

"Well, she was pointing down the East road, but we got back here via the South road…" Fenton explained as he spread out the map on the table before all of them. He went straight for the red colored 'X' that was marked on the map, searched for the East road and used the ruler and pen to draw a straight line across the state and onto Long Island. The line cut straight through to Bayshore.

"Bayshore's about an hour and a half hour drive from here on the freeway. I've been there, it's a cozy little seaside town," Gaby commented.

"Maddy, can you go to Yellow Pages online and search for any seaplane charter service in Bayshore?" Fenton requested.

Madeline did so and the search returned only one such business: Castles in the Air Seaplane Charter Services.

The detectives packed up and raced for their cars; they had their next destination.

As he drove, Fenton could not prevent an old fear from rising. It was there, buried deep in his mind ever since he was told that the Candyman was involved. He was terrified that, like thirteen years ago, he would arrive too late, to find his sons' dead bodies smiling sweetly up at him. And that fear grew when Gray announced that he was 'The Thirteen'. His mind could not help but link the fact that Frank was the thirteenth victim and Gray being 'The Thirteen'… He shook his head hard to rid his mind of those morbid thoughts.

It was almost seven when the two cars pulled up at the little shed with a huge billboard proclaiming: Castles in the Air Seaplane Charter Services. To their surprise, the lights were still on, and a gruff old man was seated within, smoking his cheroot.

"Ah, here you are, I've been waiting for you," the old man said as they walked into the dimly lit, smoky, quaint little office.

Why aren't I surprised? Fenton thought.

"You've been waiting for us?" Mathew queried.

The gruff old pilot nodded vigorously before saying to them, "Aye! You guys are all detectives aren't you? Well, this morning your kids dropped by and asked for a big favor. Said they were planning a Halloween hunt of sorts for their detective parents and asked if I could help. Of course I told 'em I would!"

There were eight sharp indrawn breaths.

But the old grey-haired pilot misconstrued the reaction and chuckled, "You guys got really great kids that would go to such lengths to give you the perfect Halloween party, you know. Anyway, here's the map and the camping gear that I'm supposed to hand over to you, and here's the photograph we took…in case you didn't believe me, they said. Now, gimme a sec to get the seaplane ready and we'll get going, huh?"

Then he left.

The detectives stared at the Polaroid photo. It showed thirteen very familiar smiling faces staring blankly back at the camera.

A number of the detectives cursed. Carlos smashed his fists against the wooden walls.

"Thirteen little Judases," Madeline whispered with a soft bitter laugh as she recalled Gray's mysterious words, and added dully, "He's pitting our kids against us."

Fenton stared at all the dull faces around him and something stirred deep within him.

"Come on, we're about to get to see them," he told them in a stern voice. "We've no choice but to go ahead into a trap. But we can choose to believe that we can get through to our kids somehow. I know my kids. Both Frank and Joe are smart, and I choose to believe that I can reason my way through to them somehow. I choose to believe I know them better than that psycho out there. We've to believe, guys, otherwise there's no point for us to get on that seaplane to go over to the island."

He glared at all of them and tried to will them back to life. It was true that things looked stacked against them, but they could not afford to head over there with a sense of defeat. Their families' depended on them, and damn if he, Fenton, was going to give up without a fight.

"The Candyman wanted to play, guys. I say we give him a game he’ll never forget," Fenton finished his little speech, and was gratified to see the others react accordingly.

"You're right, Fenton, Lets go give 'em a game worth remembering," Carlos said as he cracked his knuckles.

"I see you guys are getting into the mood!" the old pilot laughed jovially as he came back just in time to see what Carlos did. "The plane's ready, so let's get rocking, huh?"

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Disclaimer

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys 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.