Hardy Detective Agency featuring Hardy Boys Fan Fiction

Chapter Title: Watching Television

Fritz felt like he was choking on poison gas. He then realized he was in a bed with the pillow pulled over his head, making it hard to breathe. He moved the pillow, and breathed freely. Awake now, he got up. Enough light filtered in through the drapes for him to realize this was a motel room. The only other person in the room was his brother John, who lay sound asleep in the other bed. Calmed down, Fritz climbed back into his own bed.

Fritz’s nightmare resumed, but had altered. This time, he could inexplicably breathe, but he ran through Port City while the other citizens choked to death. He tried helping, but nothing would stop the gas to which he was somehow magically immune. Sea breezes from the bay swept away the gas, but it was too late. The gas had spared the inert buildings, which stood as tall and beautiful as ever.

Fritz woke again. He thought about how this latest nightmare differed from his recurring nightmares of the previous months. In those, Port City was left a shattered, radioactive ruin. Fritz felt he needed no psychiatrist to explain these dreams. The nuclear holocaust nightmares had started after he and John had barely saved a city from a nuclear bomb exploding. He currently knew Port City faced a poison gas threat. While there was no mystery why he was having the nightmares, that did not make them any less unpleasant.

The phone in the motel room rang. The phone was next to John’s bed rather than his. Fritz waited. On the second ring, John blearily opened his eyes.

Fritz asked, "Are you going to get that?"

John twisted in his bed toward the phone, then abruptly stopped. He groaned. The phone rang again. Fritz threw back his covers and got up. He crossed the room and grabbed the receiver.

A bored voice said, "This is your wake up call, Mr. Doe."

Fritz made no comment about the obviously fake name, but did ask, "What time is it?"

"Quarter to noon, just as you requested. You’ve already missed checkout time of eleven, but you already paid for the room paid for tonight. I’m reminding you to be out by eleven tomorrow morning unless you want to pay for another day."

Fritz replied, "Thanks for the message. Goodbye."

After Fritz hung up the phone, he addressed his brother, "That was a wake‑up call for someone named Mr. Doe."

Still lying on the bed, sweating slightly, John responded, "That’s me, John Doe."

"Couldn’t you come up with a better name than that?"

"The clerk didn’t mind the name since my cash was green. This is not a high class hotel."

Fritz rolled his eyes, then headed to the bathroom.

As he shaved, he said, "Up and at ‘em, John. It’s nearly noon. I know you like to sleep late, but we’ve got things to do."

John shut his eyes, "We’re supposedly dead, so we shouldn’t have to do anything. How can it be nearly noon already?"

Fritz called from the bathroom, "Would you turn on the television? Dr. Ruby said that we were supposed to watch the news to see how our deaths are reported."

John exclaimed, “Right, that’s why I had the wake up call set up. Ouch!”

Fritz popped out his head out from the bathroom, his face mostly shaved already, "What's wrong?"

"My back hurts. I'm going to just lie here for a while."

"If you’re bleeding, I’m not sure how we get you to a doctor without revealing we’re alive."

John pushed back the covers and said, "I don’t think I’m bleeding, just sore."

Fritz went back to his shaving and asked, "Didn’t you consider that riding a motorcycle after getting stitches in your back wasn’t a smart thing to do?"

John admitted, "I was so engrossed in searching for Ivana that I never gave it a thought."

Fritz had to chuckle at that. Acting without thinking things through was so typical for his brother. John had told him about using the call-back feature of the phone and checking the fingerprints and so on. For that, Fritz had to admit John had been thinking more than he had been.

John said, "Hey, Fritz. While Dr. Ruby made arrangements at our house with Chief Clymer and Officer McCormick, I grabbed our stethoscope. The one I’d initially asked you to bring. Where’d it go?"

"I stuck it in the closet."

John asked, "Can you come check on what is going on in Jason’s room?"

"Do it yourself."

"Please," John begged.

Fritz wiped his face with a towel, then came over and got the stethoscope, then asked, "Which wall?"

"The ceiling. If we were in Dr. Ruby’s room, it’d be the wall."

Fritz frowned, but made no comment as he climbed up a chair and then stepped up onto the desk. He lifted a ceiling panel, then put the bell of the stethoscope against the true ceiling.

Fritz said, "They’re moving around. They’ve turned the TV on to channel seven. They have the volume so high all I can hear now is the show."

Rolling over in the bed and using the remote bolted to a table between both beds, John turned on their television and switched it to channel seven. The news was just starting.

Fritz got down from the desk, "I’ll listen more when the news is over."

The primary local story was on the death of Fritz and John Hardly. The story said that initial reports from the police indicated that carbon monoxide had killed them. A woman announcer commented that although warm yesterday during the day, it’d been chilly last night.

"She has that right," John said. "Last night was not the time to be on a motorcycle in a flimsy cloth coat."

The announcer said that at the Hardly household, according to the police, the furnace had been turned on automatically by the thermostat. The furnace hadn’t been serviced for a long time and had been sitting off since the weather had been so warm for the rest of May. The newscaster went on that while the Hardly house had a smoke and carbon monoxide detector, the batteries were dead. Both Hardly boys had died breathing the poisonous, odorless gas.

Still on the bed, John said, "That’s the dumbest way of dying I can imagine. This is more like a public service announcement for keeping your carbon monoxide and smoke detector in good working order than a news story."

"Doing that is a good idea, John. Our supposed deaths is serving a good purpose,” Fritz said philosophically.

The reporter then announced the boys’ bodies had been found by Officer McCormick, who’d stopped by to pick them up for questioning on how their van had exploded the previous day. The reported brought up the possibility the boys had deliberately killed themselves by tampering with the furnace.

John said, "I was wrong. That is an even dumber way of dying! I guess we were supposed to have deliberately put dead batteries in the detector."

"We’re detectives. I expect we’d think of things like that if we wanted to kill ourselves and make it look like an accident," Fritz speculated.

"I’ll bet she hints we blew up our own van next."

The reporter then hinted the Hardly boys blew up their own van to get attention. Presumably since it had not got the attention they craved, they had resorted to suicide by carbon monoxide by tampering with their furnace. However, the reporter added that situation was still under investigation and might still be ruled an accident. Her manner and tone indicated strong doubt it was an accident, though.

The news report switched to a male reporter out in the field. He held out a microphone to a middle-aged, tired-looking woman. The woman was at the door of her house. Her hair was in curlers.

Fritz said, "I've seen her out gardening. She lives two houses down. She used to talk with Mom and Aunt Grace about gardening. That was before Mom, Dad, and Aunt Grace moved to Florida."

The woman described being woken up by a car driven into the Hardly’s driveway at some ridiculous late time of the night. The Hardly boys got out. She gave a lecture about how high school boys should have an early curfew that should be firmly enforced. It was a speech worthy of Grace Hardly herself. She then gave an accurate account of the show through the picture window that John and Fritz had put on for Joyce. The woman added she’d told this to the police already.

The neighbor concluded, "The boys just fell down at the same time. No sounds. No signs of struggle. It was some sort of poison gas, I’m sure. It wasn’t any broken furnace! A yellow car left about fifteen minutes later. It’s illegal to park there at that time, so this person was the murderer. As Grace Hardly once told me, it’s a small step from illegal parking to murder!"

As this was being said, John sat up abruptly as if he was in a hurry, then groaned loudly and fell back down. Sweat was now very visible on his face.

Fritz turned to him and seeing his condition said with great concern, "Let me help."

"No! Use the stethoscope! Now!"

On the television, to Fritz and John’s astonishment, the neighbor woman recited every single digit of the license number of the yellow car. Although the writing was now very faint due to washing his hands, John still managed to follow along as the woman said it.

"She got it right," John remarked.

Fritz had memorized the number and knew that already. He jumped up on the desk and listened intently at the ceiling with the stethoscope.

Fritz reported, "They’re shouting so loud I can easily hear them over the television. Jason wants to sink the car in the bay. He’s concerned about his fingerprints being on the car and thinks sinking it will get rid of them. Joyce wants to park it in an obscure place and torch it, arguing that burning will eliminate fingerprints even better. Karen...I mean Ivana...joined in on Joyce’s side. She thinks they’re less likely to get caught torching a car than sinking it. Jason is now saying they aren’t coming back to this motel either!"

"Are they leaving now?"

"Yes!"

John said, "We had to leave the rental car behind to make us really seem dead, as it was under our real names. Other than my motorcycle, we don’t have transportation until Dr. Ruby shows up. A cab won’t be here in time."

Fritz said, "I'll ride behind you on the motorcycle."

John moved and winced, "I can’t ride. I'm having trouble getting out of bed. I’m not kidding!"

"I didn’t realize you were that bad. I’ve got to get you to a doctor."

John insisted, "We’re trying to save the city and that’s more important! Dr. Ruby knows I’m in this room and will stop by later. Take the bike and go!"

Fritz rapidly got in his clothes. He snatched the motorcycle key, grabbed the helmet, and headed toward the door.

John called out, "You’ve got to use the kickstarter. The battery’s shot."

"Got it. Take care of yourself," Fritz urged.

Fritz locked the door on his way out.

With Fritz gone, John turned his attention back to the television news. He expected some of their friends to be interviewed next. Would it be Conrad Morrow? Maybe Fritz’s girlfriend, Christine? His heart sunk as he realized it might be his girlfriend, Vicky! He squirmed along on the bed and reached the phone. He grabbed the receiver, now having it in a firm grip. He longed to call Vicky and tell her this was all just a trick and he wasn’t really dead. He didn’t lift the receiver, though. He knew better than that. His eyes felt moist as he thought about how Vicky must be reacting to this news. John thought of how hard it must have been for Ivana to have let people think she was dead for years.

A reporter on the television announced they were switching to a woman who knew the Hardly boys very well. John felt very sure it would be either Vicky or Christine, but he was wrong. An old woman’s face appeared, tears streaming heavily down her cheeks. Behind the woman was a palm tree and a swimming pool. This was the age of global communication, so John felt he shouldn’t have been so surprised.

In a trembling voice, the old woman on the television said, "I’m positive this was not just an accident! It may have been made to appear like one, but it wasn’t! I always warned those boys they’d come to a bad end with their detective work! I told them...I told them..."

John felt tears wetting the pillow, as he realized that all the way down in Florida, his Aunt Grace really thought he and Fritz were dead! What she was saying was too sincere to be acting. If the reporters had found her already, it wouldn’t be long until his parents heard the tragic news!