HDA - Living in Darkness Trilogy - Pt 2 - The Search

Fenton Hardy knelt on the ground and studied the tire tread clearly visible in the soft earth of the ground outside of the large house in Cambridge , Massachusetts , and ran his finger lightly along the lines. He turned slightly to one side, his eyes following the path the car took to get back onto the road, and he looked back at the house itself, trying to figure out where Cathy came through the door. He returned his attention to the tire tread and he looked up at his partner, Sam Radley. Next to him, watching Fenton with interest, stood Fenton's daughter, Amanda Hardy and her friends, Connor Mackenzie and Samantha Ellington.

"Anything helpful, Dad?" Mandy asked her father as she stepped forward and knelt beside him. Dressed in jeans, a dark blue sweater and lined jacket, Mandy looked warm enough but she had a pink color to her cheeks that indicated the coldness of the afternoon weather. Winter at the end of October approached only too rapidly for Fenton's taste, especially when he had to be out in it during a case.

"If I'm not mistaken these are from a Mercedes," Fenton said. "Which I know Cathy drives. The tire tread is usually pretty unmistakable. What do you think, Radley?"

Sam Radley knelt beside the tire tracks and studied them before he nodded. Dressed in casual brown trousers, a long-sleeved Henley and a leather jacket, Sam looked vaguely roguish in appearance, though it complemented his silver-dappled dark hair. "Yeah, going from there," he pointed about three feet back, "To there." He pointed to the road itself. "Diagonally."

"That's what I got as well," Fenton agreed. Fenton brushed his hands off and turned slightly, marking the path of the car with his hands. He raised his hands to show the others. "So she left from here and went that way. The big question is, why park there and the second big question is, how did she get Frank into the car? Are you sure you didn't hear her use the front door?"

"The alarm would have went off, Dad," Mandy said. Mandy rocked back on her heels, a maneuver that made Fenton slightly jealous. He would kill for half of her balance. "We would have heard her for sure."

"Unless she keyed in the code," Samantha stated. The tall redhead stood next to Mandy's boyfriend, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her down-filled jacket. Also dressed in jeans, Samantha's green eyes stood out because of the bright green long-sleeved shirt she wore under her dark green jacket.

"We would have heard that, too. It beeps, remember? And I think Frank would have given us some sign that that he was being dragged away in that case." Mandy sighed and ruffled her blonde hair.

"Let's check the wall and the ground," Fenton suggested. "You may be right about a passageway or a doorway that we haven't seen yet. Samantha, why don't you take Sam and Connor up to where you and Frank were last, and try to get your bearings from there. We'll go at this from two directions."

"Is it that important to figure out how they got Frank out of the house?" Connor asked. Taller than either of the other men, also with red hair and green eyes, Connor MacKenzie looked ready to take on the world – and win. "I mean, wouldn't it be better to just start looking for Frank and not worry about the house?"

"We have to see if she left anything behind," Mandy explained to her boyfriend. "If there's a passageway, there might be something in there we can use to find Frank. Believe me, I don't want to delay finding him anymore than you do but my Dad knows what he's doing right now. And we have to go along with him, all right?"

Connor nodded and shrugged in agreement and followed Samantha and Sam Radley back to the front of the house.

Fenton turned to his daughter. "Start at that end of the house. Just push on the wall, every foot or so. If there's a door it will have to be activated that way because I don't see anything out here that would work as a lever."

Fenton checked earlier for faucets and he knew the junction box was on the other side of the house, not this side. The wall was bare.

"Unless it's remote control operated." Mandy walked to the back end of the house and pushed on the wall at chest level. Nothing happened.

"I doubt they would rely just on a remote control," Fenton said. "Your mother is the most organized person in the world but I've seen her lose a remote control before."

"True," Mandy admitted. She continued to push on the wall as Fenton started on his end of the house. He pushed, hard, before stepping down the lawn and pushing again.

"You know, I really don't see anything that looks like an opening," Mandy stated. "Of course, it's brick, so it may be really well camouflaged…"

"Exactly," Fenton agreed. He gave the wall another push and pulled his hands back. Pushing on the bricks didn't help his palms any! There were little specks of red brick in his palms and red dust all over his hands and fingers.

"How are your hands?" Fenton turned to Mandy and saw her pushing into the wall again.

Mandy held up her gloved hands. "Just fine," she grinned. "They were in the pocket of my jacket. You don't have yours?'

"Good idea," Fenton approved. He pushed again, wishing he had his own gloves. He wondered, briefly, if they were in the glove compartment of his car. "And, no, they're not on me."

"The mighty detective is not prepared?" Mandy faked astonishment. "Say it isn't so!"

"So," Fenton laughed. At least Mandy maintained her sense of humor, despite what was going on around them. He was glad to be able to laugh too.

Mandy pushed industriously on the wall and Fenton took the hint and went back to his own section of wall, giving it a solid push with all his weight. He continued for another half-minute or so.

"Whoa!" Mandy called out a few moments later. "Dad!"

There was now an opening in the wall where Mandy stood, as a piece of the wall now jutted out from the rest of the wall. Mandy grabbed the piece of wall and pulled back, opening up the doorway.

"Found it," Mandy grinned happily. "Come on."

Mandy reached around inside, feeling for a light switch. "It's dark in here. Do you have a flashlight?" she asked Fenton. Mandy's head came out of the dark opening again and peered intently at her father.

Fenton reached into an inside pocket of his long coat and pulled out a penlight. He handed it to Mandy and she turned it on. Mandy shone the light all around the small, inner room and grinned. "That works. Hold on a second, Dad."

Mandy went into the center of the room where she found a string dangling down from the ceiling. She pulled on it and light suddenly illuminated the room even more brightly. "Okay, Pop, we have light."

Fenton came into the room behind his daughter and looked around. It was small, no bigger than six feet by six feet, square with an opening at one corner and another opening at another corner. The opening at the nearest corner led to a staircase that went up and the opening at the other end went to an opening that went down.

"Which way do we go?" Mandy asked. "Up or down? Or divide and conquer?"

"You go up and see where it comes out," Fenton said. "I'll go down and see what's down below. Make sure you keep your eyes open, Mandy."

"Yes, sir," Mandy agreed as she mounted the upper staircase. "See you later."

Fenton turned to his own staircase and started going down…and down…and down. He suddenly wished he’d remembered to get his penlight back from Mandy, because it was getting darker and darker, the further down he went. Fenton kept a careful hold on the handrail, gripping it tightly as he continued his descent into the depths of the house. Finally, he made it to the bottom of the narrow staircase and he felt around along the wall.

The detective wondered, briefly, if this was what it was like for his son. Did Frank feel helpless when he was on his own in his dark world? Fenton couldn't really see his hand in front of his face!

Fenton reached above his head and walked, cautiously, forward to the middle of the room, until he found yet another pull string. Another light came on, revealing a larger room than above, maybe twelve-by-twelve. The room was empty, though, except for a table in the corner and a box sitting under the table.

Fenton pulled the very heavy box out and opened it up while it was still on the floor. There were tools inside of the box – a drill, a saw, several sets of pliers, a ratchet set and a hammer. He saw a shovel in the corner behind the table but no other exits from the room.

Another dead end?

He looked in all the corners, just in case he missed something but there was nothing else to find. He even looked under the surface of the table but, again, came away empty-handed. All right, it was an empty room. But why?

Fenton sighed and turned away, turning the light off before he made his way back to the stairs that went upward. He wondered why that room was there. Was Andrew planning on using it for something?

Whatever the case, Fenton doubted there was anything here to help him find Joe OR Frank. He walked cautiously up the first set of steps until he could see, and then raced up the next set of stairs and found Mandy, Connor, Sam and Samantha in a room at the top, looking at something laid out on a table.

"It's a drawing, Dad," Mandy told her father as Fenton walked over to take a look at it. "I'm not sure what it's of, but it seems familiar…"

Samantha bent over the drawing and closed her eyes. They sprang open again a moment later.

"Those stairs!" she exclaimed. "Do you remember over in the Andiron mansion those half stairs we found?"

"From…the dungeon?" Mandy asked, curiously. She peered more intently at the drawing and nodded, her face lighting up in a smile.

"That's it," Samantha touched the drawing and showed the split set of stairs. "See? Here's the top half and here's the bottom half. The top half is obviously open so they aren't connected to the bottom half. This drawing down here shows what they look like when they're connected!"

"Maybe this is where Andrew designed everything!" Mandy exclaimed, excited. "I bet it is! Dad, look at this! It's just like the stairs we found in the Andiron place!"

"What stairs?" Fenton asked his daughter.

"When we searched the Andiron place Samantha found this set of stairs. They were just half stairs built above a piece of floor. It didn't look like they went anywhere. Right Sam?"

"Right," Samantha agreed. "But there was a lever there. I pulled on it and the floor moved. The stairs lowered and met up with this other set of stairs down below, making a staircase."

"It's possible," Sam Radley agreed. "You know, there's a chance…maybe he wanted to repeat that here. What do you think?"

Sam looked back at Fenton.

"If he did he hasn't had a chance yet," Fenton said. "At least not that I could see. The set of stairs going down leads to a decent sized room but it was mostly empty. I did find a box of power tools and the like, but no sign of any stairs, no other entrances into the room, anything like that. No supplies either, come to that, if he wanted to duplicate those stairs."

"Maybe he hasn't had a chance to build them yet," Mandy exclaimed excitedly. "So he won't be able to use them on Joe! Or, at least, won't be able to build another dungeon to hold him in."

"That's possible," Fenton shrugged dubiously. "It's possible, though, that he didn't need it. Maybe he had enough places worked out to hide Joe until we get off the case. Look, let's carefully gather these up – make sure you don't get fingerprints on them. You didn't, did you?"

"Daaad," Mandy protested. "Of course not!"

"I'll get it, Fenton," Sam said.

"We didn't find anything that would help us find Frank?" Fenton asked his daughter and her friends.

"No, sir," Mandy sighed. "Nothing. And we really did look."

"Well, we'll just have to start a search of the area. I want to talk to the police and see if we can find out what kind of car your aunt is driving. I'm pretty sure it's a Mercedes, but model and color would be nice."

"Red," Mandy said. "It's going to be red."

Fenton stared at his daughter. "What makes you say that?"

"She's always had red cars, Dad. Remember? I think she liked the flash, you know, made her look more showy. That 'look at me and what I have' factor."

"Ah," Fenton nodded. "You're right, she has. I doubt she's changed that bit of her personality one bit. Okay. A red Mercedes is going to be hard to hide. I'll have the police do a search anyway so we can get an APB out on the car."

"Good idea," Sam Radley agreed.

"We could canvass the neighbors too," Mandy said. "The nosy neighbor syndrome worked back in Bayport. Maybe someone saw something here too."

Fenton frowned. "We don't know the neighbors here like we do in Bayport," he said slowly. "I'm not sure we'd be as lucky."

"We won't know until we try." Primly, Mandy turned to Samantha and Connor. "Let's go, troops. Spread out, tackle them one at a time. Maybe we'll get lucky."

"I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, jiggity jig," Mandy hummed under her breath as they approached the first house. "It's déjà vu all over again. Didn't we just do this?"

"A few days ago, yeah," Connor agreed. "You sure it'll do any good?"

"I'm sure," Mandy said. "We need a direction to go. This is the best way to find that direction."

I hope, she said to herself. I hope.

They knocked on the door of the first house and waited.

And waited.

When it became apparent that no one was going to answer the door, they walked back to the sidewalk and went down to the next house. There were only three houses within line-of-sight of Andrew's house but they wanted to check the block a few houses down in both directions to see if anyone saw the red Mercedes drive past.

It took several tries before they were able to get information from anyone. A younger African-American man three doors down told Mandy he was doing yard work the day before.

"Mowing the lawn the last time, getting the leaves raked. I work weekends, you know, so I have to do the lawn on my day off," he explained. "And, yeah, I saw the car go by. Tore out of here like a bat out of hell, driving like a maniac in a subdivision like this one. I thought it was some kid joyriding at first but then I saw an older lady, dark hair, driving. Couldn't believe it. I almost called the cops on her but it wasn't worth the hassle, you know?"

"Did you see anyone in the car with her?" Mandy asked, suddenly excited and hopeful.

"A kid," the man agreed. "Couldn't really see him well, just enough to tell he wasn't very old. Maybe your age. Dark haired. I figured he was her son."

Heaven forbid, Mandy thought.

"Do you know what direction the car went?" Mandy asked.

"Yeah," the man pointed up the street. "Down that way, turned on Millwood going North."

"Thank you so much!" Mandy exclaimed. She shook hands with the man.

They raced back to the house and an excited Mandy reported what they found to her father.

"Told you we'd find something!" she said. "What did you get?"

"Your aunt does, in fact, have a red 1999 Mercedes, licensed in Massachusetts. The police have put an APB out on it," Fenton grinned. "Let's do some driving, kids, and see what we can find out. Can we all fit in your S.U.V. Connor?"

Connor nodded. "IF you're friendly-like. The two girls and Mr. Radley in the backseat and you and me in the front. It should be fine."

"Let's go."

They climbed into Connor's Blazer and he took off down the street, following the directions given to them by the neighbor. He found Millwood and turned north and followed it along to a main highway.

"Where to now?" Connor asked.

"Left," Fenton suggested. "No idea if it will work or not, though."

Connor turned left.

All red cars made them look hard but, so far, none were Mercedes. Mandy sighed as she leaned back in her seat and stared out the window, past Samantha. It was like hunting that proverbial needle in the haystack and Mandy wasn't sure that this would work. But what else could they do?

We'll find you, she vowed again. Both of you. Soon.

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Disclaimer

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