“Uh, no. Uh, our surveillance camera needed some repairs, so I was working on it,” Jupe said.
“No, you weren’t. You were trying on stuff to wear to Cory Brand’s party tonight,” Pete said.
“Absurd,” said Jupe, turning off the VCR.
“Hey, they all look perfecto to me,” Pete said. “But maybe we aren’t going to the party.”
“And why not?” asked Jupiter.
“I told you I had news, Jupe. Good news,” said Pete. “I finally talked to our contact at the police station. Their computers were down all weekend — just got fixed today. So he helped me track down the Porsche’s registration.”
“Who owns it?”
“Barry Norman, 45 Lyle Street, Manhattan Beach, California,” Pete said, handing Jupe a computer print-out from his back pocket.
Jupe double-checked the printout before saying, “Let’s go talk to him.”
The two friends climbed into the Porsche, and about an hour later Pete pulled up in front of 45 Lyle Street. It was a small four-story concrete and glass office building.
“You’d better park a few blocks away,” Jupe said. “We don’t want Mr. Barry Norman to see the Porsche and run. I’ll wait for you in the lobby.”
A minute later Pete pushed through the front door of the lobby and found Jupe reading the black building directory on the wall. It listed all the tenants in small white letters.
“Barry Norman... suite 421. This is almost too easy,” Jupe said, leading the way to the elevator.
Suite 421 was locked. There was a gold nameplate in the center of the black wooden door.
“Barry Norman, Esquire,” Jupe read. “He’s a lawyer.
“He’s going to need a good one when we’re through with him,” said Pete, knocking on the door. He knocked quietly the first time, louder the second time. And the third time he practically shook the door off its hinges. “Nobody home.”
“I concluded that after the second try,” Jupe said, already halfway back to the elevator.
Outside they climbed into the Porsche, but they couldn’t see Barry Norman’s building from there. So Pete cruised around to Lyle Street again and slipped into a spot near a pay phone.
Then they waited and watched.
Every time a man entered the building, they gave him a few minutes to get upstairs. Then Pete ran to the pay phone and called Barry Norman’s office. No one ever answered the phone.
“Seven o’clock, Jupe. I’ve had all the sitting around I can take,” Pete finally said. “He’s not coming back.”
“The logical explanation is that he didn’t come back because he was in court or meeting with a client,” Jupe said. “But I’ve got a strange feeling that something else is going on. I wish I knew what it was. But I don’t think we’re going to find out anything more today.”
“All right! Time to party!” Pete said, revving up the Porsche. “On to Cory Brand’s condo!”
“Not yet. I have to go home and change.”
The party was going full blast when Pete and Jupe finally arrived. Jupe was wearing a purple and white Shoremont College sweatshirt — the one he had bought at the bookstore last week. Music was shaking the walls of the large modern apartment. And college students were talking and dancing everywhere — in the living room, in the kitchen, on the couches. Jupe spotted some basketball players and cheerleaders.
“What a great place,” Pete said, looking around. “I’d love to have a college apartment like this.”
“You could if you went to Shoremont,” Jupe said pointedly. “Keep your ears open. This is an excellent opportunity to find out which players are taking bribes. And don’t forget your cover story: you knew me
“You could have fooled me,” Jupe mumbled to Pete. “Cory, this is my friend Pete.”
“
Cory laughed and walked away. So Jupe and Pete wandered through the crowd. Occasionally Pete stopped to munch some chips and jalapeno dip, but Jupe kept circulating.
“Hi, Jupiter.”
Jupe recognized the sweet Southern voice instantly. He turned around, trying to think of something clever to say. “Uh, hi, Sarah,” he said. Someone danced into him, pushing him closer to the pretty cheerleader.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
“So how do you like your classes?” Sarah asked. She looked away from him. “Wow, that’s a pretty dumb question.”
“I’ve heard dumber questions, lots of them,” Jupe said, with a smile.
“I’m... I mean... I’m a better listener than talker.”
“Uh, me too,” Jupe said quickly.
Sarah laughed. “Oh, you don’t like to listen. I heard you at the basketball game. You were so funny as the parrot.”
“Uh,” Jupe said. How could the guy with the largest vocabulary in the school forget every word he knew except “uh”?
Suddenly Jupe felt a large hand grabbing onto his shoulder and shaking him gently back and forth. He saw that Sarah also had a hand on her shoulder.
“How’s it going, guys?” said a dude with curly black hair that came down over his collar. He had a Texas accent and he was shouting in Jupe’s ear. He reeked of beer.
Oh, great, Jupe thought. Just what I need some big hunk coming over to put the moves on Sarah. How can I compete with him?
“Tim,” Sarah said, “you’ve had too much to drink.”
“Hey,” the guy said. “I paid for all the food and beer at this party. And there’s no law that says I can’t drink it all! Who’s your boyfriend?”
Sarah blushed and so did Jupe.
“Tim Frisch, this is Jupiter Jones.”
“Howdy. You got any brothers named Mars and Venus? Hahahaha!”
Jupiter smiled weakly. Finally he was meeting the last of the five starting basketball players. Tim had cut every one of his classes last week, so Jupe hadn’t been able to track him down. Now Jupe took in the whole picture. Tim was wearing expensive-looking clothes and bragging about buying all the beer. Maybe he was another player on Michael Anthony’s payroll.
“You mean you bought all the beer for this party yourself?” Jupe asked.
“You got that straight, Jack. If you want to have friends, you gotta spend some money on them — am I right or am I right?” Tim held up his hand for a high-five, but he couldn’t hold it steadily.
“Oh, you’re right,” Jupe said, slapping the big hand. “If you’ve got the money.” He smiled at Sarah as if he were just making conversation.
“I’ve got all I need,” Tim said with a goofy grin. “So, Jupe, buddy, what’s your sport?”
“Uh, my major is — ” Jupe wanted to say his major was taking chances, because he knew he was about to take a big one. But with Tim’s brain swimming around, it was an opportunity Jupe couldn’t resist. “It’s communications history,” Jupe said. “I’m studying the history of television, old TV shows. One of my favorites is
“A show with Michael Anthony? For real?” Tim said with a laugh. “Hey, I’ll bet that show had a lot of
But just then Cory Brand came over to join the conversation.
“Hey, Cory, here’s a joke. You’ll like it,” Tim said. “There’s this TV show with a guy named Michael Anthony. And I said I bet it’s got a lot of Gravy Train commercials. You get it, don’t you? Jupiter doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it at all.”
Cory didn’t laugh. His face got serious fast. “Come on, Tim,” he said, pulling the big guy away from Jupe. “You’ve had too much to drink. You need some air.”
“I didn’t get it either,” said Sarah.
“Must be a private joke,” Jupe said, watching the evidence he almost had in his hands slip away.
“Telephone for Pete Crenshaw!” someone was shouting. “Yo! Pete Crenshaw! Is he here?”
Jupe watched Pete move through the crowd toward the guy with the phone.
“Well, Jupiter, are you going to ask me to dance?” Sarah said.
“Huh?” Jupe said. Suddenly his mind was split in two. Half of it wanted to dance with Sarah so badly he’d do anything—even go on the One-Quarter Diet if that would help. But the other half of his mind was watching Pete head for the phone. Who would be calling him —
A moment later Pete came back to the living room, motioning for Jupe to join him.
“I just got a phone call,” Pete said. “Some guy gave me a warning. He said, ‘It’s not safe to snoop around other people’s business.’ ”
“Was the voice familiar?”
“Nope. He also said if I wanted to see what he meant, go look out the window.”
Jupe and Pete hurried out onto the balcony. Just as they reached the railing there was a huge booming fireball explosion — coming from a car on the street.
Pete watched the ball of fire turn into a cloud of black smoke. Pieces of the blue Porsche fell from the air. People on the street were running for cover.
Miraculously, no one had gotten hurt. But Jupe’s heart was pounding as if he had just barely escaped with his life.
“Call the police.” Jupe delivered it like an order, partly to steady his own nerves and partly to snap his friend out of his dazed stare. “Call the police, Pete!”
But Pete didn’t move. And people inside Cory Brand’s condo came rushing out onto the balcony to see what the noise was.
Jupe pushed his way back inside to call the cops himself. Cory’s apartment was in Rocky Beach, so Jupe knew the phone number by heart. How many times had Jupe called the police to ask for help in a case? Zillions. But he’d never had to report a car bombing before — not of Pete’s own car, anyway! He hurried back to Pete as soon as he hung up.
Pete was still staring, his hands gripping the balcony railing. Fire engines had arrived. The firefighters scrambled around, connecting hoses and squirting foam. Jupe’s stomach turned over when he saw how long the fire burned — and how hard it was to extinguish the flames.
The doorbell rang and Jupe saw a Rocky Beach police officer come into the condo.
“Hey — we weren’t making any noise,” Cory Brand said the minute the officer stepped in.
The officer surveyed the party scene. “Someone here phoned to report that car bombing.”
“That was I,” Jupe said. He spoke over the general mumbles of the group as he stepped from the balcony back into the living room.
“I’d like to speak to you,” said the officer, motioning Jupe toward the front doorway for a private conference.
Jupe tapped Pete, who still looked dazed, and got him to follow.
“I’m Jupiter Jones and this is my friend Pete Crenshaw. That’s his car that was blown up,” Jupe said, his voice cracking slightly on the last sentence.
“Do you have the registration?” the officer asked Pete.
“Well, no... ” Pete looked at Jupe for help. But before Jupe could explain, the officer took two pairs of handcuffs from a pouch on his belt.
“Hold out your hands, boys,” the officer said.
“Why? Hey, wait a minute. Jupe can explain!” Pete said.
The officer grabbed Jupe’s wrists and clamped on the cuffs.
“Wait a — ow! — what are you doing? This is absurd,” Jupe sputtered. “Do you know who you’re dealing with?”
“Yeah — you’re one of the Three Investigators, aren’t you?” the officer sneered.
Jupe pulled himself up to his full height.
“I am a personal friend of Chief Reynolds,” Jupe said, trying to maintain his composure. “Is this what you do when citizens report an incident?”
“This is what we do when we’re bringing in suspects,” said the officer as he roughly grabbed and cuffed Pete.
Suspects? Jupe thought. Suspects? “That’s ridiculous. We didn’t blow up that car! Where’s your evidence?” Jupe demanded.
“I’m taking you in on suspicion of auto theft,” said the officer. “We’ll talk about it at the station.”
When they got to the police station, the cuffs were finally taken off. The two friends sat next to each other on a hard wooden bench outside Police Chief Reynolds’s office.
Pete stared at the floor and shifted uncomfortably. He felt like he was living a nightmare. “We could have been killed,” he said.
“I know,” Jupe said, his stomach turning over again.
“I don’t think we were intended to die. But we might have been killed accidentally. It’s clear we haven’t been careful enough. Someone knew we were going to be at that party.”
“But if they didn’t want to kill us, why blow up the car?”
“To scare us,” Jupe said. “Obviously we are getting close to something — too close.”
Just then the door to Police Chief Reynolds’s office opened. Officer Klint, the cop who’d picked up the guys, motioned them in.
“Hello, Chief,” said Jupiter as he entered.
“Jupiter. Pete,” said the burly, balding man behind the desk. He was half hidden by a mess of files and notes and notepads.
“Chief,” said Jupiter as if speaking to an old friend. Which of course he was. The Rocky Beach police chief had helped the Three Investigators a number of times. And vice versa. Bob liked to say they were “partners in crime-solving.” So Jupe was startled to be hauled in like a common thief. “Why the use of hand-cuffs?” Jupe asked.
“Jupe,” said the chief in a surprisingly unfriendly voice. “
It seemed like he was changing the subject, but Jupe knew Chief Reynolds too well. He knew his interrogation techniques. Make the suspect comfortable. Talk about something easy, gain his confidence — then spring the trap. But why was he using his techniques on Pete and Jupe?
“Yeah, it sure was,” Pete said. “And maybe you should be out looking for the joker who blew it up.”
“Pete,” snapped the chief, “mind your manners. I know my job. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. How long have you had that car?”
“Since Friday,” Jupe answered because Pete was biting a fingernail.
“How’d you boys get it?”
“A man gave it to me,” Pete answered.
Chief Reynolds crossed his arms and sniffed. “I don’t like that answer,” he said. Then he leaned forward with his elbows on his desk. “Try again.”
“What do you want me to say?” Pete asked. “It followed me home? I told you the truth.”
“All right, Pete. I’ve known you boys a long time, and I’m inclined to believe you. But there’s more than one side to the truth here. The other side is that that car was reported stolen this afternoon.”
“Stolen?” Pete said.
“By whom?” asked Jupe.
“By its owner. Barry Norman,” said the chief.
“Barry Norman, why that’s the — ” Pete started to say. But Jupe interrupted him loudly.
“Pete, I think it’s time to tell Chief Reynolds that we’re working on a case and that that car was a part of it, and that we can’t expose our client,
The chief threw up his hands.
“If you keep me in the dark, I’ve got to go by the rule book, boys,” said the chief.
“So do we,” Jupe said.