The Three Investigators
Crimebusters #5
Text by
Marc Brandel
Based on characters created by
Robert Arthur
The seventeen-year-old didn’t want to sound conceited in front of his two friends, so he didn’t add that he thought he could have solved it himself at age five.
Pete Crenshaw, who was working on another copy of the same crossword, didn’t think it was so easy. Would a kid of ten know who “Dagwood’s wife” was? The name Dagwood did sound familiar to him, but he couldn’t quite place it.
Bob Andrews propped his long legs up on the desk. He had solved the Dagwood clue. He penciled in the answer and moved on to the next one. “Frivolous or light-headed.” Five letters beginning with G. “Giddy.”
The Three Investigators were sitting in their headquarters in The Jones Salvage Yard in Rocky Beach, California, a small town a few miles up the Coast Highway from Los Angeles.
They were into the second week of their summer vacation. Ordinarily, they would all have been busy outdoors. Their detective firm had no cases right now, but the guys had plenty of other things to do.
Ordinarily Jupe — as Jupiter was known to his friends — would have been swimming in the ocean. A brisk swim every day kept your weight down. He hoped.
Pete would have been surfing or driving his girlfriend, Kelly Madigan, around in the MG convertible he had bought secondhand and spent weeks souping up.
Bob would have been at an outdoor rock concert. Probably with one or two or three of the girls who followed him around like groupies. He worked part-time for a local talent agent and could often get free tickets. Actually Bob’s quiet good looks were far more attractive to his string of female admirers than any freebies.
But for the past three days the TV weatherman had kept forecasting scattered showers. As far as Jupe could see, that meant it would only drizzle as long as you stayed indoors. If you went out in the open, you were in for a good soaking.
He wrote in another two letters and threw his pen down beside the completed crossword puzzle.
“ ‘Opposite of down,’ ” he said contemptuously. “Give me a break! A gerbil could guess these answers.”
“I did get that one.” Pete smiled. “Up.”
“ ‘This contest is open only to male high school students between the ages of fourteen and eighteen,’ ” he read aloud. “ ‘There is no entrance fee.’ ” He looked up. “Where did you get these things, Pete?”
“They were giving them away at the super-market here in town,” Pete explained. “The answers are easy for you, Jupe. You were born with an overgrown brain. But what’s ‘sorrow or misfortune’? Three letters ending in E.”
“Woe,” Bob told him.
Jupe went back to reading the instructions. “ ‘The grand prize is an all-expenses-paid, two-week visit to a beautiful ranch in northern Mexico. Attractions there include horseback riding, fishing in the large fresh-water lake, camping, delicious barbecued steaks — ’ ”
“Stop right there,” Pete put in. “I’ll take it!” He was the most athletic of the teenage detectives and had a healthy appetite.
He looked up at the ceiling of the trailer that served the Investigators as headquarters. Raindrops pinged on the metal roof.
“And maybe the weather’s better in Mexico than it is here,” Pete added. “I don’t mind surfing in the rain. But how can you surf when there’s no waves? The ocean’s as flat as a football field.”
Jupe hadn’t been listening to Pete or the raindrops. He was still absorbed in the instructions on the back of the leaflet.
‘ “No answers should be submitted in writing,’ ” he continued reading aloud. “ ‘They must be recorded on tape. First read the answers to the across clues into your tape recorder — ’ ”
He broke off. His eyes moved rapidly down the rest of the page.
“That’s weird,” he said.
“What’s weird?” Bob asked. The instructions seemed simple enough to him. As simple as the answer to “Not there.”
“Here,” he wrote in before glancing up at Jupe.
“Printing leaflets costs money,” Jupiter mused. “Two weeks on a ranch in Mexico costs money too. Why would anyone put up all that dough for such a dumb contest?”
“Because it’s an advertising gimmick,” Bob told him. The pop music world in which he spent so much of his spare time had taught him to recognize a come-on when he saw one. “They want you to buy a tape recorder. And a blank cassette.”
Jupe nodded. “Makes sense,” he agreed. “Only there’s no mention of a store where you can buy them. No word about any brand names either.”
“They were handing out the leaflets at the super-market,” Pete reminded him. “Maybe they’ve got a sale on stuff like that or something.”
Jupe shook his head. “If you had eyes for anything besides Kelly Madigan,” he told Pete, “you might have noticed they don’t stock any electronic equipment at the Rocky Beach super-market. Not even pocket calculators.”
He looked at the leaflet again.
Jupe, who was short and overweight, did not enjoy moving more than he had to. Two weeks on a ranch in Mexico, riding horses and fishing, was not his idea of a grand prize. But the puzzle contest had stirred his curiosity. Who was putting up the money for it? And why?
“They’ve probably been distributing these leaflets all over the Los Angeles area,” Jupe said. “And the answers are so obvious they’re going to get hundreds of perfect solutions. So they’ll have to pick one. At least there are three of us. Together, we have three times as good a chance of winning.”
Bob looked at him in surprise. “You mean you want to audition for this gig?” he asked.
“Sure. Why not?” Jupe frowned. Bob’s habit of using the slang of musicians sometimes got under his skin. Though Bob had drifted away from the Three Investigators into the fringes of show business, Jupe was as committed to The Team as ever.
Jupe took a tape recorder out of his desk drawer, inserted a blank cassette, and handed it to Pete with his own completed puzzle.
“You go first,” he said. “Start with the horizontal words.”
Pete glanced at the crossword before switching on the recorder. He made a disgusted sound.
“
An hour later the Three Investigators had three correct, recorded tapes packed into manila envelopes made out to the Santa Monica address printed on the leaflets. They had also included their names and addresses as mentioned in the instructions.
The sound of raindrops on the roof had stopped.
“Might as well go out and mail them,” Bob said, “before it starts pouring again.” He had taken out his contact lenses and was busy cleaning them with his special kit.
“Or we could drive into Santa Monica,” Jupe suggested, “and deliver them by hand.”
“What’s in Santa Monica?” Pete wanted to know. “Besides a lot of wet beach.”
“We could ride around for a while,” Bob told him. “Maybe stop for a pizza. Check out the action. See what shows up.” He put his lenses back into his eyes. Pete nodded. He was hungry. Jupe didn’t say anything. He had sworn off fast food. It was fattening. And he knew what would show up: girls.
Not that Jupe had anything against girls. He was as interested in them as either of his two friends. The trouble was, they didn’t seem interested in him. Especially when Bob was around.
But Jupe did want to go into Santa Monica. He wanted to scout out the address on the crossword puzzle leaflet. A sign on the door might give him some lead as to what the contest was all about. “Okay, let’s go,” he said.
“Whose car do we take?” Pete wanted to know. “The roof of my MG leaks and I haven’t had time to fix it.”
“Well, we definitely can’t take my car,” Jupiter said darkly. His Honda Civic had been totaled while the Three Investigators were working on a case. And his savings were still too meager to pay for another car.
“Ugh,” Pete groaned, “squashed in the bug again.”
Bob socked him in the arm as the three guys headed for Bob’s red Volkswagen. Jupe sat in front while Bob drove. Pete slumped in the back with his feet up on the seat. At seventeen, Pete was six foot one with legs to match. There was no way he could sit in the front of the VW without bruising his knees on the dashboard.
It was drizzling again as they drove down the Coast Highway.
“It’s abnormal,” Pete complained, looking out at the rain-washed shore.
“Yeah.” Bob knew what Pete meant. “Not like San Francisco. You expect it to rain there.” His job had taken him up there a few times. His boss, Sax Sendler, had used Bob as a roadie for groups he booked in that city.
Once in Santa Monica the Three Investigators soon found the street they were looking for in the downtown shopping area. Jupe watched the numbers go by.
“There,” he said suddenly, touching Bob’s arm. “Just up ahead where all those people.
He didn’t need to say any more. A crowd had gathered outside one of the stores on the street. Two police cars with circling lights were drawn up at the curb.
“Come on.” Jupe opened his door as Bob brought the VW to a stop.
“That’s it!” Jupe told them. “The address we’re supposed to mail our entries to. Let’s find out what’s going on.”
The three friends edged their way into the crowd. Two policemen were rattling the glass-topped door, peering inside. They were evidently preparing to break in if they saw anything suspicious.
Jupe studied the building in his usual methodical way. It was impossible to tell what the store had once sold. It didn’t sell anything now. The plate glass display windows had all been whitewashed on the inside. FOR sale signs were plastered all over them.
None of the people Jupe asked seemed to know what was happening. But he could tell one thing. If anyone had been trying to break into the shop, they hadn’t succeeded in opening the door. Maybe the burglar alarm had gone off before they could get inside.
He walked across the street to a drugstore and bought some stamps from a machine. He dropped the three manila envelopes holding the tapes into a nearby mailbox. Then he rejoined the crowd outside the empty store, looking for his two friends.
He saw Bob at once. The tall, blond guy was talking to a pretty, dark-haired girl about his own age near the police car. She was a nose wrinkler, Jupe noticed. She couldn’t say ten words without wrinkling her nose. But he had to admit that she was also very cute.
Pete reappeared, and waited impatiently with Jupe for Bob to finish. Finally the third Investigator touched the girl’s arm in a friendly way and left her. All three guys climbed back into the VW.
“She give you her phone number?” Jupe asked a little enviously as they drove away.
Bob shook his head.
“She collects early Judy Garland records,” he explained. “She’s not my type.”
Maybe that explained the nose wrinkling, Jupe thought. The girl had copied it from late-night Judy Garland movies on TV.
“How come it took you ten minutes to find out she didn’t like rock?” Pete asked as they, headed back to the Coast Highway. “I thought you were a fast worker.”
“That was just for openers,” Bob told him. “The rest of the time she was talking about the burglary. Attempted burglary, anyway.”
“So give,” Jupe said. They were supposed to be investigating the puzzles, not picking up girls.
“The way she told it,” Bob went on, “she was coming out of the coffee shop across the street when the burglar alarm outside that store went off. Then she saw a woman run away from the store, jump into a blue car, and burn rubber driving away.”
“Did she see the woman’s face?” Jupe asked.
“Blond hair. Slender build. About forty years old,” Bob said. “Color of eyes — unknown. The woman was wearing shades.”
“Shades!” Pete exclaimed. “On a day like this you’d need windshield wipers on ’em!”
“Yeah,” Jupe agreed. “Our forty-year-old blonde sounds like a bit of a mystery.”
He was silent for a moment, thinking it over.
“She tries to break into an empty store — to find what?”
Silence.
Jupe couldn’t let it go. “Something so valuable that she risked arrest to get it. Guys, there’s more to this contest than barbecued steaks!”
Pete was having trouble with his girlfriend, Kelly. She seemed to have cooled off a little lately. Although Kelly was the one who had first suggested going steady, her way of going steady wasn’t what it had been. Sometimes when he’d arranged to pick her up at her house, he’d find she wasn’t home. She had gone shopping with a girlfriend. This hadn’t changed Pete’s feelings about her. And he often felt she was just as attached to him as ever, in her own casual way. But Pete did find he was wasting a lot of his vacation waiting around for her. It cut into his surfing time and even his karate practice.
Jupe was again making a determined effort to lose weight. At 5 feet 8 ? inches and 190 pounds, he could no longer hide the truth from himself. He wasn’t just stocky. He was. well, maybe not exactly fat. But his physique could use a lot of improvement. His problem was that the more he swam and practiced his judo, the hungrier he felt. And the harder it was to stick to his new diet.
This week it was Keil Halfebrot’s Body-Building Regimen — nothing but protein and salads. Since muscleman Halfebrot looked like Superman and Jupiter resembled a large pear, he thought it would be worth a shot.
One afternoon Jupe was standing outside his electronics workshop, next to Headquarters. The workshop was a tinkerer’s paradise, jammed with all the equipment needed to build and repair the electronic gadgets the team used on their cases.
And that’s exactly what Jupiter was doing now — tinkering. He was testing a new security device for the workshop, a lock that could only be opened when he spoke the special password.
Pete was on the other side of the headquarters trailer in his makeshift auto shop. He had been stood up by Kelly for the second time that week.
Jupe adjusted a final silicon chip.
“Beware of the dog,” he commanded.
“What?” Pete kept cutting the canvas that would become a new roof for his convertible.
“Rats,” Jupe complained. “The lock’s supposed to open when I say that.
As Jupiter was rolling his eyes the phone rang in his workshop. Jupe ignored it, knowing there was another extension in Headquarters. Bob was inside, laying out a leaflet for the rock concert on the word processor. The call was probably one of his girlfriends begging him for a date. Let him answer the phone.
After a moment it stopped ringing. Pete went back to his auto pit.
Bob stepped out of the trailer. “Jupe, it’s your Aunt Mathilda.” Jupe caught a glimpse of three pretty young faces inside before his friend closed the door.