The Chase for the Mystery Twister (10 page)

“Yeah, but she didn't know that Chet had backed out of the deal,” Phil reminded Frank.

“But because of Iola's one comment, the insurance company made us get all this verification before they would pay Joe and me the four hundred dollars back,” Frank explained, then removed his hand from the mouthpiece to speak. “Hi, United Insurers? I can't identify myself, but the tornado damage claim for one point seven million dollars on the Kanner farm in Tulip, Oklahoma, is a fraud.”

Frank hung up the phone.

“But we aren't
sure
it's a fraud,” Phil says.

“No. And if it's for real, Kanner will eventually get his money. But if United Insurers lets Mr. Bixby hand over that payment to Mr. Kanner
this afternoon,
I will eat the hat of every cowboy in Oklahoma,” Frank said, joining the others in laughter.

•  •  •

“Dad? It's me,” Joe said over the telephone in Jansen's office. “Sorry to call you collect again, but I need a favor.”

“All right, Joe, shoot,” Fenton Hardy said.

Joe explained as much as he could about the
insurance fraud, impersonation, and other scams he believed were being committed in Lone Wolf. “I need some information, and it's the kind of information only you can get for me.”

Fenton Hardy didn't speak for a moment. They both knew what Joe was asking. Mr. Hardy was a one-time police officer and now a private investigator. Over the years, Frank and Joe had come to believe their dad had some link to every branch of law enforcement in the country.

“Do you need me to use my contacts to get information from police files or government files?” Mr. Hardy asked.

Joe cleared his throat. “Both. I need everything you can get me about a company called Tamco and an insurance salesman named Alvin Bixby and an art collector named Hal Kanner.”

“Pertaining to . . . ?” Fenton asked.

“Insurance. Claims, fraud, background, anything,” Joe said.

Fenton chuckled. “Is that all?”

“Um, no! One more thing,” Joe said. “Anything you can dig up on a man named Todd Allan Miller. That may be an alias.”

“Is he the president of Tamco?” Fenton asked.

“Maybe,” Joe said, furrowing his eyebrows, puzzled. “What made you ask?”

“Todd Allan Miller. T.A.M.,” Fenton explained. “His corporate abbreviation would be—”

“Tamco!” Joe jumped in. “Dad, you're a genius. Thanks!”

Joe gave his father the number at Windstormer headquarters so he could call back with his findings. Outside Jansen's office, Joe ran into Phil.

“Boy, do I have news for you,” Phil told Joe.

“You can tell me on the way to the Dust Bowl Truck Stop,” Joe said, turning Phil right back around and out the door.

“What's at the Dust Bowl?” Phil wondered as he hopped into the driver's seat of the Blue Bomber.

“I have a hunch about the man in the black wig,” Joe replied, “and I want to prove it.”

•  •  •

Frank pushed through the revolving door of the new office building that was home to Glover Laboratories.

“Nice place, huh?” Diana asked. “Glover has corporate sponsors, so his facilities are a bit more deluxe.”

“Why doesn't Mr. Jansen get corporate sponsors?” Frank asked as they stepped onto the elevator.

“He doesn't want anyone pressuring him or telling him what to do,” Diana explained. “Why, Frank? You want to switch camps?”

Frank smiled. “What? And give up the dog kennel?”

The elevator stopped on the sixth floor and opened into a reception area for Glover Laboratories. Behind the receptionist's desk were large tinted windows that looked in on what Frank guessed was Glover's control room. Radar screens, high-tech graphic computers, and various atmospheric monitors lined the wall, manned by half a dozen technicians.

“It looks like Glover could have doctored that videotape right here,” Frank said quietly to Diana as they approached the receptionist.

When they reached the desk, Diana said, “Hi, I'm Diana Lucas.”

“Yes, I know,” the receptionist replied coolly.

“Would you let Mr. Glover know I'm here?” Diana continued. “I'd like to talk to him about that job he's been offering me.”

“Mr. Glover isn't available,” the receptionist replied. “If you'd like, you can make an appointment for next week.”

Jed McPlat stepped out of the lab into the reception area, holding a file folder. “We need this delivered to Terry Clark at Channel Nine,” he told the receptionist.

“Hi, Jed,” Diana said with a warm smile.

Frank saw Jed's face light up when he saw her. “Diana! What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I wanted to talk to Mr. Glover about a job,” Diana replied.

“You told me you would never work for him,” Jed reminded her. “What changed your mind?”

“Oh, well . . .” Diana began.

Frank saw she was at a loss for words and jumped in. “The mystery twister tape is going to bring Glover Laboratories national recognition and a lot more funding. We want to be a part of that.”

Jed gave Frank a sour look. “Mr. Glover's analyzing the tape right now. Diana, you're welcome to come in, but your friend has to wait here.”

Diana looked to Frank, who nodded that it was all right. While the receptionist was buzzing in Jed and Diana, Frank slipped up to the control room window to get a better look. He could see Glover looking at a video monitor, and he recognized the image of the so-called mystery twister tearing apart Kanner's home. Glover appeared to be watching the tape frame by frame, rewinding, and watching the same section again.

“Excuse me. You'll have to wait downstairs,” the receptionist said sharply, and rose from her desk to escort Frank out.

Standing in front of the office tower, Frank wondered why Glover would be studying his own videotape. Maybe trying to fix any glitches that could prove it had been fabricated, he thought.

A small object suddenly struck Frank on the back of the neck and fell to the ground. Frank scooped the object off the ground. It was an earring.

Looking up and blocking the sun from his eyes,
Frank was able to see someone waving to him from an upper-floor window. It was Diana! Without warning, she threw something else out the window.

Frank watched the object fall two floors before realizing it was black and rectangular. It was the videocassette!

Frank bolted toward the building. But the tape was falling faster than he was running. If it hit the concrete, their key piece of evidence would be broken into a hundred pieces!

Diving and stretching like a football receiver, Frank nabbed the tape just before it hit the ground, then landed on the concrete with a thud.

A businessman walked past Frank, who was laid out on his stomach near the front step, and gave Frank an odd look.

“How are you?” Frank gasped from the ground, giving the man a friendly wave with the videocassette. Frank groaned as he rose to his knees, feeling his ribs. Those will be black and blue by tomorrow, he thought to himself.

He looked up, trying to find Diana in the sixth-story window.

“Here I am!” Diana called, speeding out the revolving door. “I tripped a circuit breaker, and while they were trying to restore power, I
snagged the tape,” she explained as they raced to the Jeep.

“How did you get away to find the main electrics box?” Frank asked.

“They think I'm fixing my makeup in the bathroom,” Diana said, grabbing the roll bar and swinging into the driver's seat.

“Nice work, Diana,” Frank said, looking at the videocassette. “Now the rest is up to Phil.”

• • •

“A cream-colored sedan? Nope, never saw it,” the short-order cook at the Dust Bowl Truck Stop told Joe and Phil.

“Did you see this man?” Phil asked, showing him the photo of the Gill impostor. “We think his name is Todd Allan Miller.”

“No. Sorry, boys,” the cook replied. “I see a hundred different guys a day.”

“We should get moving, Joe,” Phil said, turning to leave. “We're due to meet your brother and Diana back at Oklahoma Tech.”

Joe got an idea. Taking a black felt-tipped pen from a display on the counter, he drew on the glass plate covering the photo, adding curly black hair and a black mustache.

“What about this man?” he asked the cook.

The cook laughed at first, then stopped. “Hmm. A driver who looked like that parked his truck out back overnight about two days ago.”

“An unmarked white truck?” Joe asked.

“I think so,” the cook said.

“Thanks,” Joe said, smiling with excitement. “Come on, Phil.”

“Okay, I admit it,” Phil said as they left the truck stop, “I'm confused.”

“Picture this,” Joe said, leading Phil around the building. “Henry Low River follows our Gill impostor from his office to here. What's the only way a car and a man could suddenly disappear at a truck stop?”

Phil looked around him. “If he drove his car into the back of a truck!”

“Right. Our impostor then puts on his disguise and becomes . . .” Joe waited for Phil to fill in the blank.

“The mystery man!” Phil exclaimed, grinning.

“One and the same,” Joe pointed out. “We passed his truck on our way in from the airport.”

“Right,” Phil said. “He was headed for Tulip.”

“And for Hal Kanner's farm, is my guess,” Joe went on. “Remember the tracks Frank found? They were made by an eighteen-wheeler.”

“But why would Hal Kanner need a truck?” Phil asked. “What was on it?”

Joe snapped his fingers. “Once I was visiting a friend's farm, and his dad had to tear a stump out of the ground. He wrapped chains around it and uprooted it with his tractor.”

“And Frank saw tractor tire prints at Kanner's farm!” Phil exclaimed.

“My guess is they used a tractor and some other equipment they had in the truck to tear
Kanner's house down and then claim it was a tornado that did it.”

“So Gill—I mean, this Miller character—is Kanner's accomplice?” Phil asked.

“That's my hunch,” Joe said. As he opened the passenger door of the Blue Bomber, he stopped dead and stared past the corner of the truck stop café. “Phil, it's there.”

Parked among a dozen other tractor-trailers in the back lot, Joe saw the white, unmarked truck.

“Come on, Phil,” Joe said, walking toward the back lot.

“Wait. What if Miller's here?” Phil asked, not moving.

“After nearly dropping a barn on Frank and running me over with a thresher,” Joe replied, smacking the palm of his hand with his fist, “I kind of hope he is here.”

Joe crept cautiously up to the cab of the white truck. Jumping up on the running board, he looked inside the cab. No one was there. “Let's check around the back,” he told Phil, who had reluctantly joined the search.

Rounding the back of the trailer, Joe saw that the rear door was sealed and apparently locked.

“It's hydraulic,” Phil explained, examining the door closely. “Lowers outward from the top, see, creating a loading platform. Or, if you lower it all the way to the ground . . .”

Phil let Joe fill in the blank this time. “A ramp,” Joe concluded. “Can we open it?”

“No controls on the outside, so they must be in the cab,” Phil replied.

“And being the mechanical wizard you are, you probably can devise a way to get to it,” Joe said, smiling.

“Yes, using a complex, technologically advanced technique,” Phil joked. “Find me a coat hanger.”

Five minutes later Phil slid a coat hanger between the driver's window and the door, hooked the locking mechanism, and pulled it up.

Phil and Joe climbed in and began searching for the controls to the rear door.

“Hmm,” Joe muttered as he picked up a black metallic device from under the passenger seat. “I wonder what this is.”

“I can tell you exactly what that is,” Phil said, taking the device from Joe and looking it over. “It's called a black box. They're standard Air Force issue on fighter jets.”

“You mean a black box as in ‘flight recorder'?” Joe asked.

“No, I mean black box as in ‘radar jammer,' ” Phil replied.

“Now we know how they pulled that off,” Joe said, searching the dashboard for the controls to the rear door. “Here!”

“Yup, those are the controls,” Phil confirmed.

“Stay here and keep an eye out, Phil,” Joe instructed as he hopped down from the cab.

Phil nodded and pressed a button. Joe watched
the rear door slowly lower until it was parallel to the ground. Joe jumped up onto the loading platform and walked into the trailer.

The compartment was filled with machinery, a huge tractor with an electric winch and a set of chains, hooks, and pulleys attached to the back. That must be what left the marks on the trees at Kanner's farm, Joe thought. Under a tarp, Joe found a wood chipper and a snowblower, which he guessed were used to splinter pieces of the house and to spread dirt, broken glass, and other debris after the tractor had pulled down the walls.

Opening a large chest, Joe found a chain saw, a nail driver, and a pile driver. “Your basic portable tornado,” Joe said quietly to himself. Circling around to the other side of the compartment, Joe found a wooden crate near the door.

Removing the top with a pry bar from the tool chest, he discovered it was filled with heavily wrapped and padded objects. Opening the first package, he gasped. It was a vase with the same pattern as the fragment he had found on the farm.

Tearing away some paper covering a framed portrait, Joe quickly recognized the image of the Pilgrim. Joe was not an art expert, but he had a strong hunch he was looking at two genuine artifacts. Kanner had purchased the real items so that he could insure them to the hilt, Joe guessed, and then destroyed cheap copies.