The Chase for the Mystery Twister (5 page)

“He sure was in a hurry to get nowhere,” Joe commented.

“Yeah,” Frank said, rubbing his bottom lip. “I wonder what that's all about.”

•  •  •

The Windstormers were headquartered in a modest group of buildings that, Phil explained, used to be part of an old ranch. He showed the Hardys to their “room,” a corner of an equipment storage area where two sleeping bags had been rolled out. “This used to be a dog kennel. The old owners bred sheepdogs.”

“That's comforting to know,” Joe said.

“Sorry, guys. Not much extra space at Club Jansen,” their friend said, laughing.

“Honestly, Phil, it's fine,” Frank said. “We'll be happy to sit quietly for a few hours.”

“Cool,” Phil said. “Because it's my turn to clean the bathrooms.”

Joe laughed. “Hey, who said being an intern wasn't glamorous?”

Phil showed the boys to the kitchen before leaving them. After grabbing two sandwiches
and a couple of sodas from the refrigerator, Frank and Joe sat down to sort through all the strange happenings in Lone Wolf and Tulip that day.

“In Tulip,” Frank began, “we have Hal Kanner trying to collect on a fishy insurance claim.”

“And in Lone Wolf,” Joe continued, “we have the disappearance of Toby Gill.”

Frank posed a question to his brother. “Who would benefit from Toby Gill being out of the way?”

“Henry Low River,” Joe replied through a mouthful of ham and cheese. “It would satisfy his grudge.”

“Or Alvin Bixby,” Frank suggested, “the other insurance guy. That's certainly one way of getting rid of the competition.”

“Let's work on the Kanner problem first,” Joe suggested, sucking down the rest of his soda. “I'd like to inspect the Kanner farm more closely, when there aren't so many people around.”

“Good idea. The whole tornado aftermath seemed scripted,” Frank said.

“Scripted?” Joe asked.

“Yeah. Too perfect,” Frank explained. “Not a single witness to verify Kanner's story. If we can find some more hard evidence that Kanner is trying to collect money on works of art that were never destroyed, we can bring it to Sheriff San Dimas.”

Joe nodded and finished off his sandwich.

Things were quiet in the Windstormer control
room as Joe and Frank stopped behind a radar screen manned by Diana Lucas.

“What's the forecast?” Frank asked.

“It stinks,” Diana replied. “There's a break in the weather. Zero percent chance of tornadoes until at least tomorrow afternoon.”

“Bummer,” Joe said. “Did Mr. Jansen find out anything from the National Severe Storm Laboratories?”

“Something jammed their radar reception, too,” Diana replied. “The trouble only lasted for five minutes. NSSL pinpointed the location—about three miles from the Kanner farm—but when they sent the authorities there to investigate, all they found was an empty field.”

“That means no one has any images of the mystery twister,” Joe said.

“Why would someone jam radar transmissions?” Frank wondered.

“For the same reason some hackers break into a corporation's computers and plant viruses,” Diana replied. “To prove that they can.”

“And to prove that they're jerks,” Joe added.

Phil walked in, wearing rubber gloves and carrying a mop and a bucket. “Finished!”

“Take a breather, Phil,” Diana said. “Nothing to do around here till tomorrow.”

“Phil, you're a technology buff,” Frank began. “How would someone jam radar transmissions?”

“Simple,” Phil responded. “You can rig a microwave oven—”

“That wouldn't affect an area this vast,” Diana said. “You would need the kind of jammer they use in the military.”

“Hmm. Why don't we take a drive, Phil?” Frank proposed.

“Are there some sights you'd like to see?” Phil asked.

“One,” Frank replied. “The site of the mystery twister.”

By the time Phil and the Hardys reached the red clay road leading to the Kanner farm, the sun was beginning to set. The place seemed completely deserted now. Phil parked the Blue Bomber behind a grouping of trees so that it couldn't be seen from the highway.

“I'm glad we thought to bring these,” Joe said, grabbing a flashlight and handing two more to Frank and Phil. “This is real country darkness out here.”

“Why are we here, exactly?” Phil asked as they walked down the clay drive.

“Remember how nervous Kanner got when I found that phony piece of Ming vase?” Joe said.

“You don't think that he just misidentified it?” Phil asked.

“Let's put it this way. Frank and I think there may have been more than Mother Nature at work out here today,” Joe said. “And if we snoop around here, maybe we can find some proof.”

Frank's flashlight beam fell on the padlocked
door to the storm shelter. “I noticed this earlier, and it still doesn't make sense,” he said.

“What doesn't?” Joe asked.

“Why would Hal Kanner go to the trouble of padlocking his storm shelter right after a tornado has leveled his house?” Frank said.

“I would be thinking about the valuable stuff I wanted to salvage,” Phil said.

“Exactly,” Frank said.

“Do you think he's hiding something down there?” Joe asked.

Frank shook his head. “Take a look. The keyhole on the lock is rusted over. I doubt it's been opened in years.”

“Then Kanner was lying about being in the storm shelter when the twister hit,” Joe said.

Frank nodded and pulled his penknife from his pocket, “It's an old lock. I might be able to pick it.” Frank scraped away the rust and wiggled the point of the blade back and forth in the keyhole. Finally, the lock popped open.

Cobwebs stretched across the staircase leading down into the small shelter. “As I thought, no one's been in this shelter in a long time,” Frank remarked. “You and Phil check inside what's left of the house, and I'll check the grounds.”

On every fallen tree, Frank found the same marks where something had scraped off the bark. Beneath one tree, Frank noticed a patch of red clay that had been sheltered from the rain. In it
he could make out the track of a tractor tire. That's odd, Frank thought. Kanner doesn't appear to own a tractor or have a barn where he could keep one.

Frank was surprised by how dark it had gotten so quickly. He stumbled in a depression in the ground. Shining his flashlight downward, he saw that his foot had caught in some deep tire tracks. They were double tracks, like the type made by a tractor-trailer, and so deep, Frank guessed, it must have been a truck loaded down with cargo.

As he moved on toward the black silhouette of another fallen tree, he realized it was, in fact, a telephone pole. He traced the length of the pole with his flashlight beam. The telephone wires had been torn in half when it fell. So how did Kanner call Bixby to tell him about the twister? Frank wondered.

Meanwhile, Joe moved carefully through the shambles of the Kanner house, balancing on broken planks and fallen beams. An elaborate gilded picture frame caught his eye, and he pulled it from beneath a pile of broken glass and rubble.

The broken frame looked ancient, and the portrait was of a man dressed as a Pilgrim. Shining his flashlight on the edge of the torn canvas, Joe noticed something odd. Although the back of the canvas was brown and faded, the torn edge revealed a bright white canvas beneath it.

“Take a look at this, Phil,” Joe called to his friend.

Phil examined the canvas closely. “The canvas looks new. It looks like it was just stained to make it look old.”

“In other words, it looks like a forgery, right?” Joe asked.

Phil nodded. “Maybe Kanner really is up to something.”

They heard a creaking noise from another room. Phil and Joe stood frozen for a moment, listening. There was a faint sound, like steam rushing through a pipe.

“Sounds like the house is still shifting,” Phil whispered.

Joe sniffed the air. A strange smell was filling the area.

“Yuck,” Phil said, putting his hand over his nose. “What is it?”

“Propane,” Joe replied.

Frank was moving toward the house, eager to tell the others what he had discovered, when he noticed a small fire erupt over near the pump house. The flames spread quickly, following a thin trail of flammable material leading straight to the ruins of the house.

“Joe, Phil! Run for it!” Frank screamed at the top of his lungs. “The house is going to blow!”

Hearing Frank's warning, Joe turned and, through a broken window, spotted the trail of flames speeding toward the house.

“This way!” he shouted to Phil. But as they tried to hopscotch through the piled-up debris, a fallen section of wall gave way under Phil. His leg crashed through the hole and stuck fast.

Joe saw that the flame trail had reached the edge of the house. Broken glass and splintered wood surrounded Phil, but Joe knew there was no time to be delicate. He roughly yanked Phil's leg back through the hole with his muscular arms and carried his friend beyond the piled-up clutter.

“Over here!” Frank yelled, motioning to Joe as he and Phil emerged from the building. Frank
opened the shelter door and moved to help his friend and his brother.

“I can walk!” Phil shouted. Joe let him down, and the two boys ran full-steam for the shelter. Joe and Phil leaped through the spiderwebs covering the doorway, tumbling down the stairs.

As Frank tried to follow, he heard a massive explosion and felt burning heat on his back. The force of the explosion threw him down the stairs and on top of Joe, who cushioned his fall.

The ground outside caught fire, fueled by the bits of debris. The wooden door of the shelter was on fire.

“I'll shut the door!” Phil shouted, heading up the stairs.

“No! If we stay down here, well be baked like clams,” Frank realized.

Joe nodded. “Let's make a break for it.”

The three boys rushed up the stairs and zigzagged through narrow paths of wet ground that had not caught on fire. Reaching safety, they turned back to look at the blaze.

“There goes the Kanner farmhouse,” Frank said.

Joe leaned over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “And with it, all our evidence.”

Phil used the CB in the Blue Bomber to radio for help. Fifteen minutes later it was not a fire engine but a water tanker truck and eight civilians in cars that showed up on the scene.

“Tulip Volunteer Fire Department!” a gray-haired man in a yellow raincoat announced.

Sheriff San Dimas and a deputy pulled up in their squad car. “Holy cow, how'd this get started?” San Dimas asked.

“No time now, Sheriff,” the gray-haired man said. “We're going to need every man if we're going to get this fire under control.”

San Dimas nodded and grabbed two buckets from one of the volunteers' trunks.

“We'll be glad to help you put it out, too,” Joe offered.

“We don't have enough water to put it out, son,” the gray-haired man told Joe, handing him a shovel. “We need to control it and let it burn out on its own.”

While Joe, Frank, and Phil helped the volunteers dig a ditch, or firebreak, encircling one-half of the fire, the tanker truck pumped water to soak the ground in front of the other side of the flame wall. Unable to spread any farther, the fire burned itself out in a couple of hours.

The gray-haired firefighter came walking out of the charred remains of the house and reported to San Dimas. “Looks like the tornado ruptured the gas main. Then something touched it off.”

Sheriff San Dimas looked at Frank. “Any idea what that something was?”

“It was arson,” Frank told San Dimas, and led him to the spot near the scorched pump house where he had seen the fire erupt.

San Dimas looked at the burned, blackened ground that surrounded them. “If there was any evidence it was started on purpose, it'll be hard to find now.”

The boys told San Dimas their suspicions about Hal Kanner—about the call that he claimed he made even though his phone lines were down, the unused storm shelter he said he was hiding in when the twister hit, the unexplained tire tracks, the apparent forged painting, and the Ming vase fragment inscribed “Occupied Japan.”

“It does sound fishy,” San Dimas agreed. “Do you have the painting or the vase fragment?”

Joe and Frank frowned and shook their heads. “They're in there,” Joe said, nodding in the direction of the house.

“Maybe we can still dig something out of this mess,” San Dimas said. “I'll station Deputy Klement here for the night and come back at first daylight to take a closer look. Right now, I have some other problems to deal with. Toby Gill is still missing, and there's been no answer at Henry Low River's place all day. I'm headed out to Tahlequah right now to try to find him.”

“Shouldn't somebody tell Mr. Kanner about the fire?” Klement asked.

“Just in case he forgot that he started it,” Joe said under his breath to Phil.

“Mr. Kanner didn't start it,” the deputy said sharply. “I saw him through the window of the diner when we were leaving Lone Wolf.”

“He's probably staying at the Sandman Motel tonight,” San Dimas said.

“How do you know?” Joe wondered.

“Because it's the only motel in a twenty-mile radius,” San Dimas replied.

“We're headed back to town,” Frank offered. “We can give Mr. Kanner the message.”

San Dimas considered Frank and his friends for a moment. “That better be all you do. Just give him the message.”

The boys nodded. In the Blue Bomber, they followed San Dimas down the clay road and onto the two-lane highway.

“Are you really just going to give Kanner the message about the fire?” Phil asked.

“Sure,” Frank replied with a smile. “I just might ask him a few questions first.”