The Hidden Valley Mystery (8 page)

He heard Lou panting. A hand tugged at his shirt.

Mike yanked it free. He felt the trees start spinning. Three more steps. One. Two. He forced himself forward. Lou’s fingers brushed his ankle. Three! The path turned sharply. Mike grabbed the birch trunk on his right and threw himself behind.

Eyes closed, he heard Lou scream. Over the edge of Dead Man’s Cliff Lou pitched. Gravel and sand roared, as he slid away.

Mike rolled onto his back. High above, a little white cloud shaped like a sheep puffed across a bright blue sky. Mike watched it float along, happy and free. No thunder grumbled in its ear. No lightning flashed at its tail. “Hi, little cloud,” Mike croaked. When the cloud saw Mike, it bobbed down and rubbed a cool nose on his forehead. “I didn’t fall off this time,” Mike mumbled. “I didn’t fall off.”

“That’s good,” the cloud replied. “Are you O.K.? You look white as the moon.”

Mike blinked open his eyes. That moon seemed familiar. But there wasn’t supposed to be a moon in the daytime. He looked around. The bright blue sky disappeared. He blinked. It was night, and the moon was Tuan’s worried face bending over him. “The man ...” Mike began.

“Lou, your nice neighbour? Oh, he dove over the cliff-edge and slid all the way down.” Tuan chuckled. “Guess who was waiting to greet him at the bottom?”

Mike shook his head to clear his thoughts. “The police?” he asked, easing himself up on one elbow.

“You bet,” Tuan replied. “I saw the whole thing. After Gunnar piggybacked me to the golf course fence, I started this way to wait for you both. Far ahead in the moonlight, I saw you push through the hole in the wire. Right after, your nice neighbour lunged out of the woods. He knocked you down. I tried to catch up, to help. When I couldn’t, I signalled up the hill to Freddy and the police.”

“Signalled?” Mike asked, “How?”

“With the flashlight you dropped, sloppy,” Tuan giggled.

Mike laughed. “You’re amazing, Tuan. But what’s happened to Gunnar?”

Tuan shrugged. “After he dropped me over the fence, he ran back into the trees—to leave his ‘trademark’, he said. We’ll probably meet him soon. If you think you can walk, I know a trail that winds out near Gunnar’s backyard.”

Mike nodded. “I’m O.K.” He was anxious to find Gunnar. “Just help me up.”

CHAPTER 17 – The Mystery Solved

Long past midnight, overlooking the valley below, Mike and Tuan sprawled on their stomachs in the cool grass of Gunnar’s backyard. Beneath them, some distance to the north, specks of light bobbed along the bottom of Dead Man’s Cliff. Between cricket songs, faint voices floated up. On the far side of the valley, a flashing red light—the third police cruiser—wound from the Parks and Rec centre down to the river bank. To Mike, it felt as if he and Tuan were watching fireflies dance between flames. Both hoped Gunnar and Freddy would show up soon.

Mike rolled onto his side and looked at Tuan. “I still don’t understand,” he said. “How could Lou, Johnny, and Walt make that fake money? Those $100 bills Gunnar found were amazing. I thought they were real, until a little silver smudged off.”

“Now, Mike, if you knew anything about computers, the answer would be easy,” Tuan laughed.

“O.K., Mr. Genius, explain.” Mike nudged Tuan’s shoe.

Tuan sat up. “Well, first you need a real $100 bill.”

“To use as a model for the drawing, right?”

“No,” Tuan corrected him, “More high-tech than that! Remember, you told me how your uncle wanted to do desktop publishing too.”

“Yeah.”

“So, he’d start with a scanner.”

“Scanner?” Mike blinked. “
Theo
Lazo did say something about wanting a scanner too.”

“Listen.” Tuan raised a finger in the air. “You know a scanner can make a really exact picture.”

Mike scratched his head. “But how do you get the picture onto a printing press?”

“You don’t,” Tuan replied. “The scanner is plugged into a computer, connected to a colour laser printer.”

Mike frowned. “But how can that make a picture good enough to be a fake bill?”

Tuan replied, “You need a special software program that cleans up any spots or blurry parts, and makes the colour near perfect. It can even add a phony watermark to make the bill look genuine.”

Mike sat up. He slapped his forehead. “Now I get it. In the mansion, that’s what all those different machines were for. Scanners, computers, laser printers.”

“Right,” Tuan patted Mike’s shoulder. “The image the scanner makes will be a perfect copy of the dollar bill. That’s the easy part. The trick is finding paper. It has to feel like real money, yet work in the laser printer too.”

Mike sat back on his heels. “So maybe that’s why the men broke into
Theo
Lazo’s shop—for paper. And they made such a mess, so we wouldn’t notice stuff like that was missing. I mean, who counts a few boxes of paper, especially when it’s busy? We all thought they were hunting for the safe or a fire-box full of cash.”

“Don’t forget,” Tuan added. “They also could use the boxes to hide fake bills under the stationery.”

“There’s one more thing.” Mike frowned. “What about the shiny metal strips on dollar bills?”

Tuan thought for a moment. “I know! Maybe the counterfeiters used a metallic spray paint. You can buy the aerosol cans in any hardware store.”

“Hey!” Mike cried and bounced to his knees. “That’s why the bill Gunnar found was a throw-away. The silver rubbed off on our fingers.”

“Give yourself an ‘A’, Mike.” Tuan rolled onto his side and laughed.

Mike shook his head. He gazed down over the dark valley. A few last small lights bobbed away from the river banks. Only minutes before, the last flashing red cruiser had wound up the Parks and Rec service road on the valley’s far side and disappeared. “I guess the excitement’s over,” Tuan said.

“Yup,” Mike agreed. He plopped down and leaned over his folded arms. “I wonder what’s happened to Gunnar. Still no sign of him coming up the path.” An hour had passed since Tuan helped Mike hobble away from Dead Man’s Cliff. Surely nothing bad could have happened when Gunnar left Tuan and ran back in the woods—or could it? Mike’s worst fears he couldn’t say out loud.

“Oh-ooo-ooh,” Mike heard a moan. “I am the ghost of Gunnar, eaten by a vicious black dog in the woods.”

Mike twisted around. Tuan sat up. Across the dark grass, Gunnar and Freddy strode toward them. By the gate from the driveway, silhouetted in flashing red light, waited a tall policeman.

“Where did you guys come from?” Tuan cried, jumping up.

Freddy nodded toward the red light. “A police cruiser brought us,” he said. “Officer Powchuk wants us all down to the station to answer some questions.”

Mike scrambled to his feet and followed his friends down the driveway to the cruiser at the curb. On the porch, another policeman stood talking with Mr. and Mrs. Lindstrom, Gunnar’s parents.

Mike, Freddy, and Tuan crawled into the cruiser’s back seat. Because of his long legs, Gunnar climbed into the front. He slid around to face them and knocked on the wire mesh separating front from back. “Hi, jailbirds,” he joked.

Mike leaned forward. “So tell us what happened, Gunnar.”

“Yeah,” Tuan spread his fingers across the mesh, “where did you go after you dropped me over the fence? What did you mean by a ‘trademark’?”

Freddy laughed. He sprawled back in the thick seat. “Johnny could tell you. He’ll be itching and scratching tomorrow.”

Mike looked at him. “You mean the poison ivy?” He remembered Johnny’s bare legs, stretched out when he tilted back on the wooden chair in the basement.

“I wanted to give Tuan more time to escape,” Gunnar explained, “and Johnny was hot on our heels. I couldn’t outrun his dog for long. So, before I climbed a tree, good and high, I circled several times through the poison ivy.”

Freddy slapped his knee. “It was really comical,” he added. “When the police caught up with Johnny, he claimed he was just a late-night jogger cutting across the golf course to his house. But while he talked, without even realizing, he bent down and scratched. Later, when Gunnar explained, the police knew for sure they had their man.”

Tuan tightened his fingers around the mesh. “But how did you get out of the tree, Gunnar?”

“When Johnny saw lights bobbing through the woods, he panicked and ran. Meanwhile the dog was jumping up and down the tree trunk, snarling, and ready to chew me up for its dinner.” Gunnar’s eyes widened. “It was scary,” he admitted. “But I used the command again that Mike told me. ‘Queen, sit’ didn’t work, but ‘King, sit,’ did. The dog just eased back on its haunches. I waited, to be sure it was really calmed down. Then I heard two high-pitched whistles. The dog jumped up and took off toward the mansion. I never saw it again.”

“The same thing happened to me!” Mike cried. “But who freed Walt from his chain in the basement!”

Freddy crossed his legs. “I was standing in the driveway at the Parks and Rec centre, when the police led in Walt. They sat him in the back of a squad car with Johnny. I heard Walt bragging that Queen freed him, after all. When she smashed through the basement window, Walt pointed to the key Johnny had thrown to the far corner. He commanded her to fetch him the key in her mouth, and he unlocked the chain. But when Lou and Johnny ran back to get the dog, he pretended he was still locked up. As soon as he figured they were deep in the woods, he ran to the driveway, and whistled both dogs to come back. He locked them in the rear of the van, jumped in, and tried to take off.”

Mike shook his head. “Another double-cross.”

“That’s just what Johnny said, too.” Freddy brushed back the hair from his forehead. “But they didn’t know. Gunnar already took care of that possibility.”

Gunnar chuckled. “You remember, I told you how I undid the van door so Queen could later jump free?”

“No,” Tuan shook his head, “but that’s O.K.”

“Anyway, joker,” Gunnar continued, “I also let air out of all four tires. By the time Walt figured out why the wheels were wobbling and squeaking along the gravel, it was too late. He heard voices, and saw lights through the trees. He left the dogs locked in the rear and bolted up the hill behind the mansion on foot. But when he burst onto the road, the police at the barricade grabbed him.”

“And,” Freddy nodded, “with that black eye Lou gave him before, he looked even more suspicious.”

“But not half as bad as Lou,” Gunnar added. “That tumble down Dead Man’s Cliff really shook him up—plenty of scrapes and bruises as he slid, and a goose egg on the back of his head from hitting a fallen branch at the bottom.”

“Tell me about it,” Mike shivered. Vividly he still remembered his own terrifying skid down that cliff. Nothing could have been worse.

The cruiser doors swung open. One on either side of Gunnar, both policemen slid in.

“O.K., fellows,” said Officer Powchuk, turning the key in the ignition, “we’ll stop at the station for a few questions to write up my report. Then I’ll take you all home. Meanwhile Mrs. Lindstrom will phone your parents that everything’s under control.”

My parents!
Mike thought. In all the excitement, he completely forgot about his mother. Earlier that evening, when he dashed out to meet Gunnar and Freddy, “Be home at 11:00, Mike,” she had called. Who knew what time it was now?

CHAPTER 18 – A Surprise

Three weeks had passed since Mike and his friends helped catch the counterfeiters. Mike had enjoyed his trip to the police station, answering questions amid the hustle and bustle and ringing telephones, and meeting the Chief of Detectives. Tuan liked the high-tech computer network. Most of all, Freddy and Gunnar wanted to see where criminals were locked up.

Officer Powchuk showed them down to the basement and an empty block of holding cells. “No point giving Lou, Johnny, and Walt a good look at your faces now,” he warned, “in case they get out on bail. Besides, you’ll see enough of them when you testify in court.”

Instead, Mike, Gunnar, and Tuan identified the men’s “mug shots” from police files. Two had criminal records: Lou for theft, and Walt for a string of petty swindles.

Hoping for a lighter sentence, Walt had confessed the whole story to Officer Powchuk. After his last term in prison, Walt claimed he was going straight and conned his way into a job tending Mr. Winston’s dogs. When he bumped into Lou again at the racetrack, the others cut him into their scheme. They wanted to use the mansion when Mr. Winston took his next business trip to Japan.

The brains of the operation was Johnny. He had sold computers and software in Mr. Winston’s downtown store and kept contacts in many other computer outlets. He hired Lou to steal the machines and later to make “deliveries” in his grey van. His counterfeiting had started small, by faking sales slips. A smooth talker, dressed like a businessman in suit and tie, he would “return” expensive stolen high-tech items to different stores for cash refunds. He also experimented with faked money orders and stock certificates, which he “printed” for other “clients”. It was Lou’s idea to try printing the money, their first crack at counterfeiting big-time.

“And not a very good one,” Officer Powchuk explained as they walked back upstairs. “Several banks had spotted the bills as counterfeit weeks ago.”

“How?” Mike wanted to know. “Did the silver smear off?”

“Yes, if you rubbed hard.” Officer Powchuk continued, “The real tip-off was the way the bills were trimmed—a millimetre too wide. A store clerk would never notice the difference. But once the money was deposited in the bank, and the teller closed out her till, these fake dollars caused the automatic bill counters to jam. By then, of course, it was too late to trace who’d passed the bad paper.”

“So,” Gunnar broke in, “if they had trimmed the bills more carefully, they might have gotten away with the crime.”

Officer Powchuk shook his head. “Not for long. Remember, we’ve also been investigating several recent break-ins. We would have caught Lou and Johnny that way.”

“What about Walt?” Mike wondered. “The other two chained him in the basement.”

Officer Powchuk pointed to the mug shots lying on his desk. “From his last term in jail, Walt is still on parole. Last week, he didn’t report to his parole officer. That violation alone can throw him back behind bars.”