Case File 13 #2 (17 page)

“That doesn't look anything like the school,” Angie said, seeing the same image on Dana's monitor.

“I was confused by that at first too,” Angelo said. “Until I found this.” He clicked his mouse and the image changed to an old black-and-white sketch. “This is what Castle Frankenstein looked like when it was built in the twelve hundreds.”

Dana's eyes opened wide. “It's a perfect match.”

“It looks that way,” Angelo agreed. “It was later divided into two parts, and eventually enlarged. But sometime in the eighteenth century it fell into ruins. My guess is that either Dr. Dippel was lying when he said his castle was assembled from the original stones, or possibly sometime between when it was built and fell into ruins, the family moved the original castle and replaced it with another one.”

“Great research,” Nick said, “but that still doesn't answer my question.”

Angelo held up a finger. “Patience. Patience. This was trickier to find.” He moved to another picture that it took Nick a minute to figure out.

“Blueprints,” Dana said.

“They didn't call them blueprints back then,” Angelo said. “But from everything I can find, these appear to be the most accurate plans of the original castle's layout. My guess is these are what Dippel used to build his version.” He clicked through a series of pictures showing the first floor, the second floor, the third floor, and the towers.

“It looks just like what he showed us on the tour,” Carter said, searching the bottom of the Lucky Charms box for any colored marshmallow shapes Jake might have missed.

“That's what I thought too,” Angelo said. “But then I found . . .” He clicked to a final set of plans for rooms Nick didn't remember from their tour.

“What is that?” he asked.

Angelo grinned. “A lower level Dippel never told us about.”

“That has to be it,” Angie said. “Dippel must be hiding Cody there. Does it show how to get down there?”

Angelo moved his mouse to a set of circular stairs that descended from a center room. “This is how you went down back then. But obviously Dippel has changed the plans. I don't remember seeing a staircase anywhere.”

“Maybe Jake can help us,” Nick said. He turned to the giant. “Do you know how to get to the lower level of the school?”

Jake dropped his comic book and put his hands over his face, swaying back and forth.

“I don't think he's going to be much help,” Carter said. He patted Jake's shoulder and gave him back his comic book. “Look at this page. That's Emma Frost. She's totally hot.”

“Great,” Nick said. “So we have to break into a locked school, locate a hidden entrance, and avoid Dr. Di—I mean, you know who.”

“It might be worse than that,” Tiffany said, fanning her toenails to help the polish dry. “Has anyone considered that since Jake is still here, maybe the rest of the students are too? They weren't exactly friendly the last time we were there.”

Nick groaned. This was beginning to sound impossible.

“There might be a way,” Dana said. “Give me control of the screen.”

Angelo raised his eyebrows and changed a setting on the screen-share program so the half without the picture showed Dana's computer screen. She typed in the web address for the city of Diablo Valley and clicked on a link that said
Official City Use Only
.

“You have to have a password to access that,” Angelo said.

Tiffany sniffed, put down her polish, and inserted a thumb drive in the computer's USB port. She typed in a series of commands, waited, typed in a few more, and suddenly she was in the locked section of the site.

“How did you do that?” Angelo asked as Tiffany returned to her toenails.

Angie chuckled. “Maybe you don't know as much about us as you think.”

Tiffany was a computer hacker? Nick would never have guessed that in a million years.

“Let's see now.” Dana explored the website until she found what she was looking for. “Streets and sewers,” she murmured. Engineering plans whizzed by. “Here we go,” she said, stopping on the section of the map where Sumina Prep was located.

Nick studied the streets. “I don't see the school.”

“That's because these are plans from ten years ago,” Angelo said.

“Right.” Dana moved the mouse. “There used to be a factory where the castle is now. I read an article about it getting shut down in the paper. A lot of people lost their jobs, and some questions were raised about why Dippel was moving his school from Transnistria to California in the first place. It seems Transnistrian officials were looking into his experiments right before he left.”

“Then why did they let him open the school?” Carter asked.

“Dippel paid off enough officials that they stopped complaining. And, he promised a winning football program. It was the perfect combination. He could test his minions in public without anyone asking questions, and the city got their first winning sports team.” She traced a thin gray line. “This is an old maintenance tunnel. It looks like it's still there, but I can't tell if it goes all the way to the school.”

“I don't know,” Angelo said. “For all we know, the tunnel's been filled in since this, or it dead ends.”

Dana printed a copy of the plans and closed the city website. “It's still our best shot. Unless you'd rather face you know who and his army of you know whats.”

Carter groaned. “Some fall break this is turning out to be.”

“Fallsies breaksies being turning,” Jake agreed.

The next morning, Nick woke up with a stiff neck from sleeping on the floor in Angelo's room. “What'cha doing?” he asked Angelo, who was leafing through a thick electronics catalog.

“Making a parts list,” Angelo said. “Once we get into the school, we still have to figure out a way to stop Dippel.”

Angelo's closet door swung open and Carter stumbled out, rubbing his eyes.

“Did you sleep in there?” Nick asked.

Carter groaned. “Tried to. Jake snored so loud I'm surprised he didn't collapse the roof. Even closing the closet door didn't help.”

“I didn't hear anything,” Nick said.

“That's because you were asleep.” Carter groaned and stretched.

Nick glanced around, suddenly realizing Jake wasn't in the room. “Where is he?” he yelped, panicked at the idea of the giant wandering around the neighborhood.

Angelo pointed down the hallway, still studying his catalog. “My mom went in to the office this morning, so I let him watch TV. He's a big fan of Dora the Explorer.”

“You can't let him watch that stuff,” Carter growled. “It'll rot his brain.”

The three boys walked down the hall to find Jake sitting in the living room, eyes glued to the TV. Surrounding him on the floor were three cereal boxes, a bread wrapper minus the bread, and an empty jug of orange juice.

“I see he's still got his appetite,” Nick said, kicking a cereal box. There wasn't a single crumb left at the bottom.

Angelo shook his head. “All I have to say is I'm not going to be the one who shows him how to use a flush toilet when this stuff works its way through his digestive tract.”

A few minutes later, as the boys were making their own breakfast from what little Jake hadn't devoured, the doorbell rang. Angelo went to the door and let Angie, Dana, and Tiffany in.

As soon as Tiffany walked into the house, Jake jumped to his feet. The giant sniffed. “No flowersies?”

Tiffany blushed. “No. No perfume today.”

“Nice call,” Carter whispered to Jake.

“Okay,” Angie said, pulling a handful of papers out of her backpack. “I've been putting together a plan.”

“Who put you in charge?” Nick asked.

“Do
you
have a plan?”

Nick scratched the back of his neck. He turned to Angelo, hoping he had put something together, but his friend appeared deeply engrossed in his catalog. Carter, despite his earlier complaints, was sitting beside Jake, eating cereal and watching Swiper the fox try to steal Dora's lunch.

“Right then,” Angie said. “Back to the plan. The first thing we need to do is get in and out of the castle. I'm taking that part. Once we get there, we have to figure out how to stop Dippel.”

Angelo raised his hand as though they were all in a classroom and Angie was the teacher. “I'm working on it.”

“Perfect,” Angie said, checking off a box. Nick couldn't stand the way she was bossing everyone around, but since he hadn't thought to come up with a plan of his own, he had to let her continue. She also seemed to be enjoying this way too much, like it was some kind of school science project instead of a matter of life and death. “Next on the list are weapons.”

“You mean like guns?” Nick asked. The idea of blazing into Dippel's castle with machine guns and rocket launchers was way cool. If Angie could get her hands on some serious artillery, he wouldn't mind her being in charge at all.

“Do you
have
any guns?” Angie asked.

“Not really,” Nick admitted, pretty sure paintball and airsoft didn't count.

“Then we need to come up with some weapons of our own. Who can I put down for that?” Angie held her pen poised above the paper, waiting for volunteers.

“I've got some ideas,” Dana said.

Angie nodded and made another check.

“I'll do some too,” Carter called, still watching the television.

“You're going to make weapons?” Nick asked. “
Real
weapons. Not like Nerf swords and stuff.”

Carter snorted. “Leave it to me. I'm the master of arcane and ancient armament.”

“Good enough,” Angie said. “The last problem is, how we are going to get big boy to the castle without being spotted?”

“He can run beside our bikes,” Nick said. “He's heck'a fast.”

Angie shook her head. “Have you looked outside? It's stopped raining for a while. But it doesn't look like it's done. Besides, it's freezing out. I'm not riding my bike all the way to Diablo Valley.”

Tiffany tapped her lips with one finger. “Hmm,” she murmured. “I might have an idea.”

“I'll put you down for it,” Angie said. She turned to Nick. “What are you going to do?”

“Don't worry about me.” Nick sneered and tapped the side of his head. “I'm hard at work in here.”

Angie rolled her eyes and scribbled on her paper. “I'll list you as doing nothing.”

The truth was that Nick really didn't know what he was going to do. When it was him, Angelo, and Carter, Nick had usually been the one in charge, making decisions and coming up with ideas. As he walked back to his house, he tried to think of some way he could help. But all he could think about was how Angie had taken over everything. Even his own friends were treating her like the new leader. He wished it was just the Three Monsterteers again, even if Angie and her friends did have some pretty good ideas.