The Prime-Time Crime (12 page)

Al pushed the gun into his jacket pocket. “It's still aimed at you,” he said. “I don't mind blowing a hole in this jacket if I have to.”

“You've probably got a box full of brand-new jackets in the basement,” Joe said.

“How'd you guess?” Fred said with a laugh. “They were real cheap, too.”

There was a guard stationed inside the door. Joe tried to alert the man to his problem through his facial expression, but the guard was too absorbed in a paperback novel to notice. Al Dunlap, noticing what Joe was up to, poked the gun into the small of Joe's back.

Fred walked quickly past Studio A and opened the door to the staircase leading to the second level. Joe followed him up the stairs. A moment later they came to the door marked Studio A Catwalks. Fred opened it up and beckoned for Joe to follow him inside.

“So this is where you put Clarence,” Joe said. “Frank and I must have come close to finding him on Sunday, when we came up here.”

“Yeah,” Al said. “Fortunately, Fred was up here at the time and managed to distract you by knocking you over the railing before you could get too close.”

“And that's why you lured us to the basement,” Joe said. “It was as far away from Clarence as we could get.”

“My brother does a pretty good impression of
Clarence,” Al said in a satisfied tone. “The one he did for you in the basement really had you going.”

“Keep it down,” Fred ordered. “We don't want anybody in the studio to hear you.”

Joe followed Fred into the dimly lit catwalk area. With Al prodding him from behind with the gun, he made his way across to the opposite wall, where a dark-colored canvas had been laid across an object on the floor.

Fred removed the canvas with a flourish. Underneath was a tall, thin man. He had thick, wavy brown hair and was dressed in a brown, double-breasted suit. He was bound head-to-toe with ropes and gagged with a white handkerchief.

“Clarence,” Joe whispered.

Clarence said something under his gag and made an effort to sit up.

“Be quiet, Clarence,” Al whispered, “or we might forget to bring you breakfast tomorrow morning. You wouldn't like that, would you?”

Clarence looked up with wide eyes but said nothing.

“Now it's your turn, Joe,” Fred said, taking hold of Joe's hands. “Put your hands behind your back, so that I can tie them up.”

With Al still holding the gun on him, Joe stood quietly while Fred tied his wrists behind him with a length of rope. Then he sat down next to Clarence as Fred tied his legs and ankles and gagged his mouth.

Joe sat still as the ropes were tightened against his wrists, then watched as Fred stood up and surveyed his work. Al slipped the gun back into his pocket and began to walk away.

“We'll be back soon,” Fred said. “We've finally decided where we're going to dump you guys. I hope you're ready for a long trip.”

Joe watched as the Dunlaps walked back across the catwalks and through the door to the hallway. He could see the lights from the studio below and hear the sound of a crew putting up the set for “The Four O'Clock Scholar.”

He turned and looked at Clarence. Clarence turned and looked at him.

Great detective work, thought Joe. I've finally found Clarence. Now who's going to find me?

• • •

Several hundred feet away, totally unaware of his brother's predicament, Frank Hardy was sitting on the sofa in the WBPT greenroom, preparing for the evening's contest by thumbing through the book his brother had left behind on Sunday.

“It won't do you any good, Hardy,” Steve said. He was sprawled out in an easy chair nearby. “I'm getting my revenge tonight. I wasn't in my best form on Sunday, but this time I'm going to blow you away.”

“Forget it, Steve,” Debbie said, standing next to the sofa fastening a barrette in her hair. “Tonight I'm going to show the world how brilliant I really am—and I'm going to blow both of you away.”

“That'll be the day,” Steve retorted.

Frank sighed and put the book down. “I'm kind of distracted by the Clarence Kellerman case,” he said. “I feel bad about leaving Joe to solve it by himself—at least until the show is over.”

“It's time to get onstage,” said Marcy Simons, stepping into the greenroom with her ever-present clipboard tucked under her arm. She led the two teams into Studio A and had a technician remind them how to use the electronic equipment at their seats. Looking up at the studio audience as he sat down, Frank spotted Callie, Iola, and Chet but saw no sign of Joe. Where could his brother be? he wondered. Could he have found an important clue leading to Clarence?

The technicians worked efficiently around the stage, and the camera operators set up the opening shot. Somebody did a brief countdown, and then the show was on the air. Matt Freeman began introducing himself to the audience.

Frank wasn't thinking about the show, however. He was thinking about the case. Where was Clarence Kellerman? If he wasn't in the basement, where was he? And who had fooled them into thinking he was in the basement in the first place?

Frank reminded himself that they
had
heard Clarence's voice in the basement. So either Clarence was there and they had been unable to find him or someone was imitating Clarence's voice.

Imitating Clarence's voice? Something clicked
when Frank thought about this. Who knew how to imitate Clarence's voice?

Suddenly Frank had a clear picture in his head of Fred Dunlap saying, “It's your old buddy, Clarence!” And Joe and I found Fred Dunlap in the basement right after we heard Clarence's voice, Frank thought. I've got to find Joe and tell him.

Frank stood up. He was about to rush out of the studio when, abruptly, he was aware that there was a camera on him and that Matt Freeman was scowling at him. Steve Burke grabbed the corner of Frank's jacket and pulled him back into his seat.

Great! Frank thought. I'm trapped on this quiz show while Clarence's kidnappers are running around the station with nobody to stop them. Except my brother. I wonder where Joe is right now?

• • •

Joe was barely more than thirty feet from where Frank was sitting in Studio A—thirty feet straight up. He had twisted himself around so that he could look over the edge of the catwalk and down into the studio below. Frank, Steve, and Debbie were sitting almost directly beneath him, giving him a perfect view of the top of their heads. He would have yelled to them for help, but the gag was stuffed tightly in his mouth.

Clarence had managed to turn himself so that his hands were next to Joe's hands. He reached out his fingers and tried to untie the rope around Joe's wrist.

Then Joe heard a jingling sound from only a few inches away. He looked down to see that some coins had fallen out of his pocket onto the catwalk. He squirmed around until the coins were directly under his nose.

Using the tip of his nose, he pushed a coin until it was on the very edge of the catwalk. Looking down on Frank, Steve, and Debbie far below, Joe pushed the coin over the edge.

It fell straight into Debbie's lap.

Joe saw Debbie look down at the unexpected gift, then look up at the ceiling above her. Joe moved his head around frantically, trying to catch her attention, but it was either too dark in the catwalks for her to see him, or she was blinded by the glare of the overhead spotlights.

Debbie turned to Steve and then Frank, trying to indicate to them that a coin had fallen into her lap. But neither of them paid any attention to her.

Joe saw that the quiz show had already begun. Although he couldn't quite make out the questions being asked, he could see Frank reaching out to press his buzzer. Turning away from the action below, Joe went back to the task of getting himself and Clarence untied and away from the catwalks before Al and Fred came back.

He began working at Clarence's ropes this time. After a while, he could feel the ropes around Clarence's wrists begin to give. As quickly as possible Joe worked at the delicate operation until the knots came loose. Finally the ropes fell away.

Clarence rubbed his wrists for a second. Then he pulled the gag from his mouth.

“Whoooeee!” he announced. “Boy, is it good to be able to talk again!”

Joe made as much noise as he could under his gag to try to tell Clarence to take the cloth off.

“Oh, yeah,” Clarence said. “Sorry, buddy. I sure didn't mean to leave you tied up any longer than I had to. Let me get that gag out of your mouth.”

Clarence worked at the knot on Joe's gag until it came loose. Joe shook the cloth off his mouth and ran his tongue around his lips to wet them.

“Thanks, Clarence,” Joe said with relief. “You don't know how long my brother and I have been looking for you.”

“Well,” Clarence said, “I'm glad somebody's been looking for me. I was beginning to think I was stuck up here for the rest of my life.”

“Maybe we can call for help now,” Joe said. “Hey, somebody!” he shouted. “Come up here and get us untied!”

“Hold off on the yelling for a minute,” Clarence said. “That's a live show going on down there, and we don't want to interrupt them. It'll just take us a minute to get these ropes off, then we can go on down there ourselves.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “Maybe if you turned yourself around, you could get to the ropes on my legs.”

“Good thinking,” Clarence said. “Let me just wiggle myself over here for a minute.”

Clarence squirmed along the catwalk, his legs
still tightly bound with ropes. He positioned himself next to Joe's legs and reached out to begin untying them.

But he had pushed himself a little too close to the edge of the catwalk. With a sudden cry of “Whoops!” Clarence tumbled abruptly over the edge.

Joe tried to grab Clarence, but his wrists were still partially tied. He saw Clarence reach for the edge of the catwalk as he fell, but the show host managed to grab a fistful of tangled cables instead. The cluster of cables began unraveling instantly under his weight, and within seconds Clarence found himself twisted up in them, still falling.

Clarence fell straight down into the studio below. Two-thirds of the way to the floor, the cable stopped unraveling and broke Clarence's fall. For a few seconds, he bounced at the end of the cable as if he were a human yo-yo. Then the bouncing stopped, and he found himself dangling in midair, in front of Matt Freeman, the studio audience, the contestants, and the crew, not to mention everybody who was watching “The Four O'Clock Scholar” at home.

Clarence looked down to see a camera pointed directly at him. At the realization that he was on the air, his eyes opened wide and a big smile lit up his face.

“Hello, everybody!” he proclaimed loudly. “You may not believe this, but it's your old buddy Clarence!”

Frank looked up and couldn't believe his eyes. Sure enough, there was Clarence Kellerman, host of “The Four O'Clock Scholar,” swinging from the cable.

Frank looked around to catch the reaction of the others. The studio audience rose to its feet and began pointing and shouting. And the other contestants also stood up and stared at Clarence, forgetting that they were on television.

Even Matt Freeman sprang from his chair and shouted angrily, “I
knew
that Clarence was going to pull some cheap publicity stunt!”

Marcy Simons rushed into the middle of the studio. “This doesn't look like a publicity stunt to
me,” she said. “I think Clarence is really in trouble.”

One of the studio engineers grabbed a stepladder and a pair of pliers and raced over to cut Clarence down. Meanwhile, Frank stared up into the recesses of the catwalks, trying to determine what was going on. He considered shouting to see if his brother was concealed somewhere in the shadows, but the noise in the studio was so loud that he knew he would never be heard.

“Something funny's going on here,” Frank murmured.

“Yeah, it's hilarious,” Steve said. “Did you see the way Clarence came bouncing down on that rope?”

“So is it all just a stunt?” Debbie asked. “Clarence really wasn't missing at all?”

“I'm not so sure about that,” Frank said, slipping away from his seat. “I'm going to take a closer look upstairs.”

“Hey!” Steve shouted. “You can't run out now. We're in the middle of the show.”

“It doesn't look like there's going to be much of a show today,” Frank said, hurrying out of the studio.

Could Joe have something to do with what had just happened? Frank wondered as he bounded up the stairs to the second floor.

As he neared the door to the catwalks, he saw Fred and Al Dunlap hurrying through it.

Frank wondered if they had seen Clarence fall
out of the catwalks, too. He decided it wasn't likely, since they had reached the catwalks before he did.

Waiting until Al let the door slam behind him, Frank silently opened it again and looked inside.

He saw Fred and Al standing in the middle of the catwalks, looking around in confusion. Joe was lying on the far side of the catwalk, partially bound with thick ropes.

“What happened to Clarence?” Fred asked his brother, looking in disbelief at the spot where the quiz show host had been lying. “Where did he go?”

“Uh-oh,” Al said. “Look down there.” He pointed below, into the studio. As he pointed, Frank realized that he was holding a gun.

“Hey,” Fred said, looking up at Frank. “Who's that?”

“It's the other Hardy kid,” Al said, pointing his gun at Frank. “Come on inside, kid. Join your brother.”

“What have you done to Joe?” Frank asked, stepping the rest of the way through the door. “You haven't hurt him, have you?”

“No,” Joe said. “I'm okay.”

Frank slowly walked over toward the far end of the catwalk, where his brother was lying.