Megan Stine - Murder To Go

But as they came to the first curve and Pete hit his brakes, he suddenly wished that he weren’t going so fast — because the brakes were gone. The pedal was pumping nothing but air!

Pete was speeding down a hill at 50 miles per hour, headed straight toward a busy intersection with a flashing red light!

For a moment Pete couldn’t stop pumping the brakes. They had to be working! He had checked the brake fluid himself!

But the fact was, the brakes were dead. They weren’t gripping at all. And his car was picking up speed on the downgrade. It was only a matter of seconds until he’d go crashing through the intersection ahead. That is, he’d go crashing through it if he got lucky. More likely, he’d go crashing into another car crossing the intersection. After all — the flashing red light was on Pete’s side, telling him to stop. And the other drivers had no way of knowing that Pete’s Scirocco was totally out of control.

Pete’s throat was so tight it felt like there was a whole apple stuck in it, instead of just his Adam’s apple. His palms were sweating too.

But that didn’t stop him from grabbing for the gear-shift knob. He downshifted from fourth to second, hoping the drag on the engine would slow his car down. Meanwhile the black Porsche in front of him skidded into a U-turn, burned rubber, and took off.

The Scirocco slowed down, but not enough. He was only a hundred yards from the intersection. Cars were whizzing through it from the crossroad as if the yellow flasher on their side didn’t exist.

Honnnnnnk! A blue Honda beeped at Pete to warn him that he was going too fast.

With his heart pounding, Pete downshifted again, grabbed the hand brake, and jerked the steering wheel to the right.

Instantly his car swerved off the road and into an empty lot where some low condominiums were being built. The rough terrain at the construction site slowed his car down — but it was a cement block, hidden in the tall grass, that brought the Scirocco to a jarring halt.

Pete’s chest bounced against the steering wheel, but his seat belt kept him away from the windshield.

There goes the suspension for sure, Pete thought. He took two deep breaths to calm himself. Then he jumped out and lay down on his back with a flashlight to look under the car. Yup — the brake fluid line had been cut. Pete grabbed his keys, slammed the driver’s door closed hard, and jogged back uphill in the dusk to The Jones Salvage Yard.

A couple of cans of ginger ale later, Pete’s temper was finally cooling down. He and Jupe and Bob sat on chairs outside their trailer office.

“Well, we have now been introduced to Mr. Sweetness,” Jupe said.

“He lived up to his name,” Pete said. “The creep must have cut my brake line and then stood there just begging for me to follow him. He knew I’d hit that hill too fast if I was trying to keep up with him.”

“It’s a good thing you’re a good driver, or we’d be The Two Investigators,” Jupe said.

“Did you hear that?” Pete said, standing up and accidentally knocking over his chair. “I’m a good driver! A compliment from Jupiter Jones! You’re a witness, Bob.”

“Oh, I was just thinking of the expense of having new business cards printed,” said Jupe.

“But seriously, guys,” Bob said, “I wonder who Mr. Sweetness is and why he wants us off the case.”

“It may be more pertinent to ask, how did he know we were on it?” Jupe said.

“Good point,” Bob agreed. “I sure didn’t see him at the party.”

“And Juliet doesn’t know anyone who wears an army jacket,” Pete said. “’Cause we asked her.”

“Okay, so he’s not a friend of the family.” Jupe concluded. “Maybe he’s working for someone.”

“But who?” asked Pete.

It was a question they slept on that night.

The next morning, an unfamiliar car horn beeped outside Jupe’s workshop and the telephone inside rang at the same time. Jupe, who had been up for hours testing electronic equipment with his oscilloscope, answered the phone while he peeked out a window. One mystery solved: The car horn was Pete’s. It sounded strange because Pete wasn’t driving his Scirocco. He was in his mom’s car.

The telephone call was more of a surprise.

“Jupiter, it’s Juliet Coop. My briefcase!” she said excitedly.

Jupe was an expert at all kinds of codes, but this one had him totally confused.

“I woke up about an hour ago and started looking everywhere for my briefcase,” Juliet said after taking a deep breath. “Up until then, I’d forgotten I had a briefcase!”

Now Jupe was excited too. “Your memory is starting to come back,” he said.

“That’s one way to look at it,” Juliet said. “Or you could say I’m just starting to realize how much I’d forgotten. Anyway, the briefcase isn’t here at home. And I don’t even know why I want to find it so badly. But I think there’s something important in it. I feel like there is.”

“Pete and I are just on our way to your father’s office,” Jupe said. “We’ll keep our eyes open for it.”

“Maybe I left it in my office,” Juliet said. “Or in someone else’s office. I’d go looking for it but Dad doesn’t want me coming in for a few days. Do you think you could try to find out where I was last Friday before the accident?”

That’s exactly what I was already planning to do, Jupe thought to himself.

“We’ll ask around,” Jupe said to Juliet. “But do you have an appointment calendar? It might give us a head start if we knew what your schedule was.”

“Sure. It’s a beautiful blue morocco leather diary,” Juliet said wistfully. “And you’re welcome to look in it yourself — if you can find it. It’s always in my briefcase!”

Pete started playing his impatient symphony on the car horn again.

“I’ll check out every possibility and call you tonight,” Jupe said quickly.

“And I’ll call you if I remember anything else,” Juliet said before she hung up.

By the time Jupe got outside, Pete had the car hood raised and was peering inside the engine. He was like a compulsive dentist who couldn’t resist telling every patient he came across to open wide.

“Juliet just called. She can’t find her briefcase, which contains something important,” Jupe announced as a greeting.

“I’ll bet that’s what Mr. Sweetness was hunting for,” Pete said without looking up.

If Pete had looked up he would have seen Jupiter Jones with his jaw wide open. “Remarkable deduction!” Jupe exclaimed. “What did you have for breakfast?”

Then they climbed into the car and headed for Big Barney’s corporate office building in the San Fernando Valley. On the way they passed the lot where Pete’s car had gone off the road. It was still sitting there.

Pete pulled into a nearby gas station and hopped out to make a phone call. He was phoning Ty Cassey, Jupe’s older cousin, who usually hung around the junkyard and ran an informal car repair business whenever he was in town. Right now, however, Ty was sponging off a different distant relative — someone who had rented a beach house in Malibu for the summer.

“Ty?” Pete said into the pay phone. “It’s Pete. Remember how you said you needed some wheels for the next three weeks? Well, I’ll make you a deal. You can use my car if you’ll come haul it out of the field where it’s stuck.”

Once Pete had arranged with Ty to take care of his Scirocco, he revved the engine of his mom’s car again and they were off.

As they pulled into the parking lot at Big Barney’s Chicken Coop Corporation, Pete and Jupe had to laugh. In typical Big Barney style, the building was a cross between a modern six-story office complex and an amusement park. To drive through the locked visitors’ gate, Pete had to announce himself into an intercom system. But it was the same chicken-shaped intercom used at the Chicken Coop drive-thru restaurants. For a joke, Pete ordered two five-piece meals to go.

When the electronic gate swung open, Pete and Jupe drove toward the red and yellow building.

Big Barney had been at work for hours. He greeted them wearing a big smile and a red jogging suit. The first thing he said to Jupe was, “I’ve got one. What year did we put the carrots in the coleslaw?”

“1987,” Jupe said. “Smaller containers, too.”

“Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I tell you?” Big Barney bellowed to anyone who was listening inside a three-county radius. “You’re a nut, guy, but you’re my kind of nut. However, you two will have to wear identification tags at all times. We have tight security around here.” Big Barney slapped stickers on Pete’s and Jupe’s backs.

When they checked each other out, they discovered they were wearing kick me signs. Big Barney laughed so hard he almost turned as red as his jogging suit. Then he put Chicken Coop visors on both of them.

“What do you want to see first?” Big Barney asked. “My first dollar? I’ve got it framed and hanging over the fireplace in my office. How about my first wife? I have her hanging over the fireplace in my office too. Hahahahaha!”

“We’d like to see some of the offices, like Juliet’s new office,” Jupe said, trying to sound casual about it.

“I want to see where the food is made and what kind of stuff goes into it, too,” Pete said.

“So you want to meet my mad scientists, do you?” Barney asked, rolling his eyes wildly. “Okay, I’ll have them taken out of their cages just for you. And then I want you” — he pulled the visor down over Jupe’s eyes — “to taste something special.” Big Barney started guiding, although it was more like pushing, Jupe and Pete down the hallways. “You’re not going to believe this new product. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe it and it’s my invention.”

They took an elevator and toured the offices. Whenever Pete and Jupe could get away from Big Barney for a minute, they asked people if Juliet had been there on the Friday of the accident. One accountant said he had seen her that day. But he didn’t remember anything about a briefcase. A few other people mentioned that they’d seen Juliet’s Mustang in the parking lot when they left work — but there were no other strong leads.

Finally Big Barney took Pete and Jupe down to the basement, to a large scientific laboratory behind locked glass doors. There were warning signs saying keep out all around the electronic checkpoint entrance.

When Big Barney pushed a plastic card into an electronic box, the glass doors began to slide open. “Repeat after me,” Big Barney said, looking down at Pete and Jupe. “I will tell no one about Drippin’ Chicken.”

“I will tell no one about Drippin’ Chicken,” Pete and Jupe said.

“Okay, let’s get down to business. Pandro!” Big Barney’s voice boomed and shook the glass walls of the laboratory.

Instantly a squat, burly, bald man with gold wire-rimmed glasses came marching over. He wore a long white lab jacket that had a row of Chicken Coop pins fastened above the pocket like military medals. And he actually saluted.

“Meet Pandro Mishkin,” Big Barney said, pounding the man on the back. It was like pounding a mailbox. “You’ll never guess where Pandro came to me from!”

I’ll bet it was Disneyland, Pete thought to himself. But he played it straight and asked, “Where?”

“The Pentagon,” Big Barney answered. “At least his laboratory in Washington was within five blocks of the Pentagon. Close enough.”

Actually, the Pentagon is across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia, Jupe thought to himself. But he kept his mouth shut.