Camping Chaos (4 page)

“I didn’t steal them!” Lina protested. “I found
them near my tent. I went around to all the campsites to see who they belonged to. I just got here.”

She handed the snakes to Frank. He took them from her.

Frank tried to read Lina’s expression. She wouldn’t look him in the eye. Did that mean she was lying?

“I’m missing some decorations from my tent too, and so is Beatrice,” Lina continued. “Someone stole them from our tents last night. We thought it was you guys.”

“What?” Joe gasped. “You think
we’re
the thieves?”

“What kind of decorations are you and Beatrice missing?” Phil asked Lina curiously.

“Beatrice is missing her doll, Princess Petunia. She’s decorating her tent with a princess theme,” Lina replied. “I’m missing my toy tiger, Mr. Truffles. I’m decorating my tent with a safari theme.”

“Is anyone else missing decorations?” Frank asked.

Lina shrugged. “I don’t know. Anyway, I’m glad I found your snakes. I just hope someone finds Mr. Truffles soon—and Princess Petunia, too.”

•  •  •  •

Inside their tent Frank dug through his backpack. He pulled out his camping book, a pair of socks, some comic books, and a Space Raiders T-shirt and dumped them onto his sleeping bag. The socks were kind of smelly; he wadded them up and tossed them into the corner.

“What are you looking for?” Joe asked.

“These!” Frank pulled out an old notebook and a stubby pencil with no eraser, and showed them to Joe. “We can use these for our six
W
s, since we don’t have our whiteboard here.”

He opened the notebook to a clean page and wrote:

WHO

WHAT

WHEN

WHERE

WHY

HOW

Next to the What, Frank wrote:

Someone stole three of our snakes and put them over by Lina’s tent. The same person (?) stole her toy tiger, Mr. Truffles, and Beatrice’s Princess Petunia doll. They’re still missing.

Next to the When, he added:

Sometime between Friday bedtime and Saturday morning.

Finally, he wrote next to the Where:

At our campsite and Lina’s and Beatrice’s campsites.

Joe read the notes over Frank’s shoulder. “Now we just need to figure out the Who, Why, and How,” Joe murmured. “Any ideas about the Who?”

Frank mulled this over. “Lina could be lying. Maybe she pretended Mr. Truffles is missing, as a cover-up,” he said after a moment.

“Or it could be Beatrice,” Joe suggested.

“Or Beatrice and Lina together. They’re, like, best friends,” Frank pointed out.

“And don’t forget about Ranger Gil’s son, Garrett! He’s a troublemaker,” Joe added.

“Yeah, but his shoes didn’t have the lightning-bolt pattern,” Frank reminded him.

Joe considered this. “Maybe he was wearing different shoes last night.”

Frank nodded. “Hmm, true.”

Next to the Who, Frank added:

Lina?

Beatrice?

Garrett?

At this point they had more questions than answers.

•  •  •  •

That afternoon Fish and Wendy led the campers on an animal-tracking expedition through the forest. Animal tracking involved finding tracks, or
prints, on the ground and identifying what animal they belonged to.

Ranger Gil wasn’t there. He was back at Gooseberry Lodge with Garrett, who was in a time-out because he’d smeared pancake batter all over the lodge windows.

Joe’s right. Garrett is definitely a troublemaker!
Frank thought.

“Being a good animal tracker is like being a detective,” Fish explained as the group hiked along a winding creek. “You have to ask yourselves a lot of ‘what,’ ‘where,’ ‘when,’ ‘how,’ and ‘why’ questions to get to the ‘who.’ ”

Frank and Joe grinned at each other. That sounded just like the six
W
s!

“First step: Look for tracks on the ground. Then ask yourself, how many toes does the animal have?” Fish said.

“I see a track! I see a track!” a camper said,
jumping up and down excitedly. “It has two toes!”

Fish nodded and gave a thumbs-up sign. “Good, Zack! Two toes means that it could be a deer or a moose—”

“Or a deadly two-toed flesh-eating swamp monster,” Wendy cut in with a mischievous smile.

Several campers shrieked.

“Wendy’s kidding,” Fish said quickly, then turned to her.
“Really?”
he asked her in a low voice.

Wendy shrugged. “Just trying to keep it fun, dude.”

“Okay, well . . . back to our animal-tracking questions,” Fish went on, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Ask yourselves, are the tracks spaced far apart? That will tell you if the animal is big or small, and how fast it was going. Also, do the tracks have claw marks? Do they stop at a tree, which would tell you that the animal is able to climb?”

He added, “If there was snow on the ground, we’d be able to figure out a lot more. For example, did you know that you can sometimes identify a fox by the trail of yellow pee that it leaves behind?”

“Ewwww!”
some of the campers groaned. Others cracked up.

“Ohmigosh!” Beatrice cried out suddenly.

“Did you find a track, Beatrice?” Fish asked her.

Beatrice shook her head and pointed to a large boulder in the middle of the creek. “No, but I found something else. There’s Princess Petunia!” she exclaimed. “Somebody save her!”

6

J
oe stared. A doll was perched on a rock in the middle of the creek. She wore a sparkly gold crown on top of her long blond hair, and a fancy purple dress.

How did Princess Petunia end up there?
Joe wondered.

“I’ll get her!” Wendy volunteered.

She pulled off her pink hiking shoes and rolled her jeans up to her knees. She stepped into the
water and waded out to the boulder. “Brrr, it’s cold!” she said with a laugh.

“This is epic,” Phil murmured. “Camp counselor rescues missing doll in the middle of a raging river!” He pulled out his camera phone and snapped a couple of pictures.

Wendy emerged from the creek and handed Beatrice her doll. “Thank you!” Beatrice said happily. “Princess Petunia, you’re back!”

On an impulse Joe headed over to the bank of the creek. As he passed a bush, a deer burst out and bounded away, startling him.

He bent down and inspected the ground. There was a jumble of different footprints—
human
footprints.

There were several footprints with a lightning-bolt pattern!

“Hey, what’s up?” Phil asked, joining Joe.

Joe nodded at the footprints. “We think these belong to the person who’s been stealing stuff,” he explained.

Phil aimed his camera phone at the footprints and took a picture.

“Joe! Phil! We need to keep moving,” Fish called out. “Did you guys find an interesting animal track?”

“I guess you could say that,” Joe replied with a sly smile.

•  •  •  •

Later that night everyone met at Gooseberry Lodge for make-your-own tacos, followed by ghost stories and roasted marshmallows around a roaring bonfire.

After dinner Joe and Frank grabbed a couple of long sticks and a bag of marshmallows and sat down on a log. The evening was especially chilly, so the warmth of the fire was welcome.

Joe speared a marshmallow with his stick and thrust it into the fire. It immediately sizzled and burst into flames.

“Whoa!” Joe frowned at the blackened blob at the end of his stick. “Marshmallow fail!”

“You have to be patient, Bro. Hold it away from the fire a bit,” Frank suggested.

Joe sighed and tried again with a new marshmallow. As he waited for it to cook, he thought about their case.

So far he, Frank, Beatrice, and Lina seemed to be the only victims of the thief. At dinner the Hardy boys had gone around and asked the other campers if they were missing any decorations, and they’d all said no.

Perry, Bob, and Andy had been found, as had Beatrice’s Princess Petunia doll. But Lina’s toy tiger, Mr. Truffles, was still missing.

The footprint with the lightning bolt was their only clue so far, and they’d seen it twice—once this morning at their tent, and once this afternoon by the creek. Joe and Frank had managed to check out the bottoms of Beatrice’s and Lina’s shoes at dinner, using the same lucky-coin story they’d used that morning. Neither had the lightning-bolt pattern. Although maybe the girls had brought more than one pair of shoes for the weekend?

Joe frowned. He felt as though they were missing
something important. Maybe it was the Why part of the equation. Why would the thief do all this? Was he or she trying to win the tent-decorating contest? If so, that would point to Beatrice, who’d bragged to Joe the day before that she would definitely win. She could have
pretended
to steal her own doll—and Lina’s tiger, Mr. Truffles, too—just to confuse everyone.

Or was the thief simply trying to make trouble? That would point to Garrett, who seemed like a Troublemaker with a capital
T
—first with the soda can incident last night, and then with the pancake batter incident this morning.

Or did the thief have another motive altogether? Was it someone Joe and Frank hadn’t even thought of?

A hush fell over the group as Ranger Gil leaned closer to the bonfire and began telling a scary story. “According to an old legend these woods
are haunted by a headless ghost,” he said in a low, spooky voice.

“A headless ghost?
Cooool!
” Garrett piped up eagerly.

“Don’t interrupt, Garrett. Anyway, legend has it that the ghost wanders around the park in search of his missing head. No one knows how he lost it. But many people have reported seeing him, especially when there’s a full moon. . . .”

Joe glanced up at the sky—and gulped.

There was a full moon tonight.

•  •  •  •

Joe tossed and turned that night, unable to fall sleep.
Again.
He missed his and Frank’s bunk bed back home. He missed being in a warm, cozy house. He missed his mom’s cooking. He even missed Aunt Gertrude, who lived with them, nagging at him and Frank to clean up their room.

And he definitely missed not having to worry about headless ghosts.