Motocross Madness (13 page)

“That's what I thought too,” Frank said. “But the biker we chased through the pipe yard was no amateur. He made some jumps that you and I couldn't even attempt. There are other things, too—like all the hazards on the Enduro.”

“They were tough, all right,” Joe said. “Elizabeth Navarro seemed to handle them okay. But the rest of us . . . If didn't know better, I'd think she almost knew what was coming. But how could that be? None of the contestants were allowed to ride the course before the race.”

“Wait a minute . . . !” Frank said.

Before he could complete the thought, Pops Fernandez mounted the makeshift stage and took the microphone.

“Behind this curtain,” Pops said, “is the O'Sullivan SD5—a reconstruction of a classic motorcycle, incorporating parts from the garage of the legendary motocross champion Garth Metzger.” Mr. Fernandez smiled broadly. “This motorcycle will be awarded to the winner of the Corrine Fernandez Benefit Challenge. After some discussion, our impartial judges have decided to award first place to . . . Paco Fernandez! Come up here and accept the prize, Paco!”

Mr. Fernandez beamed as Paco left his bike in the Winners' Circle and mounted the stage. Amber Hawk growled and stalked off. A good portion of the media trailed in her wake.

“Thanks, Pops,” Paco said. “But I don't know if I can accept this. I got in this race to help my sister, not to win a prize.”

“Well, let's take a look at that SD5, anyway,” Pops said. He motioned to some stagehands at the side of the platform, and they pulled the golden curtains open.

Atop the stage stood the beautifully restored O'Sullivan SD5. Its shining black and chrome-silver paint job glittered in the afternoon light.

And astride the cycle sat a man dressed in a black leather riding outfit. A black, visored helmet, emblazoned with a silver skull, covered his head.

As the curtains parted, everyone gasped as the rider gunned the motorcycle's engine and shot off the stage, straight toward the crowd.

The spectators in front scattered as the O'Sullivan SD5 flew off the stage toward them.

The classic bike hit the ground and roared forward, heading for the motocross track. Pops, Paco, and the others who had gathered for the award ceremony stood stunned. “He's stealing the grand prize!” someone shouted.

Frank glanced at Joe. Both brothers hopped on their bikes and fired up the engines.

“Out of the way!” Frank called as the two of them rolled forward.

The crowd parted, and the Hardys rocketed toward the track, chasing the skull-helmeted bandit.

“I think that's the same guy we chased the other day,” Joe said.

“With that jump off the stage, you can count on it,” Frank replied.

The brothers skidded onto the dirt course as the bandit hit the top of the first berm. The thief raced across the course, heading toward the fence on the east side of the property.

“He's going toward the pipe yard again,” Joe called.

“No,” Frank replied. “He's angling toward the cement factory next to it. That's an easier jump to make.”

The bandit zoomed up a nearby berm and soared easily over the chain-link fence onto the adjoining property.

“Easier for him . . . and for us!” Joe said. He sailed over the fence right behind the thief. Joe landed hard but stayed on his seat.

Frank landed behind him and to one side. The elder Hardy skidded and nearly fell off his bike. “Keep going!” he radioed to Joe.

The complex ahead of them was filled with huge piles of gravel and limestone, stacked like mountains in the factory yard. Because it was Sunday, the factory itself was closed. The towering ramps leading from the rock piles up to the big building weren't moving. No steam belched from the smokestacks
perched atop the tall, flat-roofed building.

The bandit glanced back and saw Joe chasing him. Skull-Helmet veered to the right, circling around one of the big piles of gravel.

Frank righted himself and shot after the other two. Seeing the bandit's course, he circled the other way around the gravel pile. He hoped that, this time, he and Joe might catch the thief between them.

The brothers met on the far side of the pile, trapping the bandit on either side. Instead of surrendering, Skull-Helmet turned his bike up onto one of the huge gravel piles.

The tires of the O'Sullivan SD5 skidded, causing a mini-avalanche, but the bandit kept going. Frank and Joe charged upslope after him.

One of the factory's big conveyor belts touched the gravel pile near its apex. Skull-Helmet skidded off the gravel mountain and raced up the long conveyor platform toward the factory roof.

“This guy drives like a maniac,” Joe grumbled as he and Frank balanced their motorcycles carefully across the narrow scaffold. Dust flew up from their wheels, threatening to blind them, but they made it to the roof without falling off.

The bandit wound between the smokestacks and circled the factory's big air-conditioner units. Once, it looked like he might sail off the edge of the roof, but he turned at the last minute.

The Hardys split up again to increase their chances of catching him.

Skull-Helmet veered precariously along the edge of the roof, squeezing between skylights and the sheer precipice. Joe followed closely behind. Frank swung wide, trying to cut the villain off.

A big cement storage silo loomed into view beyond the rooftop. Frank spotted a ramp near the tower, leading down from the roof to ground level once more. The bandit saw it too. He jumped the edge of the roof, landed on the ramp, and zoomed downward.

Joe was still squeezing his bike between ventilators and had fallen behind. Frank went after the bandit himself. He careened down the rickety rampway while Joe stopped his bike at the roof's edge, beside the tower.

The younger Hardy looked down. The ramp that the villain and Frank were on zigzagged down the side of the building before passing beneath the legs of the storage silo. At that point, the big pylons that held up the ramp straddled some kind of loading area.

Joe spotted a large pull-chain suspended in the air just a few feet off the roof. The chain ran down from the silo toward a hatch above the loading area at ground level.

As Skull-Helmet raced down the final ramp, Joe leaped off the roof. He grabbed the pull-chain,
throwing all of his weight into it. The chain jerked down, opening the trapdoor at the bottom of the silo.

The bandit looked up as tons of silty cement dust cascaded down from the open hatchway, right in front of him. He slammed on his brakes and tried to turn, but he couldn't stop in time.

Crash!

The falling cement dust buried Skull-Helmet up to his armpits. He and his stolen motorcycle stopped dead.

Frank hit the brakes and avoided the smothering cloud. Dangling on the chain above, Joe gave a loud cheer. Then he shimmied down to ground level to join his brother.

Skull-Helmet coughed and sputtered, trying to get out from under the sandy pile of cement. Frank stepped forward and pulled off the villain's helmet.

“Richard Navarro,” he said, “currently motorcycle-magazine writer and father to Elizabeth.”

“And formerly a skilled motocross racer,” Joe added.

“I suppose we should add ‘master criminal' to his résumé as well,” Frank concluded.

“Former
master criminal,” Joe corrected. “Now he's just another crook on his way to jail.”

Navarro spit cement dust from his mouth and sneered at them. “I nearly made it,” he said. “It was just rotten luck that you caught me.”

“And rotten luck for your daughter that you involved
her
in your schemes,' ” Joe said. “She's in the hospital, you know.”

“I know, but there was nothing I could do about that,” Navarro said. “I had to finish my plan.”

“And steal the O'Sullivan,” Joe said.

“But it's not actually the SD5 you want, is it?” Frank said. “You only want certain
parts
of the bike.”

“The parts that came from Garth Metzger's garage,” Joe added. “What do you want with them?”

“If you're so smart, why don't you tell me,” Navarro snarled.

“We have a pretty good guess,” Frank said, “but we'll know for sure once we—and the police-examine the bike that's half-buried with you.” He took out his cell phone and called the cops.

   •   •   •

After the police hauled Navarro to jail, the Hardys met with Jamal and the Fernandez family in the office of the Fernandez Cycle Track.

“One of the things that was so confusing about this case,” Joe said, “was that there were
two
sets of criminals.”

“Jules Kendallson and Sylvia Short were stealing at the same time that Navarro was scheming to get his hands on the SD5,” Frank explained.

“So Kendallson and Short
weren't
working with Navarro?” Pops Fernandez asked.

“No,” Joe said. “They didn't know anything about one another.”

“Although the actions of each of them provided good cover for everyone,” Frank added.

“So which group did which crime?” Jamal asked.

“Kendallson and Short set the fire at the kick-start party,” Joe said. “They used the smoke as a distraction to do a bit of pickpocketing.”

“The fire played into Navarro's hands as well,” Frank added. “He took the opportunity to examine the O'Sullivan SD5—which he needed to do in order to confirm his theory about the bike.”

“Which was . . . ?” Corrine asked.

“We'll get to that in a minute,” Joe said. “Kendallson and Short were also responsible for the box-office robbery, and the ambush near the end of the race. Their motive was profit, pure and simple. They entered the competition hoping to win the big prize. When they saw that they didn't have a chance, they decided to make whatever money they could on the side.”

“Which meant jumping me and Elizabeth Navarro in the woods to take our bikes,” Jamal said.

“Right,” said Frank.

“Which one of them tried to rob the box office?” Pops asked.

“That was Jules,” Joe said.

Paco scratched his head. “But he was on the racecourse at the time, competing.”

“It was a nearly perfect alibi,” Joe said, “but what happened to Jamal later allowed us to figure that out. Kendallson and Short pulled a switch. They're about the same size as each other, so Short put on Kendallson's armor and impersonated him during the competition. That's why ‘Kendallson' did better in that leg of the race. She was a better rider than he was.”

“Though neither of them was good enough to be in the top group,” Jamal noted.

“Richard Navarro was behind all the other trouble,” Frank said. “His goal was to get his hands on the SD5—by whatever means necessary.”

“What about Elizabeth?” Paco asked.

“We think she was just a pawn in his scheme,” Joe said. “She knew that he desperately wanted her to win the race, but she didn't know why.”

Frank picked up his brother's train of thought. “At first, Navarro hoped he might be able to coach Elizabeth to victory. But she was too erratic as a rider to count on to win. Her nerves often got the best of her, though she had quite a bit of skill. He bought her a new bike to increase her chances, but that still wasn't enough.”

“So Navarro decided to take things into his own hands,” Joe continued. “His experience in motocross racing served him well—and his role as a journalist was the perfect cover. If anyone found him poking around the speedway, he could just say
he was working on a story. Or he could say he was helping his daughter.”

“He rigged Ed Henderson's bike to explode,” Frank explained. “He's also the one who mugged Jamal and took his place during the race. Both of those moves were designed to help Elizabeth in the final standings. Joe and I realized later that the imposter had to be a very good rider in order to execute the jumps that he used to escape us.”

“If he was that good, he could have entered the race himself,” Paco said.

“Navarro himself told us why he couldn't,” Joe said. “He didn't have the stamina to compete in long races—like the Enduro phase of this challenge. That's why he needed Elizabeth's help. She's young and strong, and a pretty good rider to boot.”

“But not good enough to win without his help,” Frank said. “So he sabotaged Henderson, replaced Jamal, and laid out a series of obstacles on the Enduro course.”

Joe nodded. “We wondered how Elizabeth saw those obstacles before anyone else did,” he said. “At the time, we thought she was just a good crosscountry rider. There was another explanation, though: Her dad had ‘set up' the course, then made her memorize the hazards. She probably just thought he had ridden the course before and knew what to expect.”

“Hey!” Jamal said. “That's what Elizabeth was babbling about after she got injured!”

“Right,” Frank said. “She was running through the instructions her father had given her to avoid the hazards. We didn't make the connection until after the bridge collapsed. Remember, she said to make sure to be over the bridge
first?
That was because her dad had sabotaged the bridge so it would collapse after a few cycles had passed over it.”

“As we were riding, the Enduro seemed more hazardous than it should have been,” Joe said. “Cross-country is tough, but no one's supposed to get hurt in it. Navarro deliberately made the course dangerous.”

“He used the information he found in Pops's office the night before the race to plan his schemes,” Frank said.

“That bandit handling an old, kick-start bike turned out to be a clue,” Joe said. “He started that bike so quickly because that was the type of motorcycle he had learned to ride on.”

“All right,” Corri said, “now we know who was responsible for most of the trouble at the event, and we know what he wanted—the SD5—but
why
did he want it so badly? Why risk his daughter's life, and put everyone else in the race in jeopardy?”