Authors: Franklin W. Dixon
It took Mac a second to realize the intruder was a woman, since she was dressed in men's clothes and wore a construction worker's hard hat.
Behind her, Mac's secretary made a helpless gesture.
"What do you want, lady?" Mac asked in a hostile voice.
"Don't call me lady," said the woman. "And what I want is a job."
"Sorry, we got all the secretaries and file clerks we need," said Mac. "This outfit ain't big on paperwork."
"I'm not, either," said the woman. "You can keep those low-paying jobs. I want one of the jobs that pays real money."
"Forget it," Mac answered. "That's men's work."
"Oh, yeah?" she said. "That's a real interesting remark. I'm sure the State Commission on Equal Rights would love to hear it." She pulled a small tape recorder out of her pocket. "You want to hire me? Or do you want some state officials to come nosing around here looking for an incident of discrimination against women ?"
Mac's tone changed from sour to sweet. He tried his best to smile. "Look, miss, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. It's just that the work involves a lot of lifting and hauling. A pretty thing like you can't be expected to do that kind of labor."
"Oh, yeah?" The woman shifted a wad of gum from one side of her mouth to the other. "Pity me. I've been pumping iron for a year."
Mac cleared his throat. "Well, in that case — "
"My name's Lisa — Lisa Lee. Just so you know what name to put on my paycheck. And it better be for the same amount you're paying these guys." She turned to Joe and Frank. "How much you getting?"
Joe opened his mouth, but Frank punched him in the ribs before he could speak.
"We ain't at liberty to say," Frank said, looking to Mac for approval.
Mac nodded. "Good. You got the idea. Say nothing to nobody. And that goes for you, too, Lisa. You get hired, and you do the same work as all the men. You keep your mouth shut about everything that goes on here. Or maybe you got a problem with that?"
Lisa shrugged. "No problem, buster. You pay me the same, and I do the same. I need the bucks too bad."
"Ten bucks an hour—and twenty for night work," said Mac.
"You just bought yourself all the silence you want," said Lisa. "I warn you, though, if you want me to kill somebody, I'll expect a raise." Her expression indicated that she wasn't joking.
Mac's eyes softened. Maybe this dame would work out after all.
"Come on, let's put you three to work," said Mac, leading the way out of the office.
"You run this whole show?" Joe asked as they walked down the corridor of the small building that housed the Acme offices.
"Me run the show?" said Mac. "You'd be lucky if I did. I'm a real pussycat compared to the boss. You'll meet him tonight, before you go on your night shift. He gets final approval of all the people we hire, but he ain't showing up here until about seven. He's got a lot of interests all over, and he just checks in here a couple of times a week."
"We're working tonight, too?" said Lisa.
"Yeah," said Mac. "A split shift. Any objections? You still got time to quit. But after tonight, I gotta warn you, you ain't gonna be able to quit so easy. We got a real tough severance policy for trusted employees who try to cut out. It's not like we hand you a final paycheck. It's more like we hand you your head."
As Mac led them outside toward a high sheet-metal fence laced with electrified wiring, Joe and Frank glanced anxiously at Lisa to see how she had taken Mac's warning. She shrugged and said, "Night work is great with me. Just so long as you pay me like you said."
"We always pay like we say," said Mac, unlocking a gate in the middle of the fence.
Inside the enclosed area, metal barrels were being loaded onto trucks by grunting workmen. Mac led the three new employees of Acme Waste Disposal to a big bunch of barrels stacked four high. Then he pointed to a truck parked next to the barrels and told Frank, Joe, and Lisa to get to work.
"When you're finished, knock off," he said. "Give your time to the guy with the checkout sheet over there, then come back tonight at seven. I'll have the boss okay you, and then you can ride out on the truck and unload it."
"You unload it at night?" said Joe, shaking his head in puzzlement.
"When nobody can see the cargo, jerk," Frank said to him. Frank turned to Mac. "Am I right, or am I right?"
"You're a smart kid," said Mac. "Just don't get too smart for your own good. Remember, we're not paying you to think. We're paying you to sweat. And you can start right now."
Acme got its money's worth that afternoon. It took all three of them — Lisa, Joe, and Frank-working together to lift each barrel.
"I wonder what's in these," said Joe, grunting.
"I've got a hunch we wouldn't want to take a bath in whatever is sloshing around in there," said Frank.
Lisa was quiet as they worked.
"You've got real muscle," Joe commented. "Were you telling the truth about pumping iron?"
"I do work out a little bit," Lisa replied. "It's to burn up calories — I have a sinful weakness for chocolate-chip cookies."
At three they were finished. Lisa wiped the sweat off her forehead and said with a grin, "I can eat a whole box of cookies now and not feel guilty."
"We actually have some at our place," said Frank. "Let's get something to eat there, before coming back here. Callie must be waiting for us."
"I hope she isn't still mad about not being able to come," said Lisa.
"She has to know it was no-go," said Joe. "She looks too fragile. No way she could have convinced them to take her on. I have to admit, I even had doubts about you. Looks like I was wrong. You keep amazing me more and more. I've never met a girl like you."
"I'll take that as a compliment," said Lisa, smiling. "I just hope I can get by the interview-with the big boss tonight. After that, we can really find out what Acme is into and see if we can pick up any leads on the killing. The more they trust us, the more they're likely to let information spill."
Back at the Hardys' the four sat around the kitchen table destroying all the leftovers in the refrigerator plus all the cookies in the cupboard. Frank was filling Callie in on what had happened.
"So you see," he said, "it's really important you stay behind. If we're caught, we'll need you. We have to be able to tell them that we have somebody who'll go to the cops if something happens to us."
"You guys just want to have all the fun," Callie said angrily.
"I know how you feel, Callie," said Joe. "Being stuck here would drive me nuts. But we need you. Okay?"
Callie shrugged. "Do I have a choice?"
In the van on the way back to Acme, Frank turned to Lisa. "I think this is where the action's really going to start," he said. "Are you ready?"
"I think so," said Lisa. "I just hope I can keep up with you guys."
"From what you've shown me so far," Joe told her, "there's no worry about that." He smiled at her in the rear-view mirror.
"Thanks," said Lisa. "You sure know how to make a girl feel good." She smiled back. Their gazes locked.
"Hey, you two," Frank cut in, "let's pay attention to the job at hand. We still have to see the boss before we can probe any deeper into Acme."
But when they arrived at Acme they didn't get to see the boss. Mac led them into an empty room.
"This is where the boss does his interviewing," he said.
"And when does he get here?" asked Lisa. "Not that I care—as long as I'm being paid for the time I have to wait."
"You don't got to wait at all," said Mac. "The boss is already here. And he's already checking you out."
Mac smirked at their puzzled expressions, then pointed to a peephole in the wall.
"The boss likes his privacy," he explained. "The fewer people who see his face, the better it is for everybody. Especially them. It ain't so healthy to know too much about the boss."
"So we get interviewed from the other side of a wall?" said Lisa.
"You just been interviewed," said Mac. "The boss ain't crazy about people hearing his voice, either. Like I said, he's a real private kind of guy. He just likes to give new people a quick once-over, in case they send off bad vibes or ring a bell he doesn't want to hear."
He grinned. "The boss is very, very sharp about stuff like that. That's how he's done so good. He's never let the wrong kind of person get close to him. Nobody's ever been able to finger him for anything."
"When do we know if we passed?" asked Frank.
"In a minute," answered Mac. "I'll check with him." He paused at the door. "Oh, yeah, I forgot. Don't even think about trying to leave. There's a guy outside the door who wouldn't be happy if you did."
"And if we flunk out?" asked Lisa.
"He's gonna be even more unhappy," said Mac. "We don't like to let the people who might bad-mouth our company go. The boss says it's bad PR."
"So we just stand here and wait for you to make up your mind," said Joe. "I don't go for that."
"You want to do something, I'll tell you what to do," said Mac. He glowered at this punk kid as his voice shifted to a snarl. "You can pray."
JOE GLANCED AT Lisa, standing beside him and Frank. He wished she was still carrying the guns she had picked up. They could use them then—if the mysterious boss was as sharp as Mac had said. But they had decided to leave the guns behind. It would have been out of character for Lisa Lee to carry a shoulder bag, and her work clothes left no room for a concealed weapon. Maybe they'd been too cautious for their own good. Now they were sitting ducks if anything went wrong.
The door opened. Joe and the others tensed.
"Okay, kids," Mac said. "We got a lot of work hustling those barrels tonight. Let's get moving."
"First you keep us waiting, then you tell us to hurry up," said Joe, careful not to show the relief that came flooding through him. "It's just like my dad said the army was."
"As far as you're concerned, you are in an army—and you follow orders," said Mac as they left the building and headed for the enclosure.
Waiting at the truck were two men, one dark and one blond, both with beards and both built like pro football fullbacks.
"This is Mike," said Mac, indicating the black-haired one. "And Fred," indicating the other. "They're working with you on the unloading. This part of the job has to be done as fast as we can dump the stuff. I'm going along, too, just to see how you do. You three ride in back. Us three will go in front."
"We got a long drive to the dumping ground?" asked Frank.
"Shut your mouth, open your eyes, and you'll see," Mac answered as he climbed behind the wheel. The other two men squeezed in beside him in the driver's cabin.
Joe, Frank, and Lisa climbed onto the back of the flatbed truck. They were barely able to jam themselves into the small area that was left empty behind the barrels. Mac started up the truck.
"Good thing these barrels are tightly secured under the tarp," whispered Frank. "I'd hate to have one of these babies topple over on me."
"Let's hope the road isn't too rough, and the trip isn't too long," said Lisa.
"Yeah," said Joe. "Mac is driving like a cow-boy — he hasn't even put on his headlights. Do you suppose he doesn't want anyone to see this truck?"
"Can't imagine why," Frank answered dryly.
The bone-jarring ride lasted less than a half-hour. The truck came to a stop, and almost instantly Mac, Mike, and Fred were out of the cab and standing behind the truck looking up at Joe, Frank, and Lisa.
"Get the tarp off and get to work," Mac commanded. "You hand the barrels down to us, and we'll stack them."
Joe, Frank, and Lisa untied the ropes holding the tarp down, and removed it from the barrels. Then they started wrestling the barrels, one by one, to the edge of the flatbed. There they tipped each barrel over on its side and rolled it gently over the edge into the waiting hands of Mike and Fred, who then rolled it off into the darkness. After more than an hour of grunting effort, they were almost done. Only three barrels were left. They all gathered around the nearest one and tensed their muscles as they prepared to grab it.
"Okay," said Frank. "All together now, one, two, three—"
Suddenly he and the others were thrown off balance, nearly tripping over their own feet as their effort sent the barrel spinning on the flatbed surface.
"It's light as a feather," said Joe.
"It's empty," said Frank, rapping his knuckles on it and hearing a hollow sound. He checked the others. They were empty, too.
"What's the deal with these?" Lisa asked Mac, who was watching what was going on, his flashlight illuminating the action.
Mac shrugged. "Some kind of goof-up."
"You want them off, too?" Joe asked.
"Yeah, why not," said Mac. "We don't get a deposit back for returning empties."
They passed the barrels down to Mike and Fred and Mac, who volunteered to roll the last one away.
Before Mac did, he said, "Get off the truck and follow us."
Joe, Frank, and Lisa jumped off the flatbed. As they followed Mac they saw his flashlight cutting through the darkness and for the first time realized where they were.
"Some kind of water," said Lisa.
"It's Barmet Bay," said Joe. "I know this cove. It's a great place to swim in the summertime. Super fishing, too."
"Yeah, some of the fish are real big," said Frank. "The bay is a good breeding ground. Parts of it are real deep."
"That's why we're here," said Mac as they reached a ramshackle wooden wharf. Mac rolled his barrel to where the other barrels were stacked. Mike and Fred were already loading one of them into a large rowboat moored there.
"You mean you dump this stuff in the bay?" asked Joe—even though he already knew the answer.
"Smart kid," said Mac. "It's a perfect setup. This place is a short drive from town, which cuts down on the transportation costs. It's deep enough to hold all we can dump into it. And there's nobody to charge us for using it. Like they say, the best things in life are free."
"But if those drums leak, they'll trace it back to you, I mean, us," said Frank, thinking how he had been swimming in Barmet Bay the past summer, and how he was planning to swim there again next summer. He thought of the stuff in the barrels—and started changing his plans.