The Hudson River Mystery Page 12

  Danger on the Hudson ● 16

  GLUB... GLUB GLUB. The car was making strange sucking noises—much louder than Honey s uncontrollable sobbing.

  ”We’re as good as dead!’’ Honey wailed. ”She—she sent us over the cliff in her car! We’re going to d-d-drown!”

  ”Honey!” Trixie spoke sharply to the quaking form beside her. ”She’s not going to get rid of us that easily. Now, calm down while we figure out how to get out of here.” Trixie had no idea of where the confidence in her voice was coming from—she herself was so frightened that she was nearly suffocating with terror.

  She tried to raise her head and found that her movement was severely restricted. ”The first job is to get loose from this net,” she said determinedly. ”Come on, see if you can unravel yourself from your end.”

  Straining against the steellike web was of absolutely no use, Trixie soon found out. She decided to save her strength for the efforts ahead and instead use her cunning to extricate herself.

  Her decision paid off. In a matter of seconds, she had located the ends of the net, tied fairly loosely together. Quickly she untied the knot and burst free.

  Squirming around in the cramped backseat, she managed to unroll the net from herself and a still weeping Honey.

  Trixie grabbed her friend by the shoulders. ”We have no time for bawling. We have to work fast! I remember Brian, or maybe it was Mart, saying something... about it taking several minutes—I think that’s what they said—for a car to completely sink.” Gulping, she stared at the brown water seeping in through the floor. ”Now, if I can just remember what else it was they said....”

  ”Trixie!”

  ”I’m thinking!” Trixie sat up and caught a glimpse of something in the front seat. She stretched forward, then screamed, ”Oh, Honey, look—sharks!”

  ”Where?” Honey cried hysterically.

  ”No, not sharks—fins. Look, look right there, Honey! It’s a couple of black plastic fins—they’re huge! I wonder where she got them. Yipes, and I was just starting to consider that they might have been phony! Oh, Honey, I think—I think I’m on the verge of cracking this case! Bunker! And that diver with the mustache—”

  It was Honey’s turn to speak sternly. ”You’ve got to concentrate on getting us out of this car! You can crack your case after we’ve saved our skins! Now—please, please remember what else Brian said.”

  For once, Trixie gave in without an argument. The water was up to the girls’ knees by this time. Apparently, the front end was going down faster than the back end.

  ”There were two methods of escaping from cars going underwater,” she said slowly, trying to bring the entire conversation back into her mind. ”And one you used if the water was already coming in the windows, and the other— Quick, Honey, roll down your window!”

  ”Are you sure?”

  Trixie bobbed her head. ”No more time for talking! Dive out your window! I’ll meet you when we get outside.”

  With that, Trixie rolled down her own window and began wriggling through it. It was harder work than she had expected and she cursed herself for being in Honey’s cumbersome skirt instead of her own jeans. Oh, well, it can’t be helped, she thought, balancing on the window frame on her stomach. I guess I should have taken off the skirt, but there isn’t time now.

  With a final valiant heave, she fell into the icy water, face first. Sputtering, she began treading water.

  Even though she’d managed to escape from the sinking car, Trixie was more discouraged than ever. She groaned as she pinpointed the lights on the shore. The silver car had shot farther into the river than she would have expected. There was no way she could swim that far—even Honey was bound to have trouble. Suddenly she felt like this was the longest, most exhausting Friday she had ever endured.

  Trixie swam around to the rear of the car, nearly punching Honey’s head with one of her strokes.

  ”We made it!” Trixie croaked with effort.

  ”S-Sure, but what do we do now?” By the light of the moon, Trixie could see Honey’s face, crimped and ashen. ”I can’t possibly make it to shore.”

  Trixie’s heart sank further. ”You can’t?” she repeated. She reached out to lean on the back end of the car, figuring to make use of its support as long as it was afloat.

  ”And these j-jeans aren’t h-helping,” Honey said through chattering teeth. ”I can only move my legs about half as much as usual.”

  ”I know. I could shoot myself for having that horrible idea about switching—”

  ”L-Look over there! Is that a light?”

  Trixie whirled around, lost her grip on the car, and went under. For a flash of an instant, she felt a blessed relief in surrendering herself to the pull of the water. Then Honey was helping her reach the surface, and Trixie instinctively began treading water again.

  With a final glub, the silver car was swallowed up by the Hudson.

  Trixie looked where Honey was pointing. Sure enough, a light wavered nearby. As it came closer, the girls could make out a boat, a small sailboat.

  ”It’s the Quarter Moon!” Honey breathed. ”Those silly boys! What are they doing out sailing at this time of night?”

  Honey wasn’t listening. ”Help!” she shouted weakly. To Trixie she muttered, ”What were their names again? Oh, Ken! Ken and Carl—over here! Help!”

  The catboat drifted closer, two scared faces peering out over the side. ”Are—are you ghosts?” asked a small voice.

  ”Just about,” said Trixie. ”Don’t you recognize us—or Honey, at least? Remember, she helped save your lives last weekend!”

  Ken leaned over to get a better look and almost fell overboard.

  ”Careful,” said Honey, nearly laughing with relief. She reached out to steady him. ”Ken, now you have a chance to save our lives.”

  ”I do?” Ken asked doubtfully.

  At the same time, Carl chirped, ”I remember you! Come on, Kenny, move over so they can get in.

  ”This boat is awful small,” said Ken.

  ”We’ll be very careful,” Honey promised. ”Here, Trixie, you go first.”

  Trixie didn’t hesitate. She grasped the side of the boat with both hands and mutely commanded her legs to propel the rest of her body into the boat. With a strength born of her will to survive, her legs obeyed.

  As soon as she had maneuvered herself halfway into the boat, it tipped wildly. Honey tried to steady it, while the two boys pulled Trixie the rest of the way in. Trixie lay gasping for a moment, feeling like a beached whale in the tiny craft. She noticed that Ken and Carl had learned Brian’s lesson to the point of wearing life jackets. At least if we capsize now, she thought wearily, only two out of four of us will drown.

  Then she jerked herself upright and joined the boys in dragging Honey aboard. Honey, too, was showing an almost superhuman strength as she struggled her way to safety.

  The minute Honey was all the way in, the two girls were forced to scrunch up as tightly as possible. Quarters were indeed cramped.

  The two boys didn’t complain but instead stared back at their wet passengers, their eyes pools of wonder.

  Trixie remembered their ridiculous clothes and forced herself to laugh. ”Jeepers, no wonder you thought we were ghosts. Ghouls is more like it!”

  Honey tried to smile but didn’t quite make it. ”Let’s see what we can do about getting back to shore,” she panted. ”Do you have any towels on board?”

  Carl handed them each a towel, which they awkwardly wrapped around their chilled bodies. Then, between the four of them, they managed to get the boat aimed toward shore. The wind that night was next to nothing, and it looked like it was going to be a long, slow ride.

  So far, neither boy had thought to ask what Trixie and Honey were doing in the middle of the Hudson on a dark Halloween night. And it didn’t occur to Trixie to badger them about their nighttime sailing habits.

  Instead, her mind was dredging up every sliver of information she could remember about Thea,
about Bunker, about the young man with the mustache....

  Apparently Honey’s brain was racing in the same direction. ”What do you think,” she began as soon as she could breathe normally, ”about Thea? I mean, why did she try to kill us? Why did she call us her latest haul? Bunker, the shark fins—what were you talking about before? What’s going on? I can’t make sense of anything anymore!”

  ”If you think about it long enough,” Trixie said slowly, ”I think you’ll reach the same conclusion I’ve already reached.”

  ”What?”

  ”That Thea Van Loon may have once been a children’s book writer, but that certainly isn’t how she makes her living now.”

  Honey gasped. ”Then what—how—”

  ”She lives off of treasure that she hires other people to ferret out for her!”

  ”But she said once—didn’t she say that there wasn’t any treasure in the Hudson River any more?”

  ”Not really,” said Trixie. ”She was just talking about Captain Kidd’s treasure. Naturally, she wasn’t going to mention Lawrence Krull’s treasure to us, the ’pesky girls.’ ”

  ”Bunker’s partner?”

  ”Yes! Remember that library article I was telling you about? It said that Krull’s boat may have sunk because it was loaded down with treasure. It most likely would have to be gold—or at least, that’s the heaviest kind of treasure I can think of. Anyway, didn’t I tell you that the librarian said that a man with a mustache had asked for that file? Well, that man has to be the diver working for Thea, and he had to have seen that particular article.”

  ”But the shark fins—how on earth did they fit in?”

  Trixie was still sorting out the facts in her own mind. Ignoring the two boys’ continued stares of amazement, she said, ”Okay, let’s start this from the beginning. I’m not sure yet how Bunker fits in, but that gold or whatever legally belongs to him. He told us Krull had willed everything to him—that makes sense because the article mentioned Krull’s ex-wife, Kathleen—”

  ”Trixie! Could Thea really be Kathleen, trying to get what she thought rightfully belonged to her?”

  ”I doubt it,” Trixie said. ”In the first place, Thea’s too young. In the second, why would she send her friend with the mustache to the library to look up Krull if she already knew all about him? No, I think this sort of treasure-hunting, or rather stealing, is something Thea does on a regular basis. Look at the trouble she went to with those shark fins, for example.”

  ”For what purpose?”

  ”Well, here’s what I think.” Trixie’s words were coming out in a rush, the way they always did when she was putting puzzle pieces together. ”I think she had her divers use them as signals when they had something to bring back to shore! That’s why she spent so much time on the river— she was watching for fins. Naturally, she was upset when she found out that I had seen the fin, too, and—what was worse—connected it with her. So she decided to let us think the shark was real! That’s why she told us not to mention it to anyone else.”

  ”But why would she want to use something as, well, as attention-attracting as shark fins?”

  ”Good question. She definitely seems to have some sort of thing—I’m sure Mart could think of a better word—about sharks. That weird poem in Alice in Wonderland, that bedtime story she told Bobby— Anyway, she probably had the divers use the signal as little as possible—just when they were ready to come in for the day, maybe. Maybe she figured the fin would scare people away. Then, when she got the signal, she must have run to fetch Bunker and then sent him-”

  ”Bunker?”

  ”—out in his houseboat to pick the divers up. Tonight, the whole group must have been about to transfer their ’haul’ from Bunker’s boat into Thea’s car. We caught them in the act, so Thea had to knock us off.”

  Honey shivered, not with cold this time, but with deep admiration of Trixie. ”You’re a genius!”

  ”Gleeps, I am not! But it is all fitting together, isn’t it? Even about Thea’s car. I don’t know why it never occurred to me before that it was stolen. That’s why she didn’t really care if Brian repaired it. And that’s why she didn’t mind losing it if it meant getting rid of us at the same time. I just remembered, too, how Thea was in that bait and tackle shop in White Plains when Brian hit her car—she must have been buying supplies or something.”

  ”How do you make the connection between Thea and Bunker?” Honey asked.

  ”Oh, that was easy—well, it seems easy now. Brian told me he and Loyola had seen Bunker picking up two divers off Killifish Point. And I was sure, one time, that I had seen Bunker’s houseboat in the same area where I’d seen the fin. The fact that we caught him and Thea together tonight just confirms that he’s in on the scheme.”

  ”He seemed like such a nice man,” Honey said thoughtfully.

  ”I know,” said Trixie. ”And I still can’t figure out why he looked so surprised when he saw the divers stowing us in Thea’s car...

  Ken, who with Carl had been silently in awe of the girls, suddenly asked, ”Are you guys in some kind of trouble with the police?”

  ”No!” the girls said in one breath. ”Why?”

  ”Because it looks like they’re waiting for you.” He pointed toward shore, only a few yards away.

  The low cliff from which Thea’s car had plunged was now swarming with flashing red lights and many figures moving about.

  ”Oh, my gosh!” exclaimed Honey. ”I wonder what’s going on!”

  ”I don’t know,” Trixie said softly. ”But I sure hope there’s still time to catch Thea before she gets away—not that I ever want to see her again in my entire life!”

  River Reward • 17

  BEDRAGGLED BUT ALIVE, Trixie and Honey stepped carefully from the boat and waded the last few feet toward the riverbank. They were profuse with their thanks to Ken and Carl, who waved and drifted back into the darkness. Their father had been expecting them hours ago, they said.

  Trixie led the way up the short climb to the top of the cliff.

  ”It’s Honey and Trix!” came Jim’s excited voice. ”Gosh, am I ever glad to see you two!”

  Surrounding him were all the Bob-Whites, several police officers—and Pat Bunker. Bunker was the first one of the parade rushing forward to greet the girls. Both Trixie and Honey stepped backward when they saw him.

  ”You must think I’m the world’s biggest fool, little ladies!” the fisherman exclaimed. ”Wh-What?” gasped Trixie.

  ”I sure am glad to see you,” he went on, reaching out to clasp a hand of each of them. ”When I saw what that woman was willing to do to protect our treasure—well, I knew I had to slip away from that gang and call the police.”

  ”You called the police?” Honey asked.

  By this time, the rest of the small crowd had engulfed the girls. Sergeant Molinson stepped forward and said, ”I had two calls about you girls tonight, one from Mr. Bunker and the other from your brothers, when you failed to return to your party after an hour. You have some explaining to do, but after hearing about what you’ve been through, I guess it can wait.”

  ”No, it can’t,” Trixie said urgently. ”We have to stop Thea—”

  The sergeant held up his hand. ”I’ve already notified the state police to be on the lookout for her,” he said with a little nod at Trixie. ”After you called me, I did some checking. I found out that she was wanted under various aliases in five states, on charges that include auto theft, tax evasion, and stealing buried or sunken treasure. The only thing I couldn’t find was any record of what you told me she was—a children’s book writer. But I guess that’ll teach me not to be so skeptical when you call me with hot tips! As for the shark—” He stopped to scratch his head. ”I did find out that there have been several other sightings of fins lately.”

  Trixie was obviously reeling from his compliment, so Honey chimed in, ”Oh, Trixie’s got the shark all figured out, Sergeant.”

  Bunker shook his head. ”That shark!” he s
aid. ”I knew that Thea was using those shark signals, and I figured that that’s what the little lady here had seen. But I just couldn’t stand the thought of her worrying about it being real, so I tried to steer her away from that notion.”

  ”So that’s why you hesitated,” Trixie realized. The Bob-Whites and the police officers were looking more and more confused, but Trixie was determined to get answers to her own questions first. ”Bunker, you said our treasure—were you and Thea partners?”

  Before Bunker had a chance to reply, Honey asked, ”Was Thea really Kathleen, your partner’s ex-wife?”

  ”Eh?” Bunker looked startled. ”The answer to both questions is ’no.’ First of all, Kathleen died last year. Thea never knew Krull, she just read about his treasure-hunting. No, we were never what you’d call partners. I met her in a bait and tackle shop in White Plains. She hired me to pick up the divers and keep quiet about it.”

  Just then, a policewoman approached Sergeant Molinson and whispered in his ear. Both hurried off.

  ”Keep quiet about what?” asked Trixie.

  ”Well, they were diving for Krull’s supposed treasure, of course. I always had my doubts about those rumors about the treasure, but I went along with their plan. Old wrecks make real good fishing spots, you know.”

  ”Thigmostropism,” Mart piped up.

  Bunker looked at him blankly. ”I don’t know anything about thigmos—whatever you said. But I know that underwater junk attracts fish. Plus the bubbles—from the two scuba divers’ air tanks—were good for fishing, too.”

  ”Right,” said Mart. ”That’s what scuba stands for, anyway—self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.”

  Honey spoke for the others. ”Mart, this is no time for showing off! Let Bunker finish!”

  Mart mumbled an apology.

  ”No problem,” said Bunker. ”Anyway, eventually I realized that Thea’s divers were really coming up with gold, and so I demanded a cut of the final haul. After all, Krull had willed everything of his to me. Thea agreed at the time, but I can see now she was planning to double-cross me out of my share all along.” Bunker’s voice held the hurt of a plain and simple man who had been cheated once too often.