Great Bicycle Race Mystery (4 page)

“Maybe she’s trying to sabotage the race, the same way someone sabotaged your bicycle, Henry,” said Violet.

“Could be,” Henry said. “After all, she only wins if we
all
lose.”

“I gotta go,” said Nan.

The man with the microphone hopped up on the chair. “Riders!” he called. “Fasten your helmets.”

The crowd of bicycle riders grew quiet.

“Are you ready?” the man called out.

“Yes!” roared the riders all together. Cheers broke out. Jessie put two fingers to her lips and let out a piercing whistle.

The man raised his air horn. “Go!” he shouted and blew a blast on the horn.

The riders surged forward. Henry let out a whoop. Benny hunched over and began to pedal furiously.

The great bike race had begun.

Wheels whirred and gears clicked as the swarm of bicyclists pedaled along the swooping road that led out of the park. The early morning sun danced over the riders. Violet and Soo Lee spun along the road side by side.

As they reached the entrance to the park, the riders began to spread out more. Violet saw a ribbon of riders filling one side of the road all the way up the next hill. A quick glance back told her she had just as many riders behind her.

“Coming through! On your left!” Jessie called out cheerfully. She passed Violet and Soo Lee, waved, and disappeared around the curve ahead with a group of cyclists.

“We’re right behind you,” Henry said. “You’re looking good, Violet, Soo Lee.”

“Thank you,” said Violet.

“Grandfather’s near the back,” reported Benny. “He said he was going to take it easy for a while.”

“That’s what Soo Lee and I are going to do, too,” said Violet.

“Not Jessie, though,” said Soo Lee, laughing. “I think she’s too excited to go slow yet.”

They pedaled onward. They met a few cars, but it was too early for many to be on the road. A dog sat at the end of his driveway and barked at them as they went by.

A girl on a bicycle delivering morning newspapers waved and shouted, “Helloooo! Good luck!”

They passed farms and empty fields and ponds and heard roosters crowing from barns and hen yards. As they passed one house, a sprinkler began to spray water over the front lawn.

“I’m thirsty,” Soo Lee said.

“Me too,” said Benny.

Soo Lee reached down and took her water bottle off the holder on the frame of her bicycle. She kept pedaling as she squirted water into her mouth.

The sun rose higher. The roosters stopped crowing. Near the front of the riders, Jessie almost finished her water bottle. She wiped her sweaty face and kept going.

Then she saw someone holding a sign. It was a thin girl with a shirt that said RIDE VOLUNTEER. As each bicyclist approached her, the girl waved the sign. It said, FIRST WATER STOP AHEAD! YOU’RE DOING GREAT!

“Oh, good,” gasped Jessie. She could get water and refill her bottle.

The water stop had been set up in the parking lot of an office building that was closed for the day. Jessie followed the arrows tacked to the trees and turned into the lot. A few bikers were leaving as she got there, but many more were behind her. Members of the volunteer support crew had set out paper cups on rows of tables while other crew members were getting more jugs from the truck.

Jessie got off her bike and leaned it against a tree. She unbuckled her helmet and pushed it back. She wiped her forehead and squirted the very last of the water from her bottle over her hot face and sweat-soaked hair. Then she got her water bottle and headed for the refreshment table that had just been set up near her. She grabbed a cup of water that a volunteer had just poured out of a big jug and gulped down a giant swallow. Other riders were eagerly gulping down cups of water all around her.

“Oh, no!” shouted a volunteer. “What kind of a bad joke is this?”

He gestured at the jugs of water and fruit juice that volunteers were unloading from the truck. “All the jugs are either empty or leaking.”

Sabotage,
thought Jessie, but she didn’t say it aloud. She saw Nan arrive, jump off her bike, and go over to one of the jugs of water. She opened the spigot and held her water bottle underneath to refill it, but nothing came out.

“Hey!” she said. “This jug is empty.”

At that moment Benny, Henry, Violet, and Soo Lee came into the water stop. “I’m
so
thirsty. I could drink a million gallons of water!” Benny declared.

“You might not get anything to drink, Benny,” said Jessie.

“What do you mean?” Benny asked.

A gray-haired woman in a cap that said CREW CAPTAIN on it put her hands on her hips and said, “Almost all of our jugs are empty! Someone opened the spigots while they were in the truck.”

“They must have done it after we got here,” another crew member said. “The jugs were filled when we left.”

“Well, whenever it was done, we don’t have enough water for the riders!” the crew captain said. “It’s all on the floor of the truck.”

Sure enough, a thin sheet of water was pouring out of the back of the truck.

“Maybe there’s a water fountain in the building,” Henry suggested.

But the building was locked.

Other riders rode into the water stop.

“We have to find water somewhere. We can’t let the riders go thirsty, especially on such a hot day,” the crew captain said.

“I have extra water,” came Grandfather’s voice. He was standing by his bike, holding a water bottle that he had taken from his backpack. “I can share.”

“Me too,” said someone else.

“I have some, too,” said a third. “And some juice.”

Soon all the riders who had water were sharing it with the riders who didn’t. Along with the coolers that still had water in them, there was just enough water for everyone to have a drink.

“That’s wonderful,” the crew captain said as she watched all the riders sharing water.

“We’ll find more water along the way, anyway,” said Al, who was standing near the end of the table. He clipped his empty bottle into his bottle holder and swung his bike out of the water-stop parking lot.

Other riders began to follow. The parking lot emptied out.

“I’m still a little thirsty,” Benny said softly. But he got on the bike behind his older brother. They went up one hill and down another and Benny thought of how Watch panted on hot days when he was thirsty. He tried panting, but it didn’t help.

They rounded a curve. By the side of the road ahead was a clump of riders.

“Oh, no,” Violet said anxiously. “I hope no one had an accident.”

But it wasn’t an accident. As they slowed to a stop, they saw water squirt into the air in the midst of the stopped riders.

Someone laughed. Someone else said, “Feels good.”

“Missy! Don’t squirt people! Help me fill their water bottles,” said a girl with dark braided hair. She looked down at a smaller girl, who also had dark hair, in pigtails.

The smaller girl grinned, showing a missing front tooth. “Okay,” she said. She held a garden hose out and directed water into each rider’s bottle.

The Aldens saw that the two girls had brought the hose from the front of their house to fill water bottles for the riders. As each bottle was filled, the older girl said, “Good luck,” and the younger girl echoed her words. Their mother watched proudly from the porch of the house.

“Thank you,” said Benny to the younger girl as she filled his bottle.

She looked at him in surprise. “How old are you?” she asked.

“Six,” said Benny.

“Me too,” the younger girl said. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” said Benny, waving as he and Henry pedaled away.

They kept riding. Then Jessie, who’d sprinted ahead, slowed down. She stopped her bike.

Her family stopped with her. She said, “Up ahead, beyond that hedge—isn’t that Ms. Whatney’s car?”

“I think it is,” said Henry. “I think we should ride by extra slowly and take a look.”

Sure enough, the car belonged to Ms. Whatney. They could see her in the back, talking on a phone.

She didn’t see them. But Ronald did. He was leaning against the front fender, watching the riders pass.

He surprised all of the Aldens as they went by, however. He didn’t frown or scowl at them. Instead he smiled.

Then he raised a cup to his lips and took a long drink. “Hot day,” he said. “Having something cool to drink sure is nice, isn’t it?”

“That was so mean of him,” said Jessie angrily as soon as they were out of his hearing.

“I know. He shouldn’t make fun of us for being thirsty,” said Soo Lee.

“Well, he doesn’t like us. Or the bike race,” Henry said.

“And maybe he’s the one who emptied all the water out of the jugs,” said Violet. “Maybe he and Ms. Whatney did it.”

“He
was
wearing a navy blue T-shirt, almost the exact same color as the crew members’,” Violet said.

“He could have slipped up onto the truck and into the back of it and opened all the spigots,” Jessie said. “I wonder if anybody noticed anything suspicious.”

“We can ask when we reach the riders’ camp tonight,” said Benny. “And look for clues.”

“I think that is an
excellent
idea,” agreed Henry. “But first we have to get there.”

At the next stop, in a small park by a river, the Aldens found lunch waiting for them and all the riders.

“This is good,” said Benny, eating the graham crackers he’d found in the lunch bag he’d taken off a lunch table. “And look! An orange. And a sandwich.
And
the sign says I can go back for seconds.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about you going hungry on this ride,” said Henry, smiling at his younger brother.

“No,” agreed Benny happily. “And now there’s plenty of water, too.”

He and Henry ate slowly. Grandfather, who had been riding in the back, came to join them. But Soo Lee, Violet, and Jessie finished quickly.

Jessie jumped up. “Let’s get going!” she said. “I’m not tired anymore.”

“Having lunch helped,” agreed Soo Lee.

Violet stood up and stretched. “You want me to wait with you?” she asked her brothers and grandfather.

“Go on ahead,” Henry said. “We’ll catch up with you later.”

“Okay,” said Violet. She threw away her trash from lunch, fastened her helmet, and followed Soo Lee and Jessie out of the picnic grounds.

The riders were more spread out now, pedaling in clumps of two or three. They stopped more frequently to rest.

They passed a mileage marker and Violet checked her map. “We don’t have much farther to go,” she said.

“Good,” said Soo Lee. “We’ll get to camp in plenty of time, and we won’t have to ride in the sweep wagon.”

“Yeah,” said Jessie. “No sweep wagon for me!”

They rode on. And on. The sun began to go down. Violet’s legs ached and Jessie had finished all her water. Soo Lee gave Jessie some of her water, but Soo Lee’s bottle was getting low on water, too.

Violet slowed to a stop. “We haven’t passed any other riders in a long time,” she said.

“We must be way ahead of them,” said Jessie.

But Violet shook her head. She said, “We haven’t passed the last water stop, either. We should have reached that by now. And we haven’t seen anyone along the side of the road with signs to cheer us on, like we did before.”

“There’s another arrow,” said Soo Lee. “It’s pointing straight ahead.” Then she said slowly, “Wait a minute.” Soo Lee walked her bike up to the sign. She leaned over to look at it. She could see it was torn at the corners—it must have been stapled down. But there weren’t any staples on the old wooden post. Instead, the paper had been stuck hastily on the end of a rusty nail.

“This sign looks like it came from somewhere else,” she said. “As if it had been just torn off and placed here.”

“You’re right!” said Jessie.

Violet had pulled out her map. She studied it. She looked up. “We’re supposed to be on County Road Eighteen,” she said.

Jessie said, “Uh-oh.” All three of them turned to stare at the street sign they had just passed. It said ROUTE 76.

Henry, Benny, and Grandfather waited by the entrance to the camp. Henry kept looking at his watch. Benny waved and cheered as a rider pedaled slowly in.