The Madman of Black Bear Mountain (11 page)

“You are Frank, yes?” the big hermit asked. “You have seen my friend Max? He is okay?”

“He's okay,” I assured him. “We wiped out on opposite sides of the river and he's got a long hike ahead of him, but he isn't hurt.”

“What about Jim?” Chief Olaf asked. “You said he was hurt?”

“He sprained his ankle pretty badly, but we splinted him
up and left him resting near the old ranger station with some water,” Joe said. “He should be okay for a while at least.”

Steven carried Maxine, or whoever she was, the rest of the way onto the bank, where she crumpled to the ground, coughing water and gasping for breath.

Casey immediately ran to her side. “Lana! Oh my God, are you okay?”

I was about to ask how Casey knew our mystery woman when I saw the matching bear-paw tattoos on both their arms. “ ‘Don't Call Me Maxine' is Casey's sister!” I blurted out.

“And I have a hunch Steven here is who you overheard talking on the radio with her before we left for our little misadventure.” Joe fixed the lanky lodge keeper with a glare.

Steven gave a panicked glance from my brother to the very mad Mad Hermit standing next to him and turned to run. The look on Casey's face stopped him in his tracks. She was a bundle of fear, surprise, and hurt all in one.

“Steven?” she said softly. “Why is Lana here? They think we've done something to hurt the Bayport High kids, but it's all just some kind of big misunderstanding, right?”

Steven looked away. “We were trying to help. No one was ever supposed to get hurt.”

“Trying to help . . . ?” Casey repeated. “But I don't understand.”

Unable to look his wife in the eye, Steven turned to us. “Whatever happens next, Casey didn't know anything about
any of this. She never would've let Lana and me get ourselves into this mess if she had.”

“Any of what?” Casey and Chief Olaf demanded at the same time.

“Kidnapping Dr. Kroopnik, stealing his identity, stranding a bunch of kids in the wilderness, and throwing Joe off a bridge, for starters,” I said when neither Lana nor Steven spoke up. Lana was still on the ground, recovering from nearly drowning, but Steven had that panicked look in his eyes again like he might try to run.

Aleksei growled and Chief Olaf fixed Steven with one of his patented “bad cop” glares. “Are you going to cooperate? I'd really rather us not have to restrain you.”

“Yes, sir,” Steven said, the fight draining out of him. “Just so long as Casey isn't blamed for anything we did.”

He looked over at Lana, who nodded meekly. Casey stumbled away from her sister like being close to either her or Steven might burn her.

“Speak for yourself next time,” Aleksei said to Chief Olaf in a thick Russian accent. “I would very much like to restrain them.”

“I'm sorry, but who are you again?” Chief Olaf asked, apprehensively eyeing the big, burly, bushy-bearded, buckskin-wearing mountain man.

Aleksei hesitated and looked down at Joe.

“Chief, this is my friend Aleksei,” Joe said proudly. “He saved my life on the bridge.”

“And he fits into this whole thing how?” the chief asked.

“Well . . . I . . . uh . . .” Aleksei cleared his throat. “You see, it's . . . uh . . . mmm . . .”

“He's Aleksei Orlov, sir,” Steven explained timidly. “Lana found out he was hiding on Black Bear Mountain on her camping trip a couple of weeks ago. We wanted to get proof to take to the FBI so we could collect the reward.”

“Aleksei Orlov?” The chief mulled the name over. “Wait, isn't that the name of that Russian mobster who crashed his plane up here all those years ago?”

Aleksei smiled guiltily.

“But you're supposed to be dead!” the chief exclaimed.

“If I am dead, then it is okay if I go?” Aleksei asked hopefully.

“What? No!” Chief Olaf looked from Aleksei to us. “Leave it to the Hardy boys to go camping and come back with a dead Russian mobster!”

“He faked his death.” Lana spoke up for the first time, her voice hoarse from nearly drowning. “I stumbled on his hideout in a cave and saw a newspaper clipping about a reward for information leading to his capture from before the plane crash.”

“She called me when she got back and I looked it up,” Steven added. “They never got around to taking the reward off the books after the crash, so we thought we could still collect it if we told the police.”

“Only they just laughed at us,” Lana said bitterly. “Like
we'd told them about seeing a flying saucer or something.”

Steven nodded. “We figured if we could get proof and show them we were telling the truth, they would have to give us the reward.”

“So I went back with my camera to get his picture and maybe some kind of DNA evidence or something,” Lana said.

“You what?!” Casey looked from her sister to her husband with her mouth wide open.

“We did it for you, honey,” Steven said sheepishly. “I know you wanted to make Bear Foot Lodge work without having to ask anybody for help, but we were so far behind on our bills. We thought if we used the reward money to pay off all the debt, then the bank would have to leave us alone.”

“Hard work is what's going to keep Bear Foot Lodge running, not some risky get-rich-quick scheme,” Casey scolded.

Steven hung his head. “We didn't tell you because we knew you'd say it was too dangerous.”

“Of course I'd say it's too dangerous!” she shouted. “Look at what happened!”

“But we almost did it!” Lana defended herself. “Everything was going perfectly until . . .”

“Dr. Kroopnik caught you trying to snitch on his friend, so you knocked him out, tied him up, and stuck him in a cabinet?” I added up the missing pieces for her.

Casey gasped.

“I didn't mean to,” Lana squeaked. “I just kind of panicked.”

The whole puzzle was starting to come together now that we had Lana and Steven talking.

“And then you radioed Steven from the research station to tell him what happened, and when he couldn't talk Jim out of taking us to Black Bear Mountain to see Max Kroopnik, you showed up in his place pretending to be Dr. ‘Maxine' Kroopnik so we wouldn't know the real Max was missing,” Joe said, reconstructing their plot. “Only we wouldn't leave when you canceled the field trip, so you tried to scare us off with the story about the Mad Hermit.”

Aleksei growled in Lana's direction.

“Pretty clever, the way you mixed fact and fiction to really frighten us with that campfire tale, but Jim still wouldn't budge,” I said, picking up where Joe left off. “So you cut down our food to lure the bear into camp, figuring a hungry black bear would scare us off for good.”

I guessed at that last part, but Lana just stared down at her soggy boots, letting me know I was right about the identity of the bear's accomplice.

“But Jim messed up your plan by wandering off and getting lost, which left you stuck with a second missing person and five stranded teenagers,” I speculated. I really hoped I was right, because there was still the unpleasant possibility that our teacher was mixed up in this somehow. I breathed a sigh of relief when Lana nodded.

“I guess I scared myself with that story too,” she admitted. “I really thought the Mad Herm—uh, I mean Mr. Orlov—took him. Besides that, I'd somehow ended up with your teacher's backpack. So I just kind of improvised to buy myself some time until I could get my own bag back, because it had all the stuff in it.”

“She radioed me from the station to meet her here by the river,” Steven said. “I was waiting when her horse threw her in the water.”

“Thanks, by the way, for trying to save me, Frank,” Lana said sheepishly. “It was a really brave thing for you to do, especially after I ruined your trip.”

“Um, thanks,” I mumbled, trying not to blush. It's still nice getting compliments from a beautiful girl, even if she was a criminal who almost got you killed a few times.

“Excuse me, miss,” the chief said to Lana. “But can you skip back to the part where you decided it was a good idea to throw Joe off a bridge?” Chief Olaf asked.

“I didn't mean to!” she said. “I was just trying to get the garnets back. I didn't realize he fell over the side until I looked back.”

“Garnets? What garnets?” the chief and Casey asked at the exact same time.

“Excuse me, Mr. Chief,” Aleksei interrupted. “You are a policeman, yes? I would like to report a robbery.”

“I'm sorry, what?” Chief Olaf said, looking from Lana to Aleksei.

“This woman has stolen my personal collection of demantoids that I have brought with me all the way from my homeland,” Aleksei accused.

“Deman-who?” the chief asked.

“Demantoid green garnets from the Ural Mountains of Russia,” Aleksei explained. “They are very meaningful to me, and I would like to have them back.”

Lana winced. “I don't have them. They were all in my bag when I fell in the river.”

“All of them?” Aleksei asked fretfully.

She nodded. Aleksei cast a sad look at the river and then shrugged it off. “It is okay. From nature they came. Back to nature they go.”

Chief Olaf looked at Joe and me and threw up his hands. “Can't you boys ever bring me a normal case?! Green garnets, mad hermits, and living dead Russian mobsters. The whole thing has my head spinning.”

“We like to keep you on your toes, Chief,” Joe said.

“So much for my fishing trip,” the chief sighed, turning to Steven and Lana. “I'm going to have to take the two of you into custody until the local police can get here to sort this mess out. You're not going to give me any more trouble, are you?”

“No, sir,” they both said.

“I'm so sorry, Casey . . . ,” Steven started to say, but Casey had already started running back to the lodge.

“What about Aleksei, Chief?” Joe asked hopefully.

“Yes, I go home?” Aleksei asked, sounding more like a little boy than a giant hermit.

“I'm sorry, I can't let you do that, Mr. Orlov,” the chief reluctantly told the giant mountain-man mobster. “I'm very grateful to you for helping Joe, and I'll put in a good word for you, but I can't let a known fugitive go just because he's a nice guy.”

Aleksei let out a little moan.

“I wish I didn't have to ask you this,” the chief gulped, looking up at the huge hermit. “But you're not going to resist this, are you?” He sounded a lot less confident asking Aleksei than he had Steven and Lana.

“I will not fight,” Aleksei conceded. “I was a criminal once, but never a violent man.”

Joe's face suddenly lit up. “That's it! You said you were charged with financial crimes, right, Aleksei? And it was thirty years ago?”

“Yes, embezzlement and money laundering were the only charges.”

“I don't see what that has to do with anything, Joe,” the chief said.

I did, though! I'd taken an online criminal law course from the local college, and Joe had helped me study. Different crimes don't just carry different penalties, some stay on the books for a lot less time than others.

“The statute of limitations, Chief!” I said. “They've expired! A person can only be prosecuted for certain crimes
for a specific number of years after they were committed—and embezzlement and money laundering are both less than ten years!”

The chief looked at me warily and sighed one of his chief-size sighs. “I know better than to challenge Frank Hardy on a technical detail.”

“Yes!” I high-fived Joe as Aleksei lifted us both off the ground in a huge hermit hug.

“The local authorities may still want to talk to you about this mess,” the chief said. “But as far as I'm concerned, my jurisdiction for the rest of this trip doesn't go past the fishing hole!”

Dr. K trudged up a little while later to join the celebration. Commander Gonzo radioed a few minutes after that to say he'd gotten Joe's distress call from the chopper; he'd coordinated with the rangers and was already on his way back to the lodge with Jim and the rest of the Geccos.

“I'm sorry you lost all your demantoid garnets,” Joe said to Aleksei as we sat with him and Dr. K around a campfire behind the lodge, watching Gonzo's plane come in for a landing.

“Who knows?” the hermit said with a sparkle in his eye. “Maybe there is still one more secret hiding place that jewel thief lady did not find, eh?”

“No way?!” I said.

Dr. K grinned as Aleksei twirled a strand of his unruly beard. It was hard to tell behind all that facial hair, but I'm pretty sure he was smiling.

“Maybe Miss Casey at Barefoot Lodge gets an anonymous donation to help with the bills so my young friends have a nice place to stay when they visit their old buddies Aleksei and Max.”

Joe and I were still processing Aleksei's latest whopper of a surprise when Gonzo's plane rumbled to a stop.

“Frank!” Melissa yelled, hopping out of the little plane and running across the field.

“Joe!” Mandy yelled from right beside her. Jim hobbled along behind them on crutches with a big grin on his face. Even Randall was smiling.

They must not have heard about our new friend, though, because all four of them nearly fainted when they saw us sitting around the campfire, roasting marshmallows with the Heroic Hermit of Black Bear Mountain.

H
AVE YOU EVER HAD A
dream?

A dream that was worth risking it all? Putting yourself in uncomfortable situations? Facing your fears?

I had that dream. But I'd only recently discovered it.

Three weeks ago, I joined the Bayport High B-Sharps, an a cappella singing group. That's right.
A cappella.
I know most people picture dorky guys in cardigans singing yet another goofy version of Billy Joel's “The Longest Time,” but the B-Sharps aren't like that. For one thing, we don't wear cardigans. For another, our captain, Max Crandal, has a strict “no Billy Joel” policy. (It's not that we have anything against Billy Joel, personally. It's just the cliché of the thing.)