“Whose car do we take?” Pete wanted to know. “The roof of my MG leaks and I haven’t had time to fix it.”
“Well, we definitely can’t take my car,” Jupiter said darkly. His Honda Civic had been totaled while the Three Investigators were working on a case. And his savings were still too meager to pay for another car.
“Ugh,” Pete groaned, “squashed in the bug again.”
Bob socked him in the arm as the three guys headed for Bob’s red Volkswagen. Jupe sat in front while Bob drove. Pete slumped in the back with his feet up on the seat. At seventeen, Pete was six foot one with legs to match. There was no way he could sit in the front of the VW without bruising his knees on the dashboard.
It was drizzling again as they drove down the Coast Highway.
“It’s abnormal,” Pete complained, looking out at the rain-washed shore.
“Yeah.” Bob knew what Pete meant. “Not like San Francisco. You expect it to rain there.” His job had taken him up there a few times. His boss, Sax Sendler, had used Bob as a roadie for groups he booked in that city.
Once in Santa Monica the Three Investigators soon found the street they were looking for in the downtown shopping area. Jupe watched the numbers go by.
“There,” he said suddenly, touching Bob’s arm. “Just up ahead where all those people.
He didn’t need to say any more. A crowd had gathered outside one of the stores on the street. Two police cars with circling lights were drawn up at the curb.
“Come on.” Jupe opened his door as Bob brought the VW to a stop.
“That’s it!” Jupe told them. “The address we’re supposed to mail our entries to. Let’s find out what’s going on.”
The three friends edged their way into the crowd. Two policemen were rattling the glass-topped door, peering inside. They were evidently preparing to break in if they saw anything suspicious.
Jupe studied the building in his usual methodical way. It was impossible to tell what the store had once sold. It didn’t sell anything now. The plate glass display windows had all been whitewashed on the inside. FOR sale signs were plastered all over them.
None of the people Jupe asked seemed to know what was happening. But he could tell one thing. If anyone had been trying to break into the shop, they hadn’t succeeded in opening the door. Maybe the burglar alarm had gone off before they could get inside.
He walked across the street to a drugstore and bought some stamps from a machine. He dropped the three manila envelopes holding the tapes into a nearby mailbox. Then he rejoined the crowd outside the empty store, looking for his two friends.
He saw Bob at once. The tall, blond guy was talking to a pretty, dark-haired girl about his own age near the police car. She was a nose wrinkler, Jupe noticed. She couldn’t say ten words without wrinkling her nose. But he had to admit that she was also very cute.
Pete reappeared, and waited impatiently with Jupe for Bob to finish. Finally the third Investigator touched the girl’s arm in a friendly way and left her. All three guys climbed back into the VW.
“She give you her phone number?” Jupe asked a little enviously as they drove away.
Bob shook his head.
“She collects early Judy Garland records,” he explained. “She’s not my type.”
Maybe that explained the nose wrinkling, Jupe thought. The girl had copied it from late-night Judy Garland movies on TV.
“How come it took you ten minutes to find out she didn’t like rock?” Pete asked as they, headed back to the Coast Highway. “I thought you were a fast worker.”
“That was just for openers,” Bob told him. “The rest of the time she was talking about the burglary. Attempted burglary, anyway.”
“So give,” Jupe said. They were supposed to be investigating the puzzles, not picking up girls.
“The way she told it,” Bob went on, “she was coming out of the coffee shop across the street when the burglar alarm outside that store went off. Then she saw a woman run away from the store, jump into a blue car, and burn rubber driving away.”
“Did she see the woman’s face?” Jupe asked.
“Blond hair. Slender build. About forty years old,” Bob said. “Color of eyes — unknown. The woman was wearing shades.”
“Shades!” Pete exclaimed. “On a day like this you’d need windshield wipers on ’em!”
“Yeah,” Jupe agreed. “Our forty-year-old blonde sounds like a bit of a mystery.”
He was silent for a moment, thinking it over.
“She tries to break into an empty store — to find what?”
Silence.
Jupe couldn’t let it go. “Something so valuable that she risked arrest to get it. Guys, there’s more to this contest than barbecued steaks!”
2
Down Mexico Way
The following day the weather cleared. The usually reliable California sun shone again. For the next three weeks the Three Investigators were all busy in their own ways.
Bob was putting in more time at his job. His boss, Sax Sendler of Rock- Plus, Inc., talent agency, had booked several of his groups for a big outdoor rock concert. Bob was working twelve hours a day, preparing advance publicity and running errands and helping to set up the equipment.
Pete was having trouble with his girlfriend, Kelly. She seemed to have cooled off a little lately. Although Kelly was the one who had first suggested going steady, her way of going steady wasn’t what it had been. Sometimes when he’d arranged to pick her up at her house, he’d find she wasn’t home. She had gone shopping with a girlfriend. This hadn’t changed Pete’s feelings about her. And he often felt she was just as attached to him as ever, in her own casual way. But Pete did find he was wasting a lot of his vacation waiting around for her. It cut into his surfing time and even his karate practice.
Jupe was again making a determined effort to lose weight. At 5 feet 8 ¾ inches and 190 pounds, he could no longer hide the truth from himself. He wasn’t just stocky. He was. well, maybe not exactly fat. But his physique could use a lot of improvement. His problem was that the more he swam and practiced his judo, the hungrier he felt. And the harder it was to stick to his new diet.
This week it was Keil Halfebrot’s Body-Building Regimen — nothing but protein and salads. Since muscleman Halfebrot looked like Superman and Jupiter resembled a large pear, he thought it would be worth a shot.
One afternoon Jupe was standing outside his electronics workshop, next to Headquarters. The workshop was a tinkerer’s paradise, jammed with all the equipment needed to build and repair the electronic gadgets the team used on their cases.
And that’s exactly what Jupiter was doing now — tinkering. He was testing a new security device for the workshop, a lock that could only be opened when he spoke the special password.
Pete was on the other side of the headquarters trailer in his makeshift auto shop. He had been stood up by Kelly for the second time that week.
Jupe adjusted a final silicon chip.
“Beware of the dog,” he commanded.
“What?” Pete kept cutting the canvas that would become a new roof for his convertible.
“Rats,” Jupe complained. “The lock’s supposed to open when I say that. Beware of the dog,” he repeated louder. Pete sauntered over. “First it’s rats, now it’s dogs,” he commented. “Make up your mind.”
As Jupiter was rolling his eyes the phone rang in his workshop. Jupe ignored it, knowing there was another extension in Headquarters. Bob was inside, laying out a leaflet for the rock concert on the word processor. The call was probably one of his girlfriends begging him for a date. Let him answer the phone.
After a moment it stopped ringing. Pete went back to his auto pit.
Bob stepped out of the trailer. “Jupe, it’s your Aunt Mathilda.” Jupe caught a glimpse of three pretty young faces inside before his friend closed the door.