Free Nowhere to Run by Franklin W. Dixon

Joe asked.
    "Only Biker's shoes." Sue laughed. "Biker almost took his head off one day at work," she explained. "We were walking out to the car, and Fat Harold was hanging around waiting for Frost. He whistled and made a rude remark to me. Biker took out Fat Harold's two bodyguards first and then started for Fat Harold. That guy is so thin that when he saw Biker heading for him, he crawled under his limousine and refused to come out till Biker left."
    "Did Biker owe Fat Harold any money?" Joe wanted to know. "No."
    "According to Fat Harold, Biker owes him two hundred fifty thousand dollars in gambling debts."
    "That's impossible," Sue protested. "Frost was the only one at the company who placed bets with Fat Harold."
    "Then why did Fat Harold say he was looking for Biker?" Joe said more to himself than to the others. "I wish we'd found something to help us make some sense of all this."
    "Maybe we have." Frank pulled the DalTime envelope from his pocket.
    "What's that?" Joe said, excitement in his voice.
    "Let's find out." Frank ripped open the envelope, pulled out several sheets of paper, and scanned them.
    "Well?" Joe was impatient.
    "What do you make of these?" Frank handed the papers to Sue.
    She took the papers and glanced through them.
    "What are they?" Joe asked, unbuckling his seat belt and joining Sue and Frank in the back of the van.
    "We have something here." Sue held up the first sheet. "This is a shipping invoice and schedule for three hundred cases of Watch Ya Wearing? watches to a large retail store chain in Kansas City. And," — she held up the second sheet — "this is a schedule of employee vacations with Biker's name underlined in red."
    "And this," Frank said, holding up a third sheet, "is a road map with a major highway leading out of Queens and New York City outlined in red."
    "So what does all this prove?" Callie asked.
    Joe's attention was on Sue. "Did Frost have access to shipping invoices?"
    "Only for the deliveries he made." Then she added, "But he had no business with the vacation schedules. Those are supposed to be confidential."
    Joe noticed a look of disappointment come over Frank's face. "What's wrong?"
    "The marks on this map end somewhere in northern New Jersey—on a highway in the middle of nowhere. There's March thirtieth and an X marked, and above that is 'B—seven-thirty.' " He looked grim. "B for Biker."
    "March thirtieth at seven-thirty! That's when the hijacking took place, according to Frost's testimony," Sue said.
    "Where was Biker on that date?" Joe asked Sue.
    "He'd just returned from his crosscountry vacation. He got to my place at about eight, and we went out for dinner at eight-thirty."
    "The spot where the truck was hijacked is a good thirty miles away," Frank said. "Biker couldn't have hijacked the truck, hidden it, and then gotten to your house by eight. Didn't his lawyer point that out to the jury?"
    "Yes, but the prosecutor said that as an expert driver and a former motocross champion, Biker had the skill to just make it to my house from the highway."
    "That stinks," Joe objected. "For all we know, that B could stand for 'Plan B' or Boise, Idaho, Frost hijacked his own truck. Let's just go back to Bayport and prove it." "We can't do that just yet," Frank said. "Why not?"
    Frank ignored Joe's angry question and turned to Sue. "Could Frost access the vacation schedule from any of the company's computers?"
    Sue shook her head. "Frost was a little slow. On his good days, he could barely remember his own address, much less try to figure out how to use a computer."
    "Then somebody must have given him the information — somebody who knows the company's computer access codes and who needed half a million bucks' worth of designer watches." Frank stared at Sue.
    She looked at him. "The only one who was in any sort of trouble was Frost."
    "And his troubles are over now," Callie reminded them from the front seat.
    "What are these numbers up here?" Frank asked as he pointed to the top