“Look!” he said, pointing to a returned car parked near the front.
“A purple Cavalier!” Jupe exclaimed. “But is it the one we’re looking for?”
They walked over and circled the empty car.
“It’s the right license plate,” said Jupe. “Quick! Go into the office and see if he’s still in there, and stall him. If he’s not there, try to find out from the clerks what Mr. Sweetness’s real name is. I’ll be there to help you in a minute.”
As Pete left, Jupe opened the purple car’s passenger door and leaned inside. Was there something in the car that might be a clue? Jupe started searching, meticulously checking the carpeting behind, under, and in front of the seats. He checked the ashtrays and the glove compartment, and even squeezed his hand into the narrow space between the pedals to check under the floor mats. Then he stood up, puffing a little from being bent over for so long.
But it had been worth it. He had found something, something crucial. It didn’t tell him who Mr. Sweetness was. But it told him the next best thing — where he might go to find out. Jupe rushed to the rental office and met Pete coming out.
“What did the clerk say?” asked Jupe.
“Have a nice day,” Pete said.
“About the purple car,” Jupe said impatiently.
“Have a nice day,” Pete repeated. “That’s all it says. It’s a computer.”
“Look what I found,” Jupe said, pulling out a small crumpled piece of paper, shiny foil on one side and plain white on the other.
“A candy wrapper,” Pete said, smoothing it until he could read the name written in silver ink. “Miracle Tastes! It’s like the candy Don Dellasandro handed out at Big Barney’s party!”
“Yes, exactly,” Jupe said. “Free samples of a product not on the market yet. This creates two possibilities. Mr. Sweetness could have been at the party and gotten candy samples as we all did. Or — and this would be considerably more interesting—perhaps Don Dellasandro and Mr. Sweetness are in league together.”
“We’re just a plane ride from finding out,” Pete said. “Let’s go home!”
It was midnight when Jupe returned to the junkyard and too late to do anything except work on his latest electronic project — the lock combination decoder. When he got too tired to tinker with it anymore, he turned off the workshop light and started to lock up.
Just then the phone rang.
“Hello?” Jupe said in the darkness.
“Hello, Jupe, it’s Pete. Kelly wants to talk to you. Tell him, babe.”
Jupe flipped the lights back on.
“Hi, Jupe!” Kelly said with an awful lot of energy. “Well. like. you know, Juliet Coop took me out to lunch today. ” she began.
Jupe could picture Kelly twisting one long brown piece of hair, and he knew this was going to be a long story. He put the call on the speaker phone so he could walk around while he listened.
“. but she doesn’t remember where she was or where her briefcase might be,” Kelly was saying. “But she remembers something about a car behind her that night. but it’s still fuzzy. Anyway, after lunch she gave me a ride home, and it was great. Big Barney just gave her a new Mustang convertible.”
“You know the one,” Pete interrupted in the background. “The baby with the five-liter V-8 engine and the — ”
“Pete, please,” Kelly said. “Jupe wants to hear this story. So anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. So before she got in the car, she opened the trunk and threw in her purse. Hey, I said to myself, that was weird. So I asked her, ‘What’d you do that for?’ ‘Habit,’ she said. She was riding with the top down once in her old Mustang and someone reached in and grabbed her purse. So do you get the picture, Jupe?”
Jupe’s eyes lit up. The trunk! Juliet’s briefcase might be in her trunk!
“Yes! A brilliant observation, Kelly. You’re learning a lot from me,” Jupe said.
Kelly sort of snorted a laugh.
“Let me talk to Pete,” Jupe said. “Pete, first thing Monday morning, we’re going to the auto salvage yard to check out the trunk of Juliet’s car.”
“Knew you’d say that,” said Pete. “Okay, see ya.”
At 9:00 Monday morning, Pete and Bob showed up in the VW. But Jupe wasn’t quite ready. He picked up the phone and dialed the number of police headquarters. When Chief Reynolds got on the line, Jupe announced he was calling about Juliet Coop’s briefcase.
“A briefcase is news to me,” said the chief.
“Of course, you searched the scene of the accident thoroughly for all personal property,” Jupe said.
“Of course,” the chief answered patiently.
“And the car?” asked Jupe.
“Jupiter, I have uniforms that are older than you are,” said Chief Reynolds. “I know how to do my job. My guys said the car was empty.”
“I was just checking loose ends,” Jupe said.
“Grasping at straws, you mean. You wouldn’t want to put a little wager on this case, would you, Jupiter?” asked Chief Reynolds with a laugh. “Loser buys the winner a Big Barney dinner?”
“Chief, if I lose this one, Big Barney’s chicken may be the last thing you’d want to eat,” Jupe said. “Talk to you later.”
Then Jupe joined his friends and the Three Investigators drove over to the Miller Auto Wreckage Yard. It was the size of two city blocks and surrounded by a tall wooden fence. The far side of the yard was piled high with newly wrecked cars just waiting to be stripped. Scattered elsewhere throughout the lot were piles of various sorts: tires, fenders, cars that were too damaged to be used for parts, and so on. In the left rear corner of the lot there was a huge compactor machine and a 200-foot crane.
Almost as if it had been planned by a television action-adventure show writer, they arrived at the exact moment when Juliet’s little blue Mustang was being lifted into the air by the enormous electromagnet on the end of the crane.
“He’s going to drop it in the masher!” Pete shouted. “It’ll squeeze the metal into a solid block!”
“We’ll never get anything out of the trunk then,” Bob said, breaking into a run.
They ran as fast as they could to the crane, shouting and waving at the crane operator. When they got there, they saw it was Dick Miller, the owner’s son, who had just graduated from Rocky Beach High School a year ago.
He shut down the motor and stepped out on the big yellow painted platform around the operator’s cage. “What’s your problem?” he shouted down to them.
“If that’s Juliet Coop’s car, we’ve got to see it,” Jupe shouted back.
“That’s it, all right,” Dick Miller said. “But it’s past it for spare parts, guys.”
“We only need to inspect it for a minute,” Jupe said.
“Okay, I’ll set it down over there,” Dick Miller said, pointing to a space in the middle of the yard beside a huge pile of trucks.
The Three Investigators nodded and headed for the area where Dick Miller had pointed. As they walked the crane’s engine started up again and the wrecked car, dangling at the end of the flat, round magnet, started moving after them. Jupe looked over his shoulder and saw the car swinging gently back and forth. But then it began to pick up speed, swinging in wider arcs.