The swelling around Travis’s eye was going down quickly. He could see clearly again by evening, and the colour was now more like that of a bad orange than a threatening thundercloud. Even the stitched area was tightening and shrinking. It was wonderful to have stitches when they no longer hurt. He felt closer to Terrible Ted than ever.
Travis and Nish had called the players together in the afternoon to discuss what was going on with the sabotaged equipment. Later on, there was to be a parent get-together, a mid-tournament party that Mr. Dillinger had set up when he booked the rooms, and Nish and Data and Derek had already helped Mr. Dillinger carry several cases of beer from the van into the Skyroom at the back of the Holiday Inn. The players knew that the main topic of conversation for the parents would be the same one the kids were meeting to discuss.
The players met by the Jacuzzi, now clean and clear and watched periodically by a nasty-looking woman from the front desk. Nish and Travis and Data set up the pool chairs around the hot tub, which, for once, wasn’t full of parents, the kids turned off the noisy bubbles, and Travis, much to his own surprise, pretty well carried the meeting.
He detailed what he knew about the Panthers. He told them everything he had already told Mr. Dillinger. The wink. The laughter. The trip. The obvious fact that Sarah stood between the Panthers and the tournament victory.
“Ridiculous,” Sarah said when Travis was finished.
“No,” Nish argued. “It makes sense.”
“You’re saying they were the ones sending the pizzas.”
“Yeah.”
“And the ones who cut my laces and straps.”
“Yeah.”
“No way. No kid would ever do something like that.”
Travis butted in: “Their big centre would. He’s got a mean streak.”
“And what about the little defenceman?” Data added. “What’d he wink at you for?”
“Because he fell in loooove with Travis!” Wilson shouted. Everyone laughed.
“Who could fall for something that looks like that?” Sarah teased.
“blmoHqu’!” said Data. (“You look very ugly.”)
Everybody laughed again. Travis was falling in love himself: with his stitches.
“It makes sense,” said Nish.
“It only makes sense because we don’t know what happened,” countered Sarah.
“Well,” Nish said, his back up, “you tell us what you think happened, then.”
“I don’t know.” Sarah stopped for breath. She seemed on the verge of tears. “I just…want it to stop.”
“So do we all,” said Travis. “That’s why we’re talking about what to do. I think we should set up a watch.”
“A watch?” Wilson asked.
“We should keep an eye on the room where the equipment’s stored.”
“We can’t,” Gordie Griffith offered. “We’ve got a ten o’clock curfew. They’d never let us stay up and they’d certainly never let us stay out at the rink.”
“We’ll tape it!” Norbert shouted.
“What?” a half-dozen of the Screech Owls asked at once.
“Tape it,” Norbert said, suddenly totally assured. “My dad has his Camcorder here. I can rig it up on a timer.”
“You mean set it up in the equipment room?” Nish asked.
“Sure. Then, if anything screwy happens, we’ll see it when we play it back.”
“Won’t work,” Gordie said, certain.
“Yes, it will,” Norbert countered, equally sure.
“You’d need lights.”
“No way. This new one takes available light. No flash, nothing. It can pick up things in the day you can’t see. You shoot outside at nine o’clock at night, it looks like noon.”
“That’s true,” Wilson said. “I’ve seen it.”
“But how would we set it up?” Sarah asked, ever practical.
“Yeah,” Nish added, suddenly giving up. “How can we get in?”
“There’s still a game on,” Travis said. “We can get into the rink.”
“But what good does that do us?” Nish asked. “The equipment’s under lock and key.”
“Oh yeah,” Travis said, now as disheartened as his friend.
Derek Dillinger cleared his throat. He didn’t usually say anything when there were more than three or four others around. “I can get the key,” he said.
“You can?” Nish asked.
“My dad’s going to be running the bar at the parents’ get-together. The keys will be in our room. I can get them.”
The kids all looked at Derek with new respect. Finally, Travis spoke for everyone.
“Let’s do it.”
They decided that only some of them would go on the mission. Derek had to go because he had the key. Norbert had to go because he had the camera. Travis went, and so did Nish, Data, Willie, Sarah, and Wilson. They had no trouble getting into the rink. As players, all were wearing tournament pins that allowed them to come and go as they pleased. And no one thought anything of a bunch of kids coming into a hockey game as a group, one of them carrying a video camera.
“You fellows on a scouting mission?” the elderly gentleman at the front desk asked.
“You bet,” Nish answered, giggling.
The gatekeeper waved them through. They headed into the rink area where a game was under way: the Panthers versus the Toronto Towers. Everyone had figured the Towers would be one of the dominant clubs at the tournament, but the Toronto team was already down 5–2 with time still to run in the first period. The Panthers scored again as the Screech Owl players came out into the stands at the far end. With the parents behind the Panthers’ bench stomping and blowing on plastic horns, the little blond defenceman was being mobbed by his teammates at centre ice, the big dark centre high-fiving him as the others rapped his helmet and slapped his back.
“Perfect timing,” announced Nish. “They’re probably planning a raid right after the game.”
“I still don’t think it’s them,” said Sarah.
The Screech Owls watched to the end of the first period. Then, with the people in the stands heading for the snack bar and the teams huddling at their benches, the Owls casually walked out through the dressing-room doors, with no one paying them the slightest attention.
Data raced ahead and set up a watch. At the far doors, he signalled back with his hand for the rest to go ahead. They checked for the equipment storage room they’d been assigned on arrival–the men’s figure-skating dressing room, which was not being used during the tournament. The rooms had small windows on the big orange steel doors, and from the light of the corridor they could see their logo–The Screech Owls–where Mr. Dillinger had taped it during the team’s first practice.
Derek yanked the keys out of his pocket and quickly opened the door. The players slipped in.
Data flicked on the lights and they came on in stages, the room dimly taking shape, then coming brilliantly alive. It hurt Travis’s black eye at first, but his pupils soon adjusted and the pain vanished.
Their room was in perfect order, just as they would expect from Mr. Dillinger. They quickly checked what they could: Sarah’s straps, skate laces, sticks, the equipment of a few other key players, including Travis’s, which made him glow with pride, and then decided everything was fine.
“What about the camera, though?” Nish asked. “Anybody comes in here it’s the first thing they’d see.”
Norbert had an answer. “We place it under the bench, low, out of sight and in the dark. Then I tilt it to catch anything near Sarah’s stuff. No one will ever see it.”
“Will they hear it?”
“Runs dead silent.”
“What about the batteries? How long will it run?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Norbert said. He pulled a small black attachment out of his windbreaker pocket. “This is an automatic activator. After I set it and we leave, it activates after a thirty-second delay. Any movement and it instantly turns the camera on–no lights, no sound. It’s used for wildlife photography.”
“So if anything happens,” Sarah said, “the camera will catch it?”
“You got it.”
Travis liked what he heard. “Set it up,” he said. “We have to clear this place.”
Norbert moved with an efficiency they never saw on the ice. He set the camera on a special holder and adjusted everything and checked the lens and set up the special activator. Satisfied, he stepped back.
“Perfect,” he announced. “Now let’s get outta here. We’ve got thirty seconds.”
Travis first peeked out the door and down the corridor, where Data was still keeping watch. Data gave him the all-clear sign and Travis waved everyone out after him. Derek shut the door and locked it.
“How could they get in without a key?” Nish hissed.
“Maybe they have a master,” said Wilson.
“Maybe some of the keys are the same,” said Derek.
“Maybe they do it when Mr. Dillinger’s around working,” suggested Norbert.
“Maybe no one’s getting in at all,” said Sarah, still doubting that anything so diabolical could be happening at a simple hockey tournament.
Hers was an opinion of one. The others were absolutely certain there was something bad going on, and that, somehow, the Panthers were involved.