Sabotage on the Set Read Online Free PDF Page B

quiet!” Brian whispered. “I hear someone.”
    A voice spoke so close by that both Brian and Sean jumped.
    “I’ve got it,” a man’s voice said. “I was right. It must have fallen out of my pocket.”
    A woman answered, “Good,” and Sean and Brian immediately recognized her voice—Maria.
    “I gave you that little pocketknife,” Maria said. “I would have been unhappy if you’d lost it.” She paused, and her voice became quiet and serious as she asked, “Max, were you in my trailer?”
    “In your trailer?” Max answered. “Of course not. Why do you ask?”
    “Because I think someone was in the trailer. While I was waiting for you a few moments ago, I decided to check out my trailer. The minute I was inside the door I saw that things were slightly out of place. There was a magazine on the floor, and I’m sure I left it on a table by the doorway. A bottle of hand lotion had moved a few inches from where I always keep it. There were a few other little things like that.”
    “Had anything been taken?” Max asked.
    “No. I double-checked. I don’t keep anything valuable in the trailer, which is why I usually don’t lock it.”
    “This time, lock it,” Max said.
    As the voices moved farther away, Brian said, “Let’s get out of here. We don’t want them to see us. They’ll think we’ve been spying on them.”
    “Well, haven’t we?” Sean asked.
    “Not exactly,” Brian answered. “Private investigators call it surveillance .”
    “How did they get in, and how are they going to get out?” Sean asked.
    “Max seems to be in charge of a lot of things. He probably has a key to the padlock,” Brian answered.
    “Then it seems to me that Max has the means,” Sean said.
    “Maybe so,” Brian said. He wheeled his bike out into the street, and Sean followed, heading for home.
    LATE THAT EVENING Brian and Sean sat on the edge of Brian’s bed while Brian finished writing in his notebook.
    “I may be wrong,” Brian told Sean, “but the way it looks to me we can narrow the suspects down to the only three people who seem to have both motive and means: Frank Hightower, Ralph Wayne, and Dakota Wayne.”
    “What about Maria and Max?”
    “Max would have been hired about the same time Maria was,” Brian said. “Neither one of them would have been with the production company when the trouble started.”
    “Yeah,” Sean said. “I remember. Maria said she wasn’t hired until the production company was ready to shoot the film.”
    “That’s right,” Brian said, “and I can’t see that she’d have any kind of motive.”
    “Then what was she doing on the empty set tonight?” Sean asked.
    “I’m guessing that she came to keep Max company while he looked for his pocketknife.”
    “If that’s what he was really doing,” Sean said.
    “Do you think he was lying to Maria?”
    “I don’t know. He could have been.”
    “We don’t have proof one way or another,” Brian said. “Why don’t we go through the rest of our list?”
    “Okay,” Sean said. “How about Mrs. Moore?”
    Brian shook his head. “She wasn’t on the set either, until filming began, so she didn’t have the means. And she wants her son to look good in the film, so I don’t think she has a motive, either. Just like I said, I think the person causing all the problems is either Frank Hightower, Dakota Wayne, or Ralph Wayne.”
    “How are we going to find out which one it is?” Sean asked. “And, even if we know, how are we going to prove it?”
    “The culprit won’t be through causing trouble until the film is totally shut down, with no hopes of it being made,” Brian said. “So we get ready for the next disaster to take place on the set.”
    A shiver ran up Sean’s backbone. “What disaster are you talking about? Is it going to be anything that could hurt somebody? I’m allergic to disasters!”
    Brian put a reassuring hand on Sean’s shoulder. “No one’s been hurt … so far,” he said. “When the set