Touchdown Tony Crowne and the Mystery of the Missing Cheerleader: A Tony Crowne Mystery, #1

By Peter Guy George

A family-friendly sports mystery packed with action and adventure…for the 9 to 12 age group...

Tony Crowne is a back-up quarterback and aspiring detective who has his share of troubles: He hates the nickname his father gave him, his eighty-pound dog clobbers his mother and grandfather at breakfast and he gets into a fight with the biggest kid in school.

Worst of all, his best friend, cheerleader Ashley Richardson, disappears the morning before Tony’s big football game. Did she run away? Was she kidnapped? Is she alive?

Now, Tony must help his team win the big game and help a retired police detective find Ashley before it’s too late.

The first in a series of Tony Crowne mysteries. Approximately 343 pages in the paperback version.

Bonus: This edition contains an excerpt from Peter Guy George's new Tony Crowne mystery, "The Tiny Heist."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hornbeck House
• Release date: Feb 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9780615930480

Peter Guy George

Peter hangs out somewhere in the lower 48 states and loves to read and write about sports, mysteries and adventures. He mainly writes books that appeal to the kid in all of us.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Ant Problem

Ant! Ant! Get up or you'll be late!

Anthony Delano Crowne III rolled over in bed, looked up at his bedroom ceiling, sighed and thought, why does Dad keep calling me that name? I’m not a little kid anymore. I hate that name. I wish he would call me Tony!

Tony’s father, Anthony Delano Crowne Jr., had been calling his son Ant since Tony was a baby. When Tony was younger, he loved the nickname. He thought it was neat to be named after an insect, kinda like being called Spiderman or Grasshopper as in those old kung fu shows Grandpa enjoyed watching.

But not now, Tony thought. Darn it, I’m 10 and in the fifth grade. I need a manly name. Ant sounds like something you’d squish on the sidewalk without giving two thoughts about it. And I don’t wanna be squished!

He was also feeling a little down because Tommy Perry, one of his best friends in the neighborhood, moved away and they had done everything together over the summer. Now, he was gone and Tony felt a little empty inside.

Without really knowing it, Tony was also giving into the pressure he felt from the other kids at school, who were slowly starting to make more jokes about his name.

Like that new kid who just moved into the neighborhood, Judd Judson, who thought his name was funny when they were introduced to each other by Coach Tiny at pee wee football practice last night and sneered, Hey Ant, whose yer uncle?

All the players and even Coach Tiny laughed at Judd’s joke. Tony, however, clenched his fists and thought about tackling him, he thought about tackling him as hard as he could, but Judd stood at least five inches taller than Tony and a good forty pounds heavier. Tony, if anything, was smart and didn’t know how athletic Judd was just yet, so he let the joke pass, forced a half-hearted smile and said, Good one.

Tony yawned and his eyelids drooped, his breathing slowed and he muttered, I shoulda stood up to Judd. I coulda taken him down—

Ant! Ant! I’m coming up there in two seconds if you don’t get out of bed!

Jolted awake by his Dad’s growly voice, Tony threw his covers off and leapt out of bed. He bounded across his room, opened his bedroom door and yelled, I’m up, Dad! I’m up!

Tony absent-mindedly shut the door and sauntered over to his closet to pick out his school clothes, he knew better than to make his Dad get him out of bed. Anthony Crowne Jr. had been a high school and college wrestling champion and he had not gained more than five pounds since his last match. Whenever Tony fun wrestled with his Dad, he thought it was like wrasslin’ with Superman, the man of steel, and he had never come close to beating him.

But, it was too late. The door flew open with a bang and Tony’s father jetted into the bedroom, roaring like a starving lion. In one deft move, he threaded his right arm between Tony’s legs, wrapped his left arm around his chest and swooshed him above his head all the while pirouetting like a deranged ballerina.

Are you positive you're getting up? Anthony asked.

Tony was spinning around like a helicopter blade and what he actually heard was, Are you —whoosh— positive —whoosh— you’re —whoosh, whoosh— getting up?

Tony couldn’t contain himself any longer. He laughed and screamed at the same time, just like when he rides the roller coaster and it’s going down the first big drop. He was having the time of his life.

Anthony Jr., now broke into a wide, toothy grin and still spinning madly, yelled, I can’t —whoosh— hear —whoosh, whoosh— you!

All the commotion in Tony’s room wafted down to the ears of a large hulk of fur asleep in the living room. One eye popped open, followed by the other one. A full sniff with his snout told Curly the Airedale all he needed to know. He sensed excitement, action and best of all fun! In one fluid move, Curly wriggled off his back and broke into a full run. He bound up the stairs, two and three at a time, stopping momentarily at the top of the stairs to check where he should run to next. In a split second, he was off again in a full dog gallop gaining speed as he raced down the hallway towards Tony’s bedroom; woofing happily all the way.

Curly gauged the distance he would need to reach his target in the least of amount of time and leapt into the air as soon as he entered the bedroom. Tony, seeing the familiar black and tan body hurtling towards the two of them, had only enough time to shout, Dad! It’s Curly—

Anthony Jr., caught off guard by the surprise attack, took the full wallop of Curly’s eighty pounds in the small of his back, emitted a loud grunt and lunged towards Tony’s bed in hopes of making a soft landing. At the same time, he protectively brought Tony down, cradled him next to his chest, twirled in mid-air and landed on Tony’s old bed with his full weight.

Tony’s bed had once been Anthony Jr.’s and originally had been Anthony Sr.’s bed, but no more. As soon as Anthony Jr. and Tony thumped onto the bed a sharp, wooden crack echoed out. Tony, still being cradled in his Dad’s chest, looked up at him just as Anthony Jr. looked down at Tony. At the same time and in a slightly conspiratorial tone, they uttered, Uh-oh, Mom’s gonna be mad!

Anthony Jr. always looked on the bright side of life and this situation was no different. Hey Ant, you know what? This bed hasn’t collapsed yet. I bet that crack we heard was just a slight break in the frame. I’m thinking, if we move real slowly and carefully off of here, that I’ll be able to repair the bed frame lickety-split.

Tony looked up and down at the bed and said, You think so Dad? I don’t know; that was a pretty loud crack we heard.

Curly was not concerned with the bed frame nor if Mom knew anything or not. Curly was concerned with one thing and one thing only: having fun. And right now, the most fun thing in the world to Curly was to be with his family who were lying on the bed. With a slight wag of his upturned tail and panting heavily as his tongue hung out the side of his mouth, Curly turned and trotted towards the bedroom door as if intending to leave the room. But as soon as he reached the door, Curly woofed twice, spun around and dashed towards Tony and Anthony Jr., leaping into the air as high as he could.

As Curly made a four-paw landing upon Tony and Anthony Jr., the bed frame groaned again and another, deeper, louder crack issued forth like a gunshot. At the same time, the bed frame broke completely in two and all three of them bounced, not once, but twice as the mattress hit the floor and rebounded them into the air like a backyard trampoline. Tony and Anthony Jr. roared with laughter as Curly stood on top of both of them, licking one face and then the other, his tail wagging furiously in delight.

Chapter 2

Curly’s Hurly-Burly

Downstairs in the kitchen directly below Tony’s bedroom, Maria Crowne was putting the finishing touches on Tony’s ham sandwich for his school lunch pail and had heard the first crack. She looked up at the ceiling, shook her head and wondered what in the world was going on up there. She knew her husband, Anthony Jr., had gone upstairs to make sure Tony was up in time for breakfast and she also knew that could be a problem because Anthony Jr. was in many respects a bigger kid than Tony. And Curly had mysteriously scampered up the stairs as well. Put all three of them together, she thought, and you have a recipe for a full-scale disaster.

As she stood there with a slice of wheat bread on the counter in front of her and a dollop of mayonnaise balanced on a butter knife in her right hand, her mind drifted away from the ham sandwich along with the mystery sound upstairs and focused upon the new law practice that she and Anthony Jr. had recently opened in a small office in downtown Dersee less than a block away from the German County courthouse. Even though it was a small office, the rent was fairly high due to the proximity of the courthouse and the magnificent view of Lake Haerr in the distance.

It was a big step for both of them, she thought, even bigger than when she met a strapping American exchange student in London, England and they decided to get married. She gave up her home in England, moved to the States, became a citizen and graduated from law school.

It was a much bigger step, she decided, because they now had a ten-year-old boy to think of and they already led a relatively comfortable life; Maria as an Assistant District Attorney and Anthony Jr. as a Criminal Defense attorney in a local law firm. Now, they were branching out on their own and there would be endless bills to pay. Would they have enough clients? One good thing in their favor, Maria noted, was their last name. The Crowne name in the town of Dersee was as good as gold, due to the sterling reputation of retired Judge Anthony Crowne Sr. Which is why, when Anthony Jr. and she were bandying about what to call their new law firm, they finally settled upon Crowne & Crowne, Attorneys at Law. If you've got one good, marketable name, they reasoned, why not double it?

Maria expertly spread the mayonnaise onto the bread with a couple of strokes of the knife, laid some deli ham onto it, cut the sandwich in half and slipped it into a baggy. She noticed the coffee pot was about half-full, turned toward the kitchen table and said in her English accent, Fancy another cup of coffee, Judge?

Judge Anthony Crowne Sr., as if pondering a mighty legal question, slowly looked up from the sports section of his morning newspaper which was parked between his plate of bacon and eggs and his empty cup. Judge Crowne was a huge football fan and he always said that if he didn’t get a chance to read the sports in the morning, then the whole day was wrecked. He looked at the coffee pot in Maria’s hand, looked into his cup once again and then replied in his best courtroom voice, One more cup of joe won’t hurt me. Don’t mind if I do, thank you Maria.

Maria grabbed the coffee pot from the warmer, walked over to the kitchen table, positioned it above the Judge’s cup and began pouring.

CRACK! BOOM!

Maria’s arm automatically jerked at the first sound and she poured the coffee over the Judge’s newspaper while at the second sound she moved the pot over just enough to make the bacon and eggs swim in coffee. As Maria was giving his breakfast and newspaper a bath, the Judge rose from his chair, his mouth forming a gigantic Oh, No! as his left arm knocked the coffee pot out of Maria’s hand which spun in mid-air, swirling the black liquid over the clean kitchen floor in a less than artistic arc.

The Judge’s right arm, in trying to steady his balance, plopped onto the kitchen table and clipped his breakfast plate, rocketing it into the air like a gigantic flip of a coin. The bacon, by virtue of its weight, was the first to fly off the plate, with one strip ricocheting off the Judge’s forehead and the other strip cartwheeling over his shoulder and onto the coffee-slicked floor. The eggs, fried sunny-side up, were the next to exit the plate, taking a higher lift-off than the bacon, the eggs followed a trajectory that allowed them to gracefully fall onto the Judge’s head, yolk down.

Following behind the bacon and the eggs, the coffee that Maria poured into the Judge’s plate, performed a tiny ocean-wave like motion and splatted the Judge’s shirt and pants as the breakfast plate spun over and over in the air. The Judge, with yolk rolling down his face, tried to catch the spinning plate, but the plate was too slippery and the Judge succeeded in only knocking it harder into the floor where it shattered into tiny pieces.

Dogs, by their nature, seem to have an extra sense of knowing the exact moment when food touches the floor. In the Crowne household, the standing rule is any food that lands on the floor belongs to Curly mainly because the three second rule is about two seconds too slow if Curly is anywhere in the house.

Once, when Tony was training Curly with hand signals, Curly just completed a successful Sit-Stay command when Tony tossed a treat toward him for a reward. At the same time, a baby carrot had escaped from Maria’s cutting board where she was preparing salads for dinner, bounced onto the floor and was rolling towards Curly. In his best shortstop imitation, Curly turned and fielded the rolling carrot first, snagged the tumbling treat out of the air and then happily munched on the vegetable/treat combo. Tony was duly impressed.

As soon as the Judge’s first strip of bacon lightly touched upon the ceramic floor, Curly stopped licking Tony’s face, his ears lifted and his head shot up in full dog-like attention and he emitted what can only be described as a human-voiced Huh! When the second strip of bacon splatted onto the coffee-drenched floor a second later, Curly had turned the corner into the kitchen and was barreling towards his meaty reward at top speed. Unfortunately, Curly did not anticipate the coffee puddle looming in front of him and he certainly didn’t anticipate the human legs which were poised like bowling pins before him.

Curly’s attempt to apply his brakes was too late and had no effect on his momentum, as he was positioned like the Great Sphinx of Giza and no amount of backpedaling with his front paws would help. He slid head first into Maria’s left leg which lifted her into the air, flailing her arms and legs up and landing on her back with a big Oomph! Still sliding on the slick tile, but rebounding off of Maria’s leg and gaining more speed, Curly twirled into the Judge’s back legs knocking him upwards like an over-sized Raggedy Andy. He landed with a deeper and louder Oomph! than Maria.

Curly, his fur now wet and sticky from the spilled coffee, spun another half-turn from his encounter with the Judge and slammed into the kitchen cabinets with a thunderous boom. The shock wave from Curly’s body rattled the kitchen counter top and knocked over a canister which