Bikes and Bullies: A Neil Everheart Mystery

By Michael Bryan Swartz

What in the world is going on?

What do you do when you find a classmate beaten up, his new bike taken from him by the school's most dangerous bully? If you're Neil Everheart, you agree to get the bike back from the bully, which means an after-school showdown in front of half the school. And that's just in the first few pages of Bikes and Bullies.

Soon more new bikes are missing in Greenbelt, where Neil lives, even though Neil's father, the town's Chief of Detectives, says no bikes have been reported stolen. What in the world is going on? It's a mystery that Neil can't resist, even though he should, because soon it becomes bigger and more dangerous than he could have guessed-or might survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 23, 2003
• ISBN: 9781469749891

Michael Bryan Swartz

Michael Swartz lives with his wife and sons in Ellicott City, Maryland, where he authors both fiction and non-fiction. With the Neil Everheart mysteries Mr. Swartz has given pre- and early-teens something new and overdue ? a true-to-genre but age-appropriate hard-boiled detective series.

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All Rights Reserved © 2003 by Michael Bryan Swartz

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Writers Club Press an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

For information address: iUniverse 2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100 Lincoln, NE 68512 www.iuniverse.com

ISBN: 0-595-26550-2

ISBN: 9781469749891

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

For Anne, of course.

Chapter 1

Thick drops of dark red blood were slowly dripping out of Eddie Payne’s narrow nose, running down over his thin lips and pointy chin. He was sitting on his butt, hugging his bony knees up to his chest, resting his chin on the top of them. He was rocking gently back and forth, and moaning lowly. Occasionally, enough blood would collect on the bottom of his chin so that a big drop would fall onto and roll partway down his shins.

As Eddie rocked, his narrow, brown eyes stared straight ahead, as if to some far-away place. I knelt next to him, but he didn’t even notice me until I gently put my hand on his shoulder. At my touch he turned his head toward me, but his eyes were unfocused, as if he didn’t recognize me.

Are you okay, Eddie? I asked him.

Slowly his eyes focused, and in the dramatic fashion Eddie was known for he said, I’m bleeding to death.

I smiled a small smile and said, You’re not bleeding to death, Eddie. You just have a bloody nose. Let me help you.

As I brought my hand up near Eddie’s nose he pulled his head back and widened his eyes.

Eddie,I said again,Let me help you. I won’t hurt you. I know what I’m doing.

I did, too. I had been boxing in the local Golden Gloves program for two years, starting when I was twelve, shortly after my mother died. Since then my nose had been bloodied half a dozen times or more.

Eddie’s face finally relaxed a bit and he leaned back up to where I could reach his nose. I ran my fingers lightly along the sides and top of it.

It’s not broken Eddie, and it’s not bleeding much anymore, but we should get it stopped altogether. Take off your shirt.

Eddie just stared at me.

The shirt’s ruined anyway, Eddie, I said. We can use the back of it to get the bleeding stopped and clean you up a little.

Eddie continued to stare at me, not moving. I raised my eyebrows at him. Finally he took off the shirt and handed it to me.

I used the back of Eddie’s shirt to pinch his nostrils together and told him to blow out of his nose. Not everyone knows that this is one of the best ways to stop a bloody nose, but all boxers do.

Is it going to hurt? Eddie asked, sounding whinier with his nose pinched closed.

No.

Eddie didn’t blow. He just stared at me some more. I could feel myself starting to get frustrated. Somebody, or more than one somebody, had worked Eddie over just before I found him. I didn’t want to bully him some more, but I needed his cooperation to get the bleeding stopped.

Eddie! Blow through your nose right now!

Immediately Eddie blew until his face turned pink. Finally he stopped and I released his nose. It had worked. The bleeding was stopped. I found a clean spot on Eddie’s shirt and wiped off his face as best I could, along with his shins. When I was done I sat down next to him.

You didn’t have to yell at me, Neil, Eddie said.

Yes, I did, I said. But I’m still sorry. You want to tell me who did this to you?

Chapter 2

Eddie Payne stared out into the distance and started rocking again. I figured he was trying to decide whether or not to tell me who had bloodied his nose. I sat next to him patiently, waiting for him to decide.

As I waited I looked around at the mess I hadn’t noticed while helping Eddie. We were in one of the many old-fashioned playgrounds that existed in Greenbelt, where I lived. Eddie’s schoolbooks and folders were scattered around us. Many of his papers were being blown around the playground by the breeze that rustled the leaves of the big trees that surrounded the playground and everything else in Greenbelt.

Greenbelt was actually named for all the big trees that were everywhere, and that I loved. Actually, I loved almost everything about Greenbelt. It was so different from other places that it almost felt like a different country. It was basically a city of town homes, almost two thousand of them, all much smaller than town homes built nowadays. I learned in school that the town homes had been built during World War II, and were made small so that young families could afford them, and it was mostly young families, along with some old people, that still lived there.

As a 14-year-old kid, I thought one of the coolest things about Greenbelt were the miles of narrow walkways that ran through it. The city of Greenbelt was built in the shape of a huge horseshoe. One long road, Ridge Road, ran around the city of town homes, forming the horseshoe, but there were no roads within the horseshoe, only the walkways, most about half the width of a normal sidewalk. Adults parked their cars in parking lots or car ports along the outside of the horseshoe and walked along the walkways to their town homes inside the horseshoe.

Town homes were grouped in the form of squares (or rectangles), which surrounded grassy open spaces with big trees. Many of the open spaces had old-fashioned playgrounds: silver aluminum slides, red wooden teeter-totters, gray chain-link swings, blue metal merry-gorounds, white stone benches, and similar things. A long, square walkway separated the middle open spaces from the town homes that surrounded them like a narrow, concrete moat. Very short walkways branched from the long, square one to the front door or porch of each town home in a square, while other, longer walkways branched off on other directions to neighboring squares.

Together, all the squares of town homes made up Greenbelt, and there were miles of walkways connecting them. Exploring the walkways, figuring out which one led where and which ones, together, made for the fastest route to a particular place, was, to me, a child explorer’s dream. And although I was a ninth-grader, and had gotten a little old for swinging and sliding, the many playgrounds made for great meeting spots.

Some parts of Greenbelt, like the Recreation Center, shopping center, schools, library, pool, ball fields, and police station were just outside the horseshoe made by Ridge Road. But even these places, which were basically grouped together, could be reached without fear of cars using walkways that led to short, concrete tunnels that went under Ridge Road.

Clarence Umberger, Eddie Payne said, yanking me from my thoughts of Greenbelt.

Hamburger beat you up? I asked.

Eddie stopped rocking and his eyes grew wider. You shouldn’t call him that. He doesn’t like to be called that.

He’s not here, Eddie.

Still…

I couldn’t blame Eddie for being scared of Clarence Umberger. He was a cruel bully. He got the nickname, Hamburger (which he hated) for two reasons. One, it sort of rhymed with Umberger. Two, he was big and fat. But Umberger’s fat was not soft and pudgy like hamburger, it was dense and strong, more like a thick steak.

But what Umberger reminded me of was a snowman: a big round head on a big round body, and arms and legs that were the same size from top to bottom. Plus, Umberger was almost bald, wearing a very short crew cut, and he was constantly sweating, like Frosty the Snowman on a warm day. But Umberger was no Frosty, he was more like Frosty’s evil twin.

Why did Umberger beat you up? I asked Eddie.

I wouldn’t give him my lunch money.

He beat you up because you wouldn’t give him a dollar?

He said he wanted my lunch money every day for the rest of the year. I said no.

I felt my eyebrows raise in new admiration for Eddie. If Eddie were facing Umberger, Eddie would probably be staring at the top of Umberger’s chest.

Eddie looked at my raised eyebrows and said, Yeah. Dumb, huh?

No. Courageous.

Really?

You bet.

Yeah, well, it cost me a bloody nose and a bike.

He took your bike?

Yeah. And I just got it two weeks ago. What am I going to tell my dad?

Tell him the truth. The two of you can go over to Umberger’s place and get your bike back.

Have you ever seen Umberger’s dad?

I instantly understood Eddie’s problem. Eddie’s dad was a lot like Eddie: meek and slight. Umberger’s dad (and his mom, too, actually) was a lot like Umberger: big and mean. A couple of months back Umberger’s dad had spent a night in the Greenbelt jail after starting a bar fight and then resisting arrest. My dad, who is a Greenbelt detective, said it had taken three uniformed cops to bring Umberger’s dad down.

My dad’s not going to go over and yell at Old Man Umberger, said Eddie. Anyway, Umberger said he’d pound me into mincemeat if I told my dad.

As a bully, Umberger made a lot of threats to a lot of kids. I often found it amusing how many of those threats involved food, like mincemeat.

What am I going to do, Neil? asked Eddie. Umberger said he’s going to ride my bike to school tomorrow to show everyone what a wimp I am.

Suddenly my face felt hot.

Meet me at the school’s front doors tomorrow after final bell, I told Eddie.

Why? What are you going to do?

I don’t know yet, but something.

Thanks, Neil, said Eddie.

I nodded. Then Eddie and I got up, picked up all of his books, folders and papers, and headed for home.

Here I go again, I thought.

Chapter 3

I caught up with my best friend, Marcus Ewing, in between fifth and sixth periods. He was on his way to Science. I was on my way to Honors English.

Hey, Neil, he called as we approached each other in the school’s old, narrow hallway, yellow lockers on each side.

Technically, Marcus and I were freshmen in high-school. But, in Greenbelt, all ninth-graders attended Greenbelt Junior High, along with seventh-and eighth-graders. We wouldn’t attend Greenbelt High until tenth-grade.

Hey, I said to Marcus, stopping in front of him.

Marcus’s skin was the color of dark syrup, and he was a little bigger than I was—a tad taller and wider. Yet anyone looking at him would instantly label him a nerd. At the moment he had on very blue jeans that were short enough to reveal the white socks he wore inside the black canvass, high-top Converse Chucks he wore. Tucked into his too-short pants was a too-large, short-sleeved, button-down, green-andblack plaid shirt that hid the big, round muscles of his shoulders, arms, chest, and back that I knew were there. His black plastic glasses had, as they often did, slipped partway down the bridge of his wide nose.

People who might have labeled Marcus a nerd were half right. He was, for example, a straight A student, considered brilliant by his math and science teachers. In fact, Marcus had placed second at the National Science Fair Competition the year before by inventing a device that allowed people to start their cars without being in them. With Marcus’s invention, people getting ready to leave for work in the winter (or summer) didn’t have to go out to a freezing cold (or blistering hot) car. They just stood next to a window in their homes, pointed Marcus’s match-book-size invention at their cars, pressed a button, and the cars started on their own. Ten minutes later the cars were warm (or cool) and ready for their drivers. Although Marcus’s invention hadn’t won first prize, a company in Detroit had ended up buying the design for $200,000 dollars, ensuring that Marcus and his older sister, Paula, would have money for college.

But Marcus was also potentially lethal. He had won the Maryland State Kickboxing Championship two years in a row, making it to the Regional Semifinals last year. But unlike me, Marcus almost never got into fights, even when challenged. Marcus seemed able to walk away from almost any fight, endure any insult. Of course, after the Greenbelt newspaper had run a story on his kickboxing championships, no kid seemed in a hurry to pick a fight with him anyway.

Would you mind giving me a hand after school? I asked Marcus.

Doing what?

"Taking Eddie Payne’s bike