The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 1 Read online

  Contents

  Title page

  Mystery at Lake Placid

  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

  The Night They Stole the Stanley Cup

  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

  The Screech Owls’ Northern Adventure

  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

  Murder at Hockey Camp

  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

  The Screech Owls Series

  About the Author

  Copyright

  “Wedgie stop!”

  Travis Lindsay could not believe his ears. “WEDDD-GEEE stop!”

  The big Ford van had been travelling nonstop since the last bathroom break–and Travis had no idea how long ago that had been. He knew only that they had finally turned off that boring four-lane highway and that, far in the distance over the trees, the high green bridge over the St. Lawrence River was now visible. Beyond lay New York State and the road to Lake Placid. Finally.

  Travis had fallen asleep as they drove. He’d had the craziest series of dreams, the kind you always have when half asleep and half awake, head bobbing and eyes drifting. He had dreamed he’d finally found his father’s long-lost hockey card collection, the one he searched high and low for, without success, every visit to his grandmother’s old house in the country. He had dreamed he was back in grade six, that he had failed his year, and that he was failing again because someone had stolen all his workbooks from his locker. And he had dreamed he was taking a face-off in the Olympic Center in Lake Placid–the American Stars and Stripes and the Canadian Maple Leaf flying high overhead, the two anthems still echoing in the rafters, in the stands his mother and father, his teachers, his friends from school, NHL scouts, Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe, Alexei Yashin and Paul Kariya, Eric Lindros, the “Hockey Night in Canada” crew–and just as the referee held out the puck, Travis looked down at the circle and saw that he had forgotten to put on his skates!

  His toes were blue! His feet were wiggling and slipping on the cold ice surface. But no one else had noticed! The referee’s skates dug in, sending ice chips flying. The other centre’s skates kicked in toward the circle, the skate heading toward Travis’s toes with more sharp blades than a Swiss Army knife. NNNNOOOOOOO!…

  Travis had woken up in the van shouting, and everyone on the Screech Owls had laughed and slapped at his shoulders and the back of his head. He had refused to tell them what had scared him. Let them think whatever they wanted. It was a ridiculous dream anyway. He’d never forget his skates. Besides, he wasn’t even a centre.

  Mr. Dillinger had been driving since they left Tamarack and would be driving until they got there. He would have to–Mr. Dillinger was the only one in the rented twelve-seater van old enough to have a licence. Muck and the assistant coaches, the other parents who were coming, and four of the players were in other cars, some far ahead, some somewhere behind. Travis was secretly pleased that his mother and father had decided not to come, because now he got to travel with the team for once–and delighted, too, that Mr. Dillinger was in charge of the rented van.

  Travis looked ahead three seats to where Mr. Dillinger was sitting. He certainly didn’t look like a kid–what kid has curly grey hair, a bald spot, and a potbelly big as a hockey bag?–but he sure did act like one. He had started the trip with a “Stupid Stop,” pulling off and parking by a little variety store and then standing by its entrance handing out two-dollar bills with only one instruction: “Remember, it’s a ‘Stupid Stop.’ I want you to spend every cent of it in one place on something cheap and useless that won’t last.”

  Travis had bought a gummy hand that he could flip ahead two seats, past Derek Dillinger, who was reading quietly, and wrap right around the face of his best friend, Wayne Nishikawa. “Nish,” the sickest mind by far on the Screech Owls, had bought a pen with a bathing beauty on it and when you turned the pen upside-down the bathing suit seemed to peel off. But you couldn’t see anything.

  Mr. Dillinger had tapes like “Weird Al” Yankovic singing silly songs like “Jurassic Park” and “Bedrock Anthem” and “Young, Dumb & Ugly.” He had licorice, red and black, to hand back, cold pop in the cooler, and comic books–X-Men, Batma, Superman, even a Mad magazine–for them to read. He had pillows packed for anyone who, like Travis, wanted to snooze, and, best of all, he had the most outrageous sense of humour Travis or any of the other kids had ever seen in an adult. Not once had anyone whined, “Are we there yet?”

  Mr. Dillinger made the perfect team manager. He even made the best jokes himself about his lack of hair, one time showing up for a tournament with a T-shirt that said, “THAT’S NO BALD SPOT? IT’S A SOLAR PANEL FOR A SEX MACHINE.” He was fun and funny, but serious when it mattered. Because he also served as the team trainer, Mr. Dillinger knew first aid. Nish’s parents believed he had probably saved Nish from being crippled the year before when he crashed head-first into the boards and Mr. Dillinger refused to let the game continue until an ambulance came. They had carried Nish off the ice on a stretcher, treating him like a cracked egg about to spill. Then their ice time ran out and the game had to be called with the score still tied. Some of the other parents–mostly from the other team, but also loud Mr. Brown, Matt’s father–had been yelling for them to get Nish off the ice so the game could continue. The two young referees had looked like they were going to cave in, but Mr. Dillinger had angrily ordered them to clear the ice of players so that no one could slip and fall onto Nish. It turned out that Nish had a hairline fracture of his third vertebrae–almost a broken neck–but thanks to Mr. Dillinger taking charge he hadn’t needed anything more than a neck brace and a couple of months off skates and Nish was right
back, better than ever. Nish adored Mr. Dillinger.

  Mr. Dillinger organized the car pools, made the telephone calls, printed up the schedules and handed them out and replaced those ones the players lost. He ran the fundraisers–if Travis never saw another bottle drive he’d be happy–and he taped the sticks and sharpened the skates. He sewed the names on the sweaters, washed the sweaters, and even got a local computer company to sponsor the Screech Owls. The computer company had bought the team jackets and hats and redesigned the logo so it looked, Travis and the rest of the team thought, better than most of the NHL crests and almost as good as–Travis thought just as good as–the San Jose Sharks’ and the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim’s.

  Wedgie stop!

  “WEDDD-GEEE stop!”

  Mr. Dillinger was still shouting and laughing as he put the big van in park and hopped out onto the shoulder of the road. He ran around to the front of the van, bending over and wiggling so his big belly rippled right through his shirt, and with his hands pulling at the seat of his pants, he pretended to be yanking a huge “wedgie” of bunched-up underwear out of his rear end.

  Howling with laughter, the team followed suit, a dozen young players out on the side of the road yanking at their pants to free up their underwear and wiggling their rear ends at the other cars that roared by, the drivers and passengers either staring out as if the Screech Owls should be arrested or else pretending the Screech Owls were not even there, a dozen youngsters at the side of the road, bent over, with a hand on each side of their pants, pulling wedgies.

  “All ’board!” Mr. Dillinger hollered as he jumped in the van. The team scrambled back in, Nish and several others laughing so hard they had tears in their eyes.

  Mr. Dillinger started up the van, then turned, his face unsmiling, voice as serious as a vice-principal’s.

  “The United States of America takes wedgies very seriously,” he announced. “At the border they will ask you where you were born and whether or not you are having any difficulty with your underwear. If they suspect you are having problems, you will be body-searched. If they find any wedgies, you will spend the rest of your life…”

  He paused, waiting.

  Nish finished for him: “…in prison?”

  Mr. Dillinger stared, then smiled: “In Pampers, Nish, in Pampers.”

  There had been no “wedgie check” at the American border. A guard had come out and looked in all the windows and guessed, accurately, that they were on their way to Lake Placid for a hockey tournament. He had asked where they were from and where they were born and Mr. Dillinger, organized as always, had passed over a clipboard with a photocopy of everyone’s birth certificate.

  Mr. Dillinger even had the passports of Fahd Noorizadeh and Dmitri Yakushev, who weren’t yet full Canadian citizens. Fahd boasted he would be the first Saudi Arabian to make the NHL. Dmitri said he would be around the five-hundredth Russian and liked to joke that by the time he got there Canadians would be the exceptions in the NHL and people would be complaining that they were taking jobs from Russian boys.

  Dmitri had a weird sense of humour. He was a thin, blond kid with a crooked smile and, Travis figured, the fastest skater in the league. He had started to play hockey back in Moscow and came to Canada at age nine with his parents, so he couldn’t really claim to be a product of either system, the Russian or the Canadian. His uncle had once played for the Soviet Red Army team and Dmitri planned to be one of the best hockey players in the world, like him. Right now he was just one of the best hockey players in Tamarack.

  But the Screech Owls were a pretty good team. Once, in the back of his Language Arts notebook on an afternoon when the class was supposed to be reading ahead, Travis had even done a scouting report on them:

  GOAL

  GUY BOUCHER: Quick hands, great blocker. Yells a lot while playing. Two different ways of saying both names. “Guy,” or “Gee,” like in Lafleur, and “Bow-cher” or “Boo-shay,” depending on where he’s playing. No one ever knows how his name’s going to come out over the public address.

  SAREEN GOUPA: Back-up. Good stick and pads, but misses high shots and can be deked pretty easily. Still, pretty good for having played only two years. Team sometimes calls her “Manon” after Manon Rhéaume, her idol.

  DEFENCE

  WAYNE NISHIKAWA: “Nish” is the steadiest of all the Screech Owls. Not a really fast skater, but a good shot and very good in front of his own net. Clean player, dirty mind.

  LARRY ULMAR: Nish’s usual partner. Slow but a good passer. Lets other team go too much. Nickname is “Data.” Obsessed with “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Claims he can speak Klingon and sometimes tries. Sometimes plays like a Klingon, too.

  NORBERT PHILPOTT: The team’s “Captain Video”–Norbert’s father owns a video rental outlet and sometimes shoots the games and they show the videos during team get-togethers. Norbert has to analyze everything. As for his own play, he’s not very flashy, but he works hard and everyone on the team likes him.

  WILLIE GRANGER: The team’s trivia expert. Has probably 10,000 hockey cards in his collection and also has a lot of autographs–Pavel Bure, Jaromir Jagr, Pat LaFontaine, Raymond Bourque, even a Wayne Gretzky–which his uncle, a sportswriter in Toronto, gets for him. Willie is a smart player, if not particularly fast. If he had a good shot, he’d be on the power play.

  WILSON KELLY: Tremendous checker. Still learning the game, but improving all the time. Always in position. Plans on becoming the first Jamaican to compete in hockey in the Winter Olympics. But for Canada, he says, not Jamaica.

  ZAK ADELMAN: Quick, but not a physical presence like Wilson. Wilson can cover when Zak pinches up into the play. Quiet but funny–one of those senses of humour where you usually have to run it through your brain a second time before you realize what he’s said.

  FORWARDS

  SARAH CUTHBERTSON: Centre and the team’s best player. Mother skated for Canada in the 1976 Winter Olympics–speed skating–and she now teaches power skating. Sarah is determined to play for Canada in the 1998 Winter Olympics, the year Women’s Hockey becomes an official medal sport. She’s already been asked to play tournaments for the Toronto Aeros and will join that team after peewee. Best skater on the team. Great playmaker. Pretty good shot, but doesn’t use it enough. Team captain.

  DMITRI YAKUSHEV: First-line right wing. So fast he sometimes runs right over the puck. If Sarah hits him with a breakaway pass, Dmitri is gone. No one ever catches him and hardly anyone ever stops him. Great with his feet, which he says comes from playing soccer instead of summer hockey. Idolizes Pavel Bure.

  TRAVIS LINDSAY:

  Left wing, first line. Good skater, good stickhandler, fair shot. Assistant captain.

  DEREK DILLINGER: Second-line centre. Good playmaker with a very good shot. Would have more points if on first line and will probably move up once Sarah moves on to the Aeros. Because of strength is the face-off man used in tight situations. Hooked on video games. Quieter and more serious than his father.

  MATT BROWN: Left wing. Great shot. Lacks speed. Doesn’t like to carry the puck, but get it to him and it’s in. Muck has benched him in the past for lazy back-checking.

  FAHD NOORIZADEH: Third-line right wing, first-line computer expert. Produces printouts of everything from goals and assists to plus-minus and chances. Muck thinks this is ridiculous: “The only numbers that matter,” Muck says, “are the two they flash up on the scoreboard.” Didn’t start playing until nine years old and improving all the time. Great knack for reading play.

  GORDIE GRIFFITH: Third-line centre. Big and gawky. Gets noticed because of size. Most penalized player on team, the one the other parents yell at–but he isn’t dirty at all. Has some shifty moves and can lift puck over net from the blueline.

  JESSE HIGHBOY: Right wing. The Screech Owls’ newest player, moving into town around Christmas from way up north in James Bay. His dad’s a lawyer and Jesse says he’s going to be one, too, and still be in the NHL as the league’s first playin
g commissioner. A great team player, cheers everybody. Needs more ice time.

  MARIO TERZIANO: “The Garbage Collector.” Nothing fancy, hardly even noticeable–until there’s a big scramble in front of the net and the puck is suddenly loose in the slot. Always has his stick down, always ready. A good-hearted guy who laughs even at himself.

  The Screech Owls were even slightly famous, having been written up in the Toronto Star during a tournament they’d played in Mississauga. Someone must have called the paper in, because a writer and photographer arrived and talked to all the players, and the next day they were on the front page.

  The story in the paper was all about how the Screech Owls represented virtually every part of the country. They had a French-Canadian goaltender. They had different religions. They had players who had come from, or whose parents or grandparents had come from, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Lebanon, Jamaica, Italy, Great Britain, and Germany. And now this year Jesse Highboy, a Cree, had joined. And they had two girls on the team–three before Jessica Crozier had moved out to Calgary.

  The story had seemed ridiculous to Travis–after all, they hadn’t even made it as far as the tournament final. And the writer of the article kept referring to them as “Team United Nations,” only once using their proper name, the Screech Owls. He had also described Sarah as “too pretty to be taken for a hockey player with her soft eyes and long, tumbling brown hair.” But Sarah had got the writer back. The reporter had asked Sarah if it bothered her that women made up more than 50 per cent of the population but less than 10 per cent of the Screech Owls.

  “Why would it?” Sarah answered. “I’ve been in on more than 50 per cent of the goals.”

  Travis began dozing off again as the big van headed up into the mountains. He heard Willie Granger, team expert on everything, spouting off facts from the Guinness Book of Records on how the Adirondacks didn’t even compare to the really high mountains like the Rockies and Mount Everest. He heard Nish, the team pervert, giggling that two of the rounded hills off in the distance looked like “boobs.” Nothing unusual there. Nish was so crazy he once said the face-off circles reminded him of two big boobs out in front of the net.