The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 3 Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Nightmare in Nagano

  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

  Danger in Dinosaur Valley

  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

  The Ghost of 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

  The West Coast Murders

  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

  About the Author

  Also by Roy MacGregor

  Copyright

  ”TOASTED BUNS!”

  Travis Lindsay could only shake his head in wonder. The Screech Owls had been in Nagano, Japan, less than an hour, and already Nish was spinning out of control.

  “WE GOT TOASTED BUNS!”

  The Owls had just checked in to the Olympic Village where they would be staying for the next two weeks. They’d been issued door keys, divided into groups, and assigned to different “apartments” in the large complex that would be home to all the teams competing in this special, once-in-a-lifetime “Junior Olympics.” Travis was sharing with Dmitri Yakushev, Lars Johanssen, Andy Higgins, Fahd Noorizadeh–and, of course, his so-called, perhaps soon to be former, best friend Wayne Nishikawa.

  “COME AND GET YOUR BUNS TOASTED!”

  Rarely had Travis seen Nish this wound up. Travis and the other players had been carefully hanging up their clothes or putting them neatly in drawers, when Nish, as usual, had simply stepped into the bedroom he’d be sharing with Travis, unzipped his bag, turned it upside down, and let shirts and pants tumble into a heap beside his bed. Then he’d gone “exploring.”

  It took him less than a minute to find out that Japan was the land of the heated toilet seat.

  “Fan-tas-tic!” Nish had shouted out in triumph. “At least one country still believes in the electric chair!”

  The rooms were not very warm. The elevator and the stairs were all on the outside of the building, the wind-blown snow powder dancing around the walkways as the Owls had made their way to their little apartments. The apartments were heated, but still cool compared to homes in North America. Each bathroom had its own heater, and the toilet seat itself was wired for heat, with a small red dial on the side to control the temperature. Nish had instantly cranked theirs up as high as it would go.

  “THIS IS BETTER THAN WEDGIES!” he had screamed before heading out to crank up all the other toilet seats before anyone else discovered this little miracle of technology.

  Travis just shook his head.

  He still had unpacking to do. And after eighteen hours of flying, and six hours sitting in a bus as it climbed up from Tokyo into the snow-capped mountains that surrounded Nagano, he was exhausted. His own bed back home couldn’t have looked more inviting than this tiny bed with the crisp sheets folded back, waiting for him.

  Travis was so tired that not even the screaming and shouting from the other apartments was going to stop him from slipping in between those covers for a quick nap.

  “YOU’RE GONNA DIE FOR THIS, NISH!”

  That was Sarah Cuthbertson’s voice. And if anybody could get revenge on Nish, it would be Sarah.

  The Screech Owls had come to Nagano through a remarkable series of coincidences. Several years earlier, their small town of Tamarack had “twinned” with Nagano, which considered itself small by Japanese standards, even though it had close to a hundred times as many people as there were in Tamarack. But “twinning” had been popular at the time, and centres throughout Japan had been approaching North American towns and cities and setting up exchanges. Nagano and Tamarack were both tourist centres. Both had long and snowy winters. Both had ski hills within easy reach. Both were surrounded by bush, but farther from the city, Nagano’s bush became mountains, whereas Tamarack’s bush just became more bush.

  There had been exchanges in the past between the two towns. One of the Tamarack service clubs had gone to Nagano several years back, and a Nagano high-school band had come to Tamarack and put on a wonderful concert at the town hall–but in the past few years, as Nagano had prepared to host the Olympics, there had been no contact.

  Now, with the Winter Games over, the town of Nagano had sent out the most surprising invitation: Would there be a hockey team in Tamarack that would like to come over and play in Big Hat? Big Hat, of course, was the main arena at the Olympic Games. It was here that Dominik Hasek of the Czech Republic team had stopped five players from Team Canada, one after the other–Theoren Fleury, Raymond Bourque, Eric Lindros, Joe Nieuwendyk, Brendan Shanahan–in that amazing shootout that had eliminated Canada. And it was here that the brilliant Hasek had then shut out the mighty Russians. In a single season, Hasek had won the Olympic gold medal and, four months later, been named, for the second year in a row, the most valuable player in the National Hockey League.

  But now that the Games were over, the city of Nagano had decided to turn Big Hat into a huge gymnasium. It would never again serve as a hockey rink.

  There would, however, be one last gasp. The head of Japanese hockey, Mr. Shoichi “Sho” Fujiwara, had talked the city of Nagano into putting on one final tournament at Big Hat. He had even received approval from the International Olympic Committee to use the official Olympic symbol and call this once-in-a-lifetime tournament the “Junior Olympics.” It would feature Japan’s future Olympic stars, or so hoped the organizers. The best peewee teams in Japan were invited. A team was invited from Lake Placid, New York, where the Winter Olympics had been held nearly twenty years earlier, and an invitation had gone out, as well, to the Canadian town of Tamarack.

  Both Lake Placid and Tamarack readily agreed. Not every Owl was able to go, of course. Jeremy Weathers, their No. 1 goaltender, had a family vacation booked to Disney World and wouldn’t be able to make it. But Jenny Staples, the backup, was more than up to the challenge. And for once the fundraising was not left up entirely to the Owls and their families. The service club was pitching in with a new wheelchair and enough money to cover the cost of Data going along as a special “assistant coach.” The local radio station was putting up some money. The town council voted five th
ousand dollars toward the exchange. A Canadian airline, as a goodwill gesture and to promote its own links with Japan, offered free passage for the players and coaches.

  What seemed like a financial impossibility one week, was a certainty the next: the Screech Owls were off to Nagano!

  No one, of course, took the trip as seriously as Nish. He called the visit his “homecoming”–ignoring the fact that his great grandfather, Yasuo Nishikawa, had left Japan for Canada a whole century earlier. Nish, who had once proudly claimed he didn’t know a single word of Japanese and didn’t care, was suddenly the self-proclaimed expert on the Land of the Heated Toilet Seat.

  He had been insufferable since the plane had taken off–and not just because he twice tried to “stink out” the section where the Owls were attempting to catch some sleep. Nish was so excited, he didn’t fall asleep until just before the plane landed. And now, while everyone else seemed to be having trouble dealing with the jet lag–the dizzying effect of convincing your body that it hadn’t missed a night of sleep–Nish was running ahead of them all, as if he had somehow picked up the energy they had lost.

  He acted like he knew everything. Back home he’d called up his grandfather to get some Japanese sayings, and was shouting “Moshi moshi!” to everyone he bumped into.

  “It means ‘Hello,’” he explained to Travis, as if Travis was some infant who had never heard the spoken word before.

  “‘Arigato’ means ‘Thank you.’”

  “Thank you,” said Travis with some sarcasm.

  “Arigato,” said Nish, entirely missing Travis’s point.

  He told everybody to be careful with their shoes. “You can’t walk into a house or restaurant with your shoes on,” he said. “You have to have slippers.”

  Nish turned out to be right about the shoes, which rather impressed some of the other Owls. As they found their rooms in the Olympic Village, they discovered small blue slippers waiting for them at the entrances. The slippers slid on easily, and almost instantly the Owls had taken to skating about the small apartments, the new footwear sliding effortlessly on the highly polished floors.

  That first evening, after Travis had taken his little nap, and Nish had practically electrocuted the entire building, the Owls gathered with the other teams in the large tent that had been erected between the buildings and which would be their gathering place for meals and relaxation for the remainder of their stay. Tonight was to be the opening banquet, with the mayor of Nagano and other area dignitaries welcoming the teams to the first-ever, and probably only-ever, Junior Olympic Hockey Tournament.

  Muck Munro, the Owls’ coach, had laid down the law. Dark pants, no jeans. White blouse or shirt and tie. Team jacket. “You’re not here just representing your town,” he told them. “You’re here representing your country.”

  That seemed to upset Nish’s plans. He had told Fahd he was headed out to find a store where he could buy a package of adult diapers. He told Fahd–and Fahd, of course, had believed him–that he was going to go to the banquet as a sumo wrestler, his big stomach hanging out over the diaper, and that he planned to spend the evening “belly bumping” the players on the other teams.

  “I think he needs a straitjacket, not a diaper,” said Sarah.

  “You should have been sitting next to him on the plane,” said Fahd. “He needs a diaper, all right.”

  Nish was, of course, kidding. But he did go out to explore, and came back about an hour later even more expert on the subject of Japan than he’d already been, if that were possible.

  “Japan,” he announced, “is the most civilized country on Earth. If you can’t find what you want in a vending machine, it doesn’t exist.”

  To prove his point, he began laying out his vending-machine loot on the bed, pulling treasures from his jacket pocket as if they were stolen jewels and the rest of the Owls were his accomplices gathered in some back alley.

  “Cigarettes,” he announced, dropping two packages down on the bed.

  “You’re not old enough to buy smokes!” Fahd protested.

  Nish shrugged a world-weary shrug and yanked something from his other pocket. A can, and a small bottle.

  “Beer,” he announced. “And whisky.”

  “Where’d you get this?” Fahd almost screeched.

  “Vending machines. Anybody can use them. You just put your yen in and push any button you want.”

  “You don’t even smoke!” said Sarah, disgusted.

  “And you certainly don’t drink!” said Fahd, still alarmed.

  “You just watch what the ol’Nisher drinks,” Nish announced, reaching into an inside pocket of his jacket.

  He pulled out a tall blue can. On the side was one word in large white letters: Sweat.

  Nish held out his can of “Sweat,” smacked his lips, pulled the tab, and hoisted the drink high, guzzling it down until he’d finished half the can.

  He pulled the drink away, burped loudly, and held it out, his eyes having taken on their most kindly look.

  “A slug of Sweat, anyone?”

  “I think I’m gonna hurl!” yelled Fahd.

  Nish tossed the drink to Travis, who caught the skinny blue can before it spilled onto the floor. He held it up to his nose and sniffed quickly. It didn’t smell like sweat. The idea that anyone would produce a drink that would taste like the inside of a hockey bag was a bit much for Travis to believe, and he sniffed again. It smelled almost sweet. He glanced at the writing on the side. Most was in Japanese, but there was also some English: “Pocari Sweat is highly recommended as a beverage for such activities as sports.”

  He took a taste: sweet fizzy water. Nice. Perhaps it was just a misspelling: “Sweat” instead of “Sweet.”

  “It’s okay!” said Travis.

  “What do you say?” Nish announced grandly. “Do the Screech Owls have a new team drink?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Travis said, passing on the can of Sweat so others could try a sip of the sweet, cool liquid.

  Nish was in his glory. The Owls were hanging on his every word. Phoney or not, he had established himself as the Owls’ expert on Japan.

  “Muck says we gotta look nice,” Nish announced next. “But we gotta act right, too. You meet people here, you don’t shake their hands, okay–you bow.”

  To demonstrate, he stood back, set his heels together, and made a deep bow to Sarah, who giggled and bowed back.

  “No handshakes,” Nish barked. “Bow. You got it? Bow.”

  “What about high-fives?” Wilson asked. “What do we do when we score?”

  “What you always do,” Nish said with a wicked grin. “Shout ‘Way to go, Nish!’”

  Muck would be pleased, Travis knew, as the Screech Owls assembled by the entrance to the tent and awaited the arrival of their coach. Travis had taken special care in combing his hair. He had moved the blond curl back off his forehead. It made him look older, he thought, more mature. More like a team captain.

  They were all there. Wilson and Andy the tallest, by far. Gordie Griffth still managing to look like a little boy and a skinny teenager at the same time. Sarah with her blonde hair in a neat ponytail. Jenny with her flame-red hair shining like it had sparkles in it. Dmitri with his hair slicked down, and Lars with his hair so light and dry it seemed like it might bounce off his head just from walking. And Nish, of course, wearing his beloved Mighty Ducks of Anaheim cap.

  “You hoping they’ll mistake you for Paul Kariya?” Sarah kidded.

  “Very funny,” Nish said, but refused to remove the cap. Travis understood why. It had, after all, been given to Nish by Paul Kariya at the end of the Quebec International Peewee Tournament, and Nish had hardly taken if off since. It was, for him, the symbol of his greatest moment on the ice–he’d scored the winning goal–and his greatest moment off the ice, as well. He had met his great hero, Paul Kariya. And Kariya had forgiven Nish for letting on that they were “cousins” just because they were both of Japanese heritage.

  Muck came along wit
h Mr. Dillinger, the team manager, and Mr. Dillinger was pushing Data in his fancy new wheelchair. Data looked great. His dark hair was combed perfectly and he had put on his new blazer with the Screech Owls logo over the heart. It was amazing what Data could do with a single hand: loop a tie, button his cuffs, tie his shoes, practically anything that anyone else could do with two. Data, the electronics nut, had a video camera small enough to hold in his one good hand, and was using it to sweep the scene, lingering on each player as he recorded their first day in Nagano.

  Both Muck and Mr. Dillinger were in suits, but Mr. Dillinger, his happy red face grinning, his bald head shining, looked far more at ease in his fancy clothes than did Muck. Muck kept pulling at his collar, and he kept scratching the top of his legs as if the pants itched him. But if Muck didn’t much care for how he was dressed, he seemed to like what he saw in his team. His only adjustment was to pluck the Mighty Ducks cap off Nish and slam it into his stomach before announcing it was time to go in to the opening banquet.

  The Owls were put at the same table as the Olympians, the peewee team from Lake Placid. The Olympians were wearing beautiful red-white-and-blue tracksuits, the U.S. flag emblazoned across the back with the Olympic symbol and “1980” stitched on beneath. The Owls knew that 1980 was pretty much a sacred year in Lake Placid–the year the home team, the United States, had won the Olympic gold medal.

  There were more than a dozen teams crammed into the tent. There were the two teams from North America, at least ten from Japan, and even two from China, where hockey was just beginning to be played.

  The teams were shy of each other, but gradually they began to mingle as they were prodded by their coaches and the tournament organizers. Nish made a great show of bowing to various members of the Japanese teams, who giggled shyly into their hands and bowed back. The Japanese all seemed to have their own cards–kid versions of the business cards Travis’s dad sometimes gave out–and Nish seemed to be the only North American player there with cards to hand back: hockey cards of NHL stars, usually, but also a few of his treasured “Wayne Nishikawa” cards from the Quebec International Peewee Tournament. Nish was a huge hit, with his Japanese looks and his treasured Mighty Ducks cap, which was now back on his head. One by one, Japanese players lined up to try on the cap that had been given to Nish “by the great Paul Kariya himself–my cousin.”