High-Speed Showdown by Franklin W. Dixon

voice. He lunged forward, reaching out to grab Dennis’s shoulder, but the safety harness held him trapped in his seat.
    Frantic, Joe slapped the quick-release buckle of the harness. There was no time left to alert Dennis. They’d be wrecked on Cooley’s Ledge before he could hope to explain. Instead, he flung himself forward, through the gap between Dennis’s and Miguel’s bucket seats. Grabbing the wheel with both hands, he jerked it to the left, throwing the boat into a hard turn to port.
    As the boat heeled over sharply, Dennis foughtJoe for control of the wheel. He thrust his elbow toward Joe’s face, but Joe’s helmet protected him. Joe kept the wheel cranked over to port until he was sure that the bow was pointing away from the danger. Then he let go and fell back into his seat, just as Miguel throttled back the engines.
    In the sudden silence, Joe heard Dennis yell, “Joe, are you out of your mind? You could have killed us!”
    â€œI saved our lives,” Joe replied, after taking a deep breath. He felt exhausted by the strain and his effort. “Look at your chart. We were headed straight for a dangerous ledge. There’s supposed to be a warning buoy, but it isn’t there. I don’t know why.”
    Dennis narrowed his eyes at Joe. Then he took out the chart and looked back and forth between the markings there and the surroundings.
    â€œYou’re right,” he said at last. “Thanks, Joe. This area is terribly dangerous. Without a marker there, someone who doesn’t know these waters as well as you do could easily go aground. We’d better get back and let the authorities know about this, before somebody gets badly hurt.”
    Back at the marina, Dennis went to the harbormaster’s office to report the missing buoy. Joe found a pay phone and called Frank.
    â€œI’d better come get you,” Joe said, after explaining what had happened. “I know buoys do slip their cables now and then. But we haven’t hadany storms or heavy seas in the last week or two to account for it. If you ask me, somebody did it deliberately.”
    â€œIt sounds that way,” Frank replied. “We’d better track down the person responsible, and fast, before he or she causes a serious accident. I’ll be waiting out front.”
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    As they drove back toward the harbor, Frank said, “The first thing we need to do is find out when the buoy drifted away. Until we know that, we won’t have a hope of figuring out who helped it along.”
    â€œWhat are the chances that we’ll find anybody who saw it go?” Joe asked skeptically. “That’d be too good to be true.”
    â€œI know that,” Frank replied. “But we know it was gone this morning. If we can pin down the last time somebody saw it there . . . The trouble is, most of the people who are here for the meet probably don’t know this part of the sound well enough to notice whether one particular buoy is there or not.”
    Joe thought hard. “The charter boats!” he suddenly exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “They take fishing parties out every morning and lots of evenings, too. And the guys who work them know these waters better than we know our own backyard.”
    â€œGreat idea, Joe,” Frank said. He glanced at hiswrist. “And they should be coming in from their morning trips just about now, too.”
    Joe drove past the marina and parked near the head of Commercial Pier. He and Frank walked out on the pier, stopping at each fishing boat to ask the crew if they had passed Cooley’s Ledge lately. They struck out with the first three boats. All had headed east, in the opposite direction from the ledge, after leaving the harbor.
    The fourth boat they came to was Captain Bill Mares’s Susie II . Captain Bill, in wrinkled khakis and a baseball cap, listened to their question. Then he said,