GET TONI: THE STORY SO FAR

Alec, John and Jane Peters are having to stay at the isolated farmhouse of their Uncle Joe and Aunt Mary, while their parents sort out troubles at home. The children are not being made very welcome by their uncle and aunt. One day, after a winter storm, they go out in the snow on their skis in order to get away from the unhappy house. They rest by a wood and happen to see, almost lost amid the trees, the wreck of a small airplane. They assume that it must have been there for some time, because there has been nothing on the news about a missing plane.

It is lodged at an angle, jammed among the branches, but Alec is able to climb up to it. He is stunned to see the bodies of a man and a woman in the cockpit, still strapped in their seats. With John's help he gets the door open. They can see that the people inside are frozen and quite dead. On the floor near them is a package with a message scrawled on it in large black letters. It begins, "GET TONI," and a series of numbers follows.

The shocked children retrieve the package and set off back home, to report their find to Uncle Joe and Aunt Mary. However, when they get there, it is to find that things have deteriorated even further. Uncle Joe is leaving and will not listen to them. Aunt Mary retreats to her room when the children enter the house. The children end up going to the boys' bedroom and there they are overcome with curiosity about the package. They slit open the cover and find inside a box crammed with one hundred dollar bills.

They do not know what to do. Alec thinks that they should get the money to their father, who can employ a lawyer before handing the money to the police. He hopes they might have some claim on it. He also works out what the numbers in the message mean. They are geographical coordinates and turn out to point to a place on the coast not all that far from where they are. They all wonder who Toni is, and what the message can possibly mean.

Things are made worse the next day when a terrible argument blows up between Uncle Joe and the children. He orders them to leave the house. Alec phones homes to explain their plight and their discovery of the money, but the troubles at home appear to have escalated also.

It seems that everything and everyone are suddenly against them. Unhappy, desperate, perhaps not thinking very clearly, they are ready to listen when Alec comes up with a wild plan . . .

Issue 12, October 24th, 2014: Alec's plan is that they should simply leave the farmhouse, and go to the location given in the "Get Toni" message. They can book into a motel there for a few days, enough time to get the adults worried about them, and maybe have second thoughts about their behavior. While they are there, they can find out who "Toni" is.

November 14th: The children are putting Alec's plan into action. In the middle of the night, they tiptoe down the stairs and load their things into Alec's old car.

January 9th, 2015: The GPS system takes them to a place called Clifftop Lodge, where Alec books them in for several nights. The approaching storm looks very bad. Once settled in the hotel, the children track down the exact location given in the message on the package. It turns out to be a cave in the cliffside, but the cave is completely empty and does not lead anywhere. The children are baffled. They settle down to ride out the storm — but then Anne happens to go to the lounge to find something to read. She finds that there are magazines in a rack that have been addressed to a "Toni." Someone called Toni Menendez has been staying at the hotel!

February 13th, 2015: Alec, John and Jane discover for sure that there is a girl called Toni Menendez somewhere in the hotel, but they have no idea where she is. Then, one night, while he is unable to sleep, John hears the elevator working . . . for an inexplicably long length of time. He has a sudden flash of insight. Maybe there is something below the hotel; below the regular basement. The three of them talk about it, and decide that Alec and John should go down to the basement and see if they can find any clue as to what is going on.

March 20th, 2015: When Alec and John go down to the basement, they find a secret door that leads into a second, secret basement. There, they think they hear the sounds of a person behind one of the doors. They think it might be Toni, but before they can make quite sure, they hear the elevator working and they hurry back into the regular basement and close the secret door. They are able to rejoin Jane safely, and they plan to return to the basement a second time — this time, to see if it really is Toni and, if it is, to get her out.

June 5th, 2015: The boys find that it is indeed Toni in the room, but they are again interrupted before they can free her. They have to take refuge on the staircase that goes down from the secret area behind the hidden door. They find themselves far below ground and at the opening of a tunnel. They follow the tunnel, hoping for a way out. They find themselves in a huge cavern with a subterranean lake. In the lake is a small submersible craft, shaped like a cigar, floating by a little jetty. Meanwhile, Jane phones for help when her bothers do not return. Mrs. LeBlanc has been suspicious and is listening at the door. She bursts in and grabs the phone, before locking Jane in her room. Jane escapes through the window, out onto the roof of the porch, and gets down to the ground. She sets out, through a blizzard, to try to walk to a house and raise the alarm. Down in the cavern, the boys have to hide when lights come on. From hiding, they see an unconscious Toni being loaded into the submersible. They wait until the cavern is empty again, and they are able to get Toni out of the little submarine.

July 24th, 2015: They carry Toni to a ledge, and see that they have rescued her just in time, when the submarine glides away from the jetty and sinks below the surface. Alec and John then realize that they have another problem. The level of the lake is rising, and before long they have to carry Toni to a higher place. The entrance to the tunnel is soon under water. The boys fear that the entire cavern will be filled with water, and they will drown. Eventually, Toni begins to come round, and she is able to tell the boys that there is a way out from the cavern to the top of the cliff, but it is a difficult climb. As the water continues to rise, they have no choice but to climb up through the "rat hole," as Toni calls it. The rat hole ends in a trapdoor which opens into a toolshed not far from Clifftop Lodge.

August 21st, 2015: Alec and John have the chance to talk with Toni in the toolshed, while they rest. Then, they plan their getaway. They decide that John and Toni will set out walking to the road that leads away from Clifftop Lodge. Alec will head back to the lodge, get into Long Shot, and pick up John and Toni on his way out of the lodge and along the road. They are very anxious about Jane, because she does not answer her phone. Someone else — it is Mrs. LeBlanc — answers, and pretends to be Jane. When Alec tries to get Long Shot, he finds that it has been immobilized. However, he manages to start a maintenance truck and he drives that out onto the road. He picks up John and Toni, as planned; and further along the road they find Jane. They are all crammed into the truck and glad to be free when they find that they are being chased, even though the snow is still falling. Alec loses control and they wreck. He wakes in a hospital to find John by his bedside. John tells him that they had hit a police car that had been driving out to the lodge. The car that was chasing them was also involved in the wreck. It was carrying the LeBlancs. The outcome was that the (unhurt) police officer had arrested the LeBlancs and got help for Alec.