The Hardy Boys (OMITB)

The Hardy Boys is the friendship between Mabel Mora, Tim Kono, Oscar Torres, Zoe Cassidy from the Only Murders in the Building fandom.

The Beginning - December 2010
The group started by Mabel and Tim after they befriended each other in the Arconia and bond over their love for mysteries. They will play solving mysteries around the Arconia, which sometimes involves breaking into inhabitants' apartments. Later, Oscar and Zoe joins them. They becomes best friends and get matching whale tattoos done by Mabel's cousin.

One day they are breaking in Dimases' apartment, where they are spotted by the Dimases' only son - Theo - who soon hides behind the wall. There Zoe spots a green ring. Oscar tells her to leave it alone but she ignores him and steals the ring.

In the new year's eve, the group is going to a party in Arconia. They separate, with Mabel drinking alone, Zoe and Oscar fighting near the edge of the rooftop. After Oscar leaves Zoe, Theo approaches her to get back the ring she stole. Zoe is upset by Theo's demand, especially when she is in foul mood after fighting Oscar. She gives the ring back crudely, Theo is taken aback by her reaction and accidentally pushes her off the rooftop.

Tim witnesses the accident, but he is threatened by Theo's father - Teddy Dimas - not to tell the truth, unless he wants himself and his friends dead. Tim tells Mabel that he saw Zoe fighting with someone whom wasn't Oscar. But as Tim unable to gives away a name, and because people in the party have seen Oscar and Zoe fighting earlier, Oscar is set as the perpetrator and sentenced to ten years of imprisonment. Mabel leaves the Arconia and Tim starts dwelling in guilt.

After the Break Up
Tim plans a revenge and starts investigating the green ring, that indirectly caused Zoe's death, and it leads him to an illegal black market company the Dimases' manage.

Ten Years after Zoe's death, Mabel comes back to the Arconia. She confronts Tim about what he saw the day Zoe died, but Tim asks her to forget the past and crudely tells her to act like she doesn't know him, which she eventually does out of spite. After some time staying in Arconia, Mabel gets the news that Tim died by suicide. She suspects that Tim was murdered instead, and thinks that she might be the next since she was one of The Hardy Boys. She decides to investigate Tim's death further.

Oscar soon visits Mabel as he has been finally discharged from prison. He helps Mabel solving the clues left by Tim, leading them to go to the parlor where the Hardy Boys' got their matching tattoos done. When they arrive at the parlor, Oscar confesses that he intends to put everything about the Hardy Boys behind and that he wants to make a new start. He eventually changes his mind after complementing how determined Mabel is in discovering the truth.

Through searching on all data archived in Tim's phone, it is revealed that Theo was the one who killed Zoe. Finally, the Dimases goes to the prison for trial and Oscar gets his name cleared. The mystery of Tim Kono's murder is also solved by Mabel, Charles, and Oliver. At last, Mabel is able to put everything about the group tragedy behind her.

Fanon
Fans conclude the complete story of those four as deliciously tragic. They sympathize with how just an accident ruined their relationship - Zoe ended dead, Oscar got incarcerated, Tim dwelled in Guilt and killed in result, and Mabel lost all her friends for reasons she wouldn't ever properly understand. Fans think that after ten years passed and Oscar was out of prison, there might have been a glimmer of hope for Mabel to rebuild the Hardy Boys, but rather it exacerbated with Tim's death.

Some fans figured The Hardy Boys as having the similarity to Veronica Mars characters with Mabel as Veronica, Oscar as Logan, Tim as Duncan, and Zemo as Lily. They suppose a spin-off featuring the Hardy Boys before their fallout would be great.

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WIKI
 * article on

Trivia

 * The matching whale tattoos that all the group members have are references to the Hardy Boys book The Mystery of the Whale Tattoo.