Confessions of a Teen Sleuth

by Chelsea Cain

  I was pleasantly gratified that my reputation as an amateur detective had preceded me. "Is anything missing?" I inquired.

  "Yes! A clock that belonged to my grandfather."

  "A clock?" retorted Carolyn, placing her little fists on her generous hips. "You're making us late to the benefit hop because of a stupid clock?"

  I shot Carolyn a quieting look and she sank into a chair.

  "Do you have any enemies?" I continued.

  Professor Dartman shook his head. "None that I know of."

  I extracted my magnifying glass from my pretty beaded evening bag and instructed the gang to stand back while I searched for clues. And hour later I had finished scouring the desk and had moved on to the carpet, when Carolyn stood up in disgust.

  "I don't know why he doesn't just call the police!" she exclaimed. "I'm going to the dance with or without the rest of you."

  She took a step and screamed.

  Carolyn lifted up her Mary Jane in despair. She had stepped right into a pool of foul-smelling liquid.

  "Don't move," I instructed. I went over and examined the liquid under my magnifying glass. "Professor Dartman," I asked carefully, "do you know any bootleggers?"

  Professor Dartman paled. But before he could speak, the room was thrown into darkness!

  I felt someone rush past me, and then the lights were flung back on. My heart was racing. I looked around the room. Ned stood at the light switch by the door, his eyes bright with excitement. Dave still sat in his chair. Professor Dartman sat at his desk, wide-eyed and stammering. But Carolyn was missing!

  The French doors facing the student quad were wide open.

  "I'll go for help!" cried Dave, standing up and running from the room.

  I surveyed the quad. There was no sign of any telltale footprints or snapped twigs, and certainly no sign of Carolyn or her kidnapper.

  "The thief must have been hiding in the closet!" exclaimed Ned, pointing in dismay to the open closet door.

  "Professor Dartman," I asked carefully,

  "do you know any bootleggers?"

  "I agree," I agreed. "This is now a matter for the police. I will call my good friend Chief McGinnis personally." Though he worked in River Heights, I happened to know that Chief McGinnis was in Philadelphia attending an Athletics/Cubs World Series game. I called the chief at his hotel, and after I explained the situation, he agreed to come to campus as soon as possible to investigate.

  I relayed this information to Ned and Professor Dartman. "Before the chief gets here," I asked Professor Dartman, "do you want to tell me how a man of your stature became involved in a bootlegging ring?"

  Professor Dartman's face fell. "How did you know?" he quavered.

  "It was as clear as the nose on your face," I retorted. "One guess is as good as another, but I'd say that your interest in mysticism drew you to it." I gestured around the office to the Haitian voodoo sculptures and Pyrenean memory masks that adorned the walls. "Everyone knows that Hank Cutthroat, the infamous Chicago bootlegger, is a scholar of Celtic mysticism. What did he promise you for your cooperation, Professor? The secret to Stonehenge?"

  Professor Dartman began to cry, nodding his head in affirmation. "He swore to me that he would give me the power of the Celtic priests if I would only sell hooch to fraternity boys. It seemed a small price to pay."

  "That hooch comes from you?" asked Ned.

  "But what would Hank Cutthroat and his henchmen want with an old clock? Or with Carolyn?" I mused. "Unless . . . Carolyn is the thief."

  When Chief McGinnis arrived, he took Professor Dartman into custody for hooch pedding, and I relayed my suspicions to him about Carolyn and the old clock. Dave had returned to Emerson, having found Carolyn too plump for his taste anyway.

  After our interview with Chief McGinnis, Ned escorted me back to my dorm.

  "You know," he teased, slipping his arm in mine, "I'll be graduating in a few months. I was thinking it might be a good time to make plans."

  "Plans?"

  "You said we could get engaged after college. I've been putting all my extra money in the stock market." He smiled engagingly. "It can't go anywhere but up."

  I gazed at Ned's handsome, blank features. "I've been taking these classes about patriarchy in society and they've got me thinking . . ."

  Ned set his jaw and nodded. "I can wait," he declared bravely. "In the meantime, I've got to find a new source for hooch."

  I watched him go off alone, then turned and headed for my dorm. I had just entered my empty room when I felt the cold edge of steel at my throat.

  Before I could react, someone forced me roughly to my desk chair, where I was tied tightly to the chair from behind!

  "You think you're so smart, Nancy Drew," sobbed a voice behind me.

  I would have known that voice anywhere. It was my roommate, Carolyn Keene!

  Carolyn stood in front of me. She had changed out of my hand-beaded, powder pink, chiffon shift and had squeezed into one of my slimming skirts and blouses. The skirt was drawn taut against her stout thighs and was partially unzipped. The blouse was small in the shoulders, and the pearl buttons threatened to burst over her ample bosom.

  "How do you think it makes me feel," cried Carolyn, pressing the knife against my throat, "to hear you go on and on and on about your adventures? You're always talking about the Hidden Staircase, the Clue in the Jewel Box, the Crooked Bannister, blah blah blah. Oh, you're so perfect. So popular. With your perfect boyfriend and your skirts." Tears were streaming down Carolyn's plump cheeks. "I just wanted to be part of the adventure. Just once. I wanted Professor Dartman to come to me to help him find his old clock. He knows I love old clocks. Old clocks and hogs. When he came to you, I decided to fake my kidnapping. So you would rescue me. But you didn't even look."

  "We looked," I lied. "We just couldn't find you."

  "Couldn't find me? The great Nancy Drew? Teen sleuth?"

  "That's right, Carolyn. You outsmarted me."

  "I outsmarted you?"

  "Uh-huh. Now put down the knife."

  Carolyn sniffed and wiped away a tear. "I just wanted to be part of your story," she faltered, letting the knife drop to the floor. Then she knelt behind me, struggling in the tight skirt, still weeping, and untied the ropes before melting into a heap of tears.

  "So what's going to happen to her?" asked Ned. It was a week after the incident and we were sitting on a bench in the quad sharing a malted.

  "I decided not to press charges," I explained. "But the college sent her home to the hog farm. It turns out she has an addiction to Uncle Ezra Pinex Cough Syrup. They found dozens of empty bottles hidden under her bed. They think it may have contributed to her nervous breakdown."

  "Do you think she'll be all right?"

  "I don't know. I hope so. The strange thing is that they found all these papers under her bed too. Like diaries. Only they were all about me. She had taken notes on all the stories I ever told her about back home. About you and Bess and George and everyone." I shivered. "She got a lot of stuff wrong, but it was still unnerving."

  "What do you think she's going to do with all that stuff?" asked Ned.

  "Who knows? But they sent it to her at the hog farm with all her other belongings."

  Ned took my hand and held it. "I'm just glad it's over," he sighed. "And at least there's a bright side."

  "What's that?" I asked.

  "You'll never have to hear the name Carolyn Keene again."

  III THE CLUE IN THE NAZI NUTCRACKER, 1942

  I want to kill Nazis more than anything!" declared Ned. I patted his hand. We were sitting at the small kitchen table in our Chicago walk-up, located in a brick apartment building on a wide, tree-lined street. We had moved there shortly after our marriage.

  "I've heard some pretty frightening things about Nazis," I commented. "Besides, it's not your fault that you hurt your knee in that big Emerson football game."

  "But Burt and Dave got to go!" Ned cried.

  "They pass
ed their physicals," I sighed. I stood up from the table and smoothed my fitted skirt over my still-attractive figure. "Shouldn't you be getting to the slaughterhouse?" I asked, admiring the reflection of my rolled, shoulder-length titian hair in the chrome handle of the Frigidaire.

  Ned nodded and stood. He was still tall, with an athletic build and brown hair and eyes, but his eyes twinkled less, and the things that used to fascinate him, like secret passageways, flying, and voodoo, seemed to hold little interest. It might have had something to do with the job he took as a meat inspector. All day long he toured the city's slaughterhouses, ensuring that the cattle were slaughtered in the least egregious manner and that the number of mice and rats ground into the all-beef chub was minimal. It was his contribution to the war effort. Ned longed to have a son to whom he could teach the finer points of agricultural codes and football. I was thirty-two at this point, and if we were to have children it would have to be soon, but I still clung to my independence, despite social and personal pressures. It was a source of tension in our otherwise tranquil relationship.

  Ned had just left and I was clearing the dishes (how I missed plump and motherly Hannah Gruen! ) when I heard light footsteps from below. Someone was coming up the staircase! I stood frozen as my complexion paled. Remaining courageous and levelheaded, I forced myself to tilt my head slightly toward the door and listen.

  "Nancy?" called a woman's anxious voice.

  I fairly flew to the front door and flung it open.

  "Bess!" I cried, throwing my arms around the cleverly dressed woman standing at the threshold. "I had a hunch it was you!"

  Bess Marvin, my old childhood chum and detecting pal, hugged me tightly. She was still blond haired, blue eyed, and pretty. Though Carolyn Keene cruelly described Bess as "overweight," Bess never had a weight problem and was in fact quite slender. It was Carolyn who was the chubby one. I had introduced the two at a Bryn Mawr house party, and Carolyn felt slighted when several Penn men had surrounded Bess and ignored Carolyn. Clearly the slanderous references to my friend's plumpness were nothing more than a petty attempt at revenge on Carolyn's part. As the books became more popular, Bess was nearly destroyed by the constant mockery of her girth and grew quite anorexic in the 1930s. She had been married and divorced twice. Now standing before me, Bess was still underweight, but she looked far healthier than six months before when her cousin George and I had put her on the train to McLean Hospital, a sanitarium near Boston. Back then shoulder pads alone could add five pounds.

  "Welcome home!" I exclaimed.

  "Oh, Nancy, haven't you heard?" Bess's blue eyes filled with tears.

  "What?" I asked fretfully.

  Her painted bottom lip trembled. "It's Joe Hardy! He's been killed in the war!"

  That night I packed a suitcase of cap-sleeved blouses, fitted suits, and other essentials, and the next morning we were on a train to Bayport. It was just us two girls. Ned was needed at the sausage plant. George, Bess's tomboyish cousin and my other best childhood chum, was working as a riveter in the River Heights industrial district and had arranged to meet us in New Jersey. Bess dabbed at her cheeks with a hankie. She had always felt a fondness for Joe. The two had dated briefly and, upon parting, he had presented her with a copy of The Scarlet Letter, which she had enjoyed thoroughly despite having only skimmed it. She credited this early creative exercise with defining her chosen career path: condensing novels for Reader's Digest. She made a good living at it and could work from home on her Underwood Universal portable typewriter.

  Outside the landscape flew by, a picturesque horizon of meadows, rivers, waterwheels, and small towns.

  I should clarify now a subject of much controversy: the geographical location of my hometown. Some readers of Carolyn's books believe it to be in the Midwest, some believe it to be on the East Coast (Carolyn was always sloppy with geography). Let me set the record straight once and for all: River Heights is located in central Illinois, twenty miles west of Peoria. If anyone had ever bothered to check a map this would have been abundantly clear.

  I was only half paying attention to the blur out the train window. My head was spinning. I still couldn't believe that Joe was gone. Of course I would know plenty of boys who would die in the war. Friends. Neighbors. Other sleuths. But Joe was the first one to die whom I had once rescued. My heart ached for Frank. He and his little brother were inseparable throughout their late teens, and Frank had always relished his role as Joe's protector and chief dating rival. I worried that Joe's death would leave Frank reeling for years to come.

  I relayed my thoughts to Bess.

  "I'm sure he'll be devastated," Bess agreed.

  I explained that Frank and I had lost touch after he refused to attend Ned's and my wedding and instead gone on a scenic aerial tour of the Grand Canyon with that tart Helen Corning. Bess told me that I had already told her that story.

  "I guess I'm just nervous," I shrugged.

  We arrived in Bayport late the next morning. George, who had arrived earlier that day on the River Heights express, picked us up at the train station. Always an athletic girl who enjoyed her boy's name, George had bulked up even more due to her hours of riveting fighter plane fuselages. She still wore her brown hair short, preferred wide-legged trousers to skirts, and had taken to wearing sleeveless blouses to show off her brawny biceps.

  "Hypers!" she exclaimed when she saw us. "You two look beat!"

  On the way to the Hardy house at the corner of High and Elm, George explained that Joe's plane had been shot down over Germany. There were no survivors. Frank had been in Washington, where he worked for a top secret intelligence-gathering organization, and was expected back that evening. Fenton Hardy, the boys' father, had once been a crack detective on the New York City police force before retiring to Bayport many years before to work as a private investigator. Rumor had it he was now consulting with the navy, using a flashlight on their rooftop at night to signal to submarines in Barmet Bay.

  The boys' aunt Gertrude met us at the door to the large, comfortably furnished Hardy home. Tall and angular, Aunt Gertrude still cut an imposing figure despite her advanced years. Decades of cookie baking had left her with especially large thighs.

  "I'm so sorry," I stammered on behalf of our group.

  "I told him that joining the air force was a bad idea," Aunt Gertrude snorted sadly. She led us into the fashionable living room, where Fenton Hardy and his trim, pretty, middle-aged wife, Laura, sat on the floral print sofa. Mrs. Hardy wept softly on Mr. Hardy's sweater. I had never met Frank and Joe's mother before and had assumed that she was dead. Faced with clear evidence to the contrary, I now found myself in an awkward spot! But I quickly recovered my composure and stepped forward to offer my condolences.

  Bess, George, and I had unpacked and settled into the upstairs guest room, and I was waiting to use the only bathroom in the Hardy home, when Frank appeared at the top of the stairs. He was wearing his army uniform and carrying a khaki duffel bag and a briefcase full of secret dossiers. He had grown even more handsome, his face creased with maturity. He saw me and stopped in his tracks, and I found myself suddenly self-conscious of my sheer baby blue mini-nightie and mules.

  "Hello, Frank," I gushed.

  "Nancy!" he grinned, looking me up and down. "Seeing you always makes me tingle."

  I swallowed hard and clutched the sheer fabric that was the only barrier between my bosom and his chest of medals. "I was so sorry to hear about Joe," I managed.

  He took another step toward me. "Yes," he murmured. "I will miss him very much. We shared a room for eighteen years. It will be strange to sleep alone in this big house tonight."

  My breath ached in my chest. I tried to speak, but my mouth was too dry.

  "So," Frank continued, "I'll see you in the morning at the funeral?" He took a step back, and I regained my speech with a sputter.

  "Yes. Tomorrow. The funeral."

  He nodded, then turned and continued down the hall toward the room he had shared with
his brother.

  The bathroom door opened and Bess popped her head out. Her hair was wrapped in a large towel, and she was wearing yellow pajamas. "What was that?" she asked. "I thought I heard you talking to someone."

  I sighed and felt my knees shudder. "Frank's home," I answered.

  I tried to speak, but my mouth was too dry.

  Several other sleuths attended the funeral to pay their respects: Cherry Ames, who was still a student nurse at Spencer Hospital School of Nursing but hoped to join the Army Nurse Corps, was present, as was Vicki Barr, a stewardess with Federal Airlines, who had once dated Joe. Louise and Jean Dana, who had stopped speaking to one another for a year after a difficult, Joe-centered love triangle, made the drive from Oak Falls. Many of the men were away working for the war effort. Tom Swift Senior sent a nice card postmarked Los Alamos. Aviator Ted Scott sent a telegram from the South Pacific. Several notable friends were missing. Frank and Joe's best chum, Chet Morton, was a grunt on the front lines, and Bert and Freddie Bobbsey had died in the Pacific just months apart from one another the year before. Flossie Bobbsey, now a professional birth control advocate, kindly drove down from New York.

  The Bayport set also was present. Callie Shaw, Frank's vivacious, petite ex-girlfriend, and Iola Morton, Joe's wife and Chet's sister, bravely clung to one another through their tears. Chief Ezra Collig, Dr. Bates, and Jerry Gilroy were all pallbearers.

  The service was brief and heartfelt. The Dana girls sobbed uncontrollably. We lowered Joe's casket into the ground, and the air force officers presented Mrs. Hardy with the flag from his coffin. Afterward, we all retreated to the Hardy home for a post funeral gathering and some of Aunt Gertrude's fresh-baked cookies.

  "I can't believe how much Cherry is flirting with Frank," I whispered to Bess and George.

  Bess rolled her eyes in agreement and headed for the punch bowl.

  As the evening passed, Cherry remained glued to Frank's side. I could tell that Frank was trying desperately to get away, but Cherry was making it impossible! I was becoming extremely worried. Did Cherry plan to take advantage of Frank's vulnerable state? There was no time to speculate.