Confessions of a Teen Sleuth

by Chelsea Cain

  We slept until sunrise.

  When we awoke, the day was again calm. The island was a stretch of beach with a clutch of palm trees and bushes at its center. A flock of seagulls squawked noisily on the shore. I gazed out on the sparkling blue horizon of ocean and gave a small shout of delight.

  Ned awoke. "What happened?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.

  I stood up and pointed. "There! It's the ship! They haven't left yet!"

  Encyclopedia and Ned sat up excitedly. In the distance the ship sat clear as day, a white square on a bed of blue.

  Encyclopedia pulled on his prescription goggles so he could see it. "We'll need to fashion a flare or bonfire or something," he suggested.

  "How?" asked Ned, looking around at the deserted island.

  Encyclopedia closed his eyes and stood deep in thought, and then he turned to me. "Do you have your magnifying glass?" he asked.

  I looked down at my skirted one-piece. "Only my travel one," I answered. I reached into the cup of my padded bosom and produced a small plastic magnifying glass about the size of an adult pinky. I handed it to him.

  "Perfect!" he exclaimed. "I'll use a focused ray of sun to set a palm tree on fire. They're sure to spot it from the ship."

  "Good thinking!" complimented Ned.

  Encyclopedia took a few steps toward the center of the island, where he stopped short. "Look at this," he declared slowly.

  Ned and I looked where Encyclopedia was pointing. There were footprints. And they looked fresh!

  We decided to follow them.

  I went first, followed by Ned, with Encyclopedia, still in his goggles, his pale hairy belly hanging over his rainbow swim trunks, bringing up the rear. We followed the footprints in the sand toward the brush at the center of the island, where they suddenly turned and headed south around the brush and back toward the beach. The prints followed the beach around to the far side of the island and back up toward the brush. A dive boat was anchored offshore, and a man was digging at the base of a palm tree. It was our blond mustachioed dive instructor! He had changed from the black bikini briefs into a Hawaiian shirt, surf shorts, and sneakers.

  He looked up from his hole and raised his shovel threateningly. His face was twisted into a menacing scowl.

  Encyclopedia stepped forward. "I know that you're behind the ghost in the corridor and the knocking," he declared confidently.

  The mustachioed man cocked his head with interest.

  "I also know what your motive is!" Encyclopedia continued. The mustachioed man raised his shovel higher.

  "And I can prove it!" Encyclopedia added emphatically.

  This seemed to startle the man. He stared at the paunchy, shirtless detective with his hard green eyes. "Okay, nerd," the man growled. "What exactly do you think you know?"

  Encyclopedia threw him a satisfied smiled. "Guess!"

  "Encyclopedia," Ned warned slowly. The mustachioed man looked very strong, and we were two small, elderly people and one awkward-looking middle-aged man with adult acne. This concerned me.

  "Come on! Guess!" Encyclopedia continued unfazed, his hands on his hips. "I'll tell you only if you guess!"

  The mustachioed man hesitated, and for a moment I feared that he might rush us with his gardening tool. I braced myself for a confrontation, but to my surprise he put down the shovel, and his posture softened. "Do you think it's because of Mandy?" he asked, his voice cracking.

  I tried to hide my surprise. Mandy, my Jazzercise instructor, couldn't be involved in such a dirty plot as this! Could she?

  Encyclopedia nodded. "Mandy," he agreed.

  "You probably think it's because Mandy wants out of her contract with the ship. Because she got that job offer to be Jane Fonda's personal trainer. You probably think this was all her idea to fake the haunting stuff so the cruise would be shut down and that she had me wrapped around her little finger."

  "But it wasn't working," I broke in. "The passengers were mistaking your Super Eight projection apparition for an angel. The cruise would have been more popular than ever. You planted the locket so we would believe the ghost story. But then we took too long to find it and you panicked and left us, thinking you'd blame our deaths on the ghost and they would shut down the cruise for sure! Now you're here burying a so-called treasure that will reinforce your ghost ruse!"

  "Hey," the mustachioed man whined, "I'm guessing."

  "Sorry."

  He continued. "I bet that you think that I'm burying all the evidence connecting Mandy and me to the fake ghost and Jane Fonda." He searched Encyclopedia for approval. "Am I right, nerd?"

  Encyclopedia nodded. "You're right."

  We escorted the mustachioed man and all the evidence back to the ship via the diving boat. We were greeted enthusiastically by the crew and passengers, who had been worrying about us most of the night after our dive instructor returned without us, telling some strange story about a ghostly apparition and then just as quickly disappearing himself. Mrs. Brown and Chief Brown were especially pleased to see their son, as they had feared the worst had happened while they had been gambling, drinking strawberry daiquiris, and generally enjoying themselves for the first time in years.

  We handed our prisoner over to the captain and recounted the entire story and the mustachioed man's strange confession.

  "Where's Mandy?" I demanded. "Where's Mandy the Jazzercise instructor?"

  The crowd parted, revealing Mandy, who stood angrily glaring at her mustachioed accomplice.

  "I had to tell them!" he cried. "The nerd knew everything!"

  Mandy scowled. "Okay, you caught me," she admitted. "I was behind the whole business. All I ever wanted was to go to Hollywood to train the stars, and when I got offered the Jane Fonda job I couldn't give it up just because of some stupid cruise ship contract."

  "But what's the connection to the original shipwreck?" Ned asked, perplexed.

  Encyclopedia pulled out of his mother's embrace. "There was no girl." He announced, turning to the captain. "And no shipwreck. Was there, Captain?"

  The captain cleared his throat. "How did you know?" he asked, chagrined.

  Encyclopedia shrugged self-effacingly. "I guessed."

  "What do you mean, no shipwreck?" inquired Ned.

  The captain sighed. "We made up all that stuff about the shipwreck. It's just something we put together for the tourists. All part of the package. The shipwreck is made of plastic and Styrofoam. We did the brochure with a mimeograph ma­chine."

  "So the knocking was a hoax," I declared. "The ghost-angel was a hoax. And the shipwreck itself was a hoax!"

  Everyone on deck applauded my astute summary.

  But I noticed Ned turn away, his eyes downcast.

  I came up behind him and put my frail arms around him. "I'm sorry she didn't turn out to be an angel," I whispered.

  He blushed. "I just wanted to believe in something," he explained. He looked out at the expanse of ocean and his eyes watered. "Sometimes I feel so afraid."

  "Of what?" I asked kindly.

  "Of getting older. I watch my shows and they just remind me how life is passing me by."

  "Life isn't passing you by," I told him. "We've had so many adventures, Ned. And we'll have more."

  "I don't want adventure." His eyes met mine. "I just want to spend time with you. That's all I've ever wanted."

  "Really?" I squeezed his frail hands in mine. "I love you, Ned Nickerson."

  "I love you, Nancy Drew."

  Encyclopedia appeared beside us, grinning. "Guess what? The captain just asked me to host the ship's next cruise! They're launching a new theme: Murder at Sea. With dinner theater and everything!"

  "That sounds perfect," I told him.

  That night while Encyclopedia was breaking the news to his elated parents, Ned and I attended the Atlantic Pacific New Age Ball. We danced until dawn.

  We may have had our ups and downs, but no one could ever Lindy with me like Ned could.

  X THE SECRET OF CAROLYN KEENE, 1992 />
  Do you miss Dad?" Ned Junior asked.

  "Of course," I answered.

  I was at Crabapple Farm where Foxy and Ned Junior now lived in Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson, New York. Ned had died two years before. He had a massive heart attack during an impromptu game of touch football at the Emerson College sixtieth reunion. He was eighty-two. Our last years together had truly been our happiest, full of travel and romance.

  I missed him most on Sunday evenings, a night we always spent together. It was a long time before I could watch Murder, She Wrote without him.

  "I loved your father very much," I told Ned Junior, patting him on the hand. And it was true. I had loved both his fathers.

  We were sitting on the porch of the wooden farmhouse overlooking the vegetable garden where Foxy was transplanting some tomato plants. The boys were teenagers now. Each knew how to treat a copperhead bite and track a bobcat. Ned Junior was almost fifty and had grown into a handsome, confident man. His titian hair was flecked with gray and laugh lines creased his face. He taught at Vassar and had spent the last several years writing a book about a single Herman Melville poem. (He said that I had taught him to look closely at things). He and Foxy were still very much in love.

  "Do you ever think about Ai Sato?" Ned Junior asked suddenly.

  I turned to look at him, surprised. "You're never asked about her before," I commented.

  "I didn't think you wanted to talk about her."

  We were silent for a long moment, watching the chickens peck in the yard. "I suppose that I accepted the fact that she had her own adventure to live. I wasn't meant to be a part of it. And she wasn't meant to be a part of mine. Besides," I added, "Hannah was there for me."

  "Like Ned was there for me?"

  I cleared my throat as this sank in. "You knew?"

  "About Frank Hardy? I suspected. I read all the Hardy Boys books, remember?" He adjusted his square shoulders and thrust out his handsome profile. "It was hard to miss the resemblance."

  "Are you angry?" I asked.

  "Did Ned know?"

  "I think he did. But we never discussed it."

  Ned Junior watched Foxy in the garden. "He loved you very much."

  "I know."

  "Do you keep in touch with Frank Hardy?"

  I told Ned Junior about my last encounter with Frank in the Haight-Ashbury district in 1967 and how I had realized that Ned and I belonged together in our own way.

  "Why, that clinic closed up years ago, before Foxy and I moved east!" Ned Junior exclaimed.

  "It's ancient history now," I declared firmly.

  Foxy stood up and walked toward the house, brushing the dirt off her gardening gloves. She grinned widely, her face especially freckled from a full day in the sun. "Gosh, you two look as serious as a couple of dapple gray mares," she laughed at us with a hoot.

  I did not know what that meant, but I had learned years before that the best thing to do was smile and shrug. Which I did.

  I slept restlessly that night, finally drifting into fitful slumber early in the morning. I had been especially tired lately. It was as if a weakness had settled in my spine. Sometimes, when I looked in the mirror, all I saw was skin and bones. I did not recognize myself.

  When I awoke it was almost noon, and Foxy and Ned Junior and the boys had gone into town. The newspaper lay open on the kitchen table. I took out my magnifying glass to read it and saw that an article had been circled. There was also a note that read:

  Thought you might be interested in this. Ned Junior

  I scanned the story and saw immediately why Ned Junior had brought it to my attention. A big publishing house in New York City was throwing an anniversary bash, and they were pleased to announce that one of their most elusive authors would be making an appearance: Carolyn Keene.

  My fingers went numb. I had been in many precarious situations and had faced great danger on numerous occasions, but never in my life had I felt such a sense of dread. I knew that the time had come to confront the woman whose life had been so tied to my own.

  By the time Ned Junior and his family had returned home, I had packed my bags.

  Despite his worry, Ned Junior agreed to drive me to the Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson train station. I promised him that I would be gone only a few days, long enough to speak to Carolyn and to look up a few old friends.

  "Be careful," he warned me. "It's a big city."

  I reminded him of the many cases I had solved, including the Bungalow Mystery and the lesser-known Mystery of the Haunted 1963 Volvo Sedan, for which I received a commendation from the American Automobile Association. This seemed to quiet him.

  The truth was that I had not been to New York in twenty-five years, and when I exited Penn Station and was confronted with the smells of the city, the scream of the taxi cabs, and the depth of the architectural canyons, I was momentarily overwhelmed.

  Flustered, I went directly by cab to the St. Moritz on Central Park and unpacked. I ordered room service, took a laxative, and fell asleep by six.

  I spent the next day trying to quiet my nerves for the party. I felt old and small and worried that I was being foolish even attending. I had my white hair washed and set, my nails manicured, my feet massaged, and my makeup professionally applied. This made me feel better. As dusk fell in the city, I changed into my evening clothes: a green knit evening dress with matching handbag. No one bothered to match her handbag anymore.

  I still had an hour before the party began so I decided to take a constitutional down to Fifty-sixth Street and Broadway, in the hopes of seeing the old TEEN HQ. Chris Cool and Bess Marvin never returned from their spring break trip to Havana on the eve of the revolution, and Bess had become something of a national treasure as a Cuban poet. I received the occasional postcard from the couple but had little idea how they were as most of the content was blacked out by the State Department censors. Geronimo Johnson, however, had risen through the TEEN ranks, and I often saw him in the background of newspaper photographs, most notably hovering behind Salvador Allende hours before his assassination.

  As I approached the corner of Fifty-sixth and Broadway, I stopped in my tracks. The Luxury Motors Building was gone!

  It seemed to have vanished into thin air, replaced by a fast-food restaurant and a large retail outlet. I sighed deeply. It seemed that TEEN had become as antiquated as I had.

  I was stooped lost in thought on the corner when a young man stumbled into me, nearly knocking me over on the street! I had very bad knees, and only through a great act of balance was I able to avoid a fall that might have been the end of me. The young man quickly recovered himself, apologized, and lurched on about his business. I checked my purse for my wallet. It was still safely in the side pocket next to my magnifying glass.

  The publishing event was held in the lobby of a large and magnificent office building. I was able to slip in unnoticed, and no one asked me for an invitation. The event was well attended. Men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns milled graciously about the room, exchanging pleasantries. I saw several name tags that I recognized: Franklin W. Dixon, Margaret Sutton, Jinny McDonnell, Marcia Martin, Julie Campbell, Kurt Vonnegut. A quartet played on a small stage, and a legion of waiters attended to the gathered masses.

  I did not recognize her at first. She had aged. The plump cheeks had hollowed and she seemed smaller, her face wilted. Her once brown hair was now snow white and piled high on her head, held in place with bobby pins. She wore a yellow evening dress and stood with a cane, watching the crowd.

  I went over and stood next to her. She did not notice me.

  "Carolyn Keene," I stated finally.

  She glanced up, her face showing nothing.

  "It's me," I declared.

  Still, she looked blank.

  "Nancy Drew," I stated slowly.

  She examined me quizzically, a spark of concern flashing behind her pale eyes. "Excuse me?"

  My cheeks began to burn. "I'm Nancy Drew. We were roommates at college. You've made a career o
ut of telling stories about me. It's me, Carolyn. It's me, Nancy."

  Carolyn raised an eyebrow. "Come sit with me," she suggested. She led me to some ornate, high-backed chairs against a wall on the far side of the room. We took a seat and she patted me pleasantly on the leg. "A long time ago, a gentleman named Edward Stratemeyer had the idea of writing heroic children series fiction. He came up with the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, the Bobbsey Twins, and others. Have you heard of the Bobbsey Twins?"

  "I knew Flossie pretty well."

  "Well, when Mr. Stratemeyer decided to feature a girl detective, he wrote an outline and sent it to me and asked if I could write it. I said yes. I was part of his writer syndicate. We all took a shot at writing the books that Mr. Stratemeyer outlined. So you see, there never was a real Nancy Drew."

  "So you're saying that my friends and I are just figments of your imagination?"

  "I'm saying that Nancy Drew was a figment of Mr. Stratemeyer's imagination. Though I suppose that the character eventually took on a life of her own."

  "Look," I retorted, "my name is Nancy Drew. My father's name was Carson Drew. I live in River Heights. My teenage sweetheart's name was Ned Nickerson. What do you call that?"

  She smiled sweetly. "Coincidence?"

  "I don't know what you're trying to pull," I declared. "I just wanted to come here and make amends. I've been thinking of writing my memoir and I plan on publishing it. I thought you'd want to know. But I guess you're not ready to admit what you've done."

  Carolyn looked at me with what I could only read as pity. "I guess not, dear. Can I sign a book for you, though?"

  I reached into my purse and pulled out a copy of The Hidden Staircase and placed it on Carolyn's lap. "Here," I declared. "It's for you. There's an inscription." I turned and walked away as Carolyn cautiously opened the book. Inside I had written: