Danger at the Iron Dragon

by Carolyn Keene

  “Here,” Bess said, handing over a mug for me. “This will make you feel better.” She wrinkled her nose as she passed by the heap of clothes I’d tossed on the floor in the early hours before crawling under the covers. “Nancy, why does everything smell like smoke?”

  I took a sip of coffee and sighed. “Oh, probably because I had to pull a guy out of a burning building last night.”

  George almost choked on her coffee. Bess’s eyes went wide. “A burning building?” she said. “But everything was fine when I left you last night! What happened?”

  I spent the next ten minutes filling them in about the fire at Iron Dragon, the chase through the alleys, and what Liam had said about his attacker. They were riveted through it all, their coffees growing cold in their hands.

  “What a story!” George said when I was finished.

  Bess looked thoughtful. “Did you say Liam saw a logo of an ape on the attacker’s jacket?” she asked.

  I nodded. “An ape or a bear. He wasn’t sure. It was a large animal with dark fur. That’s all he could really remember.”

  Bess set down her cup and pulled her phone from her pocket. She tapped at the screen for a moment before turning it to face me. “You mean something like this?”

  I looked at the image and gasped. Displayed on the screen was a black silhouette of a hulking gorilla—the Lockdown logo. “How could I have forgotten?” I exclaimed, covering my face with my hands.

  “Maybe because you were too busy chasing criminals through the streets and suffering from smoke inhalation.” George slapped me on the back. “Cut yourself some slack, Nance. You can’t think of everything. That’s why you have us.”

  I smiled. “You’re right. Thanks, team.”

  “Three brains are better than one! Even if that one belongs to Nancy Drew,” Bess said with a wink. I blushed.

  “So, what’s our next move?” George asked.

  I set my coffee cup on the nightstand and grabbed my phone. “I think I’ll get in touch with my contact over at Lockdown and see who doesn’t have an alibi.”

  I quickly tapped out a text to Z, asking him where everyone on the team had been at about half past ten last night. It took only about ten minutes to get from Lockdown to Iron Dragon—but whoever was responsible was already in the building by the time I passed there at ten thirty.

  After a minute or so, Z replied.

  After you left, everyone went down the street for pizza. We were all there until about 11.

  Everyone? I wrote back. Including Lucy and Master Brock?

  Yeah, dude, he wrote. Master Brock destroyed a large pepperoni pie. I saw it with my own eyes. I think someone posted pics on social media if you want to check. Z had included a pizza-slice emoji and the shifty eyes emoji along with his message.

  I thanked him and dropped the phone on the bed. “Well,” I said, resting my chin in my hand. “So much for that theory.…”

  “What happened?” Bess asked.

  “It’s no good. All my suspects at Lockdown were at a pizza joint during the fire. None of them could be our arsonist.”

  “They could have hired someone else to do their dirty work,” George suggested.

  I collapsed back onto my pillow and stared at the ceiling. “Yeah, it’s possible. But it’s also frustrating and messy. If Brock or Lucy hired some thug to set the academy on fire, it’s not going to be easy for us to find proof. We’d basically have to be there to catch them in the act. And I can’t be at Lockdown watching their every move.…”

  “I have an idea,” Bess said. “One that involves a girl named Anastasia Blackstone.” She waggled her eyebrows.

  George rolled her eyes. “Not this again.”

  “Actually,” I said, “that’s perfect!” I eased my sore body out of bed and started to pace the room. “You’ll be my mole, Bess. You can go to Lockdown, tell Brock you’re considering signing up but want to try it a few more times, take a bunch of classes, and sniff around for more information. I trust Z, but I just met him, and it’s his team we’re investigating. He might not be too happy about throwing his own teammates and coach under the bus. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  “Mind?” Bess spluttered. “Are you kidding? I live for this stuff! Let me look at their schedule and see which classes they have tonight.” She gulped the rest of her coffee and started poking at her phone.

  George leaned over to me and muttered, “Whatever happened to Bess ‘If It Messes Up My Hair, I Don’t Want to Do It’ Marvin?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, “but this new Bess certainly is entertaining!” I opened my closet and pulled out some clothes for the day. “In the meantime, George, I’d like you to help me out with something. I want to follow up on that locker break-in. I still think the perpetrator probably meant to break into Carly’s locker… but I have to be sure that there’s no chance Penny is involved somehow. I have no idea how she could be connected to all of this, but I don’t like loose ends. I’ll call Libby at Iron Dragon and see if she knows where Penny might be this morning.”

  George nodded. “Good thinking. Happy to tag along.”

  “Can you guys drop me off downtown?” Bess asked as I finished getting dressed. “I need to do a little shopping.”

  “No problem!” I said. The coffee and the thought of forging ahead with the investigation had blown the last traces of sleep from my mind. Sure, my body still felt like it had been hit by a pickup truck, but there’s no better medicine than a mystery.…

  * * *

  An hour later, after grabbing some breakfast and dropping off Bess, George and I drove to the outskirts of town. We searched among the maze of warehouses, using the directions Libby had given us. Apparently, Penny’s last name was Forrester, and she worked with a construction company during the week, so we would hopefully be able to find her there.

  “So, did you discover anything interesting from your Jiu-Jitsu research?” I asked George as we drove.

  She nodded. “Lots, actually. There are five belts in Jiu-Jitsu: white, blue, purple, brown, and black. And they don’t come easy. It takes most people about ten years to earn a black belt.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s quite a commitment.”

  “Yeah, that seems to be a big part of it. From what I read, the good schools don’t just promote people based on whether they can defeat everyone in the room. They also judge students on their character. If the student helps make the whole academy better, then they’re considered more seriously for a promotion to the next belt.”

  I thought about Liam and the way he’d reacted when I’d asked about his purple belt, and how long he’d been doing Jiu-Jitsu. Maybe he’d expected to be a black belt by now and felt embarrassed that he wasn’t. It must be hard to feel like you’ve fallen behind your own expectations for yourself, I thought. I knew that there had been cases in the past—tough cases—where I felt like I’d missed obvious clues and let important information slip past me. I’d been an amateur detective for a long time, and like Liam, I guess I had pretty high expectations for myself too.

  “There it is!” George said, pointing to a sign up ahead, posted on the side of a small building inside a fenced area filled with construction vehicles and equipment. The words TRIANGLE CONSTRUCTION were printed in black on a large red triangle.

  “Bingo,” I said, and steered my car into a small parking lot nearby. Half a dozen cars, including a dingy-looking white hatchback with a blue air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, were already parked in the lot. I recognized the hatchback as the same one I’d seen parked in front of Iron Dragon. “Penny must be here. I’m pretty sure that’s her car.”

  A half dozen construction workers were carrying materials out of a truck and checking equipment when George and I walked up to the trailer that housed the company offices. A man who must have been the supervisor stepped out of it and approached us. He wore a white hard hat and sported a thick mustache. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “We
’re Penny Forrester’s friends. We couldn’t get ahold of her over the phone, so we’re just wondering if we could talk to her for a second?”

  The supervisor tapped a finger on his clipboard, his eyes darting back and forth between me and George. “Fine,” he finally said. “But make it quick. And while you’re here, you have to wear these.” He ducked back into the trailer and emerged with two more white hard hats, then handed one to each of us. “She’s over there,” he said, and pointed across the way to where the new materials were being piled up.

  “We won’t keep her long, promise!” I said, plopping the hat onto my head.

  As we crossed the yard, I heard a quiet, familiar melody. “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Following the tune, I spied Penny behind a pile of lumber. She wore jeans and a black polo shirt, and her wavy brown hair was tied up in a ponytail under her hard hat. She hummed as she made notations on the clipboard in her hand.

  “I need to play this cool,” I murmured to George. “Only tell her what she needs to know. If she is somehow connected to this, I don’t want to scare her.”

  “Got it,” George said with a wink. “I’ll be cool as a cucumber.”

  “Penny! Hello!” I called as we got closer. “It’s Nancy and George from Iron Dragon. Remember us?”

  From her surprised expression, we might as well have been dragons. “Oh! What, uh, what are you guys doing here?”

  “I know this probably isn’t the best time,” I said. “But I’m still investigating what’s been going on at Iron Dragon, so this really couldn’t wait. Did you happen to hear about the fire at the academy last night?”

  Penny nodded. “Everyone was texting about it this morning. Why?”

  “Well, it’s the strangest thing,” I said. “Coach Ethan told me that whoever set the fire also broke into one of the lockers. Your locker, actually. I hope you didn’t have anything valuable in there.”

  Penny’s face went pale. “No, no,” she said after a moment. “Nothing valuable at all—just a spare gi and some athletic tape, a notebook… Didn’t anyone else’s lockers get broken into?”

  “See, that’s the funny thing,” I replied. “It was only yours.”

  “Oh,” Penny said, swallowing hard. “That’s weird.”

  “We can’t imagine why anyone would go to the trouble of breaking a padlock just to get into your locker,” I said. “Can you?”

  “No,” said Penny. “I can’t.” She squeezed the pen in her hand, clicking and unclicking it as she spoke. “Look, I’m pretty new here. I’ve only been in River Heights for about six months. I was raised in New York and moved here when this job opened up. I didn’t know anybody, so I thought it would be fun to start training at Iron Dragon. Make some friends, you know? I haven’t had time to get wrapped up in anything crazy. Didn’t I hear that you thought this whole thing was about Carly and the tournament on Saturday? I mean, I’m not even a competitor. Doesn’t that make a lot more sense than someone coming after me?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “It does.”

  Her hunch mirrored my own—that her locker being broken into was probably an accident. Everything seemed to lead back to Carly, which left me with lots of theories, but not one bit of proof.

  “I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing,” Penny said, still clicking her pen. “But I really should get back to work now.”

  I sighed and nodded. “Of course. Sorry to bother you.”

  My mood was grim as George and I got back into the car. I started the ignition and caught Penny’s supervisor watching us in the rearview mirror.

  “Sheesh,” George said, chuckling. “It’s like he’s afraid we’re going to run off with a bulldozer or something.”

  I didn’t reply. Putting the car into gear, I steered us back toward town.

  George cleared her throat and pulled out her phone. “Well, um, I’ll text Bess and tell her we’re heading back. She should be done by now.” After a minute of silence, George looked over at me. “C’mon, Nancy, buck up! I know it’s disappointing that we don’t have much to go on yet, but we’ll figure this out. We always do.”

  I shook my head. “I know, but I’m missing something, I can feel it.”

  “Maybe,” said George. “Hmm. What is it they say about returning to the scene of the crime? Maybe that’s what we need to do.”

  I thought about that for a moment and nodded. “You might be right. If Bess is going to be our spy over at Lockdown, the best thing for us to do is keep watch over at Iron Dragon and wait for the perpetrator to make their next move. They’ve already hit the academy twice, and the tournament is only two days away. If Carly is still planning on fighting, then there’s a good chance they’ll try again. And we need to be there to catch them in the act.” I felt my heart lift a little now that I had a plan going forward. “Thanks, George,” I said. “That’s just what I needed.”

  She looked a little surprised, then shrugged and laced her fingers behind her head. “It was nothing. Just routine detective work.”

  I grinned and pulled up to the curb, where Bess was waiting for us in front of a row of stores. She was carrying a large plastic shopping bag and wearing a dazzling smile. “Look what I bought!” she exclaimed as she slid into the back seat. George and I turned to see her pull a brand-new white Jiu-Jitsu gi from the bag. It had vines of pink flowers stitched across the shoulders and down the lapels. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Bess said, hugging it to her chest.

  George and I gave each other a look. “Ho boy,” George mumbled. “She’s got it bad!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Human Chess

  THAT NIGHT, WHILE BESS AND her new gi went to do some method acting at Lockdown, George and I steeled ourselves for another class at Iron Dragon. I really thought that after nearly being mugged, half a dozen rounds of sparring with as many people, a midnight chase, and nearly being burned to a crisp, my body would finally say, Enough is enough. But like Chef Kathy said that night in the soup kitchen, You do the impossible often enough, it becomes routine. Somehow, I wasn’t broken, so off I went for more Jiu-Jitsu.

  I feared the academy might have to close for a while, but the police finished examining the scene and allowed classes to resume. When we walked into the lobby, the hallway where the fire had been was cordoned off. The walls, ceiling, and floor were completely blackened. The air was still slightly smoky, though someone had tried to mask the smell with a pine-scented air freshener.

  Libby was sitting behind her desk, and her eyes lit up when she saw us. “Nancy!” she said. “I heard what happened last night! Are you all right?”

  I nodded. “Totally fine. I’m just glad everything turned out okay. I’m guessing Carly heard too. How’s she holding up?”

  Libby’s face fell. “Not great. She thinks that she’s responsible for all of this, and that whoever’s targeting her won’t stop until she drops out of the tournament.”

  George shook her head. “But we don’t know that for sure yet. And even if this is about her, she can’t let them win!”

  Libby shrugged. “I know. That’s what Coach Ethan told her too. But it seems like she’s made up her mind. Maybe you should talk to her, Nancy.”

  “Yeah, maybe I should.”

  As George and I made our way to the training room, another group was just finishing up a kickboxing class. Jeremy, the big blue belt, was hitting one of the hanging punching bags with savage jabs. The bag was swinging so wildly, it almost hit another student in the face. Jeremy stopped and steadied the bag. He caught us watching from across the room and grinned. “I don’t know, ladies. Either I’m getting stronger, or this bag is getting lighter.”

  I chuckled and called out, “My bet’s on the first one!”

  “I think we’ve reached the point in the night when I pray for my survival,” George mumbled.

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?” I asked.

  Just then Jeremy wound up for a cross, connecting with the punching bag so hard that it almost s
ailed right off its chain.

  George went pale. I patted her on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine,” I said, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. “Just keep your eyes and ears open for anything that might be useful.”

  As we walked toward the women’s locker room to get changed, Liam emerged from the men’s locker room. He smiled when he saw me.

  “Well,” I said, glancing at the purplish welt on his forehead. “I’m surprised to see you back in class so soon.”

  Liam waved a hand at me. “Oh, it’s just a little bump. No reason to keep me off the mats.”

  “You’re like the post office!” George joked as she put her hand over her heart. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor minor concussions will keep me away from wrestling with my friends.”

  Liam laughed. “Yup, that’s pretty much it.” A moment later Penny came through the lobby toward us. Liam excused himself and walked over to her. “You still good for our private lesson tomorrow night? Let’s say nine?”

  “I’ll be there,” Penny replied. She glanced over my way, and I nodded in greeting.

  “You coming?” George asked me, gesturing toward the locker room.

  “Sure,” I said, and followed her in. We found Carly standing by the lockers, slowly tying her purple belt around her waist. “Hey,” I said, setting down my bag.

  “Hey,” Carly replied, not meeting my eyes.

  “Listen,” I began, keeping my voice soft. “I know how you must be feeling about everything, but please don’t pull out of the tournament. We’re going to figure this out, and—”

  Carly looked up at me, her brown eyes full of anguish. “Nancy,” she said, cutting me off. “Whoever’s threatening me almost burned the whole building down! Liam could have died!”

  “But Carly,” I pleaded, “we don’t know for sure yet that this is even about you.”

  “What else could it be about?” she asked.

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Frustration welled up in my chest. This case seemed so clear-cut—so why wasn’t anything adding up?