Heart of Danger

by Carolyn Keene

  • • •

  Breakfast at the ranch was a community affair, with everyone sitting down to a table piled with Mrs. Arguello’s wonderful Mexican food—tortillas filled with sausage and cheese and red-hot huevos rancheros. Nancy went to breakfast wearing jeans, a red and white plaid shirt, a tooled leather belt, and her cowboy boots. Mr. Reigert was not at the table.

  Gene glanced at her approvingly. “Looks like you’re ready for your tour of the ranch,” he said.

  Mark set his empty coffee cup down with a bang. “A tour?” he asked suspiciously. “Why?”

  “Because your stepfather suggested it,” Nancy said. “He thought I ought to get acquainted with the ranch.”

  Mrs. Reigert put her hand on her son’s arm and smiled at Nancy. “Did you see Mr. Reigert last night?” she asked smoothly. She was wearing a red silk shirt with white fringe.

  “For a few minutes,” Nancy said. “I hope to talk to him again today, so we can start our work.”

  “I’m not sure that will be possible,” Mrs. Reigert said. “He was very ill this morning.”

  “Ill?” Nancy asked sharply. Mr. Reigert hadn’t shown any signs of illness yesterday evening.

  Mrs. Reigert gave a distressed sigh and reached for another tortilla. “He seems to have a chronic stomach problem,” she said. “I’ve been trying to persuade him to see a doctor for the last two or three months, but he refuses. He’s so stubborn.”

  “He’s crazy,” Mark said, leaning across the table to help himself to the tortillas. “If he’d listen to reason about the stock or anything, he’d—”

  Mrs. Arguello had appeared behind Mark with a pot of steaming coffee. As he sat back the two of them collided, and hot coffee splashed onto his arm.

  “Ow!” he screeched. “Look what you’ve done!” Mrs. Arguello stood silently behind him. Nancy thought she saw an inscrutable smile playing at the corners of the old woman’s mouth. “I keep telling you, Jonelle,” he snarled, “you ought to get rid of this old woman. She’s nothing but trouble!”

  “Now, Mark,” Mrs. Reigert said. “Mrs. Arguello didn’t mean—”

  “Shall we get going?” Gene said to Nancy, pointedly ignoring Mark and his mother. He pushed his chair back and stood up, his face set. “It gets pretty hot out there by noon.”

  • • •

  In the corral Joe Bob had saddled up two horses, a gentle palomino for Nancy and a big bay for Gene. Her notebook in her back pocket, Nancy climbed into the saddle and they started off across a grassy pasture. They rode in silence for a few minutes while Nancy absorbed the early-morning beauty. The sky was crystalline and cloudless, and the breeze was flavored with tangy sage.

  “What does Mark Reigert have against Mrs. Arguello?” Nancy asked suddenly.

  Gene shrugged and lifted his reins. His horse broke into a smooth canter. “Mrs. Arguello’s been around for close to twenty years,” he said. “She’s a fixture. I don’t think she takes to newcomers. She’s protective of the old man.”

  “Maybe she thinks he shouldn’t have married the second Mrs. Reigert,” Nancy prodded.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Gene replied quickly.

  Nancy changed the line of her questioning. “What about the girl, Angela?” she asked. “Is she a newcomer too?”

  Gene turned around in his saddle. “Yeah,” he said with a scowl. “She came a few months ago. Why are you asking? She certainly can’t have anything to do with Mr. Reigert’s memoirs. She’s just a housemaid.”

  Nancy looked at Gene, surprised at what sounded like defensiveness. But she didn’t have time to think about it, for he reined up and pointed across the pasture toward a herd of black cattle with big humps on their backs.

  “Brangus,” he said abruptly, changing the subject. “The main breed on the ranch. They’re a mixture of Black Angus and Brahma cattle. They stand the heat well and they’re good producers.”

  “What happened to Texas longhorns?” Nancy asked. “They seem to belong with land like this.”

  “Oh, there’re a few of those around here too,” Gene replied. “But their meat production isn’t that great.” He grinned. “These days we go for a little more meat and a little less personality.”

  Nancy looped the reins around the saddle horn and pulled out her notebook. If she was supposed to be a writer, she decided, she had better take a few notes. “What did Mark mean,” she asked idly, still writing, “when he said that Mr. Reigert wouldn’t listen to reason about the stock?”

  Gene grinned. “Last year Mark had this crazy idea that we ought to get out of the cattle business and into exotic game. It wasn’t a very popular idea around the ranch.”

  “Exotic game?”

  “Yeah. A few ranchers are stocking buffalo and exotic breeds of wild sheep. Mark thinks we could make a fortune selling hunting leases, but Mr. Reigert won’t hear of it.”

  “Is Mark right? Why wouldn’t Mr. Reigert listen to him?”

  Gene shrugged. “Mark could be right, actually. But Mr. Reigert pointed out that we’d need a lot of money to get started. We’d have to enclose the whole place with a six-foot fence, for starters. And the truth is, there isn’t much extra money these days. The oil industry isn’t doing well, and the cattle market’s just as bad.”

  For the next hour Gene talked about Casa del Alamo’s ranching operation, the herds of fat cattle grazing in the grasslands, and the occasional wildlife they saw. The terrain grew rougher as they continued their ride. An irregular-shaped bluff rose to the west, mounded with broken rock and dense underbrush. A V-shaped valley opened out ahead of them, filled with willows and mesquite.

  “Oh, look!” Nancy pointed excitedly as a large brown deer darted away through the trees. “Did you see that funny-looking deer? He had spots and big antlers!”

  “A buck with spots?” Gene laughed, reining his horse in. “Around here, only fawns have spots, and they sure don’t have antlers. Your writer’s imagination is working overtime, Nancy.”

  “But I saw him,” Nancy protested. “He was brown, with big white splotches all over him. And he was big, about the size of an elk.”

  “And he also had a horn in the middle of his forehead, maybe, like the mythical unicorn?” Gene said, teasing her. He added, “The only deer around here are white-tailed deer. The fawns lose their spots after the first season, and even the biggest bucks aren’t any bigger than a small calf—certainly not the size of an elk.” He turned his horse. “Come on. I think the sun’s getting to you. We’d better go back to the house.”

  I know what I saw, Nancy thought stubbornly as they turned around. But it didn’t seem important enough to argue about, or even to give much thought to. More important were the other questions that continually played through her mind like a stuck record. Was Catarina Reigert still alive, held somewhere nearby by kidnappers? Who had delivered the ransom notes?

  Nancy didn’t have enough clues even to begin to answer the questions. And, while the morning’s ride had been pleasant enough, it hadn’t taken her an inch further toward solving the mystery.

  • • •

  Nancy and Gene rode into the corral and dismounted. Joe Bob and the other cowboys were nowhere to be seen.

  “Now where’s he gone off to?” Gene muttered, uncinching the saddle from Nancy’s palomino. He handed Nancy a currycomb. “Since Joe Bob isn’t around, we’ll have to do this job ourselves,” he said. “Give her a good rubdown, and then we’ll turn her into the stable with a bucket of oats and—”

  “Gene!” called a voice.

  Nancy turned around. It was Mrs. Reigert, running toward them, her hair flying in the breeze.

  “Gene!” she gasped. “You’ve got to come quickly, before it’s too late!”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “What’s happened?”

  “It’s Robert,” she cried. “He’s very sick. I’m afraid he’s dying!”

  Chapter

  Three

  MRS. REIGERT, NEARLY incoherent, couldn’t give
them any details of her husband’s illness. While Gene helped her into the house, Nancy raced for Mr. Reigert’s bedroom, which was down the hall from her own. In the hallway she met Mrs. Arguello, standing guard at his door.

  “How is he?” Nancy asked breathlessly.

  Mrs. Arguello looked down her nose at Nancy, her black eyes unreadable. “He is sick,” she said.

  “Is he dying?” Nancy asked, trying to peer in through the partly open door. “What does the doctor say?”

  “Doctor? Are you kidding?” Mark asked. “He won’t let anyone call a doctor.”

  Nancy turned. Mark was lounging against the wall, a little farther down the hall. “But if he’s dying,” she insisted, “you ought to call one anyway. It doesn’t matter what he says.”

  “What gave you the idea that I’m dying?” a querulous voice called from the bedroom. “I’ve just got a bad stomachache, that’s all.”

  Mark grinned as Mrs. Arguello hurried back into the room. “What did I tell you?” he asked.

  “But your mother—”

  “Jonelle’s inclined to dramatize things when she gets a little panicky,” Mark interrupted.

  “Senorita Driscoll, Senor Reigert wishes to see you,” Mrs. Arguello said, coming out of the door. She glanced at Mark. “Alone,” she added. Mark glared at her and left.

  The room was dark. “Open the shutters,” a voice commanded weakly.

  Nancy obeyed. In the bright sunlight Nancy could see that the room, unlike the rest of the house, was sparsely furnished—a bed, a chair, a dresser. The only wall decorations were a pair of spurs and a coiled lasso hanging beside the casement window that opened onto the garden. And the only concessions to the electronic age were a TV set on a stand in a corner and a VCR beneath it. The streaming light revealed Mr. Reigert stretched out on the bed. Nancy went to his side.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “I’m sick,” Mr. Reigert said petulantly. His tanned face looked pale. “Any fool can see that.”

  “Then why won’t you call a doctor?”

  “Can’t trust doctors, especially that young whippersnapper over in Rio Hondo. I’ll get better. Always do.” He glared at her fiercely. “What have you found out so far about my daughter?”

  “Mr. Reigert,” Nancy said, “I followed your instructions this morning—I took a tour of the ranch. Anyway, you’ve got to be realistic. Finding out the truth about your daughter is certainly not something I can accomplish overnight.”

  Mr. Reigert frowned at her. “Nonsense,” he said. “I’ve looked into your background. You’ve got a reputation for accomplishing the impossible—if not overnight, then certainly over the next week.” He turned his face away. “So get on with it. I expect to see results.”

  • • •

  Getting on with it, Nancy was discovering, wasn’t exactly easy. Pad and pencil in hand, as though she were a writer on assignment, Nancy went in search of Mrs. Reigert after lunch. She found her in her room, reclining on a chaise longue with a damp cloth across her forehead. She was dressed in a pink satin robe, trimmed with ivory-colored lace.

  “I’m sorry, my dear,” Mrs. Reigert said, opening her eyes weakly. “I—I guess I panicked. But I truly thought that Robert was dying. I just hope I didn’t make too much of a fool of myself.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Nancy said consolingly. She looked around. Mrs. Reigert’s room was very different from her husband’s. The walls were pale mauve and the floor was thickly carpeted in white. Lacy white curtains hung at the open casement windows. Everything else was pink, with lavish touches of silver and crystal. The dressing table was crowded with makeup and perfume, and the open closet door revealed racks of expensive dresses and dude-ranch clothes.

  Nancy turned back to Mrs. Reigert. “Anyone would be concerned in a situation like that, I’m sure,” she said. “Mr. Reigert has had these attacks before?”

  “Oh, yes. Poor dear, he seems to get better right away, but every time he’s a little weaker. Of course”—Mrs. Reigert sighed—“it’s his age.”

  “Of course,” Nancy said, smiling a little at the idea of anyone calling the crusty Mr. Reigert “poor dear.” She opened her notebook. The best way to get to Mrs. Reigert, she had decided, was through flattery. “My job here,” she went on, “is to help your husband with his memoirs. You’re such an important part of the story that I thought I’d start with you first.”

  Mrs. Reigert pulled the cloth down over her eyes, obviously uncomfortable with Nancy’s, inquiry. “Oh, there isn’t very much to tell,” she said. “I grew up in Dallas. That’s where I—I married Mark’s father.”

  “And your name before you married Mr. Reigert?” Nancy asked, jotting rapidly.

  “Why does that matter?” she asked.

  “It’s just for the record,” Nancy said reassuringly.

  Mrs. Reigert hesitated. “It was—Blake. My name was Jonelle Blake.”

  “And you were working as a hostess at a club Mr. Reigert used to visit?” Nancy prodded.

  “Yes. The Plaza Balcones. It’s a dinner club that caters to the very best clientele. That’s where I met Robert.” She pulled the cloth up on her forehead again and smiled. “He was very attracted to me, and I thought he was just the sweetest man.”

  Nancy had the feeling that learning about Mrs. Reigert’s background needed in-depth research. But although it might be interesting to know what Jonelle Blake was doing before she became Jonelle Reigert, Nancy couldn’t see that that would have any bearing on the case. Instead, she asked, “What about your son, Mark? What does he do?”

  “Oh, he’s very interested in ranching, of course.”

  “But he told me he was more interested in investments,” Nancy said, making hasty notes.

  Mrs. Reigert looked slightly alarmed. “Well, yes, I suppose he is,” she said. “He’s always dealing with brokers.”

  “Actually,” Nancy said, glancing down at her notebook, “I’m more interested just now in learning about Mr. Reigert’s first family. I’d appreciate it if you could tell me what you know about them.”

  Mrs. Reigert shifted uneasily. “His first family? How would I know anything about his first family?”

  “I thought he might have told you—”

  “He hasn’t told me anything,” Mrs. Reigert said flatly. “All I know is that his first wife was killed in a plane crash.” She shuddered. “I didn’t want to know any more.”

  “Just the woman? I thought that both his wife and his daughter were killed, even though the girl’s body was never found.”

  Mrs. Reigert shut her eyes and pulled the cloth back down over them. Nancy noticed that her face was really pale. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said in a weak voice. “And now I’m afraid that your other questions will have to wait, my dear. I just don’t feel up to answering them right now.”

  Nancy closed her notebook and stood up. It appeared that there were some things that Mrs. Reigert either didn’t know or wouldn’t talk about.

  • • •

  Nancy got even less information from Mark than she had from his mother. She found him going through a file drawer in the room he used as an office. He looked up when she came in, and even though he managed a smile, Nancy had the distinct impression that he wasn’t happy to see her. He stuffed a folder back into the file and shut it quickly.

  “How was your tour of the ranch?” he asked, going to the desk and sitting down.

  “Uneventful,” Nancy said. She gave him a warm smile. “I understand that you have some rather interesting ideas about the way the ranch ought to be managed.”

  “Yes, actually, I do,” Mark said. He twisted the silver bracelet he was wearing. “But the old man doesn’t listen to me. He only listens to Gene.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. He’s got a potential gold mine here, and he’s ignoring it.”

  “You mean, turning this place into an exotic game ranch?”

  “How’d you find o
ut about that?” Mark demanded.

  “Gene told me,” Nancy said. “By the way,” she added curiously, “I saw something interesting this morning—a big deer, big as an elk, with white spots. Gene says there’s no such animal.”

  To Nancy’s surprise, Mark went rigid. “You saw what?” he asked. And then, recovering somewhat, he said, “You’re crazy. There’s no such thing. The only deer around here are whitetails. And white-tailed fawns may have spots, but they sure don’t have antlers.”

  “But I saw it,” Nancy insisted. “It ran through the mesquite trees right beside the trail.”

  “You mean, you thought you saw it,” Mark said. He stood up, his eyes intent on hers. “For once, Gene’s absolutely right. There’s no such animal.” He picked up a sheaf of papers and reached for the telephone on the desk. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some telephoning to do. My broker is waiting for me to call.”

  • • •

  After dinner that evening, Nancy went to her room to make her own phone call—to Ned. It was something she’d been looking forward to all day, and the familiar sound of Ned’s voice warmed her.

  “How’s it going out there?” he asked after he’d been called to the phone by his fraternity brother. “Have you found anything?”

  “Just a minute,” Nancy said. She put down the phone and got up to make sure the door was securely closed. She didn’t want anybody to overhear. “Not much,” she said in a low voice when she got back to the phone. “There’s been another note, with a shoe that Mr. Reigert says was his daughter’s.” She told him the details and then added, “I intended to talk to him at length today, but he was sick.”

  “Sick?”

  “Yes. Apparently some chronic stomach ailment. It doesn’t seem too serious.” She rubbed her back, smiling ruefully. “Speaking of ailments, I sure could use a back rub. I spent the morning on horseback looking at cows, and I’m really stiff.”