Choosing Sides

by Carolyn Keene

  Glancing behind Nancy at Bess and Kyle, the nurse said, “Your friends will have to wait here.” Then she led Nancy through a set of swinging doors, down a hallway, and into a room with a hospital bed and all kinds of monitors. The mayor was still unconscious and was connected to an intravenous unit and some monitors. A doctor in a surgeon’s mask and green uniform stood at the foot of the bed, looking at a chart.

  “Oh, Doctor,” the nurse said, “I didn’t realize you were in here.”

  The doctor turned around briefly and gave them a short nod.

  “I’m afraid you can only have fifteen minutes with your father,” the nurse told Nancy. Then she left, closing the door behind her.

  Nancy nodded and turned to the doctor. “I’m glad you’re here,” Nancy said. “I was afraid he would be all alone.”

  “Really?”

  Something about the doctor’s deep, gravelly voice made Nancy take a closer look at him. He seemed familiar somehow. . . . Taking in the man’s graying blond hair and pale gray eyes, she realized that she did know him.

  “Alan Blount!” Nancy exclaimed.

  For a split second his eyes widened in surprise. Then, in a swift move, Blount jumped forward and grabbed Nancy by the shoulders, wrapping his arm around her neck in a choke hold. Before she could move, he pressed her against the wall and pinned her arms behind her back. With his free hand, he reached for something on the bedside table. Nancy’s eyes widened in terror as she saw what he had picked up.

  “I think there’s enough serum in here to finish off both you and the mayor,” Blount rasped, holding a hypodermic needle up to her face.

  “I’m not the only one who knows what you’ve done!” Nancy blurted out. “There’s no point in killing me. My friends will still tell the police.”

  Alan Blount tightened his hold on her arms. “That may be. But with you out of the way, I can at least buy enough time to get out of the country.” In a disgusted tone, he added, “My plans are ruined now, anyway, so there’s no reason to stay. I should have done everything myself, instead of counting on spineless men like Filanowski and Rouse.”

  “Is that why you killed Bobby?” Nancy asked, her heart racing. “Because you thought he would rat on you after he got arrested?” Nancy turned her head to see Blount’s face behind her.

  Blount grunted in assent. “What a mistake I made, trusting that idiot. It was easy enough giving Rouse’s friend Ralph the money to post bail. The guy was happy to get his friend out, so he never questioned who Mr. Greenwood was or why I would fork over thirty thousand dollars to free Bobby. Once Rouse was out of jail, I made sure he’d never spill the beans on me—ever.”

  Nancy shivered at Blount’s cold tone. Somehow she had to buy some time before he decided to use that syringe! “Your fencing ring frame-up was pretty clever,” she said. “You’re the one who had Bobby Rouse pose in that fake photograph. And then you fed the story to Steve Hill.”

  Blount let out a short laugh. “It was clever of me, wasn’t it?” he said. “Steve Hill was so ready to believe the story that he didn’t even ask any questions. Too bad you had to stick your nose into things and prove the photograph was a fake. I’d covered my tracks so well up to that point—I’d even given money to Caroline Hill’s campaign.”

  That explained why Nancy had seen him encouraging Patrick Gleason before the debate. He wasn’t really for Caroline Hill at all! “I can see why you wouldn’t want Caroline to be mayor,” Nancy said. “She’d never go along with your incinerator plan. But what makes you think that Patrick Gleason would?”

  “He’d be a perfect mayor,” Blount said. “He doesn’t have much experience, and he’s eager to please.”

  Nancy was too disgusted to comment. There was still one piece to this puzzle that she hadn’t fit into place yet. “What about Wayne Buckley? When did you get him involved in the scam?”

  “I had to work hard to find out about Buckley. After the paper printed their retraction, I was desperate to ruin Caroline Hill’s campaign. Through my professional contacts, I got hold of Caroline’s bank statements and scoured them for any scandal I could smear her with. That’s how I found out about her payments to Wayne Buckley. A little more checking, and I traced him to Chicago. When I visited Buckley, he told me all about the money she sent him for his kids every month.”

  “And you somehow convinced him to pretend that she was sending the money to finance a fencing ring, right?” Nancy guessed. “How did you scare Buckley into blackmailing his sister?”

  “His children, of course! I had that poor jerk convinced that I could report him to the authorities as an unfit father and have them taken away for good.” Alan Blount gave a harsh laugh. “It was a great ploy. Only you came along and messed everything up! I couldn’t believe it when Filanowski told me that you had been asking questions. I could tell he was turning chicken. It’s a good thing I decided to follow him this morning, or he would have told you everything.”

  “But you—”

  “That’s enough!” Blount snapped. He pulled Nancy’s head back.

  Nancy felt a drop of sweat roll down her forehead. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Blount bringing the needle closer to her neck. She felt it prick her flesh.

  She was about to be injected with poison!

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  NANCY SWALLOWED HARD. She tried to move, but Blount held her against the hospital room wall.

  “Don’t do it!” Nancy said hoarsely. “The nurse will be back any second.”

  “There’s plenty of time,” Blount whispered.

  Just then a faint groan broke the silence of the room. Startled, Blount glanced over at Filanowski and moved the needle a few inches away from Nancy’s neck.

  That split second was all Nancy needed. Wrenching her body backward, she pushed Blount off balance. He tried to force her against the wall again, but she managed to free an arm and jab him in the ribs with her elbow.

  “Kyle! Bess!” Nancy shouted at the top of her lungs. “Help! Quick!”

  Blount whirled at her again, the syringe poised, but Nancy lashed out with a judo kick, and the needle flew from his grasp. Seconds later Kyle and Bess burst into the room. Kyle rushed at Blount and slugged him in the jaw. Blount staggered backward a few feet, and Kyle and Nancy were able to pin his hands behind his back.

  “I’ll call the police!” Bess cried, running from the room.

  Nancy was still trying to catch her breath when she heard the mayor groan again. Looking up, she saw him open his eyes and look groggily around.

  “What . . . ?” he began when he saw Nancy, Kyle, and Alan Blount.

  Nancy smiled at him. “You can relax, Mayor Filanowski. Everything’s under control.”

  • • •

  “I propose a toast to the new mayor of River Heights, Caroline Hill!” Kyle proclaimed, raising his glass of ginger ale.

  A week had passed since Alan Blount’s arrest. A few days earlier, Caroline had been elected in a landslide. To celebrate, she had invited Nancy, Carson Drew, Hector, Kyle, Kyle’s sister Mary, Bess, and Ned to an Italian restaurant.

  “To Caroline!” everyone at the table cried, clinking glasses.

  “I’m not officially mayor yet,” Caroline reminded them with a laugh. “The inauguration is still two weeks away.”

  “But the hard part is over,” Hector said, spearing a cherry tomato with his fork. “After all you’ve been through, you deserve to celebrate.”

  “It was a rough week on all of us,” Caroline agreed. She took a piece of Italian bread and began buttering it. Glancing over at Ned, she said, “I’m especially glad that you came tonight, Ned. I know you believed in Patrick Gleason as a candidate. I respect that you stood by him, yet you didn’t let your loyalty stand in the way when Nancy had to investigate him. That takes a lot of strength.”

  Nancy looked fondly at Ned. She was grateful to Caroline for acknowledging Ned’s sticky role in her investigation.

  “I did wa
nt Gleason to win,” Ned remarked. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t think you’ll be a good mayor. From what everyone tells me, you’ll be terrific.”

  Caroline smiled. “Thank you, Ned.”

  “What’s going to happen to your brother, Caroline?” Carson Drew asked.

  Caroline smiled ruefully. “I decided not to press charges for blackmailing—I just couldn’t do that to my own brother. But it’s going to take a long time for me to trust him again.”

  “Still, he did go on the evening news to tell people that you were an innocent victim of Alan Blount’s scheming,” Bess put in. “That must count for something.”

  Caroline nodded. “It does. Wayne promised that he would volunteer in some community organizations, too, to try to make up for what he did. He also said he finally realized that he needs to take more responsibility to make life better for himself and his children. If he really means that, then we’ll be able to become a lot closer.”

  “And hopefully he’ll never let people like Alan Blount take advantage of him again,” Bess added.

  Caroline took a sip of water, then said, “Alan Blount won’t be able to bother anyone for a good long time. I heard from the new D.A. that they’re going to ask for twenty years when they prosecute him. And Mayor Filanowski told me that when he testifies in Blount’s trial, he’s going to tell the jury everything, regardless of how it reflects on him.”

  “Good for him,” Ned said fiercely. “It’s the least he could do.”

  Nancy let out a sigh. “I know what the mayor did was wrong, but I can’t help feeling sorry for him,” she said. “It took a lot of guts to go public, and he might end up in jail.”

  “I’m just glad that he decided to make a public announcement about his involvement with Alan Blount before the election,” Nancy’s father added. “And he’s going to sell the condominium that Blount bought him and donate the money to the city. Maybe the court will realize that he’s trying to make amends and go easy on him.”

  “What about Anna Dimitros and Steve Hill?” Bess asked, wiping her mouth with her napkin.

  “They must be disappointed that you weren’t involved in that fake fencing ring,” Kyle chimed in.

  Caroline burst into laughter. Seeing everyone stare at her, she explained, “It just so happens that Anna Dimitros called me this afternoon and said that she wants to work with me.”

  “What?” Nancy and Bess chorused.

  Caroline nodded. “She said that when she and Steve saw the mayor and Wayne on the evening news, they realized they’d been all wrong about me. Originally, she was planning to write a ‘tell-all’ book about me, but when she realized I’m not the power-hungry person she thought, Anna decided to scrap the book.”

  “All she told us,” Nancy said, “was that it was a nonfiction book. I assumed it had something to do with her trial and imprisonment. So what’s she going to do now?”

  Caroline smiled. “Anna has a new project. She wants to help me write my autobiography. Can you believe it?” She shook her head and laughed. “Pretty nervy, eh?”

  “Speaking of nervy,” Nancy said, “I found out from Brenda how she knew about my meeting with Mayor Filanowski last week.”

  “This should be good,” Ned muttered.

  Nancy smiled at him. “After Brenda found out that I had, in her words, ‘stolen the greatest interview of her life,’ she was ready to kill me. So she marched over to my house, but I had just left for Chicago with Ned. She gave Hannah some excuse about leaving something for me in my bedroom. I had saved the mayor’s message on my machine, and she, being nosy, wanted to see if there was anything on my machine. She heard the mayor’s message about meeting him on Summit Drive.”

  “Unbelievable,” Hector said, shaking his head.

  “Ahem!” Kyle cleared his throat. “I’d like to propose another toast,” he declared.

  Bess giggled. “Another one?”

  “Yes,” Kyle replied. “This time, I’d like to make a toast to Nancy and Carson Drew.”

  Nancy and her father looked at each other in surprise.

  “To Mr. Drew,” Kyle said, smiling at Nancy’s father, “for hiring me at his law firm one week and then letting me take half the next week off.”

  “And then making you work overtime the next week!” Carson added with a laugh.

  “True,” Kyle agreed. “But if you hadn’t let me work on Caroline Hill’s campaign, I wouldn’t have met Nancy. And that brings me to the second part of my toast. Here’s to Nancy, who introduced me to Bess, the greatest girl I’ve ever met.” He held up his glass with one hand and reached for Bess’s hand with the other.

  Bess turned bright red, but Nancy noticed how her blue eyes sparkled as she looked up at Kyle.

  “Here here!” Caroline said, and everyone murmured their assent as they clinked glasses.

  Watching Bess and Kyle gaze into each other’s eyes, Nancy wondered if there was any girl on earth as happy as her friend was at that moment.

  Not a chance! Nancy decided.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Simon Pulse

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1993 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  ISBN: 978-0-6717-3088-8 (pbk)

  ISBN: 978-1-4814-3862-9 (eBook)

  NANCY DREW and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  THE NANCY DREW FILES is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.