The Case of the Artful Crime

by Carolyn Keene

  Skimming the papers, Nancy found an article published six months later in which Felice announced her intention to sell the ruby. “There are so many worthy causes that would benefit from the money,” she told the paper. “It seems absurd for me to have it locked in a vault. But because the money will go to charity, I will insist on receiving the highest price possible. This is an international event. The ruby will attract interested parties from all over the world.”

  As she flipped through the pages, Nancy’s eye was drawn to an article on the opening of the Arizona House. It showed Shawn and Loreen, arm in arm, standing in front of the restaurant. Gazing fondly at each other, they seemed very much in love.

  Paging through a paper from the previous week, Nancy spotted another brief article on Felice Wainwright. It described how Mrs. Wainwright’s security system had been tripped, setting off lights and alarms and immediately summoning the private security guard who had a direct line to the system. No intruder was found, and nothing was taken. “This system is obviously one hundred percent effective,” the head of the security force was quoted as saying.

  Nancy put the papers aside and went to the microfilm machine. Reduced on film were many back issues of the River Heights Review. Snapping in the cartridge, she began scanning the articles.

  She stopped when a familiar name jumped out at her: Joseph Spaziente. His name was printed below a picture of a sharp-featured man with dark, scowling eyes and lightly pockmarked skin. The article reported that only one burglar, Spaziente, had been caught during the midnight break-in of a local bank. He’d been shot in the leg while holding open the back door of the getaway van for the other escaping criminals. He fell to the ground while the van sped off without him.

  The article went on to say that authorities still could not figure out how the thieves had short-circuited the bank’s security system. The alarm never sounded, and they managed to get through elaborate locks. If a passing patrol car hadn’t noticed activity at the back of the bank, the thieves would have gotten away with a perfect crime. As it turned out, Spaziente had been holding the suitcase of money, and it tumbled to the ground with him when he was shot.

  When she finished the article, Nancy took out the cartridge and gave her materials back to the librarian. “Ready to go?” she asked Bess, who sat engrossed in an issue of Fine Food magazine.

  “Look what I found,” she said, showing Nancy the article. “It’s a review by Harold Brackett.”

  “ ‘Summer’s finest foods,’ ” Nancy read aloud. “ ‘When I was a ten-year-old boy in Brooklyn, my brother took me on the Parachute Jump ride at Coney Island. Afterward,’ ” she continued reading, “ ‘we went for a frankfurter with mustard and sauerkraut. For years that frankfurter embodied all that was wonderful about summer. But through the years I cultivated more sophisticated tastes . . . ’ ”

  Nancy looked up from the article and stared into space thoughtfully.

  “What’s the matter, Nan?” Bess asked.

  “Nothing,” Nancy replied. “I was just thinking of something. The Harold Brackett we saw at the restaurant is only in his early thirties. He isn’t old enough to have been on the Parachute Jump when he was ten. The ride was closed down before then.”

  “Maybe he just made the whole thing up because it sounded good,” Bess suggested.

  “Mmmm,” Nancy mused. “Maybe. Or maybe the guy we know isn’t really Harold Brackett.” Nancy handed the magazine back to Bess. “Come on. I want to snoop around Loreen’s neighborhood a little. It’s not far from here. We can talk to her neighbors and find out if Jack has come around to see her. If she’s there, I want to talk to her directly.”

  Ten minutes later, Nancy and Bess arrived at the apartment complex. They buzzed Loreen’s bell, but no one answered on the intercom. “Good,” said Nancy, motioning Bess inside. “She’s not home.”

  “What exactly are we trying to do?” Bess asked as the girls rode the elevator up to the eleventh floor.

  “I’m going to try to talk to some of Loreen’s neighbors,” Nancy said. “Maybe I can learn something that way. I’ll say I’m a cousin who’s looking for her.”

  The elevator reached their floor, and the girls got out. Suddenly Bess stepped back into the elevator and pulled Nancy with her.

  “What’s wrong?” Nancy asked.

  “Apartment Eleven C. That’s Loreen’s, and the door is open,” Bess whispered.

  Nancy held the elevator door open while she considered her next move. “Let’s go check it out. If she’s home, I’ll think of some reason for us to be here. I’ll say I want to be friends or something like that.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’d really love that,” Bess said, reluctantly following Nancy into the hall.

  Cautiously, Nancy pushed open the door. “Hello,” she called in.

  Bess peeked in behind Nancy and gasped. There was a man inside the apartment! He was coming out of a doorway off the narrow front hall. He was dressed in coveralls and held a toolbox.

  “Sorry to scare you,” he told the girls. “Your sink is fixed. I’ll give the spare key to the super on the way out.”

  “Great. Thanks a lot,” Nancy said, closing the door behind the plumber.

  “What a lucky break,” Bess commented.

  “I’ll say,” Nancy agreed. “Bess, you keep an eye out through the peephole on the door. I want to do some snooping.”

  Loreen’s apartment was small and neat. Nancy found mail scattered on one table. She read through an opened phone bill on the top. Loreen’s longdistance bill totaled over a hundred dollars. Most of the calls were to Arizona.

  Next Nancy played Loreen’s phone answering machine. One call was from her mother. The second call was more interesting.

  “Loreen, this is Edward from Le St. Tropez. Please call me.”

  Nancy pressed the Save button, and the tape rewound. Loreen would never know anyone else had heard her messages.

  Perching on the arm of a beige loveseat, Nancy thought about this latest clue. Was Loreen helping Le St. Tropez sabotage their competition, the Arizona House? Was she doing it to get back at Shawn for breaking their engagement? For money? Or was she simply looking for another job? And how did the paintings figure into the equation? They didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

  “Nancy! Loreen’s coming!” Bess whispered urgently.

  Nancy jumped up and looked around. “The fire escape,” she told Bess. “Hurry!”

  Nancy and Bess opened the back window, which adjoined the fire escape, and slipped out.

  “Climb down,” Nancy urged Bess.

  Bess moaned. “This makes me very nervous.”

  “Bess, just get to the next floor so she doesn’t see us,” Nancy said.

  Casting a worried glance over her shoulder, Bess lowered herself down the metal ladder. Just as Nancy was about to follow, Loreen came through the door. Nancy plastered herself to the brick wall of the building. She waited a few moments, then peeked in through the window. She was in time to see the back of Loreen’s leg as she stepped into the bathroom. Nancy hurried down the fire escape and joined Bess on the lower landing.

  “It’s a long way down,” Bess fretted.

  “Hang on tight and keep going,” Nancy said.

  After a long climb, Nancy and Bess reached the bottom landing.

  “How do I let you talk me into these things?” Bess said as she hung from the drop bar at the bottom of the escape.

  Nancy had already jumped to the ground. She yanked down the bottom ladder so that Bess was able to climb all the way to the pavement.

  “See? That wasn’t so bad,” Nancy said, brushing herself off as they made their way back to her car.

  “Right. What’s eleven floors of sheer terror? Nothing!” Bess said dryly.

  Nancy dropped Bess off at her house, then headed home. For once, she was glad her father’s car wasn’t in the driveway. He wouldn’t be happy if he knew she hadn’t been in bed all day.

  When Nancy pushed open the front d
oor, she immediately spotted a long white envelope lying on the front hall carpet. It looked as if someone had slipped it under the door.

  Nancy picked up the envelope and tore it open. It took only a second to read. The note read, “Give up, Nancy Drew—while you still can.”

  10

  Relative Danger

  For the next hour, Nancy read and reread the note. She didn’t show it to her father when he came home, thinking he was already worried enough.

  Though the words were printed, some of the letters drifted into script. The i was very distinctive, curving far back like an inverted c. The points of the final n in “can” were also sharp and decisive. The paper was good-quality bond with a grain. The rough edges at the top told Nancy it had been torn from a pad. She tried to decide whether it was written by a male or female hand, but it was hard to tell.

  Nancy sighed. She’d been threatened before, on other cases. But this person, she knew, wasn’t kidding around. How far would he or she go?

  The next morning Nancy dressed in black pants and a soft blue silk blouse. She pulled her hair back with a blue barrette. After breakfast, she drove to the River Heights Community Center. Felice Wainwright was waiting for her.

  “Here’s your pass,” Felice said, handing Nancy a large white card. “The class is just down this hall.”

  “Do you enjoy teaching?” Nancy asked as they walked down the long, quiet corridor.

  “Oh, yes. Mostly I do a lot of encouraging. I studied art in Rome for a number of years, so I can give the men a few pointers and principles, too.”

  They stopped at a door in front of which stood two uniformed guards. “She’s with me,” Felice said as Nancy held up her pass.

  Inside the bright, high-ceilinged room, ten men dressed in gray coveralls worked intently on canvases propped on easels. In each corner of the room stood armed guards.

  The prisoners looked up from their work when Nancy and Felice entered. Taking Nancy’s arm, Felice guided her over to a short, dark-haired man working in oils. Nancy immediately recognized Joseph Spaziente from his picture in the paper.

  “Joseph, this is Nancy Drew. She’s a great fan of your work. She might be interested in commissioning a piece,” Felice said.

  Spaziente looked up at Nancy, then turned back to his work. “I don’t do commissions,” he muttered as he dabbed his brush in the paint on his palette.

  The scene Spaziente worked on had already been sketched in pencil on the canvas. Nancy noticed that the subject was the same as the other three she’d seen, a lake surrounded by trees. The sketch was done in light lines with little detail—except for the tree in the lower left-hand corner. Every inch of its bark had been penciled in with great care.

  “That lake scene seems to captivate you,” Nancy said pleasantly.

  “Mmmph,” he grunted in reply. With one long, decisive stroke, he covered the sketch marks on the tree trunk with a long line of brown paint.

  “Once you’ve completed this winter scene, the series will be finished,” Felice said. “Spring and summer are in the Arizona House. I have autumn. Where shall we send winter?”

  The dull boredom in Spaziente’s eyes was replaced with sharp interest. “Hasn’t my Uncle Auguste been in touch with you?”

  “I was just about to mention that,” Felice said, slightly flustered. “He says you promised him the painting you gave to me.”

  “I’ll paint you another,” Spaziente said gruffly. “Give him the painting. I want him to have this one, too.”

  Felice’s mouth twitched. The gift had obviously meant something to her.

  “But, Joseph,” Felice protested, “can’t your uncle wait until after my auction? So many important people will see your work and—”

  “I want Auguste to have the paintings!” Spaziente flared. Red-faced with anger, he jumped up from his seat.

  Startled, Felice backed up clumsily, upsetting a small table on which Spaziente had piled art books and sketches.

  In a flash, two guards closed in on Spaziente. Taking him by either arm, they wordlessly ushered him out of the room.

  Felice paled. “Oh, dear! This is awful. The warden is very strict about security. Joseph might be dropped from the program.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Nancy said gently.

  “It is,” Felice insisted. “Joseph has an artistic temperament. I shouldn’t have provoked him. He’s usually so mild-mannered. I have to explain to the guards.” She rushed from the room.

  An awkward moment followed. Every prisoner in the room was staring at Nancy. “Back to your work!” snapped one of the guards.

  Nancy righted the knocked-over table and stooped to gather the books and sketches that had fallen to the floor. Now that she’d met Spaziente, she saw that he was not the gentle soul Felice believed him to be. The whereabouts of his paintings seemed to mean a lot to him. Nancy wondered if the paintings were connected to the bungled bank robbery—or even to the auction of the Dragon’s Eye Ruby.

  Suddenly Nancy remembered what the newspaper article had said. Spaziente’s gang had disengaged an elaborate security system. Felice also had a complex system. Was there a connection?

  As she picked up a heavy book on oil painting, two pieces of paper slipped out from between its covers. Still bending down, Nancy examined them. One paper was a drawing—a series of lines that ran straight for a while, then zigzagged at uneven intervals. In a small, tight script, Spaziente had written: “final quadrant, winter.”

  The other was a note that said: “Joe. What’s taking so long? Must see your latest work. Where is it going to end up? Everything set. You won’t be sorry. Your loving uncle.”

  Uncle Auguste, no doubt. Nancy stared at the letter. Suddenly, her blood ran cold. The i’s bent way back, like inverted c’s. The n’s were sharp.

  Uncle Auguste was the person who had left her the threatening note!

  She turned the letter in her hand. It was even written on the same kind of paper, a heavy bond with a slight grain running through it.

  Why would August Spaziente threaten her? How did he even know of her connection with the Arizona House case? Had he been the man who slashed the paintings? No. That man hadn’t been fat. What did all of this mean?

  At that moment, Felice and Joseph returned. Nancy stuffed the papers back into the book and returned them to the table. “Is everything all right?” she asked, rising to her feet.

  “Yes. I explained that it was all my fault,” Felice said quickly. “You’re absolutely right, Joseph. You should do whatever you please with your own paintings. I’ll give your uncle the autumn scene, and I’ll see that he gets the winter scene as soon as it’s completed.”

  “It’ll be done by the end of class,” Spaziente said.

  “So quickly?” Felice said in surprise.

  Spaziente snorted. “I’ve painted it enough times.” He frowned at Nancy. “Get her away from me, would you? I can’t work with her breathing over my shoulder.”

  Felice looked at Nancy apologetically.

  “No problem,” Nancy said quickly. She’d seen enough, anyway.

  She walked down the wide steps of the Community Center and drove off in her car. A few minutes later, she stopped at a phone booth and called Shawn at the Arizona House. He told her Jack hadn’t shown up and couldn’t be contacted by phone. Nancy decided to drive by Jack’s house. She still had his address in her purse.

  It wasn’t long before she came to a residential part of town. The streets were quiet as she drove past modest homes with small front yards. She parked at the curb in front of Jack’s house. It was a one-story, neat house with blue siding. Nancy walked up the path and rang the doorbell. She’d decided to confront Jack directly. She wanted to know exactly what he had against Shawn. And she had to find out if Jack had a partner. Was he working with Loreen? Uncle Auguste? The mysterious intruder? All of them?

  As she waited, she noticed that there was no car in the driveway. No one answered the door. Nancy walked around to t
he back porch and looked into the empty kitchen. The window nearest the door was slightly open. There was no sense waiting around for Jack. It would be a good time to do some investigating on her own.

  It wasn’t hard for her to raise the screen, reach in, and unlatch the back door. In the next minute, she was standing inside Jack’s small kitchen.

  The adjoining room was a dining area. The walls were adorned with old photos: the old Chez Jacques, photos of Jack receiving culinary awards, and autographed pictures of Jack with politicians, celebrities, and sports figures. The restaurant had obviously been the center of Jack’s life.

  As Nancy studied the photos, a sudden noise on the back porch made her jump. She whirled around and saw Jack coming in the door.

  “You!” he cried, storming into the dining room. “What are you doing in my house?”

  “Looking for you,” Nancy said boldly. “I have some questions to ask you.”

  Jack crossed to the phone on his kitchen wall. “I’m calling the police,” he threatened.

  “Good!” Nancy called his bluff. “You can tell them why you tried to burn the Arizona House to the ground. You doused the linens with vodka, then threw on a match. It wasn’t only arson. It was attempted murder. Bess and I were trapped in that kitchen.”

  Jack froze. “No,” he said, horrified. “Never murder. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” He dropped the phone receiver and sank into a chair. “I simply wanted the kitchen damaged and the restaurant closed for repair. I never meant for anyone to be hurt. Why do you think I let you out of that refrigerator? I am not a cruel man. I only wanted my restaurant back. That kid has no right to that business.”

  “What do you mean?” Nancy asked.

  “His father was a thief!” Jack cried, pounding the arm of the chair angrily. “He took care of the business side. I ran the restaurant and did the cooking. But when he died, I had to take over our accounts. That’s when I saw what had been going on. He’d been stealing from our business! Thousands and thousands of dollars had been paid to ABC Beverages. There was no ABC Beverages! It was his own account! The half of the restaurant Shawn Morgan inherited wouldn’t even begin to pay me back for all the money his father stole. He’d left no funds in reserve. I couldn’t run the place properly with the money that was left. All my creditors wanted to be paid, and there was nothing to pay them with.”