The Perfect Plot

by Carolyn Keene

  As she started up the steps, one of the summerhouse windows reflected a blinding flash of sunlight into Nancy’s eyes, causing her to stumble. She closed her eyes until the black spots faded from her field of vision, then shaded her face with her hand and looked curiously up at the summerhouse. None of the windows caught the sun now.

  Hmm, that’s odd, Nancy thought. She took a step to each side, but still the windows mirrored only sky. What had caused that flash? Had a window been shifted by the breeze? There didn’t appear to be any breeze, though, judging by the motionless branches of the trees near her.

  Nancy shrugged and started up the steps again. The world was full of mysteries. She couldn’t expect to solve all of them.

  Near the top of the steps, she stopped short. She watched as the door to the summerhouse was pulled open from the inside, squeaking as it went.

  Nancy recognized Erika’s short blond hair as the young editor backed out of the summerhouse to pull the door shut. Erika hitched the handles of a canvas tote bag higher up on her shoulder and turned. When she saw Nancy, she gasped.

  “You startled me! I didn’t know anyone was here.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Nancy said with a smile. “It’s good to know I’m not the only early riser. Pretty day, isn’t it?”

  Erika peered around her absently. “Yes, it is. Chilly, though,” she said. She bent down to brush a patch of dust from her navy blue skirt, then buttoned her matching blazer.

  Nancy decided to ask a few roundabout questions. Maybe she could uncover some clue to the theft of the figurines. “It’s fascinating being here at Mystery Mansion,” she said lightly. “Did you know Dorothea well?”

  “I certainly did,” Erika replied. “I started writing her fan letters when I was still in high school. The amazing part is, she answered them. In college, I organized the Dorothea Burden Society and invited her to come speak to the members. That was the first time we met in person.”

  “But not the last,” Nancy guessed as they started back toward the main house. Erika seemed to take a lot of pride in her relationship with the late novelist.

  Erika gave a smug smile. “Not at all,” she said. “I even spent a couple of weekends here at Mystery Mansion. Dotty loved to give her guests guided tours.”

  Nancy said, “You must know the house really well then. It’s—well—it’s very unusual.”

  Erika stopped walking abruptly and turned to meet Nancy’s eyes. “You’ve heard about the secret passages, haven’t you?” she demanded. “Here’s some free advice. Stay away from them. They can be really dangerous, even for people who know their way around in them. And there aren’t many of us now that Dotty’s gone.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Nancy said. She wondered why Erika had become so unfriendly.

  They were making their way past what looked like a gardener’s shed, when something purple and green came hurtling around a corner of the shed and slammed into Erika. She crashed to the ground, and her tote bag went flying.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Patrick said, catching his breath. “I was jogging and wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

  Erika seemed dazed as Patrick and Nancy helped her up. She glanced around at the scattered contents of her tote bag, then started scuttling around picking up what appeared to be hundreds of typed pages.

  “Oh, thanks,” Erika said breathlessly as Nancy and Patrick bent to help her. Taking bunches of pages from them, she stuffed them hurriedly in the tote bag. “I brought a manuscript with me to work on this weekend. I hoped to steal some time before breakfast today.”

  “What’s this for?” Nancy asked, picking up a black flashlight that had also fallen out of the bag. “Were you worried that you wouldn’t have enough light to read by?”

  Erika reddened. “I always carry a flashlight,” she said defensively. “I have problems with the dark.”

  Nancy studied her through narrowed eyes. The editor was definitely hiding something, and Nancy was determined to find out what it was.

  • • •

  “Look who has attached herself to Patrick,” George said to Nancy in a low voice a half hour later. The two girls were just entering the dining room, where a buffet-style breakfast had been set up.

  Nancy noticed Erika learning close to Patrick at one end of the table, toast and coffee in front of her.

  “Not that you care, right, George?” Nancy teased, fixing herself a bowl of cereal and fruit.

  George raised her head from the eggs and bacon she was spooning onto her plate. “I really don’t—not the way you mean, anyway. He is a nice guy, and she’s so . . .”

  “Whiny?” Nancy supplied. “Well, I’m sure Patrick knows how to take care of himself. Come on, we’ve got a case to solve.”

  The two girls sat down next to Vanessa, who was sitting across from Kate and Julian Romarain. Professor Coining and Bill Denton were also there, sharing a newspaper.

  Turning to Vanessa, Nancy said, “You knew Dorothea Burden very well, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What did you think when you heard about her will?” Nancy continued.

  Vanessa took a sip of coffee before answering. “You mean that she had left everything to the foundation?” she said. “Well, all her friends were surprised. I guess none of us expected her to cut Patrick off the way she did. She had always treated him as if he were her own son. Personally, I think she may have become just a tiny bit gaga toward the end.”

  The conversation ended as Kate tapped a fork against her water glass. “Good morning, everyone,” Kate said. “As you know, our first event this morning is an informal talk by Maxine Treitler, entitled ‘Editing Dorothea.’ That will take place right after breakfast, in the library.”

  From outside came the sound of tires on gravel, followed by the slamming of car doors.

  “Oh, good,” Kate added. “That must be the minivan with the participants who are staying in town. I’ll go welcome them and show them to the library. Please join us there as soon as you’re done.”

  Nancy and George hurriedly ate their breakfasts. Taking their coffee cups with them to the library, they found a dozen newcomers gathered around a big oak table, enjoying coffee and pastries. Wooden shelves filled with leather-bound books lined the walls, and reading chairs were scattered throughout the room. Kate was passing out name tags, introducing people to one another, and urging everyone to take a seat for Maxine’s talk.

  Professor Coining was standing near Nancy, holding a pastry on a paper napkin. When Kate suggested he sit down, he replied, “Yes, of course. As soon as our speaker arrives.”

  Kate seemed surprised. “Isn’t Maxine here?” she asked, glancing around the room.

  “I haven’t seen her yet today,” Nancy said.

  “She wasn’t at breakfast,” George added.

  “Oh, no, she must have overslept,” Kate moaned. “Nancy, would you mind running up to her room and reminding her about her talk? She’s in the Rue Morgue room. You can’t miss it. I’d go myself, but I have to stay and play social director.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Patrick offered.

  The two of them went upstairs and down the hall. He stopped at a door with a small blue enamel plaque that said Rue Morgue. He tapped on the door. There was no answer.

  Patrick knocked harder. This time the latch clicked and the door swung open an inch or two. Nancy met Patrick’s startled gaze.

  “I’ll wait here,” he said with a smile. “If Maxine has overslept, she might be scared to find a man in her room.”

  “Okay.” Nancy pushed the door open a little wider. “Maxine? Are you here?” she called. “It’s Nancy Drew.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll take a look,” she told Patrick. Stepping inside, she saw that the room was empty, and the curtains were open. “Maxine?” Nancy said again. Then she called back to Patrick, “There’s no one here.”

  He followed her in. “The bathroom door is open, and the light
’s on,” he pointed out.

  Nancy crossed the room to the other side of the bed—and pulled up short. Her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh, no!”

  Maxine was lying faceup on the carpeted floor. She was wearing a blue dress and matching blue pumps. Her eyes were open wide, staring at nothing. One look at the bruises on her throat told Nancy what had happened.

  Maxine was dead. Someone had strangled her.

  Chapter

  Six

  PATRICK STARED PAST Nancy and took a deep breath. Is she—?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Nancy turned away from the body with a shudder. Her mind instantly raced into action. “Go downstairs, tell Kate what happened, and ask her to get the police here right away, okay?” she told Patrick. “I’ll stay here and make sure nothing is disturbed. Oh—and please don’t touch the doorknob on the way out of the room. The killer might have been careless enough to leave fingerprints. Tell everyone to remain downstairs.”

  “Sure, right away,” Patrick said. He seemed glad to have an excuse to leave the room.

  As soon as he was gone, Nancy made a note of the time—9:27. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to take a good look around.

  In the bathroom, one of the towels was hung neatly on the rack, but the other was rumpled and damp. Droplets of water remained in the bathtub. On the ledge over the bathroom sink were several containers of makeup. The lid of a small jar of foundation was resting on the jar, not screwed down. A blush compact was also open, and its brush lay in the sink, where it had apparently fallen.

  The evidence told a clear story. Earlier that morning Maxine had showered, then gotten dressed. As she was making up her face, someone had crept in. Maxine must have heard the intruder and gone into the bedroom, where she was strangled.

  Nancy turned her attention to the bedroom. Several thin file folders, a legal pad, and a pair of reading glasses all rested on the desk. Nancy was able to make out the names on the folders without touching them, but none of them meant anything to her.

  She frowned as a thought struck her. Maxine hadn’t seemed like the kind of person who would leave her door unlocked while she showered and dressed. Hurrying over to the door, Nancy saw that the spring lock was set to lock the door any time it was closed. The only reason she and Patrick had been able to get in was that the last person to leave—presumably the murderer— hadn’t pulled the door closed all the way.

  How then had the killer gotten into the room?

  In this house there was one obvious possibility. Nancy’s gaze flew to the closet. The door was ajar, so she went through it sideways, careful not to touch anything. As in the room she and George were in, the closet walls were made of closely fitted cedar planks. Nancy soon noticed one section of boards that wasn’t even with the others. It appeared to be set back slightly into the wall.

  Nancy hurried back into the room and found a pencil. She pushed with the eraser end on the odd section of wall. Strictly speaking, she shouldn’t have touched anything at all, but she knew that what she was doing wouldn’t mess up any evidence.

  “Yes!” she whispered. The recessed section of closet wall had swung open to reveal a hidden passage. Dust coated most of the floor, but some of it was scuffed. When Nancy bent down to study the surface from an angle, she saw several blurred footprints and one that was clear and sharp. It was from a woman’s shoe that had an unusual pattern of ripples across the sole. She did her best to memorize the pattern, then returned to the bedroom, leaving the secret panel ajar.

  Five minutes later the police arrived. The first one to enter the room was a young uniformed officer whose eyes darted around the room, pausing only briefly on Nancy. Just behind him was a slightly older person, a woman in a sergeant’s uniform. She nodded to Nancy and took up a position at one side of the door.

  The last to enter was a man of about forty with big ears, an easy smile, and dark hair that flopped over his eyes. He was dressed in a bright-colored running suit. Nancy guessed that the call about Maxine’s murder had interrupted his Saturday morning at home.

  “You must be Nancy Drew,” he said, and smiled easily. “I’ve heard of you. I’m Lieutenant Kitridge. What have you got for us?”

  Nancy quickly described finding Maxine’s body. While she spoke he took a look at the corpse. Then he sent the young man downstairs to call headquarters and posted the sergeant outside the door.

  Returning to Nancy, he asked, “What made you and Mr. Burden come up here? Did you have a particular reason to be worried about the deceased?”

  Nancy told him about the lecture Maxine had been scheduled to give. “There’s something else, too,” she added. “Last night a set of valuable jeweled figurines disappeared.” Now that there had been a murder, Nancy knew she couldn’t keep the theft from the police.

  The lieutenant gave Nancy a skeptical look. “You mean they were stolen?” When Nancy nodded, he said, “Didn’t it occur to anyone to call the police?”

  “I urged Kate Jefferson to call you last night,” Nancy replied. “She’s the executive secretary of the Burden Foundation. She felt she ought to consult her boss first.”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “Afraid of a scandal, right?” he said. “Same old story. Now, would you mind giving me a quick rundown on all those people downstairs? What’s going on here?”

  When Nancy told him about the conference, the lieutenant rubbed his chin. “We’re going to have to put the conference on hold,” he said. “The people who arrived here at nine had better go back to town. None of them could have done it because the victim was killed before nine.”

  He went to the door and spoke briefly to the sergeant. Then he turned back to Nancy. “I’m going to have to talk to everyone who stayed here last night. Okay, Ms. Drew, I’ll see you again after I’ve gathered a few more facts about this case.”

  Nancy hesitated. “If you like, maybe I can give you a hand,” she offered. “I am on the inside, here.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” he replied after a moment. “Off the record, of course. Like I said, I’ve heard about your skills as a detective, and this is already starting to look like a very tricky case. I may need all the help I can get. Patrick Burden told us to use the library downstairs when he greeted us at the door a few minutes ago. That’s where we’ll be and I’ll call you if I need you.”

  Downstairs, Nancy found the other house-guests gathered in the living room. Julian was arranging kindling and logs in the big fireplace. Everyone else was sitting and watching. No one was talking. At the sound of Nancy’s footsteps, they all turned to her.

  “Nancy!” Erika exclaimed, nervously fingering the neck of her blouse. “Patrick said we had to stay here. Is it true? Is Maxine—”

  Nancy nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “It must have been a burglar,” Kate said. Her eyes were red, and her fingers were tearing a tissue into tiny bits. “Yes, of course, that must be it! First he stole the figurines, then he murdered Maxine.”

  It was reasonable that Kate would be upset, but Nancy had to wonder if Kate knew more than she was telling.

  “Why?” Professor Coining asked coolly. “I understand why someone might steal those gold figures. They were quite valuable. But why would any burglar hang around the scene of the crime all night, then wantonly kill a middle-aged book editor?”

  The same thought had been troubling Nancy, too. Before anyone could comment further, the police sergeant appeared in the living-room doorway.

  Glancing at a slip of paper in her hand, she said, “Mr. Coining? The lieutenant would like a word with you, sir. Will you come with me, please?”

  There was a brief, charged silence after the professor left. Finally Patrick said, “They’re planning to ‘sir’ and ‘please’ him until he confesses. A typical example of police brutality.”

  “How can you make jokes at a time like this!” Kate burst out. “Poor Maxine is lying dead upstairs, and the figurines are gone. This scandal could destroy everything we’re trying to do here
at Mystery Mansion. I don’t see what’s funny about that!”

  A silence fell over the room and continued as each guest was taken off to be interviewed. Finally the sergeant appeared in the doorway for the last time and beckoned to Nancy. “Lieutenant Kitridge would like to see you now.”

  Nancy followed the sergeant to the library. When she entered, Lieutenant Kitridge was standing behind the room’s big oak table. He was leaning on his two hands, studying pages of notes that were spread across the tabletop. Seeing Nancy, he straightened up and said, “Well, Ms. Drew, this is a tricky one.”

  “Please call me Nancy, Lieutenant.”

  “Nancy, then,” he said. He gestured toward a clear plastic bag that contained a flowered scarf. “Have you seen that before?”

  The scarf looked familiar, but Nancy couldn’t place it. “I think so,” she said. “Is that what—?”

  “Yep,” he said with a nod. “We found it under the deceased. We’re ninety-five percent sure it’s the murder weapon. As soon as we examine the fibers we found under the victim’s fingernails, I’m betting it’ll be one hundred percent.”

  “Did anyone identify it?” Nancy asked.

  The lieutenant shook his head. “Not in so many words. But some of the guests obviously recognized it.”

  “Do you have anything on the time of death?”

  “We won’t have the medical examiner’s report until tomorrow,” the lieutenant replied. “But his assistant did the preliminary exam. His guess was that the victim was killed somewhere around eight o’clock.”

  That pretty much fit with what Nancy had guessed already. “Did the murderer get in by the secret passage?” she asked.

  “It looks that way,” Lieutenant Kitridge replied. “Secret passages? Whoever built this place was obviously a nut.

  “What about motive? Any ideas?” he asked.

  Nancy told him about the conversation she and George had overheard the night before. “If that was Maxine’s voice,” she concluded, “she may have discovered who stole the figurines and threatened the person with exposure.”