Not a Girl Detective

by Susan Kandel

  Ruth Fielding was a plucky orphan who became an internationally celebrated screenwriter, actress, director, and studio head. She was a typical Stratemeyer heroine, embodying the get-up-and-go spirit of the new era of women’s rights. Before her—before the Motor Girls, the Moving Picture Girls, the Radio Girls, and eventually Nancy Drew—all that girls had to read was nineteenth-century sentimental rot, equal parts linen-sorting and tears. No wonder they had to satisfy their desire for adventure with books written for boys.

  I put down Ruth Fielding and picked up Dan Carter and the Great Carved Face by Mildred A. Wirt. This was one of the books Mildred had written under her own name. At least she finally got her due, poor woman, stuck all those years with that vow of secrecy. And, ironically, it was the doing of her great nemesis, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams.

  After a seventy-five-year relationship between Grosset & Dunlap and the Stratemeyer Syndicate, Harriet was looking for a more creative approach to marketing, and a bigger share of her series’ royalties. Grosset & Dunlap sued, claiming exclusive rights and charging the publishing house Harriet wanted to bring in with meddling into their contract negotiations with the Stratemeyers.

  The trial took place in 1980. Mildred was subpoenaed, and lo and behold, it turned out that oaths of silence were irrelevant to district court judges. Everything came out—every last bit of correspondence and every last release form, which pretty much made clear the true identity of Carolyn Keene.

  You had to feel a little sorry for Harriet. She must’ve gotten pretty used to being celebrated as the beloved authoress. “I thought you were dead,” she was said to have stammered when she saw Mildred take the stand.

  But Mildred wasn’t dead, just a ghost.

  I grabbed a cup of water, then dug deeper into the stack, past some well-worn Frank L. Baum books, Ozma of Oz and Glinda of Oz. Harriet died while watching The Wizard of Oz, as Edgar had reminded me the day we met. Some people made a big deal out of the fact that Nancy’s dog was named Togo, and that her fictional hometown, River Heights, was as fantastic a fairyland as Oz, but I wasn’t sure. River Heights must’ve had one of the highest crime rates in the country. Car bombs, home invasions, heists, kidnappings, dognappings. But I suppose there was a lot of crime in Oz, too.

  More Oz books. A Vicki Barr book (flight stewardess). A Cherry Ames (war nurse). A Beverly Gray (newspaper reporter). Two Trixie Beldens in excellent condition (a farm girl bored with the usual chores). Finally, I saw the only one of these plucky girls to survive, way down at the bottom of the stack.

  Number 32, The Scarlet Slipper Mystery, 1954. In poor condition. Tape on the obverse side, stains on the spine.

  Number 34, The Hidden Window Mystery, 1955. Very good condition. Like many of the late ones, actually written by Harriet. Nancy, Bess, and George search for a missing stained-glass window and encounter a mysterious ghost. It, by the way, had a fantastic cover image: Nancy shining a flashlight on an enormous peacock, straight out of Mogul India. I’d loved anything even vaguely Indian from the time I’d learned that Diana Vreeland, legendary editor of Harper’s Bazaar, had said that pink was the navy blue of India. I didn’t know if that was true (it sounded vaguely colonialist), but I liked the sound of it. Maybe Victoria would sell the book to me. I could frame the dust jacket. Look at the peacock for inspiration. Peacocks are so beautiful. Only the males, however.

  Suddenly, I had a feeling of déjà vu. The dust jacket reminded me of something. Not the peacock.

  The girl.

  The high beam of light.

  The burst of white.

  I knew.

  It reminded me of the black-and-white photograph Edgar Edwards had sent me from beyond the grave.

  33

  I drove home too fast and threw open the front door, which crashed against the wall of the entryway, leaving a knob-shaped dent. Now I could add replastering to the list.

  I headed straight back to the bedroom, yanked open the chest of drawers, pushed aside my Lanvin cape, and pulled out the photograph.

  Buster started to bark and Mimi started to whimper. They hated being ignored. I tossed them both into the hall and closed the door, gently this time.

  I sat down on the edge of my bed with the picture in my hand. What was it trying to tell me?

  The woman in the picture was holding a flashlight, pointing it straight out in front of her, hoping it would illuminate something. Her path. An object. She was alert, attuned to sounds, smells. She may have been frightened. Her head was turned slightly, as if she might have heard someone coming up behind her, looking for her, or maybe looking for the very thing she couldn’t find.

  The woman could’ve been my double. Edgar saw the resemblance, no doubt. What I couldn’t figure out, though, was how he could have known that the picture looked exactly the way my life felt. I was looking for something and I wasn’t even sure what. All I knew was why.

  For him. And for Jake.

  I turned the photograph over. L. Sands. L. Sands. Who was L. Sands? If I could just figure that out. I’d searched the Internet for the name half a dozen times, but maybe I’d missed something. I exited the French doors in the bedroom and walked through the soggy grass to my desk. I shoved everything in my way into the top of a cardboard box from Office Depot containing five thousand sheets of white paper, typed in “google.com” and then “L. Sands.”

  I waited.

  A real-estate broker named Boris L. Sands. A physicist named Eunice L. Sands. The Lost Sands of Kuwait, a French video game. No, no, no.

  I checked my e-mail.

  The usual garbage. Mortgage refinances. Wrinkle creams. A snippy note from my editor, Sally, telling me she’d be out of the office for two weeks and was expecting the completed manuscript upon her return. Sally needed downtime. She was very tightly wound. Burn fat while you sleep. Enlarge your penis. Another posting from the Society of Chums. Bette from Cleveland had been given a Newfoundland puppy. Joe from East Aurora, NY, warned her that puppies are attracted to the glue in the spines of books. A heads-up: Turner Classic Movies was screening Nancy Drew—Detective from the 1930s, which I’d never seen, on July 17. A big kerfuffle: an English edition of The Clue in the Crumbling Wall, misprinted as The Glue in the Crumbling Wall, was for sale on eBay. Edgar would’ve loved that. Another curiosity for his memorabilia category.

  Memorabilia. I looked away from the screen. Edgar was a collector of Nancy Drew memorabilia. And it was a Nancy Drew dust jacket that had reminded me of the photograph he’d sent me. Was that yet another coincidence—or was there no such thing? Then something occurred to me. I could take the question directly to the source.

  Because I owned a scanner.

  I’d gotten it last year as part of a package deal on my new printer. They’d thrown it in for almost nothing, which I’d always assumed meant it wouldn’t work. I’d stuck the thing in the corner, thinking I’d get Vincent, a computer whiz, to hook it up for me one day, only I kept forgetting to ask him. Uncharacteristically, I’d saved the instructions. How hard could it be to hook up?

  Two hours, two calls to the Hewlett-Packard help-line, and the rest of the bad Chianti later, I put the photograph on the glass, hit the button, and attached the image to a query to the Chums’ Listserv. It read:

  I was given this by a Nancy Drew collector and I’m baffled. If there’s anyone out there who can decipher it, or who knows who L. Sands is, I’d be eternally grateful.

  Yours in sleuthing, Cece Caruso

  It was worth a shot.

  I went back inside and checked my phone messages. Annie had returned my call. They were raisins, thank god. Gambino had called, too, from Yucaipa. I plopped down on the couch and called Annie back first.

  She sounded good. Things were going well on Testament, the Star Trek-esque TV show for which she was head set designer. She’d blown everyone away with her new idea for a podule for the ecologically minded Commander Gow, which she described as a 100 percent recyclable holographic cocoon. Her garden was thriving.
She’d bought a set of bamboo chairs at the Rose Bowl flea market. And on Friday, she and Vincent and Vincent’s three-year-old little boy, Alexander, were driving up to Big Sur for the weekend. Annie wanted to know what I used to do to amuse her on long car trips, but to be honest, I couldn’t remember any long car trips.

  Then it was my turn. I told her in long and gory detail how I’d set up the scanner. She was impressed. Then I gave her the Reader’s Digest version of the rest of my life, not particularly eager to get into my recent encounters with myriad officers of the law. She knew me well enough to know I was dodging something or other, but Vincent took that moment to sneak up on her and scare her half to death, or so she said between giggles, and she had to go.

  I called Gambino next.

  “You were right,” he said. “I hate to admit it.”

  “Right about what?”

  “Tiffani and Brandi. They would’ve gotten away with it, too, if Brandi hadn’t turned on her sister. You should’ve seen them going at each other at Brandi’s apartment. They were throwing things, screaming.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Gambino?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m really glad you solved the case.”

  “Thanks. You helped.”

  “Gambino?”

  “Yes?”

  “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

  “About what?”

  “About this Jake thing. And the related Edgar thing.”

  He waited.

  “I’ve sort of been poking around where I shouldn’t be.”

  “Cece—”

  “The thing is, I’m finally getting somewhere. I’m really close.”

  “Stop for a minute. I want to say something. You were right when you blew up at me the other day.”

  “I was?”

  “I’m not your father. I can’t tell you who to be. I don’t want to tell you who to be. I love you just the way you are.” He stopped short. “Not a word.”

  “Not a word.” Billy Joel. How embarrassing.

  “But I also don’t want to be the person who rescues you. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

  “I think so. And I don’t want to be a person who needs to be rescued.”

  “I know that. So I’m going to say one thing, and then I’m done. I trust you.”

  “Is that the one thing?”

  “No.”

  “What is it?”

  “Watch yourself.”

  I promised him I would. And I truly meant to.

  For dinner, I made myself a nice sticky pasta carbonara. I ate slowly, stalling for time.

  At nine, I checked on the Chums.

  Nothing.

  I came back inside and ate two Tofutti Cuties while watching a Lifetime movie about a woman who sleeps with her best friend’s husband.

  I went back outside at eleven.

  I had an answer.

  In fact, I had maybe a hundred answers.

  Those Chums were something, all right.

  Tabby Cat was the most succinct:

  You ought to come to more conventions, Cece. Then you’d know that “L. Sands” refers to Rudy Nappi’s oldest daughter, Lynn, whose married name was Sands.

  We all know about Russell Tandy, of course. But Rudy Nappi was the illustrator of most of the second and third covers of the Nancy Drew Mystery Series. Lynn was the model for many of those covers. Your picture is a trial cover of #21, THE SECRET IN THE OLD ATTIC. It’s reproduced in the eleventh printing of FARAH’S GUIDE. You really should have a copy of FARAH’S GUIDE. I know it’s expensive, but worth every penny. Anyway, how thrilling for you to own something so rare and wonderful!

  Best, Tabby Cat

  P.S. I had my baby. It was a girl!!:)

  We see what we believe we are going to see, not what is there.

  I was such a fool.

  I could’ve saved so much time.

  And Jake. I could’ve saved him from so much suffering. What had thrown me was the fact that Rudy Nappi’s daughter, Lynn Sands, was a brunette while Nancy Drew is blond—mythically, symbolically so. Blond as in fair, good, true. Blond as in one who shines light into the darkness, brilliant like the sun.

  But anybody can have blond hair. All you need is a bottle of bleach. Or a wig.

  Or an artist, to transform you from ordinary girl into icon.

  I could’ve saved so much time.

  If only I hadn’t forgotten that art and life are not the same thing.

  34

  It was early Thursday morning, around eight. I was parked kitty-corner from Edgar Edwards’s house with a pair of binoculars on my lap. I took a sip of my vanilla latte, then opened the window and tossed it out. Splat. Not all experiments are successful.

  Carroll Avenue was more dead to the world than usual. The sky was dark and the clouds so menacing even the neighborhood dogs had forfeited their morning walks. And quiet. It was so quiet the only sound you could hear was the wind whistling through the half-naked trees.

  It felt like the dead of winter.

  A door slammed. I grabbed the binoculars and peered through the scratched lenses, more for effect than anything else because I could see perfectly well from where I was parked. It was a paunchy guy in his boxers, getting the morning paper. The wind had swept the door shut behind him. Shivering, he rang the bell and waited. His wife opened the door and handed him a steaming mug of something. These people had a great house, a crazy Victorian with purple trim and what looked like a baby grand in the living room.

  The car window went up with a muffled whoosh. According to my calculations, Mitchell Honey would appear any second. Thursday was one of his two yoga days with Guru Chakravorty, whose studio was on Larchmont Avenue. Master class began at nine, and with so many asanas to work on, Mitchell would be wrapped up until at least noon.

  The night before, I’d spent a while at the guru’s Web site. It was a model of information design. I learned about yoga styles, yoga postures, yoga facials. That yoga is good not only for the muscles and ligaments but the nerves and glands as well. Then there was the cornucopia of yoga-related products available for online purchase: mats, mat covers, straps, blocks, yogatards, personalized yoga software, copper tongue scrapers, stainless-steel neti pots for nasal irrigation.

  It’s very important to dry the nose properly after nasal irrigation.

  I heard another door slam. I picked up the binoculars. It was Mitchell Honey, skipping down the moss-covered steps, his yoga mat under his arm. He looked up at the sky with concern. Please tell me a little rain wasn’t going to scare him. He pulled his keys out of his jacket pocket. No, rain didn’t scare him. I’ll bet the guru scared him. The guru scared me. Mitchell clicked the car alarm with his thumb. Two beeps later he was seated in his blue Jaguar, and then he was gone.

  I waited five minutes before getting out of my car. Then I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. The pretty young Latina I’d seen at the memorial service answered.

  “Yes?” she asked in heavily accented English.

  “I’m Cece Woodbury from the Office of Historic Preservation.” I flashed my expired gym membership. “It’s a city agency. Is Mr. Edwards at home?”

  She shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry. He is now dead.”

  “How awful!”

  “Yes. Everybody feels very sad.”

  “Is there someone else I could speak to?”

  “Mr. Honey goes to exercise. He comes back later.”

  “Oh. That’s a pity.”

  “Have a nice day.”

  She started to shut the door.

  “The thing is, Miss…?”

  “Vasquez.”

  “Miss Vasquez. Mr. Edwards inquired at our office regarding his attic. This was some time ago.” I opened my briefcase and pulled out a clipboard with the one-year no-parts guarantee for my washing machine affixed to it. “Yes, here it is.” I patted the guarantee. “Mr. Edwards wanted to build out the attic and we rejected his appli
cation for a permit. He was very upset about it. He had big plans. But in going over the documents, I realize there may have been an error made.” I shook my head regretfully. “It happens. So I’m here to perform a reinspection.”

  “What?”

  “I need to take a look at the attic.”

  “Please, you must come back when Mr. Honey is here.”

  “That’s the problem. I was in the neighborhood, down the block at the Josephsons. Nice people. Anyway, I had a free hour, so I thought I’d squeeze you in. Otherwise, it’s a minimum eighteen-month wait on reinspections.”

  “I do not know the Josephsons,” she said skeptically.

  “Listen, I’m just going to run up there for a minute, do my thing, and get out of your way. It would be a huge help to me. Clear some paperwork off my desk.”

  “I am now going out.” She waved her purse at me for proof.

  Shit.

  “Home Depot,” she explained.

  “The one on Sunset and Willoughby?”

  “Yes.”

  My heart soared. “The one with the long lines?”

  She laughed. “One mop is three hours in line.”

  “I’ve got news for you! You can forget about ever waiting in line at Home Depot again!”

  It was more than she could fathom.

  “Yup. All you have to do is ask for the manager, Raoul Ortiz, and tell him Cece sent you. He’ll treat you like a queen.” Raoul Ortiz was the brother of Tomas Ortiz, who was practically a part of Lael’s family. Tomas was the default architect of Lael’s ramshackle spread in Beachwood Canyon. They liked to keep it casual, Tomas and Lael. Nails and two-by-fours. Tomas was the king of two-by-fours. He could’ve built Versailles out of two-by-fours.

  “I do not know.”

  “Look. All I have to do is go up to the attic, take a quick peek around, make sure it’s safe for wiring, check out the ducting, stuff like that, then I’m gone.”

  “It is not safe.”