Nancy Clancy, Secret of the Silver Key

by Jane O'Connor

  DEDICATION

  For the Handler, who is key in all things!

  —J.O’C.

  For my childhood pal, Wendy Frontiero

  —R.P.G.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Past, Present, Future

  Chapter 2: The Interview

  Chapter 3: A Long-Lost Friend

  Chapter 4: Estate Sale

  Chapter 5: The Secret Compartment

  Chapter 6: Another Silver Key

  Chapter 7: Interrogation

  Chapter 8: A Break In the Case

  Chapter 9: The Time Capsule

  Chapter 10: A Dead End

  Chapter 11: More Sleuthing

  Chapter 12: A Superb Clue

  Chapter 13: Mystery SOLVED

  Chapter 14: Reunion

  About the Author

  About the illustrator

  Back Ad

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  “That’s really a camera?” Lionel asked. Nancy could see the skeptical look on his face. “Skeptical” was a new favorite word of hers. It meant a person doubted whether something was true.

  “Yup, it belonged to my mom,” Mr. Dudeny said. “Fifty years ago, Polaroid cameras like this one were high-tech. They let people take photos in a brand-new way.” Nancy’s teacher was holding up a silver and black box so everyone in room 3D could see it. The front of the camera pulled out like an accordion with a large, round lens on the end.

  “You put in film, snapped a picture, and out popped a piece of paper. In about a minute you’d see the picture appear on it.”

  “Ooh! It sounds like magic,” Clara said. “Can you show how it works?”

  “Unfortunately, no. The kind of film you need is hard to find and pretty expensive now. But I have some Polaroid pictures taken with this camera.”

  Mr. D passed around a bunch of small, square photos. The colors in all of them were very faded. “My mother is the girl in the tie-dye T-shirt.”

  “Mr. D, your mom and her friends were hippies!” Nancy said. She and Bree were looking at a photo of a boy with hair down to his shoulders and another of two girls with their arms around each other, one in a floppy hat and blue granny glasses and the other wearing lots of love beads and a necklace with a peace sign.

  Grace sat, twirling her pencil and looking bored. “I don’t see what’s so great. Now you can take photos with a phone and see them in a second. You don’t even need a camera.”

  “Well, Grace, that’s the point I’m about to make. A long time ago, this camera was brand-new and cool. Now it’s something from the past.” Mr. Dudeny took out his cell phone from his pocket. “I bet fifty years from now third graders will look at this and say, ‘That thing is really a phone?’”

  Nancy mulled over Mr. D’s words, which meant she was thinking about them really hard. Once the past hadn’t been the past. It had been just like this very moment, sitting in her classroom. The present. And in the future, this very moment would turn into the past. Nancy blinked and shook her head. All this mulling was making her brain feel twisted up like a pretzel.

  “Next week, I would like each of you to bring in something from present time. Nothing big. Something that tells about what life is like today—like a desk calendar for this year or the front page of a newspaper. We are going to put everything in a box.”

  “You mean, like, a time capsule?” Lionel said. “Awesome!”

  “Ooh—and can it have a sign on the front that says ‘Do not open until 2064’?” Nancy asked.

  Mr. D nodded and explained that their time capsule would be stored in the basement.

  “Maybe in fifty years my child will go to school here and get to open it,” Clara said.

  Grace rolled her eyes. “Clara. Do the math. In fifty years you’ll be nearly sixty. Your children won’t be kids anymore. They’ll be grown-ups too.”

  Clara pooched out her lips and looked disappointed. “Oh yeah, you’re right.” Then she brightened. “Well . . . then maybe my grandchildren will get to open it.” Clara giggled. “Imagine! Me, a grandma!”

  “And for Monday,” Mr. Dudeny went on, “I’d like each of you to interview somebody who was your age a long time ago. Thirty, forty, or even fifty years ago. Find out where they grew up and what it was like being a kid back then. What was happening in the world? Who was president? Were there exciting new inventions? Any crazy fads?”

  Bree was furiously scribbling down everything Mr. D said. Then she turned and whispered to Nancy, “Dibs on Mrs. DeVine.”

  “No fair!” Nancy whispered back. Mrs. DeVine was their neighbor and also a senior citizen. She was the perfect person to interview, and Nancy had just as much right to pick Mrs. DeVine as Bree did.

  Nancy raised her hand and waved it around it until she got her teacher’s attention. “Mr. D, Mr. D! What if two people want to interview the same person?”

  Mr. D said that wasn’t a problem.

  “Let’s do the interview together. It’ll be way more fun that way,” Nancy suggested right after the last bell rang.

  “Okay. Sure!” Then suddenly Bree looked uncertain. “Hmmmm. Maybe that’s not allowed.” Bree was always very particular about following homework rules. So before heading outside to where their bikes were parked, they got the okay from their teacher.

  By the time they biked home, a plan was in place. In the clubhouse in Nancy’s backyard, they made a beautiful invitation to slip under Mrs. DeVine’s door.

  “It’s so weird to think Mrs. DeVine was our age once,” Bree said, placing the cap back on a hot-pink marker.

  “Everything about time is weird when you really start thinking about it,” Nancy said. She sat back on her knees and pondered. “Right now, Monday is the future. And by Monday, today will already be the past. Doesn’t it make your brain feel twisted up like a pretzel?”

  Bree thought for a moment. Then she giggled and said, “No. More like scrambled eggs!”

  Bree James: Thank you very much, Mrs. DeVine, for agreeing to this interview. We will now begin. My first question for you is: Who was the president of the United States when you were born?

  Mrs. DeVine: It was Harry Truman. He became president at the very end of World War II in 1945. That was the year I was born. Actually, he liked to be known as Harry S. Truman. Although he didn’t have a middle name, he picked a middle initial for himself. I guess he thought it made him sound more important, more distinguished.

  Nancy Clancy: Where were you born? Was it in this country or were you an immigrant?

  Mrs. DeVine: Why, I was born right in this very town! Only, it wasn’t much of a town then. There was still lots of farmland.

  Bree James: Were there any amazing new inventions like the Polaroid camera?

  Mrs. DeVine: Oh, yes! TV. Television screens were tiny at first, and you needed antennas—“rabbit ears,” we called them—to keep the picture in focus. And the shows were all in black-and-white.

  Nancy Clancy: What were your favorites?

  Mrs. DeVine: That’s easy: I Love Lucy. I’d go over to my best friend’s house to watch, because her family had a TV set long before mine did. Lucy was a grown woman, but she and her friend Ethel would get themselves into the craziest trouble! My best friend and I were jealous because nothing crazy ever happened to us.

  Nancy Clancy: Who was your best friend?

  Mrs. DeVine: Her name was Bitsy. But she wasn’t little. In fact she was very tall for her age. Bitsy was a nickname for Elizabeth.

  Bree James: Since Nancy asked two questions in a row, I get to ask two now. What did you do for fun? I mean, besides watching TV? And were th
ere any fads?

  Mrs. DeVine: Oh, we did a lot of same things you girls like to do. We rode our bikes, we played board games like Monopoly and Sorry! And we read all of the Nancy Drew books.

  Bree James: What about fads?

  Mrs. DeVine: Bitsy and I loved jacks. I was very good. I could do lots of tricks, which were called “fancies” and had names like Snake in the Grass and Backsies. Slinkys were very popular too. Bitsy and I would have races to see whose Slinky would tumble downstairs the fastest.

  Nancy Clancy: What kind of clothes did you wear?

  Mrs. DeVine: Girls wore skirts most of the time. Poodle skirts were the rage. And if we wore pants, they weren’t blue jeans. Blues were for boys and were called “dungarees.” I brought over an old photo album so you can see what kids looked like in the 1950s.

  Nancy Clancy: This brings our interview to a close. Thank you, Mrs. DeVine. Your answers have told us many interesting things about the days of yore.

  “Does Bitsy live close by now? Do you still see each other all the time?” Nancy asked before biting into a Nilla wafer cookie. Now with the interview over, refreshments were being served in the clubhouse.

  Mrs. DeVine shook her head. “I’m afraid we lost touch ages ago. Her family moved when we were about twelve. We tried staying in touch, but once we weren’t neighbors or going to the same school, well”—Mrs. DeVine shrugged her shoulders—“it just wasn’t the same.”

  Bree was drinking pink lemonade out of a teacup. She gulped and sputtered, “That’s so terrible. To lose your best friend!”

  Nancy felt the exact same way.

  “We didn’t have a falling-out or anything. We just drifted apart. Bitsy had new friends. So did I. We didn’t have much in common anymore.”

  “When was the last time you saw each other?” Nancy asked.

  “Why, it was so long ago, I don’t even remember.” Mrs. DeVine pursed her lips, which were Passionately Red. That was the name of the lipstick she always wore. “Oh, I do know. We bumped into each other at a clothing store. We both had our eyes on the same prom dress. So that had to be . . .” Mrs. DeVine paused and started ticking off years on her fingers. Her long fingernails were Passionately Red too. “Well, I can’t believe it, but it must have been nearly fifty years ago!”

  Nancy and Bree exchanged identical looks. They were way more than surprised. They were stupefied. “But you were best friends. And—and you both liked the same exact dress. That proves you still had stuff in common,” Nancy said. The longest she and Bree had gone without seeing each other was four weeks last summer, when both their families took two-week vacations and the weeks didn’t overlap. Even with email and phone calls, it had seemed like forever. An eternity.

  “Bitsy was a wonderful girl. I remember her with great fondness,” Mrs. DeVine went on. “There’s a special closeness with your first best friend. Now, scoot a little closer. I’m sure there are pictures of Bitsy in here.” Mrs. DeVine opened the red spiral-bound album that she’d brought over.

  “That’s yours truly!” Mrs. DeVine laughed, pointing to a photo of a girl on a swing.

  “No way!” Bree cried. “I never would have guessed.”

  Nancy wouldn’t have either. It was hard to imagine the girl in the photo who had dark braids and wore eyeglasses turning into their glamorous neighbor with her platinum-blond hair and false eyelashes.

  “There. That’s Bitsy with me at a county fair.”

  In the photo, Bitsy stood half a head taller than Mrs. DeVine, only she wasn’t Mrs. DeVine back then, Nancy realized. She was called Margie, which was short for Marjorie. The girls had their arms around each other and, in their free hands, they held paper cones of cotton candy. Their mouths were wide-open, as if they’d just heard the punch line to a really funny joke.

  Although the photo showed two happy friends, it made Nancy sad to look at it. And what did Mrs. DeVine mean about having a “first best friend”? A best friend was forever. Nancy looked over at Bree, who was turning the pages of the album. Sure, sometimes they got into fights, but they loved each other.

  “Mrs. DeVine, what if Nancy and I tried tracking Bitsy down for you? Imagine seeing each other after all these years.”

  Yes! Finding a missing person! How thrilling that would be. “We have excellent sleuthing skills,” Nancy added. “We figured out who stole something valuable from our classroom, and we did it by cleverly following clues.” Nancy hoped that didn’t sound like she was bragging. But she and Bree were sharp detectives. The only problem was that there hadn’t been any crimes lately. Finding a missing person wasn’t like a robbery. Still, it was mysterious.

  It was obvious, however, that Mrs. DeVine didn’t take their offer seriously. “Oh no. I wouldn’t know where to tell you to start looking. Bitsy might be anywhere on the planet.”

  As soon as Mrs. DeVine left the clubhouse, Nancy turned to Bree. “Hold up your hand. We have to take a solemn oath. We have to promise we’ll always stay best friends.”

  Bree raised her hand. “Yes, we’ll never lose touch, even if you are living on the North Pole and I end up at the South Pole.”

  Then, just to be doubly sure, they pinkie locked on it.

  “Take the next left,” Nancy’s mom told her dad.

  Nancy was excited. They were going to an estate sale. Estates were like mansions—big and fancy—so the furniture for sale was sure to be fancy too. Nancy needed a desk. Up until now she had to do all her homework on her old play table, which was moving into JoJo’s room. As a third grader, Nancy required something more grown up, with drawers for her pens and pencils, a place for her schoolbooks, and room for a laptop computer. . . . That is, for whenever she got a laptop computer.

  “Maybe we’ll find a rare and valuable antique,” Nancy said. She was holding her nose, so when she spoke, it sounded as if she had a cold. Last week, driving to Grandpa’s, JoJo had regurgitated all over the backseat. It still smelled a little of throw-up.

  “An antique? Sure. As long as it costs less than twenty-five dollars,” Nancy’s mom said.

  “My tummy feels funny,” JoJo whined.

  Nancy’s mom swiveled around. “Hold tight, honey! We’re almost there.”

  A moment later the Clancys’ car pulled up near a house where several other cars were parked. On the front lawn were some old beach chairs and umbrellas as well as a plastic sandbox with no sand in it. A sign on a tree said, Estate Sale 9–12 Saturday.

  The house looked a lot like Nancy’s, only not as nice. It was painted a funny gray color that reminded Nancy of chewed gum. “If you ask me, that sign is false advertising,” Nancy said, disappointed. “This is no estate. This is just an ordinary tag sale.”

  “I don’t know. I’m getting good vibes,” her dad said, rubbing his hands together as they walked in the front door.

  “Remember, Doug. We’re here to get a desk for Nancy. Nothing else.”

  Nancy’s dad couldn’t resist buying goofy stuff at tag sales, like the cracked Smurfette mug that he found a couple of weeks ago. “Only twenty cents—can you believe it?” he’d said.

  Unfortunately her dad’s vibes didn’t mean anything. There was no desk for sale, and after Nancy’s mom dragged him away from a stack of old MAD magazines, they returned to the car and moved on to the next tag sale on her mom’s list. No luck there, either, but at the third stop, in an upstairs bedroom of the house, Nancy came upon a small wooden desk with a top that rolled up and down. Although there were lots of scratches on the wood, the desk had a row of little drawers inside as well as cubbyholes. “That’s where I could keep letters and other important correspondence,” Nancy said.

  Her mom had JoJo by the hand. “Doug, jiggle the desk to make sure the legs are sturdy.” Then she turned to Nancy. “So? What do you think?”

  “Can we repaint it?” Nancy asked.

  “Sure.”

  “The price is right,” Dad said, looking at the tag. “Twenty bucks.”

  “Oh, I can do way better than that
.” Nancy’s mom suddenly had a gleam in her eyes. She marched downstairs to find the lady who owned the house. Nancy, her dad, and JoJo followed behind.

  “Your mother has turned bargaining into an art form,” her dad said. “Watch her closely, Nancy. Learn from a pro.”

  Sure enough, after Mom mentioned the scratches on the desk and brought up the fact that one of the legs wobbled and a knob was missing from a drawer, the price for the desk came down to five dollars. While her mom was bargaining, Nancy browsed through a box of old books and magazines. She found two Nancy Drew mysteries that she hadn’t read yet and a picture book on pirates for JoJo.

  “Could we get these too, Mom?” Nancy asked. “Please!”

  The final bill for everything totaled fifteen dollars, counting the books and a tiny plastic pinball game that Dad had somehow laid his hands on when her mother wasn’t looking. He carried the desk to their car.

  “I hope you enjoy the desk,” the lady said to Nancy. “My daughter used it for years. She was a very good student. You look like a good student too.”

  “I try my best to be diligent,” Nancy said modestly. She figured the lady would know that diligent meant hardworking. “Is the desk an antique?” Nancy asked hopefully.

  The lady laughed. “It’s old, but I’m afraid I’m the only antique here.”

  Then the Clancys all piled into the car and made it home without JoJo regurgitating.

  “Before we start painting, pull out all the drawers,” Dad told Nancy.

  The desk was standing on top of sheets of old newspaper that Nancy had spread out on the floor of the garage. The putty that her dad had put on the bottom of one leg had already hardened, so now the desk didn’t wobble.

  “It’s going to look so gorgeous once we’re done!” Nancy said happily. On the way home they’d stopped at the hardware store. Nancy picked out a large can of paint in a fancy shade of white called “alabaster” and a much smaller can of gold paint for the trim.