A Crime for Christmas

by Carolyn Keene

  I didn’t know who it was, but someone was trying to scare me off the case. If they thought I could be scared off that easily, then they didn’t know Nancy Drew. Okay, maybe I was a little scared—maybe I was super, ridiculously, terrifyingly scared. But not so scared that I’d let it stop me from investigating. No way. If anything, I was even more determined. There’s nothing wrong with being frightened—detecting can be a frightening business, just as long as it doesn’t stop you from doing what’s right.

  “Have the police and the state troopers been called?” I asked, ready to get right back to business. “The avalanche would have buried some of it, but those snowmobilers may have left shell casings and other evidence behind.”

  “They’ve been called, but it’s not going to do much good,” Joe replied.

  “That avalanche triggered a second avalanche farther down the mountain that took out the road to the lodge,” Berkley explained.

  “I got here just before it happened,” Joe said. “Otherwise I’d still be stuck back in Prospect.”

  “And now you’re stuck here. No cars are coming in or out of here until the road is cleared, and with the blizzard that’s supposed to hit us tonight, that could be a couple days at least.” Berkley sighed. “Looks like we might all be spending Christmas Eve snowed in here instead of home with our families.”

  Doc Sherman may not have been any nicer or more talkative than the first time I saw him, but his boil must have been feeling a little better, because he did seem concerned at least. Everyone at the lodge was rattled by what had happened, and it seemed to have the doc even jumpier and lip-chewier than he had been the first time I saw him. You’d almost think he’d been the one on the runaway sleigh. I guess it’s not every day a ski resort physician has to treat people after their horse-drawn sleigh is chased through an avalanche and across a frozen lake by gun-wielding bad guys on snowmobiles. One of us could easily have been killed.

  “Is Jackie doing okay?” I asked. The nurse, Mariana, had told me on the way in that Jackie had a mild concussion and needed stitches for the gash on her head. I didn’t want to think how much worse it could have been if two-thousand-pound Clyde had accidentally stomped her or if she’d gotten caught under the sleigh—or run over by the snowmobile!—after Clyde knocked her down.

  “Jackie is resting, which is exactly what you should have been doing,” he scolded. “None of this would have happened if you had stayed in bed like you were supposed to.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing the impulse to defend myself. Both Jackie and Doc Sherman had worked at the lodge for a long time, and it had to be hard for a doctor to treat someone they knew after a near miss like that. Besides, even though getting chased by snowmobile thugs definitely wasn’t my fault, it was technically true that they wouldn’t have tried to warn me off the case if I hadn’t been investigating in the first place.

  “Mariana will take you for X-rays,” he said, turning to leave the room.

  It wasn’t until I glanced up and noticed the calendar on the exam room wall that I remembered—tomorrow was supposed to be the day I got my cast off! It seemed a little soon to me, but I figured Dr. Sherman knew what he was doing.

  “Wait a second, Doc!” I called after him. “I still get my cast off tomorrow morning, right?”

  He glared at me for minute before replying. “That will depend on the X-rays.”

  He was gnawing on his lip especially hard a half hour later when he came back into the exam room and laid the new X-rays on the desk.

  “You’re making me a little nervous, Doc,” I told him. From the look on his face, you’d think I had only a few hours left to live.

  “Your lower leg is badly swollen, and the healing of your tibia is almost certainly set back. And the fracture is nowhere near healed,” he began, and my heart sank. He sounded as severe as he had after my first set of X-rays came back. “But there are no further breaks . . . miraculously,” he concluded, shaking his head in amazement.

  “That’s great news!” I exclaimed. “So the cast can come off and I can get a boot!”

  “No,” he said bluntly.

  “But you said after seven days if—” I started to plead my case, but he cut me off before I could finish.

  “You could have been killed,” he snapped in a tone that sounded somewhere between an accusation and genuine concern. “I’m not taking any chances after the ordeal you’ve been through. I want your leg to remain immobilized until the swelling goes down and I can be sure there isn’t any additional trauma.”

  I must have had a serious puppy-dog pout going, because his voice softened.

  “None of us are going anywhere for the next day or two until the road is clear anyway, so you can come back and see me then,” he said apologetically. “Just please stay off it this time. Please.”

  I didn’t want to lie to him, so I just smiled reassuringly.

  I had to smile reassuringly at Archie, too, later that afternoon.

  “Absolutely no more investigating,” he implored. “I’d rather lose the lodge than someone’s life.”

  “What did Grant say?” I asked without exactly replying.

  “He . . . What he said isn’t your concern anymore, Nancy,” Archie said, cutting his original thought short. “But to put your mind at ease, he says it’s his campaign manager who recommended the All Alloy stock and took the funds from that Crane guy you mentioned. Grant swears he didn’t know anything about the oil connections, and now that he does, he’s looking for a replacement to run his next campaign.”

  “Hmm . . . ,” I said noncommittally. “What are you going to do about the pipeline?”

  “I . . . I don’t want you to worry about it,” he sighed. “I’ve involved you in the lodge’s problems too many times already, and it’s nearly gotten you killed. Right now, all I want is to get through the next couple days. We’ve got nearly our entire staff and a quarter of our rooms stuck here with a major storm coming and no way for anyone to leave the grounds, let alone get home by tomorrow night in time for the holiday.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” I offered.

  “You can help by staying out of harm’s way until I can get you and everyone else off the mountain and home safely,” he said, looking forlornly up at the lobby speakers as they began to play “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

  Then he walked away, grumbling to himself. “A merry Christmas, indeed.”

  The sound of tiny sleigh bells jingling perked up my holiday spirit. I wheeled myself around the corner, expecting to see Jackie, but found Liz and the kids instead.

  “You’re jingling just like Jackie!” I told Kelly, who had a set of Jackie’s tiny sleigh bells dangling from the pom-pom on top of her ski hat.

  “I found them in the reading room when we were testing out the moving staircase,” Kelly said, giving her head a jingly shake.

  Liz rolled her eyes. “I leave the room for two seconds and Brady lets them climb that thing. I come back and Kelly is throwing those little bells down at the other Things.”

  I had to laugh at the image. “Sounds like a fun afternoon!”

  “We were just on our way to leave them at the front desk for Jackie when she’s feeling better,” Liz said.

  “Jackie has extras. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if Kelly held on to this one,” I suggested.

  “Yeah, finders keepers!” Kelly said.

  “That’s exactly why we’re going to give it back,” Liz asserted, looking at Kelly and holding out her open palm. “What I told you guys about sharing the slopes with other skiers goes for real life too. You can ask Jackie if she wants to share them next time we see her.”

  “Fine,” Kelly relented, dropping the bells in Liz’s hand.

  “So what’s the latest on the investigation?” Liz asked.

  “The latest on the investigation is everyone seems to want me to stop investigating,” I huffed.

  Liz gave me a knowing smile. “Well, if you need any help not inv
estigating, just give Brady and me a shout. We’ll be outside playing in the snow. I love me a good blizzard!”

  “We’re going to build a whole army of snowmen!” Jimmy said.

  “And snow-women!” Grace insisted.

  “And snow vampires with capes!” Kelly added. “Like the ones that shape-shift into bats in that creepy book Brady read to us in the library room.”

  “I told Brady not to read Dracula to them,” she lamented. “He had nightmares all night.”

  “The reading room . . . ,” I muttered to myself, barely registering what Liz said. “Shape-shifting . . .”

  “You okay, Nancy?” Liz asked. “You look like you’re in some kind of detective trance or something.”

  “Better than okay! Thank you, Kelly!” I said, grabbing her and kissing her on the top of the head. “I’ve got to go!”

  Joe and I stood in the second-floor reading room, staring at the built-in shelves lining the walls. Well, Joe stood, at least. I sat, if you want to get technical about it.

  “And you think there’s a secret door here why?” Joe asked.

  “Kelly mentioned the reading room and shape-shifting and it suddenly came to me: the secret door in Chef K’s pantry is hidden by original built-in shelves just like these,” I explained. “The burglar has been sneaking in and out of rooms unseen without tampering with the locks, and if there are other shape-shifting secret doors, the reading rooms could be central access points that let them do it.”

  “Huh. There are other common rooms with the same kind of old built-in shelves too, though,” Joe pointed out. “Couldn’t there be secret doors there as well?”

  “You’re right, there totally could be!” I said, pondering the possibility of secret passages all over the lodge like Mrs. Bosley hoped. There was a catch, though. “All the other built-in shelves like these I’ve seen are on the ground floor in the lobby or the lounge, and other high-traffic areas.”

  “So even if there were secret doors, they’d be a lot harder for a perp to access without being seen,” Joe extrapolated.

  “Yup. The people who use this reading room are mostly the guests on this floor, and I’ve only seen a few people in here the whole week,” I said. “And I felt a strange draft.” I wheeled myself over to the corner of the wall with the fireplace. “Right about here.”

  There it was again, tickling my toes at the sock-covered tip of my cast.

  “Okay, so if there is a secret door, how do we unlock it?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But we might not have to. Chef K said hers only opens from the inside, as far as she can tell, so she leaves the mechanism unlatched and cracks the door a hair to keep it from locking when she wants to use it from the other side. Maybe our perp does the same.”

  “So, what, I just pull?” Joe asked skeptically, grabbing hold of a shelf.

  “Maybe?” I suggested.

  He tried yanking on the shelf, but it was hard to get a grip and nothing budged except a couple of old clothbound Tom Swift adventure novels.

  “Nada,” he said. “Even if it was unlocked, the wall’s too heavy and I don’t have any leverage.”

  “Maybe we need to take this to the next level,” I said, eyeing the rolling staircase that had been serving as a jungle gym for Things One through Three earlier in the afternoon. It had been pushed all the way to the other side of the room. “If you wheel that staircase over, you might be able to get more leverage.”

  “Swift thinking, Drew,” Joe said.

  He wheeled it over and gave the shelf a strong yank.

  “Bingo!” he exclaimed as the shelf-lined wall creaked open just wide enough for a person to slip through.

  I quickly wheeled over and peered in as best I could from my chair. Joe flicked on the little LED flashlight he had hanging from his key chain and aimed it into a dark, narrow passage.

  Joe’s light was only powerful enough to illuminate a few feet of dirt floor and cobweb-lined old plank walls. The only way we’d find out what lay beyond was to step inside.

  “I hate to turn down a secret passage that might be filled with gold, but it looks like you’re going in alone,” I lamented, flicking the wheel of my chair. “Keep within earshot, and I’ll keep watch. If you hear me talking to anyone, stay put till I give you the all clear.”

  “I feel weird going through a secret door without my bro here to annoy me, but you’re a pretty good substitute, Drew,” said Joe, grinning, as he slipped inside the secret passage, using his flashlight to light the way.

  He pulled the hidden door partially closed behind him and vanished into the darkness.

  A few minutes later he emerged, a lot dustier, but still in one piece.

  “I didn’t find any gold, but I did find this,” Joe said, and stepped back into the reading room holding a long, braided lock of dark brown clip-on hair that looked just like Marni’s trademark braid.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Really Trapped!

  “MARNI WAS FRAMED!” I EXCLAIMED, filled with relief that my instincts about her had been right.

  “The braid was snagged under the inside of the door, so I’m guessing the perp accidentally dropped it,” Joe told me. “I wouldn’t have seen it if my light hadn’t randomly reflected off the clip.”

  “Whoever sabotaged the trail to take out Chef K must’ve thrown on a ski patrol uniform and clipped that on to make it look like Marni if they were spotted,” I deduced, taking the braid from Joe and examining it.

  The braid was made of natural fiber, but it was a lot coarser than human hair and definitely seemed homemade rather than store-bought. “It might not look real up close, but you’d never be able to tell from a distance.”

  “The fake braid isn’t the only thing I found in the passage,” Joe said ominously. “There’s another one of those old animal traps your friend almost stepped in, and this one still has its teeth.”

  “The passage is booby-trapped,” I said, cringing at the thought of the cruel iron trap.

  “Yup,” Joe confirmed. “It’s hard to tell with a small flashlight and all that dust, but I think there are also trip wires a few yards farther down the passage in each direction before it seems to dead-end on both sides.”

  “Are they dead ends?” I wondered. “Or more trapdoors?”

  “Trapdoors would be my guess,” Joe agreed. “But I wasn’t about to stumble through a gauntlet of animal traps and trip wires to find out where they led.”

  I gave a cautious look back at the reading room’s entrance. “Let’s put the shelves back where they were and break the clues down somewhere else. The perp could be practically anyone, and we don’t want to get spotted hanging out in front of their secret lair.”

  “Well, you were right about the secret passage,” Joe said once we were safely back in my suite.

  There was a steady, heavy snow falling out the window, and according to the latest forecast, it was supposed to keep up like this for hours.

  “There could be a whole network of passages,” I replied. “I’m betting Grant’s suite has built-in shelves with a hidden door too. It would definitely explain how the perp has been able to sneak in and out of rooms so easily.”

  I was tempted to call Henry or Archie and ask them, but at this point I wasn’t sure who I could trust other than Joe—whoever had been using the secret passage to break into rooms had been doing it well before the Hardy Boys arrived in town.

  “Speaking of the perp,” I continued, “they knew there was no way for anyone to see their face if they were spotted moving the trail signs. Anyone of roughly average size could have worn the braid and pulled off the disguise from that far away.”

  “If they were average size, we know it wasn’t Sheriff Pruitt,” Joe said, sounding disappointed. “That’s a large dude.”

  “Or Dino Bosley, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t one of their accomplices,” I said. “We know at least two people were involved in the snowmobile ambush. The second one looked pretty big, but t
he first one could have been Frosty the Snowman or one of Santa’s elves for all I know. I only saw their headlights.”

  “So what do we know for sure?” Joe asked.

  “That the case didn’t end with Marni’s arrest,” I said. “And that we have the evidence to free her from jail.”

  “But if we do, the perps will for sure know we’re onto them,” Joe pointed out.

  “And where to find us,” I said, shuddering. “With the road closed by the avalanche, we’re practically sitting ducks.”

  “Well, technically, you’re a Sitting Drew,” Joe remarked.

  “So we’re basically trapped in the lodge with at least one and possibly multiple violent criminals on the loose and no way for anyone to reach us,” I summarized.

  “That sounds about right,” Joe confirmed.

  “Well, I guess there’s nothing left to do but catch the crooks,” I said.

  “Sounds good to me,” replied Joe. “The only problem is we aren’t any closer to discovering who’s been using the secret passages or why.”

  I looked out at the snow piling up atop the maze’s intricately pruned hedges and thought about the animal trap the perp had left behind in the secret reading-room door. Extreme circumstances sometimes call for extreme measures.

  “Are you up for a little subterfuge?” I asked Joe.

  “Hit me with it, Drew,” he said.

  “We’ll set a trap of our own to lure the perp out of hiding,” I declared. “How warm are your clothes?”

  “I’ve got a bunch of good cold-weather gear in the car,” he said. “I could camp out in the snow overnight and be perfectly toasty.”

  “Good,” I said, pointing to the Grand Sky Lodge notepad on the table. “Hand me that pad.”

  I know what you did. So will everyone else if you don’t come to the maze at 11:30 tonight with enough of that gold you gave the waiter to buy my silence. Start at the maze lower gate, take two lefts, a right, and a left. Come alone. No disguises. No funny business.