O’Reilly Bros. is a big store on the outskirts of town. They sell cheap furniture, the kind that’s made of particle board—in other words, not real wood. The pieces are covered by a thin panel of stained wood so that the furniture looks nice. Usually the kind of people who buy furniture from O’Reilly Bros, are young married couples just moving into their first home, or college kids looking for cheap dorm room furnishings. Definitely not rich guys who live in mansions up in the Mission Hill neighborhood.
But Jeffrey had thrown his arms around this armoire as if it was one of his prized antiques. Could he have been confused and mistaken it for a more valuable piece? Or did this particular armoire have sentimental value for some reason? There had to be some explanation for why a wealthy man who collected antique furniture would have a cheap piece like this.
“I’m going to need you to move back, Nancy,” Chief Cody said, striding up to me. “You’re too close to the fire. A spark might catch your hair or your clothes.”
“Sorry, Chief,” I replied. “I’ll get out of your way.”
I hurried toward my car, fighting to breathe in the smoky air. At the end of the driveway I spotted a mailbox that I hadn’t seen on the way in. When I saw the name on the side, I gasped.
“Allman,” I read aloud. “That was Jeffrey Allman!” He was the man who had recently retired as the CFO of Rackham Industries. My father and I had been talking about him only this morning.
I shuddered. It was terrible to think of a retiree losing his whole house and all his money. Poor Jeffrey Allman. Compared to his troubles, my stage fright problem seemed completely silly. I started up the car and pulled out. I could hardly wait to get back to the set. After the sad reality of the fire, a little moviemaking glamour would be welcome.
The Natural
The instant I set foot in the makeup trailer, Pam and Degas pounced on me.
“I was about to send out a search party!” Degas joked. He spun the makeup chair around and gestured for me to sit.
“We only have ten minutes to transform you into Esther,” Pam said. “We’re lucky you look so much like her to begin with!” It was true. One of the reasons Morris had asked me to play the Rackhams’ sister was because I happen to resemble the old photos of Esther.
Degas pulled my hair back into a tight ponytail and began forming it into a proper nineteenth-century bun. Pam whipped out my makeup chart. It listed everything she needed to use on my face to make me into Esther. Before production shut down due to Herman Houseman’s sabotage, these two had spent hours experimenting with makeup on me. Now I could understand why they’d done such an in-depth job. Because they’d figured out what to do back then, they now had a list of everything that was needed. It was as if they had a blueprint of my face; all they had to do was follow their directions, and I’d become Esther Rackham.
Before I knew it, I was made up and on my way to the wardrobe trailer. It was the same story there. I stepped inside, and within five minutes Julie Wilson, the wardrobe assistant, had me costumed in Esther’s long dress.
As I wrapped myself in a robe to keep the dress clean, Luke Alvarez knocked on the trailer door.
“Is Nancy here?” he asked, sticking his head in.
“I don’t know about Nancy, but Esther Rackham is here,” Julie teased.
Luke looked me up and down and whistled. “If you weren’t my sister, I’d want to ask you on a date,” he said.
“Even with this ugly bun?” I asked, putting a hand up to my hair. I wasn’t used to such severe styles. Usually I just let my shoulder-length hair fall loose around my face.
Before Luke could answer, his brother Ben called from outside. “We’re late!”
Luke rolled his eyes. “Sorry, Nancy,” he said. “But Ben and I have been sent to find you. Morris wants to get started on our scene. It’s the last one of the day, and everyone is anxious to get it over with and go home.”
“I’m ready,” I said, tying the robe closed. With a wave to Julie, I stepped outside. Luke offered me his arm, and so did Ben. I took them both, and the boys practically carried me between them over to the soundstage. They teased me the whole way, making fun of my hair and my ugly black button-up boots. As an only child, I’m not used to being ribbed like that. They were acting exactly how I imagined real big brothers would act, and I liked it!
By the time we got to the set, I was having a blast. The scene we were about to film was one in which the whole Rackham family visited the Mahoney Anvil office. Esther thought they were there to buy an anvil for her brothers to use in their new black-smithing business, but the Rackham boys were really there to check out the office. They were already plotting their heist, and they needed to see exactly where in the office Ethan Mahoney’s safe was so that they could plan their break-in.
The whole scene took place while the Rackhams were waiting in the office for Ethan to come in. It was just me and the Alvarez brothers. Harold Safer was finished filming for the day, but he was still there on set. He came over as soon as I arrived.
“Nancy, you look terrific!” he cried.
“Thanks, Harold,” I said. “I found the fire, by the way. Your house and the cheese shop are both safe.”
“Oh, thank goodness.” He mopped his brow. “This acting job is a lot of fun, but I don’t think it’s going to turn into a whole career. If anything happened to the cheese shop, I’d be doomed.”
“I don’t know about that,” Ben Alvarez interrupted. “You’re a natural actor, Harold. You may have to move to Hollywood after this!”
At that, Harold blushed bright red.
“Speaking of natural actors,” Morris Dunnowitz interrupted, coming over to us, “let’s get Miss Nancy Drew in front of the cameras.”
“Break a leg, Nancy,” Harold said. “I’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines.”
“Oh, Harold, you must be exhausted,” I replied. “You don’t have to stay to watch me.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said.
“Neither would we!” added Bess. I turned to see George and Bess hurrying in before the soundstage door was closed.
My heart gave a jump. All my friends on the set were going to be watching? Chills shot down my spine. I’d managed to forget my fear while goofing around with the Alvarez brothers, but now it was returning full force.
I didn’t have time to focus on my fears, though, because Morris quickly ushered us all onto the set. A production assistant was busy snapping instant photos of the Mahoney Anvil office. As soon as the photos developed, the set dresser, Mary Lupiani, compared them to instant photos taken when the set was first designed. Before any footage could be shot, Mary had to make sure that every prop and every bit of furniture was in exactly the right place. She and her assistants checked every set before every take. It was the only way to make sure the film footage was consistent. I knew that they had to do this, because when the editors sat down to put the movie together, they would use shots from many different takes. When you watch a scene in a movie, you might be watching one actor talking during one take, and another actor reacting during an entirely different take. The editing machines piece everything together seamlessly, but if even one prop changes place from one take to the next, the entire take is useless.
Once Mary gave us the go-ahead, Morris called, “Action!”
I stood rooted to the ground in horror. I had expected a rehearsal first—that’s the way Morris usually did it. He was probably in a real rush to finish. But I wasn’t prepared. Ever since I’d gotten back from the fire at Jeffrey Allman’s house, everything had happened so quickly. I hadn’t even had time to go over my lines for the scene. In fact, I could barely remember whether I had lines in this scene!
Luckily Ben and Luke Alvarez knew just what they were doing. They prowled around the office, looking in every cabinet. They were acting as Ross and John Rackham, looking for the office safe. I just stood there, watching them in confusion until I remembered what I was supposed to do.
“
Mr. Mahoney will be here any minute,” I said, frowning as I tried to remember my lines. “You two had best stop your nosing around.”
Ben, as Ross Rackham, laughed. “Calm down, Sissy,” he said. “We’re just curious.” He came over and helped me into one of the office chairs. While he distracted me, Luke, as John Rackham, pulled aside a painting of a sunset to reveal an old-fashioned safe.
“And … cut!” Morris called.
I heard applause and cheers from my friends, but my head was still spinning. Morris came onto the set to talk to us while the production assistants moved the painting back over the safe. “Ben, I’d like you to sound a bit more guilty when you talk to Esther,” Morris said. “You’re lying to your little sister, after all.”
Ben nodded.
Then Morris turned to me. “Nancy, you were perfect,” he gushed. “The confusion on your face was completely real.”
No wonder why! Lucky for me, my stage fright worked in my favor—Esther is supposed to be confused in this scene. She has no idea why her brothers are snooping around the office, and she’s baffled by their behavior.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves. I had gotten through that take, but it wasn’t because I did a good acting job. I happened to be feeling the way my character was feeling. But in the next take, I was going to have to act. I didn’t think I could do it.
“Action!” Morris called.
Somehow I managed to stumble through two more takes. Morris didn’t give me any more compliments—he focused mainly on the Alvarez brothers, since they were the real stars of the movie.
By the time I had changed back into my regular clothes to go home, my heartbeat had slowed a tiny bit. The nervousness had been replaced by embarrassment. Morris and the Alvarez boys had told me that I did a good job, but I couldn’t help wondering if they were only saying that to be polite. I was convinced that I had made a fool of myself.
When I went down to the dining room for dinner that night, my dad greeted me with a big smile. “There’s my favorite actress,” he teased.
I knew what that meant. He was going to ask me all about my day on the set, but that was the last thing I wanted to talk about. Time to change the subject.
“Hi, Dad,” I said. I sat down at my place across from him. “How did your meeting with Peter Wyszinski go?”
It worked like a charm. Dad’s face grew serious, and I could see that my adventures in acting were forgotten. “It was pretty disturbing, actually,” he said. “Peter hasn’t even been the CFO of Rackham Industries for a month, and already he’s running into major trouble.”
I frowned. “What sort of trouble?” Usually I wouldn’t give much thought to the worries of corporate bigwigs, but Rackham Industries is the biggest company in River Heights. They employ more people and create more city revenue than anyone else. If Rackham Industries was in trouble, it meant that all of River Heights was in trouble.
“Accounting problems,” Dad said.
I wrinkled my nose. That sounded boring. “You mean their accountants messed up?”
Dad shook his head. “No, I mean someone has been cooking their books,” he said grimly.
I gasped. “Mr. Wyszinski thinks the accounts have been purposely falsified? Who would do something like that?”
Dad shrugged. “Any number of people could have done it. The big problem is that there’s no proof. All of this happened before Peter took over as CEO. He doesn’t even know if the books have been altered to hide some kind of overspending by the company, or if it’s a simple case of embezzling.”
“Then how does he know there’s a problem?” I asked.
“The numbers just don’t make sense,” Dad told me. “He’s got a new team of accountants looking into it. But that’s still not going to give him any hard evidence.”
I smelled a rat. “And if there was hard evidence, I bet it all went up in smoke just today,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“That big three-alarm fire was at the home of Jeffrey Allman,” I told my father. “Didn’t you say he just retired from being the CFO at Rackham?”
Dad nodded, his eyebrows knit together in concern. “I heard the sirens, but I had no idea the fire was at Jeffrey’s house.”
I filled him in on my visit to the Allman house that afternoon. “And I drove by again on my way home from the set,” I added. “There was just a pile of ashes left. I’ll bet the only thing that survived was the armoire I saw.”
“Was it still there?” Dad asked.
I shook my head. “They must have hauled it away. What a shame that the only thing they managed to save didn’t even have any value.”
Dad was still frowning. “I’ve known Jeffrey for years,” he murmured. “I didn’t know he collected antique furniture.”
“I didn’t know you were friends with him,” I said.
“Oh, we’re just very casual acquaintances,” Dad replied. “We’d see each other at the occasional town council meeting.”
The doorbell rang, interrupting our conversation. Hannah answered it, and a moment later she showed Bess and George into the dining room.
Bess’s hand flew to her mouth when she saw us at the table. “Oh, sorry!” she cried. “We thought you’d be finished with dinner by now.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dad said. “We’re eating late because Nancy had a long day on the set.”
“Why don’t you girls sit down and have some dessert?” Hannah asked, bustling in with two extra plates. “I made my famous caramel cheesecake.”
George sat down immediately. “No need to ask me twice,” she joked.
Bess took a seat next to her. “Did you hear all about Nancy’s triumph?” she asked my father.
My heart sank. I’d been hoping to avoid talking about my acting. In fact, I’d been hoping to avoid even thinking about it tonight.
“No, I didn’t,” Dad said. “How was she?”
“She’s a star,” George said. “She and Harold were both great!”
“Well, Harold was great,” I agreed. “I only had one tiny scene to do today, and I managed to mess it up. I couldn’t remember my line.”
“Don’t believe her, Mr. Drew,” Bess said. “She was terrific. The director said she looked completely natural.”
“That’s just because I got lucky—”
George cut me off with a snort. “Here comes the famous Nancy Drew modesty,” she teased. My father and Bess both laughed.
“Nancy is the talk of the set,” Bess reported. “The carpenters on my team were saying that she’s going to have to give up solving mysteries and focus on her acting full-time.”
I looked at my friends’ smiling faces. I’d been hoping to confide in them about my jitters, but now it was clear to me that they would never understand. Even when I admitted that I had done a bad job, they thought I was just being modest. How could I get them to believe that I had serious doubts about my acting abilities? I sighed. I’d have to deal with the stage fright on my own.
“So did you ever get to that fire, Nance?” George asked.
I nodded, relieved by the change of subject. “I was just telling Dad about it. The place belonged to Jeffrey Allman, the former CFO of Rackham Industries.”
“And if you ask me, the fire seems a little suspicious,” Dad put in. “Whoever was monkeying with the accounts at Rackham Industries would have a motive for getting rid of evidence. And there might be evidence at the home of the old CFO.”
“So you think it might have been arson?” Bess asked.
I shrugged. “Mr. Allman certainly seemed devastated. He claimed that he’d be ruined if the house burned down because all his money had been invested in his antique furniture collection.”
George whistled. “Did they manage to save any of it?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Well, except for an armoire from O’Reilly Brothers.”
“That’s weird,” George said bluntly. “Why would he have cheap furniture from a place like that mixed in with
his antiques?”
“Maybe he really needed an armoire, but he’d spent all his money on antiques,” Bess said.
“That’s possible,” I agreed. “He acted as if it was a valuable piece, though. I guess it could have had sentimental value.”
“And that’s the only thing they could save from the whole house?” George asked.
“They only had a few minutes inside before the last room caught fire,” I said. “One of the firefighters rescued a laptop computer, but Mr. Allman was so agitated and angry that he threw it back into the fire.”
All the blood left George’s face. “He threw his computer into the fire?” she cried.
Even though the subject was so serious, I couldn’t help smiling at George’s reaction. To a computer lover like her, purposely harming a laptop probably seemed like the worst possible crime.
“He was so upset,” I explained. “I think he threw the computer because he was frustrated.”
“But he could have salvaged some of the information on it,” George said. “I mean, furniture can be replaced, but who knows if he’ll be able to recover any files from his hard drive. That laptop may have been his only chance!”
Bess rolled her eyes. “He wasn’t worried about the computer, George,” she pointed out. “You may think the furniture can be replaced, but he obviously didn’t.”
Still, George did have a point. Since everything else in the house was gone, it was unlikely that any of Jeffrey Allman’s files had survived. The computer probably contained at least a few valuable documents.
“Did he throw it all the way into the fire?” George asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “He threw it toward the fire, but it can’t have gone all the way back into the house. I think it probably just landed on the lawn.”
George pushed back her chair. “Let’s go look.”
Bess pulled her car to a stop in front of the remains of the Allman house. She gave a low whistle. “This must have been one expensive house,” she said.
“It was,” I agreed. “A big Georgian-style place. It was almost a mansion.”