“Achoo!” Bess sneezed. She pet the kitten once more. “Achoo!” Bess sneezed again. And again. And again.
Bess quickly handed the kitten back to Pete. “I can’t believe it, but I think I might be allergic to cats!” Feeling sad, Bess stuck out her lower lip in a pout and said, “No fair. No kittens for me, I guess.”
“Stick with dogs,” Nancy told Bess as Pete put the kitten back in the cage with its sister and covered them up again with the sheet. “You can come play with Chocolate Chip any time.” Bess smiled thankfully.
Just as the girls were getting ready to leave the shop, Chief McGinnis, head of River Height’s police force, stopped by to talk to Pete.
“A couple of kittens from a brand-new litter disappeared yesterday from the River Heights Animal Shelter,” Chief McGinnis said. “Know anything about it?”
“I didn’t hear about any missing kittens,” Pete told the officer. “I’ve got some new little ones myself, but I got them from a breeder named John Jones.” The Chief nodded encouragingly so Pete continued. “His cat farm is called Kind Kittens. Mr. Jones owns some mother cats and brings me their babies to sell to nice families.” Pete walked to the front counter, reached beneath the register, and took out some official looking papers. He handed the documents to the officer.
Chief McGinnis glanced over Pete’s papers before handing them back. “Okay,” he said at last. “Let me know if you see or hear anything suspicious about kittens.”
The police officer turned on his heel to leave the store. Nancy led her friends in a rush to catch up.
“Chief McGinnis,” Nancy Drew called after him. “Can we help you find the missing kittens?”
The chief turned, grinning warmly. “You know, Nancy, I can always use help from you and your friends.”
“Well then,” George said happily, “let’s get started.”
“Finally! A real mystery to keep us busy,” Bess said with a smile.
Nancy reached into her back pocket and pulled out her bright purple notepad and matching pen. “The Clue Crew is on the case!”
CHAPTER THREE
Suspicious Shelter
The next morning Hannah drove Nancy, Bess, and George to the River Heights Animal Shelter, dropping them off in front. Nancy had scheduled a tour with Sandra Berman, the shelter director. Ms. Berman was a young woman with wild blond hair, pulled back into a ponytail.
“Good morning, ladies,” Ms. Berman greeted them. Nancy noticed that there were black circles under Ms. Berman’s eyes, like she hadn’t had enough sleep. She was also carrying a cup of coffee bigger than any cup Nancy had ever seen.
“When Nancy arranged for the tour, she told me that you’d like to see the kittens first,” Ms. Berman confirmed with the girls. She then mentioned how sad she was that two kittens were missing. “Baby kittens need a great deal of attention. I hope they’re okay.”
“Could the kittens have climbed out of the cage themselves?” Nancy asked.
“Impossible,” Ms. Berman said. “Even though cats are great climbers, these babies are too small to get out of the cage. You’ll see.”
The girls followed Ms. Berman down a long, whitewashed hallway toward the cat area of the shelter. They came to a large, wooden door. “Here we are at the Cat Cave.” Ms. Berman turned the knob to let them in.
“Achoo!” Bess started to sneeze even before Ms. Berman opened the door. “Achoo! Choo! Choo!” Ms. Berman handed Bess a tissue with a questioning look.
“I don veel very vell,” Bess said, her nose growing more and more stuffy every second.
“Are you sick?” Ms. Berman asked, her voice suddenly tense.
“I’m not thick,” Bess insisted. She blew her nose loudly. “Sick, I mean.”
“She has allergies,” George explained.
“Hmm,” Ms. Berman said thoughtfully, handing Bess another tissue. “This worries me girls. You see, the baby kittens are very young and can catch germs easily. Just in case it’s more than allergies, I think it would be better if you didn’t go inside, Bess.”
Bess’s nose was starting to run, and her eyes felt itchy. “Go ahead. I’ll meet you after the tour,” she told Nancy and George. Bess practically ran through the shelter door, gasping for fresh air. Once outside she felt better immediately.
Nancy and George continued the tour with Ms. Berman.
The baby kittens were incredibly cute. Nancy and George took their time looking at them, watching as they slept. Ms. Berman told the girls the kittens had to be bottle-fed because they were still too young to eat food or drink water on their own. Nancy asked about the blankets along the bottom of the cage.
“We have to keep the babies warm,” Ms. Berman told them. “Usually the mother cat would care for the babies, but since their mama left them behind a store downtown, I suppose I’m their mother now.” She yawned. “I must say, no matter how sweet these little ones are, these babies are simply exhausting to take care of.” She yawned once more.
“Who—,” Nancy began, but before she finished her question, Ms. Berman’s cell phone rang.
While Ms. Berman took the call, Nancy and George looked around the Cat Cave. There was just the one door. A supply shelf in the back was stacked with bottles, bags, and boxes. Rows of cat cages were set up along the walls. They were stacked in threes on top of one another, all the way up to the high windows. Every cage had a least one cat in it.
The baby kittens were in an open-topped glass cage like the one at Pete’s Pet Shop. Ms. Berman was clearly right; they were too small to climb out on their own. Nancy was certain that someone must be taking them. But who? And why?
Ms. Berman was still talking on her cell phone. She’d moved away from Nancy and George now and was talking in a lowered voice, but her words echoed inside the room. She probably didn’t know it, but the girls could hear her whole side of the phone conversation.
“Yes,” Ms. Berman said. “You want one more?” Pause. “I guess I can take it,” Ms. Berman replied to whatever the other person asked. She fell quiet for a long minute before ending the call, saying, “Okay. I’ll be right there.”
Snapping her phone shut, Ms. Berman crossed to where the girls were standing, near the kitten cage.
“I have to run,” she said, suddenly shuffling the girls toward the Cat Cave door.
“We were hoping to check out the shelter exits and the Dog Dorm,” Nancy said.
“I’m sorry. We’ll have to finish the tour later. Can you come back tomorrow?” Ms. Berman asked. “There’s something I’ve got to take care of right away.”
Nancy had one last pressing question, which she tried to ask as Ms. Berman escorted her and George out the front door of the shelter. “We still need to know—”
But Ms. Berman didn’t pay attention to Nancy. Without saying “Good-bye,” she turned rapidly on her heel and disappeared back into the building.
“Well, that was odd,” George said to Nancy as they walked away from the shelter.
“What was odd?” Bess asked, coming over from the bench where she’d been waiting.
“Ms. Berman.” Nancy explained how the shelter director couldn’t stop yawning and then rushed away after the strange call came.
Nancy pulled out her notebook. She wanted to jot down a few things to consider later. She wrote a big heading that read questions at the top of the page. That’s when Suzie Park came out of the shelter. She was proudly wearing her River Heights Animal Shelter jacket, even though it was another warm day.
“What’re you doing here?” Suzie asked the Clue Crew.
George explained that they were investigating the missing kitten mystery. “Have you seen or heard anything?” George asked.
“Me? No,” Suzie said firmly. “But I’ve been working so hard this week, I haven’t had time to talk much with the other volunteers,” Suzie explained. “Today I fed all the animals and then walked all the dogs.” She yawned. “Boy, am I tired! I’m headed home for a nap. It’ll be another busy day tomorrow.”
Nancy stopped Suzie before she ran off. “Hey Suzie! Did you know you’ve got white speckles on your shelter jacket.” Then she asked, “Did you spill something on it?”
Suzie glanced down, a surprised look crossing her face. Then after a pause she replied, “Oh drat! Milk must have splattered when I was feeding the cats. Thanks for pointing it out, Nancy. I’ll wash it off at home.” She smiled, readjusting the sleeve of her coat.
“No problem,” Nancy said, glad she’d mentioned it.
“I desperately want to see the kittens,” Bess told Nancy and George after Suzie had gone. “How about if we go back in and I plug my nose?”
“You’ll probably still sneeze,” George said. Then a lightbulb went on in George’s head. “What if we hold you up outside and you look in through the Cat Cave window?”
“Great idea!” Bess was excited.
The girls moved to the back of the shelter building.
Nancy and George got on their hands and knees in the grass under the window, forming little tables with their bodies. Bess climbed on top of her best friends. She peeked through the glass. “Hey, George,” she said, “I see Ms. Berman in there, but where are the kittens?”
“Middle of the room,” George said, groaning under Bess’s weight. “In an open glass cage.”
“Oh there they are,” Bess proclaimed after a short search. “They are sooo cute! You know, they look almost exactly like the ones at Pete’s Pet Shop!”
As Bess went on and on about how sweet they were, Nancy heard a squeaking noise. She raised her head slightly to identify where the sound was coming from and saw Ms. Berman coming out the back door of the shelter. Forgetting that she was supporting Bess, Nancy jumped up, calling, “Ms. Berman! Wait up!”
Bess fell, knocking into a surprised George. Nancy left her friends tangled in a pile of arms and legs and ran after Ms. Berman. Nancy caught up to the shelter director at her car where she was loading a small box into her back seat. The box said KIND KITTENS on the side.
“Ms. Berman,” Nancy spoke rapidly, seeing that Ms. Berman was in a huge hurry to leave. “Who found the orphaned kittens?”
Ms. Berman climbed into the driver’s seat of her sedan, saying, “Mrs. Sheila Simon.” Nancy knew who that was.
After Ms. Berman sped away, Bess and George came over.
“What was that all about?” Bess asked, looking at Nancy sternly. A grass stain on Bess’s T-shirt matched the grass stains on George’s pants.
“Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry times ten,” Nancy told her friends, her hands covering her mouth. “I forgot you were up there, and I needed to ask Ms. Berman one last question. Now I know where we’ve got to go next. Let’s find Hannah. We’re moving on.”
“Where are we going?” the cousins asked at the same time, quickly forgiving Nancy for her absentmindedness.
“Downtown. Near Pete’s Pets, there’s a book store called the Book Nook,” the young detective replied. “In order to solve this mystery we need to interview the owner of that store, Mrs. Sheila Simon.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Quick Questions
The girls found Mrs. Simon standing on a stepladder, getting a book for an older customer.
George leaned over to her friends and whispered, “She looks like a character from a scary book.” Nancy and Bess laughed quietly. Sure enough, Mrs. Simon had gray hair, piled high in a bun, and tight, leathery skin. The girls would have been afraid of her if it weren’t for Mrs. Simon’s sweet smile and friendly greeting.
“Hello there, young ladies,” she said formally, climbing carefully down the ladder.
Nancy returned the greeting, then explained, “We heard you found the baby kittens that are now at the shelter. May we ask you a few questions about them?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Simon said, handing her customer the book and showing him to a small reading table. She then led the girls into her office, a dark and gloomy room with books stacked tightly on floor-to-ceiling shelves. “Tea?”
“No thank you,” Nancy replied, pulling out her detective’s notebook. “Please tell us about the kittens you found.”
“Well,” Mrs. Simon began, “I was leaving through the back door one afternoon, heading to my car in the alley, and I practically stepped on the poor little darlings! All six babies were in a cardboard box just off to the side of my doorstep. They were so tiny.” Cupping her hands in a ball, Mrs. Simon showed the girls just how small the kittens were. “I was very worried about them, so I called Ms. Berman at the shelter. She picked them up almost immediately.”
“What about the mother cat?” Bess asked. “Did you see her around?”
“Oh goodness, no,” Mrs. Simon replied. “I would have sent her with the babies. They need their mother.”
Nancy shut her notebook, and Bess thanked Mrs. Simon for her time.
“I’m curious,” George said to the woman, as they were leaving the office, “can we please see where you found them?”
“Certainly,” Mrs. Simon said. “I’ll let you out the back way.”
The girls were in the alley looking at the doorstep where the kittens had been found when the back door to the next store over suddenly opened. A short, round man, with very little hair came into the alley carrying a bag full of trash.
“Who are you? And what are you girls doing poking around back here?” he asked, suspiciously.
“I’m Nancy Drew,” Nancy replied, “and these are my friends Bess and George. We’re investigating some missing kittens.”
“I don’t know about missing kittens,” the man said, tossing his trash bag into a Dumpster. “I heard a cat meow back here once, but that was about a week ago.” After a moment of silence while the girls continued looking around, the man said, “Hey, detective girls, maybe you can help me out with my mystery.”
“You have a mystery?” Bess asked.
“Yeah,” he replied. “I’m a candle maker and I use pure, white, cotton rags to clean up. Last week, I washed a dozen and hung them to dry on my windowsill.” He pointed to the window at the back of his shop. “When I went to bring in my rags, they were gone. Solve that one.”
“Interesting. I promise we’ll keep an eye out for them,” Nancy assured him.
“Let me know if you find anything,” the man said, then went back into his store.
“Yesterday we had no mysteries. Since then we’ve solved one and still have two more!” Bess exclaimed, fully amazed. “I say, let’s keep working on the missing shelter kittens. After we solve that mystery, we can come back and search for the rags. At this rate, we’ll never be bored again!”
“Great plan. I think we should go to Nancy’s house now,” George suggested. “I’d like to type up a list of questions about the kittens on her computer.”
Walking out of the alley, toward their meeting place with Hannah, the girls were surprised to find Chief McGinnis standing in front of Pete’s Pets.
“How’s the investigation going?” Nancy asked, one detective to another.
“A third kitten disappeared from the shelter today,” he replied, shaking his head. “Still can’t figure out who’s taking them.” Chief McGinnis saw that Nancy was holding her notebook. “You girls find any clues?”
There was an awkward moment of silence before Bess jumped in saying, “Not quite yet.”
“We’re going to Nancy’s house now to process what we’ve found so far,” George explained.
“Let me know if you figure it out.” Chief McGinnis thanked the girls for their help and went inside Pete’s shop.
Hannah brought them back to the house, where the girls hurried up to Nancy’s bedroom. George sat at the computer desk, while Nancy reviewed her notes.
“We have a few possible suspects already,” Nancy reported, surprising the other two.
George opened a blank document and typed as Nancy talked.
“Well,” Nancy began, “First, there’s Pete.”
“Oh, right,” Bess said, understanding immediately. “
There were two kittens missing from the shelter and two kittens in his store. They looked a lot alike.”
“Then,” Nancy went on, “there’s Mr. Jones, from Kind Kittens. He’s the guy who Pete said is bringing the kittens to him.”
“Got him.” George said, typing quickly.
“Next, Ms. Berman was acting weird today. I think she’s a suspect too.” Nancy told George to write down the shelter manager’s name. “Ms. Berman said on that phone call that she was going to take ‘one more.’ Maybe she meant one more kitten.” Nancy closed her notebook.
“I saw her in the Cat Cave through the window, remember? And Chief McGinnis just said there was another kitten missing,” Bess put in, adding to Nancy’s information.
George made the case against Ms. Berman even stronger when she added, “Ms. Berman was rattling on about how the kittens take too much of her time. Maybe, she’s getting rid of them one or two at a time.”
Nancy thought a minute, then added, “The box in Ms. Berman’s car said Kind Kittens on the side. Could she be giving the kittens to Mr. Jones, who then gives them to Pete?”
“The clues add up. I think we’ve solved this mystery!” Bess announced. “Obviously Ms. Berman took the kittens.” Bess snatched up the phone. “What’s the number for the police station?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Real Research
Nancy and George looked at Bess, surprised by her quick judgment.
George told Bess to hang up the phone for a minute while she printed out their list of suspects. “It sure does seem like Ms. Berman’s the thief,” George said, inspecting her work, then handing it to Nancy.
Nancy looked over the list, narrowing her eyes as she read. She was quiet for a short time, then said, “Don’t call Chief McGinnis yet, Bess. I’m not totally convinced that Ms. Berman took the kittens. Let’s do some research first. Maybe finding out how to care for baby kittens will help with this mystery,” Nancy suggested.