“I had no idea you were a private eye,” Lonnie said. “I’m sure you’ll figure out what happened to Bess.”
Nancy picked up the phone that was on Lonnie’s walnut desk and put in a call to the River Heights Police Department. She spoke to the desk sergeant, briefly describing what had happened, including Bess’s scream, the shell hairpin, and the severed alarm wire. Then she pressed down the receiver. “They’re sending a patrol car over right away,” she told Lonnie and George. “Now for the hard part.” She punched in another number.
“Calling my aunt and uncle?” George asked. Nancy nodded her head silently.
Mr. Marvin answered the phone. He took the news of Bess’s disappearance calmly, although Nancy could hear his voice thicken with concern. “It sounds like you’ve done everything that can be done so far, Nancy,” he said. “I’ll tell Bess’s mother. What do you suggest we do?”
“Just stay by the phone, for now,” Nancy said, “in case Bess contacts you. I’ll follow up here with the police when they arrive.”
“Thank you, Nancy,” Mr. Marvin’s voice cracked just a bit. “I am grateful for everything you’re doing.”
“Try not to worry, Mr. Marvin,” Nancy said, mustering as much reassurance as she could. “We’ll find her.”
“I know you will,” he replied before saying goodbye.
Nancy’s heart felt heavy as she hung up the phone. “I’d like to talk to some of your staff people, including Etienne, the DJ,” she said to Lonnie. “I want to ask him about the blackout, if his sound system caused it. I’d also like to check Bess’s coat and other things.”
Lonnie thought for a second. “I told her to stow her stuff in the dressing room,” he replied. “It’s just down the hall. I’ll show you the way.” He led the two girls out of his office.
Crossing the lobby, Lonnie paused to speak with a waiter. “Go get Etienne,” he told the young man. “Tell him we’re in the dressing area.” Then Lonnie reached for the knob of a door hidden in the paneling. The doorway led into a narrow, tiled hallway that was lined with several more doors. “Here’s her dressing room.”
The cramped room was just large enough for a makeup table and a small bookcase. The walls were bare except for a latched access window. Nancy could hear a sound like gurgling water coming from the other side of the window.
“Where does that window lead?” Nancy asked.
“Into a utility room,” Lonnie replied. “It holds the water tank. Why do you ask?”
Nancy paused before answering. “I’ve learned to observe everything about the place I’m in,” she explained. “Sometimes the smallest detail can turn out to be an important clue.”
“I see,” Lonnie said, sounding impressed.
Nancy spotted some folded clothes that she immediately recognized as belonging to Bess. She spread them out on the makeup table.
“There’s not too much here,” Nancy said, disappointed. “Just some of her clothes and jewelry.” As she refolded the jeans Bess must have been wearing earlier that evening, Nancy noticed a piece of crimson paper sticking out of one of the pockets. Nancy smoothed out the paper and read it. “It seems to be a flyer about another dance party,” she said, showing the paper to George. “An underground party.”
“I’ve got a friend who goes to underground parties,” George said. “They’re very spontaneous, and you can only find them if you’re invited. They’re impossible to get to if you don’t know the right people.”
Lonnie’s face reddened as he scanned the flyer. “Those underground parties are really hurting my business,” he fumed.
“How so?” Nancy asked.
“With my club I have to pay a lot of overhead—rent, salaries, taxes, and so on. Underground dance organizers just open wherever they please, put the word out, then sit back and rake in the money,” Lonnie explained bitterly. “It’s really galling.”
Nancy looked at the flyer more closely. It was advertising two underground dances: one for that night at an abandoned amusement park on the outskirts of River Heights, and the other for the next night—in the warehouse district. A girl’s name was scrawled in purple ink across the top of the paper—Charity Freeborn. The name was written in Bess’s handwriting, Nancy noticed.
“Do you happen to know who this Charity Freeborn is?” Nancy asked.
“Unfortunately, I do.” Lonnie’s words were clipped. “I had to fire her just last week. She was my theme hostess before I hired Bess, but she was unreliable. She got angry when I insisted that she show up for work on time, so I let her go. She threatened to get back at me when I hired Bess to replace her.”
Nancy stuck the flyer into her pocket. “Perhaps Charity planned to get back at the club by staging an incident involving Bess,” she said to Lonnie. “In any case, I definitely want to ask her some questions.”
“I’d stay away from Charity Freeborn, if I were you,” a man with a soft French accent said behind Nancy. “She’s trouble!”
Chapter
Three
NANCY TURNED to face Etienne Girard standing in the doorway next to George. Etienne’s shaved head and funky clothes heightened the impact of his handsome, fine-boned features.
Etienne stuck out his hand to shake Nancy’s. “I am Etienne Girard, the club’s DJ. Why did you send for me, Lonnie?” he said to the club owner.
“That new girl I hired, Bess Marvin, has disappeared. We think she may have been kidnapped,” Lonnie told him. “Her friends want to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Bess, the mermaid girl? Kidnapped?” Etienne’s eyes widened. “I never actually met her, but I would be glad to help, if I can.”
“I’m Nancy Drew, and this is George Fayne,” Nancy said, shaking his hand. “What did you mean when you said that Charity Freeborn is ‘trouble’?”
Etienne hesitated. “Charity’s a little—how do you say in English? Volatile. She comes from a very wealthy family, but you’d never know it to look at her. And what a quick temper! She reminds me a little of a French girl I used to know,” he said with a sheepish smile. “She has actually quarreled with customers and ended up in fistfights!”
“She sounds like the sort of person who could be capable of seeking revenge,” Nancy observed, remembering how Charity had threatened to get back at Lonnie for firing her. Nancy showed him the flyer. “Bess must have had contact with Charity at some point, because she wrote her name on this flyer. And now we know that Charity resented Bess for being hired to replace her. She even vowed to take revenge against Lonnie and the club. I’d like to track her down and ask her some questions. Do you know where she lives?”
Etienne stared at the flyer. “You will not find her at home because she had some problems with her parents over the guy she’s seeing. I am not sure where she is staying. With friends, I think. But I know she never misses a party. If you like, I can go with you there tonight and introduce you to her.”
“And who will fill in for you here at the club tonight, Etienne?” Lonnie Cavello’s question sounded like a challenge.
“I have a taped music program running now, and I will give you another one that will last the rest of the evening,” Etienne replied. “I want to help Nancy and George find Bess.”
Lonnie shrugged. “Okay,” he said, rubbing his eyes wearily. “I guess I can handle the music myself.”
“Do you know why the lights went out earlier this evening, Etienne?” Nancy asked. “It coincided with Bess’s disappearance. Lonnie said the sound system might have strained the building’s wiring.”
Etienne shrugged. “I do not know why that happened. The lights just went out. I was not doing anything unusual with the system then.”
“I’ll have an electrician check the wiring tomorrow, Nancy,” Lonnie offered.
“That’d be helpful,” Nancy replied. “You can ride with me and George if you like, Etienne,” Nancy said, taking the flyer back from the DJ.
Etienne shook his head. “I have to go over a few details with Lonnie. I’l
l meet you at the front entrance of the amusement park in an hour.”
Nancy nodded and turned to leave. “That’ll give us time to talk to that guy, Tom Kragen,” she said quietly to George.
“Tom Kragen? You mean that pesky guy with the camera?” George asked.
Nancy nodded. “He was taking pictures of Bess shortly before she disappeared. Maybe something will turn up on one of the photos that will give us a clue.”
Nancy and George went back down the hallway. Then they headed for the dance floor and climbed a set of stairs onto one of the elevated dance platforms. From there, Nancy surveyed the room. “I don’t see Tom anywhere,” Nancy said, disappointed. “I’ll look up his home telephone number after we talk to Charity Freeborn.”
Nancy’s attention was suddenly drawn to a strikingly dressed couple dancing near the exit where Bess disappeared. “I think I saw them dancing near Bess earlier tonight. Let’s ask if they saw anything,” Nancy said, descending the platform steps.
Nancy and George made their way across the floor to the couple, who were dressed in matching black-and-neon-orange bodysuits. “Pardon me,” Nancy said as she tapped the girl’s shoulder. “We’re looking for a friend of ours, Bess, who disappeared earlier tonight.”
“The one wearing the mermaid outfit,” George explained. “We wondered if you saw anything.”
The girl brushed back her brown bangs. “The mermaid? I was wondering where she went. Is anything wrong?”
“We think she was abducted when the lights went out,” Nancy replied.
The girl’s eyes widened. “How awful!” she exclaimed.
“We didn’t notice anything unusual, really,” her partner interjected. “Just that some of the people freaked when the lights blew.”
“Did you notice who was in the area around Bess at the time? Anyone who seemed out of place?” Nancy asked.
“Not really,” the girl said, shaking her head. “Just some of the people who work here.”
“Which ones?” Nancy pressed.
“A couple of waiters, and maybe a doorman or someone like that. Sorry we can’t be of more help.”
Nancy thanked the couple and wove a path through the dancers, followed by George. As soon as they reached the lobby, they could see the flashing blue light of a River Heights patrol car strobing through the front windows of the Razor’s Edge.
Nancy and George went outside to speak to the officer, a tall, black-haired man whose nameplate read T. Jones. When Nancy introduced herself, the officer gave her a swift, appraising glance. “Say, aren’t you the girl who solved that problem they were having over at WRVH-TV last year?” he asked. He was referring to a case in which Nancy had protected the local TV news anchor from a murder threat. Nancy nodded. “That was a good piece of work,” the officer said with admiration.
“Thanks,” Nancy replied. As she described the events surrounding Bess’s disappearance to the officer, Lonnie Cavello and the doorman came up and stood next to them. Nancy noticed that it was a different guy, not the one with the curly black beard. The bearded guy must be on his break, she thought.
After asking a few questions, the officer snapped his notepad shut. “I’ll send for someone to dust the door for prints,” he announced. “And we’ll search the alley again and also check the power, but you probably found the only real piece of evidence, the shell hairpin. Let us know if you turn up anything else.”
“I will,” Nancy promised. She decided not to mention Charity Freeborn for now, at least until she turned up something specific.
After giving Lonnie her phone number, Nancy and George climbed into Nancy’s Mustang to head for the amusement park where they hoped to find Charity Freeborn.
George was still pale. “I’m so worried about Bess, Nan,” she said. “I just can’t believe something like this is happening.”
“I know, George.” Nancy reached over and gave her friend a comforting pat. “We’ll find her, and the person who’s responsible.” Her eyes narrowed with concentration. “Let’s go over what’s happened so far,” she said. “It seems odd that Bess was abducted on the first night of her new job, and in a way that was sure to create an incident. That could suggest someone seeking revenge.”
“Someone like Charity Freeborn,” George suggested.
Nancy nodded. “But it may also be the club that is the intended victim, and taking Bess is just a way to embarrass the club. The kidnapper had to be someone who had enough access to the club to cut the alarm wire on the door and rig the lights to go out. So we’re also talking about someone with electrical expertise.”
“Which may or may not describe Charity,” George echoed.
“We’ll learn more about that when we meet her.” In the moonlight Nancy could just make out the arcs of the roller coaster tracks rising above them.
“Remember this park, George?” Nancy said, turning into the parking lot. “My dad used to bring us here on weekends. It’s too bad it had to close.”
The memory made George smile despite her concern for her cousin. “I remember how we had to drag Bess onto the roller coaster. She preferred the house of mirrors.”
“Bess does love mirrors.” Nancy grinned. Then her expression turned serious again. “We’ll find her, George. We’ve got to.”
Nancy and George parked the car and followed a line of teens heading for the darkened front gate.
“The park’s closed, how do we get in?” George wondered out loud.
“It looks like everyone’s hopping the fence over there,” Nancy replied, pointing toward some teens who were scrambling up and over the chain-link fence.
“It feels like trespassing going in when the park’s closed down,” George commented.
“It is,” Nancy replied. “I wouldn’t do it, but Bess’s life may be at stake. From what I’ve heard, these underground parties never take place at the same location twice.”
As they came up to the point in the fence where boxes had been stacked as steps, Nancy spotted an old clunker of a car approaching. Etienne hopped out and jogged up to them.
Despite the chill evening air, Etienne was wearing his wild orchid shirt without a jacket. Nancy was afraid he was going to get cold, but decided not to say anything.
Nancy, George, and Etienne climbed the boxes to hop the fence and jumped down into the park.
“Tonight’s dance is under the old roller coaster,” Etienne explained. “And that is where we should find Charity.”
Despite the kids moving toward the dance, the park still felt deserted and somehow abandoned. Missing from the scene were the lights and motion of whirling rides, the insistent invitations from sideshow barkers, and the tinny sound of canned music played too loud. Nancy shivered slightly and drew the collar of her coat more tightly around her neck. From the distance she could feel the thumping rhythm of a strong and driving bass line.
The area around the base of the old wooden roller coaster was jammed with kids. They were wearing all kinds of weird, funky clothes—lots of black spandex and hair dyed fuschia and magenta. Spike heels were in, Nancy saw. Someone had brought a handful of California-style outdoor heat lamps to warm up the chill October night. Between the heat lamps and the wild motion of dancing bodies, the scene was very hot indeed.
Music pulsed out from a strange-looking band on a raised makeshift stage. The band members were dressed in yellow and red—even their faces and hands were painted yellow and red. The band’s driving technopop sound was amplified to a crescendo by a row of huge speakers that lined the stage.
Some of the daredevils had staked out choice spots to dance high above the crowd on the roller coaster’s scaffolding and tracks. They clung precariously to the old frame.
Nancy scanned the area. “Do you see Charity?” she asked Etienne.
The DJ searched the crowd with his eyes. “Not yet,” he said. They moved slowly through the crowd, getting jostled from all sides. “Wait a minute! There she is,” he said, pointing to a couple dancing near the band.
/> Nancy took in Charity’s appearance. She was about eighteen years old, dressed all in black, her hair sticking out in stiff black spikes. She wore heavy eye makeup, and a row of eight earrings studded her left ear. Overall, Charity had the look of a tough street urchin. Etienne was right, Nancy thought. It was hard to believe she came from wealth.
Charity’s eyes widened as soon as she noticed Etienne. “Etienne! Cheri!” She threw her arms around the DJ. Underneath the makeup, a soft vulnerability showed on Charity’s face.
Charity’s dancing partner was eyeing the newcomers suspiciously. He was a muscular, dark-skinned man in his early twenties. “What are you doing here, Etienne?” he asked the DJ abruptly. The man spoke with a lilting accent that Nancy could not place.
“Nancy, George, this is Charity Freeborn and her friend, Gaetan Orakuma,” Etienne said, ignoring Gaetan’s unfriendly tone. “A friend of theirs disappeared from the club tonight, and we are trying to find her.”
“Her name’s Bess Marvin,” Nancy explained.
“Bess has disappeared?” Charity’s eyes widened with concern. “She said she might come to the dance later tonight.”
“When did you speak with Bess, Charity?” Nancy asked quickly. “We’re trying to find out as much as we can to help the police with their investigation.”
At the mention of the word police, Charity and Gaetan stiffened visibly. “Charity doesn’t know anything about your friend,” Gaetan said quickly, stepping between Nancy and Charity.
“That’s right,” Charity agreed, taking Gae-tan’s hand. “And right now we have to be going.”
Nancy grew suspicious. Why would the mere mention of the word police cause them to have such a reaction? “I’m just trying to find out—” she began, but Gaetan and Charity had already melted into the crowd. “Wait a minute!” Nancy called, heading after them.
Nancy crashed into a woman as she pushed her way through the dancers to catch up to Charity and Gaetan.
“Hey!” the woman yelled angrily.
“Oops, excuse me,” Nancy muttered. She kept going and finally spotted the couple. They were moving away from the dance area toward a dark section of the park. Nancy followed until she saw them duck behind the carousel. I’m not going to let them get away that easily, she thought to herself.