Soon Vickers joined them outside. “I hope the security staff was able to catch the culprit,” he said.
“Let’s go find out,” Nancy suggested. “How do we get past that wall?”
Vickers held up a key and instructed, “Follow me.”
As they headed toward the wall, Nancy looked around in every direction, hoping to catch a better look at the shadowy figure. But she saw nothing.
Vickers led her and George to a heavy iron gate in the wall, took out his key, and hurriedly opened it. From there the three entered the public part of the property. Walking over to the damaged tombstone, Nancy saw a few security officers checking over the marble structure. Another couple of guards were searching the nearby trees and bushes.
“Did you see who it was?” Nancy asked one of the guards.
The guard shook her head. “I saw someone running away, but I couldn’t make out much about him,” she replied, shining her flashlight in the branches of a large oak tree.
“Him? You mean it was a man?” George asked.
Looking confused, the guard admitted, “Well, it could have been a woman, I suppose.”
Nancy turned as another security guard emerged from a wooded lot on the edge of the tombstone area, holding a sledgehammer. He had a handkerchief carefully wrapped around it. “I found this by the bushes near the road,” he told the female guard. “We can give it to the police to dust for prints. Looks like our guy got away, though.”
Seeing George inspecting the damaged statue, Nancy went over to join her.
“Who would do something like this?” George asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “Who would hate Curtis Taylor’s memory enough to want to smash up his memorial statue?”
“Maybe the same person who hated him enough to kill him,” Nancy replied. “If it was, I just hope we can catch the person before anything or anyone else gets hurt.”
• • •
“Tyrone is going to be okay,” Bess informed Nancy and George when she and Louisa picked them up at Greenwood later.
Steering Nancy’s car past the security gate and onto the road, Louisa added, “They’ve postponed the concert till Sunday, though, to give him a chance to recover.”
“You won’t believe what happened here,” George said, leaning forward to rest her hands on the back of the passenger seat. She told Bess and Louisa about the vandalized tombstone and finding water in the bourbon decanter.
“Why would anyone do something like that?” Louisa asked with a horrified gasp. “I just don’t get it.”
’Who would do it? That’s what I’d like to know,” Bess added from the passenger seat.
Nancy had been mulling over that same question. “Well, it couldn’t have been Melanie,” she pointed out. “She was at the hospital, right?”
Bess nodded. “She was there the whole time. She seemed really concerned about Tyrone, too.”
“That leaves J.J. and Spike unaccounted for, though,” George noted. “Unless it was just some random prank, which I find pretty unlikely, considering all that’s been going on lately.”
Louisa shot Nancy an uneasy look in the rearview mirror. “Are you any closer to finding out who killed Curtis?” she asked worriedly.
Letting out a sigh, Nancy admitted, “Not really.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence. “It must be after midnight already,” Louisa said, turning into her driveway. She shut off the motor and reached for the car door handle.
“Ten after,” George said, glancing at her watch with a yawn. “Come on, guys. I’m going to turn in.”
“I’m tired, too,” Nancy said after she got out of the car. She started walking up to Louisa’s front door.
“Aunt Louisa, want me to take this mail in?” Bess asked. In front of her a white envelope stuck out of Louisa’s brass mailbox, which was on the wall to the right of the front door. “Or did you put it there for the carrier to pick up?”
With a puzzled look on her face, Louisa reached into the mailbox. “That’s funny,” she said. “I got my mail this afternoon.”
“It’s probably just an ad,” Bess said.
Holding the envelope close to her eyes, Louisa peered through her glasses at it. “No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s an envelope. For Nancy. Someone must have brought it by while we were out. Do you know anybody else in Maywood, Nancy?”
“No,” Nancy said, taking the envelope from Louisa. Sure enough, her name was clearly printed on the front.
“Let’s see what this is about,” Nancy murmured, ripping open the envelope.
Under the glare of the porch light she took out a letter and unfolded it. But her breath caught in her throat when she read the brief message:
Nancy Drew, stop digging up dirt. You might wind up under six feet of it.
Chapter
Twelve
NAN?” GEORGE ASKED in a worried voice. “Everything okay?”
For a second Nancy didn’t know what to say. Finally she handed the note to George, who read it with a look of shock on her face.
“Let’s go in,” Nancy said when George was finished.
Louisa opened the door, and the four women stepped into the house. Bess flicked on the hall light, saying to George, “Let me see that.” Lifting the paper out of George’s hands, she read it aloud.
“Oh, no!” Louisa cried. “How awful.”
Bess’s hands were shaking as she handed the note back to Nancy. “First Tyrone, then Curtis’s tombstone, and now this,” she murmured.
“That note is a murder threat, Nan, pure and simple,” George added. “What are you going to do about it?”
Nancy tapped the folded note with her finger. “I’ll definitely call the police about it tomorrow morning,” she promised.
Her mind was racing as she tried to reconstruct what had happened. “Whoever left that note left it while we were gone,” she surmised, following the others into the living room and flopping down on the sofa next to Louisa.
“Curtis’s killer must be awfully afraid we’re closing in on him if he tried to electrocute Tyrone and threatened to kill you all in one day,” Bess said, frowning. “Nan, we just can’t let him get away with this.”
Wringing her hands, Louisa gave Nancy a distressed look. “You know, I hate to say this, but maybe you girls should pack up and head back to River Heights tomorrow. Not that I want you to go—I don’t. But you might be better off just forgetting all about this nasty business.”
Nancy shook her head firmly. “There’s no way I’m leaving until I find out who killed Curtis Taylor.”
“We’re with you all the way, Nan,” George told her with a grin.
Louisa still looked worried. “Curtis is already dead,” she pointed out. “But if anything happens to you girls, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Leveling her serious blue eyes at Louisa, Nancy said, “We’ll be very careful. Nothing bad will happen, I promise.”
Nancy just hoped it was a promise that could be kept.
• • •
The next morning Nancy woke up before any of her friends. After phoning the police and telling them about the note, she headed into the kitchen to make herself breakfast.
Let me just make sure I haven’t received any other strange messages during the night, she thought as she measured water into the coffee machine. Nancy went to the front door and peeked out but was relieved to see that the mailbox was empty. At her feet was the day’s edition of the Maywood Morning Star.
“Tyrone Taylor Murder Attempt” read the largest headline. Under it, in smaller letters, was “Narrow Escape for Budding Star.” To the left was a copy of Tyrone’s photo as he appeared on the cover of the Heartthrob cassette.
Nancy brought the paper into the kitchen and spread it out on the table to read.
“What’s that?” Bess asked when she wandered down in her bathrobe a few minutes later, yawning and rubbing her eyes. “Isn’t that Tyrone’s picture? What does it say?” she asked, suddenly alert.
&n
bsp; As Bess poured herself some coffee, Nancy recapped the article’s main points. “It just tells about the accident onstage, and that police suspect someone tampered with the electrical system—nothing we don’t already know.”
“What’s happening?” George asked as she and Louisa came into the kitchen, already dressed. Seeing the newspaper, George asked, “Does it say anything about the tombstone vandalism?”
Nancy flipped through the pages of the paper. “I don’t see anything about that,” she said. “I guess it happened too late to be included in the early edition.”
Nancy was impatient to begin work on the case, but she wanted to give everyone a chance to wake up first. Once they had finished their muffins, coffee, and tea, Nancy turned to Louisa and Bess and said, “I was wondering if you two have any time to do a little investigating for me today.”
“Sure, Nancy,” Bess said. “What do you want us to do?”
“I have all day,” Louisa said. With a sigh she added, “Especially now that the gala has been postponed until tomorrow.”
Nancy propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “You know the crew of the gala the best of any of us, Bess,” she said. “I’d like you to ask around and see if someone noticed anything unusual backstage before last night’s performance. Also, any information you can find about J. J. Rahmer’s whereabouts after the concert would be important to have. Louisa, you can help Bess get around, okay?”
Louisa and Bess both nodded. “Just one thing, Nan,” Bess said. “I want to go see Tyrone today, too.”
“No problem,” Nancy said. “George and I will meet you at the hospital later.”
Smiling at Nancy, George asked, “So what are we going to do?”
“I want to bounce ideas off you, if that’s okay, George.”
After Louisa and Bess had left, Nancy found Louisa’s collection of Curtis Taylor clippings and spread them on the coffee table in the living room. Next to them she placed the cassette tape with Curtis’s message and the one of Tyrone’s rendition of “Melanie,” the paper that the song was written on, Curtis’s letter, as well as the threatening note she’d received the night before.
“I don’t even know where to start, George,” she confessed as she sat down on a throw pillow on the floor, leaning over the table. “But sometimes it’s best to go back to the beginning. Tyrone gave me a bunch of stuff that I’ve hardly had a chance to look over.”
“Let’s listen to the song,” George suggested. She picked up the cassette and popped it into Louisa’s tape deck. Then she stretched out on the sofa to listen.
On came Tyrone, doing his best to present the song “Melanie.”
“You left me, and now you’re with him. Someday he’ll be gone, though, and your heart I’ll win. . . .”
“Those lyrics are just so bad,” George groaned. “Maybe he asked his dentist to write it for him?”
Nancy froze in the middle of her giggle. “George,” she said softly, “you know what? You might have something there.” Her heart pumping furiously, Nancy looked at the sheet music for “Melanie,” studying the handwriting. Then she jumped up and walked over to look at the writing on the autographed picture of Curtis Taylor over Louisa’s sofa.
“Brilliant, George!” Nancy cried. “You’re absolutely brilliant.”
“I am?” George said, looking confused.
Pointing at the framed picture on Louisa’s wall, Nancy exclaimed, “Look right there! When Curtis autographed this picture for Louisa, he wrote the words Best wishes in block print.”
Nancy held the song sheet up to the framed photo, and George stepped over to get a better look. “They look about the same to me, Nan,” George said.
“That’s because most block printing looks alike. But don’t you see it, George? If you look closely, the printing on Curtis’s picture is distinctly different from the lyrics printed on the sheet of music!”
Her eyes went from Curtis Taylor’s framed photo to the lyrics for “Melanie” in her hand. “Look at these W’s. When Curtis wrote them, he rounded the bottoms. But the ones on the lyrics are jagged.”
George nodded, comparing the two pieces of writing. “I see what you mean, Nan,” she murmured.
“And check out the T’s,” Nancy added. “The tops of Curtis’s are high up, and the ones in the song lyrics are much lower.”
Nancy’s eyes sparkled with excitement as she concluded, “Curtis Taylor didn’t write ‘Melanie.’ ”
Chapter
Thirteen
BUT IF Curtis didn’t write ‘Melanie,’ then who did?” George asked.
“That’s a good question,” Nancy commented, rereading the lyrics. “ ‘You left me, and now you’re with him.’ So it’s someone Melanie left, obviously.”
Nancy went back over to the coffee table and picked up the threatening note she’d gotten the night before. She held it in one hand and the sheet music to “Melanie” in the other. “The same block letters, George,” she said, drawing in her breath sharply. “Look.”
“But whose are they, Nan?”
“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” Nancy said. She put down the song lyric and started for the kitchen phone but stopped herself in midstride. “No, we’d better handle this in person.”
Confusion was written all over George’s face as she looked at Nancy. “Handle what?”
“Come on, George. We’re going to dig up a skeleton,” Nancy informed her. “A skeleton in Melanie Taylor’s closet.”
• • •
When they arrived at Greenwood, Vickers directed Nancy and George out to the formal gardens. “She’s been out there for almost an hour, watching while they work on the statue by Mr. Taylor’s tombstone,” he said with a frown. “Needless to say, the grounds are closed to the public today.”
“Thanks, Vickers,” Nancy said.
Melanie was standing on the lawn in a full-length black leather coat, gazing over the wall to where a group of workers were removing the guitar-shaped statue from the tombstone area below. As Nancy and George approached, Nancy saw that the singer was biting her lip and blinking back tears.
“Melanie,” Nancy said softly. “Can we talk? It’s important.”
The beautiful singer nodded sadly, her eyes still on the workers below. Finally she looked at Nancy and George and said, “Why don’t we go back inside, where it’s warm.”
When they all were in the living room, Melanie collapsed into a chair. “I’m such a wreck,” she confided. “This business with Tyrone, and then the gravestone. Isn’t it horrible?”
Nancy looked directly into the singer’s cool gray eyes as she and George sat down on a brocade loveseat. “I want to bring all this trouble to an end, Melanie, but I need your help. Are you willing?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Melanie said, shifting uncomfortably in her chair.
“Your love life before you met Curtis,” Nancy began. “Can you tell us about it?”
Melanie seemed momentarily taken aback. “What about it?” she said with a shrug. “I’ve—I’ve had my share of boyfriends, I suppose.”
“Was one of them a songwriter, by any chance?” George asked.
“A songwriter? I don’t think so. . . .” Melanie seemed lost in thought.
“J. J. Rahmer never wrote songs, as far as you know?” Nancy pressed her.
Looking confused, Melanie replied, “Not that I know of.”
“Maybe we can ask him about it ourselves,” George suggested. “Will he be around today?”
Melanie let out a sudden laugh. “Honey, I’m afraid J.J. won’t be around here today or any other day.”
“Oh?” Nancy asked, puzzled.
“He went off to Nashville early last night, before Tyrone’s accident,” Melanie explained. “And he’s never coming back.”
With a look of conviction in her eyes, she explained, “We broke up for good last night. I finally realized that Curtis was right about J.J. all along. Oh, at first, when I was trying to launch
my career, I thought I needed J.J. For a while there I guess I got love and need all mixed up. But lately, I’ve come to see what a snake that man was. He wanted me to sign a contract that gave all the advantage to him and none to me. And worst of all, he thought I was a killer!”
Nancy and George exchanged an almost imperceptible look. They certainly weren’t going to tell Melanie that practically everyone who knew Curtis had been murdered thought she might be the killer.
“Would you mind if we use your phone to confirm that your manager left?” Nancy asked Melanie. “Not many planes would have left Maywood for Nashville last night.”
Melanie nodded. “Sure. You can use the phone in the kitchen.”
“I’ll go, Nan,” George said, getting up from the couch.
When George was gone, Nancy asked Melanie, “Are you sure none of your boyfriends was a songwriter? What about Spike?”
“Spike?” Melanie echoed, looking startled. “Well, yes, Spike does write songs. But—”
“Take a look at this, then,” Nancy cut in, pulling the folded-up song lyric out of her purse. “Could this have been written by Spike?”
Melanie’s eyes scanned the sheet. “I suppose so,” she said tentatively. “There’s just one problem. Spike was never my boyfriend. Never,”
“Oh?”
“He and I are just friends, that’s all. Oh, I suppose there was a time before I met Curtis . . .” She stared into the distance, going back to that time in her mind. “I didn’t have a boyfriend, and Spike took me out to dinner a few times. But I never took it very seriously. It was more like we were just buddies, as far as I was concerned. Then Spike got a job with Curtis’s band, and when he introduced me to Curtis, I knew I’d met the man I wanted to spend my life with.”
“ ‘You left me, and now you’re with him. Someday he’ll be gone, though, and your heart I’ll win. . . .’ ” Nancy said slowly. “How did Spike react when you wound up with J. J. Rahmer, Melanie?”