Nancy was worried. What if Dennis had stolen the equipment to have money to run off with Rachel? Or if he was a thief, there was a chance he could be a kidnapper, too. If that was the case, Rachel could be in serious danger.
She forced herself to stop thinking the worst. First they had to find out if Rachel was with him. “Can we have his telephone number, please?” she asked. “It’s very important that we find him.”
“This way,” Ralph grumbled, turning and walking toward the back of the store. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand as he moved. “Knew that boy was bad news,” he muttered.
“Do you know Rachel Kline?” Ned asked.
“Never heard of her,” Ralph mumbled, pushing open the door to a cluttered office. The desk was buried in invoices and telephone messages. “The police involved in this?” he asked, flipping through a small metal file box on a battered credenza.
“As of today, yes,” Ned said. “Rachel’s been missing since yesterday.”
“Here it is,” Ralph said, pulling a card and handing it to Nancy.
There was no address, just the name Dennis Harper, which was scrawled sloppily, and a phone number. Nancy copied it down in a notebook she always carried with her and handed the card back. “Do you know where Dennis lives?”
Ralph shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t help you there.”
“Thanks,” Nancy said with a note of frustration. At least they had a telephone number. It was a start.
“No problem,” Ralph answered. Then, with a shrug, he added, “You’re probably going to find out that loser has left the country.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Nancy said, but she found that she was thinking the same thing. Still, there was no solid reason to suspect Dennis had kidnapped Rachel. “Thank you,” she said, snapping her purse closed.
“Thanks,” Ned added, holding the door open for Nancy. “Where to from here?” he asked once they were back outside.
“To the nearest telephone. We’re going to give Dennis Harper a call.”
Ned stopped at a fast-food restaurant and ordered sodas to go while Nancy went to the pay phone.
“No luck?” he asked, holding out a cup to her once she had returned.
Nancy shook her head. “Nobody answered.”
Ned shrugged. “Maybe we had the wrong number. You said his handwriting was terrible,” he said before taking a sip of his soda. “Maybe we should call directory assistance.”
“Good idea.” Nancy took another coin from her purse. “Be right back.”
Nancy punched in the number for directory assistance and asked for Dennis’s number. After a short pause, a recorded voice came on the line.
“I’m sorry. At the request of the subscriber, that number is unlisted.”
Nancy hung up the receiver and drummed her fingers against the side of the phone booth. She let out a sigh and headed back to Ned.
“Strike out?” he asked, reading her face.
“Yep. Unlisted. We’re back to square one.”
“Look, Nancy,” Ned said, putting his arms around her. “We’ll find him—and her. I know we will. Let’s head back to the Klines’, have a swim, and put our heads together. A little sun may get us thinking more clearly.”
Nancy smiled. Ned was good at reassuring her. “Okay. Maybe Rachel wrote down his address somewhere,” she added. “We can check her room.”
Nancy and Ned were back at the Klines’ house before Mr. and Mrs. Kline. Ned headed upstairs while the maid told Nancy that they wouldn’t be back until late that night. They were going to visit some of Rachel’s friends’ parents, and then there was a private party for some of the graduates and their parents.
“A party?” Nancy echoed, surprised.
“They think they might be able to learn something from Rachel’s friends,” she explained as she headed back to the kitchen. “You and Ned are invited, too. And I’m sure Josh will be going.”
Remembering what little help Mike and Jessica had been the night before, Nancy doubted that Rachel’s friends would tell her parents much. Still, there weren’t many leads in the case, and they had to start somewhere.
“Nancy?” Ned came up to her in the hallway. “There’s no address book. I just looked. I couldn’t find a thing in Rachel’s room with even Dennis’s name on it. She really kept this guy a secret, didn’t she?”
“It looks that way, but why?” Nancy asked. Before Ned could answer, the maid came back to tell them she’d set a late lunch by the pool for them.
“Thanks,” Nancy said absently. “How about that swim, Nickerson? And how about a party later?”
• • •
When Nancy came downstairs that night dressed in a black tank top, roomy white overshirt, and black-and-white-checked miniskirt, Josh and Ned were standing at the foot of the stairs. Both let out whistles.
Nancy grinned. “You don’t look so bad yourselves,” she said, taking in Ned’s red dress shirt and beige chinos. “Ready?”
The three of them set out for the party, which was being held in an ultramodern house perched on the side of one of the San Gabriel foothills. The place was surrounded by redwood decks, and the views of Los Angeles at dusk were spectacular.
Josh introduced Nancy and Ned to the host and hostess of the party, longtime friends of the Klines, and then he and Ned went off to get cold drinks.
Nancy was standing alone at the railing of the deck, thirty feet above the pool, which was full of shouting, laughing kids. As she watched the setting sun she felt sad, thinking that Rachel should be there, having fun and celebrating with her friends.
She heard someone behind her. “It’s about time, Nickerson,” she murmured without turning. “I was just thinking about enjoying the view with you.”
She started to reach out for Ned. But before her hand moved a couple of inches, two strong hands struck her hard in the back. In the next instant she was sailing headfirst over the deck railing!
Chapter
Five
AS SHE FELL through the air Nancy reached out desperately for a handhold. Nothing. She was vaguely aware of the swimmers’ screams and panic-stricken faces as she plummeted headfirst into the pool.
The water closed over her. Sinking quickly to the bottom, Nancy almost blacked out when her shoulder struck the concrete floor of the pool. The pain was intense. Gasping but trying not to swallow water, she propelled herself up to the surface.
When she finally bobbed up, she looked around, and one of the first things she saw was Ned hurrying through the crowd toward her. Josh was close behind.
Nancy lifted her eyes to the terrace high overhead, but she knew it would be useless. The deck was empty. Whoever had pushed her was gone.
“Are you all right?” everyone asked at once, crowding around her.
Nancy nodded, realizing how lucky she’d been to land in the deep end of the pool instead of the shallow one. A bruised shoulder was hardly anything. “I’m fine. Did any of you see who pushed me?”
The swimmers glanced at one another and shook their heads. Until Nancy had actually fallen into the pool, they’d all been having too good a time to notice anything happening on a deck thirty feet above their heads.
Disappointed, Nancy kicked slowly to the side. Her clothes were heavy with water, but Ned was there with a hand extended to help her climb out.
“What happened?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”
“One question at a time,” Nancy replied with a shaky smile, drying her face and pushing back her hair with a corner of a towel someone tossed to her. “I was standing up there on the deck, admiring the view, when I heard someone behind me. I thought it was you. The next thing I knew, someone had pushed me, and I was falling into the pool.”
Karen and Allen Kline ran up just then with some of the other parents. Again Nancy explained what had happened.
Mrs. Becker, the hostess, offered Nancy a change of clothes. After Nancy had slipped into a pair of dry white shorts and a red T-shirt, she went back to the po
ol and joined the Klines and Josh and Ned. Allen Kline was in the middle of telling his son what little he and his wife had learned that day.
“So the police took the report, but they said there wasn’t much they could do. At least not until there’s a ransom note—if there is one.” The fear in his voice was evident.
“There hadn’t been any other recent withdrawals from her savings account,” Karen Kline added in a bleak voice. “I just don’t know what to think or even what to hope for.”
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Josh told her. “We’ll find her, or she’ll probably come back on her own.”
“Josh is right, Mrs. Kline,” Ned offered. “The police will do what they can, and Nancy and I will do what we can, too.”
Karen Kline gave Ned a small, warm smile. “I’m really grateful for your help.” She reached out for her husband’s arm. “I’d like to go home now, Allen. If Rachel does call, I’d like one of us to answer instead of the maid.”
Allen nodded sadly. “We’re not accomplishing anything here,” he agreed. “Good night, kids. Thanks for your help, and I’m sorry about your accident, Nancy.”
Nancy managed a smile. “Don’t worry about me. Please, before you go, could I just ask you a couple of questions about Dennis Harper?”
Mr. and Mrs. Kline seemed to become tense at the mention of Dennis’s name. “Do you know him?” Nancy went on. Ned raised a hand ever so slightly, telling her to go easy.
“Not well,” Mr. Kline answered after reflecting a moment. “He certainly isn’t the kind of boy we’d expect Rachel to like. He’s got one of those punk haircuts and a pretty tough attitude to match it.”
Nancy explained that she and Ned were concentrating on locating him. “Do you have any idea where he lives?”
“You think Rachel’s with him?” Josh asked before his mother could answer.
“Well, of course, we don’t know,” Ned explained. “Still, it may not be a coincidence that he’s not around and Rachel’s missing.”
Deep furrows showed in Mrs. Kline’s forehead. “You’d better tell the police to track him down, Allen.”
“I’ll do that right away,” Mr. Kline agreed. “If she is with him, she could be in trouble. I knew we should never have let her go out with him!” With that, Allen Kline disappeared inside the house to use a telephone. Mrs. Kline and Josh quickly followed him.
Ned and Nancy remained at their poolside table. He turned to her. “Any idea who pushed you?” he asked.
“Not a clue,” she said, laughing. “There’s a pattern here, though. Whenever we’re around Rachel’s friends, someone tries to scare us off.”
“What do you think it means?” Ned asked.
Before Nancy could answer, Beth, Jessica, and Mike came toward their table, towels slung around their necks. There was another guy with them, someone Nancy didn’t recognize.
“This is Peter Henley,” Beth said. “I don’t think you’ve met him. Peter, this is Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson. They’re friends of Josh Kline’s from school.”
“Hi,” Peter said with a smile as the four of them pulled up chairs and sat down at the table.
“Ned and I went to Sound Performance today, looking for Dennis,” she said to Mike Rasmussen. “Sorry we missed you.”
“I’m off a couple of days this week because of graduation,” Mike replied.
“Mr. Lindenbaum said he fired Dennis because some stereo equipment turned up missing,” Ned put in.
Mike looked at Beth, Jessica, and Peter before meeting Ned’s gaze and nodding. “I’m not surprised,” he said bitterly.
“What do you mean?” Nancy asked.
“You’d better tell them. It’s all right. I know how you feel,” Jessica said with a sigh.
For a moment Mike hesitated. Then he shrugged and muttered, “Okay.” His eyes met Nancy’s. “I was really in love with Rachel. Maybe I still am, a little. When she broke up with me to go out with Dennis, it hurt a lot. Then when I figured Harper was ripping off Sound Performance, I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to tell Rachel, but I thought she wouldn’t believe me.”
“Why did you think he was stealing?” Nancy asked, leaning forward a little in her chair. “Did you see Dennis take something?”
Mike shook his head. “No—if I had, I would have turned him in. There were just coincidences. Also, he seemed to have a lot of money for a guy who worked part-time for minimum wage.”
“Dennis is a jerk,” Jessica said disdainfully, fiddling with the straw in her glass. “I think he’s behind all these robberies.”
“What robberies?” Nancy was quick to ask.
Peter joined the conversation. “Somebody’s been ripping off houses in Beverly Hills lately,” he said. “Expensive stuff like VCRs, video cameras, and equipment have been missing.”
Beth was fiddling nervously with her pendant, a gold cat with white opals for eyes, and Nancy noticed she was a little pale. “Dennis always hung out at the Snake Pit,” she put in. “It’s a kind of crummy place downtown. Maybe that’s where to look for him.”
“Yeah, I’d see him there a lot when I was working,” Peter added.
“You work there?” Ned asked.
“Sometimes. I like the music. The crowd’s okay. An under-eighteen place. You know. No drinking, just music, video games, pinball, and fun.” Peter slouched in his chair. “I never liked Dennis, though. He’s a bit rough for that place.”
“Do you think someone there might know where he is?” Nancy asked.
“I can think of a few people to ask,” Peter offered.
Now we’re getting somewhere, Nancy thought. “How about going now?”
“I’ll go find Josh,” Ned said with a nod of agreement, pushing back his chair.
Fifteen minutes later Nancy, Ned, and Josh were headed for the Snake Pit, following Mike, Beth, Jessica, and Peter. The club was in one of L.A.’s seedier areas, with a lot of empty warehouses.
“Some artists and musicians live down here,” Josh explained. “It used to be dangerous, but now it’s mostly trendy.”
They met Rachel’s friends in the club’s parking lot, and Nancy took the lead. Her cases had taken her to worse places than this, she thought as she pushed open the heavy metal door.
The Snake Pit was full of smoke, and there were black leather jackets everywhere. The crowd—girls and guys—looked pretty tough.
Up on the stage a band hammered out earsplitting music. Nancy couldn’t make out any of the words. Waitresses in vinyl miniskirts squeezed between packed tables, carrying trays of soft drinks.
“Does anybody see Dennis?” Nancy asked, raising her voice to be heard over the noise.
Jessica, Beth, and Mike shook their heads. Peter was busy saying hello to someone he knew.
“It’s early,” Josh said, scanning the crowd.
“Is there anybody here you’d recognize as a friend of Dennis’s?” Nancy asked.
“We don’t hang around with this crowd,” Jessica shouted just as the music died.
People at surrounding tables turned to stare at her, and the girl slipped down a little in her chair.
“Did my sister ever tell you she wanted to run off with this guy?” Josh asked Beth. “I mean, seeing this crowd he hung out with, I can’t believe she would.”
“No,” Beth answered quickly, her eyes widening. “Of course not. I didn’t even think she was all that serious about him.”
“She was serious enough to dump me for the guy,” Mike put in sadly.
“I don’t know why you don’t just forget her and start going out with somebody else,” Jessica said coldly. Everyone stared at her in stunned surprise.
“Should we ‘just forget’ that Rachel is missing, too?” Mike demanded, his tone furious.
“If she’s missing, it’s her own choice!” Jessica spat out the words. “She and that boyfriend of hers are probably in Mexico somewhere, laughing at all of us!”
“Arguing won’t get us anywhere,” Ned said, interceding quietly
.
Beth was shifting around in her chair, her eyes moving anxiously over the crowd. Once again, she was fingering the little gold cat on her necklace. “I think we should get out of here,” she said with a shiver. “This place gives me the creeps.”
Just then Mike leapt out of his chair, nearly toppling the sodas off the table.
“What’s got into you?” Jessica asked, moving out of his way.
“There’s Dennis!” he shouted, pointing past the stage.
Nancy jumped up and looked in the direction Mike was pointing. Before she could catch a glimpse of Dennis, though, the lights went off and the whole club went black.
Chapter
Six
NANCY REACHED UNDER the table for her purse. She rummaged inside, pulled out her penlight, and pointed it in the direction Dennis had taken.
Even in its dim light, though, Nancy could see that the boy had disappeared. Mike was standing by the edge of the stage, and Ned and Josh were next to her.
When the lights came back up again a few seconds later, Mike took off in the direction where Dennis had disappeared. Nancy, Ned, and Josh were right behind him. They pushed their way through the crowd, back by the club’s dressing rooms, and outside. Nancy’s first instincts were right, though. Dennis appeared to be gone.
In the parking lot Mike shoved a hand through his hair and sighed.
“We’ve lost him.”
“Maybe he doubled back and is inside,” Nancy suggested.
“I don’t think so. We all saw him take off this way,” Ned pointed out. “He’s not here.”
Nancy didn’t like giving up, especially when they’d come so close to finding Dennis.