“Wait a minute,” Gary cut in. “Maybe we can talk this over. If you girls could keep a secret, we still have a way out of this. There might even be some money in it for you. I’d be willing to share—there’s more than enough to go around.”
He looked beseechingly at Bess and shot her that same flirtatious look, but she just glared at him.
“Shut up,” Loomis said harshly. “If you think these girls could keep a secret, you’re crazier than I thought.” He shoved Nancy. “Let’s get going,” he said, “and don’t bother to scream. Nobody will hear you. I’ve already tied up your gray-haired friend in the kitchen. She’ll have to go with you girls, of course.
“Now move it!”
Before she could do anything, Nancy heard a crashing noise come from the hallway.
“What the—?” Loomis turned toward the doorway as the crashing noises came closer. Suddenly his face went slack with shock.
Following his gaze, Nancy saw two enormous dogs come hurtling into the room, growling and baring their huge teeth. Grabbing Bess’s arm, Nancy tore her friend away from Loomis just as the dogs made a flying leap toward them.
Chapter
Sixteen
NANCY AND BESS BARELY managed to jump out of the dogs’ way. Loomis, too, leapt back, but the enormous dogs kept after him, cornering him on the couch.
Nancy had recognized Tony Giralda’s dogs, Fred and Max, at once. Her experience with the dogs had shown her that they weren’t fierce, but Loomis didn’t know that. He had scrambled over the sofa and was cowering against the wall in panic.
That took care of one criminal, she thought, but there was still one more.
Nancy spun around and looked for Gary, who was edging away from the group. Seeing her, he took off at a run toward the rear door, the one Loomis must have used to get in unseen by Nancy. Nancy sprinted after him, catching up to him just before he reached the doorway and immobilizing him with a quick judo kick to his side. Gary let out a groan as he fell and lay curled up on the floor, clutching his ribs.
“Way to go, Nancy!” a deep voice called out behind her.
Turning, she saw that Tony Giralda had come into the library. Mrs. Adams was there, too, and she and Bess were standing close together on the opposite side of the room from Fred, Max, and Loomis. They seemed to be as frightened as Loomis was of the big dogs, who were now standing with their paws up on the sofa and growling deep in their throats.
“Hello there, Mr. Loomis, glad you could be here,” Tony said, going over to the sofa.
“Someone should call the police,” Nancy said.
“Over my dead body,” Loomis said, but his voice was shaky.
“That can be arranged,” Tony told him. “Fang and Claw here are trained attack dogs. I have only to say the word and they’ll tear you to shreds.” Nancy had to suppress a laugh at the aliases Tony had given Fred and Max. “I called the police as soon as I found Mrs. Adams tied up in the kitchen.”
Nancy saw that Gary was getting to his feet, still clutching his side, and she gestured for him to walk over and stand by the couch, where Fred and Max could keep an eye on him, too.
Fred was still making that deep, menacing sound in his throat, and Nancy hoped he wouldn’t stop—at least until the police showed up.
Holding out her hand, Nancy spoke to Loomis in a firm voice. “I’d like my tape recorder back, please. Hand it over to me very carefully. We don’t want to alarm Fang.”
Loomis held the minirecorder out and tossed it on the couch. “It won’t do you much good,” he scoffed. “It hit those flagstones pretty hard before. The thing’s probably broken.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Nancy said, picking it up. She rewound the tape a little and then hit the Play button. Bess’s voice came into the room, loud and clear. “Was it your father who thought of having a cake the shape of a giant football, or was it you?”
Behind Nancy, Bess giggled nervously at the sound of her own voice.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Gary said. “Who remembers a cake from years ago? You’d be laughed out of court with that evidence.”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten all the things you just confessed when you thought it didn’t matter, since you planned on leaving us to die in the snow,” Nancy pointed out.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Bess called from behind Nancy.
“We’ll both testify to everything in court,” Nancy said. “You two are going to jail for a long time.”
Loomis’s face had turned a deep purple color. With a cry of rage, he lunged at Nancy, hands raised, but she ducked aside easily. Loomis crouched, ready to spring at her, but he hesitated as the high-pitched whine of a siren filtered into the room.
A moment later two squad cars with flashing red lights raced up the drive and screeched to a halt in front of the house.
“The police!” Mrs. Adams exclaimed. “And not a moment too soon.”
• • •
“Well, it’s been quite an evening!” Mrs. Adams said. She, Nancy, Bess, and Tony sat around the kitchen table. None of them had wanted to remain in the library after the police took Gary Page and Jake Loomis away.
“We’re lucky it ended the way it did,” Nancy said, taking a sip of her cider. Mrs. Adams had made a big pot of it, and now the scent of cloves and cinnamon filled the air.
“It wasn’t all luck, dear,” Mrs. Adams reminded her. “The police were delighted that you had that tape.
“I’m just glad it’s over. I thought I would drop dead of fear when I saw those beasts,” the housekeeper added, chuckling. “I thought they were the most fearsome-looking attack dogs I’d ever seen.”
“That makes two of us,” Bess said. “Who would have known they were such sweethearts?”
Nancy glanced affectionately at the big dogs, who were lying contentedly at Tony’s feet, chomping on pieces of beef bone that Mrs. Adams had put in soup bowls for them.
“They deserve that reward for coming to the rescue,” she said. “Which reminds me, how did you know to come here, Tony?”
“I started thinking of that phone call you had me make,” he began, reaching down to pet Max. “The more I thought about it, the more dangerous I thought the situation was. I went to your house to warn you, but your housekeeper said you weren’t home. That’s when I got a pretty good idea of where you were, and I drove out here. I saw your car parked down at the end of the drive, and I had a feeling—”
“A gut feeling?” Nancy asked, grinning.
“Right, a feeling you were in danger. I parked down by your car, then came up to the house by foot. I saw through the window what was going on. Luckily the side door was open. Anyway, when I got inside, I found Mrs. Adams tied up in the kitchen.” He held up his hands and smiled. “The rest is history.”
“But how did you get Fred and Max to act so threatening?” Bess asked, a puzzled look on her face.
Tony reached down again to pat the big dogs, who had finished chewing on their bones and were sleeping with their muzzles resting on their huge front paws. “There’s one thing that drives Fred and Max crazy. They can’t stand getting a bath, and always put up a big fight.”
“So you dumped some water on them, and presto—enter Fred and Max, barking ferociously,” Nancy guessed. “I was wondering why the fur around their heads was wet.”
“I didn’t like doing it,” said Tony, “but I figured it would be the best way to stall until the police showed up. By the way, who locked you in my office with Fred and Max the night we went skating?”
“It had to be Gary, since Jake wasn’t around then. He must have followed me to see what I was up to,” Nancy replied.
“I want to thank you for everything, Tony,” Bess said. “If it weren’t for you, Nancy and I might have ended up as icicles a hundred miles from anywhere.”
“My mistake was in thinking that Loomis wouldn’t get here until later,” Nancy said. “Tony told him seven o’clock in our phone call, but he obviously decided not to wait until then.
In fact, I think he was already here. I bet he never left the area after causing our sleigh accident yesterday.”
Bess’s blue eyes went wide. “You mean he’s been here all along?” she asked.
“Not here at Glover’s Corners, but close by. There are lots of motels around.”
“He must have called his office for his messages,” said Tony, “and the receptionist said that stuff about his client in River Heights having trouble with his garden.”
“And now his car’s out in our garden,” Mrs. Adams said. “I do hope the police will take it away.”
Bess looked at the housekeeper and asked, “Where will you go, Mrs. Adams? When all this is over, I mean.”
“I imagine I’ll go to Florida,” Mrs. Adams told her. “I have a sister there, you know. Besides, the winters here are beginning to get to me. Old bones don’t like the cold as much as young ones do.
“Still,” Mrs. Adams went on, on a dreamier note, “it was lovely, having you all here again. I suppose I was fooling myself to think we could bring the old days back.”
“But it was like the old days,” Bess insisted.
“No, dear,” corrected Mrs. Adams, “it only seemed like them. In the old days that handsome young man who skated with you had a good heart. Matt was a wonderful person, just like his father. The man out on the pond this time was wicked, through and through.”
She turned shining eyes on Nancy, Bess, and Tony. “But thanks to you, he’ll get what he deserves.”
“You bet,” said Bess, grinning. “He might have been hoping for ten to twenty million, but now he’ll get ten to twenty years!”
Chapter
Seventeen
WELL,” SAID TONY, scraping his chair back, “I have to get back to my office.”
“We should go, too,” Nancy said to Bess. “I’d like to go to my house and tell my dad the case is over. We could stop by to pick up George on the way.”
Nancy, Bess, and Tony hugged Mrs. Adams, then trudged down the long drive to their cars.
“Nancy?” Bess asked after Tony had driven off. Nancy saw that there was a wistful look in her friend’s eyes. “Weren’t you ever taken in by Matt—I mean, Gary Page? Not even for the tiniest minute?”
“Sure,” Nancy answered. “Especially when we were out on the pond, in the moonlight, and we were having so much fun. I was just as fooled as anyone.”
Bess sighed.
“Don’t feel bad, Bess. You really wanted it to be true that Matt was alive. And Gary Page put on a really convincing act. He was charming, handsome, generous—he said and did everything exactly right. No one could ever blame you for believing in him.”
Bess smiled sadly. “When he fell for that lie about the cake, I was the one who felt like a fool at first. I mean, I actually thought I could fall in love with that guy! But then I just got madder and madder at him for being so deceitful.” She shook her head. “What a jerk.”
Nancy gave Bess a warm smile. She knew Bess must feel sad that Matt had turned out to be a fake, but at least she was mad at him, too.
Nancy and Bess climbed into the Mustang and went to pick up George. As the three girls then drove toward the Drews’, Nancy and Bess told George what had happened out at Glover’s Corners.
“You’re kidding!” George exclaimed. “I can’t believe I missed the wrap-up of the whole case!”
“I wouldn’t have minded missing it a bit,” said Bess. “It was pretty scary.”
“It was even scarier if you knew Fred and Max’s true nature,” Nancy added with a laugh. “I was afraid they’d start wagging their tails and making friends with those goons.”
The lights were on at the Drews’ house, and Carson Drew greeted the girls with a big smile as they came in the front door.
“The police chief just called and told me what happened,” he said. “He said to tell you that Jake Loomis and Gary Page both gave signed confessions.” Carson smiled proudly at his daughter. “The police have an open-and-shut case. Page and Loomis will be going to jail, I can promise you that.”
“Great!” Nancy said. She and Bess sat on the den sofa, while George settled herself in an easy chair.
“By the way,” Carson went on, “that was clever of you to have Tony Giralda’s guard dogs to protect you. Otherwise you would have been in great danger.”
The three girls looked at one another, then dissolved in laughter, leaving Carson to stare at them and shake his head.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Bess said, still giggling a little. “How could Gary Page have aced that lie-detector test?”
“I don’t understand it either,” Nancy put in. “I know they’re not completely reliable, but how could he have done so well? And what made him so eager to take it, when he knew he was lying?”
“I have a theory about it,” Mr. Drew said. “The conspiracy to commit fraud between Gary Page and Jake Loomis was no small thing. It was planned on a grand scale. If it succeeded, they would split a huge fortune.
“They were smart enough to know they couldn’t carry it off without a lot of preparation. In a sense, Gary went into training as an athlete would.”
“He went into training to become Matt,” Nancy said, nodding. “That makes sense.”
“Yes,” her father continued. “To become Matt. Not to imitate him perfectly, but to be Matthew Glover for the rest of his life. He submerged himself in so much detail, he worked so hard at being Matt, I think in the end he might really have believed he was Matt.”
“Then why did the test indicate he was lying about having been in Colorado?” Nancy asked.
“It turns out he never had been in Colorado. He’s from Nebraska. He did work on a paper in Iowa City, but he’s never been west of Omaha.”
“Why should that make any difference?” George wanted to know. “He lied about everything else easily enough. Why couldn’t he lie about being in Colorado?”
“I think I know,” Nancy said. “Colorado, the accident itself, wasn’t a part of his training with Loomis. Why should it have been? He’d had amnesia, and even if he snapped out of it when he saw his father’s obituary, he might not remember the actual accident, anyway.”
“Yes, I think you’re right, Nancy,” Carson Drew said.
“In other words,” said George, “he couldn’t believe in anything Loomis hadn’t prepared him for.”
“Well put, George,” said Nancy’s father. “Think of Loomis as the trainer and Gary Page as a racehorse.”
“A racehorse that finally tripped on a hurdle,” said Nancy.
There was a giggle from Bess before she put in, “A hurdle shaped like a football and iced in white and purple.”
At that moment the phone rang. Nancy went to answer it.
“Hi, Nan,” came Ned’s voice. “Sorry to call so late, but no one was at your place all day except Hannah.”
Nancy felt a familiar warm tingle at the sound of his voice. “It was one of those days,” she told him.
“One of what days? What happened?” he asked. “You sound a little tired.”
There was so much to explain. “It’s a long story,” she said into the phone. “And I’ve got company. I’ll call you back and tell you everything as soon as Bess and George leave, okay?”
She talked with him a few more minutes, then said goodbye and hung up. When she returned to the living room, Bess and George were eating chocolate-chip cookies from a plate on the low table in front of the sofa.
“Solving cases with Nancy always makes me so hungry,” Bess said, biting into one of the chewy cookies.
Nancy was reaching for a cookie herself when her father commented, “I’m sure there’ll be some interesting reading in the papers tomorrow.”
Bess sat up on the sofa. “About how we caught the criminals?”
“No,” Carson replied. “About Mr. Glover’s will. Now that nobody’s contesting it, the information can be published.”
“Since the ban of secrecy has been lifted,” Nancy said to
her father, “can you tell us who’s going to get all that money?”
Carson Drew pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and unfolded it. “As a matter of fact, I have a copy of the press release that’s going to the media.” He began to read aloud.
“ ‘The will of Clayton Glover leaves his magnificent residence, Glover’s Corners, to the town of River Heights. It is to be used as a historical museum and gathering place for citizens of the community. In an unusual move, Glover’s will dictates that the grounds of his estate be turned into a park and that the pond be used for ice skating in season.’ ”
“Way to go, Mr. Glover,” George said, clapping her hands.
Carson glanced at the girls and smiled. “ ‘The entire complex will be called the Matthew Glover Park,’ ” he went on,” “ ‘in memory of Mr. Glover’s son, who was killed five years ago on a skiing holiday in Colorado.’ ”
Carson then skimmed over the names of the local charities who would receive money. As Nancy had known, Giralda’s Environmental Action was on the list.
“Great,” said Nancy when her father told them the annual sum Tony would receive. “Now he’ll be able to expand and get the help he deserves.”
“Let’s hear it for Fred and Max!” George shouted.
“What about Mrs. Adams?” Bess asked.
“A trust fund is to be set up for her,” Carson assured the girls. “Mr. Glover mentioned special thanks to her for her faithful service. The press release also mentions Matt.” He read again from the paper. “ ‘None of these bequests would have been possible if Mr. Glover’s son, who would be twenty-three, had lived. We can only speculate as to how Matthew Glover would have used the vast wealth his father would have left to him.’ ”
Carson refolded the paper and looked up. “That’s it.”
A deep silence followed. Nancy looked at Bess, who wore a thoughtful expression. Nancy hoped hearing about Matt hadn’t upset her too much.
“Well,” Bess said at last, “something good came out of all this.”