The machine beeped and then reported that there was one dollar and sixty-seven cents in the drawer. Bess took three dimes out of the machine and pressed the green button again. The register recounted the money perfectly to one dollar and thirty-seven cents. “It can even count dollar bills!” Bess said with amazement.
“That’s the magic of the computer inside,” George reported, looking up from the instruction booklet. “There’s a magic eye hooked to a scanner. The scanner is programmed to tell dollar bills from fives and tens and twenties. It can even pick out fifties and one-hundred-dollar bills.”
Nancy tapped her pencil on her notebook. The Clue Crew had been checking out the register for ten minutes, and they still didn’t have any clues about how the money had disappeared. Nancy was positive that the register held the solution to the mystery. She had really sharp instincts—that was what made her such a great detective.
“Hey!” Bess suddenly shouted. “I think I found something!” She handed Nancy a small piece of white paper, folded into a little square. “This was in the cash drawer. It was stuck in the bottom of the quarter cup.”
“Weird,” George said, looking over Bess’s shoulder at the white paper. “I guess that because the magic eye only recognizes paper money, it didn’t do anything with this blank paper.”
“It’s not blank,” Nancy reported, opening the small square. She held up the paper to show the girls that thirty-five little pencil lines were drawn neatly onto the paper in groups of five.
“I wonder what it means,” George said softly.
“It’s our first clue,” Nancy said, writing down Thirty-five lines under her clues column.
“I’m not so sure. Maybe it isn’t a clue at all.” Bess took the paper back from Nancy and refolded it. All the excitement at having found the little piece of paper was gone from her face. “We should probably put it back in the cash register, in case it’s something important. Like a code to use if the cash register breaks or something like that.”
The girls agreed. Since none of them knew what the paper and the lines meant, they put it back where they found it. But Nancy didn’t erase what she’d written about the paper under her clues column.
Nancy knew in her heart that the Clue Crew had just discovered their first clue.
Chapter Six
Gooey, Gooey Clue
“I know where to find a real clue!” Bess said suddenly, moving away from the register. “Come on!” She led the girls to the back of the Pencil Box.
She knocked on Mr. Gustavson’s office door, in case he’d come in while they were looking at the register.
“I see you guys knocking,” Robin called down from the top of a ladder nearby. “But no one is gonna answer. Mr. G’s not here yet.” She reached up, pulling a large cardboard box off a high shelf. Then she blew a large pink gum bubble as she balanced the box on one of the ladder rungs.
“Can I help with that?” Nancy asked, stepping toward the bottom of the ladder, prepared to take the box from Robin.
“Huh?” asked Robin, popping the bubble. “Oh.” She saw Nancy looking up at her. “I can’t hear you.” Turning her head, Robin pointed at her ear, reminding Nancy that she still had her music blaring.
“Can I help?” Nancy shouted even louder.
“Nah,” Robin replied, finally hearing Nancy’s offer. “I’m used to carrying heavy loads. Thanks anyway.” Robin put the box on her right shoulder and, using her left hand to steady herself, came down the ladder. “Pencils,” she told the girls. “One little box is really light. Put hundreds of little boxes into one bigger box and those pencils are really heavy. I have to get a bunch of these big boxes down today. All the kids are gonna need pencils.” She plopped the box of pencils on the floor and turned down her music.
“Do you guys need something in Mr. G’s office?” Robin asked.
“I want to see the receipts from yesterday,” Bess responded. “I think they might help us sol—”
“I suppose I could let you in,” Robin cut in. “Mr. G didn’t tell me not to, and seeing as you’re working on that upcoming class project and all . . .”
“It’s not a class project,” George began. “We are investi—”
“Whatever.” Robin stopped George’s explanation by jingling her shop keys. “Mr. G said I should let you guys look around.” She unlocked the door and opened the office. “Have a good time.” And with that, Robin blew another big, fat pink bubble and walked away.
“She doesn’t listen, does she?” said George as they entered the office.
“Not to us,” Bess agreed. “She doesn’t let us finish our senten—”
“Whatever,” Nancy interrupted, imitating Robin. The girls all laughed. “She’s really nice, though.”
“And a hard worker,” George added. “It’s no wonder Mr. Gustavson likes having her work here.”
Bess was about to pay Robin another compliment when suddenly she found what she was looking for. She held up the cash register receipt from the previous day. At the bottom, a number was circled in red. “Eight dollars and seventy-five cents,” Bess reported.
“Poor Rodger,” George moaned, hearing the missing amount of money again. “I hope we can help him.”
“We can!” said Bess enthusiastically. “Here’s our first clue.”
“Our second clue,” Nancy corrected.
“All right,” Bess gave in. “Since Nancy is such a good detective, we’ll go with her instinct. The paper with the thirty-five lines can be our first clue. So this one”—she waved the receipt in her hand—“this is our second clue.”
Nancy pulled out her notebook and turned to the correct page, ready for Bess to explain.
“I was thinking about how the cash register weighs the money and can tell how many quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies are in the drawer,” Bess began. “Then I thought, ‘I wonder what kind of money was missing?’ I mean, was it a five-dollar bill, three ones, and three quarters? Or five one-dollar bills, seventy dimes, and a nickel? It could be almost any combination of money.
“I had to look at the receipt to know for sure.” Bess showed Nancy and George the receipt from the cash register. Right above the red-circled “$8.75,” it said, “Quarters.”
“So,” said Nancy with sudden understanding, “the missing money is all in quarters?”
“Exactly.” Bess beamed. “Our first”—she looked at Nancy—“I mean, our second clue!”
“Great job,” Nancy told Bess as she wrote down the clue in her notebook. “We are cruisin’ on the clue finding. Now we need some suspects.”
“I have two ideas,” George piped up.
Nancy was ready to write.
“Well,” George said thoughtfully, “Deirdre had an awful lot of quarters when we saw her at the Drop Zone machine yesterday.”
Nancy wrote Deirdre’s name under the suspect column. “Good point. That’s one. Who’s two?”
“Ned Nickerson,” George suggested. “He was complaining that the Drop Zone gum loses its flavor, and he needed quarters to get more gum.”
“Didn’t he say he would get a lot of quarters from his mom?” Bess asked, thinking back.
“No,” said George. “He just told us he needed quarters to buy more gum. He never said where he was going to get them.” Nancy wrote down Ned’s name. Then she studied the names and clues in her notebook. “Deirdre told us that she comes to the mall every day,” she said. “I bet if we hang out a while, we can talk to her.”
“And how are we going to find Ned?” George wondered.
“He also said he’d be back today to finish his shopping,” Nancy recalled. “I can’t believe either of them would take money that wasn’t theirs, but we’d better check it out.”
“Good plan,” Bess said. “What about our back-to-school shopping? We promised Hannah we’d get it done today.”
“Let’s shop now,” suggested George. “Schneider’s department store is really close. Maybe we can hurry over and get our backpacks, then
come back to the Pencil Box before Deirdre and Ned show up.”
“Sounds smart to me,” Bess agreed.
The girls were leaving Mr. Gustavson’s office to go find Hannah when Nancy said, “Ouch.” Then someone else yelled, “Auuugghhh.” And then there was a crash.
“What happened this time, Nancy Drew?” said Bess, spinning around.
Nancy was holding her toe. “I wasn’t looking where I was going and slammed into Robin’s ladder.”
The girls quickly looked around. Robin’s ladder had fallen, and so had Robin. She was lying on the floor under hundreds of Number 2 pencils. In the fall, the big cardboard box she was carrying had opened, and then the little pencil boxes had opened too. There were yellow pencils everywhere.
“Are you okay?” Bess asked, reaching down to pull a pencil out of Robin’s spikey hair.
“I’m fine,” said Robin, pulling herself up off the ground. She took her earbuds out so she could hear the girls. “How about you?” Robin asked Nancy.
Nancy wiggled her toe to make sure it wasn’t broken. “I’m goo—”
“I thought I told you to be careful,” Robin interrupted Nancy yet again.
Nancy wondered if Robin might be mad at her, but then the young woman smiled. “Accidents happen,” she told them.
“They happen all the time to Nancy Drew,” Bess said with a smile. “I mean she’s always so—”
“Whatever,” Robin cut Bess off. “Hey, help me clean this up, will ya?”
The girls got on their hands and knees to help Robin pick up pencils.
Nancy discovered her purple notebook and matching purple pencil buried under a pile of yellow pencils. She must have dropped them when she bumped her toe.
“Oh, man!” Robin suddenly sat up and grabbed at her throat.
“What?!” The girls popped up and rushed over to Robin’s side.
“When I fell off the ladder, I swallowed my gum!” She rolled her tongue around in her mouth, checking that it was gone for sure. “It was a yellow piece,” she moaned. “My favorite.”
“I thought I saw you chewing pink gum,” Bess remarked.
“Pink gum is the worst. It loses flavor in, like, thirty seconds,” Robin replied. “Yellow holds it the longest. Maybe five minutes or so.” Her shoulders drooped. “Bummer. That piece still had flavor left.”
“You didn’t swallow your gum,” Nancy told Robin with complete certainty.
“I didn’t?” Robin asked, confused.
Nancy held up her notebook. There, under the clues column, was Robin’s chewed-up yellow gum. It was stuck to the page. “It must have flown out of your mouth when you fell and then stuck in my notebook,” Nancy said, trying to peel the gum off the page without any success.
“Eww,” said Bess.
“I don’t want my gum back, thanks, but I’m really glad I didn’t swallow it,” Robin said with a sigh of relief.
“I’m glad you don’t want it, because I can’t get your gum out of my notebook,” said Nancy. “Drop Zone gum might not have good flavor, but it’s really sticky.”
“It’s a bummer that your class project’s ruined. Miss Kimler will be so disappointed,” Robin said, as she put the last of the pencils in a box. “It’s not very nice to turn in your work with gum stuck on it.”
“It’s not a class pro—” Bess began, then decided to give up. Robin wasn’t listening anyway. She’d finished cleaning up the pencils and had stuck her earbuds back in. The music was loud, and Bess knew Robin couldn’t hear anything she was saying.
“If she keeps listening to her music that loud, she might go deaf,” Bess remarked. “At least, that’s what my mom always says.” The other girls laughed in agreement.
After Robin went back to work, Bess and George peered into Nancy’s notebook.
Bess gave Nancy a little piece of tissue to put over the gum so the notebook pages wouldn’t stick together when Nancy closed the purple cover.
“It’s official then,” George announced. “Robin’s gum is our third clue.”
Everyone began to giggle.
Chapter Seven
Quarters, Quarters, and More Quarters
Mr. Gustavson arrived at the store a few minutes before opening time. “Hello, girls,” he greeted the Clue Crew. “I see Robin let you in. Any idea where Rodger is?”
Robin pulled the earbuds out of her ears so that she could hear Mr. Gustavson’s question. Of course she missed it the first time and had to ask, “What’d ya say, Mr. G?”
“He asked where Rodger was,” Bess quickly put in.
“Exactly.” Mr. Gustavson nodded. “Where is that boy?” He checked his watch. “On his first day of work, money goes missing from the cash register. On his second day, he’s late.” Mr. Gustavson tapped his toe on the floor. “Not a good way to impress the boss, if you ask me.”
“I’m sure he’ll be here in a second,” Nancy told Mr. Gustavson. She and the girls had been about to go find Hannah and finally head over to Schneider’s to buy those backpacks when Mr. Gustavson arrived at the Pencil Box. Nancy leaned over to Bess and George and whispered, “Hannah and the backpacks are going to have to wait. I think we should hang here and find out why Rodger is late.”
The girls agreed to stick around until Rodger showed up. But after five minutes, he still wasn’t there. Shoppers were beginning to line up at the counter to pay, and there was no one working the register.
Mr. Gustavson stepped behind the register and began to ring up purchases.
Suddenly Robin came out of the back area, saying, “I know where Rodger is!”
Mr. Gustavson turned to Robin, who was peeling her earbuds out of her ears so that she could have a conversation and actually hear what was going on, too.
“I nearly forgot!” Robin continued. “I saw Rodger when I came in this morning. He was at the mall early too.”
“Where is he, then?” asked Nancy.
“Rodger was waiting for the gaming arcade to open,” Robin told everyone around, including the shoppers standing in line. “I asked him what he was doing, and he said he always goes there first thing in the morning. He likes to be the daily high scorer on Thrash Combat.” She paused, then added, “Apparently today is a special day. They’re having a contest.”
Mr. Gustavson stopped ringing purchases long enough to ask Nancy and the Clue Crew kindly, “Would you girls please go over to the arcade and tell Rodger to come to work?” He glanced at the growing line. Back-to-school shoppers were quickly filling the store. “Tell him to hurry. Or he’ll be in trouble for more than the missing money.”
“Will do, Mr. Gustavson,” George said. The girls didn’t want Rodger to get into more trouble, so they rushed out of the store to go find him and bring him back. They made a quick stop by Hannah to explain where they were headed. She was busy finishing a sleeve for the sweater she was knitting and was happy to wait for them.
Nancy pulled out her notebook and pencil as they walked through the mall.
She was flipping pages, looking for the Missing Money clues and suspect page and once again not paying attention to where she was going. “Oops. Sorry,” Nancy would say as she bumped into shoppers in the crowded mall.
The third time she ran into someone, Bess grabbed Nancy’s arm to stop her. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m adding another suspect to our list,” Nancy replied, finally finding the right page and lifting her pencil, ready to write.
“Who’s the suspect?” George asked. “We already have Ned and Deirdre. Who else could have taken the quarters?”
Nancy looked across to the arcade. They could see Rodger through the window, standing at a tall video game, pressing buttons wildly. She pointed at the arcade sign.
It read: GAME PLAY PALACE in flashing red neon lights. And under that, in smaller blue letters: ALL VIDEO GAMES 25 CENTS.
The girls looked through the glass at Rodger just in time to see him stop pressing buttons. Then he reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out
a coin, inserted it into the game, and resumed playing.
“It must take him a lot of quarters to become the high scorer every day,” Bess added, as she realized the connection. “Maybe even eight dollars and seventy-five cents worth of quarters.”
“Rodger is definitely a suspect.” Nancy wrote down Rodger Hunter’s name under the suspect column. “I’m wondering if maybe he needed all those quarters to play Thrash Combat,” she explained. “I hate to make him a suspect, but it sure does seem suspicious.”
“We have three suspects now,” Bess said, as they continued on their mission. There were going not just to get Rodger to come back to the Pencil Box, but now to also ask him where he got his quarters from.
They’d nearly gone inside the Game Play Palace when someone came up behind the girls and said, “Hey, Nancy. Hi, Bess. Hiya, George.” All three girls turned around at the same time to see who was calling their names.
It was Deirdre Shannon. Suspect Number One.
Chapter Eight
The One and Only
“Hey, Deirdre,” Nancy greeted her. Nancy immediately noticed that Deirdre was holding the same tin that she had been carrying the day before. The lid was on the heart-shaped box today, but Nancy knew what was inside. She’d seen the contents when they’d been standing in line at the Drop Zone. Deirdre’s box was full of quarters.
“What’s up?” Deirdre asked Nancy, Bess, and George. “You got a new mystery to solve?” Everyone around school knew about Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew.
“We’re hot on a case,” Bess told Deirdre.
“Tell me more.” Deirdre wanted to hear the details.
“Do you know Rodger Hunter?” George asked her. And when Deirdre nodded, she continued, “The cash register he was working on yesterday is missing some quarters.”
“Eight dollars and seventy-five cents worth of quarters,” Bess said, glancing quickly down at Deirdre’s money box.