“Oh—hi,” Nancy said. “I was just writing something.”
“In your detective’s notebook?” Danielle asked.
“Yes,” Nancy said, closing it quickly.
“Can I see?” Danielle asked.
“No,” Nancy said. “It’s private.”
“Oh,” Danielle said. She tossed her long blond braid over her shoulders and gave Nancy a hurt look.
“Come on,” Nancy said as she put the notebook back in her locker. “We’re missing the lesson.”
Nancy hopped up and headed toward the green swinging door. It led right into the ice rink. Danielle sat down to put on her skates.
“Oh, by the way,” Nancy said. “Ms. Swanback announced your name. You get to be one of the flower girls for the ice show.”
Nancy watched Danielle’s face carefully. But the lights in the locker room were dim. She couldn’t tell if Danielle blushed or looked guilty.
“Great!” Danielle said. “That will be so much fun!”
Then Danielle finished tying her skates. She hurried toward the ice. Nancy followed her. But just as Nancy stepped onto the ice, Bess came skating up.
“Nancy!” Bess said, grabbing Nancy’s arm. “Guess what I just remembered?”
“What?” Nancy asked.
“I think I know who did it!” Bess said. “I know who erased your name from the list!”
3
Clues on the Ice
Who?” Nancy asked, staring wide-eyed at Bess.
“It was Susan Hong,” Bess announced as she and Nancy stood near the opening in the boards that surrounded the ice rink.
“How do you know?” Nancy asked.
“Because I saw her. I mean, I just remembered that I saw her erasing her own name from the board, anyway,” Bess said.
“Really?”
“Yes,” Bess said. “It was last Saturday. George and I were here to skate. I saw Susan in the lobby. She had a tissue in her hand, and she was wiping her name off the board.”
“Hmmm,” Nancy said. “That’s weird.”
“I know,” Bess said. “I mean, why would she erase her own name?”
“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “And anyway, her name is back on the list. Ms. Swanback said so. She’s one of the flower girls.”
“Oh, yeah,” Bess said, looking puzzled. “Well, do you think maybe she erased your name, too?”
Nancy shook her head. “I don’t know. Why would she, if she was erasing her own name?”
“Good question,” Bess admitted. “But I’ll tell you one thing. While you were in the locker room I talked to Ms. Swanback. I don’t think she believed you—about writing your name on the list. But she said that if you can prove someone erased your name, she’ll let you be a flower girl.”
“Good,” Nancy said. “Then I’ll have to work fast. Come on—we’re missing the lesson.”
Nancy and Bess both skated over to Ms. Swanback. She was teaching everyone how to skate backward.
Nancy took her place in the group, and listened carefully to Ms. Swanback’s instructions. Nancy was good at the basics. She could skate forward and backward on two feet. She could skate forward on one foot. And she could spin in a circle.
But she couldn’t skate backward using only one foot at a time. She definitely couldn’t do the crossover strokes. Those were the hardest—the ones where she had to lift one foot and cross it over the other.
Ms. Swanback showed Nancy how to glide backward on one skate. It was easier when the teacher was helping her.
Then Nancy practiced on her own.
“Keep your weight centered over your skating foot,” Amara called out to Nancy.
“I’m trying!” Nancy cried. She giggled as her foot wobbled and she almost fell down.
Meanwhile Ms. Swanback worked with the other girls. Some of them were better skaters than Nancy.
Finally the lesson was over. Everyone had to leave the ice. Then the big Zamboni machine came out. It looked like a huge motorized lawn mower. It scraped the ice, leaving it perfectly smooth and clean.
Nancy and Bess hurried into the locker room to change out of their skates.
“Let’s leave our things in our lockers,” Bess said. “It’s only a quarter to six, and my mom won’t be here until six o’clock. She gave me some money. She said we could go to the snack bar and get hot chocolate.”
“Great!” Nancy said.
Nancy stuffed her skates into her locker. But she didn’t lock it. She and her friends didn’t use locks. It was too hard to remember the combinations.
Then Nancy and Bess went out to the lobby. The snack bar was just a small window with a counter. Bess ordered the hot chocolate. She and Nancy sat at a nearby table to drink it.
As they sat, they watched people leaving the rink. One by one, the other girls from Nancy’s class came out of the locker room.
“See you tomorrow at school,” Amara called to Nancy and Bess.
“Bye,” Nancy called back.
Pretty soon the rink was almost empty. Nearly everyone had gone home. The rink always closed early on Monday nights.
“I can’t drink this hot chocolate,” Bess said, blowing on it. “It’s too hot.”
“Me, either,” Nancy said. “I already burned my tongue.”
“Come on,” Bess said. “We’d better get our skates and wait by the front door. My mom will be here soon.”
Nancy and Bess dumped their cups of hot chocolate in the trash. They headed toward the locker room again.
Nancy pushed open the locker room door. There were two long rows of lockers in the middle of the room, and lockers on the side walls.
At first the room looked empty to Nancy. But as she went around the corner of one row of lockers, she thought she heard footsteps running away.
“Who’s there?” Nancy called.
No one answered. Then she heard the big green door to the ice rink open and close.
“Who was that?” Bess said.
“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “But look. My locker’s open. Someone’s been snooping in here!”
Bess’s eyes grew wide. “I don’t believe it!” she said. “Is anything missing?”
Nancy checked inside the locker. “No. But I think someone was reading my notebook. Look.”
She pointed to her special blue notebook. It was sticking halfway out of her backpack.
Nancy ran toward the green door and opened it. Bess was right behind her. They stepped into the dark ice rink.
The rink was darker than usual. It was almost spooky. Only two small lights shone overhead. Nancy looked around quickly. No one seemed to be there.
“Where did she go?” Bess wondered, looking all around. Her voice echoed in the empty rink.
“I don’t know. Maybe back to the lobby, through the red door,” Nancy said, pointing.
She hurried over to the red door at the other side of the rink. It was the one that led straight back into the lobby.
“We have to catch her,” Bess said. She was right behind Nancy.
Nancy yanked open the door to the lobby. She stuck her head out to see if anyone was there. But no one was.
Bess put her hands on her hips.
“You don’t think she went into the boys’ locker room, do you?” she said.
Nancy glanced toward the boys’ locker-room door. “No,” she said, shaking her head.
“Well, she got away—whoever she was,” Bess said.
Nancy nodded. But she was staring past Bess, at the ice.
“Look,” Nancy said. She pointed. “I think she left us a clue.”
“Where?” Bess asked, turning to see where Nancy was pointing.
“On the ice,” Nancy said. “See those lines? Someone was skating after the Zamboni cleaned it.”
Nancy hurried over toward the ice and looked at it carefully. “Someone was practicing a three-turn,” she said. “You can tell because that line looks like the number three.”
“That’s what Danielle was working on
today!” Bess exclaimed. “She’s the only one in our class who can do a three-turn.”
“Exactly,” Nancy said. “She must have stayed late, after the Zamboni guy was done. Then she got back on the ice.”
“So you think she was snooping in your locker, too?” Bess asked.
Nancy shrugged. “I don’t know for sure,” she said. “But she could have been. She saw me writing in my notebook. She asked to see it.”
“Oh, wow,” Bess said. “Then I’ll bet she’s the one who erased your name from the board, too.”
“Maybe,” Nancy said as she headed back toward the locker-room door. “But we’ve got to get proof.”
Nancy reached for the door handle. She pulled hard, but it wouldn’t open.
“Oh, no,” Nancy said. “It’s locked. We’re locked in!”
4
Trapped!
Help!” Bess cried. “Let us out! Help!”
Nancy didn’t want to scream. She wasn’t that scared. But she did want to get out of the ice rink. It wasn’t fun being locked up in the dark.
She ran to the red door—the one that led into the lobby. But now it was locked, too.
“Let us out!” Bess yelled.
Nancy hurried back to the locker-room door and pounded on it with her fist. “Hello?” Nancy called. “Is anyone there? Hello! We’re trapped in here! Let us out!”
Then Nancy stopped pounding and listened. “Shh,” she told Bess. “I hear someone moving around inside the locker room.”
Bess held her breath and listened, too.
“Maybe it’s Danielle,” Bess whispered. “Maybe she’s trying to trap us in here, just to be mean.”
Just then the door to the locker room opened. A beam of light streamed into the dark ice rink. Nancy saw a man standing in the doorway. With the light behind him, it was hard to see his face.
“What happened? You girls get locked inside?” the man said.
Nancy recognized his voice. It was Mr. Radnor, the ice rink manager.
“Yes,” Nancy said.
Mr. Radnor flipped a switch near the door. Some of the lights came back on.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I thought everyone was gone, so I locked these doors a few minutes early. I’ve been cleaning up the lobby. Sorry if I gave you a scare.”
“Oh, we weren’t scared,” Bess said quickly. She shook her head hard, and her long blond hair bounced.
Nancy burst out laughing. “Who wasn’t scared?” Nancy said. “You sounded pretty scared to me.”
“Never mind,” Bess said, sticking her nose in the air. “Come on. My mom is probably waiting in the parking lot.”
Nancy hurried to get her backpack. Then she and Bess walked to the front door. Mrs. Marvin was parked right outside, just as Bess thought.
Nancy and Bess got into the red minivan. Then Nancy took her blue notebook out of her backpack again. She opened it to the page where she had written “The Ice-Skating Mystery.”
“Danielle,” she wrote. “Snooping in my notebook. Why?”
Then Nancy closed her notebook and put it back into her pack. She folded her arms across her chest.
I’ve got to find out who took my name off the list before Saturday, she thought. And that means I have less than a week!
• • •
“Nancy! Over here!” a voice called.
Nancy looked across the school playground. It was recess the next day. Through the falling snowflakes, Nancy saw Bess and George waving. They were all the way across the playground. George was lying on her back, making a snow angel.
Nancy ran to join her friends.
“Brrr, it’s so cold,” Bess said, shivering.
“I’m not cold,” Nancy said. “I love it!”
She turned around and stood with her back to a clean spot of snow. Then she stretched her arms out wide.
“Timmmm-berrr!” George shouted as Nancy fell straight back into the snow.
Nancy lay on her back for a moment and opened her mouth. She let the snowflakes fall onto her tongue.
“They don’t taste as cold as you think they will,” Nancy announced.
George stood up from her snow angel and stepped away carefully.
“Your turn,” she said to her cousin Bess.
“No, thanks,” Bess said. “I don’t want to get my new coat snowy.”
“You and your clothes,” George said, rolling her eyes. “Do you have any clothes that you can actually play in?”
“Sure,” Bess said. “My old clothes. But I never wear them.”
“Why not?” Nancy asked, still lying on her back in the snow.
“Because they’re old, silly!” Bess said. “I like my new clothes better.”
Nancy got up and brushed off her own coat. Then she looked around the playground. She had been looking for Danielle Margolies all through lunch-time. Danielle was in a different third-grade class.
“If you’re looking for Danielle, she’s not here,” George said. “Amara told me. Danielle’s sick today.”
“Oh,” Nancy said.
“But we could spy on your other suspects,” George suggested. Nancy and Bess had told George all about the mystery. “Who else is on the list?”
“Mandy Trout and Megan,” Nancy said. “And maybe Susan Hong.”
“Well, there’s Mandy now,” George said.
Nancy followed George’s gaze. George was right—Mandy was walking toward the school door. Nancy knew it was her, because she always wore her scarf wrapped around her mouth.
“Where’s she going?” Nancy wondered out loud. “We’re not supposed to go back inside until the bell rings.”
“I’ll bet she’s up to something,” Bess said, pulling Nancy by the sleeve. “Let’s follow her.”
Nancy hurried toward the school. She didn’t need Bess to pull her. She wanted to solve this mystery more than anything in the world.
“Wait,” George said. “She’s turning around.”
All three girls stopped and pretended to be talking to each other. But Nancy watched Mandy out of the corner of her eye. Mandy seemed to be checking to make sure no one saw her. Then she slipped inside the school building.
Nancy, Bess, and George followed. But they didn’t get too close. They didn’t want her to see them.
The halls were empty. Mandy hurried to her classroom—Mrs. Keller’s room—and sneaked inside.
The three friends waited until Mandy had closed the door from inside the room.
Then they tiptoed up to the door. Nancy peeked through the glass pane to see what Mandy was doing. Bess and George stayed close to the wall, out of sight.
“What’s she doing?” Bess whispered in Nancy’s ear.
Nancy shook her head. She didn’t know the answer yet. Mandy was walking toward the blackboard. She had an eraser in her hand.
“What’s she doing?” Bess repeated.
“Oh, no!” Nancy gasped. “There’s a list of classroom chores on the blackboard.”
“So what?” George said softly.
“So she’s erasing her name from the list,” Nancy said. “And she’s writing in someone else’s name instead!”
5
I Hate You, Nancy Drew
Quickly Nancy pulled open the door to the classroom and stepped in.
Mandy jumped. She turned from the blackboard with the chalk and eraser still in her hands.
“Nancy!” Mandy cried out. “You scared me!”
Bess and George followed Nancy into the room.
“What are you doing?” Nancy asked Mandy.
“Nothing,” Mandy said, her face turning bright red. Quickly she put the chalk down on the blackboard tray. But she still held on to the eraser.
“That’s not true,” Nancy said. “I saw you. You erased your name from that chores list on the blackboard.”
“What were you doing? Spying on me?” Mandy said.
“You’re not supposed to be in here during lunch,” Bess said in an accusing tone of voice.
/> “Neither are you,” Mandy said back.
Nancy folded her arms. “Look,” she said. “Maybe I was spying on you. But I have a reason. I’m trying to find out who erased my name from the sign-up board at the ice rink. Because someone did. And I just saw you doing the exact same thing.”
Mandy’s face turned twice as red. Tears filled her eyes.
“I hate you, Nancy Drew!” she cried. Then she threw the eraser down on the floor and ran out of the room.
For a minute Bess and George were silent. They looked at Nancy, waiting to see what she would say.
“I didn’t mean to make her cry,” Nancy said slowly.
“I know,” Bess said. “But she cries all the time. Anyway, at least you caught her. She’s probably the one who erased your name at the ice rink. And now she’ll get to be a flower girl and you won’t!”
“It’s not fair,” George said.
No, it’s not, Nancy thought. She was so mad, she felt her face getting hot.
“But what about Danielle?” George said to Nancy. “I thought you told me she was the one who snooped in your locker at the rink.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s right,” Bess said. “Now I’m all mixed up. That means Danielle and Mandy are both still suspects.”
Nancy was mixed up, too. But that didn’t worry her very much. She knew it was just part of being a detective. It was hard to solve mysteries.
Just then the bell rang. Lunch was over.
“Anyway, it’s better to have too many clues than too few,” Nancy said as she and her friends hurried back to class.
• • •
By Friday after school, Nancy was very worried.
“Tomorrow is the ice show,” Nancy said to Bess. “I’ve got to solve this mystery soon, or I won’t get to be a flower girl.”
“I feel so bad,” Bess said. “It won’t be any fun for me to be one, if you can’t.”
The two of them had just arrived at the skating pond in the park. Nancy sat down on a snowy log near the pond to put on her skates. Bess did the same thing. They left their boots by the log. Then they skated out onto the ice.
“Have you figured out who did it?” Bess asked as they twirled in fast circles.