She hadn’t promised George at all. But as Nancy started her rental car, she didn’t stop to think about it. She wanted to follow Cheryl. There was something wrong here, and she was going to find out what it was.
She picked out Cheryl’s car as it turned the corner. After a few minutes Nancy realized that Cheryl was driving in the direction of Robert Gleason’s apartment. Sure enough, Cheryl stopped her car right in front of the building.
Nancy waited a minute for Cheryl to get inside, then followed her upstairs. She listened outside Gleason’s apartment. There were voices inside—a man’s and Cheryl’s.
“It’s got to be here somewhere,” Nancy heard the man say. There was the sound of furniture being moved and scraped over the floor. Suddenly Cheryl was shouting, and Nancy heard glass breaking.
There wasn’t any time to waste. Nancy turned the knob and pushed against the door. It moved only a couple of inches. The door was being held by a light chain.
Cheryl’s voice and the man’s grew louder, and Nancy could tell their fight was becoming heated.
Nancy nudged her shoulder up against the door and pushed up and in at the same time with one great burst. The chain popped. Nancy stepped in. What she saw made her freeze for a second.
Chris Gleason had Cheryl Pomeroy up against the wall. His hands were moving up toward her throat.
It looked as if he was going to strangle her!
Chapter
Ten
STOP!” NANCY CRIED. Chris was so startled that he dropped his hands and took a step back.
He tripped over Nancy, who had rushed up to him, and landed flat on his back. From a seated position, he glared up at her before pulling himself to his feet.
“You’ll be sorry,” he said in a flat, ominous tone. Then, before Nancy could stop him, he ran out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
“Are you okay?” Nancy asked Cheryl.
Cheryl rubbed her throat and took a deep breath. “I think so.”
Nancy ran to the window in time to see Chris climb into his car. Within a few seconds, he had his headlights on and was speeding off.
Cheryl ran over to Nancy, pulled back the curtain, and watched as the red taillights winked out on Chris’s car as he sped down the deserted street.
“I don’t know what’s happened to him,” she said, bursting into tears. “I’ve never seen him like this before. He seems to be possessed!”
Was there something going on between Cheryl Pomeroy and Chris Gleason? Nancy wondered.
“Are you and Chris dating?” Nancy asked, searching Cheryl’s face.
Cheryl nodded silently. She turned and stared out the window; then, with a sigh, she started talking.
“He made me promise not to tell you,” she said softly. “He said I shouldn’t trust you. That’s what got him so angry—that I went to see you.”
Nancy drew in a sharp breath. “He was going to attack you just because you visited me?” she asked gently.
“As I said, he’s changed a lot. But I don’t think he would have actually hurt me.” Nancy saw uncertainty pass over Cheryl’s clear gray eyes. “He used to be such a nice guy, but now he’s gotten so serious. Maybe it’s because of his father. I don’t know. But I can’t keep any of this to myself anymore. Oh, Nancy, what should I do?”
Nancy reached over and put an arm around Cheryl’s shoulders. “I’m sure he’s going through a tough time,” she said. “Everything will work out.”
“You think so?” Cheryl’s face brightened.
“I do,” Nancy answered.
“I hope you’re right, because he’s the reason I helped Robert Gleason.”
Nancy knew she should have guessed. The case was getting more complicated by the minute.
“Now he doesn’t seem to care about what I’ve already done for him,” Cheryl went on breathlessly. “He just keeps asking me more and more questions. What was in the file. Can’t I get another copy. He won’t let up.” The story was spilling out of Cheryl. “I’m telling you, he’s driving me crazy!”
“I’ll bet he is,” Nancy said sympathetically. She didn’t want Cheryl to stop now. Finally, she felt she was getting some real clues. “You feel as if he’s using you,” she said.
“Exactly,” Cheryl said. “And he won’t let go of this thing. He says he’s convinced that someone killed his dad for that evidence. He says that if he can just find it, he’ll prove his father was innocent. But in the back of my mind I wonder if he isn’t after money, too.”
“What makes you think that?” Nancy felt herself getting close to what was making Chris Gleason act so crazy.
“Because he went to visit Dennis Allard and because I know his mother doesn’t have much,” Cheryl said. “He had to drop out of college because he couldn’t afford it. Now he’s working as a foreign-car mechanic, and all he talks about is how important it is to find the money.”
“Cheryl, I do think I have to agree with you. Chris Gleason may not care as much about his father’s innocence as he claims.”
A look of fear spread over Cheryl’s face. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that Chris cares about nothing but the money. But he isn’t like that. I know he wants to prove his dad innocent, too.”
“But he is definitely on the trail of the missing money, and he is using us to help him find it,” Nancy said.
Cheryl put her hands over her ears, as if she were blocking out Nancy’s words. “I don’t believe he’s using me,” she said desperately.
Nancy could see that Cheryl was too confused to think clearly. It couldn’t be easy to face those kinds of facts about a guy you cared about a lot. Nancy decided to go easy.
“Okay.” She paused, thinking. “Let’s say Chris cares most about proving his father innocent, and he’s only trying to find the money because he thinks that will help set the record straight.”
“I’m sure that’s it,” Cheryl said quickly. “I know Chris, and I think that that’s what’s going on in his mind.”
“Then what you’ve got to do is convince him that I’m really on his side and want to help him,” Nancy said. “Can you do that?”
“I don’t think it’ll be easy, but I’ll try,” Cheryl said slowly.
“Good. And from now on, you’ve got to be honest with me.” Nancy put her hands on Cheryl’s shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. “Otherwise, we’re never going to get to the bottom of this,” she concluded.
After seeing Cheryl to her car, Nancy stood on the curb and thought for a moment. If Chris Gleason was doing his own investigating, his sister might very well know something about it. There was no guarantee that Kate would tell her anything, but Nancy had to talk to her.
Within a few minutes of checking the Gleasons’ address in a phone book, Nancy was pulling up in front of a nondescript house in a small town just outside of River Heights.
She rang the doorbell. Kate Gleason came to the door wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. When she saw Nancy, she didn’t look happy.
Nancy sighed. She was beginning to get tired of Kate Gleason’s attitude, but she had to try to work around it somehow.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said politely. “But I have to ask you a few questions about your brother.”
“Well, you can’t come in,” Kate said, flipping her hair behind her ears. “My mother is still upset about my dad, and she doesn’t want visitors. What do you want to know?” she asked, stepping onto the porch and closing the door.
“Why didn’t either of you tell me that Chris was dating Cheryl Pomeroy?” Nancy asked.
In the yellow porch light Nancy watched Kate’s eyes narrow. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything. My brother can go out with whomever he wants,” she challenged.
“Of course he can,” Nancy admitted calmly. “But when the person he’s dating also happens to have given important evidence to his father, I think it’s relevant, don’t you?” she asked.
“Look, Nancy. I don’t know what you
’re talking about. Chris and Cheryl have been going together since their senior year in high school. What they do is their business—”
Kate stopped short. The significance of what Nancy had told her must have sunk in. “What do you mean, Cheryl gave my father important evidence?” she asked.
“She told me she did.” Briefly, Nancy told Kate about her visit to Mobley and Myerson and what had happened since then.
“So,” she concluded, “there seems to be a lot your brother’s not telling you or anyone else.”
Kate thought for a moment. “I don’t get it. What you’re telling me just isn’t like Chris. He’s been a little aloof lately, but I thought it was because of what happened to our dad.”
“It may be,” Nancy said. “But I told Cheryl that as far as I’m concerned, Chris’s actions seem just the least bit dishonest, not to mention suspicious.” Nancy tried to be as gentle as she could with what could appear to be an accusation.
Her tactic didn’t work. Kate bristled. “If you came here to ask me to spy on my brother, you can forget it. As far as I’m concerned he’s doing what he can to find out what my father knew before he died. Nothing more and nothing less.”
“Then why isn’t he letting you in on it?” Nancy challenged.
Kate paused. “I don’t know,” she said finally. Then she changed the subject. “Hey, I thought you were on our side.”
“I’m trying to be,” Nancy said. There didn’t seem to be any way to convince the girl.
“Sure, by coming here with accusations. As far as I can tell, you haven’t found out what really happened to my father,” she snapped.
“You two aren’t really helping me,” Nancy said, exasperated.
“Right,” Kate said. “I should try to help you get my brother into trouble. Why don’t you just leave us alone now? We’ll manage just fine without you, Nancy Drew.” With that, Kate stepped back inside and slammed the door shut.
Great, Nancy thought as she got back in her car. The Gleason kids are my only lead and now they think I want to get them into trouble.
Nancy was driving home, thinking about all the dead ends she had run into, when she decided to go back over the most important clue of all—the date book she’d found at Gleason’s apartment. The only lead she really had was sitting at home in her desk drawer, and she hadn’t looked at it since the first day.
Nancy rushed home. The date book wasn’t going to disappear, but she was in a hurry to study it again.
She was letting herself in the front door when Carson appeared in the hallway.
“Nancy, I’ve been thinking—” he began.
“Dad, I’m really tired. Can it wait until morning?” Nancy faked a yawn. Her mind was already poring over the pages of Gleason’s date book. Besides, she didn’t want to have to get into a discussion with her father about what she had been doing at Edward Vaughn’s office or at Mobley and Myerson.
“I want to talk to you a minute, please.” Carson put out his hand to stop her. “After you left, reporters started calling,” he said. Nancy let out a gasp. “It’s okay,” Carson went on. “I’m fine.”
“What specifically did they want to know?” Nancy asked, sitting down on a step leading upstairs.
“It seems that all of River Heights is buzzing with the news that I may have suppressed evidence the DA subpoenaed in the Allard trial,” Carson said with a sigh.
“So now the DA thinks you tried to frame Gleason by withholding evidence?”
Carson nodded. “That’s right. But I didn’t!”
Nancy had never seen her father so worked up. “I know you didn’t, Dad,” she said. She stood up and wrapped her arms around him, hardly able to believe this was happening to them.
Carson hugged her back, then pulled away. He let out a deep breath. “You’re right, Nancy. We can’t stand by and let this go on. I’ll take all the help I can get.”
Now, there’s the father I know and love, Nancy thought. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. “What’s the first step?” she asked.
“Follow me,” Carson said. He went into the living room, Nancy following him.
Carson handed her a thick manila file folder, bursting with documents. “What’s this?” she asked, taking it from her father.
“My records from the trial,” he explained. “I dragged them out and started going through them. And you’ll never believe what I found,” he said excitedly.
Nancy gave her father a bright look. “Don’t keep me in suspense, Dad.”
Carson smiled. “You’re never going to believe this,” he said. “Do you remember that the embezzled money disappeared from a bank account the day before the indictments were handed down?”
Nancy nodded.
“But this is what I hadn’t remembered—the money had supposedly been transferred to an account at the River Heights Bank and Trust.”
“Do you realize what you’re saying?” Nancy asked. “That’s the same bank that Dennis Allard works at now!”
“That’s right, kiddo. One and the same.”
Chapter
Eleven
NANCY STARED unblinking at her father. “You are thinking the same thing I’m thinking, aren’t you?” she asked slowly. “That this isn’t just some strange coincidence.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t think we can jump to conclusions.”
Nancy was about to interrupt, until Carson went on, obviously excited at the discovery. “But it is a little strange that the same man who was involved in the embezzlement case should end up working in the bank where the embezzled money had been transferred to and disappeared from.”
“And this same man claims not to know anything about it.”
Carson pulled a piece of paper from the folder. “Look at this,” he said, pointing. “The day before the indictments came down, all the money that had been transferred there from the clients’ overpayments was withdrawn. In cash. Robert Gleason signed the check.”
“But Gleason insisted he didn’t know anything about the money,” Nancy said, leafing through the pages.
“I know. Nancy, there’s too much that’s wrong here.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Nancy said. She started pacing the room. Everything in the case seemed to be breaking at once.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that Chris Gleason knows something about where the money is. Or is trying his hardest to find it,” she told her father.
“So you weren’t with George just now, were you?” Carson asked, a grin spreading over his face. “Come on, Nancy. I’m your father, I can tell when something’s up.”
Nancy was so relieved her father was finally on her side that the whole story spilled out of her.
“Dad, I followed Cheryl Pomeroy,” she told him. “You’re never going to believe this, but the reason she gave Gleason the file in the first place was because she’s going with Chris Gleason. She also told me that Chris has been to see Dennis Allard. It looks like he’s obsessed with the money that was never found.”
Carson rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “So you think his main reason for getting you to investigate his father’s death is to lead him to the money?”
Nancy nodded.
“I’m going to change my mind again. I think it’s time I called the district attorney and told him my side of the story, including all of this about the Gleasons,” Carson said firmly. “And tomorrow I’m going to do just that.”
“But, Dad—” Nancy began.
“No buts,” Carson said. He came over to where she was standing by the fireplace and put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve done more than enough for now. You are officially off the case again. I know you’re trying to help me, but you’re in over your head. I have to think of you. Now you really should get to bed. It’s late.”
Nancy went upstairs. She knew her father was right. He had to call the DA, to try to clear his name if nothing else.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to continue to get to the bottom of Chris
Gleason’s motives. If he was using her, there was no way she was going to let him get away with it.
Nancy was in bed before she remembered Gleason’s date book.
I’m really losing my touch, she said to herself. She got up, opened her desk drawer, and took out the small notebook.
Going page by page backward from the day Gleason died, Nancy pored over the notebook once more. She saw that Gleason had had appointments with Cheryl Pomeroy, Peter Nicodemus, Dennis Allard—nothing she didn’t already know. There had to be something important in the book if Gleason had bothered to hide it.
After nearly an hour of trying to find any clue in the notebook, Nancy turned off her light. She decided that the next day she was going to get some answers from the two people who had to know more than they were telling: Chris Gleason and Dennis Allard.
• • •
“I was just about to call you,” Bess told Nancy on the phone the next morning. “How’s your dad?”
Nancy briefly explained what had happened the night before. “Are you ready for action?” she asked her friend.
“You bet!” Bess answered. “Anything.”
Nancy gave Kate Gleason’s address to Bess. “Get over there as fast as you can and watch her. If she leaves, follow her. I have a feeling she’s up to something and I want to know what it is. Then meet me and George for lunch at Bonne Cuisine in the mall at twelve-thirty.”
“Gotcha,” Bess said, hanging up.
Next Nancy called George, who was also more than happy to help her out.
“Cheryl Pomeroy, watch out,” she said, after Nancy had explained what she wanted George to do. “Because wherever you go, I’ll be there,” she said, laughing.
“Thanks, George. And let’s meet for lunch at Bonne Cuisine at twelve-thirty to talk about what you found out.” Nancy hung up the phone and left the house.
After the short drive downtown in her rented car, Nancy pulled up in front of River Heights Bank and Trust. She wanted to find out if there was any way to trace the money. Nancy also had to determine whether or not there was any reason to suspect Dennis Allard.