“The astrologer said if I didn’t find what was stolen, my marriage would remain under a cloud of bad luck,” Meredith said with a laugh. “She’s going to have a heart attack when she reads the paper!”
“Well, you can thank Nancy Drew for this,” Lieutenant Flood said. “I always thought her dad was a sharp cookie. You know, I knew this kid when she couldn’t even feed herself with a spoon.
“Please, Lieutenant,” Nancy said, blushing deeply.
“He’s right,” Meredith said, walking over to take Nancy’s hands. “I have so many things to thank you for.”
Nancy smiled to herself. She had started out looking for a missing veil and, in the end, had found a missing heiress as well. She was glad that she had been able to help Meredith. But solving the mystery and stopping Jason Moss from stealing a fortune had its own private rewards. That made Nancy feel even happier.
“You know, Meredith,” Nancy said, “there is one thing about this case I never figured out — Tony Fiske. Do you think he was working with Cecelia Bancroft?”
Meredith shook her head. “No, Tony didn’t steal my veil. But he thought he could make some money from it.”
“How do you know?” asked George.
“We ran into Tony in Bermuda,” Mark said. “He tried to pick a fight with me in the hotel restaurant and landed in jail.”
“Of course he didn’t have any money, so he had to call us to bail him out,” Meredith said. “He said he came to the wedding to cause trouble, but by accident he saw who stole my veil. He said the woman had already given him five thousand dollars to keep quiet. But for ten thousand he’d tell us who she was.”
“We didn’t believe him, of course,” said Mark.
“For once he was telling the truth,” Nancy said. “He did know.”
“Well, Mrs. Brody-Webb,” said Lieutenant Flood, “I think my men have held off the reporters as long as they can.”
Meredith nodded and squeezed her grandmother’s hand. “You’ll stay with me, won’t you, Grandmother?” she said. “I’m sure they’ll want to talk to you too, since you’ve been a missing person for forty years.”
“I will, but I don’t have a thing to say to those reporters,” Rose said. Obviously her old fighting spirit had returned.
“And Nancy, too,” Mark said.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” said Nancy. “We’ll watch.”
Nancy and her friends watched from the background as Meredith and her grandmother, surrounded by Mark Webb, Lieutenant Flood and some of his officers, answered questions from the press.
Then suddenly Nancy felt someone standing behind her.
“Hello,” said the man with the flat voice and shiny summer suit.
“Hello, Harry Knox, Private Investigator,” Nancy said, smiling and shaking his hand.
“My old pal, Flood, has been telling me all about this veil case you solved,” Harry Knox said. “A neat piece of business. You’re good. You’re really good.”
“Thanks,” Nancy said. “But what are you doing here?”
“Well, I’ve never seen sixty million dollars in a size ten dress before,” Harry said, his eyes scanning the crowd out of habit.
“I don’t believe Meredith’s a size ten,” Bess said.
“Believe me, Bess,” Nancy said, “if Harry Knox says she’s a size ten, she’s a size ten.”
“Besides, I wanted to talk to you,” Harry said. “You know, you should have told me you were a detective that day on the Tea Party ship.”
“It didn’t seem important,” Nancy said.
“I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about you from Flood,” Harry said. “I was thinking, see, business is good — of course our kind of business always is. And I thought maybe you’d like to stay in Boston and put your name on my office door. I could use a partner.”
Nancy thought for a moment about what it would be like to leave River Heights, to move to Boston and be a professional private detective.
“Thanks, but no thanks, Harry,” Nancy said. “I’m not ready to move. And besides …“ Nancy put her arms around Bess and George. “I already have two partners. And I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world.”
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
A MINSTREL PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
A Minstrel Book published by POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
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Copyright © 1988 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-3424-9
ISBN-10: 0-7434-3424-2
First Minstrel Books printing May 1988
NANCY DREW, NANCY DREW MYSTERY STORIES,
A MINSTREL BOOK and colophon are registered trademarks
of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Carolyn Keene, The Case of the Vanishing Veil
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