George and Bess were keeping watch near the front door to make sure no one else came in. Nancy knew she didn’t have very much time. She walked faster.
Nancy passed the craft tables with the ant farms on them. She wanted to stop and see how the ants were doing and watch them carry their food around. Later, she told herself.
She found the logbook where it usually was: on a creaky old wooden table outside Mr. Fish’s office. She opened the heavy book to the first page.
It was hard to read the different handwriting. A lot of the people had written in a really fast, scrawly way.
How am I going to figure this out? Nancy thought worriedly.
Nancy traced her fingers over the scribbled words and tried to make them out. It looked like different campers had left last each day. On Monday it was Greg. On Tuesday it was Ned. And on Wednesday it was Savannah, one of the fifth graders from River Heights Elementary.
Then she noticed something really interesting. Each morning the same person arrived first.
Nancy had a hard time reading the handwriting. It looks like a P, she thought. No, an R. After that, it looks like E, B, E . . .
It was Rebecca!
“Aha!” Nancy said out loud.
But she was stopped cold by the sound of footsteps behind her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” demanded a familiar-sounding voice.
6
Another Suspect
Oh no, Nancy thought. Someone caught me!
Nancy closed the logbook shut. She took a deep breath and turned around slowly.
Fiona was standing there.
“What are you doing in here?” Fiona said suspiciously. “Why aren’t you outside with everyone else?”
Nancy made herself smile. “Oh, I was just checking something,” she said.
Fiona frowned. “Checking what?”
Nancy thought quickly. “Well . . . our housekeeper, Hannah, dropped me off this morning on her way to the grocery store. But I wasn’t sure she remembered to sign me in.”
“Oh,” Fiona said. She sounded doubtful. “Well, okay. You’d better get back outside, now.”
“Sure! Bye!” Nancy waved to Fiona and ran out the door.
Whew, that was close, Nancy thought. She hated not telling the truth, but she hated what was happening at the camp even more.
Just before Nancy walked out the door, she glanced over her shoulder.
She gulped.
Fiona was looking through the logbook. Was she checking out Nancy’s story?
• • •
“Who wants popcorn?” Hannah called out.
Nancy, Bess, and George all sat up and raised their hands. “Me, me, me!” they cried out in unison.
The three girls were in Nancy’s room. Nancy had gotten permission from her father for a Friday-night slumber party.
Hannah set a big bowl of buttery popcorn on Nancy’s bed. She glanced at Nancy’s hand. There was green paint on it. “What’s that, Nancy?” Hannah said. “It looks like you’ve been doing some finger painting.”
“We painted at camp today,” Nancy replied. “We each got a big piece of cardboard, and we had to paint pictures of Camp Northwoods.”
“I painted a picture of the pond with a bunch of frogs in it,” Bess said.
“I painted a picture of the meadow,” George said.
“I painted a picture of the bunnies and squirrels in the woods,” Nancy piped up.
“I can’t wait to see these masterpieces!” Hannah said. “Speaking of camp, how’s your mystery coming along?”
“We’ve got some suspects,” Nancy said.
“And we’ve got some clues, too,” George added.
Hannah grinned. “Wonderful! I hope the popcorn will give you enough energy to solve the rest of the mystery.”
“Oh, definitely.” Bess grabbed a handful of popcorn and began munching.
Hannah went back to the kitchen. Just then Chocolate Chip came bounding through the door. She went right up to Bess and began barking for some popcorn.
“Popcorn is people food, silly,” Bess said. She patted Chip on the head.
“So,” Nancy said. She sat up straight and tapped her purple pen against her detective notebook. “For suspects, we have Rebecca, Jessie, Greg, and Ned,” she said. “Rebecca’s probably our number one suspect now because of what I found in the logbook. She was the first one at camp Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.”
“Rebecca was the first one at camp this morning too,” George said. “I checked the logbook when I signed in.”
Nancy and the other campers had shown up at Camp Northwoods today and found—absolutely nothing. No one had pulled any pranks overnight.
The only incident was a half-empty package of pretzels that had been dragged out of the garbage. Mr. Fish said it was probably the work of Rocky, the raccoon who lived in the woods.
“We’re sorry again about letting Fiona get through yesterday,” Bess apologized to Nancy. “We tried to stop her.”
“It’s okay,” Nancy said. “She was watching me closely today, though.”
“She doesn’t know you’re a famous detective,” Bess said scratching Chip behind the ear.
“I think we should add someone else to the suspect list,” George said suddenly.
Nancy took the cap off her purple pen. “Who?”
“That Harry Kennedy,” George replied. “He’s always getting into trouble.”
“That’s right,” Bess said, nodding eagerly. “When we were planting sunflowers, he took people’s shovels and ran away.”
“His sister’s always chasing him and trying to get him to behave,” George added.
“Plus, he has light brown hair,” Bess said.
“Plus, his sister told me they live right next door to the camp. Maybe he sneaks over at night, or early in the morning, when his parents are asleep or something,” George finished.
“Hmm,” Nancy said. “He sounds like a good suspect.”
She opened her detective notebook and found the right page. Then she added Harry’s name to the suspect list, under Ned’s name:
• Harry, because he’s always getting into trouble. Plus he lives next door to the camp.
“Now what do we do?” Bess asked Nancy.
“Now we eat some more popcorn. Then we wait till Monday and see if the creepy camper has struck again,” Nancy replied.
“But the creepy camper didn’t do anything last night,” George pointed out. “Maybe whoever it was gave up.”
“Or maybe they just took a little break and will be back,” Nancy said.
The three girls shivered.
• • •
“Oh no,” Nancy said.
“This is a disaster,” Bess agreed.
“Mr. Fish is not going to be happy,” Fiona added.
“I didn’t do it! “Harry told Pell.
Nancy and all the campers and counselors had arrived at Camp Northwoods on Monday morning to find another disaster.
The creepy camper had returned. This time it was the paintings that the campers had painted on Friday.
The person had knocked them all down on the ground. There was green paint smudged all over the floor.
Just then, Mr. Fish walked through the front door. “Good morning,” he started to say. Then he saw the knocked-down paintings.
His face turned white. “Okay, that’s it,” he said in a grim voice. “Camp is officially cancelled for the rest of the week!”
7
Stakeout
The entire room erupted. Everyone started talking at once.
“Cancel camp?”
“You can’t do that, Mr. Fish!”
“We have four more days!”
“What are we going to do?”
Mr. Fish held up his hands. “Quiet, everyone! I need to talk this over with the counselors. Please find something to do for a few minutes.”
He summoned Max and Fiona and called them into his office.
The ca
mpers’ paintings were a mess. Nancy picked up hers. Her bunnies and squirrels were all smudged together. The leaves on the trees were a greenish-brown blur.
Nancy turned to George and Bess. “This is awful!” she whispered.
“How can Mr. Fish cancel camp?” Bess whispered back.
“He said something like this might happen,” George reminded her friends. “Remember? He told us there would be serious consequences if things kept getting ruined.”
Nancy thought hard. She had a list of suspects, but she still didn’t know who the creepy camper was. And time was running out. Mr. Fish was about to cancel camp!
“I know,” she said suddenly. She jumped to her feet and motioned to George and Bess. “Come with me.”
“Where?” Bess asked her, standing up.
“To Mr. Fish’s office,” Nancy replied.
• • •
“A stakeout?” Mr. Fish exclaimed.
“A stakeout?” Max and Fiona repeated.
“What on earth are you talking about, Nancy?” Mr. Fish asked her.
Nancy, George, and Bess were in Mr. Fish’s office along with Mr. Fish and the two counselors. His office was filled with books about nature and paintings of fish.
“Yeah. What are you talking about?” George whispered to Nancy.
“Let me explain,” Nancy said to Mr. Fish. “George and Bess and I have been working on this case.”
“You have?” Mr. Fish looked confused.
Nancy nodded. “We have. And we figured out that all the bad stuff has been happening after camp closes and before it opens the next morning.”
“Nancy’s an awesome detective,” Bess piped up. “She’s solved lots and lots of mysteries.”
Fiona and Max exchanged a glance.
“So I figured out that we should have a stakeout,” Nancy went on. “Mr. Fish, if it’s okay with you, Bess, George, and I will spend the night at Camp Northwoods tonight.”
“What?” Mr. Fish burst out.
“Not by ourselves! I’ll ask my dad, and our housekeeper, Hannah if they’ll stay with us,” Nancy explained quickly. “Plus Bess and George have to get permission from their parents.”
“A stakeout-slumber party! What an awesome idea, Nancy,” Bess whispered to Nancy.
“This way, we’ll be able to catch whoever’s been messing up the projects,” Nancy continued.
Mr. Fish folded his hands on his desk. He looked thoughtful. He didn’t say anything for a long moment.
Finally Mr. Fish nodded. “All right,” he said at last. “Your plan makes sense, Nancy. We’ll try it. However, as head of the camp, I must be here too, to make sure everything goes all right and everyone is safe.”
Nancy, Bess, and George grinned at one another.
Mr. Fish picked up his cell phone and handed it to Nancy. “Why don’t you call your father and arrange it now?” he suggested. “Then Bess and George can call their parents.”
“Okay,” Nancy said, and began dialing her dad’s office number.
“We’re going to solve this mystery tonight,” George said eagerly.
“If not, then we’re going to have to cancel camp after all,” Mr. Fish reminded the girls. “We can’t have camp when there is a criminal on the loose!”
• • •
Nancy unfolded her sleeping bag and laid it down on the floor. George and Bess did the same with theirs.
“Look what else I brought!” Bess announced. She unzipped her backpack and began pulling things out: bottles of pink and purple nail polish, magazines, her portable CD player, and a pile of CDs. “I have some awesome new CDs,” she added.
“Bess, this is a stakeout, not a slumber party!” George told her.
“I know. But who says you can’t solve a mystery and have fun at the same time?” Bess said.
Across the room, Mr. Drew, Mr. Fish, and Hannah were sitting at a table playing cards. Mr. Drew smiled at Nancy. “I hope we solve this case by tomorrow morning Pudding Pie, since I have to be at the office for a meeting,” he said cheerfully.
Nancy smiled and glanced at the clock. It read eight o’clock.
Outside, the sky was starting to get dark. Branches swayed in the wind and brushed against the windowpanes. An owl hooted in the distance. Nancy shivered.
I wonder if the creepy camper will strike tonight? she wondered.
Mr. Fish had stayed at the camp after all the campers had left. Nancy, Bess, George, Mr. Drew, and Hannah had arrived at six P.M. with their camping gear. So far, no one else had shown up. If the creepy camper was going to strike, it would be sometime between now and eight A.M. the following morning.
“Did you bring your detective notebook, Nancy?” George asked her.
Nancy nodded. “Yup. And I brought a flashlight and a camera.”
“Are we going to take funny pictures of one another?” Bess asked Nancy. “George and I could do silly poses.”
Nancy shook her head. “Nope. I want to take a picture of the creepy camper. For evidence.”
“Who do you think it will be?” George asked, scrunching down in her sleeping bag. “Rebecca? Jessie? Ned? Greg? Harry?”
“Or maybe somebody we haven’t even thought of,” Bess suggested.
Nancy glanced over at the craft table. The campers had made supercool wreaths that afternoon out of branches and dried berries.
“Whoever it is, we’ll be able to catch them if they try to mess up the wreaths,” Nancy said.
The girls fell silent. Nancy heard the strange animal noise again, from outside. She slid into her sleeping bag and wondered what the night would bring.
• • •
Nancy wasn’t sure what time it was when the sound woke her up. She blinked in the darkness and listened carefully.
Footsteps.
No, it wasn’t footsteps. It was more like a scraping or scratching sound.
She reached over and shook Bess and George awake. “Guys!” she whispered. “There’s someone trying to get inside the lodge!”
Bess opened her eyes and yawned. “What?” she murmured sleepily.
George sat straight up. “What’s happening?” she whispered.
Nancy reached over for her backpack. She unzipped it and fumbled through it. In the darkness, she couldn’t see a thing.
She felt cold, smooth metal. It was definitely her flashlight. She pulled it out and tried to find the ON/OFF switch.
The scraping, scratching sound got louder and louder.
Nancy’s heart was hammering in her chest. She had to turn her flashlight on quickly.
They were about to come face-to-face with the creepy camper!
8
All’s Well That Ends Well
Nancy finally found the switch on her flashlight and clicked it on. “Got you!” she yelled. She swung the beam of light around the room.
The creepy camper was on top of the craft table.
The creepy camper was . . . a raccoon.
Mr. Fish, Mr. Drew, and Hannah were awake by now. “What’s all this racket?” Hannah called out.
“That’s Rocky Raccoon!” Mr. Fish exclaimed. “He’s one of the Camp Northwoods mascots.”
Rocky was big, with light brown fur and dark brown markings. He was poking his nose at one of the wreaths. He started nibbling on a dried berry.
Nancy pointed her flashlight right at Rocky. Rocky stopped nibbling and blinked into the light.
“Ohmigosh,” Nancy said.
“Ohmigosh,” George and Bess repeated in unison.
A bunch of crates and boxes were piled up next to the craft table. Nancy realized that Rocky had climbed up onto the table by stepping on them.
Rocky started tearing the wreath apart with his sharp-looking teeth. Then he moved on to another wreath and started nibbling on that one. Along the way, he accidentally knocked a few of the wreaths onto the floor.
“He’s the one who’s been wrecking all the projects,” Nancy said out loud. “He must have knocked down the butterfly feeders and t
he ant farms—”
“—and dug up our sunflowers,” Bess finished.
“But how did he get in here?” George piped up.
Mr. Fish sighed. “There’s a little trapdoor in the corner of the room,” he explained. “The old owner of this lodge had a dog who came in and out that way. I’ve been meaning to nail it shut.”
“Are we sure Rocky is our criminal?” Hannah spoke up. “Maybe tonight is the first time he’s been in here.”
“I’m sure,” Nancy said. She pointed to Rocky’s fur. It had a big green smudge on it. “See that green stuff? That’s the green paint from our nature paintings. Rocky must have rubbed up against them and gotten green paint all over his fur.”
“Bad Rocky!” Bess scolded him.
“Plus I found a short, light-brown hair next to one of the ant farms,” Nancy went on. “The hair must have been a piece of Rocky’s fur.”
“This explains why all the pranks were happening at night,” Mr. Drew said. “Raccoons are nocturnal creatures.”
“Rocky must have been coming in at night looking for snacks,” Mr. Fish said. “Raccoons love snacks.”
“So do people!” Bess said. “All this stakeout stuff is making me hungry!”
Everyone laughed.
Mr. Fish got up to chase Rocky out of the cabin. While he was doing this, Mr. Drew came over to Nancy. He gave her a big hug. “Your stakeout worked, Pudding Pie,” he said proudly. “You caught the culprit.”
Nancy giggled. “I’ve never had a raccoon for a criminal before,” she said.
“There’s always a first time for everything,” Hannah remarked.
• • •
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Rebecca. “We would like to present to you an original play written by Rebecca Ramirez. That’s me! The play is called A Camp Northwoods Comedy.”
Nancy, Bess, George, and Jessie came out onto the “stage.” The stage was a wooden platform that Mr. Fish had set up at one end of the lodge.
The room was filled with people. Mr. Drew and Hannah were there. So were Mr. and Mrs. Fayne, Mr. and Mrs. Marvin, and the other campers’ parents. The rest of the campers were in the audience too.
It was Friday, the last day of camp. The campers were having a good-bye party with cookies and punch. The grand finale of the party was Rebecca’s play.