“The same one he asked you to take before?” Nancy asked.
Nikki looked at Nancy and nodded. “Same one. He was shaking, and his eyes—you should have seen his eyes—they were wild. It was like we had never had that talk in Jeremy’s backyard.” Nikki had started to tremble all over.
“Did you take it?” Robin wanted to know.
“No, I didn’t want to, but he tried to stuff it into my purse.”
The phone next to the sofa rang, startling them all. Nikki gave a little shriek and jumped up. Then somebody picked up the call in another room, and the phone was quiet.
“Go on, Nikki,” Nancy prompted her.
“I tried to run, but he grabbed me,” Nikki said. “He was trying to keep me there. I got really scared and I scratched him, I think, but finally I got away. I left my purse there. The navy blue one. He’s still got it, I guess.
“I kept running and running, and I fell into some thorns. You can see what a mess I am. Anyway, I found the road finally, and I walked all the way here. I guess that’s everything.”
The door opened. “Oh, Lacey,” Brittany called out, poking her head in the door. “That was your mother on the phone. She wants her little baby to come home. It’s eleven-fifteen, you know. Time for beddie-bye.”
Lacey reddened with rage at the roar of laughter which followed. “I scratched my mom’s car last month,” she explained, embarrassed. “Now I’ve got this dumb curfew.”
“We might as well all leave,” Nancy said. She turned to Nikki. “Do you feel well enough to go?”
Nikki nodded her head slowly. “I think so.”
“Come on, then. I’ll drive you home. All of you. This party’s over for us.”
The four girls walked out of the study through the curious crowd. Nikki kept her head down until they were safely out of the house, in Nancy’s car, and out of the driveway.
“Whew!” Lacey sighed in relief as she flicked her red braid over her shoulder. “That was awful. Are you okay, Nikki?”
“I’m okay,” Nikki answered, with a shudder. “But I wish Brittany hadn’t been there tonight.”
“I know. She’s such a jerk,” Robin muttered, still hot with fury.
Nancy looked over at Nikki. If Brittany had had such a field day with Lacey’s curfew, what would she do with Nikki’s little adventure?
Nancy dropped Robin and Lacey off, then headed for home. “Nikki,” she said as they pulled onto their block, “did anything else happen out there when you were with Dan? Anything you forgot to tell us?” Nancy wanted to have it out with Dan Taylor, and she needed to know every detail.
Nikki looked at Nancy in surprise. “No. Why do you ask?” she asked, cocking her head to one side. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I trust you,” Nancy told her. “I just wanted to make sure I was totally filled in, that’s all. Listen, you get some rest, and put yourself back together. I’ll come over for breakfast in the morning.”
Nikki smiled with relief. “Great. Nancy, you’ve been wonderful to me. You’ve been a true friend, and I really appreciate it. I doubt I’m going to hear from Dan again. I think it’s finally all over, thank goodness.”
“See you in the morning, Nikki,” Nancy said as she pulled up in front of the Masterses’ home.
“Aren’t you going to park?”
“No, I have a few things I want to check out first,” Nancy told her.
Nikki looked curious but seemed to think better of asking too much. “Okay, Nancy. See you tomorrow.”
After Nikki got out of the car, Nancy drove off. She wanted to drive past the country club. Maybe Dan was still hanging out near there. If he wasn’t, she could still get a look at the area. She’d do some hunting to try to find Nikki’s purse, and that envelope Dan had been trying to give her.
About a hundred yards from the club entrance there was a small dirt road leading off the highway. Nancy turned down it, her high beams bouncing off the dense forest growth.
As Nancy drove deeper into the woods, a light caught her eye. A flashing red light. And then another. Coming around a bend, she saw two police cars and an ambulance.
Her heart pounding, she pulled up and got out of the car. She ran over to the nearest police officer. “What’s happened?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
The policeman turned and shone his flashlight on her. It was Officer Nolan, whom she’d known for years. “Oh, hi, Nancy,” he said, in a quiet voice. “I’m afraid it’s a murder and a pretty brutal one, too. That’s the guy’s car.”
Nancy’s heart leapt into her throat when the policeman turned and flashed his light along the car. Nancy swallowed hard. The car he was pointing to was Dan Taylor’s!
Chapter
Twelve
SUDDENLY DIZZY, Nancy leaned back against her Mustang. Distant sirens felt as if they were sounding right in her head, and the flashers wound around crazily in their own wild rhythm. Nancy saw two orderlies loading a stretcher into the ambulance. She looked up but felt too weak to do anything at all.
“I’ll go tell the chief you’re here,” Nolan said, heading off in the direction of the police cars. Nancy tried to shake it off, but a horrible thought kept pounding in her head—I should have seen this coming.
The signs had been there: Dan’s growing desperation, the way he kept after Nikki, the way he tried to give her that envelope, the beating he got from Max Hudson. Obviously, Dan had been in greater and greater danger.
He was dead now, Nancy thought with a shudder. And whatever he knew was gone, too.
“Well, if it isn’t Nancy Drew!” The voice startled Nancy and brought her back to reality. Looking up, she saw Brenda Carlton from Today’s Times, one of River Heights’s newspapers. Brenda was not one of Nancy’s favorite people. She had a good nose for a story, but she always featured its most sensational elements.
“Hello, Brenda,” Nancy said wearily.
“So? What are you doing here? Do you know something I don’t know but should?” Brenda asked.
“Oh, I just sort of stumbled into this,” Nancy said. The excuse sounded lame even to her.
“Right. And I’m the queen of Sheba. Come on, Drew, you know I’m going to find out, with you or without you. So what’s your angle on Dan Taylor? He was dating your neighbor Nikki Masters, wasn’t he? I heard she gave him a real hard time.”
Nancy shuddered. “Brenda, why don’t you ever cover real news?”
“Is that a hint?” Brenda said with a sneer. “Oh, I get it. All right, I’ll find out some other way. But just remember, when you need help from me, you can count on zilch.”
Sulking, Brenda turned away from Nancy and moved off to question a police officer. When she saw Chief McGinnis walking up to Nancy, however, she turned in her tracks. She obviously wanted to be within earshot.
“Hello, Nancy,” the chief said, shooting her a grim smile. “Say, you don’t look so good. You know this Taylor guy?”
“Not well,” Nancy replied sadly. “He had a bad reputation. But I don’t think he was a bad kid, Chief—just mixed up. Maybe he got in with the wrong crowd.”
Brenda was standing nearby, scribbling furiously. Nancy detected an evil little grin on that self-satisfied face of hers.
“Sounds like you know quite a bit,” the chief said, arching his eyebrows. “What do you say we go back to the station together and er”—he looked over at Brenda—“talk about it in private? I’m about done here.”
“I’ve got my car,” Nancy offered. “Want to ride with me?”
“Fine,” nodded the chief.
“But give me the tour first, okay?”
Chief McGinnis led Nancy over to Dan’s car. Next to it was an outline of the body. Judging from the evidence, the police had found Dan on the ground by the driver’s side of the car.
“He was hit on the forehead with a rock,” the chief explained. “He must have been putting his arm up to ward off the blow, because his watch got smashed. Convenient, anyway, because that g
ives us an exact time of death: ten-fourteen p.m.”
Ten-fourteen? Nikki had been with Dan at 10:14!
“We think we know the killer,” McGinnis added. “She left a dark blue bag behind.”
Nancy’s heart sank even farther. This couldn’t be happening! Then it hit her—the envelope! It would be inside the purse. “Could I see it?” Nancy asked.
“It’s over at headquarters. When we get there, I’ll have them take it out of evidence for you.” Chief McGinnis was being friendly as always, but Nancy couldn’t possibly manage a smile.
The handbag had to be Nikki’s. In addition to the time on Dan’s watch, the purse made for some pretty serious evidence.
Nancy shivered. She’d just been with Nikki, and Nikki hadn’t acted at all like a girl who’d just killed her boyfriend.
And yet, Nancy remembered, Nikki had once told Dan that she’d kill him. She couldn’t have really meant it. Or could she?
“I think I know the girl you mean, Chief,” Nancy told the officer. “And she’s not a killer.”
“Well, we’ll see about that,” he replied.
Nancy took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay, let’s go,” she said huskily. “I’ve seen enough.”
On the trip to the police station Nancy shared everything she knew about the thefts at Vanities and about Dan’s relationship with Nikki Masters. Nancy hesitated for a moment, then told him about the envelope and her suspicions about Dan and the missing merchandise.
“I’m telling you, it can’t be her, Chief. I’ve known Nikki forever! The Vanities angle—that’s where you’ll find the true killer,” Nancy said as she accompanied the chief into his office at police headquarters. “Dan worked at Vanities and was fired for lying. I’ll bet you anything we’ll find a connection there.”
Chief McGinnis listened politely, as he always did, but he seemed less than convinced. “You know, Nancy, I have enormous respect for your judgment. I always have.”
He started pacing the room, looking uncomfortable with what he had to say. “But this one seems airtight. Taylor is seen leaving this party with the girl at ten. She comes back at eleven, all scratched and mussed. She admits they struggled. Then we find the guy. His watch is smashed at ten-fourteen. Her bag is on the seat. He’s lying next to the car, with the rock that smashed his head lying next to him. I’ll lay you odds her prints are all over the inside of the car. Can you see what I’m thinking?”
“Are you going to arrest her tonight?” Nancy asked, nervously running her hand through her hair. Obviously defending Nikki against this barrage of evidence was getting Nancy nowhere.
“That’s my plan at the moment. I’m just waiting for my people to get back. You never know,” he added. “She might run.”
“She won’t run, Chief,” Nancy assured him. “Because she’s innocent. I don’t know what happened out there tonight, but I know what didn’t happen. Nikki Masters didn’t kill Dan Taylor!”
“I wish I could agree, Nancy,” Chief McGinnis said, stroking his chin. “But what proof can you give me? Intuition just doesn’t cut it in the courts.”
Nancy rubbed her temples. “Let me think,” she said. “Can I see the bag?” she asked. Chief McGinnis signaled for an officer to get it.
“Here you go,” she said in a minute, tossing the bag onto the chief’s desk.
It was Nikki’s, all right. Nancy recognized it right away. She picked up the purse and gently unzipped it. Except for some makeup and a purse-size atomizer, it was empty. “There’s no envelope,” she murmured, half to herself.
“I can see that,” the chief acknowledged. “But that doesn’t mean there ever was an envelope. We have only her word for it.”
Nancy gritted her teeth in frustration, but she knew Chief McGinnis was right. He had to look at hard evidence—that was his job.
But there had been an envelope; Nancy was sure. And if Nikki had killed Dan Taylor, and forgotten her purse, as the chief was saying, the envelope would still be in the purse! Which meant someone else had taken it.
There was no way to convince Chief McGinnis that the envelope had existed. Nancy thought hard, trying to come up with other inconsistencies.
“What about the position of the body?” she asked. “If Nikki tried to get out the passenger side, and he tried to stop her, his body would be sprawled across the front seat, not outside on the driver’s side.”
“Go on, I’m listening,” the chief said, stretching out in his chair and putting his feet up on his desk. “Of course,” he added, “you’re assuming it happened just as she told you it did. You told me she said they argued. And you know that in an argument, we get a little hot sometimes and forget the odd detail.”
“Yes, they argued,” Nancy shot back, getting up and pacing the room, “but the place he took her might not have been the exact same place he was found. He might have met up with somebody afterward. If he was in on the thefts at Vanities, he might have been meeting his partner in crime.”
“You’re forgetting the watch,” the chief pointed out. “He was with her at ten-fourteen, wasn’t he?”
Nancy slumped in defeat. How could she argue with that hard fact? “I guess so,” she admitted. “But, Chief, couldn’t you give me just a little more time to sniff things out? A day, maybe two? I might come up with something concrete. Think what it would do to that poor girl to be arrested like that.”
“Assuming she’s innocent,” Chief McGinnis said.
“Assuming she’s innocent,” Nancy echoed.
“Well, maybe I could give you a day,” he mused, fingering some papers on his desk. “But no more.”
Nancy straightened up, every instinct alert. She had twenty-four hours. One precious day to get Nikki out of the worst jam of her entire life.
There was a knock on the door, and an officer poked his head through. “Chief, we found something written in the dirt,” he said. “Looks like our boy wrote it with his fingernail before he died.”
Chief McGinnis sat up quickly. “What was it? Got a picture?” he demanded.
“Sure do,” the officer replied, spreading a large photo out on the desk. “The people at the lab just got through with it. It’s just one letter. Any idea what it stands for?”
“I’m afraid I do,” the chief said slowly as he stared at the photo.
Nancy craned her neck to get a look, too. Etched in the dirt beside the outline of Dan’s body was the letter N!
Chapter
Thirteen
NANCY STARED HARD at Chief McGinnis. She could tell what he was thinking. If it stood for Nikki, that one letter—N—was hard and solid evidence.
“I’m sorry, Nancy. I have no choice,” he said gently. “I understand how you feel, but I’ve got to consider the evidence against Nikki Masters. Tomorrow morning, we’re going to call her in for questioning, and even if she tells us the same story she told you, we may have to arrest her. You might as well go home and get a good night’s sleep.”
Defeated, Nancy said good night and stepped out into the late summer night. The chief was right about one thing. There was nothing she could do for Nikki that night.
• • •
The next morning Nancy got up before seven. She dressed quickly, wanting to get to Nikki’s house before the police did. Then at least Nikki and her family would get the bad news from a friend, not a stranger.
“Nancy, come in.” An ashen-faced Mr. Masters opened the door and greeted Nancy with barely a nod. He ran a hand through his faded blond hair. “She’s in the dining room.”
Nancy heard sobbing coming from inside. Following Mr. Masters, she found the family grouped around the dining room table.
Today’s Times lay on the table before them. Its huge headline shouted “Local Boy Murdered. Police Seek Girlfriend for Questioning.” Nancy had beaten the police to the Masterses’ home, but Brenda Carlton had managed to cross the finish line first.
“Nancy!” Nikki’s slender shoulders were shivering, and her voice was weak from cr
ying. Her mother had a comforting arm around her.
“Hello, Nancy.” Nikki’s mom turned her tear-stained face in Nancy’s direction. Her hazel eyes were full of sorrow. “Have you seen the morning paper?”
“Take a look.” Nikki’s father pointed to the Times with a look of shocked confusion. “Can you believe it? According to this, Nikki has already been tried and convicted!”
“I’m so sorry,” Nancy said, going over to them and putting a hand on Nikki’s shoulder. “It’s awful, I know. But Nikki’s going to come through this. She’s innocent, and everyone’s going to find that out.”
Nikki bit her knuckles and stifled a sob. “Oh, Nancy,” she said. “What if I’m not innocent? What if I really did it? I mean, what if I blacked out or something?”
“You didn’t black out,” Nancy told her firmly. “And you didn’t kill him. The police just want to see you for questioning, that’s all.”
“But the article says he was killed at ten-fourteen! I was with him at ten-fourteen, Nancy!” Nikki said with a gulp.
Nancy ignored that remark. There had to be an explanation about the time, and she’d find it. “Nikki,” she began gently. “There are things I didn’t tell you about Dan.”
Nikki and her parents fell silent. Nancy went on. “At the time I didn’t want to upset you, or scare you. But I’m pretty sure Dan was involved in a series of robberies I’ve been investigating at a store in the mall called Vanities.”
Nikki’s father seemed to come back to life. “You mean you think Dan was in on them?” he asked grimly.
“Yes. And I don’t think he was working alone, either,” Nancy replied firmly.
“Well, if he was involved with criminals . . .” Mr. Masters murmured.
“One of his partners might have killed him,” Nancy finished for him. “I’ve told the police about it. Right now, unfortunately, I don’t have any hard evidence.”
“The article says that Nikki’s handbag was found at the scene of the crime,” said Mrs. Masters, with a quiver in her voice.