“We could look at everyone’s nails,” Bess put in. “Whoever has red paint under their nails must have taken Ned’s tickets.”
Nancy glanced around. The festival was really crowded. Looking at everyone’s fingernails would take way too long. They needed more clues.
“So did you figure it out yet?” asked Ned impatiently.
“We only have one clue,” Nancy reported. “And so far, no suspects. We need a little more time.”
George reached into her pocket. “Here,” she said, carefully tearing a single ticket off her own stack. “You can borrow one of my tickets. Go buy a soda and hang out for a while. We’ll come get you when we know something.”
Ned took the ticket. “Thanks,” he said. “I really want my tickets back before the festival is over.”
“No problem,” Nancy told Ned. “We’ll find your tickets.”
“No mystery is too difficult,” Bess agreed.
George smiled, adding, “The Clue Crew is on the case.”
As soon as Ned walked off, Bess turned to Nancy and asked, “What do we do next? I didn’t want to admit it to Ned, but it kinda seems like we’re at a dead end. We have only one clue, no witnesses, and no suspects.”
Nancy looked around and bit her bottom lip. “We promised Ned we’d solve the mystery, so I guess we should get busy searching for more clues.”
“Yeah. But where should we look?” Bess said with a shrug. “We already covered the baseball arcade.”
“I have an idea about where to start,” said George suddenly. “Check out Deirdre, Suzie, and Natalie.” She pointed at the girls, who were standing nearby under a tree. The bad-singing crow was sitting high on a branch above them. Deirdre, Suzie, and Natalie were counting their tickets.
“Those girls had a lot of tickets when we first got to the Fall Festival,” George remarked. “It looks like they have even more now.”
“When we were on the roller coaster, we saw them over by the baseball booth,” said Bess. “If they were spending their tickets, they’d have a smaller stack, not a bigger one.” She clicked her tongue. “Unless maybe they took Ned’s tickets.”
Nancy opened her purple notebook and began to write down Deirdre, Suzie, and Natalie as possible suspects. “Hang on a second.” She put away her pencil and closed the notebook with a snap. “We can’t accuse those girls of stealing Ned’s tickets without any real proof. I think we’d better go talk to them.”
“That’s a good plan.” Bess hugged her new stuffed bear to her chest. “If they didn’t take Ned’s tickets, maybe they saw or heard something that would help us.”
“Come on,” George said, leading the way across the grass.
Nancy, Bess, and George had taken only a few steps when Ned came rushing up. “Did ya find my tickets?” he cried excitedly. “Did ya?”
“Did ya finish your soda already?” Nancy asked, imitating the way he was speaking.
Ned laughed. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I drank the whole thing in one gulp.”
“Well,” George said, taking her time and speaking very slowly, “we have a plan, but we haven’t solved the mystery yet.”
“There’s only one more hour of the festival.” Ned sighed. “I really want to win a stuffed bear. Time’s running out. I gotta get my tickets back.”
“We’re working on it.” Bess smiled and reached into her purse. She pulled out one ticket and handed it to Ned. “You can have one of my tickets. Go get an ice cream, okay? We’ll come find you soon.”
“You guys are nice to keep giving me tickets,” said Ned. “I’ll pay you back as soon as I have my own tickets again.” He thanked Bess and hurried away.
“Do you think we can solve this mystery in less than an hour?” George asked Nancy.
“Sure,” Nancy stated confidently. She headed out toward the tree where Deirdre had been hanging with her friends. “Hmm,” she said before they got there. “I still think we can solve the mystery, but we have a little problem.”
“What’s wrong?” asked George, but she didn’t need Nancy to tell her what was up. Deirdre, Suzie, and Natalie were gone. During the few minutes Nancy and her friends had been talking to Ned, the other girls had disappeared back into the crowded festival.
Bess scanned the crowd with her eyes squinted. “There,” she cheered after she’d taken a good hard look around the fair. “I see Deirdre over by the apple bobbing.”
“And I spy Suzie at the chili cook-off,” George added.
Nancy searched all around for Natalie but didn’t find her. “They split up,” she remarked. “Let’s go talk to Deirdre first.”
“We have another problem,” Bess told the other girls. “I don’t think we should rush off to interview Deirdre quite yet.”
“Why not?” George and Nancy said at the same time.
“Well,” Bess went on, clearly trying to hide a smile, “you know how easily distracted Nancy can be. She might trip and fall on our way.” She pointed down at Nancy’s untied shoelace.
Nancy giggled. “Thanks, Bess. I’m glad you are here to protect me,” she said, bending down to tie her shoe. She stayed bent over for a full minute before George suggested, “We should get going before Deirdre disappears in the crowd again.”
Nancy didn’t stand up or even answer. She stayed hunched over in shoe-tying position, staring at something by the tree trunk.
“Earth to Nancy!” Bess called. “Are you stuck down there?”
“Oh,” Nancy said, standing up suddenly. “I zoned out again. Sorry. This time I was tying my shoe when something under the tree caught my eye. I was trying to figure out what it was.” She moved closer to the tree trunk.
Under the tree, Nancy reached down and picked up a small piece of yellow paper. “The yellow color stood out in the festival lights,” she told her friends. “I knew it wasn’t a leaf, but couldn’t guess what it might be.”
“It looks like a ripped and dirty piece of trash to me,” said George. “We should throw it out to help keep the school clean.”
“No. . . . It’s a torn half of a ticket,” Nancy murmured.
“Definitely trash.” George looked over Nancy’s shoulder. “Every ticket-taker at the festival is ripping tickets in half. This one probably fell out of someone’s garbage bag.”
Nancy was holding up the little paper, examining it.
“Hang on a second. That’s not trash!” Bess exclaimed. She was standing in front of Nancy. While Nancy was looking at one side of the ticket, Bess could clearly see the other side. “There is writing on the back of that ticket. I see an N on it!” Bess was so excited, she was shouting. “Nancy just found our second clue!”
Nancy flipped the ticket over in her hand. Bess was right. The ticket was definitely a clue. There was a capital N written in black ink on the back of the torn yellow ticket.
Ned said that he had written NN on the back of his tickets. There was no doubt about it: This was one of Ned’s missing tickets.
Nancy pulled out her notebook and wrote Torn ticket under the words Red paint scratch mark. Now they had two clues. And because they found Ned’s ticket right where Deirdre, Suzie, and Natalie had been standing only minutes before, they also had the proof they needed.
Deirdre, Suzie, and Natalie were officially suspects in the Mystery of Ned’s Missing Festival Tickets.
The girls hustled through the crowd toward the Apple Attack apple-bobbing booth. On the way they saw their gym teacher, who was dressed as a juggler. He was standing high on stilts, easily tossing five multicolored balls between his hands.
“What’s your hurry?” Mr. Wilson called down to Bess. “Where’s the fire?”
“No fire,” Bess called back.
“I see,” said Mr. Wilson. “Well then, knowing you girls, there must be a mystery to solve.”
“How’d you guess?” George asked. She was still walking very fast and talking as she passed by.
“Check out Nancy Drew,” Mr. Wilson replied with a chuckle. Bess and George turn
ed around to look at Nancy. Sure she was walking fast, like they were, but she was also double-checking the clues in her purple notebook as she went along. “It doesn’t take a detective to know that the Clue Crew is trying to solve a mystery,” Mr. Wilson explained. “But you should tell her that if she’s going to investigate and walk at the same time, she’d better tie her shoelace.”
“Thanks, Mr. Wilson,” George said. “We’ll tell her.”
Bess and George waited for Nancy to catch up. “Nancy,” Bess told her friend, “you still forgot to tie your shoe.”
Nancy looked up at Bess and shook her head. “Oh, yeah,” she said, putting the notebook back into her jeans pocket. “I guess I got distracted when I found part of Ned’s ticket in the dirt.” Nancy bent down and finally tied her shoe. This time she stood right back up. There weren’t any other clues in the grass by her feet.
Nancy smiled up at Mr. Wilson and waved.
“Before you girls hurry off,” Mr. Wilson said, “can one of you toss up that soccer ball over there?” He pointed to a bag of balls of all shapes and sizes sitting near a trash can. “I want to juggle these five little balls, plus a soccer ball, too.”
“You’re the soccer star, George,” said Bess as she got the ball out of the bag. “You should toss it up to him.”
“Careful now,” Mr. Wilson warned. “You have to throw it when my left hand is empty.” The girls watched the five balls popping up and down, back and forth between his hands. “Ready?” he asked.
“Ready.” George pulled back the ball.
“Aim,” said Mr. Wilson.
George squinted her eyes, staring at Mr. Wilson’s left hand.
“Fire!” he called, and George released the ball with a snap.
It sailed through the air and landed perfectly in Mr. Wilson’s left hand. He easily added the soccer ball to his juggling routine without falling off his stilts.
The girls began to clap and cheer.
Mr. Wilson took a little bow. A very little bow, since he didn’t want to lose his focus. “Want to tell me about the mystery?” he asked before the girls walked on.
“Ned’s carnival tickets are missing,” Bess told their teacher.
“I’m sure you girls will find them,” Mr. Wilson said as the soccer ball went sailing through the air. He caught it and tossed it right back up again. “But if you need any help, just let me know.”
“Thanks, Mr. Wilson,” said Nancy. She took one last look down at her shoe to make sure it was still tied before rushing off with Bess and George to find Deirdre.
Deirdre was waiting her turn for apple bobbing. The girls lined up behind her.
When Deirdre saw Nancy, Bess, and George, she said, “If you get an apple in your mouth, not only do you get to keep the apple, but you get a stuffed bear, too.” She showed them the bears hanging from a portable wall. They were exactly the same kind of bears that were at the baseball arcade, the same kind that Bess had already won.
“I really want a bear,” Deirdre told them. “I simply have to win one.”
“Hmm,” whispered George, leaning into Nancy and Bess. “Maybe Deirdre took Ned’s tickets so she’d have more chances to win.” George watched a boy from their class trying his luck. After using three tickets, the mom running the booth told him he had to go to the back of the line if he wanted to try again.
It was Deirdre’s turn next. They would wait to ask about her tickets until after she went bobbing.
“The trick to apple bobbing is using math,” George explained as Deirdre put on the yellow plastic poncho and tied back her hair with a pink ribbon. “The apples move in an arc through the water. I wish I had my computer, because I could diagram an apple’s trajectory. It’s really interesting.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Bess, yawning big. “Interesting to you.”
“Hey,” George countered. “We listened to you talk about how the baseball arcade works. It’s my turn.”
Bess giggled. “I’m kidding, George. I think it’s cool to know how math works in the real world.” She watched as Deirdre came up out of the water, dripping wet, with her mouth empty. Deirdre tore off a second ticket from her large wad, handed it to the mom, and dunked her head in again. “
George beamed. She was smiling so big that her eyes crinkled up. “Using math, I bet I could win the apple bobbing on the first try.” She pulled out her tickets and tore one off. “Using basic physics, the size and weight of the apple make it bob in the water. The bigger the apple, the harder it is to grab with your teeth. You have to go for a small one.”
Deirdre came up for air and handed the booth mom a third ticket for her final try. Water was dripping off her chin and nose. She looked frustrated.
When Deirdre put her head back into the bucket, George said, “You’ve gotta grab a small one fast before it moves away or push it to the bottom of the barrel and pin it with your teeth.”
The girls watched Deirdre lift her face out of the bucket. She hadn’t been able to snag an apple. She took off the poncho and handed it to George, saying, “If you think it’s so easy, let’s see you do it.” As Deirdre untied her hair, that crazy crow swooshed in and snagged the pink hair ribbon right out of her hand.
“That’s one nutty bird,” Deirdre remarked. “Good thing I have new hair ribbons at home.”
George slipped the plastic poncho over her head, ready to bob, and handed the booth mom a ticket.
It happened so fast. George dunked her head into the apple-bobbing barrel and not even a second later came up with an apple firmly clenched in her teeth. She spit the apple into her hand. “I went for a small one and followed it on its arc through the water.” George winked. “Easy as apple pie.”
The booth mom handed George her stuffed teddy bear prize.
Deirdre put her hands on her hips and huffed. “I definitely need more tickets if I’m going to win a bear.”
“Speaking of tickets,” Nancy said, “we were wondering where you got so many.”
“My dad gave them to me,” Deirdre replied. “He promised I could have as many tickets as I needed if I helped him clean out the garage. It was soooo gross and took up an entire Sunday, but it was totally worth it!” And with that, Deirdre stomped away to find her dad.
“Deirdre didn’t take the tickets,” Bess said thoughtfully. “If she can get more by asking her dad for them, she wouldn’t need to steal Ned’s.”
Nancy pulled out her purple notebook and pencil. She opened to Ned’s ticket mystery page and crossed Deirdre off her list of suspects.
“We’re right by the chili cook-off stage. That’s where we saw Suzie.” George pointed across the grass to a crowded area.
“And just like Deirdre, Suzie sure had a lot of tickets in her hand,” added Bess.
Nancy studied her notes and then closed the notebook cover. “Suzie and Natalie are still suspects. Let’s go find Suzie next.”
The girls were running over to the chili cook-off stage when George suddenly stopped and put a hand around her ear. “Do you hear that?” she said.
“Is it that pesky crow again?” Nancy asked, tilting her head to listen. “It disappeared after taking Deirdre’s ribbon. I don’t see it now. I don’t hear it either.”
“It’s not the crow,” George said. “Listen carefully.”
“Do you mean the Best Buddies CD?” Bess asked. “They’re playing your favorite song from it right now.”
“No,” George said with a smile. “It’s Principal Newman announcing that the chili awards will be given out in ten minutes.”
The girls moved a little faster, hustling past the cotton candy vendor and the popcorn booth. “Yum,” Bess said. The smell of popcorn followed them through the crowd. “We’d better solve this mystery fast. I need a snack.”
“Good thing we’re headed to the chili cook-off,” Nancy replied. “There are ten different types and you can taste them all.” She paused and then added, “After we talk to Suzie, of course.”
“There she is.”
George spotted Suzie’s light pink jacket in the crowd. She was standing next to a large black chili pot.
“She’s about to taste my mom’s chili,” George said proudly. George’s mom, Mrs. Fayne, was a caterer in River Heights. “Everyone loves Mom’s chili.”
“Your mom might have won last year,” said Nancy, “but Hannah is determined to take first place this time.”
Just then, a familiar voice called out, “Girls!”
Nancy recognized the voice immediately. It was Hannah.
“Come over and taste my chili first.” Hannah waved at them. “There are only a few minutes left before the judge hands out the prize ribbons.”
Nancy looked over at Suzie. Mrs. Fayne was handing her a little bowl of chili and a plastic spoon.
“We don’t want to be rude to Hannah,” George said to her friends. “Let’s stop and taste her chili, but we’d better make it fast.” George smiled at Bess. “Besides, Bess is hungry. Investigating mysteries is hard work. We should get her a chili snack.”
Bess grinned and walked straight over to Hannah’s bright red chili pot. “Hello, Ms. Gruen,” she said politely.
Hannah was wearing an apron that read “Kiss the Cook.” So Nancy did what it said. She gave Hannah a little hello kiss on the cheek.
Hannah handed each of the girls a miniature bowl with a bit of chili and a plastic spoon. “If you like it,” she said, “you can come over tomorrow. We’ll be having leftovers for lunch.”
Nancy took her taster bowl but rolled her eyes. “No offense, but I don’t think I can stomach any more chili, Hannah.” She closed her eyes, remembering the many different ways Hannah had served her test batches of chili. “Over the past two weeks, we’ve had chili dogs, chili fries, chili nachos, chili pot pie, and even frozen chili popsicles.” Nancy stuck out her tongue. “That was the grossest thing ever.”
Bess tasted Hannah’s chili sample and said, “Nancy’s just spoiled, having a good cook like you living with her.” She licked her lips. “This chili is amazing. I’ll be at your place for lunch for sure!” Bess gobbled up the little bowl and even asked Hannah for a second sample.