Stop the Clock (Nancy Drew (All New) Girl Detective Book 12) (9 page)

I thought for a minute, while everyone just stared at me. “Wait a minute,” I said. “What made Martha look in that bottom drawer?”

“Deirdre suggested it,” Martha said.

I looked at Ned. “Really?” I said. “That’s very interesting. I wonder what made her think of having you do that?”

“She was here for the committee meeting this morning—
on time,
” Mrs. Corning said. “When you didn’t show up, she asked me if I had a list of the authors you had invited, and I said no, that the invitations had already been sent out. But I told her there might be a list on your desk or in your filing cabinet, so I gave her permission to look.”

“Why did she need to know that?” I demanded.

“She wanted to pull some of the books off the shelves to start the displays, that’s why,” Mrs. Corning said. “After all, nothing has really been done yet. I thought it was a very good idea.”

“Of course,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Actually, I
was
thinking. I was thinking that I had
been right all along. Deirdre Shannon was behind all the problems I was having with the library celebration. In fact, it didn’t take too much effort to picture Deirdre sneaking into the library at night and prying the clock out of the wall, but I realized that that was probably ridiculous. Making my life miserable by sabotaging the efforts of my committee wasn’t at all ridiculous.

I reached for the envelopes. “I’ll go mail them now,” I said.

“Oh, no, that’s all right,” Mrs. Corning said. “I’ll take care of that myself.”

I gritted my teeth. I had to keep my composure, something I was finding very difficult to do. “Fine,” I said. I looked around. “I think I’ll get Mr. Franklin to move some of the display cases. I have some ideas about where I want to put the books of area children’s authors.”

“Mr. Franklin quit this morning,” Mrs. Corning said.

“He
quit
?” I said.

Mrs. Corning nodded. She looked at Ned. “I was hoping that your friend would be able to help you move the display cases.”

“I can do that,” Ned said hurriedly. He looked at me. “It’s no problem, Nancy—and what I can’t move by myself, I can get some friends to help me with.”

I was hearing Ned, but not much of it was registering. I was on a mental roller coaster. “Does Mr. Franklin have another job?” I asked.

“He told me that he didn’t, but he was wearing brand-new clothes,” Mrs. Corning said. “That seemed kind of odd to me.”

Odd, indeed. If you quit a job, you didn’t go and buy new clothes—unless, of course, you came into a lot of money from selling an old clock!

“Nancy! There you are!”

I turned to see Ellis heading in our direction. He had a big smile on his face, and he was looking only at me.

When he reached us, he said, “I’d love to go with you to the movies tonight.”

I blinked. “What?” I said. I could feel Ned looking at me.

“I said, I’d love to go with you to the movies tonight,” Ellis repeated. He was totally oblivious to Ned’s standing beside me. “What time do you want me to pick you up?”

“What are you talking about, Ellis?” I finally managed to say. “I don’t know anything about this.”

Now it was Ellis’s turn to look puzzled. “You left a message on my answering machine, asking me if I wanted to go to the movies tonight,” Ellis said. “You must have called when I was in the shower.”

“It wasn’t me, Ellis,” I said.

“Well, it certainly sounded like your voice,” Ellis countered. “You said, ‘This is Nancy. Let’s go to the movies tonight. There’s something important I have to discuss with you.’”

I couldn’t think of anything else to do but just stare at him. I had to face facts. These weren’t just harmless pranks. Somebody in River Heights was out to destroy me!

Searching for Evidence

F
ortunately for me, Ned
seemed to believe my side of the story. But after the incident with Ellis, I just wanted to be alone. I had to escape from everything. So I dropped Ned off at his house, and then I drove home.

As soon as I opened the front door, the smell of Hannah’s freshly baked cookies greeted me. I knew everything would be all right—at least for a while.

“I’m home, Hannah,” I called to her.

Before I got to the kitchen, Hannah came out to meet me. She was drying her hands on a dish towel.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Hannah can always tell by the tone of my voice when things aren’t going right. Frankly I thought I had done a really good job of sounding cheery, trying
to hide how I was truly feeling, but I should have known better than to try to fool her.

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“Well, I’ve got time for it,” Hannah said. “You go on up to your room, take your shoes off, lie down on your bed, and I’ll bring you up some cookies and milk.”

I wanted to remind Hannah that I was probably a little old for this, but the whole idea sounded so perfect, that I did what she told me to do.

For the next hour it was like it had been in the years just after my mother’s death, when Hannah had first come to live with us and take care of the house. She did so much more than she was hired to do. When I had any sort of problem, she’d listen, then add some of her wisdom—and I’d feel better. Of course, the cookies and milk probably helped a lot too, just as they were doing now.

“Nobody said solving mysteries is easy, Nancy,” Hannah said. “If it were, then anybody could do it. You just need to free your mind of everything that’s inside, then put it all back in a different order.”

I didn’t tell Hannah that that was easier said than done, because that would just sound like another excuse, so I tried to perk up a little. “I’ll give it the old Nancy Drew try.”

Hannah got up from the side of my bed. “You’ve
never failed to solve a case yet,” she said, “so I know you’ll be successful this time too.”

Just then the doorbell rang.

When I started to get up, Hannah said, “I’ll get it, Nancy. I need to get back to the kitchen anyway. It’s probably one of the neighborhood kids delivering some of the things I bought last week.”

“You’re a soft touch, Hannah,” I said.

Our pantry shelves were stacked with scented candles, unopened boxes of stationery, and tins of candy and nuts. We could probably have our own fund drive and make a lot of money off the things Hannah has bought from other people to help them raise money.

Hannah grinned back. “Maybe, but I like helping out the schools—and I admire the business knowhow of these elementary-grade kids.”

I snuggled into my pillow, enjoying the security of my bed, and began to sort out all the bits and pieces about the missing clock and the library celebration.

I was thinking about all of this when there was a soft knock on my door.

“Come in, Hannah,” I said. “Show me what you bought.”

“It’s me,” Ned said. “Are you decent?”

“Ned?” I sat up. “What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to apologize,” Ned said. “Are you decent?”

I got up from my bed, straightened the covers, and said, “Yes, it’s fine. Come on in.”

There are some comfortable chairs in front of a television set in one corner of my room, so I headed there, just as Ned came inside.

“What did you do that you need to apologize for?” I said, as I plopped down on a chair and put my feet on a stool. “I must have missed something.”

Ned came over and sat down beside me. “I didn’t mean to act so jealous when Ellis said he’d be glad to go with you to the movies tonight,” Ned said. “I should have known somebody was playing a prank on him.”

“Oh, Ned, I guess I didn’t even notice,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I looked at him and grinned. “Were you jealous?” I said.

“Well, of course . . . ,” Ned started to say, but the front doorbell rang again.

“This place is beginning to be like Grand Central Station,” I said. “Now,
that
must be the neighborhood kids bringing Hannah whatever it is she ordered from them.”

But it wasn’t. Within seconds Bess and George bounded into my room.

“Oh, sorry,” Bess said. “Hannah didn’t tell us you had company.”

“Ned was just apologizing to me for being jealous,” I said, grinning. “I was trying to decide whether to accept his apology or not.”

Ned grinned back. He stood up. “Well, call me when you’ve made your decision, Nancy Drew,” he said. “I have to go to the university. See you later.”

“Okay, Ned,” I said.

When Ned was gone, Bess said, “Don’t you feel well?”

I let out a big sigh. “I’m just frustrated, that’s all,” I said. “I can’t seem to do anything right anymore.”

“So, in other words, you’re feeling sorry for yourself?” George said.

I rolled my eyes. “No, George, I’m not feeling sorry for myself,” I said. “I’m just feeling . . . well,
incompetent
.”

“Did it ever occur to you that that is exactly what these people want you to feel?” Bess said.

I looked at her. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Nancy, even I can see what’s happening,” Bess said. “Whoever is behind this is playing mind games with you. They want you to give up.”

“Do you really think so?” I said.

“I think Bess is right, Nancy,” George said. “We
came over here just to tell you that we know you can solve this mystery.”

“And we’re here to help you do whatever needs to be done,” Bess added.

“Thanks. I couldn’t ask for two better friends,” I said. “In fact, I’m already feeling better.”

“Okay, so where do we start?” George said.

“Well, I’m not quite sure I need your help right this minute with the mystery, but just knowing that you haven’t given up on me helps. I could sure use your help to make some posters to advertise the celebration, though,” I said.

“Done!” George said.

I filled them in on what Mrs. Corning had told me about Mr. Franklin that morning. “I’m even more suspicious of him now than I was at first,” I said.

“That
is
odd,” Bess agreed. “If you quit your job, you don’t go right out and buy new clothes.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t,” George said. “He’s either really dumb, or he’s come into some money.”

“I don’t think he’s dumb,” I told them. I picked up the telephone. “I just thought of a plan. I’m going to call Chief McGinnis.”

Of course, both Bess and George thought I was crazy, but I knew what I had in mind would work
better if he were involved. I called him and asked him if he could come by for me, because I had something I needed to talk to him about: Willy Franklin. He agreed, reluctantly—but I could tell in his voice that he wanted to find out if I had discovered something new about the mystery. Of course, knowing how little he does, I was sure that anything I had found out would be more than he had.

By the time Chief McGinnis arrived, Bess and George had already left. I ran outside to his patrol car.

“Let’s go for a drive,” I said.

“I’m not supposed to drive citizens around town, Nancy,” Chief McGinnis said. “There’s a city ordinance against it.”

“It’s not like you’re taking me shopping, Chief McGinnis,” I said, getting into the passenger side of the patrol car. “We’re on a case.”

Chief McGinnis hesitated. I could tell that he wanted to do something to exercise his authority in the situation, but he evidently couldn’t think of anything.

He let out a big sigh and started backing out of our driveway. “Okay, Nancy,” he said, “where are we going?”

“Willy Franklin’s house,” I said. I gave him the address, and told him what Mrs. Corning had said that morning.

“There could be all kinds of reasons why he
bought new clothes,” Chief McGinnis said. “Maybe he had been saving up his money, and just decided to spend some of it to celebrate quitting his job.”

I thought about that for a minute. “I suppose,” I said, “but somehow he just doesn’t seem the type to do something like that.” I knew that wasn’t much of an argument, but I just had a gut feeling about all this, and sometimes, when you’re solving a mystery, you have to rely on that. “I still think we need to check him out. To me Willy Franklin doesn’t seem the type to save up his salary. I think he must have come into some money recently. Maybe he stole the library clock and finally found somebody to buy it. That could account for a lot of money.”

Chief McGinnis didn’t say anything, but I could tell that he was thinking about what I had said.

We finally turned onto Willy Franklin’s street, and Chief McGinnis parked the patrol car in front.

“Isn’t this a little obvious?” I said. “I was thinking that we could park down the street, then come up through the alley, and see if we find anything suspicious.”

Chief McGinnis looked at me. “Why would we do that?” he asked.

“Well, if he’s guilty and sees us, he might escape,” I patiently explained.

“He’s expecting us, Nancy,” Chief McGinnis said.

I could tell by the triumphal look in his eyes that he thought he had outsmarted me this time.

“Oh, well then, parking in front is probably the best thing,” I managed to say, knowing that I sounded like an idiot. “I didn’t realize that you had already talked to him.”

“I called him right after you called me,” Chief McGinnis said, still enjoying himself. “I knew you’d want to go see him Nancy—I’ve seen you meddle in enough cases to know your methods! I told him that I had a few questions about the library clock that I wanted to ask him. He was very cooperative and told me to come on over.”

“I just hope he’s still here,” I said.

Chief McGinnis looked at me. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, if Willy Franklin did steal the clock, then you just gave yourself away,” I said. “He’s not dumb. You just let him know that he might be a suspect in the theft.”

Chief McGinnis obviously hadn’t thought about that. “Come on!” he shouted. “We need to stop him!”

He literally ran up to the house. If Willy Franklin hadn’t been scared before, he’d probably be scared now. Chief McGinnis looked like a one-man SWAT team.

“Police!” Chief McGinnis shouted. “Open up!”

“You’re going to scare him,” I whispered. “You don’t want to do that. If you’ll just—”