025 Rich and Dangerous (10 page)

“Please send a small fruit and cheese board to my suite, with a club soda, please,” Nancy said into the phone. Hanging up, she walked over to
the triple window facing Fifth Avenue and tried to clear her mind. But it was pretty hard to ignore the fact that she was practically under house arrest at the Plaza Hotel. What a weekend!

She hadn’t meant to get herself into such an awful mess, of course. And really, her own problems were nothing compared to the other things that had happened—like murder. Nancy had to get to the bottom of it and see that the murderer was put away where he, or she, couldn’t hurt anyone else. Leaving Sarah’s murder in the hands of the authorities would, in this case, be like walking away from the scene of an accident. She might be the only one who could figure out what had really happened.

Maximilian arrived with a tray containing the fruit and cheese board and a bottle of club soda.

“Hello, again, miss,” he greeted her.

“Hello, Maximilian,” she replied wearily.

The little waiter left the tray on the table in front of her and made for the door. He did not leave, however. Instead, he turned and said, “Perhaps, miss, you will permit me to give you a little piece of advice?”

Nancy looked up at him in stark surprise. “Well, what is it?” she asked, annoyed and curious at the same time.

“This matter of the Amberlys—miss, I urge you, for your own safety, to stay away from it. It is not something for a nice young girl like you.
You, you should be at the parties, the discos, with the young boys, having a good time. Not here, in this nest of snakes and evil things.” He moved in close to her, his eyes piercing.

“Please, miss, it will end badly for you. Please . . .”

Nancy took a deep breath. “I appreciate your concern, Maximilian, but you see, I liked Sarah Amberly. And I don’t think the person who murdered her should walk away.”

Maximilian’s face darkened. “That old witch! You liked her? Ha! She was as bad as all the rest of them. Forget her, I tell you! Forget her, before it is too late! You do not understand these things, these matters are deadly, miss—”

“I beg your pardon,” Nancy interrupted him, “but I know what I’m doing. This isn’t the first time I’ve been involved with—well, with murder. And I don’t intend to let the criminal get away with it.”

“So.” Maximilian nodded, tight-lipped. “You will not listen. You fancy yourself a detective. You cannot let the murderer get away with it, you say. Allow me to tell you, miss—in this world, everyone gets away with whatever he can. We all do whatever it takes to get by, understand?”

His voice was hoarse now, the muscles of his face twitching with rage. “You rich people, you think everything is easy! You never get your hands dirty, yet you live like kings and turn your
noses up at the rest of us. Well, allow me to tell you,
I
have come a long, long way to get where I am now. See?”

He held out his hands to her, palms upward. “See these hands? Maybe you do not see the dirt on them, but it is there, inside. . . . I know what it is, miss, to want things, and to do anything to get them.”

Spinning on his heel, he strode to the door. Then, standing in the doorway, he turned and said, “I have warned you, miss. Stay out of this matter. I will not warn you again.” And then he was gone.

• • •

“Wow! What do you think he meant?” Bess’s eyes widened with surprise as Nancy told her about Maximilian’s warning.

The two girls were sitting at a table in the Oak Room, pretending to read their menus, but all the while they kept sneaking glances in the waiter’s direction.

Maximilian studiously ignored them as he went about serving his tables on the other side of the Oak Room.

“I don’t know what he meant,” Nancy admitted. “And I guess I never will know. But he sure is creepy, isn’t he?”

“Nancy! Wait a minute. I just got an idea!” Bess whispered excitedly. “Maybe
he
did it! He always brought her tea, right?”

“Maximilian? Murder Sarah? I don’t know.”
Nancy sighed, shaking her head. “I mean, I guess anything is possible—”

“Oh no!” Bess’s attention was caught by a movement at the front of the restaurant. “Don’t look now, but here comes trouble.”

Nancy did look, and what she saw was Joe Ritter striding toward their table, an angry scowl on his face.

“I suppose you think you’re a real big shot,” he hissed as he pulled up a chair and sat down without being invited. “Your precious father seems to have turned some screws on high. I just got a call telling me to go easy on you or take early retirement.”

Nancy and Bess looked at each other, and neither one of them could suppress a giggle of satisfaction. Good old Carson to the rescue!

“Oh? You find that amusing? Well, don’t get the idea you’re permanently off the hook,” Ritter warned Nancy. “A man in my position has to follow his instincts. My instincts tell me you’re hiding something, and I intend to find out what it is.” His jaw was set determinedly.

The three of them sat in stony silence for all of thirty seconds, none of them knowing what to say.

Finally, Ritter grabbed a menu and said, with a wink at Bess, “So, what are you having?”

The girls’ jaws dropped open. Was he actually going to invite himself to dinner, after being so nasty not half a minute before?

“As for you,” he said, returning to Nancy, “I know you know more than you’re telling, so why don’t you spill the beans right here and now? I’ll pick up the tab. Deal?”

Nancy just couldn’t look Bess in the eyes. If she did, she’d end up giggling again! Obviously, bumbling Joe Ritter was a desperate man, and he was asking for their help in his own crude way. Well, she wasn’t going to tell him
everything,
but Nancy supposed it couldn’t hurt to share some of her thoughts with the befuddled detective.

“Honestly, what I know is very simple, and it’s all public information. A woman dies from an overdose of her own medicine, and apparently her jewelry box is taken at the same time. Now, why was she murdered? Well, not for her jewels. For one thing, they were fakes. But more important, those jewels were used to implicate her sister. Right after the murder they’re planted in Alison’s bureau drawer where anyone could find them.”

Ritter’s brow was screwed up in concentration as he tried to follow Nancy. “Wait a minute,” he interjected. “What if Alison didn’t know the jewels were fakes? Maybe she didn’t open the box after the murder because she was planning to run away with it.”

Nancy sighed and absentmindedly began to line up the silverware in front of her. As a sleuth, Joe Ritter was truly hopeless. “No, no. A confused person like Alison would never be able to
carry through with such a cool plan—not in my opinion, at least. Yes, the person who murdered Sarah Amberly knew her habits, knew that she took her medicine with her tea in the evening, and yes, they knew just how potent that medicine really was. But Alison Kale plan a murder? No way. She’s too confused and hysterical. The only way she could ever hurt anyone would be in an unplanned outburst of anger, nothing calculated.”

“How do you know she just didn’t
force
the medicine on the old lady out of anger?” Ritter demanded.

“Anyone who ever saw the two of them together could answer that question. Alison was angry at Sarah, all right, but she was also afraid of her. She let Sarah lead her. But honestly, the bottom line is they loved each other.”

“Well,
somebody
did it.” Ritter was shaking his head in frustration. Suddenly Nancy thought back to the very first time she saw Sarah Amberly walking down the hall. “My medicine is always running low— Why can’t one of you look after it. . . .”

Of course! Even back then, someone could have been putting tablets aside. Nancy was just about to share that memory when she noticed Maximilian across the room, standing on tiptoe, gesturing to someone. Obviously, he was trying to catch that person’s attention—trying hard, to judge from the way he was waving. But who was
he waving to? And now he was walking off toward that someone.

“Would you two excuse me, please? I’ve got to go to the ladies’ room.”

Throwing down her napkin, Nancy rose and threaded her way between the tables in the direction the waiter had taken. Out of the restaurant, around the corner of the hallway, and—where?

Ah, there was his white towel on the floor. It must have fallen out of his uniform pocket. Nancy sped down the corridor, just in time to see a pneumatic door swing shut. She hurried through it, ignoring the sign that said Employees Only, and found herself at the top of a staircase.

Nancy flew down the stairs, pausing only when she reached a corridor that was lit by bare bulbs. The floor was concrete, painted gray. No luxury here. Off in the distance, Nancy heard the hum of immense motors, and something else—the click of footsteps!

Now she could hear the footsteps quickening to a run, and as she followed, she could also hear the roar of motors getting louder. This had to be the loading dock where trash was piled into the hotel’s compactor and from there taken by trucks to the city dump.

Nancy halted and listened for the footsteps. They had stopped. After a moment, she proceeded again, slowly, taking each step lightly and listening hard for any telltale sound.

Suddenly she felt strong hands grip her from behind. And the next thing she knew she was hurtling headfirst down a chute that was in the wall opposite her.

She landed with a thud, in a dark place with a vaguely disgusting smell. It was dark down there, only a square of light at the end of the sort of tunnel she was in. The floor was soft, rubbery. Nancy wondered where she was.

But when the floor started moving to the tune of a whirring motor, Nancy knew. She was on a conveyor belt. And the square of light, now growing larger, was the mouth of the compactor!

Rising unsteadily to her feet, Nancy started to inch back to where she had landed. Just then, however, a chute opened somewhere above her, and a huge pile of trash landed smack on top of her, sending her sprawling to the floor. Among the papers Nancy noticed some orange rinds, several loaves of stale bread, and some coffee grounds.

Nancy flailed about anxiously, trying in vain to dig herself out and get to her feet again. But it was impossible. Every passing second brought her closer to the great mouth of the compactor. In no time at all she’d be reduced to a cube the size of a shoe box!

N
ANCY MOVED HER
hands around frantically, desperately feeling for some way to escape the huge jaws of the compactor. They were coming closer and closer every moment!

Brushing coffee grounds out of her eyes, she tried to claw her way backward, but it was no use. Just a few feet ahead, the two-ton mechanical monster was thudding down and she was headed straight for it.

But then, just as she was about to have the life squashed out of her, there was a shower of sparks and the giant motor came to a grinding halt. All at once there was total silence and total darkness.
Even the dim square of light behind Nancy had disappeared.

It must be a power outage, Nancy thought. Swallowing hard, she stood up. Her shoulder bumped painfully against a wall of the stalled compactor.

Nancy knew that hotels like the Plaza had emergency lighting systems that turned on automatically in cases like this. That meant the compactor would shortly be working again. She had, at the most, a minute to save herself.

Twisting out of the compactor’s way, she felt behind her—more trash. She scrambled madly through the enormous pile ahead of her until she reached the chute she had come down.

Nancy tried to pull herself up by grabbing the walls of the chute, but they were too slick. At last she managed to locate a chink in one wall. It was just big enough to accommodate her right hand. She gripped it and pulled with all her might. Thank goodness, it worked. She was able to take her first steps back up the chute.

The second her feet left the conveyor belt, the emergency power switched on, and the belt kicked into motion again with a whirring noise. Behind her, Nancy heard the compactor come down with a sickening crunch. That could have been me, she thought, her stomach tightening.

Pulling her way up for what seemed like an eternity, she finally came to the top of the chute
and, with a final thrust, threw herself over the top and landed on the cold floor of the underground hallway.

The emergency lighting left a lot to be desired. It cast deep shadows, and Nancy had to feel her way along the corridor until she heard hushed voices and saw a faint glimmer of light at the end of the catacombs.

Through the window of the pneumatic door, Nancy could see the eerily lit lobby. She pushed the door open and began walking back toward the Oak Room.

All around her, the hotel staff was busily tending to their patrons’ comfort, reassuring them that everything was all right.

“I was reading my paper when the lights went out! What happened?” asked a portly gentleman in a pin-striped suit.

“Our apologies, sir. There seems to have been some sort of power outage. Our maintenance staff is attending to it now, and we should have full power restored momentarily,” explained one of the staff.