025 Rich and Dangerous (13 page)

“Alison never liked Pieter van Druten,” Nancy went on. “Neither did Jack Kale. In fact, I myself wondered about that. Why would someone as sharp about people as Sarah Amberly give her heart to a man like Pieter? And I realized—she wouldn’t.”

“You’re lying!” growled van Druten. “Sarah and I loved each other! We were completely devoted! This girl is slandering me. Are you going to allow her to malign the dead like this?”

“Let her finish,” Ritter barked, pointing at Pieter.

Nancy began pacing the room again. As she went, the eyes of Pieter van Druten followed her every move. Even now, that look of his made her skin crawl.

“My first real clue, if you can call it that, was Sarah’s last words. She said: ’The Devil, the Fool, and Death.’ I wondered what she meant, until Madame Rosa told me. The Devil, the Fool, and Death are all tarot cards, and according to Madame Rosa they might have stood for people in Sarah’s life. Sarah told me, for instance, that I was the Three of Cups. So it stood to reason that she would connect her family with tarot cards, too.

“But which card stood for which person? I remembered the arguments I overheard between
Sarah and the Kales. She’d called Alison a fool, and she told Jack he was a devil—that left only Pieter as the Death card.”

Van Druten stood up, his face purple with rage. “If that’s the sort of evidence you have against me, I hope you’ve got yourself a good lawyer, because you’re going to need one!”

“I do,” said Nancy, looking at her father, who stood by the door now, a package in his hands. “But I don’t think I’ll need him. Not if you’ll hear me out.”

She looked over at Ritter, who nodded for her to continue.

“I knew it was only a hunch, but what if Sarah had been trying to tell me who had killed her? I thought about it for hours—and then it came to me.

“The first time I ever saw Sarah, she was shouting at everyone about how her pills were always running low. The night I had to give her a pill to save her life, I counted the pills left in the bottle. There were ten. The next night, after her death, I counted again—there were only seven. The dose indicated on the bottle was one pill every evening. That meant at least two were missing!

“Then it came to me. What if Pieter had put a couple of crushed-up pills in Sarah’s tea—she always had a cup in the evening. Then, when she took her normal dose an hour later, an overdose
would have resulted, causing death. Pieter only had to make sure he was seen elsewhere at the time of death, and his alibi was ironclad!”

Bess gasped out loud, sitting up on the couch. “You mean when we saw him that night, he had just come from—oh no!” Her hand flew to her mouth in horror.

Nancy ignored Bess’s remark. “I felt sure that I was right,” she went on. “But if I was, Pieter had committed the perfect crime. Or had he? When we saw him, he was holding an airline ticket.

“Just in case? I wondered. A careful criminal always has a getaway planned. And whoever killed Sarah Amberly was very careful—which is why I never thought Jack Kale killed her, by the way. He’s so reckless as a gambler, it wouldn’t be like him to plan things out so carefully.”

Jack smiled at her from across the room. “You tell ’em, Nancy,” he said.

“Well,” Nancy resumed, taking a deep breath. “After he bought the ticket, Pieter stopped at the dry cleaners to drop off a shirt. And I thought, why did he do that? One shirt, at ten o’clock at night?

“I managed to get the shirt before it was cleaned. And my dad had it analyzed by Interpol’s lab. Dad?”

Carson cleared his throat and pulled the soiled shirt out of the bag. “We just got the results of the test an hour ago. Tea stains,” he said, pointing to
them. “And traces of Sarah Amberly’s medicine —oxytomicin.”

“My first hard evidence.” Nancy smiled. Pieter van Druten looked as if he were about to explode. On either side of him, two policemen kept watch, just in case he decided to move.

“What about Maximilian?” Ritter wanted to know. “I had him pegged for the killer, to tell you the truth.” For the first time, Ritter was speaking to Nancy with some real respect.

“Well, his hatred of the Amberlys was intense. It was almost an obsession. And that made me suspect him,” Nancy agreed. “I have a feeling that if I had dug into his background a little, I would have found some old skeletons in the closet, something connected with Sarah and Joshua Amberly. But that’s a whole other story.

“When I was pushed,” Nancy continued, “down in the basement, I thought he had done it. But when he was killed too, I realized that his game wasn’t murder—it was blackmail. And that it must have been the person he was following—Pieter van Druten—who had tried to kill me. Maximilian must have gone down there expecting a payoff. Only he got a payoff he wasn’t expecting.

“I checked with the staff,” said Nancy. “The night Sarah died, Maximilian was the one who brought her tea from room service. My guess is that he saw Pieter putting the medicine in the tea.
And by the way, Pieter, you slipped up when you left the door of the suite wide open. After Sarah’s death, Maximilian must have put two and two together, and put the screws on Pieter. He even warned me not to mess around in matters that didn’t concern me. I guess he was trying to protect his little blackmail racket. Unfortunately for him, he messed around with the wrong person.”

There was silence in the room. Ritter scratched his head, going over everything Nancy had said.

“Wait—I still don’t get it,” he said. “Why in the world would van Druten here want to bump off the old lady? All he had to do was marry her, and he would have had everything. Why kill her?”

Nancy looked over at Pieter. He was smiling at her, daring her to explain that one. It was a smile of triumph, a smile that said, “Now I’ve got you.”

“That had me stumped, too.” Nancy nodded. “Pieter stood to lose if Sarah died before she married him. I didn’t know what to think, until I remembered Alison saying something about Sarah being a ‘one-man woman.’

“I thought of all the things Sarah had told me about her dead husband Joshua, about the way she kept his ring on her night table, and I thought, what if Sarah had told Pieter she would
never
marry him?

“And something else—Pieter van Druten was
supposed to have diamond mines in South Africa, so why didn’t he know the jewels in the missing jewelry box were fakes? I remember him saying they were very valuable when they were first missing. Either he didn’t know their value, or he was trying to make Alison look guilty. Either way, something was fishy. So I had my father check on him through Interpol.”

Carson reached into his pocket and handed Nancy an envelope.

“It seems Pieter van Druten was not a diamond mine owner at all, but a well-known con man, who served time in Robbin Island Prison for grand larceny and fraud. And another thing, Pieter van Druten was an alias. This man’s real name is Patrick Kale!”

An electric charge ran through the room. Suddenly Pieter shot to his feet, ready to lunge at Nancy. He was restrained just in time by the two burly officers and forced to take his seat again.

“Yes, a distant relative.” Nancy nodded. “A con man whose hand is played out in his native country. One day he reads an obituary in the papers—the death of the famous Joshua Amberly, Boston millionaire. Widow Sarah, née Kale—and a plan forms in his mind.

“He’s a handsome man, Patrick Kale, suave and debonair. The ladies have always liked him. So he goes to America under another name and gets to know the wealthy widow.

“Sarah Amberly is lonely and likes his company.
He’s doing well, getting closer to his goal. And then one day, she tells him she can never marry him, that she will always be a ‘one-man woman.’ And that’s when he decides to kill her.

“If he can make it look as if the sister and nephew are behind it, he can then declare his real identity and collect the inheritance. That’s why he tried to make Alison look guilty by planting the jewels in her drawer. He overheard Alison begging me to hide them for her, and when she ran off, he stuck a knife through a note she’d written, just to make her look even more suspicious.”

Nancy sat down. “So there you have it, Detective Ritter. I’m sorry I didn’t share all my information with you in the beginning, but you must remember, you didn’t exactly trust me.”

“No, I didn’t,” admitted Ritter. “My apologies, Miss Drew.” He went over to Pieter, the soiled shirt in his hands. “This ought to do it for you, Mr. van Druten—or should I say, Mr. Kale?”

Pieter glared at Nancy. “It was a good plan, a perfect plan,” he growled. “And it would have worked, too.”

“Yes, you’re right.” Carson nodded. “It would have worked, if your neighbor at the Plaza had been anyone else but Nancy Drew!”

W
HAT A FANTASTIC
show! I’ll never forget the music—and those costumes!” Nancy stepped out of the yellow taxi cab as Carson held out his hand to help her. “Thanks, Dad.”

Nancy beamed. She and her dad had finally gotten their day together in New York City, and they were both feeling on top of the world.

“It was fun, all right,” Carson agreed. “Good old Broadway, where everyone just bursts into song at the drop of a hat,” he mused, a little wistfully, Nancy thought. “Wasn’t it terrific the way they did that tap number?”

“And when she did that number with the
shadows behind her— Oh, what a show!” Nancy was still sailing. Maybe the next time she and Ned came to New York she could take him to the show too. It would be great to see it again.

“Nancy! Mr. Drew! Wait up!”

Turning around at the top of the Plaza steps, Nancy and Carson saw Bess and George flying toward them.

“Hi, you guys!” Nancy called out in surprise.

“Fancy meeting you here!” said Bess as she and George climbed up to Nancy and her father.

“Coming to see us?” asked Nancy.

“Actually,” answered George, “we’ve been invited to a little party on your floor. Jack Kale is having a few friends by.”

“You’re invited, too. He told us. Both of you,” Bess added, walking through the polished brass and glass door that the doorman held open for them with a smile.

“I’m afraid I have to make some calls before we leave,” Carson explained. “You’ll have to go without me.”

“Well, I’m all packed, so why not?” said Nancy, pressing the elevator button.

“Jack said he may come out and visit River Heights this fall!” Nancy could see the stars in George’s eyes.

“Well, that’s terrific,” said Nancy. “A party sounds great! And here we are.” The elevator
door opened on the top floor of the grand old hotel.

“Have a good time, girls,” Carson replied. “Don’t forget, Nancy, we leave in an hour.”

“No problem, Dad.” The girls waved goodbye to Carson at his door and walked to the Amberly suite.

“I hope there’ll be some cute guys here. Maybe Jack has a couple of friends—” Bess fluttered her lashes and grinned.

“Bess, you have a one-track mind.” Nancy laughed.

“He’s just so adorable, you know?” George seemed to be talking out loud to herself as she knocked on the door of the Amberly suite.

Bess and Nancy shot each other a look and laughed. “You think
I
have a one-track mind?” said Bess. “George seems to be operating on a single orbit herself these days—around Jack Kale.”

And there he was at the door. “Hello! Let the party begin!” he said as he opened the door with a flourish. “Come in, ladies.”

Sitting on the divan was Alison Kale. For the first time since Nancy had seen her, she actually looked relaxed. Not only that, she was wearing lipstick and an attractive dress that made her look almost pretty.

“Hello, Nancy,” she said warmly. “Hello, girls.”

“What’s the party for, Jack?” asked Nancy, a twinkle in her eye.

Jack raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Isn’t it clear as crystal? This is a celebration, my friends. We’re inaugurating the long prison career of my dear long-lost fifth cousin, Pieter van Druten.”

While Jack ran to get the girls some soda, they glanced around the suite. For the first time, it was filled with people, and there was actually a festive atmosphere about the place. Knots of well-dressed, handsome guys and great-looking girls mingled in cheerful groups all over the huge room.

“Jack has a lot of friends,” whispered George in Nancy’s ear. “And they’re all so
interesting,
too. He introduced me to some of them the other night.”

Nancy smiled. This was the way a suite at the Plaza was meant to feel, not creepy and ominous, the way it had been when she’d first seen it.

“And here we are, ladies,” Jack announced, handing them their glasses. “To the future!” he said.

“And what does the future hold for Jack Kale?” Nancy asked.

“Nothing like the past, I can promise you that,” Jack said. “I’m the Devil no more— scout’s honor. I’m not going to steal, or even gamble, ever again. Now I have all the money I need.” His expression grew serious. “Thanks to
you, Aunt Sarah,” he added, raising his glass to the ceiling.

“And, yes, I’m going straight,” he added, his exuberant spirits returning. “I’ll have you know I even retrieved this little trinket from the pawnshop.” He drew the ruby ring from his jacket pocket.