Troubled Waters (Nancy Drew (All New) Girl Detective Book 23) (13 page)

Uh-oh, I thought, looking around. Not that there was anyone nearby who could help us. “What are you going to do to us?” I asked.

“You’ll see.” J.C. jerked his head toward the hole a second time. “Now quit stalling and get in there.”

George climbed through the ragged hole first. I squeezed through after her, into a triangular room barely large enough for the two of us. At our feet a wooden crate sat among the dust balls, spiderwebs, and pulverized brick. The crate had obviously been sitting there for ages. A lacy network of dusty cobwebs covered the outside of it—and the cracked wooden lid that had been tossed aside. Even in the dim light that came through the hole in the bricks, I saw piles of money stacked right up to the top of the box and several wads that had spilled over onto the floor.

“Whoa! Nancy, we can’t just let J.C. take all this money,” George said. “It’s stolen!”

“Well, who’s going to stop me?” J.C. scoffed, leaning into the hole from the living room. “Not you two, that’s for sure. In fact, you’ll be helping me—if
you know what’s good for you. Start putting the cash in here,” he ordered.

He handed a yellow Bullets sports bag through the opening. George looked questioningly at me as she reached over and took the bag.
What are we going to do?
she mouthed silently.

That same question had been churning in my mind. All I could do was shrug as I reached for a wad of bills and put them in the sports bag. Then my shoulder bag shifted, banging against my ribs, and I felt something hard inside. My cell phone! I thought.

I glanced over my shoulder at J.C. His face was framed by the ragged opening in the bricks, but his eyes were focused on the money, not me. Reaching into my bag, I opened my phone and pressed the button to dial the last number called. George took one look at my hand, deep inside my bag, and began to bang the wooden box noisily against the concrete.

Excellent! I thought. J.C. would never hear my phone with all that noise. Glancing inside my bag, I saw that the call was being answered. Owen had picked up!

“Hey, cut it out!” J.C. said angrily. “Just put the money in the bag.”

“Oh, sure thing. Sorry about that,” George told him. She stopped banging the crate, but I noticed the tiny
smile that curled the outside edges of her mouth.

“How did you sneak back into the foundry, J.C.?” I asked, loud enough so that I was pretty sure Owen would be able to hear me on his phone. “We didn’t see your car in the parking lot.”

J.C. laughed and said. “Well, I didn’t want to take any chances, not after you followed my car up here the other night. I left with everyone else when Owen called it quits for the day. Of course, I drove back up a few minutes later, but I parked behind some trees off the side of the road so the guard wouldn’t get suspicious.”

J.C. let out another self-satisfied laugh as he added, “The stupid idiot never even saw me coming. I knocked him out from behind and tied him up before he came to.”

Glancing into my bag, I saw that the call was still connected. I just hoped Owen could hear what we were saying and guess what was going on!

“Jeez, you’re worse than Bernard Tilden!” George said, shaking her head in disgust. “He acted like he was the biggest brain to hit the planet in a century too. But he was just a low-down thief!”

“He deserved that money!” J.C. said hotly. “Everyone in my family knew how badly Mr. Davis treated him.”

I shivered when I saw the angry gleam in his eyes. Who knew how long it would be until Owen got here—if he got here. Somehow, George and I had to buy some time—or at least keep J.C. talking. Then I realized what he had just said, and remembered how we’d originally assumed the Bernard Tilden house belonged to J.C.’s parents.

“So Tilden was a relative of yours?” I asked. I had already guessed the answer, but I definitely wanted to keep J.C. talking.

He shot a surprised glance at me. “He was my mother’s great-uncle,” he admitted. “His house passed to my mom after he died. Too bad no one thought to look in his journal before I . . .” He hesitated, but I had a pretty good idea of what he’d been about to say.

“Before you went in after the floods?” I guessed. “Brad and Tanya said they saw you there. Is that when you found his journal?”

“Police weren’t letting anyone in the houses, but I promised my folks I’d get their things. You know, pictures and sentimental stuff,” J.C. explained. “Yeah, I found the journal. I guess after Uncle Bernard died so suddenly, the family just shoved it away without reading it. But
I
read it. Good thing I did too. Otherwise, I’d never have known he hid that money here in the factory.”

J.C. leaned into the hole, his eyes still fixed on the crate of bills. “It figured that Helping Homes would pick the exact same time to fix up this place into new apartments. Volunteering on the job was the only way I could look for the money.”

“Let me get this straight,” George said, standing upright in the tiny space. “You didn’t volunteer with Helping Homes in order to help people. You did it just to get the money? And in the meantime, you didn’t care if you
hurt
all the work we were doing?”

J.C. just shrugged. “I knew it might take some time to find the money, since my uncle didn’t write exactly where he hid it. That was why I went back to the house last night, to see if maybe he left anything
else
saying where the money was.”

“Why did you try to pin the damage on Craig Reynolds?” I asked J.C.

“It was too perfect,” he said, with a smug laugh. “I mean, after I took that floor plan, I needed a way to distract people’s attention from me. And Craig had already knocked me down, so people knew how he felt about me. When I stashed the frames in my car, I saw a box full of spray paint in his truck bed. The rest was easy.”

“Your phony accusations could have ruined Craig’s life! Did you ever think about that?” George asked,
grabbing more cash and putting it in J.C.’s sports bag.

J.C. just shrugged again.

I kept glancing past him, watching and listening for some sign of help. Where was Owen? Somehow, George and I had to buy more time. “What happened at Deirdre’s party, J.C.?” I asked. “Someone was in the garden with me. I thought it was Craig, but . . .”

“It wasn’t easy to get rid of Deirdre, but when I saw you and your friends go outside, I figured you might be talking about the foundry,” he said. “I snuck outside and listened. Too bad Craig decided to get curious about what
I
was up to. I barely got away without him seeing me.”

But I saw
him
, I realized. “You must have dropped Bernard Tilden’s journal before you drove away.”

“None of that matters now,” J.C. said. He scowled into the darkening shadows at us. “All that matters is that I’ve found the money. A half million dollars . . .”

“You won’t get away with it,” George said hotly. “The police will know you took it.”

“Not if you’re not around to tell them,” J.C. told us. There was a steely edge to his voice that chilled me to the bone.

“What are you going to do to us?” I asked.

His eyes shifted to the handle of the sledge hammer.
“Never mind about that. Just hurry up,” he said.

There were just a few more wads of bills left in the wooden crate. George reluctantly grabbed them and placed them in the sports bag.

“Hand it over,” J.C. instructed.

As he held out his hand, I saw a flash of movement behind him. Owen? I didn’t want my eyes to tip off J.C. Lowering my gaze to the bag, I picked it up slowly. “Oops!” I said, pretending to stumble.

J.C. scowled as money spilled out across the floor. “Cut the shenanigans,” he said sharply. He gripped the sledgehammer, but before he could lift it, I heard a loud thud.

J.C. slipped to the floor, out cold.

“Nancy! George!” Owen said, appearing on the other side of the hole. In his hand was a chunk of brick. “Are you okay?”

George and I grinned at each other. “We are now,” I told him. “We’re fine.”

“Smile and say cheese, everyone!” said Owen, a week later.

Bess, George, Tanya, and I squeezed in next to the other Helping Homes volunteers in the lobby of the Davis Foundry. “Cheese!” we all said. There was a flash of light as the photographer for the
River
Heights Bugle
snapped off a shot. In the next instant the volunteers let out a wild cheer and green Helping Homes caps flew up into the air like confetti.

“Congratulations! We did it!” Owen cried above the din, ducking caps that rained down on us. “The foundry is now officially open and ready for residents.”

The cheering grew even louder. I spotted Brad and Cathy farther back in the crowd. If their wide smiles were any indication of how they felt, they were definitely happy.

“Talk about a dramatic makeover,” George said as we headed for the tables where punch and cake were being served. “It’s only been a week and a half, and the foundry is ready to move into.”

“Can you believe it?” Bess glanced around at the shiny silver elevators and freshly painted walls and balcony. “The elevators are in, the bathrooms have been tiled, all the cabinets, sinks, tubs, and toilets are in place, and pipes and wires are in working order. Whoever would have thought that a bunch of regular people like us—with a little professional help—could pull off such a big job in such a short amount of time?”

“Or that we’d have to catch a thief while we were at it,” Tanya added. She raised an eyebrow at me, shaking
her head. “What a shock for everyone to find out their favorite basketball star was the person who was wrecking all our work.”

“Well, at least J.C. is in jail now,” I said. “And we still managed to finish renovating the foundry right on schedule.”

“I’ll toast to that,” Craig Reynolds spoke up next to us. He and Cam had just helped themselves to glasses of punch, which they raised. Craig put his arm around his brother’s shoulder. “And even though J.C. Valdez proved himself to be the jerk I thought he was all along, not
all
of the Bullets are bad news.”

Cam gazed over his shoulder at Travis and some of the other guys wearing yellow Bullets warm-up jackets. “We learned a ton from training with the team—even without J.C. Coach Stanislaus thinks we’ve got a good shot at being number one in our league next year.”

I turned to see Owen working his way through the crowd toward us. “Helping Homes should have a great season too,” he said. “A great building season, that is. I just heard from the lawyer for the Davis family—”

“The ones who owned the foundry?” Bess asked.

Owen nodded. “They never expected to get back the money that Bernard Tilden stole from them all
those years ago,” he said. “They decided the best way to use the money would be to donate it to the
next
Helping Homes renovation for flood victims in the area.”

“That’s great!” I told him.

I picked up a glass of punch, but it spilled a moment later when someone bumped into me from behind.

“Make room, people,” Deirdre Shannon called out. She had the
Bugle
photographer by the arm, and she pulled him over to Owen. “I’m sure readers will want to see a picture of me with Mr. Parkinson.”

“That’s
Jurgensen
,” Owen said dryly.

Deirdre gave a dismissive wave of her perfectly manicured hand. “Whatever,” she said. “The point is, I threw a fabulous party, and I
am
Helping Homes’ biggest fan.”

“Really?” George asked, raising an eyebrow. “Does that mean you’ll be volunteering for the next renovation?”

“You mean . . . working?” Deirdre said, her smile faltering.

Owen nodded. “Helping Homes could use all the help we can get,” he told her. Then he turned to Bess, George, Tanya, and me. “What about you four? Can I count on you for our next project?”

I hesitated for half a second. Just that morning I’d
gotten a phone call. I couldn’t give my friends any of the details—not yet, anyway. But it looked like I would be heading to California for a few days.

“When would we start?” I asked Owen.

“Let’s see . . . It’ll take a week or two to get all the paperwork done. But we’ll start as soon as possible after that,” Owen said. He gazed at me with eyes that sparkled with challenge. “What do you say, Nancy? Think you can handle it?”

“Are you kidding?” Bess said, grinning. “Nancy Drew is
always
up for another adventure.”

“True,” I agreed. “Absolutely, most definitely true.”