04 Once Upon a Thriller (5 page)

George gave me one of her George looks and said, “Okay, so we could have drowned today in Moon Lake, but why would anyone target us? No one knows who we are. And besides, how could anyone have known we'd go out on the lake and be caught in a storm?”

“But remember Alice Ann—and that waitress—told us where Lacey lives. I just have a feeling it's connected somehow. I know you're beat, but maybe we should start reading
Burned
and
Framed
now. There just might be more clues to what's next.”

“I'll tell you what's next for me, Nancy: sleep. You can wait up for Bess, but I'm going to bed.”

The next morning I woke up early and waited to tell Bess and George what I had discovered. I had looked at both books, letting George get her beauty sleep.
Burned
opens with a mysterious fire at an antiques store. The arsonist tampers with the wiring in an old chandelier to make it look as though the fire is accidental. The rest of the plot involves an international ring of criminals who traffic in fake and stolen antiques. The heroine in the novel—a journalist named Lucy Luckstone—breaks the story and eventually solves the case with the help of Detective Buck Albemarle.

The two characters appear again in the novel
Framed
. This time a thief steals a valuable painting from an art museum while Lucy Luckstone is on a behind-the-scenes tour. Lucy is framed for the theft, and Detective Albemarle has to clear her name.

I didn't know if
Drowned
would have revealed anything helpful, but I didn't have a copy of it.

I was on my second cup of tea when Bess came into the kitchen.

“So, what did you find out?” Bess asked eagerly as she helped herself to a mug of coffee. “Any insight into the Avondale crime spree?”

“Well, I think there's a pretty good chance I'm right about someone borrowing crimes from Lacey's books,” I explained. “But I don't even know where to begin in terms of motive.”

“How about Alice Ann?” George said as she shuffled into the living room. “You said she didn't seem to like Lacey or Paige all that much.”

I nodded. “Could it really be that easy? Who else? Lacey?”

Bess yawned from the couch. “It sounds crazy, but who else knows her books better than the one who wrote them?”

Bess had made a good point. But as much as I would love to talk to Lacey, we had already been warned by Sheriff Garrison to stay away, far way. I wasn't sure if anyone would be willing to talk to strangers from out of town, no matter how friendly people from Avondale appeared.

George looked thoughtful. “Well, you're probably the only person in town who's made the connection between the two crimes,” she said. “Ian and the sheriff might figure it out as well, but something tells me you have a leg up on those two, at least for a little while. The sheriff thinks we're stalkers, remember?”

I answered, “I know. But the girls in town did know that the Paige's Pages fire sounded similar to
Burned
. Maybe it would make sense if we let people know about the connection between the two crimes. What do you think?”

George didn't look too happy. “Do we really have to get involved in this, Nancy? Can't we let the sheriff take charge, for once?”

My friends knew me better than that. If there was even a possibility that these occurrences were copycat crimes, then I couldn't ignore them. And it didn't mean they would stop—Lacey O'Brien had written a number of mysteries, and the person or persons behind the fire and the theft had more than enough material to keep them going.

I frowned at George.

She and Bess both sighed. “Okay, Nancy,” Bess finally said. “What do we do next?”

I got up from my chair and walked into the kitchen area to pour myself another cup of tea.

“I was thinking I might give Ned and his dad a story for the
Bugle
, and if they want to run it, they would be free to do so.”

Bess nodded. “And you'll get this story by . . .”

“Saying I'm a
Bugle
reporter, of course. And that I'm following Lacey O'Brien's rare appearance and book signing in the quiet hamlet of Avondale.”

“Hamlet?” George said.

“I'm going to give Ned a call right now,” I said. “And then I'll do the dishes. Promise.”

My boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, is a part-time reporter and news editor at the
River Heights Bugle
, his dad's paper. The
Bugle
covers a wide area encompassing three counties, including Avondale, so the chances were good that Ned and his dad would be interested in the story.

I quickly filled him in on what had happened yesterday, and he agreed that both crimes sounded newsworthy.

“I'll have to clear it with my dad, but if you write the story, I'll edit it and get my dad to publish,” he told me on the phone. “When will you be back in River Heights?”

“I'm not sure. But Bess and George are coming home first thing tomorrow,” I replied. “I hope to do the interviews tomorrow morning and write the article tomorrow night so you can post the story ASAP. Sound good?”

“Yes, sounds great,” he replied.

After I hung up the phone, I cleaned up the dishes as promised. And because yesterday had been such an unplanned adventure, we decided to relax the rest of the day at the cabin—snacking, napping, reading—before George and Bess took off for home.

After dinner, we decided to play one of our favorite games, Scrabble.

George was easily the best player among us, and just fifteen minutes into the game, she was well ahead of Bess and me.

“Triple word score!” she shouted gleefully as she played the word ZEBRAS.

“Ugh, and you even have a
Z
in there,” Bess groaned.

“Not only that, but the
Z
is on a double-letter-score square,” I added with a pained sigh.

“Sorry, girls,” George said apologetically, though the smile on her face made it hard to believe she was being sincere.

I played the word YEAR and was left with the letters
A, D, K
, and
O
. I selected a
Q
and then two
O
s in a row.

“Really?” I exclaimed, exasperated. “Two more
O
s?”

“Nancy, you just totally gave away your letters!” Bess laughed.

I shrugged. I was losing badly by this point anyway. I placed the tiles on my stand with a sigh and started rearranging them. Suddenly I remembered the scrap of paper from yesterday.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, practically knocking my tiles over. “I think I know what that number might have been!”

George and Bess both gave me puzzled looks.

“Number?” Bess asked. “What number?”

“The one on the paper Paige dropped in the supermarket,” I reminded my friends.

“What do you think it means?” George asked.

“Well, I was rearranging the letters on my stand, and I was looking at the number of points assigned to each letter instead of at the letters themselves,” I explained. “Maybe each of those numbers corresponds to a different letter of the alphabet.”

I spun my stand around to show them.

“Well, I guess the game's over if you're showing off all your letters,” George joked.

I glared at her.

“Sorry, sorry!” she said, waving her arms in apology. “Please, go on.”

“George, I know you thought the number might be a date, but what if it's a word?” I continued. “The numbers were 9-1-14, so we should try the ninth, first, and fourteenth letters of the alphabet.”

Bess had been keeping score, so she quickly grabbed a scrap of paper and a pencil and jotted down the numbers one through fourteen on the paper with the letters of the alphabet below them. She studied the paper for a second and then gasped.

“The letters spell the name ‘Ian'!” she cried.

“Really?” I asked, intrigued.

“It's a good theory, but why would someone write down numbers instead of letters for someone's name?” George asked. “I admire your sleuthing skills, but maybe the number is just a number.”

“You have a point,” I admitted. “People sometimes write things down if they're likely to forget them, and ‘Ian' doesn't seem like a name that would be hard to remember.”

“Or necessary to disguise,” Bess pointed out a bit defensively.

“Well, we don't know about that, do we?” George joked. “Maybe he's an undercover spy and his cover is that he's the sheriff's nephew-slash-intern.”

“Ha, ha,” Bess replied, rolling her eyes.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “If it is just a number, a number that someone wouldn't want to forget, it could be a combination—maybe to a safe?”

“And that would explain why the bookstore owner looked so alarmed when you picked it up,” George pointed out. “Maybe it's the code to a safe she has in the bookstore.”

I nodded. “It's a possibility.”

“Are we done with this game, then?” George asked as she gestured at the abandoned Scrabble board. “Or are we still playing?”

Bess threw up her hands. “It's no use, George,” she admitted. “You'll win anyway. Let's call it quits.”

“I agree,” I chimed in. “You are truly the champ, George.”

With that, we packed up the game and headed to bed.

I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. But I was startled awake in the middle of the night by a rustling noise outside the cabin. I sat straight up. Bess was still sleeping soundly in the bed next to mine, but I saw George shift in her bed across the room. She sat up too.

I tiptoed over in the dark and perched on the edge of her bed.

“Did you hear that?” I whispered.

She nodded. “It sounds like someone's out there,” she said in a hushed tone.

I stood up and dashed back to my bed to grab a sweatshirt and my cell phone—just in case. I pulled the sweatshirt over my head and stepped into my flip-flops. George did the same, and then we quietly went out into the cabin's main room.

A shadow darted past the window next to the front door. George and I both held our breath.

“Maybe we should call the police,” she said quietly.

Suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I clutched George's arm.

What I had seen outside was now behind me, but inside.