Not A Girl Detective (11 page)

Probably not a great idea. I’d save it for a less squeamish audience. It’d be perfect for my book. I was sure I could get Edgar to give me permission to reproduce the painting. I could give it a whole chapter, even. I took a deep breath. That was settled. As for today, well, the N O T

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winning individual rolls with the punches and sways

with the breeze. If Nancy Drew—while bound and

gagged by villains—could tap out HELP in Morse

code, I could handle Clarissa and the Chums.

“You will be speaking directly after the scavenger

hunt, and the ladies should be on their last clue by now.”

She pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket of her red blazer. “This last one is from
The Mystery of the Fire
Dragon
. ‘Aunt Eloise treats everyone to dinner at a Chinese restaurant,’ ” Clarissa read, “ ‘but ends up taking the food to go after a flowerpot falls from a balcony and knocks Nancy Drew unconscious.’ ”

“Are they looking for doggy bags in the kitchen?” I

asked.

“No.” The elevator doors opened and I followed her

out. “Aunt Eloise ordered Peking duck. They’ve got to find the pond in the West Garden.” She pointed toward an exit sign. “There are ducks out there. In this heat, can you imagine?”

“That’s pretty obscure, don’t you think?”

“It’s supposed to be a challenge.” She stopped in front of the ice machine. “Most of us here are experts, Cece.”

“Well, I’m sorry about Edgar, but I’m ready.” I’d disappointed her. She’d actually been looking forward to catching me off guard, the sadist. “Yes,” I said, patting my purse, “I have my notes and even a change of underwear right here.”

“Be prepared. It’s not just the Boy Scout motto. It’s a life lesson.”

She looked at me and I looked at her. Then she

snatched the ice buckets out of my hands and filled

them up.

I think I won that round, but I’m not exactly sure.

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*

*

*

THE LIGHTS WENT DOWN. I began with the bland

stuff—the Stratemeyer Syndicate and the multiple

Nancy Drew ghostwriters and half-ghosts, so called

because they worked from such detailed outlines.

Then, on the theory that pandering never hurts, I

talked about the role of fans in series fiction. Tabby Cat nodded like crazy during that part. (She’d recently written a twelve-page account of Nancy’s wed-

ding and posted it on the Chums’ Listserv. Her vision of the Drew-Nickerson nuptials had Nancy wearing a

simple white sheath, no sequins or beads, and the

bridesmaids, Bess Marvin and George Fayne, in pale

yellow pantsuits. The hors d’oeuvres were likewise

pale yellow: deviled eggs and curried chicken salad

on endive spears.)

From there, I hashed over Nancy as gothic heroine,

virgin goddess, feminist icon, and WASP legend. Fi-

nally it was time for my personal obsession: Grace

Horton.

Grace Horton. She was the black hole at the center of my research, inescapable and invisible. I knew she had been a model with the Harry Conover agency in New

York, where the idea of the celebrity model had sup-

posedly originated. Other than the Nancy Drew covers, however, and a single newspaper advertisement from

1942, in which Grace, dressed in a red bathing suit and polka-dot slingbacks, professed to staying slim on the Ry-Krisp plan, I could find no images and no information whatsoever about her.

The Stratemeyer archive at the New York Public Li-

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brary yielded nothing. Databases at various societies of illustrators and institutes of pop culture, also nothing.

The Internet, zilch. And still, Grace haunted me, an-

other one of the Stratemeyer ghosts—or maybe just a

half-ghost.

The cool blonde. The good girl. She was both at the

same time. That much I could fathom. What I just

couldn’t wrap my head around, however, was the fact

that Grace Horton used her beauty to become Nancy

Drew, a young woman who only ever had to use her

brain.

Nancy was beautiful, of course, but her beauty was

beside the point. Poor Ned Nickerson. He never quite

got it. He was the kind of guy who was always under-

foot, a puppy waiting to be stroked—or kicked. There

were others, too: Dick Larrabee, Dirk Jackson, Don

Cameron, Jack Kingdom, as all-American as their

names. But Nancy was indifferent. With her adoring father and unlimited bank account she could afford to be.

Everything about her was inspirational: her bravery, her loyalty, her spirit of adventure. But it was this obliviousness to money and sex that made her an icon, espe-

cially to readers too young to have developed much of a taste for either. Then again, maybe that was me, a two-bit beauty queen from the working class who got preg-

nant and blew her one shot at a serious life.

The lights went up. All eyes were on me. I felt naked.

I was clearly some kind of exhibitionist, because I liked it. And everyone seemed to be clapping.

Lael and Bridget arrived just as Clarissa opened the

floor to questions and comments from the audience.

“Sorry,” Lael mouthed as they crawled into the back

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row, but I think she could tell from my face that things had gone well.

Rita was waving her arm with grim determination.

“Yes, Rita?”

“You’ve inspired me to come out of the closet. As I

said yesterday, I think Nancy Drew sucks.”

After a chorus of horrified clucks, the audience

turned en masse from Rita to me. Somebody had to be

the source of this perfidy.

“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” I said. “I do

not think Nancy Drew sucks. I am a huge Nancy Drew

fan. She made it possible for me to dream of doing

things I never even could have imagined. She was fearless. And nothing could sway her.”

“Absolutely,” Rita said, cutting me off. “That’s a sign of psychosis.”

“Why don’t we move on?” I looked around the room

for a friendly face. Nancy Olsen’s hand went up. Oh,

great.

“Nancy?”

She looked at her mother for a minute, then back at

me.

“What would a Nancy Drew book be without a happy

ending?”

“Real life,” I answered without thinking.

Clarissa stood up abruptly.

“Do you have something to add?” I asked her.

She glowered at me by way of response, then walked

slowly up to the front of the room. With the lights up I could see that her face was red, almost as red as her suit.

She turned to face me. “Thank you, Cece, on behalf

of the Chums. That was very interesting. Of course”—

and here she paused dramatically—“if you had both-

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ered to inform me that you would be speaking on a

topic other than the one we had agreed upon, ‘The

Changing Demographics of River Heights,’ I might

have been able to provide you with some pertinent in-

formation.” She addressed the Chums. “What I mean to

say is, had I been better informed, I might have saved Ms. Caruso from making such egregious errors.”

What errors? Little beads of sweat began trickling

down my sides.

Clarissa strolled around the room, up and down the

aisles, her hands clasped behind her back. The Chums

were mesmerized, heads swiveling in unison, pens

poised over their pads. This was way more excitement

than they’d bargained for when they’d sent in their reg-istration forms.

“It would seem that Ms. Caruso finds our Nancy

Drew to be some sort of elitist ideal.” Clarissa paused next to the sleep-over kits. “Fine. I don’t agree, but one could certainly argue the point.”

I scanned the crowd. Big Bad Sebastien, sensing a

catfight, looked happier than a pig in shit.

“However, I find it
reprehensible
to use an actual individual to make such a point. I’m speaking about

Grace Horton. Let me tell you a thing or two about

Grace Horton, the original Nancy Drew. First of all, she was not a sociological cliché—some poor exploited girl from a humble background forced to use her beauty to

rise in the world.”

I didn’t say she was, I wanted to scream. But I re-

mained calm.

“Grace was a highly moral, highly principled indi-

vidual. And more to the point,” Clarissa continued,

walking back up to the front of the room, “she came

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from a wealthy and accomplished family—my family,

to be precise.”

At this, the Chums went crazy.

Tabby Cat leapt up from her seat.

“Careful—the baby!” Rita warned.

“I need to know how Clarissa is related to Grace,”

said Tabby Cat urgently.

“Grace Horton was my ex-husband’s mother, my

daughter Nancy’s grandmother.”

I looked over at Nancy, whose head was buried in a

book.

A dark-haired woman wearing glasses raised her

hand.

“Yes?”

“Who chose Grace as the cover model? Was it Ed-

ward Stratemeyer or the illustrator, Russell Tandy?”

Before Clarissa could answer, another woman

shouted out, “What was she really like? Was Grace anything like Nancy Drew?”

Then another: “Did your ex-mother-in-law get to

keep any original cover art, anything like that?”

“Ladies, ladies. These are all fine questions. Indeed, on the subject of Grace’s relationship with Russell

Tandy and her impact on the creation of Nancy Drew, I have much to say. But you will have to be patient.”

They didn’t much like that idea.

“Now, now.” She smiled. “What I mean to say is, I

will be addressing all of these questions in my forthcoming book.”

The Chums were beside themselves yet again. What

forthcoming book?

“It will be chock-full of surprises, I promise you that.

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All sorts of secrets will be revealed.” She smiled again, showing all of her thirty-two teeth.

Lael sounded like she was choking. She was a good

friend.

“And now, Chums, we will adjourn for lunch. When

we return, Allie Nemeroff from Shreveport, Louisiana, will give her talk, ‘Boullion with a Speck of Nutmeg: Savories in Nancy Drew.’ Finally,” she said, looking

right at me, “something we can all enjoy!”

In the world of boxing, they call that a technical

knockout.

10

Edgar Edwards’s pool turned out to be an excellent

place to recuperate. The water was a crystalline blue, the temperature a balmy eighty. The three of us floated along on rafts we’d bought on sale at Target, soaking up the healing rays of the sun. All negative thoughts were banished. They were like the tiny leaves floating on the surface of the water. If you didn’t get rid of them,

they’d eventually clog your filter.

So Lael and Bridget had lost three hundred dollars at video poker. They had their health, didn’t they? Bridget had a boyfriend who adored her. Lael had amazing

children. As for me, well, I could hardly complain. I let my hand dangle in the water and tried to feel content-ment wash over me. It took a minute. I had a happy

daughter. Wonderful friends. My book was almost fin-

ished. I was done with Clarissa’s games. Her bad attitude was not my problem. Her daughter was not my

problem. Her quote-unquote book was not my prob-

lem. My romance with Gambino, however—that was

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set it right. I pulled my hand out of the water and shook the droplets off.

“You woke me up,” Lael said groggily.

“Go back to sleep,” I whispered.

I grabbed my cell phone from the raft’s cup holder and punched in his number. He’d be back from Buffalo by

now. And if I knew him at all he would’ve gone straight from the airport to his office in the Hollywood Division.

He picked up on the first ring.

“Gambino.”

“Hi. It’s me.”

I thought I could hear him smiling. He’d be rumpled.

The blue eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses would

be red. He couldn’t sleep on planes. And he’d be on his fourth cup of coffee by now, heavy on the cream and

sugar.

“I missed you.”

“Me, too,” I answered.

Lael was wide awake now. She and Bridget drifted

over, so they could hear our conversation better. “I want to hear all about your trip, but first I have something I need to tell you.” My stomach was doing flip-flops. “It can’t wait.”

Lael squealed. Bridget reached over to clutch her

hand but inadvertently bumped her raft into mine.

That’s when the phone flew out of my hand and fell

down to the bottom of the pool.

“Shit!”

“Were you going to tell him you loved him?” asked

Lael, positively deranged with anticipation. She was

sitting up now, and clutching the sides of her raft.

“What was he saying?”

“Now we’ll never know,” I said.

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“Your love has plunged into the bottom of a watery

abyss,” said Bridget. “Just like
Titanic
.”

I climbed out of the pool and adjusted my black

bikini, which set off to perfection the wound I’d gotten stealing the orange in Riverside. “I’m calling him back from inside. You two can wait here.”