Perfect Plot (6 page)

The evidence told a clear story. Earlier that morning Maxine had showered, then gotten dressed. As she was making up her face, someone had crept in. Maxine must have heard the intruder and gone into the bedroom, where she was strangled.

Nancy turned her attention to the bedroom. Several thin file folders, a legal pad, and a pair of reading glasses all rested on the desk. Nancy was able to make out the names on the folders without touching them, but none of them meant anything to her.

She frowned as a thought struck her. Maxine hadn't seemed like the kind of person who would leave her door unlocked while she showered and dressed. Hurrying over to the door, Nancy saw that the spring lock was set to lock the door any time it was closed. The only reason she and Patrick had been able to get in was that the last
person to leave—presumably the murderer— hadn't pulled the door closed all the way.

How then had the killer gotten
into
the room?

In this house there was one obvious possibility. Nancy's gaze flew to the closet. The door was ajar, so she went through it sideways, careful not to touch anything. As in the room she and George were in, the closet walls were made of closely fitted cedar planks. Nancy soon noticed one section of boards that wasn't even with the others. It appeared to be set back slightly into the wall.

Nancy hurried back into the room and found a pencil. She pushed with the eraser end on the odd section of wall. Strictly speaking, she shouldn't have touched anything at all, but she knew that what she was doing wouldn't mess up any evidence.

“Yes!” she whispered. The recessed section of closet wall had swung open to reveal a hidden passage. Dust coated most of the floor, but some of it was scuffed. When Nancy bent down to study the surface from an angle, she saw several blurred footprints and one that was clear and sharp. It was from a woman's shoe that had an unusual pattern of ripples across the sole. She did her best to memorize the pattern, then returned to the bedroom, leaving the secret panel ajar.

Five minutes later the police arrived. The first one to enter the room was a young uniformed
officer whose eyes darted around the room, pausing only briefly on Nancy. Just behind him was a slightly older person, a woman in a sergeant's uniform. She nodded to Nancy and took up a position at one side of the door.

The last to enter was a man of about forty with big ears, an easy smile, and dark hair that flopped over his eyes. He was dressed in a bright-colored running suit. Nancy guessed that the call about Maxine's murder had interrupted his Saturday morning at home.

“You must be Nancy Drew,” he said, and smiled easily. “I've heard of you. I'm Lieutenant Kitridge. What have you got for us?”

Nancy quickly described finding Maxine's body. While she spoke he took a look at the corpse. Then he sent the young man downstairs to call headquarters and posted the sergeant outside the door.

Returning to Nancy, he asked, “What made you and Mr. Burden come up here? Did you have a particular reason to be worried about the deceased?”

Nancy told him about the lecture Maxine had been scheduled to give. “There's something else, too,” she added. “Last night a set of valuable jeweled figurines disappeared.” Now that there had been a murder, Nancy knew she couldn't keep the theft from the police.

The lieutenant gave Nancy a skeptical look.
“You mean they were stolen?” When Nancy nodded, he said, “Didn't it occur to anyone to call the police?”

“I urged Kate Jefferson to call you last night,” Nancy replied. “She's the executive secretary of the Burden Foundation. She felt she ought to consult her boss first.”

The lieutenant shook his head. “Afraid of a scandal, right?” he said. “Same old story. Now, would you mind giving me a quick rundown on all those people downstairs? What's going on here?”

When Nancy told him about the conference, the lieutenant rubbed his chin. “We're going to have to put the conference on hold,” he said. “The people who arrived here at nine had better go back to town. None of them could have done it because the victim was killed before nine.”

He went to the door and spoke briefly to the sergeant. Then he turned back to Nancy. “I'm going to have to talk to everyone who stayed here last night. Okay, Ms. Drew, I'll see you again after I've gathered a few more facts about this case.”

Nancy hesitated. “If you like, maybe I can give you a hand,” she offered. “I am on the inside, here.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” he replied after a moment. “Off the record, of course. Like I said, I've heard about your skills as a detective, and
this is already starting to look like a very tricky case. I may need all the help I can get. Patrick Burden told us to use the library downstairs when he greeted us at the door a few minutes ago. That's where we'll be and I'll call you if I need you.”

Downstairs, Nancy found the other house-guests gathered in the living room. Julian was arranging kindling and logs in the big fireplace. Everyone else was sitting and watching. No one was talking. At the sound of Nancy's footsteps, they all turned to her.

“Nancy!” Erika exclaimed, nervously fingering the neck of her blouse. “Patrick said we had to stay here. Is it true? Is Maxine—”

Nancy nodded. “I'm afraid so.”

“It must have been a burglar,” Kate said. Her eyes were red, and her fingers were tearing a tissue into tiny bits. “Yes, of course, that must be it! First he stole the figurines, then he murdered Maxine.”

It was reasonable that Kate would be upset, but Nancy had to wonder if Kate knew more than she was telling.

“Why?” Professor Coining asked coolly. “I understand why someone might steal those gold figures. They were quite valuable. But why would any burglar hang around the scene of the crime all night, then wantonly kill a middle-aged book editor?”

The same thought had been troubling Nancy, too. Before anyone could comment further, the police sergeant appeared in the living-room doorway.

Glancing at a slip of paper in her hand, she said, “Mr. Coining? The lieutenant would like a word with you, sir. Will you come with me, please?”

There was a brief, charged silence after the professor left. Finally Patrick said, “They're planning to ‘sir' and ‘please' him until he confesses. A typical example of police brutality.”

“How can you make jokes at a time like this!” Kate burst out. “Poor Maxine is lying dead upstairs, and the figurines are gone. This scandal could destroy everything we're trying to do here at Mystery Mansion. I don't see what's funny about that!”

A silence fell over the room and continued as each guest was taken off to be interviewed. Finally the sergeant appeared in the doorway for the last time and beckoned to Nancy. “Lieutenant Kitridge would like to see you now.”

Nancy followed the sergeant to the library. When she entered, Lieutenant Kitridge was standing behind the room's big oak table. He was leaning on his two hands, studying pages of notes that were spread across the tabletop. Seeing Nancy, he straightened up and said, “Well, Ms. Drew, this is a tricky one.”

“Please call me Nancy, Lieutenant.”

“Nancy, then,” he said. He gestured toward a clear plastic bag that contained a flowered scarf. “Have you seen that before?”

The scarf looked familiar, but Nancy couldn't place it. “I
think
so,” she said. “Is that what—?”

“Yep,” he said with a nod. “We found it under the deceased. We're ninety-five percent sure it's the murder weapon. As soon as we examine the fibers we found under the victim's fingernails, I'm betting it'll be one hundred percent.”

“Did anyone identify it?” Nancy asked.

The lieutenant shook his head. “Not in so many words. But some of the guests obviously recognized it.”

“Do you have anything on the time of death?”

“We won't have the medical examiner's report until tomorrow,” the lieutenant replied. “But his assistant did the preliminary exam. His guess was that the victim was killed somewhere around eight o'clock.”

That pretty much fit with what Nancy had guessed already. “Did the murderer get in by the secret passage?” she asked.

“It looks that way,” Lieutenant Kitridge replied. “Secret passages? Whoever built this place was obviously a nut.

“What about motive? Any ideas?” he asked.

Nancy told him about the conversation she and George had overheard the night before. “If
that was Maxine's voice,” she concluded, “she may have discovered who stole the figurines and threatened the person with exposure.”

“Or tried a little blackmail,” Kitridge suggested. “That's a dangerous game when you're dealing with someone who's desperate.”

He let out a weary sigh. “Why don't you go back to the others, Nancy? We've got a lot of routine stuff to wrap up here.”

When Nancy rejoined the group in the living room, Kate was just announcing that lunch had been set up in the dining room.

While the others went through the double doors, Nancy took George aside to fill her in on what Lieutenant Kitridge had told her.

“So we still don't have a clue to who could have killed Maxine,” George said as she and Nancy went into the dining room.

Nancy shook her head, then turned her attention to the spread of salads and sandwiches on the buffet. She and George were just sitting down next to Erika, when Bill Denton came over.

“Well, Erika,” he said loudly. “I notice you're not wearing that flowered silk scarf of yours. What's the matter? Did you forget to unwind it from Maxine's neck?”

E
RIKA'S FACE
went completely white. Everyone at the table was silent and staring at her.

“It's not true,” Erika murmured, barely above a whisper. “It's not!”

“Why else would that slick cop show me your scarf and ask if I'd ever seen it before?” Bill continued. “Did you admit it was yours?”

“I—” Erika swallowed, then said, “I told him it looked like one I have. But the store where I bought it sells thousands of those scarves every year. It's a classic.”

“A classic piece of evidence, you mean,” Bill said with a nasty grin.

Blinking furiously, Erika pushed back her chair and ran out of the room.

“That was a rotten thing to do, Bill,” Vanessa
spoke up from the other side of the table. “I can understand why Dorothea decided to get a new agent.”

Bill turned red. “That's a lie! I was her agent right to the end.” He glared at Vanessa, then stalked out of the room, slamming the double doors behind him.

“Well, well,” Professor Coining said with a chuckle. “This weekend is starting to resemble a classic mystery story in which the guests are picked off one by one. I suppose we should excuse Mr. Denton. From what I hear, he's having financial problems.”

Nancy glanced sharply at the professor. He had to understand that he had just given Bill a motive for stealing the figurines. Had he just done it to divert attention away from himself?

Her thoughts were interrupted by Vanessa's standing up. “Sorry, I don't really have any appetite,” she said, excusing herself.

“I don't, either,” George added. “How about you, Nan?”

“I'm done,” Nancy said.

As the two girls got up, Patrick announced, “We've put the conference on hold, of course. We hope you'll stay on at least through tomorrow, in case we're able to resume.”

“Anyway, the police probably wouldn't like it if we decided to leave,” Nancy pointed out.

Out in the hall she turned to George and said,
“Let's see if anyone's in the library still. We need someplace to talk.”

The room was empty. Sunlight poured in through the french windows, illuminating the wooden bookcases.

“Well,” George said as they sat down at the long table Lieutenant Kitridge had been using earlier. “Here we are with two crimes to solve, a theft and a murder. To think I was expecting a nice, relaxed weekend!”

“Two crimes, yes—but how many criminals?” Nancy asked. “Two? Or one?” She pulled a pad and pen out of her purse and started to jot down her thoughts.

George stared at her. “One? You mean Kate's idea, that a burglar came in, stole the figurines, and then waited around to kill Maxine?”

“Not quite like that,” Nancy said. “But what if Maxine found out who the thief was and threatened to expose him or her?”

“Of course,” George said excitedly. “And that's why she was killed—to silence her. Nancy! That mysterious voice we heard last night! What did it say? ‘I know what you did, and I'll make sure you don't get away with it.' Wasn't that it?”

“Something like that,” Nancy agreed.

“What if that was Maxine, speaking to whoever stole the gold figurines?”

Nancy nodded slowly. “Lieutenant Kitridge
and I were thinking the same thing. I just had another idea, right now.”