Then she glanced out the picture window and saw Spider Hutchings doing push-ups on the lawn. She rushed out before he could get away again.
“Spider, I’ve got to talk to you,” Nancy asked.
“Give me a chance to put on a raincoat first,” Spider teased.
“No dirty dishes this time,” Nancy said. “Just a present for you.”
“What’s this?” Spider asked, looking at the medicine bottle Nancy had given him.
“I found your medicine,” Nancy said.
“Someone’s pulling your leg,” Spider said. “I don’t pollute my body with medicines.”
“Aren’t you allergic to nuts?”
“Yeah, nuts, bananas, and eggs,” Spider said. “But I don’t take pills for that; I just don’t eat them. Listen, I hate to cut this short, but right now I’ve got to go smash some glass.”
Nancy took back the pills and walked with him toward the McCauley house. “Are you and Josh Petrie close friends?” she asked.
“No,” Spider answered. “We just met a couple of days ago. You know old Josh doesn’t have too many good things to say about you. He says you’re always trying to get him into trouble.”
“He usually doesn’t need anybody’s help to do that, “ Nancy said. “But he does have a grudge against the Teppingtons, the people who own Fenley Place.”
“You’re back to that again,” Spider said, brushing his red hair back with his hand.
“I don’t quit. Did he tell you anything about what he did to the Teppingtons last year?” Nancy asked.
“All he told me was how he wanted to be a stunt man, and he asked if I could get him started,” Spider said. “I said it’s as good a way as any to get his neck broken. He seems like an all-right guy, so I’ve been showing him the ropes—excuse the pun. That’s all.”
Spider gave Nancy a smile and a little salute like wave and walked into the house, calling out, “Window remover’s here!”
As Nancy turned away, someone on the front lawn shouted through a megaphone: “Is there a Nancy Drew here?”
“That’s me!” Nancy called.
“There’s someone outside the barricades who wants to see you,” the megaphone answered.
“Screamer, bleeder, or corpse?” Nancy asked with a laugh.
“Looks to me like a little of each,” the voice said.
Nancy hurried to the end of the block and found Hannah Gruen waiting for her. Hannah’s usually smooth, calm face was lined with tension and, worse than that, fear.
“What is it?” Nancy asked. “Is something wrong with Dad?”
“No,” Hannah said. “But you’ve got to come home right away. The horror has moved to our house!”
A Major Clue
Hannah Gruen wiped her forehead with a linen handkerchief she had tucked in the sleeve of her blouse. “I was only gone an hour doing some shopping,” Hannah said. “When I came home, the house looked like it was dumped upside down.”
“Oh, no!” Nancy said. “We’d better hurry. Where’s your car?”
“I took a cab,” Hannah answered. “I was just too shaken up to drive.”
Nancy and Hannah hurried to Nancy’s blue sportscar and started driving back to the Drew house.
“It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” Hannah continued. “The furniture is everywhere it’s not supposed to be. Dining chairs in the hall, the couch on the other side of the room, tables moved every which way. It’s as though they waited till I was gone and then flew around the room.”
Nancy tried to be calm. But she had just seen what Hannah had described. What she didn’t understand was how furniture could fly without monofilament wire. “But that’s not all of it,” Hannah said. “I wasn’t in the house five minutes, when the phone began to ring. And it wouldn’t stop—”
Nancy knew the ending to Hannah’s sentence and she finished it for her. “Not even when you picked up the receiver,” Nancy said.
Hannah’s face registered additional surprise. “How could you possibly know that?” Hannah asked.
“Something tells me, Hannah, that maybe I know too much,” Nancy said. “That’s why it happened at our house this time and not at Fenley Place.”
She drove home quickly and ran into the house to see the mess, Hannah following behind. The Drews’ cozy home had been transformed into a chaotic warehouse of their possessions. And the telephone was ringing. It didn’t stop even when Nancy lifted the receiver.
She let the phone ring and began investigating immediately. She checked for signs of forced entry into the house or for some evidence left behind.
“Nothing,” she said, coming back to the living room. She lifted the ringing phone again and slammed it down in frustration. The phone stopped ringing. But only for a moment. Then it rang again.
“Hello,” Nancy said into the receiver.
“Stay away,” a muffled voice said. “Stay away from Fenley Place.”
“Josh?” Nancy said angrily.
The voice laughed and hung up.
No it wasn’t Josh Petrie’s voice. Nancy knew his voice and sarcastic laugh too well.
She couldn’t place this voice, but she thought she recognized the laugh.
“Someone spoke to you, didn’t he?” Hannah asked. “What did he say?”
“He said to stay away from Fenley Place,” Nancy said. “And I have the feeling I know what that means. It means that this”—she gestured at the mess in the room—“was just a warning to me. But Fenley Place is still the main target. The Teppingtons are still in danger.”
Nancy sat down on a pile of large sofa pillows and wrapped her gold chain necklace around a finger.
“Did you recognize the voice?” Hannah asked.
“I think it was Chris Hitchcock,” Nancy said. “But I don’t get it. He’s a nice guy. I can’t believe he’d do this to us or do anything to the Teppingtons.”
Hannah Gruen set a lamp back where it belonged, on an end table. “There’s usually more to people than what they show us, good and bad,” she said.
Nancy thought about what Hannah had just said. Maybe Chris was hiding something. And if he was, what was he hiding?
“You’re right, Hannah. I should get to know him better, shouldn’t I?” Nancy was on her feet, filled with energy. She pushed pieces of furniture back where they belonged. “I should find out what food he likes and what food he hates—or can’t eat. And I should find out where he hides his secrets—in a chest of drawers, a suitcase, or a backpack maybe.”
“What does all that mean exactly?” Hannah demanded.
“I think it means don’t count on me for dinner,” Nancy said, jumping over the couch as if it were a high hurdle.
She was in her car and out of the driveway before Hannah could ask her to explain her plan or warn her to be careful.
Nancy drove back to Highland Avenue and mingled with the crew. It didn’t take her long to find Jane, Chris Hitchcock’s frisbee partner. Nancy simply looked for the tallest head there.
“Do you know where Chris is?” Nancy asked.
Jane got on her walkie-talkie to Chris, but she got no answer. She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess he’s not around the set,” she told Nancy.
“I’ve got to find him,” Nancy said. “Uh, I found this bottle of his medicine.”
“Gee, I didn’t know he was sick,” Jane said.
“Do you know where he’s staying?” Nancy asked.
“Sure,” Jane said, nodding her head. “Just about everyone in the crew is staying at the Happy Trails Motel. Is that really the best motel in River Heights?”
“Not exactly,” was all Nancy could say about the rundown motel. In fact, the Happy Trails was just about the worst, and definitely the cheapest, motel in River Heights.
“I should have known that’s why they stuck us there,” Jane said. “Chris’s room faces a big neon sign that blinks on and off all night. He calls it the land of the Midnight Sun. He’s a funny guy.”
“Yes,” Nancy said, but she didn’t nod her head.
There was just one more thing Nancy needed before going to the Happy Trails Motel—company. If she was going to search Chris Hitchcock’s room, she’d need a lookout. Nancy found George in the catering tent and in world’s record time she talked her into coming along.
Before they left, George grabbed two leftover sandwiches from a tray, a bag of potato chips, and two cans of soda. They ate their picnic dinner in the car as they drove to the motel.
When they got to the Happy Trails Motel they drove around it first. It was located on a busy road near the heaviest commercial area of River Heights. There were two rooms that faced a large neon sign. The sign belonged to River Heights’ only twenty-four-hour health food store, the Healthy Appetite.
“Which one of those two rooms do you think is Chris’s?” George asked Nancy. “The one with the lights on, or the one with the lights off?”
“Lights off,” Nancy guessed. She pulled into the parking space in front of the dark room.
They walked up to the door. Nancy knocked softly.
“Do not disturb, okay?” a man’s gruff voice shouted. “I need my sleep, okay? So get lost, okay?”
The two girls moved quickly down to the next door. Nancy knocked on the door several times, but there was no answer. Evidently, Chris wasn’t in his room. She looked at George, who shrugged helplessly. How could they get inside?
Just then, a man in coveralls, carrying a heavy case of tools came around the corner.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Nancy quickly turned back to the door and gave it a solid kick. “I locked my keys in the room,” Nancy told him.
The guy walked straight toward them. “I don’t work here. I just fix the TVs,” he said. “But who am I to deny two pretty little ladies in distress?” He smiled, then unlocked the door with a pass key and held it open.
“Thanks,” Nancy said and closed the door quietly behind her and George. When they heard the man walking away, Nancy reopened the door.
“You wait outside,” Nancy said to George, “and knock if I’m in trouble.”
Nancy noticed that the room was clean and that Chris kept the place in order. On the dresser there was a photo of Jenny Logan. She had written, “To Chris. Remember me when you get to the top. Jen.”
Nancy moved into the bathroom. There, she found fresh towels and soaps in paper wrappers, a can of shaving cream, a razor, and a bottle of after shave lotion that smelled like too-sweet pine needles.
In the medicine cabinet were two different bottles of aspirin tablets, a portable hair dryer, and a tube of toothpaste. There wasn’t one bottle with capsules for asthma or allergy.
George knocked on the door, and Nancy’s racing pulse almost burst. She ran to open it.
It was George. “Find anything yet?” she asked.
Nancy shook her head.
“Well, try his suitcase, Nancy.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“Because I knew you’d be too polite to look there first,” George teased. Then she went outside again to stand guard.
Chris’s suitcase was an old, stiff-sided, banged-up black leather bag with the word CAT printed near the handle in gold letters.
He probably bought it in a pet store Nancy thought and laughed. Then she stopped laughing because she suddenly realized that CAT was not the word cat. It was a set of initials—Chris’s monogram. C for Chris. A for, what? But the last initial should be S for Smith or H for Hitchcock. Not T, unless that was a joke, too.
Nancy slowly lifted the lid of the suitcase. Shirts, jeans, and socks packed tight. But in the pouch in the lid, she found something unexpected. It was a color snapshot, twenty years old at least, judging by the hairstyle of the blond young mother in the picture. In her arms was a baby, her new baby. It was a tender picture of mother love. But Nancy’s hands trembled as she held it. She recognized the woman! It was the actress Pamela Teppington.
Scene in the Attic
The photograph hypnotized Nancy. The young Pamela Teppington gazed so directly at the camera and smiled so confidently. Her arms were gentle yet protective around the baby.
A knock on the window snapped Nancy out of her thoughts. She slammed down the lid of the suitcase and whirled toward the window.
George was mouthing the words, “Let’s go!”
Still holding the photo, Nancy ran to the door. As soon as she opened it, she saw why George was worried. The parking lot was filling up. The movie crew were coming back.
“Chris is probably on his way,” George said as they hurried to Nancy’s car.
“Good,” said Nancy, getting in but not starting the engine. “He’s just the person I want to see.”
George looked at the photo in Nancy’s hand. “Cute picture, but are you sure you should take it?” she asked.
“I don’t think it belongs to Chris,” was all Nancy said. She turned on her car radio to wait for Chris.
“It’s eight twenty-four on the Rick Rondell Oldies Request Show on WRVH,” the DJ said. “I’m playing the songs you want to hear. Tonight, Susie wants to hear some Rolling Stones. So I told her to go listen to an avalanche—hahaha! Chuck requested some surfin’ oldies, and my mother called and requested that I change my socks more often. Thanks, Mom. Great to know you’re listening.”
“This guy thinks he’s really funny,” George said.
“And I just got a call from Jane,” said Rick Rondell without taking a breath. “Jane is on the Hank Steinberg movie crew visiting our fair city. She wants to hear anything by Elvis Presley. And remember, movie fans, if you’re going to the McCauley house to watch the filming, you’d better get there soon.”
Suddenly Rick Rondell had Nancy’s full attention.
“River Heights police will be closing Highland Avenue in about twenty minutes,” Rick went on, “so that the fire trucks can get in and out, if necessary. Hank Steinberg is setting fire to the McCauley house tonight. So bring your own marshmallows!”
Nancy snapped off the radio and started her car.
“What’s the hurry, Nancy?”
“Steinberg’s changed the shooting schedule,” Nancy said. She pulled into traffic quickly and drove with racing driver intensity. “Don’t you understand? He’s shooting the fire scene tonight, not tomorrow. That means it could be getting hot, too hot, at Fenley Place right now.”
The police stopped Nancy at the barricade that blocked off Highland Avenue.
“You can’t go through, miss,” the officer said.
“I have to. I’m staying at Fenley Place,” Nancy explained.
“Fenley Place?” said the officer. “I’d be doing you a favor to keep you away. But go on.”
Nancy quickly drove down the street and zipped into the driveway. Across the street, the movie lights were once again shining on the McCauley house, bright as day. The special effects team was setting up gas jets to pump blasts of fire from a window facing the lawn.
A River Heights fire truck was parked nearby just in case the special effects got out of hand. But who would notice if things got out of hand on the other side of the street?
Nancy and George watched for a while from the front lawn of Fenley Place.
“I’m going to run over to Pat Ellis’s tent and bring back something to eat,” George said. “Want to come?”
“I’d better not,” Nancy said. “I’m going to walk around the house.”
“I’ll be right back,” promised George.
Nancy watched George disappear down the block. Then she started her circle around the old house.
Her feet crunched the driveway stones. As she came around to the back of the house, her legs became tangled in a small fallen branch. She almost tripped and fell. It was dark in the backyard and Nancy realized she should have turned on the lights in the house first.
She took a step and something hard under her foot squeaked in pain. Nancy’s heart raced and she stepped back quickly. Removing her foot made it squeak again. She reached down toward the sound and her fingers picked up something soft and rubbery.
This is going to be a long night, Nancy Drew, if you let rubber ducks scare you, she thought, picking up the soft rubber toy.
Nancy finished her tour around the house and went inside to wait for George.
Later, the two friends sat around the oversized dining room table, spooning Pat’s fudge cake ice cream roll into their mouths. Three long white candles burned in a heavy silver candelabrum that Nancy had placed in the middle of the table. She had decided not to turn on the electric lights in case Fenley Place received a visitor that night—one with arson on his mind. The hot fatty candle wax sputtered.
“You know, all this place needs, to fix it up, is a few gallons of paint and a bulldozer,” George said.
“Shh,” Nancy said. The candlelight flickered and almost went out. “I think Sara Teppington is right. This house has feelings.”
“I wish it had air conditioning,” George said, yawning. “I feel like I’ve been locked in a closet.”
They blew out the candles and carried cans of soda into the living room. Gloom seemed to watch over them. So did the eyes of the carved heads on the mantel. George flopped down on the couch and yawned again. “Going to work at five-thirty in the morning should be against the law,” she said.
Somewhere upstairs the house creaked and stretched as if it were just waking up.
George’s head drooped a little more. “I’m not going to fall asleep, Nancy. Honest. But if I just nap for five minutes,” she said, “I’ll be set for the night.”
“No problem,” Nancy said.
“Honest. Wake me up. Five minutes, okay?”
George drifted off and for a few moments, Nancy sat in a high-backed chair, listening to voices drifting over from the McCauley house. They were still setting up for the fire scene.
Then, all of a sudden, Nancy knew what to do. She got out of her chair, picked up the photo of Pamela Teppington and the baby, found a flashlight, and climbed the stairs to the attic.
It only took a minute, even in the cramped attic, to find what she was looking for.
Alan Teppington’s trunk had been moved back against a wall. She opened the lid.
“Old clothes that don’t fit and memories I don’t think about” was Alan Teppington’s bitter description of the trunk.
If Nancy was right, he, too, was hiding a secret.
She moved some clothing aside until she came to a brown leather photo album. Alan Teppington hadn’t mentioned it the first day Nancy was up there.
She opened the book, but a sound startled her. She stood up quickly.
“George?” she asked. Then she said into the silence, “Real juvenile game, George, sneaking around like that.”
She knelt down to the photo album again and turned the pages of Alan Teppington’s early life. In addition to photos, there were newspaper clippings and stories he had written for his college newspaper. There were high-school pictures of him with a very young woman. It took a moment for Nancy to realize that the woman was Pamela Teppington with dark hair.
She turned the page and saw wedding pictures, showing Pamela as a blond.
Again, she heard a sound. “George, stop playing around,” Nancy called into the dark stairway landing. “I want to show you something.”
There was no answer. Nancy shook her head. Apparently George wanted to keep playing her little game.
Nancy turned another page. The page was blank, but there were fade marks and an imprint on the self-sticking plastic. A picture had been removed from this page.
She opened the plastic overlay and tried the photo of Pamela and the baby. It fit the outline perfectly.
“George, I was right about the photo,” Nancy said.
George’s answer wasn’t what Nancy had expected. Suddenly she felt a sharp pain on the back of her head. Then there were two photo albums, two Pamela Teppingtons, two of everything—and her head hurt terribly. Nancy stood up for just an instant on wobbly legs, then fell to the floor. The last thing she saw as she blacked out was the yellow and red flames just outside the attic window.
Trapped!
George, that hurt. And it wasn’t funny. Why aren’t you listening? George? George?
A voice was talking in Nancy’s dream, a faraway voice. Sometimes Nancy could hear all the words, and sometimes she couldn’t. Slowly they became clearer and she realized she was only hearing her own thoughts. When she finally came out of it, she had no idea how long she’d been unconscious.
“George!” Nancy shouted, then winced with pain. Shouting hurt her head. Moving hurt her head, too. She reached up and felt a small lump.
Lying on the floor, looking at the dust, Nancy suddenly remembered the flames outside the window. She struggled to her feet.
“George!” Nancy called to her friend downstairs.
She made it to the window, each step getting easier, surer. Once there, she rested her head against the glass pane and sighed with relief.
There was no fire eating away at the roof of Fenley Place. The flames she’d seen were coming from Bo Aronson’s special effects across the street at the McCauley house.
Nancy was beginning to feel stronger. She walked to the attic door. It was closed, although she didn’t remember shutting it.
The doorknob rattled and moved in her hand. It did everything a doorknob should do, except open the door.
Try harder, she told herself.
She twisted the knob and pulled as hard as she could, but the door wouldn’t open.
“George!” Nancy yelled, pounding on the door. “I’m locked in the attic!”
She kept yelling and pounding on the door with both fists. She tried knocking over boxes and dropping cartons, so George would hear the racket and come upstairs. There was no response. George must not have heard her.
That left the windows. One of them was painted shut. She couldn’t budge it. But the other window had to open. It was the one through which the bird had flown.
That window was closed now, too. It wasn’t locked—it just refused to open. With a sinking feeling, Nancy realized that someone must have nailed it shut from the outside.
“What’s going on?” Nancy asked herself.
Suddenly the footsteps started again. She held her breath. It was the same sound she had heard earlier that afternoon. Rubber track shoes on roof shingles. He was on the roof.
She had to get out of the attic, and fast. If she didn’t, she’d soon be trapped inside while the house burned around her!
Nancy lifted a carton and threw it through the window.
I hope someone is watching out there, she thought. She knocked out the remaining shards of glass with her shoe. Then she squeezed out through the window frame. A lone figure stood on the roof in moonlit silhouette.
“Chris,” Nancy called, climbing out onto the roof. “ Chris Teppington. “
The figure froze.
“Don’t do it,” Nancy pleaded. “ Please. ”
“I told you to stay away. I warned you!” Chris called back.
Nancy started to move toward him. There was a click and then the flame of a cigarette lighter glowed under Chris’s face.
“Don’t come any closer,” he said. “Or I’ll light the roof.”
Nancy looked down and saw a pile of gasoline-soaked newspapers at Chris’s feet. She knew he was upset enough to light it. Her only chance was to talk to him, to stall. She hoped someone down on the street, one of the crew members, would hear them and look up.
“I found the photo of Pamela Teppington in your suitcase,” Nancy said.
“You stole it, you mean,” Chris snapped.
“No, I just put it back where it belonged—in your father’s scrapbook,” Nancy said.
“Lucky guess,” Chris said.
“No, actually I figured it out,” Nancy replied. “When I saw that picture and did a little counting, I realized the baby had to be Alan’s baby. After that it was easy to figure out that the T on your suitcase must stand for Teppington. What’s the A for?” Nancy asked, although she thought she knew the answer already.
“Alan—just like my father. Is that a joke or what?” Chris said. “Okay, you’re real smart. But you can’t stop me.”
“I was pretty slow about the medicine,” Nancy admitted. “It’s your asthma medicine isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Allergies run in the family.”
Just keep talking, Nancy. Keep him talking. Stall. Anything to prevent him from lighting those newspapers. “Why did you tear your name off the label?” Nancy casually sat down on the roof as if she were having a conversation on her front porch.
“Because my doctor in L.A. is a jerk. He writes the prescription in my real name, Chris Teppington,” he explained. “I didn’t want anyone on the crew to find that out.”
“So that’s how you knew Alan Teppington was allergic to pineapple,” Nancy said. “But I didn’t get it, so you called me up. You wanted me to recognize your voice and catch you—admit it.”
Suddenly a bright light swept over the roof. Chris covered his eyes. Nancy squinted and looked down to the street.
Just as she had hoped, the movie crew had heard their voices. And now they were shining the huge klieg lights at the roof of Fenley Place.
“Chris, I don’t know what’s gone on between you and your dad—” Nancy began, but Chris didn’t let her finish the sentence.
“Nothing—nothing’s been going on between me and my father. Nothing for twenty years!” he shouted. “He knew my mom was pregnant, but they split up anyway. And he never came, and he never even called. Can you believe that? So now it’s my turn to hurt him the way he hurt me.”
Nancy looked behind her, away from the bright lights. In the shadows down below she saw someone beginning to climb the oak tree. Unfortunately, Chris saw him too.
“Don’t come near me or I’ll light it!” Chris warned the onlookers. He lowered the lighter to within inches of the newspapers.
“Chris, it’s awful that your dad ignored you. But it doesn’t make this right,” Nancy said.
Chris laughed at Nancy. “Oh, yeah? What would you do?” he shouted. “What would you do if you thought your father was gone, out of your life—and then twenty years later you knocked on a door in a strange town and he’s standing there in front of you?”
His words drilled through Nancy’s heart. She saw the photos of her mother, who died when Nancy was three, sitting on her dresser at home.
Nancy swallowed hard. “I don’t know, Chris. Maybe I’d hug him,” she said.
“You don’t know anything about it,” he shouted. “You can just ask to be loved—not after twenty years.”
“I can think of any other way to do it,” Nancy said. “Burning your father’s house, scaring two little girls to death—your half-sisters—just doesn’t make it.”
Chris sighed a long, sad sigh, but then he looked at the cigarette lighter again. “Look down there—they’re waiting for a show. Lights, camera, action.”
Nancy lunged forward, reaching for Chris. But in the move, she stumbled, fell, and slid on the roof. “Ouch!” she shouted, grabbing her right hand.
“Are you okay?” Chris asked nervously.
Nancy held out her right hand for him to see. It was bleeding profusely.
Father and Son
“Oh, no! That was really stupid of you!” Chris yelled. He was angry, upset, and worried about Nancy’s hand all at once. He put away the lighter and tried to think of what to do.
In that short moment, Spider Hutchings sprang out of the oak tree, overpowered Chris, and forcibly wrested the lighter from his hand.
“There’s nothing like having a good stunt man around when you really need one,” Nancy said, smiling at Spider.
Spider was sitting on top of Chris now, with his knee pressed into Chris’s chest. Chris could hardly breathe.
“Hey, lighten up,” Chris said coughing. “Save it for the cameras, okay?”
“What happened to you, kid?” Spider asked. “I don’t understand this at all.”
“That’s right, you don’t. So butt out,” Chris said. He turned his head toward Nancy and asked, “Are you okay?”
Spider looked over for the first time and saw the blood dripping from Nancy’s hand. “That looks nasty,” he said to her. “We’d better get you to a doctor quick.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Nancy said, bravely. She licked at her wound. “Mmm. In fact, it tastes just like corn syrup with a trace of red dye.”
Spider caught on first, and his laughter exploded like a bomb. “I don’t believe it!” he shouted. “Fake blood capsules! She fooled us with our own tricks, kid!”
“I broke it in my hand when I knew you were in the tree.” Nancy beamed.
Chris didn’t seem to think it was as funny as Nancy and Spider did.
In the quiet they heard a siren wailing. Nancy figured that someone across the street must have called the police.
“Well, is everybody ready for a really hot family reunion?” Chris asked.
Spider pulled Chris up, and they climbed back through the attic window and then down the stairs, Nancy following behind. In the living room, Nancy found George still asleep on the couch.
“George, wake up,” Nancy said, leaning over her friend.
“Are my five minutes up yet?” asked George drowsily.
“Yes,” Nancy said. “And I don’t think you should be asleep when the police come.”
“Police!” exclaimed George. Then she saw Nancy’s bloody hand and gasped.
