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Ned nodded. “I can vouch for that. You should see him in this marketing class. He’s the top student every time. I’m sure he’ll be the one to get the job with the ad agency.”

“How about Heather?” Nancy asked, trying not to let any cattiness creep into her voice. “How does she do?”

Ned winced. “She just sort of coasts along, but not badly actually. Grades aren’t exactly the main thing on her mind. Now, if an ad agency offered a job in the Stealing Guys from Their Girlfriends Department—”

“Just as long as it doesn’t work with you,” Nancy told him.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Ned exclaimed. “Heather? Nancy, that’s an insult to my good judgment.”

“Okay, okay,” Nancy said with a laugh. “I
don’t want to start sounding like Marcia. And speaking of Marcia, I’d like to talk to her. Something about that phone call doesn’t make sense.”

“Why don’t we go talk to her now?” Ned asked. “She went home for lunch.”

Nancy checked her watch. “Good idea. Do you have her address, Ned?”

“I sure do. I even know how to get to her house. Let’s drive there together in my car.”

The trip to Marcia’s was short, and Ned and Nancy easily found her street. As Ned turned the wheel to pull onto her block, he was stopped by a police car blocking the intersection.

“What’s going on?” Nancy wondered aloud. She rolled down her window and called to the officer in the car, “Can we go through here?”

“Where are you headed?” he asked in return.

“To visit a friend,” Nancy replied. “Marcia Grafton.”

The officer just stared at her instead of replying.

“I think she lives down at the end of the—” Ned began, but the officer cut him off.

“Would you please park your car and come with me?” he asked them politely.

“Why?” asked Nancy. “What’s wrong?”

The man did not answer. He just gestured again to the side of the road.

A feeling of dread swept over Nancy as she and Ned got out of the car. Something was wrong—very wrong.

As they followed the officer toward another squad car, Nancy spotted a familiar figure.

“Chief McGinnis!” she called. She had worked with the chief on earlier cases. “Maybe he’ll tell us what’s going on,” she said to Ned in a low voice.

Chief McGinnis turned and stared at her. “Nancy, are you here to investigate?” he asked.

“Investigate what?”

Now the chief’s expression was grim. “There’s a young woman on this street who’s very sick.”

Nancy grabbed Ned’s hand.

“Who is it?” she asked.

But she didn’t need to ask the question. She knew the answer before Chief McGinnis had opened his mouth. His words only confirmed her worst fears.

“Marcia Grafton.”

W
HAT HAPPENED TO HER
?” Nancy asked, her eyes wide.

“We’re not really sure,” Chief McGinnis replied. “But we’ll know when we get the report from the hospital. By the time the rescue squad had arrived, Marcia was unconscious.”

Nancy and Ned exchanged a glance. Marcia’s collapse sounded frighteningly familiar.

“You don’t seem too shocked,” the chief commented. Then, staring hard at Ned, he asked, “Who’s your friend?”

“Ned?” Nancy asked, surprised. “This is my boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, Chief.”

She stopped when she caught sight of the other police officer’s raised eyebrows. He looked down at the top sheet of paper on a clipboard and nodded at the chief.

“Would you two please get into the back seat?” Chief McGinnis asked. He made a quick gesture toward his car and wouldn’t meet Nancy’s startled eyes.

“Tell me about your relationship with Marcia Grafton,” the chief said abruptly when Nancy and Ned were in the back seat.

He can’t suspect me of anything! Nancy thought in amazement. He knows me!

Ned was speaking now in a calm and measured voice. “She’s a classmate of mine,” he explained. “We were working on a special research project at the mall.”

The chiefs face was expressionless. It was impossible for Nancy to guess what he was thinking. “Who else is working on the project?” he asked.

Ned gave him the names, and Chief McGinnis jotted quick notes on his clipboard, comparing his notes to the sheet of paper the other officer had left with him. Nancy tried to catch a glimpse of that sheet, but the wire mesh separating the front and back seats made it impossible.

“How about you, Nancy?” the chief asked in an expressionless voice. “What’s your connection here?”

Nancy steadied her nerves. What was going on? “I was helping Ned and the rest of the group,” she said.

Chief McGinnis made another note. “If your project was at the mall, why were you going to Marcia’s house?” Again there was just a hint of suspicion in his voice.

“She was eating lunch at home, and I wanted to ask her a few questions.”

“Oh, so you
are
investigating this case?” the chief said instantly.

“Well, I— In a way I am, yes. You see, my friend Bess was—”

Before Nancy could finish, the other police officer opened the front door of the squad car and climbed inside. “No change in her condition,” he said.

“How sick
is
Marcia?” asked Nancy.

“Very,” said Chief McGinnis tersely. “The last report from the hospital was that she’s in a coma.”

“A coma! But she was fine two hours ago!” Nancy gasped.

“Well, she’s not anymore,” answered the chief.

“Was she at home when you found her?” asked Nancy.

“Yes. She was lying on the kitchen floor not far from the phone,” the other officer added. “She looked as if she were about to have lunch. The table was set, and there was a half-full glass of soda at her place.”

The police radio squawked, and Chief McGinnis picked up the receiver.

“We’ve got the others,” a woman’s voice said. “We’re on our way to HQ.”

“Good work,” said the chief. “So are we.”

He turned to Nancy and Ned. “You’ll have to come to headquarters with us. We need to take some statements.” He gave them a long, appraising look, as though he were trying to decide something. Then he added, “You can take your own car.”

Nancy and Ned got back into Ned’s car. Chief McGinnis drove off, Ned following.

“A coma!” Nancy exclaimed as she and Ned drove toward the center of River Heights. “I can’t believe it!”

Ned’s face was taut and white. “I can’t, either. And I wonder just how the police think we’re connected to all this.”

“I wish I could have seen what was on that piece of paper they both kept looking at,” said Nancy.

“I don’t like this, Nan,” Ned added grimly. “Not at all.”

They were pulling up in front of the police
station now. Ned parked, and he and Nancy quickly scooted up the wide concrete steps past flocks of scurrying pigeons.

The hallway seemed dim after the bright sunshine. Nancy and Ned followed the two officers through a maze of corridors.

Chief McGinnis ushered them into a small room at the end of one hall.

“What are you guys doing here?”

It was Justin. He, Heather, and Brad were sitting on gray metal folding chairs in the room. All of them looked a little sick.

“Probably the same thing as you,” Ned answered with a wry smile.

“Sit down, Nancy and Ned,” the chief said. When they were seated, he began talking.

“We have a serious case of poisoning on our hands, and I understand that all of you knew the victim. As you may be aware, there’s been a rash of poisonings in the River Heights area over the past two days. Your friend has the same symptoms as the others—only hers are far worse. Now, I’d like each of you to tell me where you were today.”

“You mean, after we closed down the booth?” asked Heather in a trembling voice. “Because, you know, Marcia said we might as well close it since there weren’t any customers, so we—”

“After you closed down the booth,” the
chief cut in. “After the group broke up, and you were on your own.”

Brad flinched. Justin’s gulp was audible, and Heather squeezed her hands together so tightly her knuckles turned white.

“You want our alibis.” There was a tremor in Justin’s voice.

Chief McGinnis nodded. “That’s one way of describing it.”

“I might as well start,” Justin volunteered. “I was at my house in River Heights with Ned.”

“Doing what?”

Justin bit his lip. “I was doing a chemistry test,” he said.

“A chemistry test?”
Chief McGinnis raised his head and stared at Justin. “What kind of chemistry test?” he asked.

Once again Justin hesitated, and Nancy felt a surge of sympathy for him. She knew how incriminating his next statement was going to sound.

Ned cleared his throat. “We were testing lemonade for poison,” he said.

I’ve got to explain! Nancy thought. “Chief, my friend Bess was one of the people poisoned yesterday,” she said. “I thought she might have drunk tainted lemonade. That’s why Ned asked Justin to test the mix.”

“I know a lot about chemistry,” began Justin.
Then he stopped short. “That makes it sound as though— Well, you see—”

“I see,” said the chief dryly. “I’m going to need to talk to you privately. Can you corroborate his statement?” he asked Ned.

Ned nodded, and Chief McGinnis turned to Nancy. “Where were you?”

“I was helping Bess Marvin check out of the hospital.” Nancy’s voice was steady. She knew that the hospital records would include the time of discharge. The police would be able to verify her statement. “Then I went to a restaurant to meet Ned. The waitress can vouch for us.”

“I was shopping at the mall,” Heather said when it was her turn.

The officer raised his eyebrows quizzically. “That’s not going to be easy to prove,” he said.

“Did you buy anything?” Nancy asked quickly.

Heather nodded, but her face was pale and her hands were trembling. “I did get a sweater, but I returned it about fifteen minutes later,” she said. “But maybe the salesgirl could—”

“We’ll check into it,” said the chief briskly. He turned to Brad. “How about you?”

“I was shopping, too. My mom’s birthday is this week.” Brad’s voice was firm, almost defiant. “I didn’t buy anything, though, if that’s your next question.”

“Well, that’s all the questions I have—for
now, anyway,” said Chief McGinnis. “I’ll have these statements typed and ready for your signatures in a few minutes. Then you’ll be free to go.”

Brad, Justin, Heather, and Ned filed haltingly from the room, but Nancy stayed behind. She had a question of her own—and she wasn’t going to be frightened out of asking it.

“How did you know we all knew Marcia?” Nancy asked the chief.

“That wasn’t hard.” The chief pulled a familiar-looking sheet of paper from his clipboard. It was the one Nancy had tried to read in the squad car.

“We found this in the victim’s house,” he said, and began to read from it.

The sheet was an explanation of the Spotless marketing project. It listed all the students who were participating, their addresses, and the location and dates of the test.

“We also found these,” the chief went on. He pulled a pile of papers out of a large manila envelope.

They were Spotless questionnaires.

“ ‘Douglas Brody, age eighteen, formerly used Clearly,’ ” the chief read aloud. “ ‘Bonnie Harte, age seventeen, used Clearly—Chuck Loomis, age fourteen, several different products—Maryanne Jansen, age sixteen, no other product—Adam Poulios, age fifteen, used—’ ”

“Wait a minute,” Nancy interrupted tensely. “This can’t be a coincidence. I talked to some of those people this morning! Can I see that list?”

The chief held it out, and Nancy took it. Her hands were trembling with excitement.

“I knew it,” she said after a second.

All five poisoning victims she’d met in the hospital were on the list!

T
HIS LIST SOLVES
ONE
MYSTERY
,” Nancy told Chief McGinnis triumphantly. “Every one of the poison victims sampled Spotless.”

“Spotless? Isn’t that the cream you were testing?” asked the chief.

Nancy nodded. “All five kids I talked to at the hospital this morning took samples of Spotless. Every one of their names is here. That can’t possibly be a coincidence!”