Read Make No Mistake Online

Authors: Carolyn Keene

Make No Mistake (9 page)

BOOK: Make No Mistake
12.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Gently, Nancy helped Mrs. Adams to lie back on the bed, then went back downstairs. She paused at the landing to phone home to let her father and Hannah know that they were all waiting out the storm at Glover's Corners.

Nancy found Bess and George in the library. George was feeding pine cones to the fire, while Bess was lazily flipping through the pages of a magazine. Nancy picked up a magazine to look at, too.

“How's Mrs. Adams?” Bess asked at last, putting her magazine down.

Nancy plopped down on the sofa beside her. “Resting. I'm sure she'll feel better in a while.”

“She's had a lot to deal with, what with Matt coming back and all,” Bess said sympathetically.

“If it really is Matt,” George added quietly. “I'm sorry, Bess,” she said in response to the
dark look her cousin shot her, “but you've got to be prepared for that possibility.”

“I just know it's Matt,” Bess insisted. “I would be able to tell if it weren't.” She was about to say something else, but paused before going on excitedly, “Listen—the sleighs!”

They all rushed to a window. The storm had begun to let up, and Nancy could see that fresh snow lay deep and thick around Glover's Corners and in the woods beyond. The sun was low on the horizon, and the sleighs and snow all had a pinkish glow to them.

“There's Matt!” Bess exclaimed, pointing to a figure in an Eskimo-style parka driving the first sleigh.

“That must be someone from Thurston's stables in the other sleigh,” said George.

Bringing up the rear was a four-wheel-drive Land Rover—the only kind of vehicle that could make it through the snow before the plows came.

“I wonder why he rented two of them?” Nancy asked. “One is big enough for the four of us.”

George was already heading for the front closet, where their jackets and boots were. “Who cares why? It'll be so much fun. Let's go!”

They struggled into the warmest clothes they could find in the cloakroom. Bess wound a long, fluffy, red muffler around her neck and picked up a pair of matching mittens. “Hey, Nan,” she said, pointing to a bright blue woolen hat hanging
from a peg, “you should wear that. It'll look fantastic with your hair.”

Nancy's hat was still wet so she pulled on the cap, then the girls went outside. As they tromped through the snow to the sleighs, the man who had driven the second sleigh was climbing into the Land Rover. “We'll be back in an hour,” Nancy heard him tell Matt. “Enjoy your ride.”

Matt's face was glowing from the cold. “Hey, my hat looks good on you,” he complimented Nancy.

For a second Bess looked the tiniest bit jealous of the compliment, but at Matt's next words her face lit up. “I thought Bess and I would take one sleigh and you two the other,” he said to Nancy and George. “You do know how to drive?” he asked Nancy. She nodded.

“We'll follow the old trails through the woods and meet back here in an hour if we split up.”

“Terrific!” said Bess, hopping up next to Matt in the first sleigh.

As Nancy and George climbed into the second sleigh, George commented in an undertone, “Bess's nervousness sure disappeared in a hurry.”

“I'll say,” Nancy agreed, pulling the heavy lap robe over their knees. “Her crush on Matt is getting even bigger. I just wish she'd back off a little until we're sure about him.”

Nancy watched as Matt and Bess led the way,
starting out for the woods. Taking the reins, she urged their horse to follow.

There seemed to be no sounds in the world but the jangling sleigh bells, the creak of leather, and the snorts of the horses as they went forward in the snow.

“This is great.” George sighed. “I'd forgotten how wonderful a sleigh ride can be.”

“It
is
beautiful,” Nancy agreed.

Soon they were deep in the woods, with its mixture of tall pines and sturdy oaks. The sun was very low now, and deep shadows had settled around the tree trunks, but the snow still shone with a beautiful, pearly glow. Nancy felt herself relaxing as she followed Matt and Bess's sleigh, which was about twenty yards ahead of them.

Seeing Matt's sleigh veer off onto a narrower path to the left, Nancy said, “I guess we should follow.” She began to maneuver their horse to turn left. “I don't want to get lost out here.”

The path was just wide enough for the sleigh, and lined by trees on both sides. Their horse was moving at a good trot now, and the tree branches seemed to whiz by them. Nancy had to concentrate to see clearly through the thick shadows.

Suddenly she started. At first she just saw a blur, then she realized it was someone in a red hunting jacket stepping out from beneath the pines, right into the path of her sleigh!

Instinctively, she gripped the reins hard and
pulled back, but she could see the sleigh was moving too fast to stop in time. “Hey! Get out of the way!” she yelled, but the figure in red hurtled onto the path directly in front of them and streaked by under the horse's startled nose.

“Watch out!” George shouted.

The horse reared in panic, and Nancy gripped the reins harder. Then she felt them snap in two in her hands. She watched in horror as the leather strips slid from her grasp and dropped behind the wild horse, leaving her with two useless ends. A second later the horse bolted and took off into the woods.

The horse was still attached to the sleigh by the traces, but there was no way to control the animal. The sleigh teetered and then went careening after the horse, into the woods and down a slope. Tree branches whipped at Nancy's face, and the forest went by in a blinding blur.

“We're going to go over!” she heard George yell beside her.

The last thing Nancy saw was a huge oak rushing toward her. Then everything went black.

Chapter

Eleven

W
HEN
N
ANCY OPENED
her eyes again, the first thing she saw was Mrs. Adams's worried face floating above her.

Nancy's head was pounding, but when she gingerly moved her legs, then her arms, she found that they worked. Turning her head, she looked around, squinting, and saw she was lying under a goose-down quilt in a bedroom at Glover's Corners.

“What?” she began, but Mrs. Adams put a finger to her lips and said a doctor was on the way.

Nancy looked over Mrs. Adams's shoulder at the snow-covered tree branches outside the bedroom window. She blinked, dimly remembering
the runaway sleigh, the startled horse, and the oak tree. There was something else, too, but her mind felt so foggy she couldn't concentrate on it.

Letting out a sigh, she shut her eyes again. That was when it came to her—the figure in red hurtling across the path in front of them. Someone had deliberately frightened the horse. But who?

Nancy felt a cool, soothing cloth being placed on her forehead. Opening her eyes again, she asked Mrs. Adams, “Is George all right?”

“George landed in a snowbank. She's fine.”

Nancy tried to tell the housekeeper that someone had startled her horse on purpose, but Mrs. Adams told her not to talk until the doctor had examined her. Nancy stared at the ceiling, trying to get her thoughts together. Her head felt woozy. She could hear the muted voices of George, Bess, and Matt from somewhere beyond the bedroom door. The sound was lulling and comforting.

She must have drifted off, because when she opened her eyes again a kind-looking man was sitting by her bed. Mrs. Adams introduced him as Dr. Biddle. This time Nancy felt wide-awake and clearheaded. She greeted the doctor with: “I'm really fine—you shouldn't have bothered to come out on my account.”

“Now, hush, young lady,” the doctor told her with a smile. He examined her eyes with a little penlight and asked her if she was feeling dizzy.

Nancy shook her head. “I just have a king-size headache.”

“It's no wonder,” Dr. Biddle told her. “You must have the hardest head in River Heights, to have gotten the better of that tree you ran into. If you had a concussion it was a very minor one. I don't think X rays will be needed.”

After the doctor left, Nancy took some aspirin. When the pounding in her head had lessened a little, she went downstairs to the library. Matt was standing on the hearth by the fire, and Bess and George were sitting on the couch. They all looked worried. Matt rushed over to Nancy when she stepped into the room.

“Nancy, are you all right?” he asked. “You really gave us a scare back there.” He led her over to a chair beside Bess and George and poured her a steaming cup of tea from a china tea service on the table in front of the couch.

“Someone gave my
horse
a scare,” Nancy replied evenly. She took a sip of the tea. “Mmmm, this tastes good. I'm starting to feel better.”

Bess looked up, her blue eyes filled with concern. “That's awful. You guys could have gotten killed, and Matt and I didn't even know anything was wrong until George screamed for us.”

“You wouldn't have seen anything, unless you were looking back,” Nancy said. “A person dressed in a red jacket ran out from the trees right in front of us.”

Matt nodded. “That's what George said. Did you see who it was?”

“No, and I don't even know if it was a man or a woman. It all happened so fast.”

“I do remember one thing,” George said, leaning back against the plush pillows of the couch. “Whoever it was had a ski cap pulled low so it was impossible to see the face clearly.”

“I don't suppose it could have been an accident?” Bess asked.

“Oh, come off it, Bess,” George told her cousin. “People don't wait around in the woods in a snowstorm and charge out in front of a horse by accident. Whoever did it meant for Nancy or me to get badly hurt, maybe even killed. And somehow I don't think whoever it was was after me.”

Matt looked troubled. “If someone is trying to hurt Nancy, it must be because of me—because of the investigation she's been doing to see if I'm who I say I am.” He held up a hand as Nancy started to speak. “Yes, I know you haven't been sure about me. I heard Bess telling you about the lie-detector results earlier. I do understand your suspicion, believe me. I know it's a strange story to swallow, but I hope soon you'll believe I'm telling the truth about who I am.”

Watching Matt as he paced back and forth in front of the fire, his blue eyes earnest and troubled, Nancy was almost positive he was telling the truth.

“What we have to think about is who could
have done such a thing,” Matt went on. He paused to look at Nancy. “Do you have any suspicions?”

Nancy shook her head, waiting for him to speak. He stopped his pacing as if he had an idea.

“I hate to say it,” Matt said at last, “but it must be one of the people who would have inherited my father's fortune if I hadn't reappeared. Like maybe Tony Giralda.”

So Matt had thought of that possibility, too, Nancy thought with a touch of admiration.

“You could be right,” she told him. “There's something else we should consider, too. I don't think the attacker was necessarily after me. It's just as likely that the person was trying to get
you
out of the way, Matt, so that your father's money would be distributed to the causes named in the will.”

Bess gasped. “Oh, no!” she wailed.

“That makes sense,” said George. “Whoever it was could have mistaken our sled for Matt's. It was pretty shadowy out there, so it would have been hard to tell who was in which sled.”

“I'll bet it
was
Tony Giralda,” Bess said emphatically. “He's so intense!”

“His work is his whole life,” Matt pointed out. “If he loses it, he loses everything. He's barely surviving as it is. He needs that money.”

Matt came over and knelt in front of Nancy's chair. He put a hand on her shoulder and stared into her eyes. “I'm sorry that I've caused you so
much trouble. If anything happened to you because of me I'd—I don't know what I'd do.”

Nancy studied Matt's blue eyes carefully, but there was nothing in them but sincere concern. “Thank you, Matt,” she said.

As Matt went over to put another log on the fire, Mrs. Adams came in with fresh tea. She smiled at them, but Nancy saw that the housekeeper still had a pained look on her face, and her step had lost its usual energetic bounce.

As she bent to place the fresh teapot on the table, she leaned close to Nancy and whispered very softly, “I have something to tell you.”

Nancy blinked, surprised. Obviously Mrs. Adams wanted to talk with her in private. Getting to her feet, Nancy picked up the tray with the cold teapot on it and said, “Here, Mrs. Adams, I'll help you clear this.”

In the kitchen Mrs. Adams didn't waste any time telling Nancy what was bothering her.

“There's something I want you to know,” the woman began. She leaned over the counter and began chopping carrots and tossing them in a big stewing pot. “Ordinarily I'd wait until you were feeling better, but this can't wait.”

BOOK: Make No Mistake
12.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

No One Needs to Know by Kevin O'Brien
Bridge of Swords by Duncan Lay
Take Me Always by Ryan Field
Ramage's Mutiny by Dudley Pope
Breaking Ties by Vaughn R. Demont
Sudden Desire by Lauren Dane
Shadow Horse by Alison Hart
Me and My Hittas by Tranay Adams