Stop the Clock (Nancy Drew (All New) Girl Detective Book 12) (12 page)

Bess gasped.

“You’re kidding me!” George said. “Why would he be doing that?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” I said. “I want the four of us to go to the library and see if we can find Ellis,” I said. I looked each one of them straight in the eye. “After that, I’m going to resign from the library committee,” I added emphatically.

What’s in a Name?

T
he four of us
piled into my car, and we headed for the Mahoney Library. When we got there, I couldn’t find a parking space in front, so I drove around to the back.

“We can use the service entrance,” I told everyone. “That’ll be closer to Mrs. Corning’s office. I won’t have to face the rest of the librarians, who probably think I’m a total failure.”

“You are not a failure, Nancy,” Bess said. “Repeat after me: ‘I am not a failure.’”

“I am not a failure,” I repeated halfheartedly.

“Well, that’ll certainly convince a lot of people,” George said.

As we headed up the steps of the loading dock, I started rehearsing what I was going to say to Mrs.
Corning. But just as we opened the back door, I saw her to our immediate left. She was ripping up some of the posters, and they seemed pretty dry to me.

Bess and George gasped.

“You don’t have permission to be back here!” Mrs. Corning screamed at us. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“I think we need to ask you the same question, Mrs. Corning,” Ned said. He looked at me. “Don’t we, Nancy?”

Slowly all of the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit together—and it wasn’t the picture I had expected to see.

“I don’t understand, Mrs. Corning,” I finally said, my voice barely above a whisper. “I was trying so hard to make the library celebration a success.”

Suddenly Mrs. Corning buried her face in her hands and started crying. “I wanted you to look foolish, Nancy,” she said, sobbing. “Because . . . I blame you for Helen’s leaving River Heights!”

I was stunned. I couldn’t believe that Mrs. Corning had been harboring all this ill will toward me for so long—and only now, it came out!

I walked over and took her by the hand. “Why don’t we discuss this someplace else?” I said as gently as I could.

Mrs. Corning looked unsure at first, but quickly
caved. “All right,” she said, looking up at us with her tear-stained face. “There’s an old table and some chairs on the other side of those packing boxes where we can sit. I just can’t go back out into the main library now—now that you’ve found me. I can’t face the other librarians.”

As the five of us headed across the storeroom, I said, “There’s really no reason for anyone else to know about this, Mrs. Corning. We can figure out a way to get everything back on track for the celebration.”

Mrs. Corning started shaking her head. “No, no, it’s too late for that, Nancy,” she said.

We reached the table and chairs and all sat down.

“It’s never too late for anything,” I said, trying to sound conciliatory. “If you think about something long enough, you can always find a solution to any problem.”

Mrs. Corning nodded.

“I knew how much Helen wanted to be an actress, so I suggested that she live with Mr. Corning, while she took acting lessons—to see how everything worked out,” I said. “In retrospect, I should have been sensitive to your feelings, too—and I’m so sorry.”

“I was being selfish, though. I was thinking only of myself,” Mrs. Corning admitted. “Trying to make you look bad these past few days has been so hard for me; I’m ashamed about how I’ve acted, what I’ve
done out of unreasonable resentment. Really, I should have just spoken to you about this before Helen left.” She paused a moment, and looked at all of us with weepy eyes. “I plan to make a public apology for what I did to you, and then I will resign my position as head librarian.”

“Well, wait—you did nothing illegal,” I said. “I don’t think your apology needs to leave this room.” I just didn’t have the heart to make this public. It might tarnish her professional reputation—and she’d been so good to the library. I turned to everyone else. “What do you think?”

They all nodded, but I could tell that they weren’t too happy with letting Mrs. Corning get away with what she had done to me.

“I suppose, for the celebration, we could always make a papier-mâché replica of the library clock,” Bess suggested. She looked at George and Ned. “Together we can all make sure this is a happy occasion, can’t we?”

“Sure, Bess,” Ned agreed. “Just like Nancy said, if you think long and hard enough about something, you can always figure out a solution.”

“Mrs. Corning?” a voice called from the door leading to the main library.

“It’s Chief McGinnis,” I whispered. “I wonder what he wants.”

“Are you in there, Mrs. Corning?” Chief McGinnis called again.

“Yes, yes, we’re back here, just talking about the library celebration, Chief,” Mrs. Corning said in as composed a voice as she could manage. “What was it you needed?”

When Chief McGinnis saw all of us, he said, “I actually wanted to ask you a question about one of your librarians, Mrs. Corning. But I’m glad that Nancy is here, because she needs to hear this too.”

Mrs. Corning looked puzzled. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

“That’s what I want to find out,” Chief McGinnis said.

“Which librarian are you talking about?” I asked.

“Ellis Lamsley,” Chief McGinnis said.

I shot my friends a quick glance. Incredibly, I had almost forgotten the reason we had come to the library in the first place.

“We got a court order to examine Mr. Franklin’s bank account, and we found something very interesting,” Chief McGinnis continued.

“Really?” I said. “What?”

“Mr. Franklin deposited a couple of checks from Ellis Lamsley into his account,” the chief said. “The first one was for two hundred dollars, and the second one was for four hundred dollars.”

“Why was Ellis giving Mr. Franklin money?” George asked.

“I don’t have any idea,” Chief McGinnis said.

“Maybe it was a loan,” Bess said. “Maybe he felt sorry for Mr. Franklin.”

“I don’t think that was it at all,” I said. “I think it was blackmail.”

“Blackmail?”
everyone cried.

“Why would Mr. Franklin be blackmailing Ellis?” Ned asked.

Just as I started to explain, another voice said, “Well, I didn’t know we were having a committee meeting this morning!”

We all turned and saw Ellis standing just a few feet away. I had no idea how long he had been there or how much he’d heard of what we were saying, but I decided to find out.

“Where are the jewels, Ellis?” I asked.

Everyone turned to stare at me, and probably didn’t see Ellis turn pale.

“What jewels?” Ellis asked.

“You know what jewels I’m talking about,” I continued. “The jewels you dug up after you stole the library clock.”

Ellis turned to run, but Ned was too fast for him. He got up and tackled Ellis before he reached the door to the main library.

Ellis landed with a thud and cried out in pain. “I think you broke my arm, you thug!” he whined.

“I thought you were an athlete, Ellis,” George said. “Turns out you’re nothing but a wimp.”

“Ellis Lamsley, you’re under arrest,” Chief McGinnis said. He read Ellis his rights while he was putting handcuffs on him.

“My name’s not Lamsley,” Ellis said. He turned to me and spat out his next words. “It’s
Smalley
. Even the great Nancy Drew didn’t realize that ‘Lamsley’ is an anagram for ‘Smalley,’” he said, sneering.

I didn’t see the point of telling Ellis that, from the beginning, I had been curious about his last name, so I just kept quiet.

Chief McGinnis started to lead Ellis away, but Ellis said, “Don’t you want to hear the rest of the story?”

“Of course,” I said, “but in the movies this is usually where someone says that you shouldn’t say anything without your lawyer present,” I said.

“My lawyer
is
present,” Ellis said. “You’re looking at him!”

“Oh,
please
!” Bess said, and rolled her eyes.

“I’m smarter than any lawyer in this town,” Ellis said. “No jury in River Heights will convict me after they hear my side of the story.”

It suddenly occurred to me that Ellis was a smooth enough talker that he might be right—but I really
did have more faith in a River Heights jury to find him guilty than he did.

“Come on,” Chief McGinnis said.

He grabbed Ellis by the shoulder, but Ellis pulled free and faced me defiantly. For just a split second I wondered if he’d try to attack me, just to get even in some way, but he didn’t move. He did tell us all what happened, though, and Chief McGinnis let him.

The Smalleys had promised Ellis, their cousin, that they would send him to the university to become a librarian, but when I discovered Albert Washington’s last will, which disinherited the Smalleys, they couldn’t afford to keep their promise. Ellis had to work in fast-food restaurants to pay his tuition. From the way he described this, it was easy to tell that he thought he was above that sort of thing. His anger toward me kept building, and he promised himself that one day he would get even with me—and return the money to his family.

When Ellis learned that Ben Mullins had given all of his papers, drawings, and materials to the Mahoney Library, he used his charm to get this job, so he could have full access to the documents. He had always believed the story about the buried jewels, and after reading all of the jeweler’s documents, he was positive that the clue to where they were buried was in the library clock.

He had the plan all worked out. Unfortunately he didn’t realize that Mr. Franklin had come back to the library unexpectedly, to get some tools he needed. He saw Ellis taking the clock out of the wall. Franklin told Ellis he’d have to give him some money to keep quiet about the theft. Ellis figured that he could afford to give Mr. Franklin a little cash, considering what he’d be able to sell the jewels for. He didn’t really expect Mr. Franklin to get as greedy as he did; he decided he wanted some of the jewels for himself. That’s when the Smalleys—who knew about Ellis’s strategy—decided they had had enough. The entire clan, including Ellis, went to Franklin’s house and threatened to put him someplace where no one would ever find him.

“Mr. Franklin left the next day for Texas,” Ellis said. He gave a big laugh. “We would have kept our promise too—and he knew it.”

“So, Ralph Mullins and his family had nothing to do with any of this?” I asked.

Ellis shook his head violently. “No!” he shouted. “And they don’t deserve the jewels, either.”

“Did you make the telephone call from Henry Mead, and send the letter to the Romer sisters?” I asked.

Ellis nodded. “A little harsh, yes. But I wanted you to be totally confused,” he said.

Chief McGinnis grabbed Ellis by the arm. “We’ve heard enough,” he said. He radioed his officer who was in the patrol car outside. “I’m bringing a perpetrator out,” he added. “I’ve solved the mystery of the library clock.”

George and Bess looked at me and rolled their eyes.

Just then Deirdre walked in. “What is going on here?” she demanded. She turned to me. “Nancy, do you have any idea how little time there is until the library celebration? You’ve really not shown any leadership at all in this, and frankly, I think that—”

“Deirdre,” George said. “Stuff it!”

Deirdre blinked. “Nobody talks to me that way!” she said, glaring. She took a deep breath and let it out. “That does it. I’m taking myself off this committee! I will not be a part of anything that’s going to fail, and fail miserably.”

“Oh, thank you, Deirdre,” I said. “I just hate to fire people—and now you’ve saved me that task.”

For a minute I thought Deirdre was going to explode. But instead she just wheeled around and stormed out of the library.

“I have a feeling that this committee will get twice as much work done now,” Ned said.

“So do I,” I agreed.

Ellis had the library clock hidden in his apartment. He had taken it apart, so he could get to an engraving inside. At first it looked like the fabled map to the jewels. On closer inspection, though, it appeared to be a map of River Heights. Ellis didn’t have any jewels in his possession, and later admitted to not finding the map. Where, then, was the map to the jewels? Did it exist? That was a mystery for another day!

Chief McGinnis returned the clock to the library, and Ned headed a crew of townspeople who lovingly reassembled and reinstalled it. If anything, I thought the clock looked better than ever.

Over the next few weeks we worked feverishly to get everything ready for the library anniversary celebration. We made it, and the party was anything but usual.

“I have a pretty big role in
Mystery Depot
this fall,” Helen Corning whispered to me. She’d flown in the day before for the celebration. “You’ll never believe who my love interest is.” She whispered the name of a man who used to be big in movies, but now was seen only on television. “Don’t tell, though, because he hasn’t signed his contract yet!”

“Oh, I won’t tell—but it sounds great!” I told her.

“I know,” Helen said. She gave me a big hug. “Thanks for suggesting that I move to California.”

I was sure that her mother hadn’t said anything at all about what had happened in the library, so I certainly wasn’t going to either.

Just then someone tapped a spoon on a glass, and we all turned to see who it was. Mrs. Mahoney was standing underneath the library clock. “I have an announcement to make,” she said. She motioned for Mrs. Corning and Helen to join her. “Mrs. Corning is resigning her position as head librarian of the Mahoney Library, effective immediately, and she’s going to California with her daughter, Helen. Let’s show our appreciation for all that she’s done.”

That brought forth some heartfelt applause from the crowd. I was just so glad that things had worked out. I was sure Mrs. Corning would have resigned anyway, because of what she had done. But this way, it almost didn’t matter.

After the toast, Ned, Bess, George, and I circulated throughout the library, taking in all of the compliments for the displays, but especially for the library clock.