Troubled Waters (Nancy Drew (All New) Girl Detective Book 23) (11 page)

“Ugh,” I said as Brad picked up a mud-coated tree branch. I thought he might use it to keep his balance
on the slippery ground. But holding on to the branch, Brad crept closer and closer to the house. He walked right up to one of the windows, then angled the branch over his shoulder like a baseball bat.

“He’s going to break the window!” George gasped.

Without thinking, I jumped out from behind the roots. “Stop!” I shouted. “Stop it right now!”

B
rad and Tanya jumped about a foot in the air. They whipped around to face us, and Brad’s face turned a ghostly white. He and Tanya took a step back as George and I raced toward them across the muddy ground.

“What the . . . ?” Brad said.

“Don’t break that window!” I said again, slip-sliding across the slime that coated the street.

“Don’t you know that’s vandalism?” George added. “The floods have already done enough to the house without you two causing even more damage.”

Tanya’s mouth fell open. “What are you talking about?” she said. “All we’re trying to do is save Mr. Fillmore’s dog!”

“Dog?” I repeated. It took me a second to figure
out what she was talking about. “You mean the one the old guy at the Historical Society had to leave behind?”

“Otis,” Brad said, nodding. “I promised Mr. Fillmore I’d try to find him.”

George and I stopped and looked at each other. Now that we were closer to the house, we heard barking inside—a weak, high-pitched baying that tugged at my heart.

“The poor thing sounds like he’s hurt!” I said.

“That’s what we think too,” Tanya said. She turned back to the house, frowning. “Whether or not it’s Otis, we need to help that dog. Too bad the front door isn’t exactly in good enough shape to use.”

That was the understatement of the year. The front porch had half collapsed, looking like it could completely cave in at any moment.

“Which is why Brad was going to break the window?” George guessed.

“That’s why you guys have been so secretive!” I realized. “You couldn’t exactly tell everyone you were sneaking past police barriers.” Relief washed over me—until I heard another soulful bark inside the house.

“We’ve got to get that dog out of there. Do you think we can get the window open without breaking it?” I suggested.

I glanced worriedly at the side of the house where we stood. It hadn’t collapsed—not yet, anyway—and it didn’t lean nearly as much as the other side. Stepping cautiously over to the window, I tried to open it.

“It’s stuck,” I said.

The next thing I knew, Brad was next to me. Together, we pushed up on the window. I was afraid it was locked, but it finally opened a crack before jamming again.

“The shifting house must have made it stick,” Brad said. Gritting his teeth, he pushed up even harder—until the window screeched open about a foot.

“I can get through there,” Tanya said.

“Careful.” George glanced worriedly up at the outside wall of the house as Tanya strode to the window. “Can it hold your weight?”

Tanya was already stepping up onto the cradle Brad had formed with his hands. Grabbing the window ledge, she tried to shake it, but the walls remained solid. Smiling over her shoulder at us, she leaned in the window.

“It’s a bulldog,” she reported. “Looks like he’s wedged behind an overturned table.” Then I heard her croon in a soothing voice, “Otis, is that you? We’re here to help you, buddy. . . .”

The dog’s whining grew sharper and more urgent. Then we heard Tanya say, “I’m bringing him out.
Nothing’s broken, but he’s dehydrated and really weak.”

A moment later she leaned out the window with a creature that was so limp, it looked more like a fur-covered rag than a dog. The dog’s reddish brown fur was dull and dirty, and his breathing was shallow and rapid. The bulldog was barely able to lift his head to gaze at us with tired, red eyes.

“Oh! The poor thing,” George said as Brad gently took the dog in his arms.

“I’m glad we finally found you, Otis,” Brad said, stroking the dog’s head. “Mr. Fillmore sure is going to be glad you’re alive.”

At the sound of his name the bulldog’s tail wagged the slightest bit.

“See how he perked up? That’s Otis, all right.” George smiled as Tanya squeezed back out through the window and dropped to the ground next to us. “No wonder you guys snuck past the barriers. You couldn’t just leave Otis out here to die.”

Brad was heading toward Tanya’s car with the bulldog. Glancing over his shoulder at us, he said, “Mr. Fillmore was really upset about leaving Otis behind, so I promised I’d try to find him. I came by myself the first time, but—”

“Early in the morning, before our first day with Helping Homes?” I guessed.

Brad nodded. “That was when I realized how creepy it is around here,” he said. “I felt weird being by myself with everything wrecked and falling down around me.”

George glanced around at the fallen trees and broken-down, slimy homes. “So you asked Tanya to help you?”

“I’m glad he did too,” Tanya spoke up. Opening the hatchback of her car, she spread an old blanket out. “I’ve had some experience with sick animals. And two of us could cover a lot more ground than one.”

“It’s still pretty dangerous,” I said. “You two are lucky you didn’t get hurt—or arrested.”

Brad gently placed Otis on the blanket, talking soothingly to him all the while. When he straightened up, he said, “Well, I don’t regret it. Otis is like family to Mr. Fillmore. If sneaking around was the only way to find him, I think it was the right thing to do.”

“Anyway, we weren’t the only ones who ignored the police barriers,” Tanya added. “Just last night we saw—”

“You came here last night?” I said, taken aback. “But we saw you at Deirdre’s party.”

“Can’t a girl have fun
and
do a good deed in one night?” Tanya said, grinning at George and me. “I met Brad afterward, and we drove down here. We almost had a heart attack when we saw J.C. Valdez walking around.”

“J.C. Valdez?” George asked. She leaned against the side of Tanya’s car, raising an eyebrow. “But didn’t he tell Deirdre he had to leave the party early because he was going to see his parents in Woodburn?” she said.

“Definitely,” I said, nodding. “That’s an hour away from here, so he couldn’t have been in both places.”

“All I know is that Tanya and I saw him right over there,” Brad said. He pointed through the piles of debris and branches to a house that stood even closer to the river.

“I wonder why he lied?” I murmured.

“Who knows,” Brad said with a shrug. “Like you said, anyone who’s breaking the law to come here wouldn’t exactly advertise what they’re doing.”

“But
why
would he come here?” I said, thinking out loud.

Moving away from Tanya’s car, I picked my way carefully along the muddy road toward the house. I shivered at the sight of a couple of rats scampering over the rubble of a collapsed house. Just beyond was the house Brad had pointed at. I heard Tanya’s engine start, and a moment later George came up next to me.

“Brad and Tanya are taking Otis to the animal shelter,” she said, trying not to slip on the mud. “They’ll get him some food and water, and then they’ll reintroduce him to Mr. Fillmore.”

“Great,” I said, still scanning the area.

I stopped next to an old wooden house that was covered with slime up to its second-story windows. Miraculously, the gabled roof and wood siding had remained intact. Even the elaborate wooden trim of the porch had survived. Not that the place looked like any sort of showcase at the moment. Trash bins lay overturned and filled with foul-smelling water. Slime-covered lawn chairs and tables were wedged against the house at odd angles. The sour stench of mold and mud made me gag.

“Maybe this is J.C.’s parents’ house,” I said. “Didn’t J.C. tell us the house has been in his mother’s family for generations?”

George nodded, gazing at the muddy walls and debris. “This place does look pretty old. It’s even got one of those signs that tells about the history of the house,” she said.

She pointed at a muddy wooden plaque nailed to the clapboards next to the front door. Taking a few steps closer, I peered at it. The plaque was half covered with mud, but I could still make out the words.

“George!” I breathed out. “This is the Bernard Tilden House!”

Y
ou’re kidding!” George said, gaping at the house.

As I moved across the mud-coated walk toward the front porch, I saw skid marks in the smelly slime where someone else had walked. “It looks like J.C. went into the house. I wonder what—”

“Careful, Nan!” George said.

I had just put my foot on the steps leading up to the porch. The moldy, mud-covered board gave way with a sickening crunch. My foot slid out from under me, and I fell to the ground with a squishy thump.
“Eeew!”
I shivered, scrambling up from the slime as fast as I could.

“Look, maybe J.C. was crazy enough to go in there, but I don’t think we should,” George cautioned.

I gazed up at the building, rubbing my hands
against my jeans to get the mud off. “It looks solid enough,” I murmured. But when I grabbed the railing, the whole porch shifted with a creaky groan that made me jump back.

“We’d better not risk it. If the house collapses, I definitely don’t want to be inside,” I said, making my way back across the mud to George. “But . . . we’re so close! How are we going to find out what J.C. was up to?”

“Remember how mildewed Bernard Tilden’s journal was?” George said thoughtfully. “I’ll bet you anything that it was right here in this house.”

Her theory made sense. And my gut told me that J.C. was the one who found the journal and returned here last night looking for more. So why was Craig standing next to the journal when I found it?” I wondered out loud. “We were pretty sure he dropped it. Unless . . .”

As I thought back, the picture of Craig staring down the street at the glowing taillights of a car flashed in my mind. “Right before I found the journal, Craig was watching someone drive away,” I told George. “What if
that
person dropped the journal, not Craig?”

“J.C. did tell Deirdre he had to leave early,” George said. “And I don’t remember seeing him when we were dancing after you found the journal.”

“Still, all we have is guesswork,” I said, scraping my boot across the mud-coated pavement. “There’s got to be a way to prove J.C. is the one looking for the money. I mean, if he took those framed photos, he must have them somewhere. . . .”

“His hotel?” George suggested. “Didn’t Travis say the guys on the team are staying at the River Heights Motor Lodge?”

“Yes, he did.” I started back down the muddy road toward my car. “J.C.’s probably at the foundry,” I said, “so let’s start with the hotel.”

George and I were both relieved to leave the flooded part of Cedar Plains behind us—and to make it past the barrier without any police spotting us. Before long we were pulling up in front of the River Heights Motor Lodge. The U-shaped building was two stories high, with doorways on both levels and stairs going up to a second-floor balcony. At the center of the U was a swimming pool surrounded by lounge chairs. It wasn’t warm enough to swim yet, and the pool was empty except for a layer of grime and leaves.

The place was quiet—and the more deserted the better, as far as I was concerned. We didn’t exactly want an audience while we snuck into J.C.’s room.

“There’s the reception desk,” George said, nodding
at a glassed-in office at the end of the U-shaped building. “Let’s find out what room J.C. is in.”

As we got out of the car, I scanned the first- and second-floor doorways. Three laundry carts stood on the walkways outside the rooms, along with buckets, mops, and bottles of cleansers. As I watched, a woman wearing a white smock over her clothes came out of one of the second-floor rooms. In her arms was a mound of towels and sheets, which she dumped into her cart.

“I’m not sure reception will be so accommodating—but maybe there’s a better way,” I said. “Come on.”

We jogged up the stairs and caught up to the woman as she was opening the door to the next room. “Excuse me, miss,” I said breathlessly.

“Yes?” The woman turned toward us, and I saw that she had chin-length black hair and small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. “Can I help you?”

“We hope so,” George said. “We’re trying to find J.C. Valdez. He’s one of the basketball players who’s staying here.”

“You mean the Bullets? Such lovely boys!” the woman said, her voice filled with warmth. “I call them my knights in shining armor. Every day I thank those boys for helping to build the apartments over
at the Davis Foundry. See, my three boys and I lost our place down in Cedar Plains during the floods and—”

“You’re going to get one of the foundry apartments when they’re done?” George guessed.

The woman nodded. “Let me tell you, it’ll be a relief when we don’t have to sleep on the floor at my sister-in-law’s place anymore,” she said. “She’s been a darling to us, but after a while you just want your own place, know what I mean?”

“Mmm,” George said. “Did you say you
do
know which room is J.C.’s?” she pressed.

“Sure, I know. Room 226. It’s right down there,” the woman said, nodding farther down the second-floor balcony. She reached for a bottle of spray cleanser with one hand and her keys with the other.

“Do you think you could let us in?” I asked before she could disappear into the next room. Seeing her hesitate, I added quickly, “There’s something in there that’s desperately needed at the foundry. Work could be held up if we don’t get it soon.”

It wasn’t a
total
lie. Work
would
be held up if there was any more damage to the foundry. Still, I wasn’t sure the woman bought our story. For a moment she just stood there sorting through her keys. But at last she smiled and said, “Well, I guess it’s all right. . . .” Stepping farther down the balcony, she unlocked
room 226 and pushed the door open. “Just close up when you leave. The door will lock automatically.”