Without a Trace (5 page)

Soon Bess, George, and I were hurrying down the sidewalk toward my house. “I wish we had time to talk to a few more people today,” I commented, glancing at my watch. “Talking to Mr. Safer has made me realize it really would be better to clear this up sooner rather than later.”

“Yeah, I see your point,” George admitted. “Mr. Safer seemed pretty freaked out about all this.”

Bess nodded. “He and Mr. Geffington have had disagreements before, but nothing like this. We’ve got to do something before things go any further.”

“I’m supposed to meet Ned in an hour to go to the movies,” I said as we reached the sidewalk in front of my house. We all paused in front of Bess’s car, which was parked at the curb. “But maybe we can pick up on this sometime over the weekend if you guys aren’t busy.”

“Sure,” Bess agreed for both of them. “Oh, and if you’re going out with Ned, you should wear that lavender blouse you never wear. It really brings out the color of your eyes. And don’t forget to put on lipstick! I keep telling you, it really makes a difference.”

Bess is always trying to convince both George and
me to take more interest in clothes and makeup—two subjects that interest her a lot and us not much at all. I like an occasional shopping spree as much as the next girl, and I enjoy wearing nice things on special occasions, but most of the time I just can’t be bothered thinking too much about stuff like that. As for George, she’s been a tomboy since the day she was born. If Bess hasn’t turned her into a fashion fiend by now, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.

“Okay, I’ll attempt to look human if at all possible,” I told Bess, with a playful wink at George. “See you guys tomorrow.”

We parted ways, and I hurried into the house. Dad was nowhere to be seen, but our housekeeper, Hannah Gruen, was fixing dinner in the kitchen. Hannah has been with us since my mother died, and I think of her as part of the family. She appears brisk and efficient on the outside, but underneath her no-nonsense exterior lies a heart as ample as her considerable girth.

“Oh, there you are, Nancy,” Hannah said, wiping her hands on her apron. “You just missed a phone call. The young lady sounded rather upset! Her number is on the pad.”

“Thanks.” I hurried to look at the notepad next to the phone. Simone’s name and phone number were written there in Hannah’s neat cursive. “Oh! That’s
the new owner of the Peterson place. We met her this afternoon. I wonder what she wants?”

Figuring there was only one way to find out, I dialed the number. Simone answered, though she sounded so upset that I almost didn’t recognize her voice. “Nancy!” she cried when I identified myself. “I am so glad to hear from you. As you know, Pierre and I have met almost no one here in River Heights yet, and I didn’t know where else to turn.”

“What is it, Simone?” I asked anxiously. The worried crackle in her voice told me that something was wrong—very wrong.

“It’s my Fabergé egg,” Simone replied. “I walked into the living room and noticed that it’s gone!”

Five minutes later I
was back on Simone’s porch, ringing her doorbell. When Simone answered the door, her face looked flushed and she was frowning.

“Oh! It’s you,” she said, her scowl fading slightly. “Come in, Nancy. I thought you might be the police. I called them right before I called you.”

“I’m sure they’ll be here soon,” I said tactfully. I decided it wouldn’t help anyone to mention that Chief McGinnis of the River Heights Police Department doesn’t always bother to hurry unless the crime is something that might land him a headline in the Chicago papers. “In the meantime, do you want to tell me what happened?”

“Of course.” Simone gestured for me to follow her
inside. “Come in, I’ll introduce you to Pierre’s friends. They can help me explain it all.”

I followed her into the living room. It didn’t look much like a crime scene. Having been there just a few hours earlier, I didn’t notice anything out of place.

With one exception, of course. The glass case on the mantel that had held the Fabergé egg was open and empty.

“You didn’t clean things up after you found the egg missing, did you?” I asked.

Simone shook her head. “We haven’t touched a thing,” she said. “The egg seems to be the only thing that interested the burglar. Nothing else in here appears to have been disturbed.”

“Interesting,” I said.

At that moment I heard voices from the direction of the kitchen. Pierre walked into the room, followed by three other young men.

“Nancy!” Pierre exclaimed as soon as he spotted me. “I’m so glad you are here. Please allow me to introduce my friends: This is Jacques, and Thèo, and René.”

He gestured to each young man in turn. Jacques was tall and slender, with light brown hair and an attractive face that had a slightly melancholy expression. Thèo was shorter, with dark hair and broad
shoulders. René had sparkling green eyes, and hair as dark as Thèo’s but much curlier.

“Nice to meet you all,” I said as the boys greeted me politely. “Welcome to River Heights. Sorry you had to arrive at such an unfortunate moment.”

“Actually, they had already been here a little while when it happened,” Simone said. “They arrived just a few minutes after you and your friends left.”

“Yes, and we feel just awful about it all, as we feel we are partly responsible,” Jacques said earnestly in lightly accented English.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Thèo shrugged. “It is because we forgot to lock the door.” His French accent was much stronger than Jacques’s, but his voice and expression were equally worried. “Pierre, he offered to show us the town. We were all very eager to see it, and so we hardly took the time to put our luggage upstairs or lock the doors.”

“Yes, it’s my fault.” Pierre sighed loudly. “Simone, she is always telling me to lock the doors. It may be a small town, but there are bad people everywhere. But I just cannot remember. This town—after Paris, it seems so . . . so
good.
”

I sighed. “Trust me, we get our share of crime even here in sleepy little River Heights.” Sometimes it seems we get much more than our share, in fact. But
I didn’t bother to try to explain that. Simone, Pierre, and their friends already felt bad enough.

“Well, I shouldn’t have left you all here so soon after your arrival,” Simone said. “I was just so eager to get the supplies for our party tomorrow night. I didn’t want to put off the shopping too long.”

The French guys all spoke up at once, reassuring Simone that she was in no way responsible and that the fault was all theirs. Meanwhile, I looked around the room more carefully. I stepped toward the fireplace, being careful not to touch or bump into anything. The last thing I wanted to do was mess up the crime scene before the police arrived. But I was still having trouble believing that nothing else had been touched.

“These bracelets,” I spoke up abruptly, interrupting whatever the others were saying. I pointed to the jeweled pieces that Bess had admired earlier. They were lying on an end table along with a few other knickknacks. “Simone, they look valuable. Are they?”

“Oh, yes, I suppose so,” Simone replied. “I mean, those are real diamonds and pearls, so they must be worth a little something. They have sentimental family value to me; that’s why I display them here.”

“Why wouldn’t the thief grab something like that on the way past?” I whispered, speaking more to myself than to the others. “It would be easy enough to slip them in a pocket or something. . . .” I glanced around
and saw other valuable items—figurines, oil paintings, glassware, and more. Why only take the egg?

“That is a good question,” René said, having heard my comments. “Perhaps we startled the thief upon our return.”

“When did you return, exactly?” I asked. “Please, could you tell me everything that happened—how long you were out, when you discovered the theft, and so on?”

“Well, of course,” Pierre said, though he looked surprised at the request. I guessed that meant that Simone hadn’t told him about my reputation as a detective. “My friends arrived about fifteen minutes after you left, as Simone said. We showed them around the house, then Simone left almost immediately to do the shopping. My friends took their bags upstairs, then we went out to walk around the neigh-borhood. We were gone about an hour, maybe a little more. When Jacques and René returned to the house together, Simone had just come in and noticed the egg missing. Thèo and I were still outside looking at the river, and we rushed in when René called us, and then heard what had happened.”

“That’s right,” Simone said. “I noticed that the egg was gone right away, because the sun was slanting in through the window and hit the open door of the case to make a reflection.”

“I see.” I thought about that for a moment. “And was the case locked before?”

“Yes,” Simone said. “And the case is bolted to the wall. But it wouldn’t have been difficult for the thief to find the key. I only kept it tucked under the clock there.” She pointed to a clock sitting on the other end of the mantel.

I stepped a little closer to the fireplace for a better look at the clock. As I did so, the adjoining den came into view through an open doorway. I saw that a table in there was overturned.

“Did the thief do that as well?” I asked, pointing.

Pierre nodded. “He must have,” he said. “See? The table was near the back door. We think he heard us coming back from our walk and in his rush to get out he knocked into the table.”

“Yes, and if René didn’t always talk so much, perhaps we would have heard the crash,” Thèo added with a twinkle in his eye.

Jacques frowned slightly at him. “It is not a time for jokes, Thèo,” he said mildly. “Our friends have lost a valuable family treasure. That egg has been with them for generations, you know.”

“Yes, I know.” Thèo looked chagrined. “My apologies, Simone and Pierre.”

“No apology is necessary, Thèo,” Simone said. “It was only an object that was taken. At least no one
was here when the thief came, or someone might have been hurt. That would have been much, much worse.”

She sighed, looking sad and hopeless. “Don’t worry,” I told her quietly, stepping closer as the guys started talking among themselves. “I’ll help you find your egg if I can.”

“You think you can find it?” Simone looked surprised. “Oh, Nancy, I know you said earlier that you are a detective. But this . . . How could you hope to do such a thing? I’m not sure even the police will be able to help me. There are so many places for such an item to disappear quickly. . . .” She sighed again.

I knew she had a point. If a professional thief had taken the Fabergé egg, it surely would be well on its way to some sort of black-market art auction by now. But my little sixth sense was tingling, and that made me think that I needed to do some more investigating to get the answers to some questions. For one thing, how would a professional art thief even know about Simone’s egg? And why would such a person leave behind other items he could easily sell as well? It just didn’t make sense. And when something doesn’t make sense, I’ve learned that usually means there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

“Don’t worry,” I told her again. “I think there’s still a chance we could get your egg back.”

I noticed that Jacques had turned away from the other guys and was listening to me. He looked surprised too, but didn’t say anything, and he quickly turned away again.

Meanwhile Simone smiled at me, though she still didn’t look terribly hopeful. “I wonder what could be keeping the police?” she commented, glancing at her watch. “I called them nearly an hour ago. . . .”

“An hour?” I gulped, suddenly realizing how much time had passed. Looking at my own watch, I realized I was in trouble. “Uh-oh,” I said. “I was supposed to meet my boyfriend ten minutes ago! I’ve got to go.”

“I’m sorry! Ned, I’m so, so sorry!” I exclaimed breathlessly as I raced into the lobby of the River Heights cineplex. It wasn’t hard to spot my boyfriend, Ned Nickerson—he was the only one in the lobby other than the ticket taker and the teenage girl working at the popcorn stand. That was no surprise, since the movie we’d planned to see had been scheduled to start ten minutes earlier.

Ned smiled, displaying his adorable dimples, as he stood up from one of the lobby’s padded benches to greet me. “It’s okay,” he said, running one hand over his brown hair. His brown eyes twinkled playfully. “I figured that whatever was keeping you was probably
more interesting than the movie anyway . . . or your name isn’t Nancy Drew.”

I laughed. “Actually, you’re right about that,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it. Since we already missed the beginning of the movie, can I buy you dinner instead?”

“Absolutely!” Ned said immediately, despite the empty popcorn tub sitting on the bench beside him. That’s one of the predictable things about Ned: In addition to being patient and understanding, he’s always ready to eat. He and George are a lot alike that way. Like George, Ned’s love of food never seems to affect his tall, lanky frame too much, even though Hannah likes to say that he eats enough to feed a small army.

We left the theater and headed down the block to one of our favorite places to eat, a combination bookstore and café called Susie’s Read & Feed. Tucked into a tall, narrow storefront on River Street between a clothing store and the First Bank of River Heights, Susie’s is a cramped but wonderful place, every inch of the walls lined with tall bookcases crammed with an eclectic variety of reading material, and every inch of space in between is occupied by mismatched, brightly painted wooden tables and chairs. The owner, a tiny, energetic young woman named Susie Lin, keeps both the books and the food
varied and interesting, which has made the place very popular with locals of all ages.