NEW YORK, NEW YORK, IT’S A WONDERFUL TOWN 5 страница
As soon as I could decently do it, I slipped away from the party and caught a taxi back to the hotel. I went straight to Bess and George’s room, where they were waiting for me.
“So, how’d it go?” Bess asked.
“Well, no one yelled at me,” I said, “which is about the best I was hoping for. So I guess it went well. Thanks again, Bess. You saved my life!”
I yawned again. The day was catching up with me in a big way. And tomorrow evening was the pageant. I needed to get my beauty sleep — but more important, I needed to figure out what had happened to Anna Chavez!
“So before I forget, tell me what Kelly said about her dad’s activities last night,” I urged as I helped myself to a diet soda from the minibar.
“Well, it was pretty easy to get her on to the subject,” Bess said. “All I had to do was say that her dad seemed to be working really hard. Kelly went off about how stressed he was, how the new job was really wearing him out, how he seemed so worried all the time, how she had barely even seen him since we got to New York.”
I nodded. “That’s saying something,” I commented. “When we were back in River Heights, he hovered over her all the time.”
“She told me he’d been working the phones or in meetings solidly all evening,” Bess went on. “He had to deal with the animal-rights protest thing, then he had a dinner with the Pretty Face sales team that lasted till like nine thirty, then he came back to the hotel and did more work. She stopped in to see him at ten and again at eleven and both times he was on the phone and couldn’t talk.”
“That must have been after I fell asleep,” I said. I hadn’t even heard her leave.
“So if he kidnapped Anna, he must have done it after eleven last night, is that what we’re saying?” George asked.
“Actually, he must have done it after twelve thirty,” Bess told us. She looked triumphant. “I checked with the night desk clerk. I wanted to know if he saw Kyle leave the hotel after eleven. He said he never saw him leave, and then he called the room service people and they said Kyle ordered a club sandwich at midnight. It was delivered at twelve twenty-five and he signed for it in person.”
“Wow!” I exclaimed, amazed. “Bess, how did you get the clerk to tell you all this stuff? They’re totally not supposed to share that kind of information.”
Bess grinned and batted her eyelashes. “I have my methods.”
“Unbelievable,” George said with a snort.
I thought back to the schedule I’d seen on Kyle’s computer, which said he’d had a breakfast meeting this morning. “Okay. So from what we know, it seems that Kyle could only have kidnapped Anna sometime between about one a.m. and six thirty a.m. today,” I said. I frowned. “Which is weird, because there was no sign of forced entry or a struggle in Anna’s apartment. He would have had to buzz her and get her to let him into her apartment in the middle of the night, and then get her to leave with him.”
“And then he would have had to take her wherever he was taking her,” George added.
“And be at the office in time for his seven a.m. staff meeting,” I finished. “How did he do it all?”
“Maybe he canceled the staff meeting,” Bess suggested.
I thought back to what I’d overheard Kyle say to his product manager about the meeting while George and I were hiding under his bed. “No, it happened.”
“Maybe he had help,” George said.
I nodded. It was what I’d been thinking too. What if someone were in this with Kyle? Someone like Adam Bedrossian?
If that was the case, I had a feeling we were moving into much more dangerous territory…
And the crazy thing was, I still didn’t even know why. Why had Anna gone missing? What was it that she and Kyle had argued about that night at the reception? What had she wanted to talk to me about?
What was so important that Kyle needed to get her out of the way?
“I wish I could go back to that reception and just go through the whole thing again,” I muttered. “I feel like I wasn’t paying enough attention, or not paying attention to the right things, or something.”
George snapped her fingers. “You can’t go back in time, Nan, but we do have something that might be almost as good.” Opening the drawer of her bedside table, she pulled out her camcorder. “I recorded it, remember?”
“George, I love you!” I yelped, and snatched the camcorder out of her hands. “How do you play back the video on this thing?”
“Easy, cowboy. Leave the techno stuff to me, okay?” George took the machine back and carried it over to her laptop. She took out a cable and hooked the camcorder up to the computer.
Bess and I gathered around as the film began to play. The camera’s view was a little jerky, and George had added occasional low-voiced, snarky comments on what people were wearing and talking about.
“George, is there a way to get rid of your voice-over?” I asked. “I’d like to see if we might be able to overhear some of the party.”
“Sorry,” George said. “I might be able to do it in a video editing lab, but not here.”
We reached the moment where the lights went out and the protest started. “Wait. Back up five minutes or so,” I instructed. “I want to find Piper and see if we can track her movements.”
George obediently rewound to five minutes earlier. She advanced the film slowly while I scanned the room for Piper’s red dress. In a moment I spotted her, standing by herself. She was too far away for me to see her expression. But I caught my breath as I saw her glance at her watch, then make for one of the exits. At the doorway she paused, looking around as if to make sure no one was watching her. Then she slipped out.
“She left, and three minutes later the protest started,” I murmured. “She’s the one who set it up. She has to be!”
We kept watching. The party continued, then the lights went out. This time I focused on the protesters, trying my best to make out their faces under the fake blood. Was one of them Piper?
No. There were three girls on the stage, but all of them were too tall and the wrong body type. Besides, there was no way she’d have had time to change out of her party outfit in the time between when she’d gone out and when the protest started.
“Did you know they test their products on helpless animals?” the distorted voice cried.
“That voice…,” I said, frowning.
“Oh, come on,” Bess objected. “It’s so distorted. You can’t tell me you recognize it.”
“Not the voice itself, but the accent,” I said. “The way it says ‘product’ and ‘animals’ with kind of long vowels. That’s a Midwestern accent.”
George made a face. “Do you think that’s enough to go on?”
“No,” I said with a sigh. I was so tired. “I need real proof — a smoking gun.”
“So how do you think they did that voice distortion, George?” Bess asked.
“It’s easy,” George said. “Anyone can download voice-changing software off the Internet. You can make yourself sound like a warrior princess, or a demon, or pretty much anything you can think of. There are hundreds of programs. People use it for online gaming, mostly. But I’m sure that’s what they used here. In fact, it sounds like one of the ‘evil creature’ voices from a program called VoxPop. I have that program.”
“Is there any way to reverse the distortion?” I asked.
George’s brow furrowed as she thought about it. “You know, maybe I can,” she said slowly. “Hang on, let me try something…”
Turning to her keyboard, she began typing furiously. A few moments later she said, “Let’s try this.”
She hit a button and a voice filled the air again. “Did you know they test their products on helpless animals?”
Bess and I burst out laughing. This time the voice sounded like a demented pixie.
“Okay, so that wasn’t quite right,” George said with a grin. “Let me try something else….”
She made a few changes, then held up a hand. “How about this?”
Once again we heard, “Did you know they test their products on helpless animals?”
I gasped. This time the voice was human.
And it was definitely the voice of one Piper Depken.
THE FROG CONNECTION
“George, you did it!” I cried, leaping up to hug my friend. “There’s the proof I need!”
“I don’t know if it would hold up in court,” George cautioned. “I just played a second voice program on top of the first. They canceled each other out, sort of.”
“I don’t need it to hold up in court,” I said. “All I need is to convince Piper that she’s been exposed, so she’ll tell me what she knows.”
I checked the clock. It was 11:30. Technically, that was pretty late to go knocking on someone’s door, but I had a mystery to solve, and a missing girl to find.
Piper’s room was on the floor above. Borrowing George’s laptop, I hurried up the stairs and knocked on Piper’s door. Her voice called, “Who is it?”
“Nancy Drew,” I called back. “Piper, I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
A moment passed and then the door swung open. Piper stood there scowling at me. She was still in her party clothes.
“What?” she demanded.
I pushed past her and set the laptop down on her desk. “Listen to this,” I said, and pressed Play on George’s sound file.
“Did you know they test their products on helpless animals?” rang out one more time. Piper’s eyes widened.
“I know it was you,” I told her quietly. “That’s your voice.”
Piper’s face turned pale. Then the color began to come back into it in blotchy patches.
“So what if it was me?” she snarled. “It’s not against the law.”
“No, but I’m sure Pretty Face wouldn’t look too kindly on you trying to smear their reputation,” I said. “They’d boot you from the pageant for sure.”
“Fine, then, let them,” Piper shot back. “It wouldn’t matter. I already know this whole pageant is rotten. They have it in for me and my family. And so do you, apparently.”
“I know you won’t believe me, but I really don’t, Piper,” I told her. “And I’m not doing this for Pretty Face. I mean, I don’t understand why you did it and I’m certainly not condoning your actions, but that’s not my main concern right now. I just need to know what you know about this animal-testing stuff, and where you got your info.”
“That crown was mine. You stole it from me,” Piper snapped. She folded her arms and stared defiantly at me. “Why should I tell you anything?”
“Because a woman’s life could be in danger,” I said urgently.
Piper’s mouth fell open. “What are you talking about?”
I grasped her arm. “Listen to me. Anna Chavez has disappeared. And I think it has something to do with the protest you staged. You have to tell me — did you get your information from her?”
“Anna who?” Piper looked bewildered now. “I don’t even know who that is.”
My heart sank. I’d been hoping the connection would be clear — Anna told Piper about animal testing, Kyle found out, Kyle took steps to silence Anna. But apparently it wasn’t that simple. Taking a deep breath, I moved to one of the chairs and sat down. “Okay, never mind about that. Just, please, tell me what you do know. It could be important.”
“My sister, Robin, told me about the animal testing,” Piper explained, eyeing me uncertainly. “She found out something about Perfect Face last year. I think she read an e-mail she wasn’t supposed to, one day when she was at Kelly’s house.”
My attention sharpened. “Go on.”
“Robin said they were using frogs somehow to make the new Perfect Face,” Piper went on. “The e-mail said something about how not enough testing had been done and they ought to delay putting the product on the market.” She shrugged. “Robin thought the e-mail meant they were, like, testing the stuff on frogs. She was grossed out. She tried to get me to stop using Pretty Face products. But I figured, well, if it works, who cares if it’s tested on frogs?”
I blinked and tried to keep my face neutral.
“But then after I lost the crown, I got mad,” Piper went on. “I mean, it’s obvious that Pretty Face just didn’t want me or my sister to be their spokesperson, and that’s totally unfair. So I decided to get revenge.”
“Okay,” I prompted.
“See, Pretty Face goes on and on about how they’re ecofriendly, but they’re big hypocrites, because they’re testing their stuff on frogs and that’s hardly ecofriendly, is it? I mean, frogs are, like, endangered and all.”
I’d never heard that frogs were endangered, actually. Not as an entire genus, anyway. But I didn’t want to interrupt the flow, so I kept quiet.
“I wanted to show that they were hypocrites, but I didn’t think people would care so much about frogs. I mean, lots of people don’t like frogs. They’re gross.” Piper held up one finger. “But everyone loves cute little bunnies.”
“So you staged the protest, but you changed the frogs to bunnies,” I guessed.
Piper nodded. “I found some animal-rights groups on the Web and picked the one that did the most outrageous protests,” she said. “That’s pretty much it.”
I sat there in silence, thinking about what I’d just learned.
The bad news was, Piper didn’t know Anna, and really didn’t know anything about Pretty Face and animal testing. Her only proof was an unspecific e-mail that she hadn’t even read herself.
On the other hand, the e-mail had mentioned frogs. I thought of the article in Spanish I’d found in Anna’s desk drawer. That was about frogs, too. Coincidence? Surely not.
So maybe there was some dirty secret about animal testing at Pretty Face — just not the one Piper had tried to publicize. Was that what Anna had wanted to talk to me about?
Then again, Anna’s lab mate, Marty Anders, had been so definite about Pretty Face not doing animal testing. He should know — and I couldn’t see why he’d lie about it.
I felt like clutching my head in frustration. This case was so confusing!
“So…” Piper broke the silence. Studying her fingernails, her voice deceptively casual, she asked, “Uh… you don’t really need to turn me in to Kyle, do you? I mean, if I promise to call off the protest group?”
I stared at her in surprise. “Would it matter? I thought you wanted to expose Pretty Face. What do you care if you get kicked out of the pageant?”
“Well…” Piper still didn’t look at me. “I am still runner-up. And let’s be honest, you haven’t exactly been impressing Harrison Hendrickson. I might be… needed.”
I stood up to leave. “I won’t tell anyone if I don’t have to,” I said, too weary to argue.
Collecting George’s laptop, I got out of there as fast as I could. When this case was over, I was going to get as far from the pageant world as I could.
I went to my room. There was one last thing I had to do tonight before I could finally fall into bed. Rummaging through my purse, I found the article I’d taken from Anna’s desk. I took the elevator down to the hotel lobby, where the business center was.
The center was deserted at this hour, but luckily it wasn’t locked up and the machines were all still on. At the fax machine I grabbed a cover sheet and scribbled a quick note to Ned. “Urgent!! Too tired to explain right now, but can you please find someone in the Spanish Department at the U. to translate this article ASAP, and then fax translation back to me? It’s for a case. Of course. Love you, miss you. N”
Putting the note and the magazine page into the fax feeder, I dialed the fax number Ned had given me and hit Send.
The machine whirred and beeped, the pages fed slowly through. A second later a message flashed on the tiny LCD screen: DATA SENT.
I waited for a confirmation to print out, but nothing happened. Then I saw that the screen was flashing another message: ADD PAPER.
The fax printer must be out of paper. Well, I was too tired to hunt around for some hotel staff person to reload it right now. I didn’t need the confirmation, anyway — the machine had confirmed the fax was sent.
I headed out toward the elevator again. As I pressed the Up button, I suddenly got the strangest feeling I was being watched. Turning, I glanced around the lobby.
A chill washed over me. There, standing by a column with his arms folded, was Adam Bedros-sian. He was gazing steadily at me, his face as unreadable as ever.
How long had he been there? Was he following me? Or was I just being paranoid?
The elevator arrived and I stepped on. As the doors slid closed, I peeked out one last time and saw that he was still there, watching.
The next morning I slept until eight thirty. I’d fallen asleep before Kelly got in the night before, and she was already gone by the time I woke up. I felt bad — I wondered if she was avoiding me after the accusation I’d made yesterday about her involvement in the protests. I told myself that now wasn’t the time to think about that.
Since today was pageant day, we had very little on our schedules. All I had was an afternoon spa session at one o’clock. Then I was free until the pageant itself, that night at eight o’clock — which meant that I could spend the bulk of the day trying to find out what had become of Anna.
I knew Bess and George weren’t around this morning — they were visiting their great-aunt Estelle, who lived on the Upper West Side. Great-Aunt Estelle is a little crazy, but I like her a lot. Ordinarily I would have gone with them to see her, but between the pageant and my case I couldn’t spare the time.
I dressed quickly, then hurried down to the business center. No fax from Ned yet. Well, I supposed it was still pretty early. I went up to the hotel’s rooftop café and ordered a light breakfast — fruit and yogurt, a muffin, and a latte. I sat there sip- ping the latte and enjoying one of the first quiet moments I’d had since I came to New York. If only I wasn’t so worried about Anna!
As I was leaving the restaurant, my cell phone rang. I checked the caller ID. Ned!
I flicked open the phone. “I was hoping it would be you,” I said. “Did you get my fax?”
“Yes, I got it,” Ned said. “Oh, and by the way, good morning. I miss you.”
I smiled into the phone. Ned’s voice always comforted me. “I miss you too.”
“That’s better. Okay, back to business — I got your fax and sent you a reply hours ago. Yours came through at midnight, my time, and since I happened to be studying with my friend Vicente, I gave it to him and he translated it on the spot. Then he faxed the translation back to you from his computer. It must have been about one in the morning.”
I frowned. “That’s weird. I checked at the business center and they didn’t have anything for me. Are you sure it went through?”
“Yeah, Vicente got a confirmation,” Ned said. “I can call him and ask him to send it again, but he’s in class right now, so it won’t be for a couple of hours.”
I bit my lip. “Can you give me a recap? I don’t have a lot of time to spare.” Glancing around, I spotted a small seating area near the elevator. I went and sat down in one of the armchairs. “Okay, I’m ready for you.”
“Nan, you’ve had some weird cases, but if this article is anything to go by, this has got to be one of your weirder ones,” Ned said. “The article is about cosmetic uses of the venom secreted by certain frogs.”
“Cosmetic uses of frog venom!” My pulse sped up. “Go on.”
“I see this means something to you. Should I worry?” Ned joked. “Well, apparently there’s a species of Venezuelan tree frog that defends itself by covering its skin with a neurotoxin that paralyzes anything that tries to eat it. The chemical properties of this neurotoxin happen to be very similar to those of Botox.”
“Botox?” I exclaimed. “You mean the stuff that people inject into their faces to keep from getting wrinkles?”
“That’s the stuff,” Ned confirmed. “Actually, it’s not as surprising as it sounds. Botox is made from botulinum toxin, which is also a deadly substance in other circumstances.”
“Right,” I said, my mind spinning. “So do they by any chance have to hurt the frogs to get the toxin from them?”
“The article doesn’t say anything about how they get the toxin,” Ned replied, sounding a little taken aback. “It’s more about the possible uses of this stuff in makeup. But it does say that although the frog toxin acts similarly to Botox, there are some significant differences in the chemical structures of the two. Then there’s a lot of technical stuff about what those differences are, which Vicente couldn’t really explain.”
BEEP! BEEP! My cell phone’s battery alarm was going off. I winced as I realized I’d forgotten to charge it for the last two nights. “Sorry, I’m about to run out of juice,” I told Ned.
“It’s okay, I’m almost done. The gist of the article is that the author cautions that the frog toxin could be deadly over time, and that a ten-year study needs to be done to determine its long-term effects before it is put into use by the cosmetics industry.”
A ten-year study…. I thought of what Piper had told me last night, about the e-mail her sister Robin had seen saying that more studies needed to be done on Perfect Face before it went on the market. The article I’d found in Anna’s desk was from two years ago. So there was no way a ten-year study could have been completed by now.
Was that Kyle’s secret? Was Perfect Face being made with an untested frog toxin?
BEEP! BEEP!
“Ned, I’d better go before we get cut off,” I said. “Thanks, this is incredibly helpful. I’ll explain it all to you when we have more time to talk.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Ned said with a laugh. “But be careful, Nan, okay?”
“I always am. Bye, love you,” I said, and hung up.
I sat there a moment longer, my mind racing. Things were starting to slot into place at last. I thought about the weird tingle I felt whenever I put the new Perfect Face on, and how I didn’t feel it when I used the old version that Kelly used. In fact, Kyle had always made sure Kelly used the old version instead of the new.
I had that gut feeling that told me I was close to cracking this case. Yes, I was pretty sure now that I knew why Anna Chavez had had to disappear….
But the most important question of all had yet to be answered:
Where was Anna Chavez now?
CLOSING IN ON THE TRUTH
Iran down to the business center and asked again if there were any faxes for me.
“No, Miss Drew,” said the young woman behind the counter. “We have nothing for you.”
“Could you do me a favor?” I asked. A scary thought had just occurred to me. “Could you check the log on that fax machine there?” I pointed to the one I had used last night. “It would have come through at about two a.m. and it would have been sent from a number with the River Heights area code.” I handed her a scrap of paper on which I’d written down my area code at home.
“Of course.” Giving me a puzzled look, the clerk went over and pressed some buttons on the fax machine. After a moment a list began printing out.
“Tell me,” I said, struck by another thought, “are you the first person to come on duty at the business center this morning?”
“Yes, I am,” she confirmed.
“Did this machine need to have paper loaded, or was it ready to go?”
The young woman wrinkled her brow as she thought. “It was full, I think. Yes, that’s right, I didn’t have to fill up any of the paper trays this morning. That’s unusual — usually the last shift at night leaves everything all unprepared for the morning people.” She put a hand over her mouth. “Oops. My boss’s son works on the night shift. Can we just pretend I didn’t say anything?”
“No problem,” I assured her.
“Thanks.” She scanned the log that had just printed out. “Oh, you’re right, a fax did come in last night from that area code. Two pages came in at 2:13 a.m.” She looked worried. “I can’t understand what happened to it; it definitely wasn’t here when I came on duty at six this morning.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I have a pretty good idea what happened to it.” My stomach muscles had formed into a knot. I was thinking of Adam Bedrossian, standing in the lobby last night, watching me as I left the business center.
He must have loaded paper into the machine himself, waited around for my reply to come, and then intercepted it.
That meant two things to me: First, he was definitely in on whatever had happened to Anna. And, second, he knew exactly what I knew — so he’d be looking out for me.
That was a scary thought!
Thanking the woman behind the counter, I walked away and sank down on one of the lobby couches. What could I do next? I had a pretty good idea of why Anna had had to disappear, but no idea of how to find her.
Think, think. If I were Kyle McMahon, and I needed to get Anna out of the way in a hurry, what would I have done?
My guess was that Adam Bedrossian had actually done the dirty work, but even so, it seemed likely that Anna had to be somewhere in the city. Both Adam and Kyle had been around yesterday, so they really wouldn’t have had time to take her anywhere far away.
That was, of course, assuming they didn’t have other people working with them. On the whole, I thought that was unlikely. Kyle didn’t strike me as the type to take unnecessary risks. And the more people there are involved in a criminal conspiracy, the riskier it is — the more chance it has of being exposed.
My hope was that Kyle believed that keeping Anna alive and unharmed was the least risky option for him….
I shook my head. There was no point in thinking that way. I had to keep going on the assumption that Anna was still okay.
I cast my mind back over the last few days, trying to think of anything Kyle might have said that would give me a clue….
And then I had it.
The new Pretty Face offices! They were housed in a brand-new building that wasn’t yet occupied. It was also a place where no one would think twice about seeing Kyle McMahon or Adam Bedrossian. They could come and go without arousing any particular suspicion.
Could Anna be somewhere in that building?
Only one way to find out!
Jumping up, I ran outside and flagged down a yellow taxi. “I need to go to the Wall Street area,” I told the driver. What street had Kyle said the new offices were on? “There’s a new building being built somewhere on Albany — do you know where that is?”
The driver gave me a weary look. “I’ll find it.”
He turned south on a highway that ran down the west side of Manhattan and we were off. Pulling out my phone, I began to compose a quick text to Bess and George. “Progress! Searching 4 Anna in new —”
That was as far as I got. My phone gave one final, outraged beep and the screen went dark. The battery was completely dead. Oh, no! I’d have to hope I could find a pay phone down at the building site.
The driver wove through a maze of small, hilly streets in far downtown Manhattan. Since it was a Saturday, the area was deserted — I guessed it wasn’t very residential.
We passed an old-looking brown stone church and then the driver made a left. He pointed out his window. “This the place?”
I stared out at a brand-new, glass-and-steel office tower. There were big X-shapes taped on the plate-glass ground floor windows. Through them I could see a vast, empty lobby with a reception console below a mezzanine level filled with potted palms.
“I guess it is,” I said. “Thanks.”
I paid the driver and got out. I glanced around for a pay phone, but there were none in sight. Well, I reasoned, even if Bess and George left Great-Aunt Estelle’s and got here as fast as they could, it would still take them at least forty-five minutes — and those were minutes I didn’t have to spare. I’d have to go in without backup.
Actually, I decided as I knocked on the glass, trying to attract the attention of the security guard who sat at the console inside, it was probably best that I was alone. It fit my cover story better.
After a moment or two he spotted me and ambled over to the door. Unlocking it, he drawled, “This building isn’t open, Miss.”
“I know,” I said. I gave him my best smile. “I’m sorry to bother you. But I’m Kyle McMahon’s assistant over at Pretty Face, and he sent me down here to pick up his cell phone. He thinks he left it up in the new offices yesterday.”
The guard frowned. “Are you on my list?” he asked, holding up a clipboard.
“List?” I said, my heart sinking.
“I got a list of people who are authorized to come in here,” the guard explained. “What’s your name?” He began to turn pages, running a finger down the scrawled notes.
Uh-oh. “It’s Nancy Drew, but I doubt I’m on there yet — I’m brand-new,” I said. “I just started work this week.” I tried the smile again. “I’d call Mr. McMahon and have him vouch for me, but like I said, he lost his phone, so there’s no way I can reach him.”
“No, no Nancy Drew on here,” the guard muttered, still scanning his list.
I glanced around the lobby, trying to see if there was any other way in. There had to be a fire exit, right? It looked like I was going to have to go to Plan B. Only I didn’t exactly have a Plan B yet….