Lights! Camera! Explosion! 2 страница
“And his tongue hangs out of the left side of his mouth,” added Kate.
“Sounds like a guy who was hanging around the pecan buns,” George said, laughing. “But seriously, I haven’t seen any real animals around here today. Sorry. What kind of dog is he?”
“He’s just a brown mutt,” Kate said affectionately.
George’s eyes shifted to a coffee urn that was bubbling for attention in the corner. “I’ll watch for him,” she said. “Gotta run, guys. Hope you find your dog.”
Nancy led the girls back toward their house.
“Maybe spacemen came down and took Boris for a ride in their spaceship,” Amy said.
“If they did, they’ll be sorry,” Kate said.
“Why?” asked Nancy.
“Boris throws up a lot in the car.”
The girls watched their parents’ car pull into their driveway. They ran home, hoping to find a fuzzy face hanging out the back window. But they were disappointed.
“No luck, girls,” their mother said.
“We didn’t find him, either,” Kate said.
Nancy could see that Amy was getting ready to cry again. “This means we’ve got to put plan B into action,” Nancy said quickly.
“What’s plan B?” asked Amy.
“Missing dog posters,” Nancy explained. And she gave out assignments. “Amy, you draw a picture of Boris. Kate will write his description and all the other important information on the poster. Then your mom can get it photocopied, and you can put the copies up all over the neighborhood.”
The two girls went into the house to work on plan B.
“That dog didn’t run away,” Alan Teppington said. “He’d never leave those kids.”
“Alan thinks someone stole the dog,” Sara Teppington said. “Well, I’m going in the house to call the pound, in case someone turns him in.”
“Thanks again, Nancy, for your help,” Alan said. “I wish I could pay you back somehow.”
“As a matter of fact, Mr. Teppington, there is one thing you could do.”
“What?”
“Could you climb up on the roof and check out the chimney? I think there’s something in there and maybe it has something to do with the red smoke. Did Mrs. Teppington tell you about that?”
Alan Teppington nodded abruptly. Then he dragged out a long expandable ladder from the garage. He hauled it to the side of the house and planted it firmly in the ground. After raising the ladder as high as it would go, he climbed to the roof and disappeared.
Nancy walked around to the front of the house to see him better.
He was a big man and not graceful, but he walked the roof confidently. He walked with his feet straddling the crest of the roof and his arms outstretched like a tightrope walker.
A little farther, a little farther, Nancy coached him silently.
There was a loud crash at the side of the house. It made Nancy jump, and she took her eyes off the roof for just a second.
Alan Teppington instinctively looked behind him to see what had caused the noise. In that instant, he lost his balance. With a yell, he started rolling down the slope of the roof.
When Nancy looked up she saw him heading helplessly for the edge of the roof—and a three-story fall onto the sharp spikes of the wrought-iron fence below.
Double Horror
“No!” Alan Teppington shouted. He was almost to the edge of the roof.
Nancy stood, frozen in horror, holding her breath. There was nothing she could do. Maybe he could grab on to the gutter before he fell, but it would never hold a man his size.
At the last possible second, Alan Teppington stretched out his arms and grabbed a thin tree branch that just barely overhung the roof of the house. It stopped him from rolling, and he lay, face down and motionless, right at the edge of the roof.
Nancy rushed to the side of the house to climb the ladder. But it was no longer standing against the house. It was lying on the ground.
So that was the crash she and Alan had heard!
Using all her strength, Nancy tried to lift up the ladder and stand it against the house, but it was too tall and heavy; it was like trying to lift a fallen tree.
From the front of the house, Sara Teppington’s voice cried out in sudden terror. “Alan!” she shouted. And then in a more quiet voice she coaxed, “Don’t move. Just don’t move.”
Nancy was still struggling with the ladder, when a new voice came up behind her and said, “Let me help you, little lady.”
She turned to find that the Texas drawl belonged to a bald man in faded jeans and a Western-cut checked shirt.
As soon as the ladder was steady again, the man bounded up the steps shouting, “Hold on there, fella. I’m on my way!”
Nancy watched anxiously from the ground and kept her hands on the ladder to make sure it didn’t fall again.
Finally, Alan Teppington started climbing down with the other man’s help. Alan’s face was as white as the old nightgown in his attic. His hands and nose were scraped and skinned red from the roof shingles.
Once the two of them were back on the ground, the man introduced himself as Dallas Cranshaw. “I’m a grip over on the movie set,” he said, with a friendly grin. “I was setting up a camera when I happened to look over here and see what happened.”
Sara Teppington came running out the back door.
“What happened?” she asked breathlessly. “Alan, you’re bleeding.”
“Your husband forgot where the diving board was, that’s all,” Dallas said, still wearing his grin. “You know, fella, next time you oughta plant that ladder real good so it won’t fall.”
Alan Teppington’s eyebrows came together in a tight scowl. “I planted that ladder halfway to China!”
“He did. I saw him,” Nancy said.
The flush of anger once again filled Alan Teppington’s face. “The only way that ladder could have fallen is if someone pushed it over.” He glared accusingly at Dallas.
“Alan, what were you doing up on the roof, anyway?” Sara asked.
Nancy answered, reminding Sara that they both wanted to know what the lump in the chimney was.
“Did you find out?” Sara asked.
Alan shook his head no.
“Come into the house and let me patch you up,” Sara coaxed her husband.
“I’m telling you, someone pushed that ladder,” were Alan’s final words.
Nancy turned her attention to Dallas Cranshaw when the Teppingtons had gone.
“It was lucky you were watching,” Nancy said. “Did you happen to see how the ladder fell?”
“I didn’t see anybody,” Dallas answered. “But I’ll tell you this: that house is more jinxed than this movie we’re working on.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It gives me the jitters just to think about it,” Dallas replied. “But do you know what happened while we were filming up there on the roof this morning?” He pointed to the McCauley house. Nancy shook her head.
“A stunt man walked around on the roof, got scared, and fell off,” Dallas said. “Of course, our guy had a big old mattress to fall into. Makes a difference.”
Dallas looked at Fenley Place with a cautious eye. “If I was them, I’d leave, that’s what I’d do.”
“Oh, I think you’re overreacting a little bit,” Nancy said.
Dallas shook his head slowly. “I saw that red smoke, little lady. First the smoke, then the windows, and now this. I tell you, it’s like everything we do at the Mc-Cauley house—or plan on doing—happens for real at Fenley Place!”
Suddenly Nancy felt as though she couldn’t move. The idea that had flown out of her head in the Teppington’s den flew back again. Dallas was right—everything they filmed for the movie script had been repeated at Fenley Place. A big knot formed in her stomach as she asked herself a single question: What was going to happen next?
Dallas started walking away and then he noticed that Nancy was still standing in the same spot, staring off into space. He looked back with his head cocked to one side. “Hey—I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.
“Just tell me one thing,” Nancy said very slowly. “Is there by any chance a dog in that movie?”
Dallas gave a nod.
“What happens to him?”
“He’s found dead in front of the fireplace. Why?”
Nancy could feel the knot move from her stomach into her chest.
“Dallas,” she said, “I’ve got to get a look at the Terror Weekend script.”
“Are you kidding?” Dallas said with a laugh. “Hank Steinberg wouldn’t show a script to his own mother until after the movie was filmed and cut.”
“I don’t care,” Nancy said. “He’s got to make an exception for me. The Teppingtons could be in a lot of trouble, if someone is trying to make them live out every scene from the movie. And I know you’d blame yourself, Dallas, if anything really awful happened—wouldn’t you?”
Dallas chewed on his lower lip. He was doing some serious thinking.
“Well, I’ll let you see my copy, but if somebody catches you with it, you don’t know where you got it. Okay?”
“Got what?” Nancy said, smiling.
A few minutes later, Nancy was sitting on the ground, resting her back against an old maple tree in the park at the end of Highland Avenue. In her lap was a thick ring binder. The label on the cover said “Terror Weekend.”
Inside were pages of many different colors: white, blue, green, pink, yellow, tan—a different color paper had been used each time a page of script was changed or rewritten. The final script, a shooting script Dallas called it, looked like a rainbow. By using this colored-paper system, people talking about a scene would know they were talking about the most recent revision.
As Nancy read the script her pulse began to race, just as if she were watching the movie in a theater. Terror Weekend was about a house that turned against its inhabitants. Furniture would fly around the room almost crushing the family. Bloodred smoke poured out of the chimney, and the windows exploded. Phones would ring incessantly—even when they were off the hook—until the family nearly went crazy. The walls of a room closed in on a little girl. When she read that part, Nancy immediately worried about Kate and Amy.
And then there was the dead dog.
The worst of course was saved for the end of the movie. In the middle of the night, when everyone in the family was finally safe and sound asleep, the house spontaneously caught fire and burned to the ground.
There was a handwritten note on the final script page. It read, “Ending: Did the family get out?” The answer, written in a different handwriting, said, “To be determined by Hank on location.”
Boris Is Found
Nancy closed the book.
How could she tell the Teppingtons about this script? She didn’t want to frighten them, especially not Amy and Kate. But she couldn’t just let them stay at Fenley Place without warning them about what might happen.
Nancy returned the script to Dallas with thanks. Then she stopped in at Fenley Place to see how Alan Teppington was. She also wanted to give her father a call to ask if he needed her to run some errands that afternoon. Sara was only too happy to let Nancy use the phone.
After speaking to her father, Nancy joined Sara in the den. “How is Mr. Teppington feeling?” she asked.
“He’s behind the garage shooting jump shots,” Sara said. “He does that when he’s really upset. Kate and Amy are working on the missing dog poster. I don’t think they even know their father almost broke his neck.”
“Good,” Nancy said. “Listen, I’ve got to run some errands for my dad, but I’ll be back later, after dinner. I need to talk to you.”
The teacher brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead. “I don’t get it, do you?” Sara Teppington said.
“I’m starting to,” Nancy said.
After a quick lunch at a fast-food restaurant, Nancy started her errands. The list was a long one, and it took Nancy all afternoon to complete most of her tasks. Now it was getting late in the day. But just the same, in between picking up an envelope at the courthouse and a get-well card for one of her father’s associates, Nancy couldn’t resist doing an errand for herself.
She parked her car in front of Wishing Wells Shoe Shop and put a coin in the meter.
“Nancy,” cried Mrs. Wells excitedly, when Nancy entered the shop. “I’ve got a brand new shoe, and it has your name written all over it.”
Mrs. Wells showed Nancy a black pump. Amazingly, it did have the word Nancy written all over it in different colors of glittering ink.
“It’s called the Ego Tripper,” Mrs. Wells said. “Twenty-six different names in all the popular sizes.”
“I’ll think about it, Mrs. Wells,” Nancy said.
Then Nancy took out the sketch of the footprint she had made in the Teppingtons’ attic. “Do you sell a running shoe with this pattern on the sole?”
“Oh, my,” Mrs. Wells said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Well, I hope you won’t mind if I look around,” Nancy said. She went directly to the display of running shoes and turned over shoe after shoe, looking at the treads. Finally, one shoe matched the print of her sketch. It was called the Pacer, and it was manufactured by Killer Shoes, Los Angeles, California.
“Found it!” Nancy called triumphantly.
“Oh, good,” Mrs. Wells replied. “Do you want to try them on?”
Nancy looked at the price tag on the bottom of the shoe and almost gasped. It was the most expensive running shoe she had ever seen.
“No thanks,” she told Mrs. Wells. She put the sketch away and headed for the door.
“But, Nancy, what do you think about the Ego Tripper?”
“Unforgettable, Mrs. Wells. I mean it.”
It was almost dinnertime, so Nancy made a quick stop at a card store nearby. Then she hopped into her car and headed home.
Okay, she thought as she drove, find the feet wearing a pair of Pacers and you’ll find the visitor in the Teppingtons’ attic. All of a sudden, she realized she should have looked for footprints around the ladder.
That would have to wait until after dinner, where the guest of honor was scheduled to be Bob Seglow, one of Carson Drew’s old college friends.
Nancy arrived home and found her father involved in one of his favorite activities: teasing Hannah Gruen while she cooked a special dinner.
“I don’t know, Hannah,” Carson Drew said, his eyes twinkling. “This gravy doesn’t look dark enough to me.”
“You know perfectly well that those are the mashed potatoes,” Hannah Gruen said. “Can’t you get him out of here, Nancy?”
Carson Drew walked with his daughter out of the kitchen, through the dining room, and into his study.
“Where have you been all day?” he asked.
“Fenley Place,” Nancy said. She told her father about the windows blowing out, the clues she found in the attic, and Alan Teppington’s near-plunge from the roof. Then she described how Dallas had come to the rescue by letting her read the script. Finally, she told him how she found the shoe that matched the print.
Nancy gave her father a triumphant look. And he smiled at how much she looked like her mother at that moment.
“Busy day,” said the lawyer. “Well, remember, my old friend Bob Seglow just happens to be the chief sound technician on Hank Steinberg’s crew.”
“He is?”
Carson Drew beamed at his little surprise, and Nancy gave her father a hug. Now she would really have an inside track on who might be causing the trouble at Fenley Place.
At dinner that evening, Bob Seglow sat at the end of the table in the guest of honor seat, telling fascinating stories about the movies he had worked on. He had a short haircut, a long mustache, and a few pounds to lose. Nancy liked the casual but confident way he dressed: he wore jeans, a blue work shirt, and a sweater tied around his neck.
Bess and George, who had been invited to dinner, listened attentively to Bob’s stories. Nancy tried to get her questions in edgewise, but it was hard. Each time she asked something, Bob would launch into another twenty-minute anecdote full of fabulous bits of inside Hollywood information.
In the middle of one story, Nancy received a phone call. It was Kate Teppington, Sara’s ten-year-old daughter. She was still worried about her missing dog.
“Well, did you put up the posters?” Nancy asked Kate.
“Yes. But Boris isn’t home yet.”
Nancy’s stomach turned over with fear, but she managed to keep any apprehension she felt out of her voice. “Kate, you’ve got to wait for people to see the posters. Someone will find him soon.”
There was a quiet but disappointed “okay” on the other end of the line and then a dial tone.
Nancy came back to the dining room and apologized for the interruption.
“Where was I?” Bob Seglow asked.
Bess spoke up.
“You were telling us how Spider Hutchings got the job as stunt man for Hank Steinberg,” she said, her blue eyes wide with anticipation. “He was scaling the outside of a building in downtown Los Angeles…”
“Right,” Bob Seglow picked up the story again. “So Spider climbs all the way up to the tenth floor because that’s where Hank Steinberg’s office is. And Hank is having a big meeting.
“So Spider knocks on the window, and people look over and they see a guy outside the window on the tenth floor. No scaffolding! Three secretaries and two of the producers pass out immediately. But someone unlocks the window and Spider climbs in.
“‘Hey, I hear you’re looking for stunt men,’ Spider says to Hank.
“Hank doesn’t know what’s going on, but he’s trying to act like he’s in control. So he says, ‘Not today.’”
“Then what happened?” Bess asked.
“This is what Spider Hutchings is made of,” Bob Seglow said. “He says ‘okay,’ opens the window again, and jumps out.”
Everyone at the table gasped.
“Well,” Bob said, “those who could still walk—Hank Steinberg among them—run to the window and look down. But Spider had set up a net under the window. He’s lying there looking up at them like a baby in a cradle. Hank can’t resist. He hires Spider on the spot.”
Nancy listened and laughed along with everyone else. But the story had reminded her of an important question: whose footprints were in the attic?
“Mr. Seglow,” Nancy asked, “a man like Spider Hutchings could climb into an attic window without a ladder, couldn’t he?”
“That man could climb anywhere anytime,” Bob Seglow said. “Especially if there’s a practical joke at the other end.”
After the long and story-filled dinner, Carson Drew and Bob Seglow excused themselves and went into Mr. Drew’s den, where they planned to look at their college yearbook.
George had to get to bed early, since she was working at 5:30 the next morning. So she thanked Hannah for dinner and said goodnight. When Bess heard that Nancy was planning to go back to Fenley Place soon, she decided to head home, too.
So Nancy was left alone to figure out just what exactly she should tell the Teppingtons about the movie script she’d read. On the way to their house, she pondered the possibilities.
Was it possible, for instance, that the red smoke in their chimney and the red smoke in the script were not connected? Or the instant replay of the exploding window scene? Not really, Nancy decided. There were too many strange similarities between the script and the recent events at Fenley Place.
As Nancy approached the mysterious old house, she saw Alan and Sara Teppington sitting on the front lawn with their arms around each other. They were watching the stars—not the movie stars across the street from their house, but the clear black summer sky, which looked paint spattered with yellow and white dots.
“Good news,” Nancy said. Her voice startled them.
“Oh, hi, Nancy,” Sara said sleepily. “What’s the good news?”
“I know what kind of shoe left the print in your attic.”
“But do you know who was wearing the shoe?” asked Alan Teppington. “That’s what counts.”
“Not yet, but I’m going to work on that tonight,” Nancy said. “But first, there’s something I’d better tell you.”
Just then a frightened child’s scream came bursting from Fenley Place behind them.
“That was Amy!” Sara cried out.
She and her husband both jumped to their feet just as Amy came running out the front door and down the lawn. She was crying and screaming.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” her mother asked, holding her daughter’s shoulders tightly.
Over and over again, Amy sobbed the answer.
“Boris is dead!” she cried.
Spider Hutchings
Amy collapsed, sobbing, into her mother’s enfolding arms.
“You were dreaming, sweetie,” Sara said, stroking Amy’s long brown hair.
“No, no, no, no, no!” Amy said, shaking her head violently. “I saw him. He’s dead.”
“Where?” Sara asked.
“In front of the fireplace,” Nancy Drew answered.
Sara Teppington turned and shot a questioning look at Nancy. Then Amy struggled away from her mother and ran back toward the house. Sara, Alan, and Nancy followed her.
When they reached the living room, they stopped in the doorway.
There, on the floor in front of the carved wooden fireplace, lay the stiff, unmoving body of Boris.
For a moment, the adults were frozen, as motionless as the dog. Then Alan went forward and knelt down, resting a hand on the dog’s side.
“Shhhh,” he said looking up at Sara and Nancy. “I think he’s breathing. He’s still alive.”
Quickly he lifted the limp, heavy animal into his arms and carried Boris out to their station wagon.
“I want to go with you, Daddy,” Amy pleaded.
“All right,” Alan replied. “Sara—call the vet and tell him we’re on our way. I don’t think we should wake up Kate now. We’ll tell her about Boris in the morning.”
His wife nodded in agreement.
Nancy waited in the den while Sara made the phone call and then poured two glasses of iced tea. In the morning, the room had seemed like the safest, friendliest spot in Fenley Place. But at night the old-fashioned kerosene globe lamp cast huge shadows on the curtains and walls.
“Now.” Sara said just that one word as she settled herself into the rocking chair. When Nancy didn’t begin speaking right away, Sara said sternly, “How did you know that Boris would be in front of the fireplace?”
“It’s in the script,” Nancy said simply.
“What script?”
“I read the script of Terror Weekend today,” Nancy said. “The red smoke, the exploding windows, and the dead dog—they’re all in the script. I know it sounds weird but it’s like there are two horror movies being made—the one at the Mc-Cauley house, and the one at Fenley Place.”
Sara shook her head and looked hurt.
“Why would anyone on the movie crew want to duplicate those things at our house?” she said.
“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “Do you or your husband know any of the movie people personally?”
“No. We haven’t even talked to any of them except that boy, Chris Hitchcock, and Hank Steinberg. They both came over quite a few times, oh, it must have been two months ago. They wanted to film here, but Alan hates Hollywood people and he wouldn’t hear of it.”
“I know,” Nancy said. “Kate and Amy told me how he feels.” She cleared her throat before asking the next question. “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way but, was your husband rude to Hank Steinberg? I mean, would Mr. Steinberg have a reason to hold a grudge?”
“You’ve seen how Alan can be.” Sara gave a smile of both apology and tolerance for her husband’s behavior. “I can’t say he was on his best behavior with Hank.”
“Well,” Nancy said, “I’ll check it out. Meanwhile, I just thought you’d better know about some of the other things in the script.”
Nancy described the worst parts of Terror Weekend, including the ending, when the house burns to the ground.
“I guess this means we can cross Josh Petrie off the list as a suspect,” Sara said. “Not only is he in the army, but he has nothing to do with the movie production company.”
“True,” Nancy agreed. “I think whoever is terrorizing your family must be connected with the film.”
“I almost don’t want to ask this,” Sara said. “But what’s going to happen next? In the script, I mean.”
“They don’t shoot the scenes in order,” Nancy answered, “so I don’t know. I’ll try to find out. And maybe tomorrow, you should talk to Hank Steinberg yourself, to let him know what’s happening here—although I think he may already know. Rumors circulate pretty fast.”
“I wish Alan would come home,” Sara said.
Sara Teppington got her wish. The station wagon was heard in the driveway, and a few minutes later Alan walked in, carrying Amy instead of the dog.
“Talk softly, she just fell asleep,” he told his wife. “The vet kept Boris, but he’s going to be all right. He was drugged, tranquilized somehow. We can pick him up in the morning.”
“I’ve got to be going,” Nancy said quickly. She wanted to leave before Sara told Alan the latest news. She didn’t want to be there for another of his explosions. “I’ll call you tomorrow if there’s anything new to report.”
Outside, the night was clear and cool. It felt so good to Nancy to have some open space and some fresh air to breathe. Highland Avenue was bustling with movie crew people setting up for some exterior nighttime shots.
Since it was getting late, the crowd of spectators had dwindled, and so the security lines had eased up. Nancy found she was able to move around through the jungle of lights, trucks, and equipment pretty freely.
She was just about to thread her way through the maze, to search for Spider Hutchings, when she saw a familiar form standing on the outskirts of the action.
“Bess?” Nancy came up behind the spectator and caught her by surprise.
“Hi! Am I glad to see you!” Bess said.
Nancy smiled. “What are you doing here? I thought you gave up fame and fortune because you didn’t dare come within ten blocks of Fenley Place.”
“I almost did. But then I said to myself: ‘Be brave, Bess Marvin. Where else can you make good money just for doing one scream?’ And anyway, I really want to be in the movie. So I decided to try coming here tonight, and if I don’t think about Fenley Place and get too scared, I’m coming back tomorrow.”
“Great,” Nancy said. “Well, I’m going to look around a bit. Do you want to come with me?” Nancy tried to sound casual. She knew if Bess heard about Boris and the other recent troubles at Fenley Place, she might lose her new-found nerve.
“Who are you investigating?” Bess asked.
“Spider Hutchings,” Nancy said.
Bess was surprised. Spider had sounded like a wild and exciting guy according to Bob Seglow’s stories. “Do you think Spider Hutchings planted the red smoke in the chimney?” Bess asked.
“I’ll tell you after I look at his shoes,” said Nancy.
Nancy and Bess walked past the crew and onto the lawn of the McCauley house. One of the security guards waved them on, calling out, “Hiya, Screamer!”
“You’re getting to be a real celebrity around here,” Nancy said to Bess.
Passing the front porch of the McCauley house, Bess went up for a quick peek in the windows.
“Deck Burroughs and Jenny Logan are sitting in directors’ chairs,” Bess announced to Nancy. “There’s Hank Steinberg. And Chris Hitchcock.”
Nancy climbed the steps to the porch and peeked in the window too. Everything was just as Bess had described it—except for one horrible detail. Lying in front of the fireplace was the limp, motionless body of a dog.
Nancy walked off the porch, her stomach fluttery. “We’ve got to hurry,” she said.
They walked into the backyard of the McCauley house and found two crew men setting up a bright spotlight by a tall oak tree.
“Have you seen Spider Hutchings?” Nancy asked.
One of the men pointed—straight up. “Spider,” he called. “Visitors. Pretty ones.”
Suddenly the top branches of the oak tree fluttered and snapped and something came swooping down. It was Spider Hutchings, making his entrance, swinging down from the top of the tree on a rope.
Before he even looked at Nancy and Bess, Spider said to the other men, “Tell Hank the rope’s fine but the tree’s not high enough.”
“Maybe we can come back in ten years. It’ll be taller then,” joked a man with a toothpick in his mouth.
Spider’s laugh almost shook the leaves off the tree. Finally, he turned to Nancy and Bess.
In the flesh, Spider was just as Bob Seglow had described him—almost larger than life. He was six feet tall, muscular, and red-haired.
“Hi,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“Could I get a look at your shoes?” Nancy said.
“Usually people want to see a stunt man’s scars,” Spider said.
“Fans get stranger every day,” the man with the toothpick joked.
Spider laughed again. “Hey, I’ve got a scar that’s a perfect horse’s hoof,” he said. “Got it in a Western when I fell off a horse and it decided to do a little tap dance on my back. Want to see?”
“I really am more interested in your shoes,” Nancy said.
So Spider lifted his right leg into the light and showed off his brand new pair of running shoes. It was the Pacer—the shoe Nancy was looking for.