Things That Go Bump in the Night 1 страница
Dare to read: Нэнси Дрю и Братья Харди
(https://vk.com/daretoreadndrus)
ПРИЯТНОГО ЧТЕНИЯ!
Carolyn Keene
Nancy Drew Girl Detective: Volume Twenty-Nine
The Stolen Bones
Copyright, 2008, by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
I'm hunting for something other than clues for a change: dinosaur bones! Bess, George, and I travel out to the desert to join a paleontology dig. The other volunteers are a pretty quirky bunch, but we're all having a great time... until an important find goes missing. It turns out fossils can be worth millions. I'm making no bones about it — the thief is going down.
Let me introduce myself. I’m Nancy Drew.
My friends call me Nancy. My enemies call me a lot of other things, like “that girl who cooked my goose.” They actually sometimes speak like that, but what can you expect from criminals? See, I’m a detective. Well, not really. I mean, I don’t have a license or anything. I don’t carry a badge or a gun, in part because I wouldn’t touch a gun even if I could, and also because I’m just not old enough. But I am old enough to know when something isn’t right, when somebody’s getting an unfair deal, when someone’s done something they shouldn’t do. And I know how to stop them, catch them, and get them into the hands of the law, where they belong. I take those things seriously, and I’m almost never wrong.
My best friends, Bess and George, might not totally agree with me. They tell me I’m wrong a lot, and that they have to cover for me all of the time just to make me look good. Bess would tell you I dress badly. I call it casual. George would tell you I’m not focused. By that she’d mean that once again I forgot to fill my car with gas or bring enough money to buy lunch. But they both know I’m always focused when it comes to crime. Always.
Nancy Drew
Trespass
“What have you gotten us into now, Nancy?”
I glanced over at Bess in the front passenger seat. Her eyes were sparkling, so I knew she was only teasing me. Bess and her cousin George are my best friends, and I do get them into trouble sometimes — mostly when we’re on the trail of a mystery. We weren’t trying to find a criminal now, though. We were trying to find a road.
George was hunched over her GPS unit in the backseat. “Hey, we’re not lost. I can tell you exactly where we are. It’s the road that’s lost. And if we had the GPS coordinates of the turnoff, I could tell you where it was too.”
“I did ask,” I reminded her. “They didn’t know the coordinates.”
George snorted. She loves gadgets of every kind, and couldn’t imagine anyone not taking advantage of a useful item like a Global Positioning System. She’d been tracking our progress since we’d left River Heights two days before.
Bess pointed to our left. “There’s a road. Or is it a trail? It’s something, anyway.”
I slowed my car and idled near the turn. The land around us was dry scrubland, with plenty of rocks and weeds, but few road signs. The rutted dirt trail on our left might have been wide enough for a car, but calling it a road seemed generous. Still, our directions said “go six miles, to the third dirt road on the left.” We’d driven ten miles looking for a major dirt road, without luck, as the sun had headed for the horizon. So we’d decided that whoever had written the directions had a definition of road that was different from ours. We had decided to backtrack and start over.
“I guess we can try it.” I turned the car and eased it onto the dirt path. Scraggly brush grew up the center, with deep ruts on either side. I kept my wheels on high ground so the bottom of my car wouldn’t scrape.
“And if we don’t find the place soon,” Bess said cheerfully, “we can turn back to that last town and get a hotel room.”
I smiled. Bess doesn’t like to be away from her shower and hair dryer. I wondered if her perfectly manicured nails, painted a soft pink to match her rosy cheeks, would survive this trip.
“We’re hardly roughing it,” I said. “We’re car camping, so you won’t even have to carry a pack. We’ll have our cooler right there, and even a camp cook to fix our meals.”
George muttered, “Yeah, talk about roughing it. I’ll be away from my computer for almost a week!”
Bess and I laughed. George must have had a dozen gadgets with her, but without her full computer setup, she acted like she was living in the Dark Ages.
“Look,” I said, “this is going to be fun. How often do you get to see dinosaurs in their natural habitat?”
Bess grinned. “So long as they’ve been dead for a few million years, I’m happy.”
George leaned forward. “I’m excited too, Nancy. We’re just teasing you. I think volunteering for a paleontology dig is a great idea!”
“Thanks. I just hope we can find it.” The track crossed what looked like a shallow old streambed. I eased the car forward, but it only lurched, throwing us against our seat belts.
“Uh-oh,” George said. “That didn’t feel good.”
“No.” I turned off the engine. “We’d better get out and take a look.”
We opened our doors. “Ugh!” Bess said. “The ground is all muddy here.”
I stepped gingerly onto the soft ground and crouched to peer under my car. “Whoops.” This was a streambed all right. The last time it had rained, water must have run across our “road.” The ground was wet and our front wheels had sunk into the mud. “I didn’t realize the ground was so soft here. I guess I should have checked before trying to drive across.”
“So how are we going to get out of here?” George asked.
The wind whipped my shoulder-length hair into my face, so I swept it into a ponytail. “I guess we should try pushing. Bess, why don’t you get behind the wheel, and George and I will shove. We’d better try to go backward.”
Bess slid into the driver’s seat while George and I crouched in front of the car. Our feet sank into the mud. Bess put the car in reverse and gently pressed the gas while George and I leaned against the front. The car rocked slightly. But despite our grunts and groans, the only thing that moved was the mud — as the tires spun, the mud splattered all over us.
Finally George and I stood up, gasping. Bess put the car in park and got out. “We can try digging around the tires and then packing in dry sand and rocks,” she said.
I glanced at the sun sinking toward the western mountains and sighed. We didn’t have much light left. “We’d better get started.”
“Hey!” A loud voice startled us. “What are you girls doing?”
We turned to see a woman hurrying toward us across the field. She was in her forties, thin and wiry, with dark hair and a weather-beaten tanned face. She wore faded jeans and a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
My initial relief that someone had found us faded as I noticed her scowl.
“This is private property,” she yelled. “You’re trespassing!”
• • •
I forced myself to smile as the woman came panting up to us. “We didn’t mean to trespass,” I said. “We’re going on a paleontology dig, and we thought this might be the road we’re supposed to take.”
The scowl eased itself into a straight line. “Oh. You’re one of them.” She grudgingly admitted, “Yeah, this is the right track. I said them fools could go through my land. I can’t understand why people would want to waste time digging up old bones, but so long as they make their mess on that government land and not on mine, I guess I don’t care.”
“The museum is learning more about the past,” I said. “They might even discover some new species.”
She snorted. “Who cares about that? It’s today that matters. Ranching is real work.” She looked us up and down, her eyes lingering on Bess’s short skirt and sandals. “But it don’t look like you girls know anything about that. I told my Jimmy that’s the kind of foolishness college leads to. Better to get a real job and make some money instead of spending it on school.”
I was still trying to think of a response when George said, “There is money in paleontology! Dinosaur bones can sell for millions of dollars.”
The ranch woman gaped at her. “You don’t say? You mean some of them bones out there might be worth millions?” She laughed. “If I’d known that, maybe I would have kept them for myself.”
I glanced at the setting sun. We still had two miles to go on this road and we were running out of light. I pasted on my brightest smile. “We really are sorry to cause you any trouble, but our car is stuck. Do you have a couple of boards or something that we can stick under the wheels?”
She frowned at the car. “I guess if I want you off my property, I’ll have to rescue you. Hold on a minute. I’ll get my son.”
She trotted away. George, Bess, and I stared at one another and simultaneously let out a long sigh of relief.
George whispered, “You sure do attract interesting people, Nan. I can’t wait to meet her son.”
“I just hope he hurries,” I said.
We watched the sun drop behind the distant hills in a blaze of pink and gold. The temperature also dropped about ten degrees, so we retrieved our sweaters from the car. George frowned at her watch. “We have about half an hour of fading light left. Looks like we’ll be setting up our tent in the dark.”
At last a dirty white pickup bounced toward us. It turned and backed up so it was about ten feet in front of my car. The woman got out, along with a young man, maybe eighteen or twenty. He, too, was thin and wiry, with tangled dark hair.
I stepped closer and smiled. “Thank you for helping us. I’m Nancy Drew, by the way, and these are my friends Bess and George.”
He stared at us. Like his mother, he studied Bess especially closely. I think his opinion was different, though — his eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. Bess is a natural beauty who usually looks like she just stepped out of a fashion magazine.
Bess gave him a dimpled smile and said, “Hello. Thanks for helping us out. It’s really nice of you.”
He only continued to stare. I started to wonder if he could even talk.
His mother stepped forward. “I’m Erlinda and this is Jimmy. Now enough chitchat; let’s get you out of here.”
We weren’t arguing with that! Jimmy reached into the back of the truck and pulled something out. He attached it to his truck’s trailer hitch, and then pulled the other end toward my car.
“Oh, a come-along!” Bess said. “That will make things so much easier.”
Jimmy paused again to stare at her, until his mother gave him a shove. He bent his head and fumbled around under my front bumper. He tightened the come-along, got back into the truck, and slowly pulled the truck forward. The car finally came out of the mud with a sucking sound. Jimmy kept going until my car was safely across the muddy area. Then he got out and unhooked the come-along as we picked our way across the mud.
“Thanks so much,” I said. I wondered if I should offer money for the help. “Um, can I give you —?”
Erlinda interrupted. “You said them dinosaur bones could be worth millions of dollars? Is that true?”
“Well, I don’t know about these particular bones. Fossils can sell for a lot of money, but they have to be rare to get millions.” I worried that Erlinda might have ideas about scavenging the dig after the paleontologists left. “Of course, you need a special permit, like this team from the museum has. If you steal fossils, you can get big fines and jail time.”
Erlinda nodded. “Oh sure, but bones on my own land, they’d be mine, right? And if there’s bones just down there, maybe there’s some here, too!”
“You would probably own any fossils you find on your own land,” I said cautiously. “But I don’t know if you’d find anything valuable. It depends on lots of things. The age of the rock, for example.”
She kept nodding, but I wasn’t sure whether or not she was actually listening. “Right, right. Well, just keep going down this road and you’ll find them diggers.”
After we thanked her, Erlinda got into the truck with Jimmy and they drove away.
“Ten minutes until dark,” George said. “Let’s get moving.”
We did our best to scrape the mud from our shoes, and piled into my car. Everything was gray, like a faded black-and-white photo. I turned on the headlights and drove slowly along the dirt track.
George leaned over the seat back. “Well, Nancy, you’ve done it again.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You found a mystery already,” she said, laughing. “Why are these people so odd?”
I smiled. “Odd maybe, but hardly mysterious. Not everyone can be as normal as you are, George.”
Bess burst out laughing. When she caught her breath, she said, “I guess we should expect people to be different here in New Mexico, anyway.”
“Oh, come on,” George said. “We’re not in a foreign country. New Mexico is one of the fifty states, you know.”
Bess twisted in her seat to poke her cousin. “I know that! But it’s still going to be different from River Heights, don’t you think? All this desert, and the Spanish culture.”
I let them tease each other. Bess and George may be cousins, but they couldn’t be more different, in everything from looks to temperament. George is tall and thin, with short dark hair and a cynical attitude. Bess is blond, shorter, and curvy, with optimism that some people would call naïve.
I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. I try to see the best in people, but I’ve uncovered too many criminals to think that people are nice all the time.
At that moment, driving needed my full attention. The track twisted around, and my wheels kept slipping on big rocks. I winced as a bush scraped against the side of the car. This was one place where a big truck would have been handy. I had to remind myself of all the fuel the hybrid had saved on the long drive from River Heights.
I was hunched over the wheel, clutching it tightly, when I noticed another glow ahead, over a hill. The sun had long since vanished, and we were miles from any city. I squinted and focused on the glowing light.
I smiled, realizing what I was seeing. This mystery was easy to solve — campfire. “Hey, I think we found the camp!”
Finally we’d arrived. I put the car in park and slumped back. George bounded out of the car, and Bess and I followed her.
I’d parked among the other vehicles — trucks, SUVs, and one Land Rover. A cheerful fire sent warm light and dancing shadows over a group of people sitting in camp chairs.
A man got up and walked toward us. Bess nudged George, whispering something. Even without hearing her words, I could guess her reaction to the tall, well-built form striding toward us. We went over to meet him.
“You must be the River Heights crew,” he said. “We were starting to worry about you.”
“You’re not the only one,” George muttered.
I held out my hand. “I’m Nancy Drew. This is Bess Marvin and George Fayne.”
He shook hands with each of us. “I’m Kyle, the dig leader for this trip. It’s great to have you here.”
“We’re excited,” I said. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get here earlier, but my dad needed help at his law office, and George and her mother had a big catering job to do.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Kyle said. “We still have plenty of work to do!”
“Have you found anything interesting so far?” George asked.
Even in the dark I could see his face light up. “You bet! Our best find is still over at the dig site. We can’t take it out until it’s encased in plaster for protection, so you’ll see that tomorrow. We also picked up some loose pieces that are really cool. Come on; I’ll show you.”
I glanced over at the group sitting around the fire. I was more interested in getting some food, but Kyle wanted to share his find. We followed him to the back of the Land Rover, where he pulled out a plastic tub.
As he pried off the lid, Kyle said, “These vertebrae are from a creature sort of like a crocodile —” He stopped mid-sentence and his jaw dropped open. He looked around, as if searching for someone. “Steffi!”
George, Bess, and I exchanged looks and shrugged. A petite young woman — Steffi, we assumed — strode over to us. “What’s wrong?”
Kyle held out the plastic tub. It was empty. “The bones are gone!”
Noise in the Night
Steffi’s pretty face puckered in confusion. “But I didn’t move them. I labeled them, wrapped them in paper towels, and put them in the box.”
Kyle looked worried. “And you brought the box back to camp yourself?”
Steffi shook her head. “Tom carried it back to camp for me.” She ran her hand through her short dark hair and, without turning around, called, “Tom!”
A young man walked toward us. “Something wrong?”
Kyle and the woman turned to him. “Where are the bones we found yesterday?”
He glanced at the open tub Kyle still held. “I have no idea. You mean they’re not there?” His face went hard. “You’re not suggesting I —”
“No, no,” Kyle said quickly. “We just wondered if you took them out to study them or something.” He looked at us and seemed to suddenly remember that three strangers were witnessing their exchange. “I’m sorry. This isn’t much of a welcome for you.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “If something’s wrong, we’d like to help.”
Kyle shrugged. “I’m sure it’s nothing. The bones will turn up.” His unhappy face didn’t match his confident words.
Steffi smiled at us and held out her hand. “Hi. I’m Steffi.” She barely came up to my shoulder but she had a strong handshake and moved like a gymnast.
“Steffi is my assistant here,” Kyle said.
“You’re a paleontologist?” I asked. She looked only a couple of years older than us.
“I’m a student, working toward my master’s degree. So is Tom.”
The young man managed a smile and shook hands. He was medium height and medium build, with brown hair and tan skin. Bess glanced between him and Kyle, and I could almost see her mind working. Tom wasn’t bad-looking, but Kyle was definitely Bess’s type, with close-cropped blond hair and a strong jaw. I smiled. Bess could have her pick; I was perfectly happy with my boyfriend Ned back home.
Kyle turned toward the fire. “Come meet the rest of the team.”
We joined the cozy circle. A man shifted with a groan, getting ready to rise. I said, “Please, you don’t have to get up. You must have all had a long day.”
“Thanks,” the man said. “I think my leg muscles have seized up. Kyle, next time why don’t you get a hot tub out here?”
Kyle smiled. “That’s Grayson. This is his first time with us.”
“Hi, Grayson,” I said. He was an older man, with white hair, but he looked like he was in pretty good shape despite his complaints.
The woman next to him gave a small wave. She was about forty, with silvery blond hair that hung over her shoulder in a thick braid. “I’m Abby. They’ll tell you I’m the flaky one.”
“We’ve never said that,” Grayson protested. “At least not within your range of hearing!”
Abby just laughed. “Don’t worry; I’m used to it.”
“I’m Russell,” the next man said. He was probably in his fifties, with a stocky build and a thick brown beard. “Just another volunteer here. I’ve gone on these digs all around the country, but this is my first time with this group.”
“Russell really knows his bones,” Kyle said. “Some of our volunteers know more than Steffi and I do. And that brings us to Felix.”
The last one of the group stood up, despite my protest. He was easily the oldest person there, perhaps over seventy, with hunched shoulders but a firm handshake.
“Felix has been coming to these digs for almost forty years,” Kyle said. “What he doesn’t know about fossils probably isn’t worth knowing.”
“I don’t have any formal training,” Felix said. “I’m just an interested amateur, but I’ve been around a long time. Unfortunately, I can’t dig anymore, with my bad heart. But they let me come along anyway. Now I’m the camp cook.” He grinned around at all of us. “Speaking of which, who’s ready for dinner?”
Bess, George, and I had gotten a warm enough welcome, but everyone greeted food with cheers. Felix dished out sloppy joes, the thick meat sauce spilling over hamburger buns. Steffi offered sodas from a big cooler. Then she and Kyle sat together on the cooler and gave us their chairs. Tom insisted that Bess take his chair, and he sat cross-legged on the ground.
“This place is dangerous,” Bess said, eyeing her plate. She usually tries to be careful about what she eats.
George shoveled food into her mouth. “You’ll work it off tomorrow.”
Steffi laughed. “It’s not health food, but after a long day of work, nothing beats Felix’s culinary creations. We’re lucky. On most digs the volunteers have to bring and fix their own food. This is a real treat!”
Felix gave a dismissive wave. “So who’s ready for seconds?”
I was stuffed after firsts, but everyone who’d been working that day went back for more. I studied their faces, reminding myself of the names. It seemed like a nice bunch, and they teased one another like old friends. Even the first-timers had had two days to get to know each other.
When everyone was finished, we burned the paper plates in the fire. Felix washed the silverware in a little water from a bucket. The bottles and soda cans went into special bags for recycling later.
It was still pretty early, but people started drifting off to their tents.
George stretched and yawned. “You guys ready? We still have a tent to set up.”
Bess made a face. “I’d forgotten.”
“At least we’ll be able to see by the moon,” George said. “It’s full tonight.”
“How do you know?” I asked. George picks up all kinds of trivia on the Internet, so I figured she’d checked a site with moon data.
“It’s rising right over there.”
I turned. A huge golden moon seemed to float above the eastern horizon. “Wow. It’s beautiful!”
We watched for a minute. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flicker a movement. When I turned, I saw Steffi and Kyle heading back to the Land Rover and poking around in the back. “Just a minute,” I told my friends. “I want to ask Steffi and Kyle about those bones again. Something tells me they’re more concerned than they’re letting on.”
When I reached them, Steffi turned with a small plastic tub in her arms. “These will be safe, anyway. I’ll keep them in my tent tonight.” She gave me a smile and walked off.
“Oh, hi,” Kyle said. “Do you need something?”
“I just wanted to ask about these missing bones,” I said. “Were they something important?”
“We had some very nice phytosaur vertebrae. Not the most important thing we found, but good specimens.”
“Valuable?”
“Sure, but —” His eyes darted around at the people entering their tents. “No one here would take them. It has to be an accident.”
Steffi must disagree, I thought, if she was taking the other fossils to bed with her. “Is fossil theft a big problem?”
Kyle scowled. “You wouldn’t believe it. People pull off some pretty brazen thefts. There’s been a rash of them in the Southwest lately —” He stopped suddenly. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. It’s perfectly safe here. I promise.”
“I wasn’t worried about our safety —”
He cut me off. “You had a long drive today. Get some sleep.” He put a hand on my arm to turn me away.
I sighed and left him to close up the Land Rover. I could ask more questions in the morning, when we were both rested.
I joined Bess and George. “Anything interesting?” George whispered.
I shrugged. “I didn’t get much information. Kyle probably doesn’t want to sound suspicious of his volunteers. But from the way he and Steffi are acting, I’d say the bones were stolen, not just lost. Keep your eyes open tomorrow.”
Bess grinned. “So you found a real mystery after all. And if you don’t count the long drive out here, it came up within the first five minutes of our vacation. This may be a record.”
I laughed along with their good-natured teasing. We got our tent and flashlights from the car and scouted out a flat place. It didn’t take long to put up the tent.
At home I can be ready for bed in ten minutes. Out there it took more like half an hour. We had to find everything in our luggage, brush our teeth with bottled water, and trot off into the darkness to go to the bathroom. Finally we settled down in our sleeping bags. I shivered despite my flannel pajamas, and snuggled deeper.
“Should I set an alarm?” Bess asked.
George groaned.
“I expect we’ll hear everyone else getting up,” I said.
“Still, I could set one just to be safe,” Bess offered.
“No thanks!” George said. “Besides, we don’t even know what time they want to start.”
I tried to change the subject. “This is kind of like a slumber party.”
Bess giggled. “Who brought the popcorn?”
George said, “If I had my laptop, we could watch movies.”
“We could watch one movie, before the batteries ran out.” I yawned. “Anyway, I’m tired, and it sounds like we’re going to be working hard tomorrow.”
They mumbled their agreement. The night was filled with the chirping of crickets. It was hardly quiet, but made a nice change from city noises. I felt myself sinking into sleep.
Until someone screamed.
Footprints in the Dark
I tried to jump up, but I hit my head on the tent and stumbled in my sleeping bag. I collapsed back. Bess squealed and pushed me off of her. I fumbled for my sleeping bag zipper, but by that point I was tangled and disoriented. I started wiggling out the top.
A light flashed in my face. It danced around the tent, then settled as George hooked a big flashlight to a loop in the roof.
“That was a scream, right?” George asked.
“That was me,” Bess said. “Nancy sat on me.”
I shoved my sleeping bag aside and unzipped the tent. “Before that. Someone definitely screamed out there.” I found my shoes just outside the tent and slid my feet into them.
George and I crawled out of the tent together. Someone ran past, and I thought I recognized Kyle.
“Kyle!” I called. “What’s going on?”
He yelled, “That was Steffi,” and kept running.
George and I followed, stumbling in the darkness. It was a good thing Kyle knew where Steffi had pitched her tent. She was pretty far from the camp, hidden between a rock outcropping and one of the few small trees. She was crouched in the tent opening when we arrived.
Kyle knelt in front of her and took her arms. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She sounded perfectly calm. “I’m sorry I startled you.”
“You scared me half to death!” Kyle exclaimed. “What happened?”
A light came bobbing up, and I turned to see Bess. Somehow she’d managed to get fully dressed. She handed George and me our coats and we pulled them on gratefully.
Tom and Russell jogged over from the campsite. Grayson trailed behind them. We were missing only Abby and Felix. Maybe they’d slept through the noise.
Steffi stood up. “I’m sorry I frightened everyone. I heard noises outside my tent. Probably just an animal.”
Kyle said, “But you’ve never —”
Steffi shot him a look and he closed his mouth.
Bess wedged herself between George and me and shone the flashlight into the shadows. “What kind of animals do you have here? Anything dangerous?”
“Not really,” Steffi said. “Just rabbits, possums, skunk, maybe deer or coyote.”
Bess’s light jerked. “Coyote?”
Steffi laughed. “I’ve never heard of them attacking a person. Now why don’t you all go back to bed?”
Russell and Tom headed back toward camp. Grayson said, “Save the next wake-up call for nine a.m.,” and gave us a friendly grin as he passed.
“Do you really think it could have been a coyote?” Bess whispered. “Maybe I’ll sleep in the car.”
“Probably just a rabbit,” I said, to comfort her. “Let me see the flashlight.” I examined the ground around Steffi’s tent. I saw tracks all right, but they weren’t animal tracks. I found human footprints, with the thick heel and pointed toe of cowboy boots. They came from the direction of the road, toward the tent, and away again. The return tracks were deeper at the toes, and farther apart, as if the person had been running. And they looked fresh. The wind that afternoon would surely have softened the edges more.
I put my foot next to the track. The footprint was much longer, probably a man’s. I glanced at Kyle’s heavy hiking boots.
He was watching me, and must have seen what I saw, but he didn’t say anything. Steffi spoke sharply. “I said everything’s fine. Why don’t you go back to bed?”
Steffi didn’t sound scared — more like angry. Was she just embarrassed because she had screamed? She didn’t seem like the type who would scream for no reason. But if a man was sneaking around her tent at night, maybe she should be scared. “Steffi, someone was here,” I said. “A man. Don’t you think it would be safer to move your tent closer to the others?