The Lighthouse Mystery

  Contents

  Chapter 1: Road Trip!

  Chapter 2: Top Secret!

  Chapter 3: A Puzzling Puzzle

  Chapter 4: The Floating Clue

  Chapter 5: Detective Meaney?

  Chapter 6: Clue in a Cave

  Chapter 7: A New Twist

  Chapter 8: The Haunted Lighthouse

  1

  Road Trip!

  What in the world is in that suitcase?” asked eight-year-old Nancy Drew, staring at her best friend, Bess Marvin. “Or, what in the world isn’t in it?”

  Bess was walking toward the Drews’ car, pulling a giant suitcase behind her. It was stuffed so full that its zippers were straining. It looked like it would topple over any minute.

  Nancy’s other best friend, George Fayne, was walking right behind Bess. She didn’t have a suitcase at all, just a backpack. “Bess is ready for any emergency,” George said. “Especially if it involves her hair.”

  Bess and George were cousins, but they were very different. George was tall, with dark, curly hair and dark eyes. She loved sports, and she wasn’t fussy about the way she looked. Bess was shorter, and blond with blue eyes. Her clothes always matched. She loved headbands and barrettes, cool shoes and jewelry.

  “You’ll be sorry!” Bess exclaimed. “What if you forgot something? Where we’re going it won’t be easy to find a new toothbrush. Or sunblock. Or—”

  “Just don’t ask me to help you get that thing in the car,” joked George. “It would take ten strong men to lift it!”

  Just then Nancy’s dad, Carson Drew, walked out of the garage. “One strong man at least,” he agreed, lifting Bess’s suitcase into the trunk. “Everybody ready to go?”

  “Let me just think for a minute,” said Bess. “Do I have everything?”

  Nancy and George exchanged a look. Then Nancy said, “We’re ready, Dad. Maine, here we come!”

  Mr. Drew closed the trunk, and the girls piled into the car. They were taking a road trip! Mr. Drew’s old friend Matt Webb had just opened a bed and breakfast on the coast of Maine. The bed and breakfast was in an old lighthouse keeper’s house. When Nancy heard her dad planning a trip, she’d asked if she could invite her friends. It was summer vacation, after all. And the Webbs had plenty of room in their new inn. Mr. Drew had agreed to bring Bess and George along, and now the girls were crammed into the backseat of the car, sharing a bag of pretzels.

  “What should we do first when we get there?” Nancy asked.

  “Let’s go swimming!” cried George, pumping the air with her fist.

  “We could work on our tans,” Bess pointed out.

  “How about taking a hike?” George countered.

  “Or going fishing?” said Mr. Drew. “Maine is famous for its lobsters.”

  “Ugh! Lobsters!” said Bess with a shudder. “I can’t even stand to look at them! All those legs give me the creeps!”

  “I wonder if we could climb to the top of the lighthouse,” Nancy said. “I’ve never been in one before.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Drew, “I wouldn’t count on it. Nowadays the lighthouse is run automatically. It doesn’t need a keeper anymore—that’s why the Webbs were able to turn the keeper’s house into a B and B. Someone goes into the lighthouse to check it from time to time, but it’s probably not open to everyone.”

  “That’s okay,” said Nancy. “I think we’ll be pretty busy. Anyone want to play the license plate game? Let’s see who can spot plates from all fifty states first.”

  “I see Massachusetts!” called Bess.

  “Me too!” called Nancy.

  “There’s Nevada!” shouted George. “And look—there’s New Jersey! People from everywhere are driving to Maine!”

  The girls played the game for a while, and then Mr. Drew put on some music. Later they stopped for gas. Mr. Drew knocked on the window as he was filling the tank, and pointed at the car in front of him in line. “Puerto Rico!” he said, pointing to a license plate. But all three girls were fast asleep.

  • • •

  Nancy woke up first. She’d been asleep for a long time. “Are we there yet?” she asked her father.

  “Sure are,” he said. “Look at that water!”

  Nancy looked out the window and saw the ocean! Waves crashed up on Maine’s rocky shore, and Nancy could see boats sailing in the distance. Nancy spotted a long stretch of rock jutting way out into the water. A lighthouse stood at the end of the rocks. Her father caught her eye. “That’s the lighthouse, Pudding Pie,” he whispered. Nancy woke her friends up right away.

  Soon they were at the end of the peninsula, looking up at the lighthouse. “Welcome, Carson!” said a man, stepping out from a white building beside it. He shook Mr. Drew’s hand energetically. “This must be Nancy. That strawberry blond hair is just like her mother’s!”

  Nancy remembered her manners and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Webb. These are my friends, Bess and George.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, too,” said Mr. Webb. “And here is my wife, Julia. We are very pleased to have you here with us. Let me take your luggage. Then follow me inside for some dinner!” He lifted Bess’s suitcase and hauled it up a flight of stairs to the front door of the white building. Nancy figured it had to be the Webbs’ inn.

  Inside, a table was set for dinner. Another family was already sitting there, drinking lemonade. “These are our other guests, the Meaneys,” said Mr. Webb. “They’ve come here all the way from Florida.”

  A girl with short, straight brown hair said, “I’m Megan. I’m in third grade.”

  A younger girl beside her said almost exactly the same thing. “I’m Hayley. I’m in first grade.”

  “Hayley is copying me again,” Megan reported to her mother.

  Before Mrs. Meaney could respond, the Webbs appeared with the food. “Dig in!” said Mrs. Webb. One platter was piled high with ears of corn on the cob. Another was stacked with steaming hamburgers, fresh off the grill. “And be sure to save room for dessert. I’ve made one of my famous wild-blueberry pies. Or they will be famous, anyway, when the word gets out about our inn.”

  “This is a beautiful spot,” Mr. Drew said to his old friend. “I’m sure there will be a waiting list for guests before the summer’s out.”

  “We hope so,” said Mr. Webb. “It’s hard to know. We’re off the beaten track, as you can see. And the place has a bit of a reputation.”

  “What kind of reputation?” asked Mr. Drew.

  Mr. Webb hesitated. “Well,” he said, “a mysterious reputation.”

  Nancy glanced at her friends. “Mysterious how?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to scare the kids,” said Mr. Webb, looking at Nancy’s dad.

  “Oh, don’t worry about us,” Nancy assured him.

  Mr. Webb smiled. “It’s a long story,” he said. “It began a hundred years ago.” Mr. Webb gestured toward the window, where the lighthouse was visible. “That’s when this lighthouse was built by a local fisherman. Over the years he’d lost too many friends to the sea. So he decided that a lighthouse should go up where so many ships had gone down. He raised the money for it, and built it himself. He was even the first lighthouse keeper. He lived in this very house.”

  “That doesn’t sound mysterious,” declared Mr. Drew. “That sounds wonderful. Think of the lives he saved!”

  Mr. Webb continued. “But that’s just the beginning. The fisherman was lonely in the lighthouse. He missed fishing for a living. Every so often, when there was a clear night with a full moon to guide the ships, he sneaked back to the water. The lighthouse would be abandoned for a short time, but the fisherman always came back . . . until one night when a storm blew up. That night, a neighbor spotted his boat in the water. B
ut he was never seen or heard from again.”

  “How awful!” cried Mr. Drew. “What about his family?”

  “His family moved away after he vanished,” explained Mr. Webb. “But some say the fisherman never left. Since he disappeared, many strange things have happened at the lighthouse. People think the fisherman haunts the place. Everyone around here knows the stories. We just hope they won’t scare customers away.”

  “They won’t scare us, that’s for sure!” exclaimed George. “Nothing’s going to get in the way of our good time here!”

  “Unless the ghost does,” Bess muttered. “We’d better be careful.”

  “We come here every summer,” said Megan Meaney. “And I’ve never seen any ghost.”

  Mrs. Webb agreed. “We hope we never see the ghost! Now, would anybody like more pie, or shall I show you to your rooms?”

  Soon Nancy, Bess, and George followed Mrs. Webb up to the third floor of the house and down a long hallway. They entered a room with two bunk beds and a slanted ceiling. “I think you’ll be comfortable here,” said Mrs. Webb. “But ring this bell if you need anything at all.”

  The girls thanked her and began to unpack their bags.

  “What do you think about this ghost?” Bess asked nervously. “Do you guys think it’s safe here?”

  “Nancy’s dad wouldn’t bring us here if he thought it was unsafe,” George said. “You don’t need to be afraid of a ghost. But you might need to be afraid of me!” George leaped at Bess and moaned “wooooooooo” until her cousin giggled.

  Nancy laughed with her friends. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the ghost. Mr. Webb had left out a lot of details. Nancy was wondering about them while Bess and George drifted off to sleep. Finally she drifted off too.

  But the next thing she knew, Nancy was wide awake. And there was an eerie bright white light shining in her eyes!

  2

  Top Secret!

  Bess! George!” cried Nancy. “Wake up! Something strange is happening!”

  Bess awoke with a start and exclaimed, “The ghost! I knew it!”

  Just then, the white light stopped shining. The girls sighed with relief. But then it came back a few minutes later!

  “Maybe we should ring for Mrs. Webb,” Nancy said.

  George jumped out of a bottom bunk and walked bravely to the window. After a quick glance, she said, “Take a look at this.” Nancy and Bess drew closer to see what she was looking at. “It’s a not a ghost at all,” said George, pointing. “It’s the lighthouse!” The girls’ window was directly across from the lighthouse. Its great beam of light passed by the girls’ bedroom as it cut across the sky. The room lit up, then darkened, then lit up again as the light in the lighthouse spun around.

  “I can’t believe we didn’t notice it before,” said Nancy, a little embarrassed.

  “The blinds were closed when we came in,” Bess explained. “I opened them a little while ago when I got up to open the window.”

  George yawned. “Can we go back to sleep now? I want to get up early for a swim!”

  • • •

  George’s alarm clock went off at sunrise, but the girls weren’t the first ones up at the inn. “We always get an early start,” said Mrs. Webb, folding napkins in the kitchen. She set some homemade muffins and tall glasses of orange juice on the table. There was a place set for each of the girls—and one set for Megan Meaney, the girl they’d met the night before. She was up early too.

  “So how long are you staying?” asked Megan, breaking a muffin in two. “My family will be here for a whole week.”

  “Just a few days,” said Nancy.

  “That’s not nearly enough time to do everything,” Megan replied. “Trust me—my family comes here every summer.”

  “Maybe you can tell us the best place to go swimming, then,” said George. “The beach here looks a little rocky.”

  “Most beaches in Maine are rocky,” Megan said importantly. “A beach with sand is something special here. But don’t worry—I know where to find one. Abigail showed me.”

  “Abigail?” asked Nancy. “I thought your sister’s name was Hayley.”

  “Hayley is my sister,” said Megan. “Abigail is my friend. She lived in this house until the Webbs bought it last winter. I met her one summer when we were really little, and I’ve seen her every summer after that.”

  “It must be weird to stay in her house now that it’s not her house anymore,” said George.

  “It is pretty weird,” Megan agreed. “My family usually stays in a hotel, but my parents thought it would be exciting to stay closer to the lighthouse this year. They haven’t been inside the lighthouse, but I have—loads of times. Abigail’s dad was the last lighthouse keeper here.”

  “Wow!” cried Nancy. “How did you get up there? What was it like?”

  “Oh, Abigail could go up whenever she wanted,” Megan said. “And it was really cool. You could see for miles from up there.”

  “You weren’t scared of ghosts, or anything?” ventured Bess.

  “Of the fisherman’s ghost? Oh, nobody really believes those stories.” Megan dismissed them with a wave of her hand. “And if there was a ghost, Abigail probably knew him. She knew this place like the back of her hand. She showed me the best place to get ice cream—a place only the locals know. She introduced me to the coolest people in town. She taught me how to sail—and you should see me now!”

  “You must really miss her,” Nancy said.

  “Yeah. This year Abigail’s gone and all that’s left is a bunch of tourists. . . . I mean, no offense,” Megan stumbled, “but it just isn’t the same.”

  “It just isn’t the same,” mimicked a voice in the doorway. It was Megan’s little sister, Hayley. “Nobody is as cool as Abigail!” she said in a mocking tone.

  “Oh, leave me alone, Hayley,” groaned Megan. “Can’t I say anything without you saying it again?”

  “Oh, leave me alone,” Hayley repeated. She poured herself a glass of juice.

  Megan glared at her sister. To break the silence, George said, “So where’s that beach you mentioned, Megan? Are you up for a swim?”

  Megan and Hayley suddenly agreed on something. “It’s pretty cold,” said Megan.

  “It’s freezing,” Hayley added. “We go swimming at home in Florida. Here we stay out of the water.”

  “But I know the best place to go, of course,” Megan continued. “Walk back to Maine Street. Then make a left. You’ll pass the general store and come to a blue house. There’s a private beach behind the house, but the people who live there let anybody use it. Anybody who knows about it, that is. Tell them Megan sent you.”

  “Thanks, Megan!” cried Nancy.

  “See you later!” called George as she bounded up the stairs.

  Bess closed the door behind her friends once they were all back in their room. “It’s not that I don’t like her, okay? But what did she mean by ‘tourists’? Isn’t she a tourist too? And I’m sure somebody believes in the lighthouse ghost. I’m glad she doesn’t want to swim with us!”

  “And what was with her sister?” George asked.

  Nancy shrugged.

  Bess was digging through her suitcase. “Oh, where did I put my bathing suit? Maybe I did pack too much stuff. . . .”

  Bess began to pile things on the dresser near her bunk bed: a stack of socks, a bottle of shampoo, and a curling iron. “Is that a curling iron?” asked George, surprised.

  “For emergencies,” Bess said, hiding it under some T-shirts.

  Nancy and George both laughed as Bess kept hunting for her bathing suit. “Oh, there it is!” she cried. “And . . . oh, no!” Some of Bess’s things had fallen behind the dresser. “Can one of you help me get the shampoo out from behind there?”

  George took one side of the dresser, and Nancy took the other. “One, two, three, push!” Nancy counted. The girls shoved the dresser a few feet away from the wall. Bess crept behind it and located her bottle of shampoo.

&
nbsp; “Wait a minute,” she said. “Something else is back here.” Bess pointed to something wedged between the floorboards. She knelt down and tugged at it.

  “Need a hand?” asked Nancy.

  “Nope. I think I’ve got it,” Bess replied. “Here it is.” Bess held up a white envelope and stuck it in her pocket. “Okay. Now let’s move the dresser back.”

  The girls leaned against the dresser till it was back against the wall. Then Bess took the envelope out and turned it over. She gasped.

  “What is it, Bess?” Nancy asked, worried.

  Bess whispered, “The back of this envelope says whatever is inside is top secret.”

  3

  A Puzzling Puzzle

  Do you think we should open it?” Bess asked.

  “Of course we should open it!” cried George, looking to Nancy for backup.

  “I think we should too. We’ll need to decide whether to tell the Webbs,” Nancy said.

  Bess ripped the envelope open. A jigsaw puzzle piece and a bit of folded paper fell to the floor. The girls knelt to look at the mysterious objects. The puzzle piece was small and red. On the paper someone had pasted cut-out letters that spelled out the words: “Puzzled? Pieces on land and sea will lead you to the key.”

  “Can I see the envelope again?” Nancy asked. Bess passed it to her friend. Nancy stuck her hand inside the envelope and pulled out a small sketched map wedged inside. “Maybe this will help us,” Nancy said.

  “But help us do what?” George questioned.

  “Find something?” Nancy guessed.

  Bess said, “Like . . . ?”

  Just then a voice outside their door said, “Wait for me, Hayley!”

  “Oh no,” whispered George. “Megan Meaney.”

  “Let’s go to the beach as we planned,” suggested Bess. “I don’t want to show her this stuff.”

  The three girls changed quickly and packed a few things for their outing. Nancy stashed the torn envelope and its contents in her backpack. When the girls left their room and spotted Megan at the end of the hall, they waved as if nothing was up. They left a note to tell Nancy’s dad where they’d gone.