“I was looking for you, Nancy,” he said anxiously. “I’m just about to anchor the noon update. How’s Rita?”
“As good as could be expected,” Nancy replied. She looked around to make sure no one could overhear them, then said, “Hal, it’s time we talked seriously about Marilyn. I found out that she had a meeting with Gilbert last week. That means she could very well be behind these attacks.”
Hal leaned against the wall, an anguished look on his face. “You’ll just have to accept my word that she’s not our suspect. I admit she hasn’t been acting like it recently, but she’s too good a person to do something like setting a fire in my office.”
Nancy shook her head. Hal obviously still cared for Marilyn. Nancy just hoped that his feelings weren’t blinding him to the fact that she could be trying to harm him.
Checking his watch, Hal added, “I’ve got to rush if I’m going to make the noon update.”
“I’ll go with you,” Nancy insisted.
Back in the newsroom, a nervous floor director looked relieved to see Hal arrive.
“You’re cutting it short today, Hal,” she said, clipping a microphone onto his lapel. “Twenty seconds to air.”
“No sweat,” Hal said, flashing his trademark anchorman’s grin. He quickly scanned the script in front of him. When the director threw him a signal, he began reading his noon update.
“Good afternoon from the Channel Nine newsroom,” he said to the camera. “Our top story on the four o’clock edition will be a follow-up on yesterday’s spectacular collision between two eighteen-wheel trucks on Highway Forty-two. Then at six . . .”
Nancy had taken a seat on a nearby footstool and was watching carefully. Then she heard a low, buzzing noise above Hal’s head and looked up. The noise seemed to be coming from somewhere inside the ceiling.
Suddenly, a ceiling panel crashed to the floor, releasing a shower of dust and debris. Nancy gasped and stood up as a thick black wire dropped through the hole in the ceiling. It was crackling with electricity, Nancy realized with a start.
It was a live wire! And it was falling straight toward Hal!
Chapter
Twelve
FOR A SPLIT SECOND, Nancy stood frozen in horror. Then, grabbing the wooden footstool that she had been sitting on, she leapt toward Hal.
She used the stool to push the crackling wire away from him. The force of her momentum caused her to fall hard against him, and the two of them went sprawling in a heap across the floor.
The newsroom erupted into chaos. The floor director shouted through her microphone to the control room, “We’ve got a hot wire here! Cut the power! Shut it off!”
Otto Liski came running out of his office and grabbed the microphone from the director. He barked another set of commands to the control room. In the next instant, the room was plunged into semidarkness as all power in the station was turned off.
Nancy and Hal struggled awkwardly to their feet. “Are you all right, Hal?” Nancy asked.
“Yes—thanks to you,” he replied. He shuddered as he looked at the wire that now hung limply from the ceiling. “Looks like I came close to getting deep-fried,” he joked weakly. “I wonder how many volts that thing carries?”
“Enough to roast an elephant,” came a deep-voiced reply. Nancy turned to see Bill Steghorn and a technician standing next to Hal’s desk. Steghorn used a flashlight to gingerly examine the fallen wire.
“The protective skin is all frayed off this wire,” the engineer said indignantly. “This should never have been installed like this. Either someone was incredibly stupid, or—”
“Or it was done deliberately?” Nancy posed the question that was uppermost in everyone’s mind. If so, this would be the most serious attack yet.
The engineer looked at Nancy. “Could be,” he said thoughtfully.
“But what caused the wire to fall through the ceiling?” Mr. Liski wanted to know.
“Maybe we can find out,” said Nancy. “Do you mind if I take a look at the ceiling?” she asked the producer.
“Go ahead,” Mr. Liski said. “Just be careful.”
Nancy borrowed the technician’s flashlight and climbed onto the anchor desk. She shined the beam into the crawl space above the false ceiling of the newsroom and saw a jumble of wires and ropes. Standing on tiptoe, she reached up and carefully felt inside the space. Her hand brushed against something, and a shower of sand fell into the newsroom.
“I found something,” Nancy called down to the others. She pulled out a half-empty bag of sand along with a funnel and a tiny mechanical device with a clock on it.
“I’d say a pile of sand caused the ceiling panel to fall,” Nancy said. She jumped down from the desk and handed the timer and funnel to Otto Liski.
“What?” he exclaimed. “I don’t understand what these are.”
Nancy pointed to the funnel. “This funnel and the sandbag were suspended by ropes above the ceiling panel,” she explained. “It looks like this timing device was used to control what time the sand would be released through the funnel onto the panel. When enough sand trickled onto the panel . . .”
“It crashed down to the floor,” Hal finished slowly, “releasing the live wire.”
Nancy nodded, her expression sober. “Someone cut that wire earlier,” she said. “And the timer was set to go off at noon. The attacker must have known that you were scheduled to anchor the news update then.”
“Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to kill me,” Hal said, looking around nervously.
“Someone’s head is going to roll for this,” Steghorn bellowed at the technician. “Who’s assigned to work in this area of the overhead circuitry?”
“Clay Jurgenson, I think,” the technician replied.
Bill Steghorn shook his head and turned toward Otto Liski. “Jurgenson is one of those temporary workers we’ve been using since the station had all those layoffs,” he explained. “I don’t know him too well.”
Clay Jurgenson was also the technician who claimed to have seen someone outside Hal’s office at the time of the arson fire, Nancy recalled. His job as a temporary worker would be the perfect cover for an outside person trying to attack Hal. He could easily be working for Kurt Milhaus or Steve Gilbert.
As the engineers began repairing the wire, Nancy quietly drew Mr. Liski aside. “I’d like to question Clay Jurgenson right away,” she said.
“You and me both,” the producer sputtered angrily. “I haven’t seen him around today, though. I’ll find out whether he’s scheduled to work.”
After temporarily repairing the wire, Bill Steghorn called for the power to be restored. The lights came back on suddenly, causing Nancy to blink. She looked up as Hal approached Otto Liski and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Otto, don’t you think I should go back on the air to explain to the viewers what happened?” Hal asked. “After all, the last image they had was of my being tackled by Nancy—followed by an old rerun of a comedy show. It’s hard to decide which is scarier—the tackle or that awful show.”
Nancy laughed despite the tension everyone was feeling. Otto Liski gave the okay for Hal to go back on the air, then he went off to find Clay’s work schedule. He soon came back, holding a sheet of paper with a grid pattern on it.
“Jurgenson’s off work today, according to this schedule,” the news producer told Nancy. “And there’s no answer at his house, which is listed on Creedmore Street.”
“Let’s head over there anyway,” Nancy said. “Even if we can’t question him, maybe we’ll find some proof that he’s behind the attacks.”
Mr. Liski nodded his agreement. “Meet me out in the parking lot,” he whispered. “I’ll tell anyone who asks that you’re heading off to do research on a story.”
It was already well past noon, so Nancy grabbed a quick lunch in the station’s commissary. On her way to the lobby, she bumped into Marilyn Morgan, who was coming around the corner. The anchorwoman looked shaken.
“I heard wh
at happened in the newsroom. What’s happened to Hal?” she asked Nancy anxiously.
Nancy decided to confront the newscaster about her involvement with Steve Gilbert. “You should know what happened to Hal, Marilyn,” Nancy said coolly. “After all, you’ve been working with Steve Gilbert, haven’t you?”
The anchorwoman’s eyes widened with fear. “Steve Gilbert? Wh-what do you mean?” she stammered. “What did Gilbert tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything at all,” Nancy retorted. “He didn’t have to.”
Marilyn glared at Nancy. Without a word, she turned on her heel and stalked away. Nancy didn’t have time to go after her. She would have to wait until later to pursue her questions.
Nancy stopped short when she reached the station’s lobby. Brenda Carlton was standing there, trying to talk her way past the security guard. She looked furious when she saw Nancy.
“You tried to throw me off the track before,” Brenda said accusingly. “The real story is that someone is trying to kill Hal Taylor, isn’t that right?”
Uh-oh, Nancy thought. She had a big problem on her hands now. If Brenda printed one word of this, the whole story of Hal’s predicament and Nancy’s investigation would be splashed all over town. And that could destroy all the progress she’d made so far!
“I suspected that something like this was going on,” Brenda went on smugly. “So I came over just in time to hear about the wire falling on Hal. And I’m betting it was no accident.”
Nancy decided that she had no choice but to level with Brenda—to a point. “You’re right about the attacks on Hal,” she said. Luckily, no one else was in the reception area to hear her. “Surely you can understand why the station wants to keep it quiet for the time being.”
“Why should I cooperate with you and Hal? After all, he’s the competition,” Brenda said, putting her hands on her hips. “And the fact that someone’s going after the town’s top anchorman is a dynamite story.”
Nancy thought for a moment. It looked as if she would have to bargain with Brenda. “You want a great story, right?” she asked. Brenda nodded emphatically. “All right, then. I promise to give you all the details of my investigation, along with an exclusive interview with Hal Taylor, once this is all over—if you promise to give me a couple more days to solve the case.”
Brenda looked suspicious, but she finally agreed. “I’ll be watching you carefully, though, so don’t try to wiggle out of giving me the story,” she warned.
Nancy promised, then dashed for the parking lot to meet Otto Liski. Soon they were on their way to find engineer Clay Jurgenson’s house, which was located along a row of seedy walk-ups on Creedmore Street.
Nancy parked the car behind a broken-down pickup truck, then she and Liski hurried up to Jurgenson’s front door. Mr. Liski knocked, but there was no answer. When he tried the door, it swung open easily. He and Nancy exchanged a glance, then stepped inside.
They found themselves in a living room with a threadbare couch and a table with a television set on it. Nancy saw a kitchen area behind the couch. To the left, a staircase rose up to the second floor. She didn’t see or hear anyone.
While Otto Liski looked around downstairs, Nancy climbed the stairs to the second floor, where she found a bedroom and bathroom. In the bedroom, on the engineer’s desk, she spotted a desk calendar with a note scribbled on it: KM, 3:00, $25,000.
Could KM stand for Kurt Milhaus? Nancy wondered. The note was entered under the current day’s date, which was Saturday. It was just now close to three o’clock, she realized.
She turned as Otto Liski came into the bedroom. “Find anything?” he asked.
Nancy showed him the note on Clay’s calendar. “If Milhaus is behind these attacks, there’s no question now that he’s deadly serious,” she said. “He may have paid Jurgenson off to set up the live-wire booby trap.” She frowned as she thought of something else. “I’m worried that Milhaus has found out about the tape at Hal’s home. I want to head over there and pick it up. Hal told me where he hid it.”
“I’ve been away from the station too long already,” Mr. Liski said, frowning. “Believe it or not, I’m trying to take tonight off, so I’ve got a lot to wrap up this afternoon. I’ll call a cab to take me back. But, Nancy, I’m afraid it might be too dangerous for you to go to Hal’s alone.”
“I’ll be fine,” Nancy assured him. “But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll arrange for my friend Ned Nickerson to meet me over at Hal’s.”
“Please do,” the producer insisted.
Going back down to the kitchen, Nancy used the phone there to call Hal and ask him where she could find his spare key. She also told him about the outtake footage she’d found while searching the tape files earlier that day.
Hal sounded excited by her discovery. “I can’t believe I missed that when I was reviewing the old tapes,” he said. “We can run it in a slow-motion processor during the discussion of the bribery allegations,” he said. “That will really help visualize the story for the audience.”
Next Nancy called Ned and asked if he’d mind meeting her at Hal Taylor’s.
“Turn down a chance to go on the job with reporter Nancy Drew?” he said in his deep voice. “No way. I’ll be there in half an hour to forty-five minutes.”
Nancy gave him the address and hung up. After saying goodbye to Liski, she drove across town to Hal’s modern split-level house. Ned arrived in his car soon after she had pulled into the circular drive.
“I guess anchors must make pretty big bucks—this is a fancy spread,” Ned said as they walked up the path to the front door.
“Everything seems quiet,” Nancy observed.
Suddenly, she heard a car motor start from somewhere behind the house. Sensing that something was amiss, Nancy quickened her step.
As she raced up the stairs, she could see that the front door was slightly ajar. Nancy threw the door open and looked inside with dismay. Next to her, Ned drew in his breath sharply.
Chairs had been ripped with a knife and overturned, pictures torn from their frames, and debris scattered across the floor. Hal’s house had been ransacked!
Chapter
Thirteen
WHAT TORNADO hit this place?” Ned asked soberly, surveying the damage. It was obvious that whoever had done the damage had spent a long time searching for something and was very thorough.
Without saying a word, Nancy bolted through the living room and ran out through Hal’s back door. Seeing a service alleyway behind the house, she hurried toward it.
“Wait, Nancy! Where are you going?” Ned called after her.
She was in too much of a hurry to answer. Her head whipped to the left and right as she looked down the empty alley.
“What is it?” Ned asked. He was breathing hard as he came up beside her. “What are you looking for?”
“I heard a car motor start just as we walked up the steps to Hal’s house,” Nancy replied. “I have a hunch it was probably our vandal.” She shook her head in frustration. “If I’d moved faster I might have caught a glimpse of the car.”
“Believe me, Nancy, you moved plenty fast,” Ned said, bending over and rubbing the back of his calves. “Any faster and we’d have to sign you up for the Olympics.”
Nancy was already sprinting back inside Hal’s house. She headed for the kitchen and opened a cabinet under the sink. “I hope the tape’s still here,” she said worriedly.
Ned was right behind her. He looked in the cabinet and shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it—all I see are sponges and a bunch of cleaning supplies.”
“That’s all you’re supposed to see,” Nancy said. She pulled out a box of soap pads and began fiddling with the box top. With a click, the top of the box slid sideways, revealing a videotape inside.
“It’s still here!” she cried triumphantly, pulling the bulky tape from the box with a flourish.
“I can’t believe it,” Ned said. “That soap box is really some kind of safe?”
/> Nancy grinned at her boyfriend, who was shaking his head in amazement. “Hal’s a nut about unusual gadgets,” she explained. “This time his hobby really saved the day.”
“That kooky box is even better than a wall safe,” Ned pointed out. “The way this house was torn apart, the burglar probably would have discovered and cracked a regular safe.”
Nancy tucked the tape under her arm, and the two of them returned to the living room. “What a mess,” Nancy said, looking around. She pulled a pad of paper and pen from her purse. “I’m going to make some notes about the damage for Hal.”
“You know, it’s spooky the way the attacker struck just before you came to get the tape,” Ned observed.
Nancy looked at him thoughtfully. “You may have hit on something, Ned,” she said slowly. “I mean, whoever’s behind these attacks seems to know our every move.” She tried to piece together her thoughts. “Just a little over an hour ago I was talking to Hal and Mr. Liski about coming to get the tape—and then his house was attacked. It’s almost as if someone were monitoring our conversations.”
Nancy ran outside and checked the spot where Hal had said his spare key would be. As she had expected, the key was missing. “The person knew right where to look,” she said, frowning.
“Could anyone have overheard you talking to Hal and that producer, Liski?” Ned asked. “That might explain it.”
Nancy shook her head. “Mr. Liski was the only person in Clay’s house, and I talked to Hal on the phone,” she said. “I guess it could have been a coincidence that the attack on Hal’s house came right after our conversation, but that doesn’t explain how they found out about the key.”
She walked into Hal’s office, which was off the living room, and looked closely at the pictures that had been ripped from the walls. Most of the pictures that had been torn were publicity photos that showed Hal at work as an anchorman, sometimes alone and sometimes with his co-anchor, Marilyn Morgan.
“There’s something odd about the way these photos have been ripped apart,” Nancy observed. “Only the ones that include both Hal and Marilyn have been torn in half,” she said.