Nancy scanned the Grand Ballroom. Jean-Claude and his assistant wheeled out another cart stacked with jelly cookies, tiny cupcakes, and fruit tarts. The judges strolled through the Lily Garden. Mimsy sat in the corner with another woman. She still looked like she might burst into tears at any moment.
“I don’t see the photographer,” Nancy said.
Bess shook her head. “Me neither. She was here all morning, why would she suddenly leave?”
The girls left Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald near the back exits. They weaved through waiters and guests. They looked by the Tulip Garden and the Lily Garden, but they didn’t see the photographer anywhere. They could still hear Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald arguing as they moved deeper into the crowd.
Caught in the Act
After an hour Nancy, Bess, and George stood behind a boy, staring at the card in his hands. “Is that what I think it is?” Bess asked. “Look at the tiny camera symbol on the business card. That has to be from the photographer, right?”
Nancy nodded. The girls had spent the last hour circling the Grand Ballroom, trying to find the redheaded woman with the camera, but she’d disappeared. She was no longer taking pictures of the Orchid Garden or asking people to pose by the Rose Garden bouquets. Now the only trace of her was a few business cards she’d given out. They’d spotted the boy, who was blond with freckles, sitting alone at a table. Nancy figured he was someone’s nephew or grandson. He looked like he was about to pass out from boredom.
“Excuse us,” Nancy said as she went over to the table. It was covered with a lace cloth and plates of half-eaten cake. “Did you get that card from the photographer?”
The boy spun around. He couldn’t have been older than twelve, but he looked a little nervous when he saw them. “Whoa. Aren’t you the girls looking for the stolen roses? Just for the record, I didn’t take them.”
“We didn’t think you did,” Bess said. She nearly laughed. Apparently word of their investigation had gotten around. “We’re more curious about that card you have.”
“What about it?” the boy asked. He wore a nice shirt and a bow tie. The tie was fastened crooked. “What does the photographer have to do with anything?”
Bess pointed to Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald. They strolled around the hydrangeas, stopping to smell some of the bouquets. “We have two witnesses who saw a man take the flowers. But they can’t agree on what he looked like. We’re hoping the photographer has a picture of him.”
“I haven’t seen her for at least an hour, maybe more than that,” the boy said. “She took a picture of me and my grandma Helene. Then she gave us this card. She wants to take pictures at my grandma’s seventieth birthday party.”
“You’re Helene Flossenhammer’s grandson?” George asked.
“Yup,” the boy said. “My mom makes me come to the show every year with her and my dad. Booooooorrrrrrrring.” He pretended to fall asleep.
George glanced down at the notebook. When she’d gotten tired looking for the photographer she took a break. She’d drawn two pictures of the “suspect.” In one she used the description Mrs. Fitzgerald had given them. In the other she’d used the description Mr. Fitzgerald had given. “Do either of these people look familiar to you?” she asked, knowing it was a long shot.
The boy shook his head. “Not at all,” he mumbled.
Bess let out a sigh. They had looked everywhere for the photographer. They’d walked through every flower garden. They’d seen gardenias, lilacs, orchids, roses, and more. They’d asked every waiter in the Grand Ballroom if they’d seen the woman with the camera. It was almost like she’d vanished into thin air.
Nancy plucked the card from the boy’s hand. “Jenna Crosby,” she read. At least they had her phone number now, in case they needed it.
“She must’ve left the Garden Show,” George said. “Should we search the rest of Le Chateau?”
Nancy raised her eyebrows. “Do you think she could be hiding out somewhere in the rest of the building? How many parties are happening this afternoon?”
“I bet there’s a ton,” the boy chimed in. “But I could help you find her. You’ll have a better chance if you have one more person looking with you.” He looked around the room at the older crowd. Most of the people were women. Nearly everyone had gray hair. “Please? I might die of boredom if I don’t.”
Nancy looked to her friends. She’d never considered a full search of Le Chateau, and she’d definitely never considered letting Helene Flossenhammer’s grandson help them. But the building was huge, with parties of all sorts going on inside it. She knew they weren’t supposed to leave the Garden Society Show, but how would they find their next clue if they didn’t? Wasn’t it worth the risk?
“Let’s try it,” Nancy said.
The boy sprang from his seat like a jack-in-the-box. “Great! I promise you won’t regret this! I’ll really help you guys out, I swear. I’m Adam, by the way. Adam Flossenhammer.”
Bess and George exchanged a nervous look. There was a reason the Clue Crew was only three people—it was easier that way. “Okay, Adam . . . ,” Bess said. “You search the west wing and we’ll search the east wing.”
“Suh-weeet!” Adam yelped.
Then the girls took off toward the opposite exit. They waved to Adam as they slipped out the side doors.
“Do you see anything?” Bess whispered.
Nancy pulled back the curtain a tiny bit more. They were hiding in one of the Le Chateau’s side rooms. The hallway had ended with a velvet curtain. Now they were behind it, trying to look inside.
Nancy stared into the ballroom. It was filled with people dressed in fancy gowns and tuxedos. Ten girls in neon green dresses wandered about. A woman with short black hair stepped onto the dance floor. She wore a puffy white dress and held her husband’s hand. “Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Kim!” the announcer yelled. The couple came together for a slow dance.
“Just a wedding,” Nancy said. They crept back down the hall, looking for another party.
Le Chateau was a maze of hallways and ballrooms. They’d been searching for over an hour. They’d already found a cocktail party and a private dinner with men in suits. They were walking through an empty dining room when they heard Adam’s voice.
“Psssst! I found her! She’s photographing another party!” Adam appeared at the end of the hall. “Over here!” He waved his arms frantically, like he was signaling a plane.
The girls chased after him. They followed Adam down two long hallways. The music grew louder as they came closer to sliding glass doors. Adam stood beside the window.
There was a party on the lawn outside. A jazz band played a happy song. The saxophonist knelt down as he started a solo. A few people danced in a half circle, clapping their hands to the beat. “See?” Adam asked. “Isn’t that her?” He pointed to a woman just ten feet from the door. She had bright red hair and black glasses. She held a camera with a long lens.
“You’re right!” Nancy said.
“We have to talk to her,” George tried. She slid the door open a few inches, trying not to draw too much attention to them. “Excuse us! Jenna Crosby! Were you working the Garden Society Show?”
Jenna froze. She turned, not sure where the voice had come from. She looked confused when she spotted the four kids huddled around the doors. “Why do you ask? I finished up there hours ago.” She let her camera fall to her side.
Nancy took a deep breath. “We were hoping to see your pictures. We think you may have caught someone stealing one of the prized bouquets.”
Jenna stepped inside, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching her. “I’m supposed to be working right now,” she whispered. “Can’t you find me later?”
“We don’t have much time,” George tried. “Our friend can’t enter the show until we find out who stole her roses. We think you can help.”
Jenna looked back to the party, like she wasn’t sure what to do. Then she stepped inside and shut the door behind her. “Okay, but we’ll
have to hurry. Do you know when they were taken?”
“Between ten thirty and eleven.” George read from the notes. “And there should be a picture of a gray-haired woman in a pink ball gown before or after it.”
Jenna turned the camera so the kids could see the screen. She hit an arrow beside the small window, scrolling through each photo. There were tons of pictures of people dancing. There were even more of the jazz band. After a few minutes they reached the photos of the Garden Society Show. Geraldine posed for a picture with Helene. The photographer had taken photos of guests and nearly every bouquet. They even saw the picture of Adam with his parents and his grandmother. He was making a silly face.
“There they are!” Nancy cried. They’d finally reached the photo of Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald. They were standing right in front of Mimsy’s roses. The bouquet was in the vase, just as Mimsy had described.
“Can you go back?” Bess asked.
Jenna went to the picture before. Sure enough, the roses were gone. At the edge of the picture they saw a man in a white jacket. He held the roses close to his side. “I can only see the side of his face, but I can zoom in on the jacket,” Jenna said. She hit a few buttons and a gold symbol came into view. It looked like initials, but it was too far away to be sure.
“Have you seen that jacket before? Do you know who it is?” Nancy asked.
Jenna shook her head. “I don’t.” She turned back to the party. A man was waving her outside. He looked annoyed. “I have to go now. I’m sorry. Good luck!” She opened the door and warm air rushed in. Nancy could tell it was getting late. The sun was setting in the sky.
“See!” Adam yelped. “I told you I’d be able to find her. Awesome.”
But Nancy was too busy thinking of that jacket to notice. “Who would wear that?” Nancy asked. “I don’t remember seeing anyone in it.”
“Me neither,” Bess said.
They strode down the long hallway, back toward the Garden Society Show. Adam trailed behind them, occasionally saying how “cool” it was that he’d been able to help, and how this was the most fun he’d ever had at a Garden Show. The Clue Crew looked at every waiter and guest they passed, but none of them was the man from the photo.
“Whoever that is, we need to find him,” Nancy said when they finally reached the Grand Ballroom. It was getting late, and there were even more people in the crowd than before. The clock in the front of the room read four fifteen. They had less than an hour until the show ended and everyone went home. Then there would be no witnesses, no suspects, and no clues to collect before the big gala.
“I know . . .” George trailed off. “But how?”
The Mystery Man
“At least you tried,” Mimsy said. “Thank you, girls. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.” She dabbed at her eyes with her lace handkerchief. A few feet away, the judges were moving through the Rose Garden. They stopped at Geraldine DeWitt’s vases. A man scribbled on his clipboard as he leaned closer.
Nancy glanced toward the exit. Her father, Carson Drew, was there, standing by the front doors of Le Chateau, looking at pictures from the previous year’s Garden Society Show. Her father worked as a lawyer and was still wearing his navy suit, even though it was five o’clock on a Saturday. He’d worked overtime before picking the girls up. “We’re not going to give up yet,” Nancy said. “You never know. Maybe we’ll figure this out before the gala. We still have a few hours left.”
Bess rested her hands on her cheeks. “But we’ve searched everywhere,” she said. “I haven’t seen anyone with that jacket. No one remembered seeing a man who fit that description.”
Nancy shrugged. She knew her friends were right. They had searched the Grand Ballroom for the last half hour and found nothing. They’d talked to as many people as they could, asking if they’d seen the man from the picture. They’d even described the white jacket with the gold symbol on the back. Nancy knew it was time to go home, but she wasn’t ready to give up.
“Maybe there’s a clue we missed,” she said. She looked at the vase and the bouquets on either side of it. There was nothing unusual underneath the table or behind it.
Just then Mr. Drew strode over to them. He’d been waiting by the exit for nearly fifteen minutes. “Dad, can we please have a little more time?” Nancy asked. She held up one finger, as if to say just one more minute? “We’re so close to figuring this out. Right, Miss Bouret?”
Mimsy wiped her nose with her handkerchief. “You’ve done terrific work, but I have to get back to my house and get ready for the gala. I guess I’ll have to wait for another show. Maybe with your help, the blooms will be just as impressive next year.”
Mr. Drew rested his hand on Mimsy’s arm, trying to make her feel better. “I’m terribly sorry, Mimsy,” he said. “I wish we could’ve helped more. What kind of person would do this?”
Nancy glanced sideways at Bess and George. They knew exactly what kind of person would do this: a white-jacket-wearing, brown-haired man with shiny black shoes. The only trouble was finding him.
Mimsy leaned down to hug Nancy. “Thank you for being my guests. You put the ‘important’ in ‘very important people.’ I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.” She gave a hug to Bess, then George.
“Thanks for inviting us,” Bess said sadly, before heading to the door.
As the three girls walked out, they turned one last time to look at Mimsy. She said good-bye to a few of her friends, then collected her empty vase. She kept staring at it as she headed out a side door toward the parking lot.
“I just don’t understand,” Bess said. “Our suspect has to be somewhere. How could someone just vanish like that?”
She grabbed a cookie from the plate. Even after hours of eating piles and piles of desserts, Bess was still in the mood for Hannah’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. Hannah knew how to make them just right, so they were crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside.
George reviewed the notes. “Was it possible the jacket was a disguise?” she asked Bess and Nancy, who sat across from her at Nancy’s kitchen table. Mr. Drew had dropped them off at the house, then returned to work. It was already six thirty. There were less than two hours left until the gala started, and they were no closer to solving the mystery.
“It might’ve been. Maybe we could find out where he got the disguise from,” Nancy said. “Even that would be helpful.”
Behind them, Hannah moved around the Drews’ kitchen, cleaning the last of the bowls and pans. She grabbed three spoons covered in cookie dough and handed them to the girls. “It sounds like a lot happened today at the Garden Society Show.”
“Tons. Someone took Mimsy’s rose bouquet,” Nancy said.
George flipped through more notes. She thought about Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald’s descriptions of the suspect. After all that, it seemed like neither one of them had been right. No one had said anything about a white jacket with a gold symbol on the back. “Is it possible he came from another part of Le Chateau? Maybe the person in the jacket wasn’t from our party at all.”
“But then why would he want the flowers?” Nancy asked. “Whoever it was knew Mimsy had the chance to win. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Bess licked the cookie dough off her spoon, distracted from the conversation. “This is so good, Hannah,” she said. “Your cookies are even better than Jean-Claude’s.”
“Jean-Claude?” Hannah asked. She furrowed her brow.
“He made all the desserts for the party. You probably know him from TV,” Bess explained. But Hannah still looked confused, like she’d never heard his name before.
“I’ll show you his website,” Bess said, getting up from the table. “You’ll see!”
As Bess went searching for Nancy’s laptop, Nancy and George huddled together. They flipped through the notes, looking for anything that might spark an idea. George studied the page labeled Motive for a second time. “Maybe we have the wrong motive. Maybe whoever took the roses didn’t k
now much about Mimsy.”
“We haven’t ruled out Deirdre and Suzie,” Nancy said. “They still could’ve had something to do with this. Maybe whoever this man is . . . maybe he was just helping—”
“Nancy! George!” Bess’s voice called out from the living room. “Come here! Quick!”
Nancy and George jumped from their seats. They knew Bess’s excitement could only mean one thing . . . she’d found another clue. “What is it?” George asked.
Bess was on Nancy’s laptop. Hannah sat next to her on the Drews’ couch, looking at the website Bess had pulled up. It said Jean-Claude in fancy script at the top. “Does this look familiar to you?” Bess asked, pointing to the side of the screen.
“I can’t believe it!” Nancy cried. On the side of the website was a gold circle with three letters inside. “JCP: Jean-Claude Pastries! It’s the same symbol that was on the back of the man’s jacket.”
“A clue?” Hannah asked. She looked around at the girls’ excited faces.
“A definite clue,” George agreed. “The man in the picture must have gotten the jacket from Jean-Claude . . . or he works for him.”
Nancy glanced at the clock. “Hannah, we need to go back to Le Chateau,” she said. “We have a chance of helping Mimsy find her bouquet. Maybe even before the party starts . . .”
The girls gave Hannah hopeful looks. “Oh, all right,” Hannah finally said. She never could resist helping the girls solve a mystery. “Let’s go. But if you don’t find anything by the party, we head back here . . . and you girls head to bed.” She grabbed her coat from the armchair and started toward the door.
“Deal,” Nancy said as she pulled her sweater on over her dress. As the three girls followed Hannah to the car, Nancy could think only of Jean-Claude and his assistant. As crazy as it seemed, she was starting to think one of them was to blame. . . .