Trail of Lies

  Now, why didn’t anyone mention to me that Steve worked at his father’s company? Nancy thought. She skimmed through his file. Steve had worked in accounting, like Amanda. He had quit without notice six weeks ago. According to the books, he had resigned, but no reason was given.

  Was there any significance in the date? Or in the fact that Steve and Amanda had worked together? Nancy resolved to question Amanda as soon as she was done with the books.

  Craig’s records appeared to be in order. He normally worked four days a week, as he’d said, with an occasional night or two of overtime. Nothing unusual there.

  Finally, Nancy checked Amanda’s salary. She earned a modest amount. It was enough to afford a nice apartment if she had a roommate, but Nancy could see no way Amanda’s salary could stretch to afford two fur coats and a huge gold ring.

  Unless Amanda had another source of income.

  Suddenly Nancy was very interested in the bookkeeper. Amanda’s evident alarm when Nancy had asked to see the books, combined with her obviously extravagant lifestyle, suggested that she was up to something. Was it something illegal? Something to do with smuggling ivory aboard her employer’s ships?

  Yes, it was time to talk to Amanda.

  Nancy walked back to Amanda’s cubicle, but it was empty. The fox jacket was no longer hanging on its hook. “You just missed her,” the girl across the aisle called. “If you hurry, you might catch her at the elevator.”

  Nancy grabbed her coat and sprinted out of the office. Amanda wasn’t in the hallway. Nancy saw that the elevator was way up at the top floor. There had to be a stairway. She looked down the hallway and saw a red exit sign at the far end.

  Nancy ran, pushed open the door, and started down the stairs. Her boots clattered on the cement and echoed in the stairwell.

  Suddenly a tremendous force hit her from behind, pushing her off balance. Her arms flailed wildly, but it was no use.

  In a moment, she was tumbling down the stairs head over heels!

  Chapter

  Eight

  JUST BEFORE SHE HIT the cement landing, Nancy twisted her body sideways, tucked her head, and flung her arms out to absorb the shock.

  She landed with a thud and lay there for a moment, stunned. Then, gingerly, she moved her arms and legs. Nothing seemed to be broken.

  Groaning slightly, she reached up and felt her head. It was still there. She was thankful she’d learned how to fall properly in her martial arts classes. Though she was going to be badly bruised, she had no serious injuries.

  Nancy stood up and gazed at the stairwell. She saw no one, but there was no doubt in her mind that someone had pushed her.

  Amanda knew I was here, Nancy thought. She shivered. Would Amanda have the strength—or the nerve—to push someone down the stairs? It was impossible to say.

  Nancy took a few moments to catch her breath and smooth her clothes. Then she went back to the Wilcox Shipping offices. There she spotted two familiar faces by the receptionist’s desk.

  “John, Craig! I didn’t know you were going to be here!” Nancy exclaimed.

  Craig greeted her. “There was a mix-up with my overtime pay on Friday, so Mr. Wilcox said he’d have another check ready for me this morning.” He grinned. “You know what it’s like when you’ve spent the check before you get it.”

  “I wish I’d known you were coming here, Craig,” John Tilden put in. “You could have saved me a trip. Mr. Wilcox asked me to bring some papers back to the house.”

  “Has anyone seen Amanda Spear?” Nancy asked.

  Both Craig and John shook their heads.

  Nancy stuck her head into Amanda’s cubicle. It was just the way she’d left it a few minutes earlier, and there was no sign of the bookkeeper.

  “Want a ride back to the house?” Craig offered.

  Nancy shook her head. “I’ve got the other car here,” she explained. “And I still have a couple of errands to run.”

  She said goodbye to the two men, then went to the hall and pushed the button for the elevator. One trip down the stairs was enough for the day!

  When she stepped outside, Nancy looked for a pay phone. She wanted to call her father, to see if he knew where Henry was. Then she planned to go to the Musk Ox to search the shipment of paperback books.

  “Wait up, Nancy!” a voice called.

  Nancy turned. Lindsay Dunning was a few yards away, waving and hurrying in Nancy’s direction.

  “Brrr,” Lindsay said, shivering. “I’ve lived here since I was little, and the cold still gets to me. Want to have a cup of cocoa? The coffee shop here makes the best in the city.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Nancy was glad for the chance to talk to Lindsay.

  The two girls went inside and sat at a table. “Are you coming to the sled-dog trials tomorrow?” Lindsay asked when the waitress set two cups of steaming cocoa in front of them.

  “Absolutely,” Nancy promised. “I can’t wait. From what George said, it’s almost as exciting as a real race.”

  Lindsay took a sip of her cocoa. “George looks like she’s a dogsledding convert.”

  “She’s not the only one,” Nancy admitted, her blue eyes sparkling. “Steve let me take the team on a short run, and it was great. You were right—one try and you’re hooked.”

  Nancy scooped the whipped cream off the top of her cocoa and ate it. This was her opportunity to turn the conversation to Amanda.

  “It’s strange that only Amanda seems immune to dogsledding fever.”

  Lindsay frowned and sipped her cocoa again. “She was never a big fan, but it’s only since she and Steve broke up that she seems to hate it.”

  “Was that a long time ago?”

  Lindsay shook her head. “Maybe five or six weeks ago. It was sudden—Amanda had no idea it was going to happen.”

  Six weeks, Nancy thought. It had also been six weeks since Steve had quit his job at Wilcox Shipping.

  “Amanda and Steve used to work together, didn’t they?” she asked.

  “That’s right,” Lindsay told her. “Amanda loved it, because she got to see Steve every day.”

  “I wonder why he quit his job. Do you know?”

  “No.” Lindsay shook her head. “He never said. But I think maybe something happened. He’s been pretty unpleasant ever since. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

  Hmm. So, six weeks ago, something had happened to make Steve quit his job, break up with his girlfriend, and become generally bad-tempered. Well, at least that told Nancy she had been right to disagree with Craig. Whatever was wrong with Steve, it had little to do with his father’s impending legal troubles.

  Nancy glanced at her watch. “I was hoping to meet Amanda for lunch, but she left before I could ask her. Do you have any idea where she usually goes at lunchtime?”

  Lindsay shrugged. “Sorry. I’m not normally in town for lunch. This time of year, training the dogs is pretty much a full-time job. I just came in today to do some shopping.”

  When they’d finished their cocoa, the two girls paid the waitress and walked outside. Nancy’s eye caught the colorful sign of a craft store across the street.

  “Is that a good shop?” Nancy asked. The store was called the Totem Pole.

  “If you want real Alaskan crafts, it’s the best,” Lindsay told her.

  “I wanted a Christmas present for my friend Bess,” Nancy explained. “I thought it would be nice to give her something from Alaska.”

  Lindsay needed no more encouragement. “I love to shop. Let’s go!” she said, grinning at Nancy. During the next break in traffic, they darted across the street.

  The windows of the Totem Pole were filled with displays of gold-nugget jewelry, beaded mukluks, painted wooden masks, and soap-stone carvings. It was the shelves of carved ivory inside the shop that drew Nancy’s attention, however.

  The girls went inside. “May I look at some of these?” Nancy asked the shopkeeper, pointing at the figurines.

  The shopkeeper pulled out a tray
of carvings. “This is a particularly nice piece,” she said, holding up a moose for Nancy’s consideration.

  The artist had done a superb job of capturing the awkward majesty of the moose, but it wasn’t the piece Nancy wanted. She looked at the tray again, as though considering. Then she pointed to one statue.

  “I’d like to see that one,” she said. It was a brown bear standing on its hind legs. If Nancy wasn’t mistaken, it was identical to the one she’d found on the Musk Ox.

  “I prefer the moose myself, but this is a nice piece,” the shopkeeper said as she handed the bear to Nancy. “We just got it about a month ago.”

  Nancy held the small bear in her hand, touching the intricate carving. The weight was about the same as the one on the Musk Ox, and the carving looked identical. She knew the bear couldn’t have come from the Musk Ox, because nothing had been unloaded from the ship.

  But what if it wasn’t the first time ivory had been brought into Alaska on one of the Wilcox ships? The bear could have been part of an earlier smuggled shipment.

  “Turn it over,” the shopkeeper urged Nancy. “See the label with the state map on it? That’s your assurance that it’s a genuine Alaskan handicraft. No one except Alaskan artisans can use it.”

  It was the same label Nancy had seen on the bears in the Musk Ox. Whoever was smuggling in the ivory was also counterfeiting the Alaska label.

  Nancy looked at the other ivory pieces for a few minutes longer, pretending to be considering them. Then she pointed to the bear. “I’ll take that one,” she said.

  Nancy handed the storekeeper some money. While they waited for her to ring up the sale, Lindsay remarked, “I liked the moose better, too. There was something—I don’t know—more genuine about it, I thought.”

  You don’t know how right you might be, Lindsay! Nancy was thinking. But she just smiled and said nothing.

  The girls thrust their hands into their mittens as they left the store. “Where next?” Lindsay asked.

  Nancy looked down the street, considering the signs. She wanted to find another craft store to see whether it had the same bears for sale. There didn’t appear to be another nearby, though.

  She looked idly at the stores across the street, and then did a double take. Amanda was coming out of a jewelry store. There was no mistaking the fox jacket or the long blond hair that streamed over it.

  “Amanda!” Nancy cried.

  The girl swiveled at the sound of Nancy’s voice. For a second she stared into Nancy’s eyes. Then she turned abruptly and started walking in the other direction.

  “Amanda!” Nancy called again.

  Amanda’s step quickened.

  “She must not have seen us,” Lindsay said, looking across the street at her friend. But Nancy knew that wasn’t true. Amanda had seen her and deliberately gone the other way.

  The traffic light turned to green, and a stream of cars filled the street. There was no break in the traffic and no way Nancy could run across the street.

  “Wait!” she called.

  But Amanda didn’t wait. She disappeared through the revolving door of a large building half a block away.

  “Let’s go!”

  Lindsay was one step behind Nancy as traffic stopped. The two girls raced across the street and down the sidewalk to the building where they’d last seen Amanda. They pushed the revolving door and found themselves in the lobby of an apartment building.

  There was no sign of Amanda.

  “Is this where Amanda lives?” Nancy asked.

  Lindsay’s expression was thoroughly puzzled. “No, her apartment’s out near Fort Richardson.”

  “Can I help you ladies?” a uniformed guard asked.

  “We’re looking for a friend,” Nancy explained. “A pretty girl with blond hair and a silver fox jacket.”

  The guard shook his head. “Haven’t seen her.”

  “But we saw her come in this door,” Lindsay insisted.

  “I would have remembered someone like that,” the guard said, shrugging. “Sorry. Maybe she went into another building.”

  Nancy’s lips tightened in frustration. She was positive now that Amanda was hiding something from her. At that moment, the girl was definitely at the top of Nancy’s suspect list. But how was she going to get to the truth, when her prime suspect had just vanished into thin air?

  Chapter

  Nine

  THAT’S WEIRD,” Lindsay said. The two girls went back out to the street. “I wonder where Amanda could have gone?”

  “Maybe the guard was busy and just missed seeing her,” Nancy suggested casually.

  “Maybe.” Lindsay looked doubtful. “Well, I’d better get my errands done. I want to get home and put in a practice run before it gets dark.”

  “Okay. Thanks for taking me crafts shopping. I’ll see you soon,” Nancy said. She waved and headed down the street.

  As soon as Nancy had turned a corner and was out of Lindsay’s sight, she ducked into a large office building. She had to find a pay phone.

  Nancy dialed the number of the Wilcox house and asked for her father. A moment later he came on the line.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said. “I’m still downtown. Things are taking a little longer than I thought.” She didn’t tell her father about being pushed down the stairs—it would only upset him. “Do you know where Mr. Wilcox is? I need to talk to him.”

  “Funny you should ask,” Nancy’s father replied grimly. “I just got off the phone with him. The police asked him to come in for questioning, and it looks like he’ll be there all day. He asked me to join him.”

  Nancy’s heart sank. Did this mean the police had new evidence? “I’ll meet you there, if that’s okay,” she told her father. She got directions to the police headquarters, then said goodbye.

  Since Carson would not reach the city for some time, Nancy retraced her steps and entered the jewelry store she’d seen Amanda leave. If she was lucky, she could resolve two issues while she was there.

  She looked around the store. As she had guessed from its fancy sign and display windows, it was an exclusive shop. The pieces of jewelry shown in the glass cases were obviously very expensive.

  “A friend suggested I come here,” Nancy told the manager, who introduced himself as Mr. Feder. “Her name is Amanda Spear.”

  Mr. Feder nodded. “Ah yes, Miss Spear. She was here earlier this morning.”

  Good. Now Nancy had confirmation that Amanda had indeed been in the expensive shop.

  She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out the ivory bear. “I just bought this, and I wondered if you could check it for me. I want to be sure it’s genuine walrus ivory.”

  Mr. Feder fitted his jeweler’s glass to his eye and looked carefully at the small figurine. He turned it over, gazed at the Alaskan map and frowned. Then he laid the ivory on the counter and looked at Nancy.

  “I don’t understand it,” he said. “The seal should be used only on Alaskan products, but this is clearly an import.”

  “How can you tell?” Nancy asked.

  Mr. Feder picked up the bear again. “Do you see these wavy, pinkish lines in the ivory? That tells us it’s from an elephant, not a walrus. We don’t use anything but walrus ivory in Alaska. In fact, it’s illegal to import the other kind. Young lady, this bear is contraband!”

  Nancy thanked Mr. Feder, then hurried back across the street to the Totem Pole. The woman who had sold her the ivory bear had gone to lunch, so Nancy talked to the manager.

  “I just bought this for a friend,” she explained, holding out the bear. “I wanted to ask something about how it was made. Did you buy it directly from the artist?”

  The woman shook her head. “We used to, but now our business has grown, so we have a supplier. A middleman, you might say. So far, he’s been able to get us everything we want.”

  “Can you tell me the name of your supplier?”

  “Sure.” The manager flipped open a file of business cards and pulled one out. Nancy noted the name and
address, then thanked the woman for her help.

  As she walked back into the frigid Alaskan air, Nancy was thoughtful. The manager of the Totem Pole hadn’t seemed to know her supplier was providing illegal ivory. The Totem Pole was probably an innocent victim of the smugglers.

  Nancy found another pay phone and dialed the number of the Wilcox Shipping offices. She asked for Amanda.

  “Amanda is out for the afternoon,” the receptionist said blandly. Nancy raised her eyebrows. It seemed Amanda was lying low.

  Nancy flipped open the telephone book and found Amanda’s home phone number. She dialed and let it ring, but there was no answer.

  It was time to meet her father at the police station. Since the address she had been given was only a few blocks from the Totem Pole, Nancy walked there. She found her father and Henry Wilcox waiting in a small conference room.

  “Detective Chandler is taking a phone call. He’ll be here in a minute. What have you found out?” Henry asked eagerly.

  “I think the ivory is being loaded onto your ships in Seattle,” Nancy told him, explaining that both the beans and the cookies had been loaded there. “The only other cargo that came from Seattle was a bunch of paperback books. I’d like to check them before they’re unloaded.”

  Henry shook his head. “You’re too late. The police let us unload the ship this morning.”

  Undaunted, Nancy pulled her pad from her shoulder bag. “I’ve got the names of the stores where the cartons are going. Maybe we can check there. And I’ve also found out that some of the ivory carvings sold in the Totem Pole are illegal.”

  “Great,” Carson said. “We can tell Chandler about it when he returns.”

  “Your father said you wanted to ask me some questions,” Henry told Nancy. “You know I’ll do whatever I can to help.” He heaved a gloomy sigh.

  Nancy’s blue eyes were bright with compassion. “I know you will. First of all, I wondered whether you had told any of your employees about the smuggling charges.” She didn’t think he had, but she knew she should confirm this before she tracked Amanda down for questioning.