Heart of Danger

  “And so when Senora Arguello left to return to the United States, I left with her, late one night, when all were asleep.” She smiled proudly. “I could travel easily across the border, for my birth certificate proves that I am an American citizen!”

  “I understand,” Nancy said, her heart full of sympathy for the young woman who had narrowly escaped marriage to a man she didn’t love. “But why didn’t you reveal yourself to your father when you arrived at Casa del Alamo?”

  “I meant to,” Catarina said. Her smile became a little crooked. “But I learned that my father had unexpectedly taken a new wife, who had a son.

  “At first they all seemed very happy together, and the time did not seem right for my father to learn that he had a daughter, as well as a new son. And then after a while, I began to worry that his new wife and her son did not have a real love for him, and I thought it best to wait a little while longer.”

  “So you watched.”

  “Yes. I waited and I watched.” Catarina’s words were measured. “And I learned that my father was becoming very unhappy with his new wife. I learned that she did not love her husband and that her son wished him dead.”

  “Wished him dead!” Nancy exclaimed. “So Mark has been poisoning Mr. Reigert?”

  “Sí,” Mrs. Arguello replied. She stood up and began to pace back and forth. “That is why we have come to talk to you. The senor is in very great danger and must be warned. We believe that he will accept the truth about this poisoning if it comes from you.”

  “And what is the truth?” Nancy asked, looking at them closely. “What have you seen?”

  Catarina clenched her hands into fists at her sides. “Last night, during the party, I saw Mark put something on the dinner plate that Senora Arguello had prepared for my father. It was a white powder. At first I did not know what he was doing, but when my father was taken ill after eating, I realized that Mark has been causing his stomach attacks.”

  She took a deep breath. “While Mark was at breakfast this morning, I went to his room and searched it. I found this, hidden behind a picture frame.” Gingerly, she held out a small glass bottle that bore an aspirin label. But instead of aspirin tablets, the bottle contained a white powder. The bottle was wrapped in a handkerchief.

  “This is what I saw him putting on the food, and it is the same bottle. I am sure that it is poison.”

  Nancy took the bottle, holding it so as not to disturb any fingerprints. “It could be poison,” she said thoughtfully. “But we can’t be sure until it’s tested. The nearest forensics lab must be in—”

  But Nancy didn’t get to finish her sentence. At that moment the oak door at the top of the stairs swung open and then closed again. Heavy footsteps came down the stairs.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  NANCY THRUST THE bottle into her shirt pocket and held her breath as the footsteps moved down the steps.

  “Well, have you told her yet?” a voice demanded from the shadows. It was Gene Newsom!

  “Sí,” Mrs. Arguello said. “We have told her. Or rather,” she added, “the senorita guessed before we could tell her. She has a very good mind, this one.”

  Gene came into the light. “Were you surprised?” he asked. He put his arm around Catarina’s shoulders and looked down at her lovingly. “Don’t you think Mr. Reigert will be proud of his beautiful daughter?”

  Nancy let out her breath explosively. “So, you’re involved in this too!” Suddenly she understood—Gene was in love with Catarina!

  The laugh lines crinkled at the corners of Gene’s eyes. “Before she went to Mexico, Mrs. Arguello took me into her confidence. But I must say, I wasn’t expecting her to bring back someone like Catarina.” He hugged her tightly. “As soon as she’s told her father who she is, I’m going to marry her.”

  “And this time,” Nancy said to Catarina, “I suppose you’ll consent.”

  Catarina laughed warmly. “I consent,” she said, “if my father agrees.”

  Gene’s grin nearly split his face. “And we’re both sure that he won’t mind,” he said. “In fact, he’ll probably be even happier than we are, if that’s possible.” He turned to Nancy. “And now I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “For me?” Nancy asked.

  “Yes. There’s this guy waiting outside. He says he’s a friend of yours. Says he just happened to be passing through and thought he’d stop and say hello.”

  Nancy’s heart jumped up into her mouth. “Is he tall and dark?” she asked.

  Gene laughed. “That’s him. Says his name is Ned Nickerson.”

  Nancy took the steps two at a time and threw open the door. Ned was waiting in the yard, and she motioned eagerly for him to come into the cellar. He looked around to be sure that no one was watching, then followed her down the steps, grinning. At the foot of the steps, he put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her carefully.

  “You’re all in one piece?” he asked worriedly. “You’re okay?”

  “I’m a hundred percent better right now,” Nancy said, unable to take her eyes from his face. “Now that you’re here.”

  Ned looked at Gene and the others. “Is it okay to talk?” he asked.

  “It’s okay,” Nancy assured him. She briefed him on what she had learned from Catarina and Mrs. Arguello.

  “And I’ve got news for you too,” Ned said. “Just before I left, my uncle remembered where he had heard the name Jonelle. Turns out that she and Mark were involved in a scam in Houston a couple of years ago. They took a widow for every penny she had, and they got away before they were found out. And what’s more, Jonelle and Mark aren’t even related!”

  “Not related!” Catarina gasped.

  “I think their conning days are about to come to an end,” Nancy assured her. “What we have to do now is discover what’s in this bottle.” She turned to Gene. “Where’s the nearest forensics lab?”

  “In San Antonio, I think,” Gene said. “There’s a private airport in Rio Hondo, and I have a pilot’s license. I could fly the bottle to the lab this afternoon and be back by dinnertime.”

  “Great!” Nancy replied. She thought for a moment. If what Catarina had found was poison, and if Mark was responsible for the attempts on Mr. Reigert’s life, it was very likely that he was the one who had tried to kill Nancy too—deliberately throwing suspicion on Joe Bob. “I suspect that Mark is behind a great many things that have happened since I came to Casa del Alamo,” she said.

  “Like saddling Bad Guy for you to ride?” Gene asked.

  Ned frowned. “And firing the gun at you? That was what worried me most and made me decide to come.”

  “Right,” Nancy said. “And when that didn’t work, he dressed up in a clown suit and pushed me off the fence into the pen at the rodeo.”

  Gene’s face turned red with embarrassment. “I wonder what you thought of me that night,” he said. “I didn’t jump into the pen after you because—well, because I’m bull-shy.”

  “Bull-shy?”

  Catarina stroked his arm. “Gene was thrown last year at the rodeo. He still has trouble getting close to bulls.”

  Nancy laughed. “I did wonder about it,” she admitted. “In fact, for a little while you were one of my suspects.” She turned to Ned. “Mark was probably the one who smacked me on the head in the stable that night. I thought it was Joe Bob, but he had just put on Joe Bob’s coat to make me suspect him.”

  “So that’s why you were suspicious of Joe Bob,” Gene said thoughtfully. He looked at Nancy, his eyes narrowing. “Just who are you, Nancy Driscoll? And what are you doing here?”

  Ned chuckled. “Don’t you think it’s time you told them, Nancy?”

  Nancy looked from one to the other. It probably was time to let them in on the deception, now that she was certain they didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping. They might even know something that would help her.

  “The truth is,” Nancy said, “that I’m a private detective. My name is Nancy Drew
.”

  “A private detective!” Catarina turned pale.

  “Mr. Reigert contacted me because he had received a ransom note from someone who claimed to have kidnapped his daughter,” Nancy said.

  “Ransom notes!” Gene exclaimed.

  Catarina laughed. “But that’s ridiculous! I’m right here! There’s no kidnapping!”

  “That’s right,” Ned said. “But Mr. Reigert couldn’t have known that. As far as he knew, his daughter really was being held captive.”

  “Yes,” Nancy agreed. “In fact,” she added, “he received some interesting evidence along with the notes. A piece of cloth that he recognized as a fragment of the dress Catarina was wearing the day she and her mother left, and a little shoe with a silver bell tied to the lace.”

  “My shoe!” Catarina wailed. “And a piece of my dress! Someone must have stolen them from the attic, from the box where I put them!”

  “The box?” Nancy asked. “You mean, those things belonged to you?”

  “Yes. I brought some mementos here from Mexico. Perhaps it was sentimental, but I put them in an old box in the attic, where some of my mother’s things were stored. It seemed to me that they all belonged together.”

  “So it’s possible,” Ned said thoughtfully, “that someone opened the box and found the cloth and the shoes. But how would that person know they belonged to you?”

  “Easily,” Nancy said. She told the others about the article and picture that had appeared in the Rio Hondo paper after the crash. “It’s one of the photographs on the videotape!” she added.

  “The videotape?” Gene asked, shaking his head. “What videotape?”

  “In addition to the ransom notes, Mr. Reigert received a videotape. It showed a girl claiming to be Catarina, bound to a chair. It also showed two photographs, the one from the newspaper and another taken on the Reigerts’ wedding day. Your father says it was stolen from his room.”

  “He is right,” Mrs. Arguello said, regarding Nancy calmly. “I know who took it.”

  Nancy nodded. “It was Mrs. Reigert, wasn’t it?”

  “Sí. I met her in the hall, coming out of the room with the photograph. She hid it behind her back, but I knew what it was because I had seen it many times before.”

  “So Mrs. Reigert is in on this phony kidnapping plot?” Ned asked. “But what did she hope to get out of it? I mean, she didn’t really have the girl.”

  “Obviously,” Nancy answered, “she hoped to get the ransom money. Half a million dollars in cash. That kind of immediate payoff would be much better than a large inheritance at some indefinite time in the future, wouldn’t you say?”

  Gene whistled and Catarina’s eyes widened. Even the impassive Mrs. Arguello looked startled.

  “It must have been Mrs. Reigert,” Nancy continued, “who found the mementos in the box in the attic—perhaps quite by accident. Maybe that was what gave her the idea for the ransom scheme. Or maybe they just helped her scheme along. Anyway, it seems to have worked, at least so far.

  “Late last night your father’s banker delivered half a million dollars to him. But after he went to sleep, someone broke into his room and stole the money.”

  Catarina buried her face in her hands. “My poor father!” she moaned. “And he brought the money here for me! Because he loved me and wanted me with him!”

  Nancy smiled gently. “I have a feeling that if we work fast, we’ll be able to get that money back,” she said. “Things are beginning to fall into place.” She paused for a moment, “I can see how most of this was done,” she said slowly, “and why. But there are a few things I just can’t fit together.”

  “What?” Ned asked.

  “That crazy spotted deer I saw,” Nancy said. “And the kangaroo you saw, Gene. And the stock truck with no headlights.”

  “Stock truck?”

  “Yes. Late last night I was nearly run down by a stock truck. It was running without lights, heading for the main road.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” Gene protested. “We don’t ship stock at night. If somebody brought any cattle in here, or took any out, I’d know about it in a minute.”

  “Smuggling!” Nancy exclaimed suddenly.

  “What?” Gene demanded. “Smuggling? What are you talking about?”

  “I think I know what’s going on,” Nancy exclaimed, snapping her fingers. “Even better, I think I know how to find out for sure. Come on, Gene! You’re flying a bottle to San Antonio. And Ned and I are taking a horseback ride to explore a certain box canyon!”

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  NANCY HAD TAKEN Ned on a quick tour of the ranch and to meet Mr. Reigert, introducing him simply as a friend who had helped her on several other cases. Mr. Reigert, who was on his way to see the doctor in Rio Hondo, had only grunted a greeting. When Nancy had introduced Ned to Mrs. Reigert, she had been just as unfriendly.

  When Nancy and Ned went out to the corral to saddle a couple of horses for their ride, they found Gene just climbing into the truck to leave for Rio Hondo. “It’s noon now,” he told Nancy. “I can be in San Antonio by two. The lab should be able to complete the tests in an hour. With luck, I ought to be back here by six—just before dinner.”

  Gene patted the bottle in his pocket. “I just hope the lab can tell us something definite,” he said.

  “Let’s all meet in Mr. Reigert’s office when you get back,” Nancy suggested. “We’ve got to plan our strategy for the evening.” She glanced at Ned. “I’ve already got some ideas, but we’ll try to have something worked out by the time you get back.”

  Gene grinned at the two of them after he slammed the door of the pickup. “I bet you will,” he said and drove off.

  Instead of riding down through the lower canyon, as she had done earlier, Nancy and Ned guided their horses up the treacherous trail to the top of the limestone bluff. Nancy’s palomino picked her way nervously through the rocks, staying away from the precipitous drop straight down to the right. Once or twice Nancy held her breath as large rocks, dislodged by the horses, tumbled down to the bottom of the cliff, several hundred feet below, but Ned rode confidently ahead.

  It was nearly one-thirty by the time they reached the top of the bluff. They dropped their reins over the horses’ ears to tether them while they made their way to the edge of the bluff to look over the box canyon.

  Hidden from view in a clump of mesquite, Nancy knelt and put her binoculars to her eyes, peering into the canyon. She searched fruitlessly for a few minutes. There seemed to be nothing but willows and mesquite down there, growing around a small spring that opened into a muddy waterhole in the middle of the canyon. She could see a two-strand electric fence stretched across the front of the canyon. If anything was in there, it was penned in securely.

  After a minute Ned touched her arm. “Look,” he said, pointing toward the back of the canyon.

  Then she saw what she was looking for. A herd of large brown deer, several with massive antlers—and all with white splotches! Most were lying peacefully in the high grass, while some stood under the willows, their mottled brown fur blending in beautifully with the dappled shade of the trees.

  Nancy studied the deer for a few minutes and then swung her binoculars around the canyon, continuing her search. Suddenly, moving across the open grass, she saw a kangaroo! Impossibly, incredibly, unmistakably—a large brown kangaroo with muscular hind legs and a thick tail, moving through the tall grasses with short, powerful hops.

  Nancy handed the binoculars to Ned and wiped the sweat out of her eyes. With those improbable deer and that out-of-place kangaroo down there, the canyon looked like a zoo. A refuge for exotic animals. At that moment Nancy remembered the conversation she had overheard between Mark and his “mother.” Exotic animals! Smuggling!

  “I’ve got it!” she exclaimed. “I know what Mark has been up to!”

  “Yeah,” Ned said. “It looks like he’s got his own private exotic game reserve down there, doesn’t it? I would
n’t be a bit surprised if those are endangered species.”

  “Right,” Nancy said. “Probably so rare that he can’t buy or sell them outright and has to smuggle them into the country.”

  “You know, that looks very much like a Sika deer to me,” Ned replied, studying the herd of animals through the binoculars.

  “Sika deer?”

  “Sometimes you see them in zoos. They’re extremely rare animals. I think they’re from Formosa.”

  Nancy laughed a little. “It looks like Mark has found a way to go into the exotic game business, even without Mr. Reigert’s permission.”

  After a little while Nancy and Ned climbed back on their horses and slowly returned to the ranch. Nancy was deep in thought. All of the pieces were definitely falling into place—but the only problem was proving what she knew.

  There was nothing specific to link Mark to the exotic animals penned in the box canyon, and no proof that Mrs. Reigert was the one who had taken the money out of the safe the night before, or that she had sent the ransom notes. The attempts on Nancy’s life could just as easily have been accidents. And so far, there was only Catarina’s word that the bottle came from Mark’s room.

  Unless they could get confessions out of Mrs. Reigert and her “son,” there didn’t seem to be much chance that they would ever stand trial for their crimes.

  Still, there might be a way. . . . Nancy smiled as a scheme began to form in her mind. It was a long shot, and it would require luck and careful planning, but it just might work.

  “Hey, Ned,” she said, riding up close to him. “What do you think about this?” And she told him her idea.

  • • •

  It was nearly three in the afternoon when Nancy and Ned got back to the ranch. They rode into the corral just as Mr. Reigert, looking tired and stooped, was returning from his trip to Rio Hondo to see the doctor. Ned took the horses to the stable to rub them down while Nancy followed Mr. Reigert to his room. He shut the door behind them and sat heavily on the edge of the bed.