A Talent for Murder

  • • •

  Nancy slept poorly and woke up while it was still dark. The illuminated dial of her clock read five o’clock. She heard voices downstairs—Ned and Evan. She pulled on jeans, a sweater, and running shoes and went down.

  Evan looked up from the kitchen table and put a finger to his lips. “Shh,” he whispered. “We’re letting Laurel sleep in.”

  Nancy thought that Evan could have used several hours of sleep himself. His eyes were red-rimmed and had dark circles underneath them.

  “Why are you up so early?” Nancy asked Evan.

  “I’m going out to the location,” Evan explained. “Jane was supposed to go, but with the fire damage she wants to stay at the agency.”

  “Mind if I come along?” Nancy asked.

  “No problem,” Evan said.

  “Is it all right with you, Ned?” she asked.

  Although Ned didn’t seem thrilled by the idea, he shrugged and said, “Why not?” Glancing over at Nancy, his eyes narrowed and he reached out to touch her forehead. “What happened to you?”

  Nancy frowned. “I ran into Sean McKearn last night.” With worried looks, Ned and Evan heard her story.

  “I feel awful about having gotten you mixed up in this,” Evan said.

  “Don’t feel bad,” she assured him. “It’s part of what I do. I’ve learned to live with it.”

  “I should have been there!” Ned insisted.

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Nancy urged. “There was no reason to expect it to happen.”

  Sensing that the couple needed privacy, Evan headed out to the garage, saying, “I’ll warm up the car.”

  Looking at Nancy, Ned shook his head, obviously upset. “You say you’re worried about being closed out of my life,” he told her. “How do you think I feel when you’re wrapped up in a case and I’m closed out? I worry about you. I care about you, Nan.”

  Surprised by Ned’s words, Nancy reached out and squeezed his hand. “I care about you, too,” she said. “We’ll work this out, I know we will.”

  • • •

  In the sparse predawn traffic, the drive to the production company took only fifteen minutes. It was still dark when Evan parked. Two minivans were waiting, their motors idling.

  Freddy got out of one and walked over to them. “Good morning. We’re almost ready to go.”

  “I’m going to take Jane’s place at the shoot, if that’s all right,” Evan said.

  “Sure,” Freddy said. “But Ned should go in the van, so we can go over the plans for the day.”

  “Okay,” Ned said, getting out of the car. On the drive over, Ned had been preoccupied and silent. Now he turned to Nancy with a troubled expression and seemed about to say something. But he only sighed and said, “See you later.”

  Nancy watched him walk away. As he got in the van, she heard Amanda call out, “Hey, Tex!”

  The sun was coming up as Evan crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. They drove through Marin County and then headed east.

  Nancy looked at Evan. “Don’t answer this question if it puts you in an awkward position.”

  The agent gave her a sidelong, troubled glance. “Do you suspect Jane of something?”

  “You’ll keep what I say in confidence?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But I can’t believe she’d do anything illegal. And Jane would never damage her agency. It’s been her life’s work.”

  “I know JZA is important to her,” Nancy said. “Would it be important enough for her to use desperate measures to save it from shutting down?”

  “I don’t know,” Evan said, shaking his head. “I can’t believe Jane would stoop so low.”

  Deciding to let the subject drop, Nancy watched the scenery for the rest of the trip.

  At eight o’clock they swung into a clearing off the road. “We’re here,” Evan said after the hour-long drive through vineyards and farms. The field was cluttered with vehicles, including a big tractor-trailer and a few smaller trucks. Cables, lights, and reflectors were being unloaded.

  Nancy got out, stretched, and looked around. They were in a meadow between rugged hills and rock formations. A helicopter sat in the grass, and farther from the road a huge expanse of gold and red nylon was spread on the ground—the balloon. Next to it was a giant wicker basket.

  Curious, Nancy walked over to look. Two big electric fans blew air into the mouth of the balloon. The top was already billowing sluggishly as it inflated. Two men hauled a piece of machinery into place at the balloon’s mouth. Nancy noticed a cylindrical fuel tank attached to the mechanism. The men adjusted its position, and one man gave a thumbs-up sign.

  “Better stand back,” said a voice nearby.

  Nancy turned to see a tall, athletic-looking blond woman next to her. Nancy stepped away from the balloon just as a long blue jet of flame roared out of the fuel tank.

  “You came with Evan Chandler, right?” the blonde asked. When Nancy introduced herself, the woman shook her hand. “I’m Peg Amarillo, with the ground crew. Ever see a balloon close up?”

  Nancy shook her head, fascinated.

  Peg pointed to the flame. “The burner is fastened under the mouth of the balloon, in the basket, which we call the gondola. It heats the air inside, and when the air is hot enough, up you go. If you want to go higher, a blast from the burner heats the air some more. If you want to go down, you let hot air out of a vent in the side by pulling a cord attached to the gondola, where the passengers ride. Simple.”

  “How do you turn?” Nancy asked.

  “You can’t,” Peg replied, grinning. “You go where the winds blow. If you don’t like where you’re going, you try to catch a breeze in another direction by going up or down. To get down real fast, there’s a rip panel in the top, fastened with Velcro. Yank that off and you’ll come down.”

  “Peg!” called one of the men working the burner. “Give us a hand here, will you?”

  “Sorry, duty calls,” Peg said, hurrying away.

  Nancy saw that breakfast had been laid out on a table. She picked up an orange and spotted Ned coming out of a trailer, where he had changed into his dude ranch outfit. Resisting an impulse to giggle, she grabbed another orange and joined him.

  “Care for some breakfast, cowboy?” she asked.

  “Thanks.” He looked down at his costume and scowled. “If any of the guys from my frat see me in this stupid getup, I’ll never live it down.”

  Nancy wanted to clear the air with Ned and hoped they had a few free minutes. “What were you trying to tell me before?”

  Ned looked deep into her eyes. “I—”

  “Ah, there you are!” A tall gangly man in a khaki fatigue jacket and bush hat appeared. Amanda walked beside him. “I’m Keith Bryant,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m directing this masterpiece. Nice meeting you, Ned.”

  “Same here.” Ned shook the offered hand. “Meet Nancy Drew, my girlfriend.”

  “Pleasure,” Keith said, smiling at Nancy. “We’ll do the balloon stuff first because the wind is right. Later we’ll shoot you picnicking in the meadow, drinking King Kola, naturally. For the balloon shots, the camera will be in a helicopter. I’ll coordinate it from the ground by radio. All you have to do is smile and wave and look like you’re having a blast. Any questions?”

  “Sounds easy,” Ned remarked.

  “You’ll get your shots in a flash,” Amanda promised. “Ned and I have an amazing chemistry.”

  “Okay,” Keith said. “Enjoy the ride, and we’ll do the work.”

  A woman with a clipboard ran up to them. “We’re all set, Keith.”

  Keith nodded. “Fantastic! Let’s do it.”

  They walked over to the balloon, which was now fully inflated, held down with ropes by the ground crew. It looked like a forty-foot-high red and gold teardrop. The pilot stood in the gondola. Ned climbed aboard and helped Amanda in.

  “Cast off!” the pilot called, and the ground crew let go of the ropes. The balloon rose slowly. Ned and Amanda
waved to the people below.

  Evan came up beside Nancy. “Some fun, huh?”

  She nodded, watching it float upward.

  By the time the helicopter took off, the balloon was about two hundred feet high.

  “Ned? Amanda? How are you doing?” Keith called into the radio.

  Ned’s voice crackled through the receiver. “This is awesome! The view is great, and there’s no noise. Everything is smooth as silk.”

  “Okay, stand by.” Keith looked up, shading his eyes with his hand. Then he called the camera operator in the helicopter. “Get that sheer rock wall to the east in your shot, okay?”

  “Can do,” came the reply.

  “Hold on,” said a voice over the radio, and Nancy realized it was the balloon pilot. “We’ve got a little problem.”

  Nancy looked up. The balloon was drifting toward the hills, and its gondola was swaying.

  “Hang on tight, you two!” the pilot called. “We have a strong wind here that’s taking us toward the hills too fast. We have to gain altitude and find a gentler breeze.”

  “Roger,” Keith replied, looking up anxiously.

  The balloon was now too far away for Nancy to make out the passengers.

  The pilot came on the radio, obvious tension in his voice. “Something’s wrong with the burner! It’s flamed out, and it won’t relight! We can’t get away from this wind! If we hit that bluff, it’ll collapse the balloon or tip the gondola!”

  Far above, the balloon rolled violently. On the radio, Nancy heard a scream of terror from Amanda as the gondola rocked back and forth.

  “Easy, I’ve got you!” Ned’s voice said. Nancy stared up, feeling helpless and horrified.

  The balloon was completely at the mercy of a powerful wind, and it was being blown right into a sheer escarpment of jagged rocks!

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  PEG SPOKE into her radio. “How about venting air and going lower?”

  “Too slow,” the pilot replied. “We’ll hit the rocks too soon.”

  “Then pull the rip panel!” Peg shouted.

  “No way,” the pilot’s voice crackled over the radio. “The terrain is too rocky for a safe hard landing. You’d better come and get us.”

  “Hang on—we’re coming!” Peg and two other crew members sprinted toward an all-terrain vehicle parked by the road.

  Nancy dashed along with them. “What will you do?” she asked Peg.

  “He’ll drop lines over the side, and we’ll grab on and pull them out of danger.” Peg and the others scrambled into the ATV. “Come on!” she urged Nancy. “We can use another hand.”

  Nancy jumped in, and the ATV roared to life and jolted toward the hills. As they bounced along, she clung to the door handle and focused on the balloon overhead. It had lost height but was closer to the jagged outcroppings.

  As Nancy watched, the gondola rocked, and Amanda’s scream was heard on Peg’s radio. A tiny figure was almost tossed over the side. It was Ned! Nancy held her breath as he caught hold of the rigging and hauled himself back in.

  The ground got steeper and rougher, but the ATV was closing in on the balloon. Suddenly they were at the foot of a slope too rugged even for a four-wheel-drive. Peg grabbed the radio.

  “We’re close!” she called. “Drop the lines!”

  Two ropes snaked out of the gondola and dropped to earth. Nancy and the crew scrambled upward on treacherous footing. One rope had landed just yards from Nancy. She was heading toward it when some loose rock gave way under her and she fell. She got up, ignoring the pain of a bruised knee, but she had lost sight of the rope!

  She was flat against a rock face, feet braced on a ledge. To her left, Peg shouted. She turned and noted with dismay that the others were still far from the other line. Nancy looked up and saw the balloon ominously close to a sharp stone spur. Her eyes followed the rope down from the gondola, and she saw that it was snagged in a bush twenty feet away.

  She crawled forward, clinging to every tiny crevice. The distance to the line narrowed. At length, gauging the distance, she took a deep breath and lunged to the side, her right arm outstretched. Her hand closed around the rope!

  “I’ve got it!” she shouted, getting a firmer grip with both hands. Wrapping it around her waist, she pulled in the slack and slid down to a more level surface. The rope kept pulling at her as though it were alive and had a mind to escape.

  The crew called out encouragement and hurried over to her. By the time they reached her, Nancy’s arms ached from her effort. Together the four tugged the line downward, muscling it back to the ATV. They tied the rope to the vehicle’s roll bar and put it into reverse.

  Nancy kept her eyes skyward, afraid to breathe as long as Ned remained in danger. It seemed to take forever, but finally the balloon was pulled away from the escarpment, toward safer ground and a soft landing.

  The pilot’s voice came on over the radio. “Well done! I’m bringing us down.”

  Nancy felt relief wash over her as the balloon drifted to earth. Two minutes later the gondola thumped down and tilted over, as the balloon crumpled in a mass of gold and red nylon.

  Ned stumbled from the gondola with Amanda clinging to him. Nancy dashed forward.

  Seeing Nancy running toward him, Ned gently freed himself from Amanda’s grip and ran to meet her. Nancy let out a cry as he wrapped his arms around her. Breathless, they hugged each other.

  “I was so afraid,” she murmured, her face buried against his chest. “I thought . . . you almost . . .” She couldn’t say the words.

  Gently Ned touched Nancy’s chin and lifted her face. They kissed, and a rush of emotion surged through Nancy. The touch of Ned’s lips filled her with the knowledge that everything would be all right between them. The near miss had proven just how much she loved Ned.

  “For a minute I thought I was a goner,” he said softly. “That’s when I realized how much you mean to me. Nothing matters to me as much as you do. I must have been a little crazy lately to lose sight of that. I almost lost you.”

  “Don’t think about it now,” Nancy whispered happily. “You’re alive and well and with me, and that’s all that counts.”

  There was a sudden outburst of angry voices behind them. Evan was shouting at Freddy, who looked gray and drawn. Nancy took Ned’s arm as the two men approached.

  “It was crazy, this balloon idea,” Evan yelled. “I should never have allowed my clients to risk their necks in that contraption.”

  The balloon pilot, who had been poking through his gear, spun around. “Balloons are perfectly safe!” he insisted. “I’ve gone up thousands of times, and nothing like this ever happened before.”

  “What went wrong this time?” Keith asked.

  “I’m trying to figure that out right now,” said the pilot, bending over the burner.

  Freddy Estevez bit his lip and checked his watch. “Thank heavens everyone is all right,” he said. “Well, what should we do now?”

  Evan stared at him, astonished. “What we should do—no, what we will do—is pack it in for today. Nobody here is ready to go back to work. We’ll reschedule and be thankful we got away with nothing more than a narrow escape.”

  “But—” Freddy looked at the grim faces around him. “Of course you’re right. We’ll reschedule. We’ll call it off for today.”

  Keith excused himself and left to supervise.

  Amanda approached Ned and Nancy. She was pale and shaken. “I’ve never been so frightened in my life.”

  “It was scary,” Ned agreed, his arm around Nancy. “But the main thing is, nobody was hurt.”

  Amanda looked wistfully at Ned, then nodded. “Thank goodness,” she said. She caught Nancy’s eye and smiled, as if to say “no hard feelings.” Nancy smiled back, too happy to carry a grudge. Amanda slowly walked back toward the trailers.

  “Hey!” The pilot held up a small piece of machinery. “Here’s what caused our problem. This feed valve connects the fuel line to the burner. I
t was stuck in an open position, and all our butane leaked out. That’s why I couldn’t relight the burner—there was nothing to burn.”

  Nancy walked over and examined the valve. “You mean it was defective?” she asked.

  “No way!” the pilot insisted. “I do a thorough preflight check every time I go up, and I mean thorough. I check everything: fabric, vent, rip panel, rigging, the burner and fuel supply—the works. After all, my life depends on this equipment, too. There was nothing defective on this balloon before we went up.”

  “When did you do the check?” Nancy asked.

  “We started at six-thirty this morning, and finished about an hour later. We did the same careful job we always do,” the pilot said firmly, as if daring anyone to contradict him.

  “No one is blaming you for what happened today,” Evan said.

  Production crew members started packing their trucks while the balloon crew set about carefully folding the huge expanse of nylon fabric and detaching the rigging.

  Nancy and Ned remained in a huddle with Evan and the pilot. Ned rubbed his jaw, looking perplexed. “So why did the valve malfunction?”

  “Maybe it was metal fatigue,” Evan said. “After a while, things just wear out.”

  “No, sir,” the pilot insisted. “I always replace equipment long before it can wear out. That valve is almost brand-new.”

  “May I take it?” Nancy asked. “I’d like to have it examined.”

  “What are you talking about?” demanded the pilot. “I just did examine it, I told you!”

  “I mean for fingerprints,” Nancy explained.

  The pilot stared at her. “Who would do something like that deliberately?”

  “It’s just a precaution.” Nancy preferred to avoid a detailed explanation of her suspicions.

  The pilot frowned but handed over the valve, which Nancy placed in a tissue. “I don’t know what to make of this, but go ahead,” he said. “I want to know how this happened as much as anybody else. More, even.” He left to help his crew pack up.

  “Nancy, was this sabotage?” Evan stared at her and lowered his voice, making sure that no one was within earshot. “Does it tie in with Ursula’s death?”