Flower Power

  Nancy gulped. There were lilies of the valley in her yard at home. She had no idea they were deadly!

  “There are all sorts of other flowers that can kill you,” Mrs. Bridges went on. “There’s foxglove and monkshood and oleander . . .”

  Mrs. Bridges’s words were starting to make Nancy shivery and goose-bumpy. She didn’t like talking about poisonous flowers.

  “. . . and rhododendron. Shall I go on?” Mrs. Bridges asked.

  “No!” the girls cried out together.

  Mrs. Bridges smiled. “It’s not a verypleasant subject, is it? Still, it’s important that you girls include this information in your report for school. In any case, it’s time for me to serve lunch. It’ll just take me a minute to get it ready.”

  Mrs. Bridges disappeared into the kitchen. Nancy leaned over and whispered to her friends,“I don’t see the Pink Princess daisies anywhere.”

  “I saw a couple of empty flowerpots outside the front door when we came in,” George whispered back.“I checked them to see if any of them was ours, like maybe she took the daisies out of it or something. But none of them had our initials on it.”

  Nancy and her friends had painted their initials in pink on the bottom of their pot: ND, BM, GF, and JS.

  “Forget about the daisies for a minute!” Bess whispered frantically. “You don’t think Mrs. Bridges is going to serve us poisonous flowers for lunch, do you?”

  “Bess, that’s crazy!” George whispered.

  “Girls! Lunch is served!”

  Nancy’s head snapped up. Mrs. Bridgeswas standing in the doorway, holding a big wooden bowl.

  “I’ve made us a very special salad today,” Mrs. Bridges said with a smile.“A very special salad with some very special edible flowers.Pinkedible flowers!”

  Bess gasped. Nancy, George, and Julia exchanged a glance.

  Nancy knew they were all thinking the exact same thing.

  Was Mrs. Bridges going to serve them their Pink Princess daisies for lunch?

  6

  The Flower Experiment

  Nancy was tingling with worry as Mrs. Bridges walked over to the dining room table, bowl in hand.

  Would the bowl contain chopped-up pieces of their precious daisies? Nancy wondered.

  Mrs. Bridges set down the bowl in the middle of the table. Nancy and her friends all sat up in their chairs and leaned forward, trying to make out what was inside the bowl.

  Nancy closed her eyes for a second. She was afraid of what she would see.

  She took a deep breath and opened hereyes. Inside the bowl was lettuce . . . and spinach . . . and tomatoes . . . and cucumber slices . . .

  . . . and some little pink flowers.

  But the little pink flowers didn’t look anything like their daisies, Nancy realized. The petals were smaller and a different shade of pink altogether.

  Nancy sighed with relief. So did George, Bess, and Julia.

  “What are these flowers?” Julia asked Mrs. Bridges, as if to make onehundredpercent sure.

  “Pink violets!” Mrs. Bridges said proudly. “They’re rather unusual, aren’t they? Usually violets are purple, but these are a special pink variety that I grow in my backyard.”

  “Are they edible?” Bess asked her cautiously.

  Mrs. Bridges laughed. “Of course! The violet is one of the most common edible flowers.”

  Mrs. Bridges served the salad to the girls on pretty yellow salad plates. Nancy picked up her fork and speared one of thepink violets. She put it in her mouth and tasted it.

  It’s different, Nancy thought, munching. Kind of yummy, but kind of weird, too.

  “Mmm, this is good!” Bess said, popping a couple of pink violets into her mouth.“I’ll have to tell my mom and dad to start putting edible flowers inoursalads.”

  Fifteen minutes later everyone had cleaned their plates. Mrs. Bridges went back into the kitchen and returned with bowls of reddish pink ice cream.

  “Dessert!” she announced cheerfully.

  Bess picked up her spoon. “Mmm, strawberry ice cream!” she said excitedly.

  “Actually, it’s red geranium sorbet,” Mrs. Bridges corrected her.“The red geranium is another edible flower. I made the sorbet myself, from scratch. I grow the geraniums in a window box.”

  “Red geranium sorbet,” Bess repeated. “Hmm. Okay, well, itlookslike ice cream, so it must be all right.”

  As the five of them dug into the sorbet, a young guy came into the dining room.Nancy guessed that he was about eighteen or so. He had long, greasy blond hair and glasses, and he was dressed in baggy shorts and a T-shirt.

  “Byron, hello!” Mrs. Bridges called out.

  “Girls, this is my son, Byron. Byron, this is Nancy, George, and Bess—and of course you know Julia.”

  “Hey,” Byron mumbled.

  “Byron works part-time doing odd jobs for Julia’s parents,” Mrs. Bridges told Nancy, George, and Bess.“You know, fixing things around the house, helping out with the yard, and so forth. The rest of the time, he’s going to college. He’s majoring in . . . what is it you’re majoring in these days, dear?”

  “I don’t know, drama or astrophysics or whatever,” Byron replied, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Got anything to eat?”

  “Could I interest you in a mixed green salad with pink violets and some red geranium sorbet?” Mrs. Bridges said brightly.

  Byron made a face. “Uh, no, thanks,Mom. I think I’ll go over to the Quik-EBurger instead.”

  After Byron left, Mrs. Bridges frowned and said, “That boy has no taste at all. He’s always eating those horribly unnatural pretend-food products.”

  Nancy liked Quik-E-Burgers, but she didn’t think it would be polite to say so. Instead, she said,“Mrs. Bridges? Julia said you were interested in our Pink Princess daisies.”

  Mrs. Bridges looked startled.“Oh, yes, those flowers you had out the other day, Julia.” She paused. “I thought they were edible, so I looked them up in one of my books. It turns out they’re not edible.”

  “They’re not edible?” Bess said happily. Nancy knew what her friend was thinking: Maybe this meant Mrs. Bridges didn’t steal them to put in a salad, after all.

  “No, they’re not edible,” Mrs. Bridges replied.“More red geranium sorbet, anyone?”

  As Nancy ate her second helping of sorbet, she thought: Maybe this meant theycould cross Mrs. Bridges off their suspect list.

  That meant they had only two suspects left: Viola Van Hall and Orson Wong.

  “Orson’s in his room.You can go on up, girls,” Mr. Wong said.

  Nancy, George, Bess, and Julia went up the stairs to Orson’s room. His twin brothers, Lonny and Lenny, who were six, were running around the living room, having a pretend-battle with umbrellas.

  “Lonny! Lenny! Umbrellas aren’t toys!” Nancy heard Mr. Wong scolding them.

  When they got to Orson’s room, they found the door closed. Nancy knocked.

  “Enter!” came Orson’s voice.

  Nancy opened the door and went inside. The other girls followed.

  The shades were drawn, and the room was almost totally dark.

  Nancy glanced around, trying to get her bearings. She had been in Orson’s room before. He had all kinds of interesting things in it. There was a big blue globe on his dresser and a bug mobile hangingfrom the ceiling. Orson’s pet iguana was very still in his cage, looking at everything with big, bulging eyes.

  Orson was sitting at his desk, which was usually covered with rocks and minerals and plastic dinosaurs. Today, though, it was covered with pots of really weird-looking flowers. A lamp was shining an eerie bluish white light on the flowers.

  Orson’s desk looks like the laboratory of a mad scientist, Nancy thought.

  “Orson?” Nancy said. She blinked, trying to adjust her eyes to the strange bluish white light in the room.

  Orson turned around in his chair. “Welcome!” he called out.“Don’t turn on the light—my subjects are very sensitive!”

&
nbsp; “What are you doing?” Bess demanded.

  “Why is it dark, and what’s up with that weird blue light, and what are those mutant flowers on your desk?”

  “Interesting you should ask,” Orson said, rubbing his hands together.“I have been conducting a series of cross-pollination and hybridization experiments.”

  “Cross-what? And hybri-what?” Julia asked him.

  “Basically, I’m creating new breeds of flowers by mixing up the old breeds,” Orson explained.

  Nancy stared at the flowers on his desk. They were really, really strange-looking. One of them was an oversize yellow flower with a fuzzy purple middle and jagged leaves. Another one had two flowers—a pink flower and a totally differentlooking red flower—coming out of one stem.

  George was staring at the flowers on Orson’s desk, too.“Orson, that is insane!” she exclaimed.

  “Not at all,” Orson said calmly.“ Crosspollination and hybridization are common techniques. Scientists and gardeners use them to create new kinds of flowers.”

  Nancy moved closer to Orson’s desk to get a better look at the flowers. All of a sudden, she noticed something. Something bad.

  One of the flowers way in the back looked like the Pink Princess daisy.Except that this one had an ugly, spiky red thing sticking out of the middle of it.

  Nancy felt all queasy in her stomach. Did Orson steal our Pink Princess daisies and do a scientific experiment on them? she wondered.

  7

  A Surprise Suspect

  Nancy moved closer to Orson’s desk. For a second she squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t bear to see what Orson had done to their Pink Princess daisies.

  If Orson turned our daisies into some sort of horrible, yucky mutant flowers, I’ll never forgive him! Nancy thought.

  She opened her eyes. She bent down and took a long, hard look at the weird pink flower.

  But it wasn’t pink at all. It just looked that way under the bluish white light.

  “Nancy? What is it?” Bess asked her.

  Nancy turned around. “Nothing. I justthought I saw something . . . familiar.” She glanced at Orson. “Listen, Orson. Remember those Pink Princess daisies we showed you at the Civic Center the other day?”

  Orson reached for a notebook and flipped to the middle of it.“Yes, of course, here it is. ‘A rare kind of daisy. Hard-toget seeds. Frilly pink petals. Excellent specimen.’”

  “You haven’t seen any of them around, have you?” George asked him pointedly.

  Orson shrugged.“Of course not. They’re rare, aren’t they?Raremeans you don’t see them around.” His eyes gleamed. “However, I would love to borrow your Pink Princess daisies after the flower show is over. They would make excellent specimens for a new cross-pollination experiment I’m designing.”

  “Ewww!” Bess cried out. “You arenotgoing to cross-polli-whatever our Pink Princess daisies!”

  “Let’s go,” Nancy whispered to her friends.“I don’t think Orson knows anything about the daisies.”

  “Yeah, let’s get out of here,” Julia whispered back.

  “Just think about my offer!” Orson called out as the girls turned to go.“You would be making a valuable contribution to science!”

  Bess stuck a spoon into her Crazy Creamy Caramel Sundae.“Tomorrow is the opening day of the flower show. And we still haven’t found our daisies!”she moaned.

  Bess, Nancy, George, and Julia had decided to discuss the case at the Double Dip. The Double Dip was their favorite ice cream place in River Heights. Julia’s mom had dropped them off, and Bess’s mom was going to pick them up.

  George took a bite of her Blueberry Burst Sundae.“I guess we should just give up,” she said with a sad sigh.“We’re not going to have an entry in the flower show, after all.”

  “We can’t give up yet!” Nancy cried out. She pulled out her special blue notebook and turned to the page about the missing daisies.

  “We can cross Mrs. Bridges off the suspect list,” Nancy said, scanning the page. “Orson doesn’t seem like a really good suspect anymore, either. We didn’t see the daisies in his room. And he asked to borrow them after the flower show is over.”

  “Which means that he probably doesn’t have them now,” Julia piped up. She peered over Nancy’s shoulder at the entry in the blue notebook.“We still have Viola Van Hall,” she said.

  Nancy nodded. “That’s kind of a dead end for now, though.Viola doesn’t want to talk to us.”

  “She is so mean,” George complained.

  Nancy took a bite of her Strawberry Surprise Sundae. Were they missing an important clue in this case? she wondered. Why couldn’t they find the daisies?

  Nancy glanced up at Julia. “Let’s go back to the scene of the crime,” she suggested.“Try to remember what happened when you put the daisies on your deck Tuesday afternoon. Try to remember everything . . . every little detail.”

  “I’ve seen detectives do stuff like thaton TV,” Julia said, nodding. She closed her eyes.“Okay. I came home from the Civic Center with my mom. She went into the kitchen to start dinner. I took the daisies to the deck. I put them next to a bunch of other flowerpots—pansies and begonias and geraniums and stuff. And then Mrs. Bridges came by, and—”

  “Wait!” Nancy interrupted her. “What do you mean, you put them next to a bunch of other flowerpots? They weren’t there yesterday—except maybe one pot of yellow pansies, I think.”

  Julia opened her eyes and blinked. “You’re right, Nancy,” she said slowly. “Come to think of it, those flowerpots weren’t there the next morning, either. Except for the yellow pansies.”

  Nancy took another spoonful of her sundae.“Then this might be a brand-new case,” she announced. “Maybe the thief wasn’t just after the Pink Princess daisies, but all the other flowers, too!”

  Nancy glanced up at the sky. It would be dark in about an hour or so.

  She hurried her steps. The Santoses’ house was just around the corner.

  After the Double Dip, Mrs. Marvin had driven her and the other girls home. At her house, Nancy had started helping Hannah with dinner.

  Then she thought about what Julia had said: That not just the daisies, but a bunch of other flowers, had disappeared sometime between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning.

  So Nancy had decided to go by the Santoses’ house before dinnertime to do one last sweep for clues.

  She soon reached the Santoses’ front door and knocked. Julia’s mother answered.

  “Well, hello, Nancy,” Mrs. Santos said with a smile.

  Nancy smiled, too.“Hi, Mrs. Santos. Is Julia here?”

  “She’s out back,” Mrs. Santos replied.

  Nancy thanked her, then went around the house. She didn’t see any sign of Julia.

  Maybe she’s way in the back of theyard, Nancy thought. The Santoses’ yard was large and L-shaped. It was impossible to see the whole yard from the deck.

  Nancy started wandering around the yard, calling Julia’s name. There was no reply. A fat yellow cat darted out of a bush and through her legs, startling her.

  “Yow!” Nancy cried out. The cat disappeared into another bush.

  Then Nancy noticed something. Next to the bush where the cat was hiding was a little patch of flowers. They looked as though they had just been planted. The dirt was freshly turned, and a small shovel was lying nearby.

  Nancy did a double take. The flower patch included begonias. And pansies. And geraniums.

  And some Pink Princess daisies!

  Nancy took a closer look. They were definitely Pink Princess daisies—the missing Pink Princess daisies!

  8

  The Most Beautiful

  Flower

  Nancy stared at the Pink Princess daisies, totally confused. Why had Julia said that the daisies had been stolen? And why did Julia plant them in her own backyard?

  “Hey, Nancy! What are you doing here?”

  Nancy turned around. Julia was running across the yard toward her.

&n
bsp; “Hi, Julia,” Nancy said. She pointed to the Pink Princess daisies. “Look what I just found.”

  Nancy waited, watching for Julia’s reaction. But instead of acting guilty orupset, Julia smiled and started jumping up and down.

  “The Pink Princess daisies!” she cried out. “Nancy, you found them! You found them!”

  Now Nancy was totally confused. “ Yyou didn’t know they were here?” she stammered.

  Julia frowned at Nancy. “Know? How could I know? This is a total and complete surprise. I mean, what are they doing here, in our garden?”

  “Do you think that maybe your mom or your dad planted them here by accident?” Nancy asked her.

  Julia shook her head. “I asked them about the daisies right away, as soon as I realized they were missing. They didn’t know anything about them.”

  Just then something caught Nancy’s eye. There was a crumpled-up piece of paper lying near the daisies.

  Nancy bent down to pick it up. She smoothed it open. It was a Quik-E-Burger wrapper.

  Quik-E-Burgers, as in what Byron Bridges likes to eat! Nancy thought.

  Nancy grabbed Julia’s arm. “Come on. We have to talk to Byron Bridges right away,” she said.

  “Why?” Julia asked curiously.

  “You’ll see!” Nancy told her. The two of them found Byron and Mrs. Bridges in their backyard. Byron was playing a handheld computer game while Mrs. Bridges picked some flowers for dinner.

  “Hello, ladies!” Mrs. Bridges called out when she saw Nancy and Julia. She wiped her forehead with the back of her gardening glove. “Tonight’s menu is grilled salmon and nasturtium-blossom salad. Can you stay?”

  “No, thank you,” Nancy said quickly. “We need to talk to Byron.”

  Mrs. Bridges stared curiously at Nancy, and then at her son.“Byron? What for?”