Nancy nodded. Annie’s plan made sense, although Nancy could understand Chris’s impatience.
At the end of the enclosed bridge, they entered Pier 4, and Nancy found herself in a sunny cafeteria. She spotted George and Jackson already in line. “Leave it to George to find the quickest route to food,” Nancy said.
Chris laughed. “I’m glad to see that you’ve lightened up on the interrogation,” he said as they joined the line to the snack bar.
Nancy would have liked to learn more about the task force, but she let the subject drop as they approached the front of the line. “Save us a table,” she called out to George and Jackson, who were being handed their food.
George let out a laugh as Jackson put a dish of fries on her tray. “You’ll never believe it, Nan,” she called back. “They’ve got french fries shaped like whales!”
Nancy was just about to sit down to a lunch of a hamburger and fries, when she noticed that the wall opposite the snack bar contained a glass window to an aquamarine pool. A moment later, a large gray shape swept by, too quickly for her to make out its details.
“What was that?” she asked, picking up her burger.
Chris glanced over his shoulder, then answered, “One of our beluga whales.”
Jackson nodded. “There are a few windows on this floor called viewing stations. You can look directly into the lower half of the pool in the amphitheater.”
Judging by the shrieks of delight from the children gathered around the viewing station, Nancy could tell that the whale was a hit.
As soon as the group finished eating, Jackson showed them the rest of the building.
“The focal point of this wing is the amphitheater,” Jackson said as he led the girls back up the stairs and pointed to the four sets of double doors at intervals along the corridor. “This is where the dolphins and whales do their stuff.” He pushed open a door and motioned them inside. “They’re between shows, so we’ll just take a quick peek.”
Nancy was impressed at the size of the circular theater. Rows and rows of bleachers curved around half of the huge round pool. The other half was surrounded by windows, which allowed natural sunlight to dance along the water’s surface.
“Cool!” George exclaimed. “This would make a great swimming pool.”
“Except that it’s filled with surprises,” Chris said, wriggling his dark brows.
“And it’s lined in glass. It’s like a big glass bowl,” Nancy said, walking down the aisle toward the giant pool.
At that moment a whale poked its bulbous head above the surface of the water, let out a cheerful squeal, then dove again.
Chris smiled. “That’s Anore.”
Glancing across the pool, Nancy saw a narrow platform that jutted into the water, nearly dividing the pool in half.
As she watched, a thin, dark-haired man in a wet suit approached from the side of the pool, hopped onto the platform, and knelt down to stroke the nose of a whale. The group caught his eye, and he waved. “You guys staying for the presentation?”
“Just passing through,” Jackson said, tossing off a quick salute. Turning back to the girls, he explained, “That’s Doug Chin, our assistant curator in charge of seals and whales. You’ll have to catch the show before you leave. These creatures are real crowd-pleasers.”
“Do you ever work with the dolphins and whales?” Nancy asked Chris as they headed out of the amphitheater.
“No. As an aquarist, I specialize in fish—the ones with gills. The dolphins, seals, and whales are mammals, so they’re cared for by mammalogists. We all try to have a working knowledge of everything that goes on here, though. Annie and Russ Farmer work with the dolphins. Doug and another mammalogist, Megan O’Connor, work with the whales and seals.”
“We saw Megan feeding the seals this morning,” George added. “It was quite a show.”
They retraced their route, then went up to the top level, which housed the tropical rain forest.
The minute Nancy stepped through the door, she felt the hot, humid air and caught the scent of moist earth and vegetation. Palm trees towered in the air, filling the sunny space of the glass rooftop pyramid.
George craned her neck as she stared up, past a rushing waterfall, into the leafy jungle. “You expect to see Tarzan swinging down from one of these trees,” she said with a laugh.
Exotic birds fluttered through the dense foliage, their high-pitched calls echoing through the steamy air. Watching the birds dart overhead, Nancy could see that a crafty person could manage to capture one. There were no cages, nets, or bars.
Chris checked his watch. “I want to show you some fish that are exhibited in their own tanks—electric eels and puffer fish that inflate themselves. Then I have to get back to work. The sharks are due for a feeding.”
Nancy, George, and Jackson followed him out of the rain forest and down to level three. They entered a room lined with glass windows looking into individual tanks.
“You’ll get a charge out of these babies,” Chris said, pointing to a tank containing a snakelike fish. “This guy is commonly called an electric eel, although he’s actually related to catfish and carp.”
“Do they really produce electricity?” Nancy asked.
Chris nodded. “Enough to disable a cow. But don’t worry. You won’t find them in the waters of North America.”
Nancy stepped aside as a young boy and his mother made their way over to the next window. She watched the boy press his nose to the glass. “Look, Mommy,” he said, “these fish are sleeping.”
That doesn’t sound right, Nancy thought. She walked over to the tank and looked at the spiny fish floating on the surface of the milky water. So far, all of the other tanks and pools at the aquarium had seemed clear and clean, but this one wasn’t so appealing.
Her stomach turned as she studied the lifeless bodies of the fish. She was not a marine biologist, but she could see that something was very wrong.
“Chris,” she called, motioning him over to the window.
He took a step forward, then gasped. “The porcupine fish! They look like they’re dead!”
Chapter
Four
THEY WERE FINE when I fed them this morning,” said Chris, still staring at the tank.
Nancy could tell that he was upset. He strode across the room and yanked open a door marked Employees Only. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” he said, ducking inside.
Nancy took a step toward the door that Chris had disappeared behind. “I want to see if I can give Chris a hand,” she told George and Jackson.
“Mind if I don’t join you?” asked George. “I don’t think I’d be much help.”
“We’ll meet you back at my dad’s office. Can you find the way?” asked Jackson.
“No problem. I still have this map,” Nancy said, pointing to the brochure in her skirt pocket. Then she tugged open the door and stepped inside.
She found herself in a wide corridor with bare concrete walls and floor. As Nancy tried to save her suede pumps by stepping around puddles, she guessed that this area endured a lot of traffic—and a lot of splashing water as fish were removed from their tanks for checkups and treatment.
She found Chris at the top of a short stairway beside a square concrete tank. “There’s no doubt about it. These guys are dead,” he told her.
Nancy watched as Chris put on gloves to protect his hands from the fish’s tiny sharp spikes and dropped the dead fish into a bucket. When he was done, he brought the bucket down to the work table, where he and Nancy studied one of the grayish fish speckled with dark brown spots.
“Can you tell what killed them?” Nancy asked.
Chris shrugged. “Could be a virus, but I’ve never seen one that disables fish so fast.” With a quick look back at the tank, he added, “Fortunately, each of these tanks has its own filtration system. Otherwise, whatever killed these guys could have wiped out hundreds of fish.”
She nodded at a tangle of plastic piping that was churning
water into the tank. “Sounds like the filtration system is still running, so that doesn’t seem to be the problem.”
Chris went over to the pump, picked up a clipboard hanging beside the tank, and quickly read the piece of paper on it. “According to this status report, the system was working fine this morning.”
He let the clipboard drop, then took a beaker and a box of labeled bottles from the table and climbed the stairs to the top of the tank. “We can run a few tests on the water right here, but just in case, I’ll send a sample to the lab. And our in-house vet will perform autopsies.”
“That should help,” Nancy murmured. The situation at the aquarium was getting worse by the minute, she thought.
“Do me a favor and bring me that rack of test tubes on the shelf against the wall,” Chris said as he dipped the empty beaker into the tank. “I want to test the pH levels.”
Nancy picked up the small rack and carried it up to the top of the tank. As she watched Chris work, her eyes began to burn, and she noticed a familiar smell. “Why does this tank smell like a swimming pool?” she asked, thinking aloud. After a pause, an idea struck her. “Could it be—”
“Chlorine,” Chris said, holding one test tube up as definitive proof. “Someone added a lethal dose of chlorine to the water in this tank!”
Just then Nancy noticed a white slip of paper wedged between the tank and the filtration system. She reached down and picked it up. The message was no surprise.
“This is no accident,” she told Chris. “According to this note, these fish are ‘victims of the task force.’ ”
• • •
Later that afternoon, Nancy, Chris, Jackson, and George met Dr. Winston in his office. Nancy and Chris had already filled in the director on the incident with the porcupine fish. At Nancy’s suggestion, Dr. Winston agreed to give the aquarium’s security force a special alert to watch for any suspicious activity—from either the public or the staff.
Chris pushed up his shirt sleeve and tapped his watch. “I need to look in on a few of my fish friends,” he told Nancy, “but I’ll see you guys tomorrow. We should have more info from the lab and the vet by then.”
“See you in the morning,” Nancy called as Chris headed for the door.
Dr. Winston waited until the door closed behind Chris, then said in a lowered voice, “Do you think that Annie is right about Chris? Could he be the one making the threats?”
Nancy frowned. “I’m afraid Chris is one suspect, but he seemed genuinely surprised about those dead fish. It could be any of the aquarium employees. The person who poured chlorine into that fish tank had access to the back room.”
Dr. Winston nodded grimly, then picked up a thin sheaf of papers from his desk. “Annie dropped this off for you,” he said, handing the papers to Nancy.
She leafed through the three-page roster of task force members. Annie had jotted some notes and placed stars next to the names of key members. “Thanks,” Nancy said. “I’ll study this tonight.”
Dr. Winston turned to Jackson. “Why don’t you take these two ladies out and show them around Baltimore? It’s almost four o’clock. We’re closing in an hour, anyway.”
George gave Nancy a hopeful look, and Nancy considered the next step in her investigation. Dr. Winston had already agreed to allow her to examine the personnel files on all the current aquarium employees. The next morning she was planning to interview some of the staff members and find out how people felt about the task force.
In the meantime, it would be great to spend some time seeing the city. “I guess a little fresh air might give us a new perspective on the case,” Nancy said, grinning.
“Great!” George jumped to her feet. “Where do you want to start?” she asked Jackson as she went over to the coat rack and took down coats.
“How about Fort McHenry?” He pulled on his jacket. “It’s just across the harbor, and if we hurry we’ll catch the last changing of the guard.”
“Sounds good,” Nancy said, adding, “We can take our rental car. It’s parked in the underground lot of the Lady Baltimore Hotel.”
“I don’t mind driving,” Jackson said as he headed toward the door. “Besides, my car is closer. It’s right outside in the employee lot.”
Out in the hall, Nancy spotted Chris standing outside a cubicle and talking to someone. She was about to call out a goodbye when the tone of his voice stopped her.
“When are you going to see the light and dump that jerk?” Chris snapped angrily.
“I don’t want to discuss it—especially with you,” said a stern voice—Annie’s voice.
I’ll bet he’s talking about her boyfriend, Nancy thought.
“You know,” Chris added, “you’ve got a lot of nerve dating him. Especially after those tips we got about Mills. How does he explain that, Annie?”
Mills? Nancy frowned. That was one of the companies accused of polluting the Chesapeake Bay. She wondered how Stuart was connected to the place.
“The task force is investigating Mills,” Annie retorted. “If the company is guilty, Stuart would like to know about it, too!”
“I can’t believe you’d fall for that!” Chris snapped.
“I don’t have to clear my love life with you,” Annie added. “Go hit on someone your own speed—and leave me alone!”
Deciding that it was best to pretend she hadn’t heard their argument. Nancy kept walking out to meet George and Jackson’s the parking lot. She couldn’t help wondering, though, about the antagonism between Annie and Chris. Was there any foundation to Annie’s suspicions of Chris? Or was it simply a matter of bad chemistry?
• • •
“Present arms!” shouted a soldier dressed in the garb of a U.S. militiaman of the early 1800s. Three soldiers dressed in similar uniforms swung their muskets off their shoulders and pointed them to the sky. “Fire arms!”
There was a loud boom as the charges exploded. The group was standing in the courtyard of the restored brick fort, and Nancy smiled as George held her hands over her ears to muffle the noise.
After the demonstration, Jackson took them through the museum, where historic flags, military uniforms, weapons, and documents were on display.
“Fort McHenry is probably most famous for its role in the War of 1812,” Jackson explained. “The British had landed in Maryland in August of 1814. They had already burned the Capitol and the White House when they began to shell Fort McHenry from the harbor.”
“And that battle inspired our national anthem,” Nancy said, reading from a brochure.
“That’s right.” Jackson led them past a display case with shiny sabers, then opened the door so that they could see the exterior of the fort before the sun set.
As she walked along the frozen grass and watched the orange sun set over the gray harbor, Nancy wished that the aquarium was as easy to defend as a fort.
Looking back on that day’s incidents, she knew it was time to concentrate her investigation on the inside. Most likely, the animals had been killed by someone who had access to them. At least, that had to be true of the porcupine fish. The general public didn’t have access to the actual fish tank; visitors observed the fish through a glass panel that made up one side of the tank. And while Chris was removing the dead fish from the tank, Nancy had had an opportunity to question some of the aquarium employees who worked in that area. None of them had noticed strangers wandering behind the scenes.
It was getting dark by the time the threesome climbed back into Jackson’s car. They decided to stop for shrimp and crabcakes at a small seafood restaurant at Harbor Place, the bustling complex near the aquarium and the Lady Baltimore Hotel, where the girls were staying.
“This is delicious,” George said, taking another bite of a crispy crabcake. “Do you think this seafood came right from the Chesapeake?”
“This time of year, it’s probably shipped in from the Gulf of Mexico,” Jackson explained. “But the Chesapeake waters are filled with fishing boats in the summer. The truth
is, crabs are just one of the reasons we need to protect the waters in our area. All of our wildlife is at risk. That’s why Annie started the task force.”
Nancy swallowed a spoonful of chowder, then asked, “Has anyone at the aquarium raised any objections to the group?”
“Not that I know of. In fact, most of the curators are members and staunch supporters. There are a few lawyers and university people on the force, too, but the core of the group seems to be aquarium people like Annie and Chris and Russ.”
And how do they all get along? Nancy wondered. She had witnessed the tension between Annie and Chris. Nancy would also have to check to see how Annie got along with the others in the group.
George took a hot piece of corn bread from a basket on the table. “I wonder if someone at the aquarium has a personal vendetta against Annie.”
“That’s exactly what I was wondering,” Nancy said thoughtfully. It was the first thing she would try to find out in the morning.
• • •
The next morning, Nancy sorted through the clothes in her suitcase, tossing aside the shoes she had worn the day before. “Suede is out,” she told George. “I must have walked through half a dozen puddles behind those fish tanks.” She chose an oversize royal blue shirt with black leggings and high-top sneakers.
“It’s an aquarium,” George said as she pulled a red sweater on over her blue jeans. “You have to expect a little water.”
Downstairs, the girls grabbed a quick breakfast in the hotel coffee shop. Afterward, they pulled on their jackets and headed off along Pratt Street. They walked past the Harbor Place shopping pavilions—two long buildings covered with hundreds of twinkling lights—until they reached the aquarium at the far end of the inner harbor.
Since it was only nine-thirty and the aquarium didn’t open to visitors until ten, Nancy and George used their special passes to get into the administrative section, where employees were already bustling around in their cubicles.
Nancy was about to knock on the door of Dr. Winston’s office when the door opened and the distraught director nearly barreled into her.