025 Rich and Dangerous

  “In fact, I informed Detective Ritter of all this not an hour ago. Someone had to let the poor man know of her disappearance. The entire police force is out there searching for her right now, their butterfly nets in hand, I suppose.” With that, Pieter chuckled.

  Nancy caught George’s eye, and she could tell George was thinking the same thing she was: for a man who’d just lost his fiancée, Pieter van Druten seemed remarkably collected.

  Nancy wondered if she should speak her mind in front of Pieter. Giving him the benefit of her thinking was like baiting a barracuda, she knew. On the other hand, she wanted to hear what else he had to say. There was something about him. . . .

  “I think you’re wrong,” said Nancy. “This crime was too calculated for a person as unstable as Alison. She could never have planned it, much less carried it out.”

  Pieter van Druten threw Nancy a dazzling smile and stubbed out his cigar. “Brilliant, truly brilliant, Miss Drew. And that is where Jack Kale comes in. Between the two of them, they had one brain, and with that little brain they were able to plan and execute poor Sarah’s demise.”

  Nancy saw George shiver when she heard that. That night, she and Jack would be off on their date together—alone.

  “I don’t understand,” said Nancy, hoping Pieter would explain.

  He did. “You see, Miss Drew, Sarah and I were to be married. If that happened, both Alison and Jack stood to lose millions. On their own, they are penniless, yet they’ve grown used to living the life of wealthy people through Sarah’s generosity. I myself—again he laughed his cruel little laugh—“I am not so generous. They would have both been out on their ears and they knew it.”

  “Hmmm.” Nancy considered Pieter’s hypothesis. It certainly sounded logical. And then there was the little matter of the jewels. She wondered if Pieter knew Alison had them. If he did, then he’d been the one eavesdropping on them. He may have even planted them in Alison’s dresser.

  “Then why steal the jewels?” she asked him. “With Sarah out of the way, wouldn’t they have come to Alison and Jack in the end?”

  Pieter considered this for a long moment. “Who knows?” he answered. “The working of irrational minds is hard to comprehend.”

  “You seem to do all right,” Nancy remarked.

  “Surely, Miss Drew, you are not suggesting that I took the jewels?” He laughed uproariously. “You may not be aware, but I am the owner of a rather large diamond mine of my own, back home. Money is of no interest to me, my dears. It was Sarah I was after. I loved her. I’m sure you shared my regard for her—her special qualities—”

  Nancy couldn’t help but wonder what Sarah had seen in Pieter van Druten. True, he was handsome and debonair, but Sarah Amberly wasn’t the type to go for surface appeal. She was deeper than that. And van Druten was so calculating, so unlikable—had Sarah truly intended to marry a man like him?

  It really was too bad, she thought. Pieter would make such a perfect murderer. If only he had had a motive. And if only he hadn’t had such an ironclad alibi. But Nancy had seen him with her very own eyes in Trump Tower at the time of the murder.

  Just then, they heard shouting outside, followed by a woman’s screams. “Get your filthy hands off me!” she cried out at the top of her lungs.

  “I believe our fugitive has been found,” said Pieter as Joe Ritter and several policemen entered with Alison Kale in tow. She was kicking and shouting. In Felske’s hands was the missing jewelry box.

  “Aha!” said Pieter, delighted. “All the loose ends seem to be falling into place.”

  “We found her, Mr. van Druten,” Detective Ritter bragged. “She was trying to hide the box up on the roof.” Then he turned to Nancy. “But you’re not off the hook yet, missy,” he said, pointing his finger at her. “I’m arresting this lady for robbery, but the murder charge is still open and up for grabs, understand?”

  Nancy was about to explode. She had taken enough from Joe Ritter, and she was going to tell him so in no uncertain terms.

  But she never got the chance. Because just at that moment, Felske tripped over the leg of a table, sending the jewelry box flying end over end. It popped open as it landed, spilling a rainbow of gems all over the marble floor in front of the fireplace.

  “Holy smokes!” said Ritter, looking down at his feet. He stopped to pick up a handful of glittering fragments. The diamonds, rubies, and emeralds had smashed into a thousand pieces.

  Ritter looked around the room, flabbergasted. “These jewels are fakes—every last one of them!”

  Chapter

  Twelve

  A CHARGED SILENCE filled the room. It was broken only by Alison’s scream.

  “I didn’t kill her, I swear it! Why doesn’t anyone believe me? Why? Sarah—Sarah, you’ve got to tell them, please, I didn’t kill you! I didn’t steal your jewels!”

  The poor woman was suddenly reduced to a babbling bundle of terrified humanity. The hotel doctor, who had entered right behind the security men, was on her in a moment, administering a sedative by hypodermic. And after a few moments, Alison collapsed in a heap on the floor. Felske and one of the policeman carried her out of the room.

  “Okay, everybody,” Ritter barked. “I want you to get back to your rooms and stay there till you’re interviewed by the police. And where’s the nephew—that’s what I want to know!”

  “Excuse me,” said Bess, in as respectful a tone as she could manage. “You’re not including us in that order, are you? We’re not even staying at the Plaza.”

  As she was speaking, Ritter took Bess in from top to toe, and he looked very impressed. “No, no, you and your friend here,” he said, indicating George, “are free to go. But you”—now he pointed to Nancy—“stay here.”

  George looked at Nancy as if to say, “This guy is too much,” and for a second, Nancy almost felt sorry for him—he seemed so hopelessly foolish.

  “Well, Nancy, we’d better go,” George said. “My date tonight, remember? I’ve got to decide what to wear! Wish me luck.”

  “That’s enough chitchat!” Ritter yelled.

  Nancy shot Ritter a withering look before turning to her dark-haired friend. “I do wish you luck, George. And be careful!”

  “Bye, Nancy,” called Bess. “We’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Great,” Nancy answered, while the detective rolled his eyes impatiently. “I’m having dinner right here in the hotel, I guess. I hope my dad will be with me.”

  After her two friends left, Nancy watched the policemen gather up the shattered “jewels.” They put the fragments they collected into plastic bags for lab analysis. Finally, she spoke up. “Mr. Ritter, if you don’t need me—”

  “What, are you still here?” said Ritter.

  “Not anymore,” Nancy replied, making her way out of the room.

  Back in her own suite, Nancy opened the door on a silent living room. On the coffee table was a note from Carson: “Nancy, I’m held up at Interpol. Order dinner without me, but I should be able to join you for dessert.”

  So much for their dinner together. Another lost cause.

  Feeling unsettled, Nancy slid open the huge louvered doors of her closet and looked at her clothes. The new peach outfit was just sitting there. She had wanted to wear it to the Broadway show. . . . Well, she’d wear it that night, no matter what. Even if the weekend was falling apart, she still wanted to look good. Maybe she’d call Bess, and the two of them could go to the Oak Room by themselves.

  A low rumbling filled the room, and Nancy realized it was her stomach. No wonder—she had missed lunch, and dinnertime was still several hours away. Thank goodness for room service.

  “Please send a small fruit and cheese board to my suite, with a club soda, please,” Nancy said into the phone. Hanging up, she walked over to the triple window facing Fifth Avenue and tried to clear her mind. But it was pretty hard to ignore the fact that she was practically under house arrest at the Plaza Hotel. What a weekend!

  She hadn’t me
ant to get herself into such an awful mess, of course. And really, her own problems were nothing compared to the other things that had happened—like murder. Nancy had to get to the bottom of it and see that the murderer was put away where he, or she, couldn’t hurt anyone else. Leaving Sarah’s murder in the hands of the authorities would, in this case, be like walking away from the scene of an accident. She might be the only one who could figure out what had really happened.

  Maximilian arrived with a tray containing the fruit and cheese board and a bottle of club soda.

  “Hello, again, miss,” he greeted her.

  “Hello, Maximilian,” she replied wearily.

  The little waiter left the tray on the table in front of her and made for the door. He did not leave, however. Instead, he turned and said, “Perhaps, miss, you will permit me to give you a little piece of advice?”

  Nancy looked up at him in stark surprise. “Well, what is it?” she asked, annoyed and curious at the same time.

  “This matter of the Amberlys—miss, I urge you, for your own safety, to stay away from it. It is not something for a nice young girl like you. You, you should be at the parties, the discos, with the young boys, having a good time. Not here, in this nest of snakes and evil things.” He moved in close to her, his eyes piercing.

  “Please, miss, it will end badly for you. Please . . .”

  Nancy took a deep breath. “I appreciate your concern, Maximilian, but you see, I liked Sarah Amberly. And I don’t think the person who murdered her should walk away.”

  Maximilian’s face darkened. “That old witch! You liked her? Ha! She was as bad as all the rest of them. Forget her, I tell you! Forget her, before it is too late! You do not understand these things, these matters are deadly, miss—”

  “I beg your pardon,” Nancy interrupted him, “but I know what I’m doing. This isn’t the first time I’ve been involved with—well, with murder. And I don’t intend to let the criminal get away with it.”

  “So.” Maximilian nodded, tight-lipped. “You will not listen. You fancy yourself a detective. You cannot let the murderer get away with it, you say. Allow me to tell you, miss—in this world, everyone gets away with whatever he can. We all do whatever it takes to get by, understand?”

  His voice was hoarse now, the muscles of his face twitching with rage. “You rich people, you think everything is easy! You never get your hands dirty, yet you live like kings and turn your noses up at the rest of us. Well, allow me to tell you, I have come a long, long way to get where I am now. See?”

  He held out his hands to her, palms upward. “See these hands? Maybe you do not see the dirt on them, but it is there, inside. . . . I know what it is, miss, to want things, and to do anything to get them.”

  Spinning on his heel, he strode to the door. Then, standing in the doorway, he turned and said, “I have warned you, miss. Stay out of this matter. I will not warn you again.” And then he was gone.

  • • •

  “Wow! What do you think he meant?” Bess’s eyes widened with surprise as Nancy told her about Maximilian’s warning.

  The two girls were sitting at a table in the Oak Room, pretending to read their menus, but all the while they kept sneaking glances in the waiter’s direction.

  Maximilian studiously ignored them as he went about serving his tables on the other side of the Oak Room.

  “I don’t know what he meant,” Nancy admitted. “And I guess I never will know. But he sure is creepy, isn’t he?”

  “Nancy! Wait a minute. I just got an idea!” Bess whispered excitedly. “Maybe he did it! He always brought her tea, right?”

  “Maximilian? Murder Sarah? I don’t know.” Nancy sighed, shaking her head. “I mean, I guess anything is possible—”

  “Oh no!” Bess’s attention was caught by a movement at the front of the restaurant. “Don’t look now, but here comes trouble.”

  Nancy did look, and what she saw was Joe Ritter striding toward their table, an angry scowl on his face.

  “I suppose you think you’re a real big shot,” he hissed as he pulled up a chair and sat down without being invited. “Your precious father seems to have turned some screws on high. I just got a call telling me to go easy on you or take early retirement.”

  Nancy and Bess looked at each other, and neither one of them could suppress a giggle of satisfaction. Good old Carson to the rescue!

  “Oh? You find that amusing? Well, don’t get the idea you’re permanently off the hook,” Ritter warned Nancy. “A man in my position has to follow his instincts. My instincts tell me you’re hiding something, and I intend to find out what it is.” His jaw was set determinedly.

  The three of them sat in stony silence for all of thirty seconds, none of them knowing what to say.

  Finally, Ritter grabbed a menu and said, with a wink at Bess, “So, what are you having?”

  The girls’ jaws dropped open. Was he actually going to invite himself to dinner, after being so nasty not half a minute before?

  “As for you,” he said, returning to Nancy, “I know you know more than you’re telling, so why don’t you spill the beans right here and now? I’ll pick up the tab. Deal?”

  Nancy just couldn’t look Bess in the eyes. If she did, she’d end up giggling again! Obviously, bumbling Joe Ritter was a desperate man, and he was asking for their help in his own crude way. Well, she wasn’t going to tell him everything, but Nancy supposed it couldn’t hurt to share some of her thoughts with the befuddled detective.

  “Honestly, what I know is very simple, and it’s all public information. A woman dies from an overdose of her own medicine, and apparently her jewelry box is taken at the same time. Now, why was she murdered? Well, not for her jewels. For one thing, they were fakes. But more important, those jewels were used to implicate her sister. Right after the murder they’re planted in Alison’s bureau drawer where anyone could find them.”

  Ritter’s brow was screwed up in concentration as he tried to follow Nancy. “Wait a minute,” he interjected. “What if Alison didn’t know the jewels were fakes? Maybe she didn’t open the box after the murder because she was planning to run away with it.”

  Nancy sighed and absentmindedly began to line up the silverware in front of her. As a sleuth, Joe Ritter was truly hopeless. “No, no. A confused person like Alison would never be able to carry through with such a cool plan—not in my opinion, at least. Yes, the person who murdered Sarah Amberly knew her habits, knew that she took her medicine with her tea in the evening, and yes, they knew just how potent that medicine really was. But Alison Kale plan a murder? No way. She’s too confused and hysterical. The only way she could ever hurt anyone would be in an unplanned outburst of anger, nothing calculated.”

  “How do you know she just didn’t force the medicine on the old lady out of anger?” Ritter demanded.

  “Anyone who ever saw the two of them together could answer that question. Alison was angry at Sarah, all right, but she was also afraid of her. She let Sarah lead her. But honestly, the bottom line is they loved each other.”

  “Well, somebody did it.” Ritter was shaking his head in frustration. Suddenly Nancy thought back to the very first time she saw Sarah Amberly walking down the hall. “My medicine is always running low— Why can’t one of you look after it. . . .”

  Of course! Even back then, someone could have been putting tablets aside. Nancy was just about to share that memory when she noticed Maximilian across the room, standing on tiptoe, gesturing to someone. Obviously, he was trying to catch that person’s attention—trying hard, to judge from the way he was waving. But who was he waving to? And now he was walking off toward that someone.

  “Would you two excuse me, please? I’ve got to go to the ladies’ room.”

  Throwing down her napkin, Nancy rose and threaded her way between the tables in the direction the waiter had taken. Out of the restaurant, around the corner of the hallway, and—where?

  Ah, there was his white towel on the floor. It must have
fallen out of his uniform pocket. Nancy sped down the corridor, just in time to see a pneumatic door swing shut. She hurried through it, ignoring the sign that said Employees Only, and found herself at the top of a staircase.

  Nancy flew down the stairs, pausing only when she reached a corridor that was lit by bare bulbs. The floor was concrete, painted gray. No luxury here. Off in the distance, Nancy heard the hum of immense motors, and something else—the click of footsteps!

  Now she could hear the footsteps quickening to a run, and as she followed, she could also hear the roar of motors getting louder. This had to be the loading dock where trash was piled into the hotel’s compactor and from there taken by trucks to the city dump.

  Nancy halted and listened for the footsteps. They had stopped. After a moment, she proceeded again, slowly, taking each step lightly and listening hard for any telltale sound.

  Suddenly she felt strong hands grip her from behind. And the next thing she knew she was hurtling headfirst down a chute that was in the wall opposite her.

  She landed with a thud, in a dark place with a vaguely disgusting smell. It was dark down there, only a square of light at the end of the sort of tunnel she was in. The floor was soft, rubbery. Nancy wondered where she was.

  But when the floor started moving to the tune of a whirring motor, Nancy knew. She was on a conveyor belt. And the square of light, now growing larger, was the mouth of the compactor!

  Rising unsteadily to her feet, Nancy started to inch back to where she had landed. Just then, however, a chute opened somewhere above her, and a huge pile of trash landed smack on top of her, sending her sprawling to the floor. Among the papers Nancy noticed some orange rinds, several loaves of stale bread, and some coffee grounds.

  Nancy flailed about anxiously, trying in vain to dig herself out and get to her feet again. But it was impossible. Every passing second brought her closer to the great mouth of the compactor. In no time at all she’d be reduced to a cube the size of a shoe box!