He answered immediately, and Nancy could sense his excitement before she’d even finished explaining why she was calling.
“Sure I remember that story,” he said with a short laugh. “That was the one that changed my career. How could I forget?”
As Walters spoke, Nancy gradually stopped taking notes. She was too engrossed in what he was saying. It seemed that he had uncovered some correspondence that definitely linked Lyons to the safety-violations fraud.
“And it wasn’t just that one site, where the two buildings collapsed,” Walters told Nancy. “Lyons and Rickenbacker—he’s the subcontractor who was convicted—had a whole scam going. I’m certain they built at least a dozen buildings in southern California that didn’t meet safety-code requirements. No one knows about those other buildings because none have collapsed yet. But they probably will, sooner or later.”
“Wow! Why didn’t any of this ever come out?” Nancy asked.
“High-level hush-up.” The reporter’s voice was bitter. “Lyons must have had someone in the mayor’s office on his payroll, because when I started looking into the case, my editor in chief told me to lay off. When I refused, I got fired.”
So that was what Walters had meant about changing his career. Poor guy!
“How much do you think Lyons made in illegal profits?” Nancy asked.
“Close to a million,” Walters replied promptly. “But during the investigation I think he had to pay a lot of it out in bribes. When he left the state, I don’t think he took more than a few hundred thousand dollars with him. Enough to get himself a new life and a new career on the East Coast, but not much more.”
“Why did he leave?” Nancy asked.
“Berry forced him out, I think. Berry wasn’t in on the scam, and my guess is that he found out about Lyons. Berry didn’t want to risk a scandal, so he didn’t turn Lyons in, but I think he more or less forced Lyons to leave.”
Nancy had one final question. “Can you prove any of this?” she asked.
Walters hesitated. “Not beyond the shadow of a doubt,” he said at last, “but the circumstantial evidence is convincing. I could make a good case.”
“Thanks, Mr. Walters,” Nancy said fervently.
No sooner had she hung up than the telephone rang. Nancy picked it up.
“Nancy, it’s Sasha. Can we talk?”
Sasha! Guiltily Nancy realized that she had barely even thought about him in the past twenty-four hours.
Well, as painful as the discussion would be, she had to go through with it. She had to tell him she wasn’t in love with him.
They arranged to meet at Nino’s diner in half an hour. As she drove into town, Nancy thought about what she would say to Sasha. They were too different. . . . Ned and she had something very special. . . . Sasha shouldn’t base his career decisions on anybody but himself. . . .
She went into the diner with flutters in her stomach. Sasha was already waiting in a booth. He looks nervous, too, Nancy thought. I wonder if he knows what I’m going to say?
“I ordered you a soda,” Sasha said as she sat down opposite him in the booth. “I have something to tell you.”
“What?” Nancy asked, surprised.
Sasha gazed into his water glass. “I hope you will not be hurt, but—I have decided to stop chasing you.”
“What did you say?” Nancy was so surprised she nearly choked on her soda.
“I won’t chase you anymore,” Sasha repeated. He leaned forward, frowning earnestly. “I do not think I should base a career decision on anyone but myself. I cannot get the training I need here. And I don’t think you and I are really suited to each other. We are very different.”
Nancy leaned back against the plastic seat, shaken. How had this happened? She had come there prepared to break Sasha’s heart, and instead he was breaking hers!
“So that’s it?” she managed to get out. “That’s all you have to say?”
Sasha hesitated a moment. Then he shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “I was going to leave it that way, but I cannot. The truth is, I already know your heart. If you felt about me the way I feel about you, you would have made up your mind long ago.”
Nancy looked down at the table, tracing a pattern on the Formica with her straw. He was right, but the truth hurt nonetheless. She nodded, not trusting her voice to speak.
“When Ned got here,” Sasha continued, “it was too hard for me. I could see the way you felt about him. I like Ned. He is a fine person. And I didn’t want to compete with him—especially because I knew I would lose. I am not used to losing, Nancy. I don’t like it. So I think I will bow out now, before it gets any more painful.”
“Oh, Sasha.” Nancy felt tears brimming in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
He gave her that familiar slow smile. His blue eyes were extra bright as he said, “So am I,”
Nancy fumbled for her bag. She could barely see through the haze of tears. “I guess I’d better go,” she murmured. She rose.
His voice stopped her at the door. “Nancy?”
“Yes?” Nancy said, turning.
“What’s happening with the case?”
Nancy stared at him. “The case?”
“Yes. You know, Emily’s kidnapping. Have you got any new leads?”
A smile stole across Nancy’s face. So Sasha still wanted to be friends. Well, that was fine with her. Just fine!
“New leads? Are you kidding?” she exclaimed, heading back to the table. “Wait till you hear!”
• • •
After discussing the case with Sasha, Nancy headed home. She felt a little sad, but she knew her decision about Sasha had been the right one. Our decision, she corrected herself. It had been Sasha’s, too. Now all that remained was to patch things up with Ned. And she was going to do that as soon as possible.
A piece of paper was pinned to the front door of the house. It was addressed to Nancy. Wondering, she turned it over. A note was scrawled on the other side.
“Nancy,” it read, “I’m going to Smithson’s shed. Please meet me there—it’s urgent! I’ll explain when I see you. Must run. Emily.”
What could it be about? Nancy mused as she got back into her car and drove to the shed. Emily’s car was already there. Nancy jumped out of her car and slammed the door. “Emily?” she called.
There was no answer. Feeling somehow uneasy, Nancy hurried into the dark shed. It was empty except for a medium-size powerboat bobbing at the dock. Where did that come from? she wondered.
She stepped forward. “Emily?” she said again.
Too late, she heard a sound behind her. Before she could turn, an arm snaked around her throat. She opened her mouth to scream, but instead gasped with surprise as a piece of wet gauze was slapped over her mouth. She smelled the sickly sweet odor of chloroform.
And then the world went black.
Chapter
Seventeen
NANCY’S EYES FLUTTERED open slowly. Where am I? she wondered. The ground seemed to be rocking under her. There was something covering her mouth. She tried to reach up to remove it, but both her hands were bound behind her. She was a prisoner!
In a flash she remembered the arm around her throat in the darkness of the boat shed and the smell of chloroform. She must be in the cabin of the powerboat that had been docked there.
Rolling her head to the side, Nancy squinted in the dimness. Her eyes widened. Emily lay on the bunk across from Nancy’s. She was bound and gagged, as Nancy was. She appeared to be unconscious.
Lyons must be behind this, Nancy guessed. He must have written that note to lure me here. But how did he know we were onto him?
She tensed as she heard the hatch opening. Across from her, Emily moaned. She was coming to.
The hatch opened, and Roland Lyons appeared. He snapped on the light and gazed down at his two captives, frowning as if the sight of them annoyed him. Lyons wasn’t looking his usual dapper self, either. His suit was rumpled, and his horn-rimmed glasses were aske
w on his nose.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said briskly. “Or should I say good evening? It’s dusk, you know. You both slept the day away.
“You’re causing me a lot of trouble,” he continued. “Especially you, Emily. I don’t like trouble. So I’ve decided to dispose of you both.”
At his words, Nancy felt a thrill of fear. She strained against her bonds.
“Don’t bother,” Lyons told her with a smug smile. “I’m good at knots. You look like you want to say something. I’ll remove your gag if you promise not to scream or anything. If you scream, I’ll get very annoyed. Do you promise?”
Nancy nodded reluctantly. She had no choice.
Lyons pulled the strip of tape off her mouth. “Sensible girl,” he said. “If only you’d been a little more sensible earlier and minded your own business, we wouldn’t be in this position now. It’s unpleasant for me, too, you know. I don’t want to kill you—but you’re forcing me to.”
Nancy had to stall him somehow while she thought of a way out of this mess.
“Why kidnap Emily in the first place?” she questioned. “She was no real threat to you.”
“What do you mean?” Lyons retorted. “She was hot on my trail! She’d talked to Berry, she already knew about the earthquake and the building collapsing. It was only a matter of time before she found out the rest.”
“But she didn’t know,” Nancy told him, confused. “Your old partner wouldn’t tell her anything. We didn’t find out about the earthquake until yesterday afternoon.”
“Don’t pull that on me. I heard you talking in the diner,” Lyons said angrily. “You were all whispering, and then somebody shrieked, ‘Earthquake!’ Why are you playing dumb now?”
“So that’s why,” Nancy whispered as the truth hit her. She remembered George’s comment about earthquakes and Bess’s squealed response. Lyons had heard and had thought they were talking about his guilty secret.
It had all been a horrible misunderstanding!
She shook her head. “We didn’t know anything until yesterday,” she told Lyons wearily.
“Oh, really?” Lyons sounded bored. “Well, it’s too bad I went to all this trouble. You know now, so you’ve got to be taken care of.” He started for the hatch.
“Wait!” Nancy cried. Lyons turned. “How did you find out I knew about you?” she asked.
“Thank your crusading friend here,” Lyons answered, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at Emily. The girl stared back at Nancy, imploring forgiveness with her eyes.
“I was working at home today,” Lyons went on, “and it’s a good thing I was, because Emily came storming over, vowing to bring me to justice. The stupid girl thought she could gloat over me before calling in the police.”
Lyons chuckled briefly. “I let her talk until I found out where she’d gotten her information and then I tapped her on the head and brought her here. It was easy to write the note to you. I gambled that even if you knew what Emily’s handwriting looked like, you wouldn’t notice the note was a fake. You’d just think she was in a rush.”
“Smart,” Nancy murmured.
“Of course it was smart. I didn’t get where I am by being stupid,” Lyons boasted.
“What are you going to do with us?” Nancy asked, ignoring his boast.
Lyons smirked. “It’s another brilliant plan, if I do say so myself. You’re going for a joyride, girls. This boat, the Marlene, belongs to my neighbor, who’s out of town for the month. And everyone knows Emily Terner is a wild girl. I can hear the gossip now. Naughty Emily—she talked that nice Nancy Drew into ‘borrowing’ Roger Lindsay’s powerboat for a little adventure on the open ocean. And then something went wrong with the fuel line, and the boat blew up. Such a tragedy! Such lovely girls!” He heaved a theatrical sigh.
“Very clever,” Nancy said sarcastically. She didn’t want him to see her worry. But she also thought she might have found a flaw in his plan.
“I have a question,” she continued. “How do you plan to force us to drive the boat? You can’t do it yourself—remember your seasickness?”
“If I hadn’t taken care of that, I wouldn’t be here now,” Lyons said, whipping out a little plastic case with a flourish. He extracted two flat patches. “I’ve got a cure! These patches are new on the market. You stick them behind your ears, and they release a drug that seeps into your skin and neutralizes the vertigo. Isn’t science wonderful?” he added, beaming.
“Terrific.” Nancy couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice anymore. She was scared.
“I used to love boating, before I damaged my ears,” Lyons told her. “But enough about me. Back to what I’m going to do with you.
“When I get out a suitable distance, I’m going to plug the electric starter wand from my grill into the cockpit outlet. Then I’m going to lay it against the inboard motor’s fuel line. In a few minutes, it will melt through the rubber and ignite the fuel inside. And when that happens”—he threw his hands wide—“boom! I, of course, will be safely away in my motorized dinghy. But I’ll be watching.” He grinned.
“You can’t get away with this,” Nancy warned. “I already told the police about you.”
Lyons looked worried, but then he laughed, “You’re bluffing. If you’d told the police, they’d have come after me by now.” He turned to go.
“I told my friends. It’s the truth. You’ve lost!” Nancy called after him. But he didn’t stop. He didn’t believe her! Nancy sagged. Even though it was true that her friends knew about Lyons’s past, that wouldn’t help her or Emily now.
“Nancy,” Emily whispered. She had worked her gag off. “What are we going to do?”
She sounded close to panic. Nancy shook her head. “I don’t know, but we’ll think of something,” she promised. She doubled up her legs and tried to work her bound hands over them. If she could get her hands in front of her, she might be able to do something with the radio.
There was a roar as Lyons started the boat’s powerful engine. Emily began to cry. Nancy redoubled her efforts. Time was running out!
Finally she gave up. She’d have to do it with her hands behind her. Swinging her bound legs down to the floor, she hopped over to the communications console. “Stop crying,” she told Emily. “We’re going to make it!”
Nancy flipped the on-off switch with her mouth. Then she looked for a microphone. She’d have to trust the thing was on the right frequency—she had no idea how to change it if it wasn’t.
Then she gasped in horror. The microphone was gone! Where it should have been, there were only two bare wires.
“I cut it off,” Lyons’s voice came from behind her. She turned. He was peering in through the hatch. “I know you’re a resourceful girl—I thought you might try something like this.” He smiled pleasantly at her and disappeared.
Emily let out a sob. Nancy swallowed hard. She felt like crying herself.
What else could they do? In desperation, Nancy groped for the exposed wires with her bound hands behind her. She touched the ends together. There was a crackle.
They were live! Nancy felt a flare of hope. Maybe she could send a message in Morse code!
“SOS,” she tapped. Short—long—short. “SOS.” It was hard with her hands behind her back. The wires gave her tiny pinprick shocks every time she touched them together, but she kept on.
She tapped out all the information she could think of: the name of the boat, the location they’d left from, and their rough heading—east, toward the open sea. She repeated these twice. Then she went back to the SOS.
After about fifteen minutes she gave it up and hopped over to Emily. “Sit up,” she said urgently. “We’ve got to get our hands and legs untied. You work on my hands, I’ll do yours.”
For ten minutes the girls pulled frantically at each other’s bonds. Then came the sound Nancy had been dreading. The Marlene’s engine slowed to a throbbing idle as the boat came to a halt.
Lyons stuck his head through the hatch again. ?
??All systems are go!” he announced brightly. “I’m off. I’ll say my goodbyes now, since I won’t see you later, I’m afraid.” Then he was gone. Nancy heard the dinghy putt-putt away.
“Don’t stop trying!” she told Emily fiercely. “You’re almost loose. We still have a chance!”
They worked for a minute or two more. Suddenly Emily gave a triumphant cry.
“I think I can get my hand out—there!” Nancy felt her wrench it free. Then she turned and fumbled at Nancy’s wrists.
“There!” Emily cried as the knots parted. “Now for our legs.”
“No! No time,” Nancy said breathlessly. She grabbed Emily’s hand and dragged her to the hatch. “Pull yourself up,” she directed.
The girls hauled themselves up through the hatch and out onto the dark deck. Nancy looked around, but she couldn’t see where Lyons had placed the electric starter wand. She made a split-second decision. “We’ll have to swim for it!”
Emily nodded wordlessly, and the two girls hopped to the rail. Nancy threw herself over, and felt cold, black sea water close around her. A splash beside her told her that Emily had done the same.
They swam away from the Marlene as quickly as they could, using only their arms. Nancy could feel the strain already—she tried not to think about how far out to sea they might be.
After a few minutes Nancy heard a new noise: the throb of a big boat’s engine. Peering to her left, she saw in the faint moonlight the dark bulk of a ship about a hundred yards away. Overjoyed, she waved an arm in the air. “Help!” she screamed.
A powerful beam of light cut the night, blinding Nancy as it swept over her. A voice boomed, “This is the coast guard! Ahoy, there—are you in trouble?”
The coast guard! Thank goodness! Nancy continued to wave her arms. “Help!” she repeated.
The boat chugged closer, and then a life preserver landed in the water near Nancy. She snatched it and was pulled through the water and aboard the cutter, Emily beside her.
“Get away from that boat! Now!” Nancy shouted at the captain as soon as she could speak.