The Best Detective

  “I’M THE BEST!”

  “NO I’M THE BEST!”

  WHO IS THE BEST

  DETECTIVE OF ALL?

  Nancy Drew’s special detective notebook is gone! And, boy, is she in trouble. Inside were three passes—for her, Bess, and George—to the most popular movie of all time, Star Quest 2.

  Sure, Nancy’s friends will forgive her...maybe in a million years. Even worse, Jason Hutchings is looking for the notebook—just to prove how easy it is to be a detective. One thing’s for sure: these days, it’s not easy being Nancy Drew!

  The Best Detective

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

  A Ready-for Chapters Book

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Cover photography by Michel LeGrou

  Cover photo-illustration copyright © 1998

  by Joanie Schwarz

  Ages 6–9

  Kids.SimonandSchuster.com

  0995

  The

  Best Defective

  “If you’re all such great detectives,” Jenny March said, “help me find another pass for Star Quest 2.”

  “So solve that if you’re such a super duper incredible detective,” Jason Hutchings said to Nancy. “Come on, you have ten seconds.”

  Nancy shrugged and held on to her blue detective notebook. “I don’t need ten seconds because it’s not a mystery. You have to learn what a mystery is before you can be a detective.”

  “I don’t need to learn anything,” Jason said. “I’d be the best detective if I could just get my hands on one thing.”

  “What?” Bess asked.

  “Nancy’s notebook!” Jason yelled as he jerked it out of Nancy’s hands.

  The Nancy Drew Notebooks

  # 1 The Slumber Party Secret

  # 2 The Lost Locket

  # 3 The Secret Santa

  # 4 Bad Day for Ballet

  # 5 The Soccer Shoe Clue

  # 6 The Ice Cream Scoop

  # 7 Trouble at Camp Treehouse

  # 8 The Best Detective

  # 9 The Thanksgiving Surprise

  #10 Not Nice on Ice

  #11 The Pen Pal Puzzle

  #12 The Puppy Problem

  #13 The Wedding Gift Goof

  #14 The Funny Face Fight

  #15 The Crazy Key Clue

  #16 The Ski Slope Mystery

  #17 Whose Pet Is Best?

  #18 The Stolen Unicorn

  #19 The Lemonade Raid

  #20 Hannah’s Secret

  #21 Princess on Parade

  #22 The Clue in the Glue

  #23 Alien in the Classroom

  #24 The Hidden Treasures

  #25 Dare at the Fair

  #26 The Lucky Horseshoes

  #27 Trouble Takes the Cake

  #28 Thrill on the Hill

  #29 Lights! Camera! Clues!

  #30 It’s No Joke!

  #31 The Fine-Feathered Mystery

  #32 The Black Velvet Mystery

  #33 The Gumdrop Ghost

  #34 Trash or Treasure?

  #35 Third-Grade Reporter

  #36 The Make-Believe Mystery

  #37 Dude Ranch Detective

  #38 Candy Is Dandy

  #39 The Chinese New Year Mystery

  #40 Dinosaur Alert!

  #41 Flower Power

  #42 Circus Act

  #43 The Walkie-talkie Mystery

  #44 The Purple Fingerprint

  #45 The Dashing Dog Mystery

  #46 The Snow Queen’s Surprise

  #47 The Crook Who Took the Book

  #48 The Crazy Carnival Case

  #49 The Sand Castle Mystery

  #50 The Scarytales Sleepover

  #51 The Old-Fashioned Mystery

  #52 Big Worry in Wonderland

  #53 Recipe for Trouble

  #54 The Stinky Cheese Surprise

  #55 The Day Camp Disaster

  #56 Turkey Trouble

  #57 The Carousel Mystery

  #58 The Dollhouse Mystery

  #59 The Bike Race Mystery

  #60 The Lighthouse Mystery

  #61 Space Case

  #62 The Secret in the Spooky Woods

  #63 Snowman Surprise

  #64 Bunny-Hop Hoax

  #65 Strike-Out Scare

  #66 Zoo Clue

  #67 The Singing Suspects

  Available from Simon & Schuster

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1995 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Produced by Mega-Books, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or

  in part in any form.

  NANCY DREW and THE NANCY DREW NOTEBOOKS are

  registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of

  Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  The text of this book was set in Excelsior.

  First Aladdin Paperbacks edition April 2002

  First Minstrel Books edition September 1995

  ISBN-13: 978-0-671-87952-5

  ISBN-10: 0-671-87952-9

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4424-6764-4 (ebook)

  Contents

  Chapter 1: A Free Movie

  Chapter 2: In the Dark

  Chapter 3: Lost or Stolen?

  Chapter 4: The Race Is On

  Chapter 5: Toys and Clues

  Chapter 6: She Didn’t Do It!

  Chapter 7: The Blue Notebook

  Chapter 8: The Best Detective Wins

  1

  A Free Movie

  Star Quest 2!” Nancy Drew whispered to Bess Marvin. “Isn’t that super wonderful?”

  “Super excellent!” Bess answered.

  It was Friday afternoon and the end of the school week. Ms. Spencer had just made an announcement to her third-grade class. She had twenty-five free passes to a special preview of the movie Star Quest 2.

  “A friend of mine got the passes,” Ms. Spencer said. “I’ll give them out when you settle down, class.”

  Ms. Spencer tried to look stern, but she couldn’t help smiling. Her students were too excited to sit still or stop whispering.

  Jenny March waved her hand in the air. “Ms. Spencer,” she said, “is there an extra pass for my cousin Nina? She’s coming to visit me this weekend. She loves Star Quest.”

  Ms. Spencer shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jenny,” she said. “I was given just one pass for each of my students.”

  The school bell rang.

  “Line up for the passes,” Ms. Spencer said. “And don’t forget—the movie is at four-thirty on Sunday afternoon at the River Heights Cinema.” She glanced out the window and added, “Please hurry home. I didn’t expect rain today, but now it looks as if we might have a storm.”

  As the class filed out of the room, Ms. Spencer gave each student a movie pass. The passes were small cards with a purple border.

  Nancy and Bess waited near their cubbies for another classmate, George Fayne. Then the three best friends hurried down the crowded hallway.

  George’s real name was Georgia. She and Bess were cousins. But they looked very different. George was tall with dark curly hair. Bess was shorter and had long blond hair.

  Nancy was taller than Bess and shorter than George. She wore her straight reddish blond hair long.
/>
  “I can’t wait to see Star Quest 2,” Bess said. “I wish it were Sunday right now.”

  “Me, too,” Nancy said. “I love the first movie. I’ve seen it a zillion times on video.”

  “If the new one is just half as good, it will be great,” George said. “And we get to see it a week before the regular opening!”

  Along with all the other students, the girls left the building. They started walking across the schoolyard. Friday afternoons were always noisy. Everyone was laughing and shouting.

  Nancy took a close look at her special movie pass. “Wow, I just noticed something,” she said. “Our movie passes are like Star Quest trading cards. There’s a different character on the back of each one. I have star-fighter pilot Zyle. George has the robot dog RFF.”

  “Ha!” Bess said. She waved her pass at Nancy. “I have my favorite character—Kema, the android.”

  “Brrr,” George said. “It’s gotten a lot colder.” She shivered in her red sweatshirt.

  Bess stopped walking and began to button up her jacket. A strong gust of wind whipped around the girls.

  “Arghh!” Bess screamed. “My pass!”

  The wind had torn Bess’s pass out of her hand. Nancy quickly stuffed her own pass into the pocket of her pants and dashed after Bess’s. George did the same. Bess starting running, too. The girls chased the pass all the way across the schoolyard. Each time they came near it, another gust of wind snatched it away.

  “Oh, no!” Nancy said. “It’s starting to rain.”

  The first large drops quickly turned into a downpour. Almost everyone in the schoolyard raced for cover. Some students dashed back to the school building.

  George made a running jump and landed on Bess’s pass. “I’ve got it!” she yelled.

  “Great!” Nancy said. “Let’s get out of the rain. We can go to the Bell.”

  The girls ran toward the small store that stood by itself next to the school yard. The store windows displayed school supplies, toys, and candy. The red, white, and blue sign over the door read The School Bell.

  A man with light brown hair and glasses held the door open. He owned the Bell. His name was Charles Pitt, but everyone called him Charlie.

  “Come one, come all,” Charlie called. “Just be careful not to slip on the wet floor.” His blue eyes twinkled with laughter as the dripping kids crowded inside.

  Nancy, Bess, and George squeezed into the shop with the other students who had run there to get out of the rain. Like everyone else, they were laughing and trying to catch their breath.

  Nancy looked around. She loved the Bell. The counters and shelves were made of dark wood, and the wood floor was polished. An old-fashioned fan hung from the ceiling. Nancy’s father used to come to the School Bell when he was a boy. Charlie Pitt’s grandfather had run it then.

  “I’ve never seen so many kids in here,” Nancy said to Bess and George. “We’re like sardines in a can.”

  “Sardines?” George said. “That’s gross.”

  The girls squirmed past the cash register. They pushed forward until they reached the middle of the store. They stopped near a display rack that held paper clips, rolls of tape, colored pencils, and markers. It was too crowded to go farther.

  “Ouch!” Bess cried. “Someone stepped on my toe.”

  “Not true,” a boy in front of her said. It was Jason Hutchings. He and a few other students from Ms. Spencer’s class were standing near the shelves. “You put your toe right under my foot. Right under it.”

  “You’re wrong as usual,” Bess answered.

  “Whew!” Nancy said. She pushed her dripping bangs off her forehead. Then she reached into the pocket of her pants and took out her movie pass. “Yuck,” she muttered. “It’s almost as wet as I am.”

  “Look at my pass,” Bess said, holding up a dirty, limp card. “George really mashed it.”

  “Yeah, but at least I kept it from blowing away,” George said.

  “I’m going to put mine inside my notebook,” Nancy said. “Then it will dry flat.” She took off her backpack, unzipped it, and pulled out a small notebook with a shiny blue cover.

  “Can you put mine in, too?” Bess asked.

  “Mine, too,” George said.

  Nancy took their passes. She stuck all three of them between blank pages in the middle of the notebook.

  “Ooooh,” Jason teased Nancy. “The famous notebook of the world’s greatest detective.”

  “You just wish you could be a great detective like Nancy,” George said to Jason.

  Nancy loved to solve mysteries. She was good at it, too. Her father had given her the blue notebook. In it she wrote about suspects and clues.

  “I could be a detective if I wanted to be,” Jason told George. “And I’d be better than Nancy. I’d be the best detective!”

  Another classmate, Brenda Carlton, joined the conversation. “You don’t need to be a detective to solve mysteries,” she said. “Newspaper reporters like me solve mysteries all the time.”

  Brenda had her own newspaper, The Carlton News. She wrote it herself and handed it out at school. Her father was a newspaper publisher. He helped Brenda design it on their home computer.

  “If you’re all such great detectives, help me,” Jenny March said. “I’ve got to find another pass for Star Quest 2. If I don’t, I’ll miss the movie.” The rain had soaked Jenny’s short dark hair. Even her eyelashes were dripping wet. She did not look happy.

  “Why?” Nancy asked.

  “My cousin Nina is coming from Chicago to visit me,” Jenny explained. “It’s her birthday. My mom will never let me go to the movie without Nina.”

  “So solve that if you’re such a super duper incredible detective,” Jason said to Nancy. “Come on, you have ten seconds.”

  Nancy shrugged. “I don’t need ten seconds because it’s not a mystery. You have to learn what a mystery is before you can be a detective.”

  “I don’t need to learn anything,” Jason said. “I’d be the best detective if I could just get my hands on one thing.”

  “What?” Bess asked.

  “That notebook!” Jason yelled as he jerked it out of Nancy’s hands. “Ha! I—”

  Nancy moved quickly. Before Jason could finish his sentence, she grabbed back the notebook. She unzipped her backpack again. As she stuffed the notebook inside, lightning flashed in the windows of the Bell. Thunder shook the building.

  Suddenly the lights went out!

  2

  In the Dark

  Ouch! That was my ear!” someone yelled.

  “Sorry, I thought it was the door handle,” a voice answered. “I can’t see anything.”

  The storm clouds blotted out the late afternoon sun. The sky was dark. With all the electric lights out, it seemed like night inside the Bell.

  “Okay, kids, don’t panic,” Charlie Pitt shouted. “Just stand still. The lights will be on before you know it . . . I hope.”

  “I just bumped into someone,” Nancy said. “Was that you, Bess? George?”

  A girl answered, “It was me—Jenny. Is this you, Nancy?”

  A boy said, “No! it’s Jason. And quit pushing!”

  “Sorry,” Jenny said. “I’ll move back.”

  “Not this way,” Nancy said. “There’s a display stand. You’ll tip it ov—”

  Nancy’s warning came too late. There was a loud noise.

  “Help!” Bess screamed.

  Nancy heard a crash and shrieks. She took a step forward and tripped over someone’s leg. She flung out her arms to catch herself and landed half on the wood floor and half on someone else.

  “Is anyone hurt?” Charlie shouted. “Please, everyone be quiet so I can find out if everyone’s okay.”

  There was silence for a few seconds. Nancy moved her right hand around to find out what was near her. She felt someone’s shoulder, a backpack, spilled paper clips, and several pencils.

  Charlie Pitt called out, “Everyone stay calm and stand still. Just pretend
you’re frozen until the lights come on.”

  Near Nancy’s left side someone began to laugh. “We’re not frozen. We’re all wet!”

  Nancy started to giggle. In a minute everyone heaped on the floor was laughing.

  “Who’s under me?” Nancy asked when she could speak again.

  “I am,” George said.

  “So am I,” Bess said. “At least, I think I am. Ow! who kicked me?”

  “I’m just trying to get up,” Jason answered.

  Suddenly the lights went on.

  “Thank goodness!” Charlie said. He hurried over to the fallen display and made sure everyone was all right.

  Nancy looked around. Jenny, Brenda, Jason, George, and Bess were brushing themselves off and picking up their things.

  The bell on the front door jingled.

  “Is Nancy Drew here?” someone called.

  Nancy turned and then waved. “Hannah!” she shouted. “I’m over here.”

  Hannah Gruen was the Drew family’s housekeeper. She had lived with the Drews since Nancy’s mother had died, when Nancy was three years old.

  Hannah took a few steps toward Nancy. “My word!” she said. “What happened?”

  “It’s a mess, but no one’s hurt,” Charlie Pitt said. “The lights went out. Then a display rack got knocked over.”

  “When the rain started, I went looking for you in the car,” Hannah said to Nancy. “I thought you might come here.”

  Hannah helped Nancy, Bess, and George gather their belongings. Charlie and several children began setting up the display rack. Others were also picking up school supplies that had fallen on the floor.

  “I’ll drive you home,” Hannah said to Bess and George. “But we’ve got to hurry. The car is double-parked.”

  “I can’t find my backpack,” Nancy said.

  “Isn’t this one yours?” Brenda asked. She held out a purple pack.

  “Yes. Thanks,” Nancy said.

  Hannah steered the three girls through the crowded shop to the door. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’m blocking traffic.”

  Nancy glanced back at the school supplies that were still lying all over the floor. “Sorry about the mess,” she said to Charlie.