Double Take, Page 2

  “Well, you have to find it soon, because I’m not going to sleep until you do,” Nadine insisted.

  “If you want to find your hoodie fast, Nadine, then you need to hire real detectives,” someone said.

  Nancy, George, Bess, and Nadine all looked around to see who had spoken. Deirdre was standing behind them on the sidewalk, along with Madison and Kendra.

  “Real detectives? What are you talking about?” Nadine asked Deirdre curiously.

  “I’m taking about me, Madison, and Kendra. We’re the Klue Krew, and you should hire us instead of these inexperienced amateurs,” Deirdre said, pointing to Nancy, George, and Bess.

  Bess frowned. “What do you mean you’re the Clue Crew? We’re the Clue Crew! Is this a joke, or what?”

  “We’re the Klue Krew. With K’s. As in K-L-U-E K-R-E-W,” Deirdre said smugly. “I’m the President and CEO. CEO stands for “chief executive officer,” in case you didn’t know. Here, check out our flier. Kendra?” ”

  Kendra started. “Huh? What, Deirdre?”

  “The fliers,” Deirdre whispered.

  “Oh, right.” Kendra reached into her backpack and pulled out a pile of bright orange fliers. She passed one each to Nadine, Nancy, George, and Bess.

  Nancy scanned her flier. It had a drawing of three girls in trench coats and sunglasses, carrying flashlights and magnifying glasses. It said:

  IS YOUR TREE HOUSE HAUNTED?

  IS YOUR FAVORITE KITTY MISSING?

  ARE YOU GETTING SPOOKY CRANK CALLS?

  WELL, DON’T WORRY!

  WE’RE THE KLUE KREW, AND WE CAN FIND ANYTHING

  AND SOLVE ANY MYSTERY!

  WE’RE EXPERIENCED AND RELIABLE.

  CONFIDENTIALITY GUARANTEED.

  TO GET STARTED, CALL OR E-MAIL DEIRDRE,

  THE PRESIDENT AND CEO.

  DON’T RELY ON AMATEURS.

  COME TO US

  FOR ALL YOUR MYSTERY-SOLVING NEEDS!

  At the bottom were Deirdre’s phone number and e-mail address.

  What a bunch of copycats! Nancy thought.

  “You’re ‘experienced’? What mysteries have you solved?” George asked Deirdre, Madison, and Kendra.

  “Well, actually—” Madison began.

  “We’ve solved, uh, dozens of mysteries,” Deirdre interrupted. “Dozens and dozens, in fact.”

  Nadine crossed her arms over her chest. “What am I going to do? I don’t know if I should hire the Clue Crew with C’s or the Klue Krew with K’s,” she said, confused.

  Deirdre’s face lit up. “I know! You should hire both of us,” she said excitedly.

  Kendra nodded. “Yeah! We can have a contest.”

  “Whoever solves the mystery first will become the number-one detective club at River Heights Elementary School!” Madison added.

  “We accept!” Bess blurted out. She hesitated. “That is…if it’s okay with you guys,” she said to Nancy and George.

  “Game on!” George said. “What do you say, Nancy?”

  Nancy grinned. “I’m in.”

  “Great!” Nadine said eagerly. “With six detectives looking for my hoodie instead of three, it’ll turn up twice as fast!”

  “Okay. We have fifteen minutes until school begins. Let’s get started,” Nancy said.

  It was Wednesday morning. Nancy, George, and Bess were in the girls’ locker room. They had come to school extra early so they could look for clues that would lead to the missing hoodie.

  On the way to the girls’ locker room, they had stopped by the lost-and-found box in the principal’s office, just in case the hoodie might be there. But the only things in the box were a baseball cap, a comic book, and a silver hair scrunchie.

  Nancy glanced around. It was weird being the only ones in the girls’ locker room, which was usually so crowded and noisy—and messy, too. This morning, the locker room was totally quiet. And it seemed to be totally uncluttered, except for a lone white sneaker and a water bottle lying on the floor.

  “Which locker did Nadine use yesterday?” George spoke up. There were no preassigned lockers in gym class; each girl used whatever locker was available.

  “It must have been number seven, because Nadine’s locker was two lockers to the left of mine, and I used number nine,” Nancy said after a moment. “I remember that mine was number nine because nine is the same as the month of September.”

  “You have an awesome memory,” Bess complimented her.

  Nancy grinned. “Thanks!”

  The three girls walked over to locker #7 and opened it. It was empty.

  Nancy went over it again, making sure to check every nook and cranny. It was definitely empty. “Hmm,” she said, disappointed. “No clues here.”

  George started opening other lockers. None of them had locks, which made it easy to search them. Nancy and Bess did the same.

  “They’re all empty,” Bess said after a moment. “Except this one—ew! There’s a pair of stinky socks in here.”

  “And this one has a stinky pair of gym shorts,” George piped up.

  The girls kept opening and closing lockers. Nancy glanced at the clock on the wall. School started in five minutes. Time was running out.

  Nancy got to locker #24. She was about to open it when she noticed something shiny on the floor in front of it.

  She bent down to take a closer look. It was a silver sequin.

  Could it be a silver sequin from Nadine’s hoodie? she wondered excitedly as she picked it up.

  She opened locker #24 to see if there might be another clue. On the bottom of the locker was something that looked like a crumpled-up candy wrapper. Nancy reached for it and smoothed it out. She was right. It was a Krunchilicious candy wrapper.

  “Hey, guys? Who used locker number twenty-four yesterday?” Nancy asked George and Bess.

  George glanced up from locker #16. “I don’t remember. Do you, Bess?”

  Bess was checking out locker #29. “Nope. Why, Nancy?”

  “Because I found these two clues,” Nancy began. “A silver sequin and a Krunchilicious candy wrapper. I think that—”

  Suddenly, there was a noise. It sounded like footsteps.

  Nancy put her fingers to her lips. “Shhhh,” she whispered. George and Bess nodded nervously.

  The three girls waited and listened. There were more footsteps.

  Then Nancy saw something—or rather, someone—peering out from behind a row of lockers.

  Nancy’s heart began pounding. She, George, and Bess weren’t alone anymore.

  Could it be the thief, returning to the scene of the crime?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Breaking News

  Nancy wasn’t sure what to do. Should she, George, and Bess try to hide…or run for it…or face the thief…or what? She had to make a split-second decision.

  We should face the thief—or whoever it is, she thought.

  Nancy cupped her hands over her mouth. “Come out! We know you’re there!” she called loudly.

  In response, the person jumped out from behind the row of lockers. Then a second person jumped out. Then a third.

  All three people were dressed in matching trench coats and dark glasses. Nancy stared and stared. They looked like the pictures on the Klue Krew’s flier….

  “Deirdre?” she said after a moment. “Madison? Kendra?”

  Deirdre adjusted her dark glasses. “We’re undercover, so please don’t use our real names!” she said conspiratorially. “What are you three doing in here, anyway?”

  “Uh, we’re working on our case,” George said.

  “You mean you’re working on our case,” Deirdre corrected her. “Soooo. I bet you haven’t found anything, have you?”

  “Actually, Nancy just found—” Bess began, then clamped her hand over her mouth. “I mean…Nancy didn’t find anything. Anything at all.”

  Deirdre frowned. “Hmm. You’re hiding something, aren’t you? Well, not for long!” She turned to Madison and Kendra. “Come on, Agent Double Oh On
e and Agent Double Oh Two. We’ve got exactly three minutes and twelve seconds to do a complete search of the premises. Go, go, go! You have your orders!”

  “Yes, Chief!” Madison and Kendra said in unison.

  Madison and Kendra took a couple of flashlights and magnifying glasses out of their coat pockets and started checking out all the lockers. Nancy tried to stifle a laugh. The Klue Krew seemed to be taking their jobs a little too seriously!

  “Let’s go over what we have so far,” Nancy said.

  It was after school on Wednesday. Nancy, George, and Bess were hanging out in Nancy’s room, discussing the case. Nancy’s puppy, Chocolate Chip, was curled up on the floor, snoring and thumping her tail.

  Nancy and Bess were sitting cross-legged on the bed, which had a pretty lavender-and-white bedspread that matched the rest of Nancy’s room. Nancy had her special purple detective notebook on her lap. It was the notebook she used to keep track of all the Clue Crew cases, in purple pencil.

  George was sitting in front of Nancy’s computer. She liked to keep track of all the Clue Crew cases on the computer. “Okay. I’m going to open a new file, and I’m going to call it ‘The Case of the Missing Hoodie,’” she announced.

  “Good idea,” Nancy said. She flipped through the notebook and started scribbling some notes onto a fresh page. “So. We have two clues: the silver sequin and the Krunchilicious candy wrapper.”

  Nancy reached into her backpack and pulled out a small plastic bag. Inside the bag were the sequin and the candy wrapper. She always carried small plastic bags for storing clues, “in case of a case.”

  She handed the bag to George, who put it inside Nancy’s desk drawer. The drawer was full of bags containing clues from all their cases, old and new. Nancy sometimes thought of the drawer as a clue museum!

  George turned back to the computer. “Okay, so what about suspects?”

  “I think Antonio is the thief,” Bess blurted out. “He pretended to trip and spill chili all over Nadine’s hoodie yesterday, remember? Maybe he pretended to steal it, too. He loves to pull evil pranks like that.”

  Nancy thought about this. “Yeah, except…Nadine said she saw her hoodie in her backpack at the beginning of gym class. And right after gym class, she noticed it was missing. Which means that the thief probably stole the hoodie in the girls’ locker room. How would Antonio get into the girls’ locker room?”

  Bess frowned. “Oh. Hmm. Maybe Antonio was working with a partner? A girl partner?” she suggested.

  “He should definitely be on the suspect list, even though he’s a boy,” George agreed, typing. “Who else?”

  “Well, there’s that new girl, Violet Keeler,” Nancy said. “I heard her talking to Nadine in the locker room yesterday. She’s a big, huge Lula Rappaport fan. She was practically begging Nadine to sell her the hoodie, or at least let her borrow it for her birthday party. Nadine said no. Violet seemed kind of upset.”

  “Maybe Violet is Antonio’s partner, then,” Bess mused.

  “We should interview both of them tomorrow,” George suggested.

  “Good idea,” Nancy said. “And don’t forget—we also have the results of our Krunchilicious poll.”

  Nancy, George, and Bess had conducted a poll at lunchtime: Krunchilicious versus Choco-Mania. Nancy had a theory that whoever had used locker #24 yesterday might be the hoodie thief, because the silver sequin was in front of locker #24. So it was important to know who liked Krunchilicious candy bars and who didn’t, since they had found the Krunchilicious candy wrapper in locker #24.

  The results had been interesting. Most of the kids they had polled preferred Choco-Mania. The only Krunchilicious fans were Deirdre, Madison, Kendra, Violet, and Antonio.

  There was a knock on Nancy’s door. “Come in!” the girls called out in unison.

  Hannah Gruen walked in, carrying a tray. Hannah was the Drews’ housekeeper. She had been with Nancy and her father, Carson Drew, since Nancy’s mother had died five years ago. But Hannah was much more than a housekeeper. She brushed Nancy’s hair every night, gave great hugs, and made the world’s yummiest vegetable lasagna.

  “Hi, Hannah!” Nancy said, waving and smiling. “What did you bring us?”

  Hannah chuckled as she set the tray down on the bed. “Well, I figured you girls were working hard on your new mystery. So I brought you some power snacks to help you brainstorm. Banana bread and hot apple cider. What do you think?”

  “We think that’s awesome!” Bess said excitedly. “Thanks, Hannah!”

  “You’re welcome, detectives!”

  After Hannah left, the girls dug into the snacks. They were delicious. “So where were we?” Nancy started to say, just as a little bell dinged on her computer.

  George glanced at the screen. “You have an instant message from Nadine,” she told Nancy. “She says we need to see Deirdre’s website ASAP.”

  “Huh? Why?” Bess said.

  “I’ll check it out,” George said as she typed in the address for Dishing with Deirdre. Deirdre used her website to post articles, gossip, photos, and whatever else she felt like posting, including her opinions on just about everything. Nancy and Bess got up from the bed and stood behind George as the homepage appeared.

  All three girls gasped when they saw the enormous headline blazing across the screen:

  THE INTERNATIONALLY FAMOUS

  KLUE KREW DETECTIVE CLUB IS CLOSE

  TO CRACKING THE HOODIE MYSTERY!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Ransom Note

  “What is Deirdre talking about?” Bess exclaimed. “How did they find Nadine’s hoodie already?”

  “Let’s keep reading,” Nancy suggested.

  Under the blazing headline, Deirdre had posted an article. It read:

  The Klue Krew is klose to klosing a major kase! (LOL!)

  Yesterday, River Heights Elementary School student Nadine Nardo was the victim of a vicious crime. Her brand-new pink Lula Rappaport hoodie was stolen from the girls’ locker room!

  “Please find it for me!” a sobbing Nadine begged “DS,” the President and CEO of the Klue Krew. (For security reasons, the Klue Krew will not reveal the identities of its members.)

  Nadine also hired Nancy Drew and her “Clue Crew” for the same case. Rumor has it that Nadine felt sorry for them because they didn’t have any other cases to work on.

  As of 3:32 p.m. today, the Klue Krew has found dozens and dozens of clues. The Klue Krew has also interviewed dozens and dozens of witnesses and suspects. “I think Nadine will have her hoodie back any minute now,” said “MF,” a Klue Krew agent.

  “We’re really close to solving the mystery,” said “KJ,” another Klue Krew agent. “On the other hand, Nancy Drew and her Clue Crew are totally clueless!”

  “This article is a pack of lies!” Bess said angrily.

  “It’s just Deirdre being Deirdre,” George reassured her. “We should ignore it.”

  “Definitely,” Nancy agreed.

  “But everyone will read it and think they’re a better detective club than our Clue Crew!” Bess pointed out. “Deirdre can’t get away with this! Here, George, scoot over.”

  She gave George a little push and sat down in her place in front of Nancy’s computer. She began typing, her fingers flying across the keyboard.

  “What are you doing, Bess?” Nancy asked her curiously.

  “You’ll see,” Bess replied mysteriously.

  After a second, the IM window popped up on the screen. Nancy realized that Bess was IMing Deirdre.

  Bess typed: YR WEBSITE IS FULL OF LIES!!!!!

  Deirdre typed: YR JUST JEALOUS B/C KK ROCKS AND CC DOESNT

  Bess typed: CC IS WAY AHEAD OF KK

  Deirdre typed: YOU GUYS HAVENT FOUND ANYTHING

  Bess typed: YES WE HAVE!!!!!!!!

  Deirdre typed: UR LYING

  Bess typed: WE FOUND KRUN

  “BESS!” Nancy and George yelled at the same time.

  Bess accidentally hit ENTER. “Huh?
What?”

  “You have to stop typing right this second!” Nancy told her. “Deirdre is just trying to trick you into telling her top-secret information.”

  Bess blushed. “Oh. I’m sorry! I almost typed ‘Krunchilicious.’”

  “Sign off, sign off,” George urged Bess.

  Bess typed: GOTTA GO! Then she signed off. “Sorry, guys,” she apologized to Nancy and George. “That was close! I mean, that was ‘klose’ with a K!”

  “What are you making, Violet?” Nancy asked her in a friendly voice.

  It was Thursday morning. Nancy and her classmates were in art class, creating collages out of magazine clippings and brightly colored tissue paper.

  Violet was at the same table as Nancy, George, and Bess. Nancy had decided to take the opportunity to question Violet, since she was a suspect. Deirdre, Madison, and Kendra were sitting all the way across the room. They didn’t seem to be paying any attention to Nancy and her Clue Crew.

  Violet held up her collage with a proud smile. The collage had lots of photos of Lula Rappaport. There was Lula on the set of one of her movies. There was Lula air-kissing her fans. There was Lula inline skating with her six toy poodles. There was Lula getting a manicure at a fancy-looking spa.

  “I’m going to call this ‘The Many Faces of Lula,’” Violet said. “I really hope I get an A on it.”

  “I’m sure you will!” Nancy said. “By the way, speaking of Lula…you know about Nadine’s missing hoodie, right?”

  Violet’s brown eyes widened. “I know what you’re going to say!” she burst out before Nancy could say another word. “You’re going to say that I’m the one who stole it, aren’t you? Of course you would say that, since I’m, like, the biggest Lula Rappaport fan in the entire universe. But there’s no way I would ever, ever steal someone else’s Lula hoodie. Stealing is wrong!”

  Nancy, George, and Bess exchanged glances. “I wasn’t going to say you stole it,” Nancy told Violet. “I was just going to ask you if you knew anything about it. Anything at all. It would really help our case.”