Danger in Disguise, Page 3

  Nancy had become wrapped up in his story. “What problem?” she asked.

  “The foreman on the job said I had to have a social security number and a green card. All I had was a temporary visa. Then, my mother’s friend came up with a solution.”

  “Who is this friend of your mother’s?”

  “Her name is Dee Shannon. She lives on the other side of town from here. Sometimes she rents out rooms—that’s how she got the papers she gave me. They belonged to one of her roomers who had died.” He deflated again. “At least, that’s what she told me.”

  “And you used them to get a job under an assumed name?” Nancy asked. She could see how uncomfortable that question made him, but she had to know.

  “Yes, I did,” he said.

  “Did you understand that it was illegal to pretend you were Michael Mulraney?”

  He shuffled his feet under the table, looking miserable.

  “I know it’s hard for you to understand,” he said. “I’d come here from a place where there was no chance for somebody like me. I truly believed that this job offer was a fluke, and if I passed it up there would never be another. So I became Michael Mulraney. Then, I worked day and night till I could get a small crew together and start taking jobs on my own. I just kept on working and saving and praying I wouldn’t get caught.”

  Nancy nodded. “Have you saved enough to bring your family here?”

  “Almost. This job for the city will give me the rest. Then they can come here and have a decent place to live and something to get started on. My father taught my brother carpentry too, so he can take over my business.”

  “And what about you?” Nancy asked.

  “I’ll turn myself in and take what’s coming to me,” Michael said with a heavy sigh.

  “What do you think that will be?”

  “They’ll probably send me back to Ireland, but I won’t mind if my family is taken care of.” He tapped the note, which he’d tossed on the table next to the cola he hadn’t touched. “Only now it looks like I’ll be going back before they come here.”

  “So, you think this note is a threat of some kind?” Nancy said softly. She couldn’t help feeling sorry about the fix he was in.

  “I think whoever sent this is going to use what they know against me somehow,” Michael answered. “I thought it must be you when I saw you with that immigration paper last night.”

  “But that paper doesn’t say anything that could prove you’re not Michael Mulraney,” Nancy objected.

  “The corner was folded over where the birth date should have been. The date was proof.” Michael sighed once more. “The real Michael Mulraney is twenty-five years older than me. I think that the person who sent me this note has the original of that printout with the birth date still on it.”

  “What makes you so sure the note isn’t just a friendly warning?”

  “If they wanted to help me, wouldn’t they tell me more than this?” He unfolded the paper to show her the one sentence again.

  Kathy Novello’s death made Nancy inclined to agree. Good Samaritans didn’t push innocent secretaries out of windows. But did Michael Mulraney qualify as an innocent victim too? That wasn’t clear.

  “What is it you want me to do exactly?” Nancy asked, curious.

  “Find out who sent this to me, and then we’ll decide from there,” he said quietly.

  “I’ll have to think about this,” she said, looking away so she wouldn’t see the hope fade from his eyes. “You broke the law, and I don’t usually take on a case for anyone who’s done that.”

  “I understand,” he said, and she could tell he really did. That didn’t make her decision any easier.

  • • •

  It was past suppertime when Nancy got to the pizza parlor. Bess was out, having finally maneuvered a date with Jeff Matthews, and it had taken Nancy an hour to track George down at the gym and wait for her to finish.

  Under George’s peaked hood, her dark curls were still damp from the shower as she sat in the booth across from Nancy and picked up a wedge of double-cheese with everything—except anchovies. She was wearing a gray, hooded sweatshirt jacket over a T-shirt and navy blue sweatpants.

  Nancy shook her head in amazement. “You work out like crazy—then top it off with a million calories.”

  George’s dark eyes twinkled. “I’m just making sure I don’t get carried away with this fitness stuff.” She creased the wedge deftly down the middle so none of the ingredients would fall off, then wound a strand of mozzarella into the neat package. “Speaking of getting carried away, what’s got you looking so serious?”

  Nancy recapped her conversation with Mulraney. She had to talk to somebody, and she knew George could be trusted with his secret. She was well into her second slice by the time the story was finished.

  “Let’s think about what could happen,” said George matter-of-factly. “If you don’t take the case, he’ll probably get caught and be sent back to Belfast. His brother will still be on the street, and the family will be back where they started.”

  “On the other hand,” said Nancy as George twirled the pizza platter in search of the piece with the most goodies on it, “if I do take his case, Michael may be able to keep all of his hard work from going down the drain.” She caught the edge of the platter in midtwirl. “And I’ll have time to figure out what really happened to Kathy Novello.”

  Nancy bounced out of the booth, taking the platter with her.

  “Where are you going with that?” cried George.

  “I’m having it boxed to go. We’ve got something important to do.”

  Nancy tapped her keys on the counter while the remains of their pie were wrapped up. “Thanks,” she said briskly when it was done. “Let’s go, George!”

  • • •

  Michael Mulraney was working late again. He saw the blue Mustang pull in and hurried over to greet Nancy and her friend.

  “I didn’t think you’d be coming to see me so soon,” he said.

  Nancy could tell he was very nervous. “I’ve made a decision,” she said.

  “I see.” Mulraney shifted from one booted foot to the other. “Well?”

  Nancy smiled warmly. “I’ll take the case, but I need to get some more information from you. Do you have time to talk?”

  Michael Mulraney looked relieved. “Sure,” he said. “Just give me a minute to put the outside lights on.”

  Before Nancy could answer, he was off across the dirt yard.

  She was getting out of the car when Michael suddenly went rigid beside the circuit breaker box. He began to twitch, first along his arms, then through his entire body.

  Nancy gasped and ran toward him. “Come on!” she shouted over her shoulder at George. “He’s being electrocuted!”

  Chapter

  Five

  DON’T TOUCH HIM, NAN! You’ll get shocked too!” screamed George.

  “I have to get him off that handle somehow!” Nancy tore away from her friend’s grip on her arm and looked around her. There had to be something—“Wood!” she muttered, remembering that it was a nonconductor.

  She pulled a two-by-four from a stack of lumber and thrust it at Michael, trying to pry him loose. He quivered some, but remained clamped fast to the circuit breaker.

  “Harder!” cried George. “He’s got a death grip on that switch.”

  She grabbed the board along with Nancy. They lunged forward together. The board struck Michael with a thud in the chest. Whoosh! The impact knocked the breath out of him.

  At the same instant his hand popped off the charging handle. He slid to the ground, unconscious—but alive.

  “Is he—is he all right?” asked George.

  “Call an ambulance” was Nancy’s only reply as she bent over Michael.

  The lights had pulsed off and on while he held the shorting handle. Now they were out completely.

  “What’s going on?” called a workman who had come out of the building. Then he spotted Michael crumpled on
the ground and Nancy hovering over him. “What happened to Mike?” the workman shouted in alarm.

  “He got a heavy jolt from that circuit breaker. I’m trying to bring him around.”

  She slapped Michael’s cheeks and called to him, but he didn’t come to. Meanwhile, the workman was examining the circuit breaker box, being careful not to get too close. Nancy jumped up to peer over his shoulder.

  “This thing is wired all wrong,” the man said, sounding amazed. “There should be a negative and a positive here, but look”—he pointed—“there’re two positives instead.”

  “What does that do?” Nancy asked. She bent down to listen to Michael’s respiration. He was breathing steadily, but he still showed no sign of waking up.

  “It means that, instead of alternating like it’s supposed to, the current went around in a circle,” the workman answered, making hand motions to demonstrate. “When Michael touched the handle he became part of that circle with the current going straight through him. It’s a miracle he’s still alive.”

  “Could those wires have been rigged wrong by accident?” Nancy asked.

  “I don’t see how. They were fine earlier.”

  “Then you think somebody must have switched the wires deliberately?”

  “I don’t think anything!” the man snapped, suddenly on the defensive. Then he hesitated. “Still, I don’t see any other way it could have happened.” He eyed her with suspicion. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m Nancy Drew. Who are you?”

  “The name’s Pete Donaldson. I’m Mike’s foreman.” He still sounded skeptical.

  “Does Michael turn these outside lights on every night?” Nancy wanted to know.

  “I guess he has done that, ever since the wiring was finished,” said Pete.

  “Is he usually alone on the job this late?”

  “Usually, unless we have something big to finish. Sometimes I stay around, but most of the time he’s alone,” Pete answered.

  Nancy nodded. Michael’s routine would make him an easy target for a would-be enemy, she reflected. She knelt to check his pulse again. Rapid, but steady.

  “Would you ever inspect this outside area, or was Michael the only one who did that?” she asked, though she could already guess what the answer would be.

  “He was the only one,” said Pete. “Say, what’s going on here?”

  “I’m not sure what’s going on,” said Nancy. She debated what to tell him. Pete seemed to be exactly what he said, a guy who worked for Michael. Still, somebody with access to that box had rigged those wires, and Pete appeared to know how that would be done. She stood up.

  “I suspect somebody’s been trying to scare Michael,” she went on, watching Pete carefully, “or maybe even kill him.”

  Pete stared.

  “That’s all I need,” murmured an unsteady voice from the ground. Michael had regained consciousness.

  He tried to sit up, but Nancy wouldn’t let him.

  A few minutes later the ambulance arrived and medics checked Michael over. They moved him to a cot in the construction trailer nearby. There’d been no serious damage done, except for the nasty bruises where Nancy and George had struck him with the board. The men tried to talk him into going to the hospital, but Michael wouldn’t hear of it. Finally they left.

  “All I need is a little rest,” Michael said to Nancy. “And one other thing.”

  “What’s that?” Nancy asked.

  “To find out why someone would do something like this.”

  “We’ll find out,” replied Nancy seriously.

  A broad grin lit up Michael’s face, and he seemed to be a little less pale beneath his tan. He sat up painfully and grasped Nancy’s hand. Then he looked dismayed and sank back down on the cot again.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I may have ruined our chance with the only lead we have,” he said. “Yesterday, after I left your house, I was sure you were going to turn me down, so I thought I’d better check things out on my own.

  “I went to see Dee Shannon, the woman who gave me Michael Mulraney’s social security card. I’m afraid it didn’t go very well.”

  George had been listening and looked suddenly worried.

  “What do you mean?” Nancy asked Michael.

  “My nerves were a bit on the ragged side. That’s my only excuse for what happened,” he said. “I lost my temper and started yelling at her for giving me the card in the first place.” He hung his head. “Instead of getting information, I got kicked out and was told never to come back.”

  He looked so unhappy and ashamed of himself, and he’d been through so much in the past few days. Nancy couldn’t bring herself to tell him that if he really had ruined their chances of getting Dee Shannon to cooperate, then they could really be in trouble. Michael Mulraney’s hot temper might very well have cooked his own goose!

  • • •

  Late the next morning Nancy visited Mrs. Shannon. Michael had said she was a real TV buff and that it wasn’t a good idea to interrupt her during the afternoon soaps or evening prime time.

  She lived in a white, wood-frame house. Green flower boxes brimming with orange and yellow marigolds lined the wide porch. Dee Shannon answered the door, but it took some fast talking from Nancy to keep her from closing it again the minute Michael’s name was mentioned.

  “Please, believe me,” Nancy pleaded, “Michael is in very serious trouble. You know him—normally he would never have acted the way he did yesterday.”

  “And you’re asking me to get myself in trouble along with him?” Dee Shannon’s naturally high-colored cheeks were even redder from the agitation of the moment. “After all, I’m the one who gave him that card.”

  “Why don’t you let me in for a few minutes? We’ll talk about what we can do to keep everybody out of trouble.”

  Mrs. Shannon was short and wide. She filled the doorway so Nancy couldn’t possibly get past. Instead of stepping aside, Mrs. Shannon moved back several steps, letting Nancy into the entry-way but no farther. She knew she had to calm the woman down or they’d never be able to talk sensibly about Michael’s situation.

  “Something smells good,” said Nancy. “Were you cooking?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Don’t let me stop you then,” said Nancy with a bright smile. “I’ll come into the kitchen and we can talk there while you cook.”

  Mrs. Shannon looked Nancy up and down suspiciously one more time, then turned and walked down the hallway.

  “I do my cooking early so I can watch the soap operas when they come on,” said Mrs. Shannon as Nancy surveyed the array of steaming kettles on the kitchen stove.

  Nancy remembered what Michael had said about Mrs. Shannon being a real TV lover. Maybe that could be a way of getting to her.

  “I met Rick Arlen once,” said Nancy. “You know, the guy from ‘Danner’s Dream.’ ”

  “You did?”

  Nancy could see Mrs. Shannon beginning to thaw, and it wasn’t because of the steamy kitchen.

  “I can hardly watch that show since they had him die. It’s just not the same without him.”

  Nancy nodded before steering the conversation back in the direction she wanted it to go. “Michael wishes he hadn’t lost his temper with you.”

  “He shouldn’t have talked to me the way he did.” Mrs. Shannon sounded as if she was getting angry again.

  “Well, he wasn’t thinking straight at the time,” Nancy said apologetically. She told Mrs. Shannon about Michael’s problems.

  “I think he snapped under the pressure,” she finished up. “After all, he could lose everything.”

  Mrs. Shannon stared at her for a moment. “Yes,” she said finally in a much softer tone. “I see what you mean.”

  Nancy tried not to let her sigh of relief be audible.

  “I can’t really help you much though,” said Mrs. Shannon. “That other Mulraney—the real one—kept to himself. He didn’t even eat his meals here the w
ay most of my roomers do. Tall, handsome fellow—but not very memorable, for all that. He never smiled. He made it very clear that he minded his business and wanted everybody else to do the same. Then, the next thing I heard, he was dead, killed in some kind of construction accident.”

  Construction! That was the present Michael Mulraney’s business too. Was it just coincidence, or was there more of a connection than that? Nancy realized she’d have to find out more about the first Mulraney.

  “Did he have any friends that you know of?” she asked Mrs. Shannon.

  “If he did, he never brought them here. He was quiet and neat, and he paid his rent on time. That’s all I can tell you about him.”

  Nancy couldn’t hide her sigh this time. It looked as if she’d hit a dead end.

  “Wait a minute. Now that I think about it,” said Mrs. Shannon, wiping her hands on her apron, “there was one thing I heard.”

  “What was that?” Nancy asked eagerly.

  “Supposedly he hung around a pool hall in the neighborhood sometimes. It’s called the Side Pockets Club.” She frowned. “I remember it seemed strange to me. He struck me as too much of a gentleman for that crowd.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Shannon,” said Nancy. “I’ll check it out.”

  “Don’t you be going there by yourself,” said Mrs. Shannon. For the first time, Nancy heard a bit of a brogue in the woman’s voice. “As I understand it, that’s no place for a young lady.”

  “Oh, it can’t be that bad,” Nancy protested, but Mrs. Shannon shook her head vigorously.

  Mrs. Shannon wouldn’t let Nancy go back into the hallway until she promised not to go alone. Nancy hated to deceive the woman, but it wasn’t a promise she could keep.

  However, when she saw the pool hall, she wondered if she shouldn’t have taken Dee Shannon’s advice.

  The sidewalk in front of the Side Pockets Club was littered with bottles and cans. The windows of the one-story building had been painted over in dark green with black lettering. Nancy couldn’t tell anything about what or who was inside. She remembered Mrs. Shannon’s warning. Still, it was a bright, sunny afternoon, and Nancy was anxious to get on with the investigation. She was following a trail that had been cold for a few years, and she had the feeling it could get colder by the minute. She opened the door and stepped inside. It could have been midnight instead of broad daylight. The long, narrow room was lit only by green-shaded light bulbs suspended from the ceiling over a dozen or so pool tables. By the time Nancy’s eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, she heard someone move in behind her.