Club Dread (7 page)

NANCY

George, Bess, and I headed back up to our suite to get ready for our evening out. Matthias really knew how to ruin a party. I didn't understand how Frank and Joe could be friends with him, let alone work with him in ATAC. Poor George! He wouldn't leave her alone. Thankfully George knew how to let a guy know she wasn't interested.

“All right, Nancy, let's see what you've got.” Bess dragged my suitcase out. She put it on the table in the main room and started rummaging through it.

“I don't think I brought any of my investigation stuff. I know I left the picklocks at home. But maybe…”

Bess was right. We needed to get ready. It seemed like things were coming to a head. Who knew what we might need.

“No, Nancy. Clothes! Let's see what clothes you've got. You're meeting with Jack Thorton later. You need to get dressed up.”

I groaned.

“This won't do?” I pointed to my shorts and sandals.

Bess didn't even bother responding. She was right. I sighed and helped her lay out all my clothes on the table.

“Now it's your turn to let her play dress-up on you. This is payback for the mall.” George laughed.

Bess threw most of my clothes aside with a shake of her head. We had different standards when it came to fashion. The pile of “no's” far outweighed the pile of “maybe's.” Finally, she settled on a black shirt, the one pair of long slacks I had brought with me, and a pair of heels, which I almost hadn't brought but which Bess convinced me I needed. They were low, only about an inch, but I still felt like I was walking on stilts whenever I put them on.

“Do you think that shirt is fancy enough?” I didn't know a lot about fashion, but it definitely looked like a plain T-shirt to me.

“Of course not. I'm going to have to work on it. Hand me my sewing kit?”

I should have known. If
I
thought it wasn't fancy enough, I'm surprised Bess even thought it could be saved. But she was a miracle worker when it came to
clothes. As I watched, she cut all along the bottom of the shirt, then took the extra fabric and began to stitch a fancy new collar.

George called home to check in, and I could hear her telling her parents all about the hotel and the beach, though she didn't mention anything about our room being trashed or the robberies. George was one of those people who could never sit still, and she paced back and forth through the suite while she was on the phone.

As she walked, I noticed a strange noise, like a buzzing sound. At first I thought it was her phone, but then I noticed that it only happened when she was walking near one of the sofas—the one that was shaped like a giant clamshell. Once George was off the phone, the noise stopped entirely.

I had a suspicion. I took a piece of paper and pen from my bag. Quickly, I wrote out two notes that said,
pretend to have a conversation.
I handed one to George and the other to Bess. Their eyes widened, but they nodded.

“Hey, George,” said Bess. “So do you want to go to that party on the beach that Thatcher mentioned?”

“I think so. Do you think it'll be fun?”

“I hope so.”

While they talked, I took Bess's scissors out of her sewing kit and walked over to the couch. I took out my cell phone and turned the volume all the way down. Then I dialed my voice mail. The buzzing returned. I
began to pass the phone over the couch cushions, listening. The sound was loudest over by one of the seams. If I was wrong about this, I was going to have to apologize to Mr. Thorton tonight.

I slipped the shears in between the thread and the fabric, cutting each stitch individually to make the least amount of noise and mess possible. George and Bess crept closer, continuing their fake conversation loudly. I peeled back the fabric. A small metal circle was sitting there, glinting. As I watched, a red light blinked on and off. There were small holes at one end of it, like the kind you see on a pair of headphones.

The room was bugged!

We all looked at one another, wide-eyed.

We hadn't said much of anything today, but if the device was here yesterday, the person listening would know all about Joe, Frank, and Petrovitch. I pulled the fabric back up and stitched it closed again. Whoever had put the device there, we didn't want them to know we had found it.

We continued to make fake conversation until the time came to leave. Bess finished making my new shirt, and we all got dressed to go out. In the elevator, we finally stopped pretending.

“George, can you look up some information on listening devices and see if there is any way to block them out?”

“Sure thing, Nancy.”

“Bess, I need you to let Frank and Joe know about this. And then I want the two of you to be careful at that party tonight! Someone at the hotel is after us, and who knows what they may have overheard.”

The elevator doors opened onto the lobby, and we split up. I trusted Bess and George to look after each other, but I was starting to worry. Most of the cases we worked on were back in River Heights, where we could call on Police Chief McGuiness or my father to help us out. Here, I had no idea who we could trust. Other than the Hardy boys, that is.

A uniformed waiter with white hair met me at the door to the Wetlands main restaurant, the White Heron.

“Ms. Drew?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“I have been instructed to take you to Mr. Thorton's private dining room. Please come this way.”

With that, he walked off away from the restaurant. I hurried to catch up with him. We walked through the lobby until we arrived at a small door I had not noticed before. It was very plain, except that it had a large keyhole in it. All the other doors in the hotel worked on keypads and sensor systems. The waiter pulled out a large black key, and the door clicked audibly as he turned it in the lock. He beckoned me to enter, and closed the door behind me.

I found myself on a narrow path above a large pool. The water was lit from below, and I could see all manner of things swimming below me: fish, turtles, lizards, frogs. At the end of the path, a man sat at a table lit by candles. He smiled as I walked toward him.

“Nancy!”

“Mr. Thorton.” I smiled.

“You must call me Jack. May I call you Nancy? Sit, sit!” Jack Thorton was a large, smiling man with incredible energy. He must have been as old as my father, or maybe even older. His hair was all white, and his dark skin was lined with deep grooves from a lifetime of smiling. He seemed so excited about everything that his words tumbled out of him in the wrong order, and much too fast. I liked him instantly.

“Of course, Mr. Thor—I mean, Jack. Please call me Nancy,” I said as I sat down. The table was set with old, heavy silver and thin, bone-white china. The table was an antique as well, a grooved and scarred piece of hardwood that must have weighed a ton! Jack caught me looking at everything and smiled.

“This was all my mother's. Handed down through the generations, though my mother was never clear on how many generations there were. French aristocracy, she assured me, we were. Or sometimes Creole royalty. Or Seminole chiefs. Her stories changed, but the china stayed the same. When she died, it became mine. As
did the land the hotel now sits on—turns out she might have been telling the truth all along.”

Jack picked up a bell that was sitting by the table and rang it once. A waiter came in with two small plates. I smelled spices and onions. On each plate was a tiny crepe topped with brownish yellow eggs.

“Curried eggs,” Jack said. “I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of ordering us a tasting menu, a selection of our chef's favorites dishes.”

I put a bite in my mouth. It was delicious!

“This is amazing. Thank you!”

Jack smiled and clapped his hands. For the next half hour, the waiter brought a steady stream of tiny dishes—a bite of this, a taste of that. Most of it I barely recognized, but all of it was great. I tried to ask Jack about the hotel, but the food was so good, my mouth was always full.

Finally, we took a break before dessert and I had my opening.

“How have you been enjoying your stay, Nancy?”

“It's been wonderful, Mr. Thor—I mean, Jack.” It was hard to get used to calling someone my dad's age by their first name. I could do it out loud, but in my head, I still thought of him as Mr. Thorton. “You must hear this all the time, but I've never been anywhere quite this amazing before!”

“It's so good of you to say that, dear. It has not been
the easiest year for the resort, I'm afraid.” His eyebrows scrunched up in his face and he looked like a sad cartoon character. His emotions were so big, they didn't look real sometimes. But you could tell they were genuine.

“Has something been wrong?”

“And here I thought everyone had heard! But then, we're always the center of our own universe, right? It's good to be reminded that life goes on aside from our woes.” He sighed and wrung his hands. “There have been a number of terrible events here in the past few months: robberies and break-ins and balconies falling into the pool and altogether too much for me to be worrying such a lovely young girl about over dinner. Tell me, how has your father been?”

Just when we were getting close to the information I wanted to discuss, our conversation headed off in another direction. I told him how sad Dad was that he couldn't make it down to visit.

“Ah, Carson! That was always your father's way. Busy, busy, busy. Too big a heart to turn anyone down. That's how I knew he was the right person to help me out with my employee problems.”

Employee problems?
The only unhappy employee I'd met was Petrovitch. This sounded exactly like the sort of information we needed.

“What kind of problems were you having? It's hard
to imagine someone who works at the Wetlands not being happy. I wish I could work here!”

“Oh, no—no, no, no, nothing like that. I pride myself on treating my employees well. I know what it's like to work in the resorts down here. Some of them treat their employees terribly, like servants.”

Mr. Thorton went on to explain that many of the people who worked at the resort were immigrants. There was a large immigrant population in the local community. It was normal for restaurants and hotels to hire illegal immigrants, who they could pay less and treat poorly. Mr. Thorton, with help from my dad, was working on a program to enable his employees to apply for visas, which would let them stay legally.

“Wow,” I told Mr. Thorton. “That's really generous of you.”

“It was all due to an employee of mine. I believe you met him, Andrew Nikitin?”

My skin prickled at the sound of his name.

“Yes, he checked us in. The program was his idea?”

“Yes, indeed. Now his is a sad, sad story.” Mr. Thorton paused, and I could tell he wanted me to ask him for more information, which I was happy to do.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, his life has been very hard. He himself is an immigrant from Russia. He changed his name to fit in better, from Androvitch to Andrew. He moved here
many years ago, but still he sends almost all his money back home to support his family. His brother came here a few months ago, and we hired him to work at the Wetlands. But Andrew is still perpetually in debt.”

Nikitin has a brother?
My mind froze. I knew, for certain, who it was.

“I think I've met his brother—his name isn't Petrovitch, is it?”

“Yes, that's him!”

Andrew Nikitin and Petrovitch weren't just connected—they were brothers!

JOE

“And that's when I realized Petrovitch and Nikitin are brothers! It explains everything.” Nancy called me as soon as her dinner with Jack Thorton ended, and told me she had crucial information. Frank and I were still conducting important investigations in the employee pool, but we raced to join her at the Courtyard Café, which was fast becoming our regular meet-up place.

Frank let out a low whistle. Nancy had really come through this time. Talk about zero to sixty in no time flat! After nearly a week of cleaning dishes and carrying guests' towels, this case had really gotten going. Once Nancy told us that Petrovitch and Nikitin were brothers, and that Nikitin was known to have money problems, we were pretty sure we had this case wrapped up.
Usually I could tell when people were lying, but Petrovitch had me completely convinced when he cautioned Frank and me against using violence. He was a good liar, as well as a good thief.

But not good enough. We had him, now we just had to reel him and his brother in. And for that, we needed hard evidence. I had an idea of where we were going to get it.

“I already searched his office and found nothing,” I said. “Nikitin's got to have his share of the money somewhere. Even if he's sending most of it home, I'd guess he's keeping part of it. I think we need to search his room. Tonight.”

“I agree,” said Frank.

“Well, we're in luck,” Nancy added. “I passed him in the lobby. He's working the front desk right now.”

“All right, here's what we do.” Nancy and Frank bent in to listen. “Nancy, he's definitely keeping an eye on you already. So you have to distract him. Keep him busy in the lobby, and if he leaves, call us and let us know. Frank and I are going to search his apartment.”

“Where are Bess and George?” Frank asked. “I don't like the idea of you doing this alone, Nance.”

Nance? Since when had Frank started calling Nancy by a pet name? I looked at him, and he blushed. That was my brother. Smooth as sandpaper.

“They're at the beach.” Nancy said. “But I'll be in the
middle of a crowd. Nothing's going to happen to me. But, Joe—make sure your phone is on, okay?”

I flipped my phone out and turned the volume all the way up.

“There you go,
Nance
.”

Frank kicked me under the table.

“Seriously, guys. Be careful. I've still got a bad feeling about all this. Something isn't quite right.” Nancy looked worried.

“Don't worry. We'll be fine,” I said. “We've got this case wrapped up.”

Nancy left first, heading out to the lobby. We counted to one hundred, then followed her. By the time we got there, she had Nikitin deep in conversation, pouring over a map of the Wetlands. We scurried across the room and into the elevators without Nikitin ever once looking up at us.

We made it up to Nikitin's apartment. Unlike most of the other employees, he lived in the same building as the guests, since he was on call so often for emergencies. It must have made it all the easier for him to plan the robberies. We found his room and I pulled out my cell phone.

Have I mentioned my favorite part of being in ATAC? It's definitely the gadgets. Aside from making calls, our cell phones have dozens of special features you wouldn't find on even the latest iPhone.

I held the phone in front of the door's sensor pad. The light at the top of the phone strobed rapidly from red to green to blue and back. After a few seconds of this, I heard a click and Nikitin's door swung open.

“Jackpot! Age before beauty. Frank, after you.” I held the door open.

Nikitin's apartment was pretty much the opposite of his office. There was stuff everywhere. Pictures on the walls, shelves filled with books, little tables with knickknacks all over them. Wordlessly, Frank and I split up. We know how to search a room.

I worked my way along the left, Frank along the right. I flipped through the books on the shelves, but they all seemed real—no fake ones filled with money here.

“What is this?” I asked quietly. Even though the room was empty and we had Nancy as a lookout, it was standard procedure to be as subtle as possible when on a mission. The books were filled with weird script that looked positively medieval. I held one out to Frank.

“That's Cyrillic, the script Russian is written in. Didn't you do any research at all?

“Dude—it's summer. The only thing I'm researching is how to get the best tan once this mission is over.”

Frank rolled his eyes and we went back to searching.

Everything in the room was, like,
really
Russian.
The art, the pictures, the books. He even had a set of those hollow dolls that have smaller versions of themselves inside them. I found a bunch of photos of a much younger Nikitin with a crowd of smaller kids around him. I could pick out Petrovitch in all of them too. I didn't see any photos of his parents, or of any older people at all, except one very old woman.

“Frank? You don't think these are all his siblings, do you?”

There were almost a dozen of them. No wonder Nikitin needed so much money to send back home. It didn't make the robberies right, but it did make me understand him a little better.

I flipped open the lid of a small wooden trunk, and there it all was—wallets, cell phones, jewelry, and a small pile of cash. If I'd had any doubts about Nikitin's being in on the crime, they were gone now.

“Frank, come here!”

Frank came running over. While he looked at what was in the trunk, I pulled out my phone and started snapping photos. Frank pulled a small notebook out of the trunk and flipped it open. Most of it was in Cyrillic, but there were columns of numbers that weren't hard to figure out—money borrowed, money sent, money owed. Frank took photos of it too.

Suddenly a noise came from behind the closed door at the other end of the room. Frank and I both froze.
Frank motioned for me to follow him and we crept quietly toward the door. Even if someone was there, I doubted they had heard us. It was probably just the air conditioning kicking on. Still, I picked up a small statue of a horse, just in case.

Frank looked back at me and shook his head. He motioned for me to put the statue down. He was right—our ATAC training always told us that bringing a weapon into an unknown situation just made it more likely that there would be violence, which was the last thing we wanted. But I made a mental note of where it was, just in case I needed it.

Frank pushed the door open and we moved in quickly. He went left, I went right. That way, if anyone was in the room, we'd have them flanked. But it didn't matter. Standing in the room were Petrovitch and Matthias!

Or rather, Matthias was standing in the room. Petrovitch was lying on the bed, tied up! His hands and feet were bound together with rope, and he wasn't struggling. I felt momentarily annoyed that Matthias had solved the case without us. If he'd involved us at all, we could totally have figured it out days ago! Then again, we didn't tell him what we were up to, so I guess I couldn't blame him.

“About time you guys got here,” Matthias said. “I thought I was going to have to do all the work myself.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I've been following Petrovitch all week. I caught him in the act of moving some of the stolen goods up here. I had no idea Andrew was involved. When I confronted Petrovitch, he attacked me. I just finished tying him up when you two burst in.”

At the mention of his name, Petrovitch started struggling against the ropes. His motions seemed slow and uncoordinated. His eyes kept fluttering closed. It was almost like he had been drugged. He was pretty big; Matthias might have needed to give him something to keep him from getting loose. Still, it meant we needed to get him to a hospital soon. Sedatives and other drugs could really hurt someone if they weren't administered properly.

It was still hard for me to believe that Petrovitch had lied to us, but the evidence against him was pretty clear.

“Why didn't you tell us you were after him?” I didn't want to sound like a whiny kid, but we'd been wasting our time all week when we could have been working together.

“I knew he had a partner, and I was hoping the two of you would figure out who it was,” Matthias answered. He seemed excited and amused, like there was some big inside joke. “And it seems like you have, eh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I overheard Nikitin talking on the
phone about ‘laying low' and we figured out that he was in on something.” I tried to explain everything we had learned without mentioning Nancy, but it was hard. Matthias didn't seem to care how we'd figured everything out though. He talked right over me as though I weren't even there.

“Now we just need to catch his brother. Are you guys ready for some action?”

“Yeah!” At least we'd be in on part of this case. Frank nodded his head cautiously.

“Okay, get ready.” Matthias pointed to either side of the door, and Frank and I took up positions. Then he pulled out his cell phone.

“Andrew? Yes, it's Matthias. I was walking by your room, and I noticed the door was open. I think you should get up here immediately.”

He hung up the phone and checked the knots on Petrovitch once again. Then he turned to us.

“We'll tackle him as soon as he comes in the door. Are you ready?”

We nodded. The room grew quiet as we all strained to hear the first signs of Nikitin entering the room. He was a big guy, but I had no doubt that, between the three of us, we could take him.

Da dun da dun dun dun!

My cell phone rang and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Shut that off!” Matthias hissed.

I looked at it guiltily. Nancy. Probably calling to tell us that Nikitin was on his way. I wanted to answer and explain what was happening, but Matthias looked like he was about to take it out of my hands and throw it against the wall, so I shut it off. I figured we'd have Nikitin in custody in ten minutes and the case wrapped up in an hour. I could call her later.

I had no idea how wrong I was.