False Notes (12 page)

“Not exactly.” I cleared my throat, steeling myself for her reaction. “Um… we seem to be out of gas.”

Bess smacked herself on the forehead. “Stupid! Stupid!” she cried.

I frowned at her. “You don’t have to be insulting,” I protested.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said. “I was talking to myself. What’s wrong with me? I should know to double-check you on stuff like that by now. It’s not like this is the first time something like this has happened. Or the second. Or the forty-third.”

By this time George was awake too. She leaned over the back of the seat and just stared at the gas gauge. “Well,” she said fuzzily after a long pause. “Isn’t this just superfantastic?”

I glanced out the window at the dark, deserted stretch of highway. If there were any houses or other buildings within a couple of miles, we couldn’t see them—the moon was behind a bank of clouds, and it was too late for lights to be glowing through windows. I tried to remember the last village or farm we’d passed that was relatively close to the road. As I thought back, I also realized that no cars had passed in either direction for at least ten minutes.

“Someone’s got to come by sooner or later,” I said.

“I’m sure someone will,” Bess responded. “But do we really want to flag down some unknown stranger in the middle of nowhere at this hour?”

I had to admit that she had a point. Bess tends to look on the bright side whenever possible, so when she’s worried about something, it usually means there’s something to worry about.

George held up her cell phone. “Don’t worry,” she
said wearily. “I’ll see if I can track down the closest garage. Well, the closest garage that’s open
all night
.”

It took quite a few calls, but George finally managed to get through to an all-night truck stop and convince one of the workers to come to our rescue with a can of gas and directions back to the truck stop. We were on the road again within an hour and a half with a full tank and a new appreciation for Good Samaritans like the truck stop worker. He even refused to take any money for his trouble.

“That guy was sweet, wasn’t he?” Bess commented as we pulled away from the truck stop. She waved to the worker who had rescued us as he watched us go. “It was nice of him to help us out like that.”

George laughed. “Uh-huh,” she said. “I’m sure it didn’t hurt that you kept fluttering your eyelashes at him. Good thing you had plenty of time to check your makeup while I was making those calls.”

As Bess protested, I laughed—but I wasn’t feeling especially cheerful. I was all too aware that we’d lost valuable time. Whatever cushion we’d had was gone; our luck was going to have to hold from now on if we wanted to have any chance of getting Leslie to her audition on time.

I mentioned this to my friends. “So let’s try to be prepared,” I suggested. “George, can you look up the
Sharons’ address at Lake Firefly? That way we can find it on the map and not have to waste any time when we get there.”

“Sure,” George said. “I should be able to manage finding one simple address sometime in the next two and a half hours.”

We drove on in silence broken only by an occasional chirp from George’s computer. After a few minutes, though, I heard her let out a frustrated sigh.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, peering at her in the rearview mirror.

“It’s nothing,” she muttered. “I’m just having a little trouble finding any address listings for Lake Firefly, that’s all.…”

Bess and I exchanged a worried glance. We kept quiet, though, and let George do her thing. Our silence didn’t help. Finally George had to admit defeat.

“They must not have any mail service up there,” she said with a shrug, sounding irritated. “I mean, it
is
mostly just a vacation town, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I think so. But I’ve never actually been there myself.”

Bess shrugged. “Me either,” she said. “I’ve been to Lake Terrance, though. That’s just twenty miles east of Lake Firefly, I think. And it’s pretty rustic up there.”

“I can’t believe they don’t list the addresses online,”
George muttered. “Postal service or not, that’s just crazy.”

Despite my anxious mood, I couldn’t help smiling a little at that. George sounded personally insulted by the fact that the information she wanted wasn’t on the Internet.

“Well, we’ll just have to play it by ear, I guess,” I said, still not willing to give up. People had solved mysteries before the Internet ever existed, and we could do it too, if necessary. “We’ll just have to check names on mailboxes, go to the local police station—do whatever it takes.”

“Right,” Bess said. “The local police are going to be thrilled to see us turn up at four in the morning.”

I ignored her sarcastic comment. Pressing my foot down on the gas pedal a little harder, I kept my eyes trained on the road.

It was approaching 4:30
A.M.
when we finally passed a large, rustic-looking wooden sign reading
WELCOME TO LAKE FIREFLY: A PLACE TO UNWIND.

“Okay,” I said hopefully as I peered at the buildings visible by the glow of my headlights. “Now let’s just hope that this town isn’t too big.”

Lake Firefly didn’t seem like much of a town at first—just a collection of cabins in the woods, lining
the single narrow paved road that led straight toward a large lake. My hopes soared. But when I reached an intersection and glanced to either side, my heart sank. More cabins lined both sides of the crossroad that paralleled the shoreline for as far as I could see by the fading beam of my headlights. There were no streetlights and the moon had set, so it was impossible to tell how far the town stretched. Everything was quiet and still at that hour, but the cars in many of the driveways and the occasional porch light indicated that there were plenty of people there enjoying the nice summer weather.

Bess was taking it all in too. “Wow, this place is bigger than it first seemed.”

“No kidding,” I muttered. How were we ever going to find Leslie in time?

George seemed to be thinking the same thing. “We’re never going find her—not at this crazy hour.”

“We have to try,” I said with determination. “Come on, I’ll drive slowly. You guys read the names on the mailboxes.”

We wasted the better part of an hour driving around in the dark, peeking at mailboxes. The more time that passed, the more desperate I felt. I couldn’t believe it: We were
here,
probably within a few hundred
yards of the Sharons’ cabin, but we had no way of knowing exactly where it was.

For a while Bess and George had shared my sense of urgency. They’d both rolled down their windows, leaning out and squinting at the faded names and numbers on the mailboxes. George had also spent a while grumbling about those mailboxes—if there was mail delivery after all, she couldn’t understand why the addresses weren’t listed on the Net. She even pulled out her computer and checked again, with no more luck than she’d had the first time.

Every time we thought we were reaching the edge of town, we rounded a curve in the road or turned a corner and found a new row of cabins in front of us. After a while all conversation in the car faded. I would drive from one house to the next, pause just long enough for Bess and George to check for a mailbox name or other clues, and then move on in silence. Soon we were all yawning almost nonstop, and I was starting to wonder how much longer we could go on before we would have to face defeat and crash somewhere for a while.

As I idled at a stop sign, I checked the clock on the dashboard. It was 5
A.M.

Well, that’s that, I thought with resignation. We’d
never be able to make it back by 8:15
A.M.
, even if we found Leslie that minute.

Still, I didn’t want to give up. Not when there was any chance of making this come out right. I decided to drive on, trying to think positive thoughts. Maybe the auditions would run late. Maybe they would let Leslie switch times with someone else. Maybe…

My head was spinning, partly from the stress of our search and partly from lack of sleep. When I’d spent a good thirty seconds staring at a brown house with a blue mailbox, trying to remember if we’d already checked this block, I decided that I needed some fresh air.

“I’m going to stop for a sec,” I said. “You know—stretch my legs.”

Bess mumbled something unintelligible and rested her head on the window ledge. George didn’t bother to reply at all.

I pulled to the side of the road—there were no curbs or sidewalks in Lake Firefly, just sandy lawns stretching to meet the blacktop—and cut the engine. Glancing at Bess and George, who were both at least half asleep by then, I climbed out of the car.

My legs felt stiff and a little numb after driving for so many hours without a break. I did a few stretches,
breathing in the cool, clean night air, which smelled pleasantly of pine needles and earth. I glanced around at the cabins nearby. One or two of the windows were showing lonely spots of light as dawn approached and the early-rising creatures prepared to meet the coming day. Now that the car motor was off, the buzz of nighttime insects droned lazily around me, and a few birds chirped and whistled. But suddenly I realized that that wasn’t all I was hearing.…

“Hey!” I blurted out, leaning into the car and poking Bess. “Wake up. I think I know which house we want!”

Bess and George came awake at once. “Huh?” George said. “How? What do you mean?”

“Listen.”

They climbed out of the car and stood beside me. After a moment Bess’s look of sleepy confusion changed to one of amazement.

“It’s a piano!” she cried. “Someone’s playing the piano!”

I nodded, grinning. The strains of a familiar classical piece were easy to hear in the early-morning stillness. “Sounds like it’s coming from that house,” I said, pointing to an attractive cedar-shingled cabin across the road and a few houses down from where we were standing.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” George exclaimed.

Leaving the car where it was, we jogged down the street to the house in question. A light gleamed from one of the front windows. The piano music grew louder as we approached—it was definitely the right house.

“Come on,” I told my friends, already marching toward the front door. “Let’s do what we came here to do.”

I knocked on the door. The piano music stopped instantly, and seconds later the door flew open to reveal a slim, pretty teenage girl with long black cornrows and an anxious look on her face.

“There you are!” Leslie Simmons cried. “I thought you said you’d be here by… wait a minute. Who are you?”

“Hi, Leslie,” I said with a reassuring smile for the startled girl. “It’s me, Nancy Drew, from River Heights. We’ve met a few times, remember?”

“Oh, of course!” Leslie said, clearly doing her best to regain her composure. “Hello. Did the Sharons send you to pick me up or something? I was expecting them an hour and a half ago. They were supposed to come get me and take me back to town for an audition.”

I exchanged a glance with Bess and George. “It’s
sort of a long story,” I said. “That’s the reason we’re here.”

Leslie looked alarmed. “There wasn’t an accident or anything, was there?” she cried, clutching the door anxiously. “Is someone hurt?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” I assured her hastily. “Um, did you say that the Sharons were supposed to pick you up?”

Leslie nodded. “Mr. Sharon and I arranged it yesterday. He was supposed to come back up here and get me at three thirty
A.M.
That way we’d have plenty of time to get back to town before my audition time.” She shrugged. “But three thirty came and went, and nobody showed up. And I couldn’t call—there’s no phone in the cabin.”

“Don’t you have a cell phone?” George asked.

“No,” Leslie said.

Ignoring George’s look of amazed disbelief at that bit of information, I focused on Leslie. “Listen,” I told her as gently as I could. “We think you’ve been the victim of some troublemaking. We’re here because we don’t think Mr. Sharon is coming for you at all—at least not until you’ve missed your audition. We’re pretty sure the Sharons invited you up here for that very reason—because they want to make sure that Diane wins the scholarship.”

“No way!” Leslie said immediately. “Diane is one of my best friends. She wouldn’t do that to me!”

“Maybe not,” Bess said kindly. “But I’m afraid her parents did.”

George nodded. “They had it all worked out,” she said. “No phone, no way home on your own—they figured you’d be stuck here until they were ready to come and get you.”

I shot George a warning look—sometimes she can be a little too blunt—and then gazed sympathetically at Leslie. She looked shocked, confused, and anxious at the same time.

“Come on,” I said. “Why don’t you grab your stuff and come with us? We can talk about this more in the car.”

Leslie nodded. “I’ll be right back,” she mumbled. A moment later we heard her rustling around in a back room.

George leaned against the door and glanced at her watch. “Well, it’s official,” she said, keeping her voice low so only Bess and I could hear. “The Sharons’ plan worked. There’s no way we’ll get her back in time.”

I checked my own watch, which had stopped. It’s an old-fashioned one that used to belong to my mother, and I’m always forgetting to wind it. Grabbing
Bess’s arm, I checked hers instead. It was ten minutes after five. But I refused to believe that we’d come all this way only to miss out on saving the day by an hour.