How Nancy Drew Saved My Life (21 page)

“Now,
that
I believe,” she said.

“See?”

“But I don't believe for a second that it's the reason you are so obsessed with his private affairs.”

“‘His private affairs,'” I echoed. “You keep using that phrase. Could you stop saying that?”

“See?” Her “see” was a lot more triumphant than mine had been just a few short seconds ago. “None of this would bother you if you were not yourself in love with him.”

“How about we go back to saying this is because I'm worried about Annette?” I suggested.

“You can view it your way, if you want to—” she smiled knowingly “—but please allow me to view it mine.”

“But you don't understand,” I spoke with some urgency. “If somehow it turns out that Ambassador Rawlings can marry Bebe Iversdottir, it will be the worst thing in the world for Annette.”

“How so?” she asked.

“Because that ice princess wants to send Annette away to Switzerland to boarding school!”

“Oh no!”

“Then you agree that would be awful?”

“Absolutely! No child should be separated from her parents at such a young age.” Then she stopped herself, looked at me more closely. “That's what happened to you, was it not?”

“It was,” I said.

“And you hated it?”

“Still hate it whenever I think about it.”

“Then you must do whatever it takes to stop this.”

“But how?” I practically whined. “What am I supposed to do? Sure, he told me he wouldn't send Annette away, yet, but who knows what Bebe might get him to do later? I can't just tell Ambassador Rawlings what to do. He'd never listen to me—I'm only the governess!”

“Of course that's true, but you're getting ahead of yourself. The first thing you need to do,” she counseled, “is find out if there is in fact a Mrs. Rawlings and what the status of their relationship is. If there's still a Mrs. Rawlings somewhere then it's entirely possible that whatever Bebe Iversdottir's nefarious plans concerning Annette are, they will fail.”

“How do you figure?”

“If they are not divorced, maybe it's because he doesn't want to be.”

Ouch! That hurt almost as much as thinking of him with Bebe.

“If they are,” Gina went on, “then perhaps the threat of a new woman moving in would be enough incentive for Mrs. Rawlings to take on a larger role in Annette's life, preventing her from becoming a boarding-school orphan.”

“I think I see what you mean,” I said.

“The important thing,” Gina said, “is to gather as much information as you can, so you know what you're up against. Once you do that, you'll be able to stand on a leg.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“Honestly,” she said, looking stunned, “I cannot believe you have forgotten all about Nancy Drew! What do you think she would do in your situation?” She didn't wait for me to answer. “She would gather and assemble all the
facts,
” she said. “Nancy wouldn't sit on her thumbs, twiddling them while Rome burned. She wouldn't let her imagination race helter-skelter all over the place.”

Actually, I seemed to recall Nancy having quite a big imagination. It was what enabled her to take seemingly innocuous events, like a truck rushing by a little too quickly, and extrapolate it into, “Gadzooks! There must be a den of art thieves around here!” Of course, she was always right.

When I pointed this out to Gina, she had a ready answer for this too.

“Yes,” she said, “Nancy does have quite an imagination, but it always takes her places. And once that imagination starts to take off, she immediately starts looking for facts and clues. That is what you must do, too.”

I could see that she was right.

Then she looked at me with real sorrow in her eyes.

“I'm so sorry, Charlotte,” she said. “You would undoubtedly be better off if you had not fallen in love with him.”

“I'm not—“

“As you Americans are so fond of saying, bullshit.”

“Hey!”

“Oh, that's right, I forgot—” she winked “—this is all about Annette.”

 

The bracing walk back to the embassy should have killed any residual wine buzz, but we'd drunk so much after dinner, arguing all the while—“You are
so
in love with him!” “I am
not
in love with him!”—that I still felt pretty intoxicated as I let myself in the door. We'd argued so strenuously, it occurred to me ruefully that it was a good thing Gina wasn't one of her lactating sisters.

If the bracing walk didn't kill the wine buzz, the wine buzz should have made me drowsy enough to go right to sleep, but this proved not to be the case. My mind was so unquiet as I moved through the quiet household that I knew I'd have to do something first to tire myself out.

Then I had a brilliant idea. Gina's advice came back to me and I realized there was no time like the present.

Hey, kids? Want to put on a little drunken detection show?

Feeling like the queen of stealth—“Hee, hee,” I couldn't help giggling to myself—I removed my boots, tossed my wet outdoor things in the general direction of the coatrack.

I missed.

Oh, well. Who said I needed great aim to find information? I'd only need great aim if I ever needed to hit somebody with something.

Where to start? Where to start?

Imagining myself to be like Steinway, I tiptoed toward the back of the first floor. Ambassador Rawlings's office seemed like the logical place. Turning the doorknob gently, I was surprised to hear the door squeak.

Shouldn't an embassy be better oiled than this?

I giggled again, then shushed myself sharply, “Shh!” It was like I was two separate people, conflicted by what I was doing. Take it too lightly, take it too seriously, take it too…

Only after I'd carefully shut the door did I realize how dark it was in here. It was a room I'd rarely entered before, having no business there—“And what business do you have here now, hmm?”—and I stumbled over a chair on my way to where I remembered the desk was.

“Ouch!” I rubbed my shin.

“Be quiet!” I cautioned myself again.

“Okay,” I said. “But you don't have to be so grouchy about it.”

Achieving the desk, I played my hands around the edges until I felt the outline of a lamp on the far corner. I pulled the cord and the area immediately surrounding the desk was bathed in a romantic illumination.

“Gee,” I said, “if only I had someone to make out with in here, this could be fun.”

When I got to the far side of the desk and looked up, I noticed for the first time the switch on the wall beside the seam of the door I'd just entered. Damn! If I'd thought of that earlier, I could have saved myself from barking my shin.

Nancy Drew would never have missed that, I thought.

I started going over the items on the top of the ambassador's desk, trying to be careful to leave things just as I'd found them. Not sure exactly what I was looking for, I was sure I would know it when I found it.

There was a part of me that was uncomfortable with what I was doing. Wasn't it wrong for me to be snooping around in here like this? But then I figured that so long as I confined my investigation to what was already on the desk, it was okay. I mean, if someone keeps something out in plain sight, isn't it fair game? Feeling more virtuous by the minute, I resolved not to go through any of the drawers, which really would qualify as snooping.

Besides, the drawers were locked and I had no idea where the key was kept. Perhaps it was under Ambassador Rawlings's pillow? I giggled to myself. After all, Nancy Drew always said that if you needed to keep something safe, you should sleep with it under your pillow. She also always said that if you were trapped in a closet, you should look for something to use as a lever.

I picked up the stapler and contemplated it as an evidentiary device.

When is a stapler really just a stapler? I pondered.

Gee, it felt kind of spooky, being in here all by myself while the rest of the house slept on around me.

And then spooky started to feel like lonely.

I addressed the stapler, “Alas, poor Stapler, I knew him well. He was an office tool of infinite jest—”

What would Nancy Drew look for? I wondered.

She'd look for correspondence, I decided.

There were certainly a lot of papers on the desk. Didn't this guy ever get anything done in here?

All of the correspondence looked official. Well, I supposed that figured. It was his office. But as I looked at the return addresses, I saw a surprising number of pieces were from the CIA.

That was odd.

But how annoying! All of the letters were unopened. These must just be new items from the day's post that had arrived after he and Miss Bebe had taken off. I didn't know what to do. If I were Nancy Drew, I was sure I'd know how to steam these babies right open so that I could take a peek inside. But if I knew nothing else, I knew that no matter how intrepid I ever became, I'd never be enough of a sly boots that I could steam open a letter and reseal it without getting caught. Why, I never even bought clothes that weren't wash-and-wear, because I sucked with an iron!

Besides, I yawned, placing the letters back, this wasn't getting me anywhere. What I needed to find was some personal correspondence, something that would help me get a handle on the ambassador's personal life.

But, wait a second: there wasn't any personal correspondence here! Wasn't that kind of odd? I mean, even I got the occasional letter from my father, and Mrs. Fairly got letters from Ireland all the time.

I yawned a second time, replacing everything, including my new best friend, Mr. Stapler, exactly as I'd found it, switching the light off on the way out.

I made my way upstairs in the dark, thinking about turning in. But when I got to the top of the stairs, I caught my second wind.

I hadn't found anything out yet! What kind of detective was I?

Back to tiptoeing, I stealthed my way to that secret door, the room from which I was sure that strange laughter always came. As I turned the knob, I could have sworn I heard a slight whirring sound coming from inside. But, as always, the door was still locked.

Damn! Where was a hairpin or credit card when a girl needed one?

Then I had a sudden inspiration.

No, I wasn't going to break into the room. That would constitute criminal behavior, right?

But Ambassador Rawlings's room was right next door and Ambassador Rawlings was busily away in the Westman Islands. So, how hard would it be to turn the knob on his unlocked door, like so? How hard would it be to sneak around, no matter how incriminating that sounded, hoping to find evidence of the kinds of personal effects I hadn't found below?

Was there a picture of Mrs. Rawlings anywhere in here? Were there some papers, perhaps, evidence of a divorce in progress or better yet a divorce decree?

I didn't hear the light pad of feet until whoever possessed those feet was nearly right there in the room with me. Without a second thought, I threw myself to the ground and rolled under the bed.

“Papa?”

I heard Annette's voice sounding tired, confused.

Oh, no! This was the worst thing that could happen.

Okay, well, maybe it would be worse if Mrs. Fairly found me like this or, worse still, if it were the ambassador. Maybe if I just stayed quiet, she'd go away.

“Did you decide to come home early?” she asked.

Oh, shit! This was awful! I couldn't leave her to think that maybe her father was here but was ignoring her. She'd feel unloved.

Feeling like the Grinch getting caught by Cindy Lou Who, I rolled out from my hiding place.

Annette's eyes widened.

“Miss Bell?”

“Hi,” I said, and gave a little awkward wave.

“What are you doing in my father's room in the middle of the night?”

“I came to steal the Christmas tree?” I gave an awkward laugh.

“What?”

“I heard a noise in the night,” I said, which wasn't technically a lie since there had been a noise in the night, only it had been made by me, “and I came to investigate.”

“But why were you under Papa's bed?”

“I lost an earring and was looking for it.”

“But you don't have earrings.”

“That's because I lost it.”

I couldn't believe I was lying to this sweet child! But I was doing what I was doing in order to help her in the long run, right?

“Yes,” said Annette in a very precise way. “But you have no earrings on at all. If you lost one, wouldn't you still have the other?”