Make No Mistake (3 page)

“Yes, he told me how the article in the
Clarion
sparked his memory,” Nancy said. She paused, then asked, “Tell me, Mrs. Adams. When did you know he really was Matt?”

“I began to suspect it when we came back here after the funeral. He stepped into the hall and asked me where the old elephant's leg was.” Mrs. Adams was beaming, unaware of the puzzled expressions on the others' faces.

“Elephant's leg?” Carson Drew inquired.

“Yes, the old umbrella stand. Mr. G's father brought it back from Africa years ago. It was a hollowed-out leg—a curio, really. Matt always loved it as a child. I had to tell him his father gave it away after he disappeared. Mr. Glover couldn't stand being reminded of Matt every time he saw the thing.”

“I wonder why he didn't ask yesterday, when he first came to the door?” Nancy said.

Mrs. Adams appeared to be indignant. “You
don't think I let him into the hall yesterday?” she asked. “He didn't take one step inside, because I couldn't be sure who he really was.”

“But now you're sure?”

The housekeeper nodded. “When we came back here today, he knew right where to find my trays, for one thing. And when he went up to see his old room, he came back amazed at how it hadn't changed. Only a boy who'd been raised here could know such things, don't you agree?”

Nancy smiled rather than answering.

“Still,” Mrs. Adams continued, “there's always that little nagging doubt, isn't there? A fortune hunter could learn about the umbrella stand and about how Matt's father kept the room the way it had been. . . .”

“And where the trays were kept in the second pantry,” Nancy added.

Rosemary Adams wiped at some imaginary dirt on the table with the kitchen towel. “But I really knew in my heart that he was Matt when he called me Addie.”

“Addie?” Nancy asked.

“That was Matt's private nickname for me. He didn't use it when other people were around, but in private, he always called me Addie.”

Mrs. Adams glanced at her watch, then got quickly to her feet. “My goodness, I've been neglecting my guests,” she said.

“Don't try to do too much,” Carson Drew advised her.

“Oh, but there'll be lots of work now that Matthew is back,” she sang out in a happy voice.

“So you think he'll stay on here?” George asked. “This place is pretty big for one person.”

“Two people, you mean,” Mrs. Adams corrected. “Don't forget, Matthew will surely want to marry and raise a family, and I'd want to stay on and take care of them.”

Nancy gazed after Mrs. Adams as she bustled back toward the dining room. The detective in her was beginning to be very intrigued by this situation. Whether or not the man she'd met that day really was Matt Glover, his appearance was definitely causing ripples.

• • •

“Did you ever hear Matt call Mrs. Adams 'Addie'?” George asked from the backseat of Nancy's car. She and Nancy and Bess were driving back toward town from Glover's Corners.

“I don't think so,” Nancy said, “but Mrs. Adams said that he didn't use the name in front of other people.”

“What's this Addie business?” Bess asked.

“Mart's private nickname for Mrs. Adams,” George told her. She stretched her long legs out on the seat and leaned back. “It seemed funny to me, that's all.”

“I
think it sounds cute,” Bess countered.

George rolled her eyes. “You think everything about Matt is cute.”

“That's because it is,” Bess replied. “Matt's a major heartthrob, you have to admit.”

“He is handsome,” Nancy agreed. She gave Bess a sideways glance. “But maybe you should hold off falling in love with the guy until everyone's sure he really is Matt.”

“Who's not sure?” Bess asked. “Mrs. Adams is convinced. Who would know him better? And you saw how much mustard he put on his sandwich. How would he know how much Matt liked mustard unless he
is
Matt?”

“Well, Tony Giralda's not so sure.” Nancy told Bess and George about the environmentalist's reservations.

Bess looked at her doubtfully. “Well, I don't remember anyone named Tony Giralda hanging around with Matt. How would he know?”

“Tony said he knew Matt like a brother,” Nancy explained. “We were a lot younger than they were, don't forget. We don't know who Matt's friends were.”

“Yeah,” said George. “Just because we didn't know him doesn't mean Matt didn't.”

Nancy steered the Mustang onto Bess's street and pulled up in front of her house. “Anyway, I'm going to talk to him tomorrow and find out what he has to say. It can't hurt.”

“I don't see why you guys can't just admit that Matt's really back.” Bess got out of the car, pausing with the door open while she looked back and forth from Nancy to George. “I would
think you'd at least believe Mrs. Adams if you don't believe me. Oh, well. See you.” She closed the door and was gone.

Nancy dropped George off and was on the way home when a new thought struck her. It was something Mrs. Adams had said: “Don't forget, Matthew will surely want to marry and raise a family, and I'd want to stay on and take care of them.”

Mrs. Adams had lived at Glover's Corners for over twenty years, and she loved the place. Where would she go if the estate was given to River Heights as a museum or a nursing home or if it was demolished to make room for development?

It was definitely in the housekeeper's best interests to have Matt show up. She knew Matt better than any other living person and could easily teach a stranger—a stranger who looked just like Matt—all the little things. Maybe she'd even made up that stuff about her nickname being Addie.

Nancy didn't want to believe it, but a part of her was whispering that the only one who knew enough about Matt and Glover's Corners to set up a giant fraud was Mrs. Adams.

N
ANCY LET OUT
a long breath. She could hardly believe that Mrs. Adams would deceive anyone, but she had to admit that it was possible.

A dog ran out into the road. Nancy swerved to avoid it, then forced herself to keep her mind focused on her driving for the rest of the way home.

She found a note from her father in the kitchen: “Went to bed early. See you in the
A.M.”
Beneath it, he had scrawled, “Call Bess.”

Picking up the kitchen extension, she dialed Bess's number, smiling to herself when her friend's bubbly voice came over the line.

“Nan! I have so much to tell you!”

Nancy leaned against the kitchen counter and cradled the receiver between her head and shoulder.
“I just dropped you off ten minutes ago, Bess. How much could there be to say?”

“Matt called,” Bess said, her voice shrill with excitement. “He told me how much it meant to him to have good friends like me after being away for five years. He mentioned you and George, too.”

Nancy could practically see her friend's grin over the line. “I forgot to tell you guys on the ride home,” Bess went on, “that he had told me his whole story—well, practically all.”

“What did he tell you?”

Nancy listened to the story about the obituary to see if he'd told it any differently to Bess, but it was the same, almost word for word. “He doesn't remember the skiing accident in Colorado at all,” Bess finished. “He didn't even know his own name until he read it in the paper. He had taken the name Gary Page. He was working as a journalist. Doesn't that sound familiar?”

“Yeah,” Nancy agreed. “I remember that Matt was the editor of the high school paper. I think he even wrote a few articles for the
Morning Record.”

“So that's more proof he's really Matt, right?”

“Maybe,” Nancy said noncommittally. “Where'd he work? In Colorado?”

“He didn't say. He just said something made him want to keep moving east. He worked on a paper in Nebraska for two years, and then he
went to Iowa before going to work for the
Clarion
in Chicago.”

They talked for a few more minutes, and then Nancy hung up. It seemed more and more as if Matt was who he said he was. It would be great if he were—especially for Bess—but Nancy knew she wouldn't be convinced until she had checked out a few things. Tony Giralda's doubts, for one.

Maybe she'd go to the Chicago
Clarion
office, too, to check on his background to see if Gary Page was the same guy as the Matt Glover she'd met that day.

Her father would be checking him out, too. Carson Drew was spending the whole next day with Matt. Apparently there were matters to be settled before Matt could be legally accepted as Clayton Glover's heir. If anyone could catch him in a lie, it was Carson Drew.

Nancy shook her head. She'd thought about Matt Glover enough for one day. She knew one way to get her mind off him. Grabbing the bag with her disassembled tape deck in it, Nancy sat down at the kitchen table, dumped the parts out, and concentrated on putting them back together.

• • •

When Nancy woke in the morning, light snow-flakes were dancing outside her window. She had stayed up until after two
A.M.,
working on her tape deck, and had slept much later than usual. It was ten by the time she had dressed in jeans and
a pale green cable-knit sweater and went downstairs.

Hannah Gruen, the Drews' housekeeper, was making chicken soup for lunch. Hannah had been living with the Drews since Nancy's mother died, when Nancy was just three, and she was more like a member of the family than a house-keeper.

“That smells delicious,” Nancy said, sniffing appreciatively.

“Your father's at his office with that young man who says he's Clayton Glover's son,” Hannah informed her. “I imagine they'll be there all day.”

Pouring herself a glass of orange juice, Nancy popped two slices of bread into the toaster. “What do you think?” she asked.

“About what?”

“About the new Matt,” Nancy said. “Do you think it's possible to have amnesia for five years and snap out of it when you see your father's obituary?”

Hannah considered Nancy's question. “It happens all the time on TV,” she said, “which is enough for me to doubt it. On the other hand,
anything
is possible.”

“I guess you're right—on both counts,” Nancy said, laughing. When her toast popped up, she buttered it, then smothered it with strawberry jam.

“You're going to spoil your appetite for lunch,” Hannah told her.

Nancy took a bite of toast. “Don't worry. I always have room for your soup.”

At twelve Nancy proved it, eating a big bowl full of it. After mopping up the last of the soup with a thick slice of crusty bread, she checked her watch. It was early afternoon, and Tony Giralda would probably be in his office by now.

Pulling on her leather boots and heavy jacket, Nancy grabbed her tape deck from the small table in the front hall, where she'd left it the night before. Then she ran out to her car. A light snow was falling, but the flakes melted as soon as they hit the ground. Backing out of the driveway, Nancy put a tape in the deck and was pleased to hear that the sound was perfect and that the machine was no longer eating tapes.

Nancy drove toward the address she'd looked up for Giralda's Environmental Action office. Soon she pulled up in front of a building on the outskirts of River Heights's downtown area.

To call the Environmental Action building an office was stretching things a bit, Nancy thought as she studied the building through the window of her car. It was really just a long, low garage. Posters publicizing Tony's campaign to clean up the Muskoka River covered the area around the door.

Pulling the fleecy collar of her leather jacket
close around her ears, Nancy stepped out of the car, walked to the door, and knocked on it. A few seconds later Tony opened it.

“I was wondering if you'd show up,” he said as she stepped inside.

It wasn't exactly an enthusiastic hello, Nancy thought, but at least his voice had lost some of the angry intensity of the day before.

“I said I would,” she told him.

He took her jacket and hung it on a hook just inside the door next to his parka. Then Nancy followed him down a small hallway lined with closed doors. Nancy guessed they opened into closets—there really wasn't room for much more.

Tony led Nancy into an office. The room was crammed with posters and buttons. A table against the wall was piled high with letters and envelopes and so was the only desk in the room.

“This is pretty much a one-man operation,” Tony explained. “I can't afford to hire anyone full time, so I have to depend on volunteers.” He gestured around the empty office. “As you can see, they're not always dependable.” Clearing off some posters that were on his desk chair, he offered Nancy the seat, while he leaned on the edge of the desk.