Nancy Clue Mysteries 1 - The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse (26 page)

"She said she was going to tell everyone what he really was, but he just laughed. 'Who'd believe you over me?' he said." Nancy put her hands over her ears. "Oh," she cried. "I can still hear his laughter.

"When Hannah picked up the phone to call the police, he pulled it out of the wall. I thought he was going to kill her, so I ran to the den and got one of his guns.

"`Father!' I screamed. He turned and faced me. I shot him right through the heart. He was dead before he hit the floor.

"Hannah begged me to let her say she did it, and I agreed. I was so scared and upset; I wasn't sure what I was doing! I packed some clothes, jumped in my car and headed west.

"She told me to forget and never tell anyone what had happened. But I can't."

Nancy wiped her face on a clean handkerchief from Cherry.

"You're safe now; that's what matters," Aunt Gertrude said, putting her arms around the sobbing girl.

"Am I?" Nancy asked no one in particular. "Now I know what I've got to do," she said, rising from her chair looking very determined.

"I've got to go back to River Depths and free Hannah-no matter what it takes!"

"And we'll go with you!" Midge said.

"That's right!" cried Jackie. "There's got to be some way to prove what kind of man your father really was."

"There were letters he wrote to me," Nancy said. "Disgusting things that would prove his nature beyond a shadow of a doubt. Those and the diary I kept. I left them in my room; I was in such a panic that I forgot to take them."

"We'll go back and get that evidence!" Velma cried.

"You're not alone, Nancy!" Jackie added, already planning the investigation. "Why, with those letters and your diary, we're sure to get Hannah released, and clear you, too."

Lauren pulled a pencil from her overalls and grabbed some paper from the desk. "Gather round, girls," she cried. "We need a plan!"

Aunt Gert interrupted the excited girls. "We can plan everything tomorrow, girls," she said. "Right now I think Nancy needs some rest." She escorted Nancy and Cherry to a charming bedroom and lit a fire in the fireplace facing the comfortable double bed.

"This is lovely!" Cherry exclaimed, looking around at the cozy bedroom which had been decorated in warm coral tones. Cherry recognized the old oak bed. Why, it was Grandma Aimless's. She found the place in the headboard where, as a child, she had carved her initials.

"C.A., R.N.," she read as she ran her hand over the deep marks in the wood. "Why even then I knew I'd be a nurse someday," she murmured.

While Nancy washed her face and scrubbed her teeth in the little bathroom adjoining the bedroom, Cherry changed into flannel pajamas and fuzzy slippers on loan from Aunt Gert.

Midge and Velma, clad in matching blue-checked pajamas, stopped in to say goodnight. They expressed their concern about Nancy, and urged Cherry to awaken them if she needed anything.

Then Lauren appeared at the door, drowning in pajamas three times her size. Jackie was at her heels. "Great! You get to sleep with each other and I get stuck with the squirt," Jackie groaned.

"And you'd better not snore," Lauren warned her.

"I just know you're a cover hog," Jackie teased.

"I guess I'm the only one sleeping alone here," a soft voice teased. It was Nurse Marstad, clad in a luxurious green satin lounging robe that accentuated her large gray eyes.

Why, Cherry had never noticed before that under the confines of a stiffly-starched nurse's uniform was the voluptuous body of a glamorous woman!

Cherry wasn't the only one who had noticed.

"That's a crying shame," Jackie said huskily, as she let her eyes roam the length of the head nurse's shapely form.

The teasing stopped when Nancy appeared. She looked worn and pale and very tiny in her flannel pajamas. Her hair was brushed off her forehead. Her sky-blue eyes looked luminous against her pale skin.

Jackie hugged her goodnight. "If there's anything you need, just give a whistle."

Aunt Gert appeared at the door. Cherry giggled-she couldn't help herself. Aunt Gert looked so cute in her blue flannel pajamas and slippers. Using her best housemother voice, Gertrude Aimless shooed them all off to bed.

"I'll call you at five a.m. for morning mass," she called after them.

"Five a.m.!" they chorused in dismay.

Aunt Gert giggled. "Fooled you." Her laugh echoed down the hall.

The girls bade each other a hasty goodnight. Nancy fell to sleep instantly, but Cherry lay awake, thinking of the horrible tale Nancy had told them. She tossed and turned for an hour, unable to sleep. Finally she put on her robe and slippers and crept quietly out of the room.

"If I can remember which room is the study, maybe I can find a good book and perhaps a piece of that delicious coconut cake to go with it," she thought.

She made her way down the hall and turned right. Or was the study on the left? Cherry was confused, and when she opened the door to what she thought was the study, she found herself in Midge and Velma's bedroom instead.

"Oops!" she cried.

Midge and Velma were wide awake, and their flannel pajamas were strewn about the floor. "You'll catch your death of cold in this drafty stone house," Cherry scolded.

Midge and Velma laughed, and promised they would put their pajamas back on soon. Cherry, satisfied that she would not have to worry about her chums, left to find the study.

A light under a distant door beckoned. "I'm earning my trailblazer badge for sure," Cherry smiled to herself. She quietly opened the door. She saw someone bending over Lana's desk. Cherry felt a chill run down her back-something was very wrong!

"Father Helms-you're alive," she gasped. Indeed, the evil priest was very much alive, and was at this very minute rifling through Lana's desk.

Cherry wanted to scream, but she was too frightened. She backed up, accidentally shutting the door behind her, trapping herself in the room.

The priest came toward her. His hands and face were badly burned; his clothes were in tatters. "You left me for dead in that steamy grave," he said hoarsely, walking ever closer toward the frightened nurse.

Cherry tried to speak; she tried to yell and warn the others, but she couldn't.

"No one imagined I could survive the intense heat, but I did! I clung onto a sharp rock in the side of the wall, and waited. Waited for all of you damn nuns to go to bed so I could exact my revenge! Perhaps with you as my prize, I'll get the deed to this land yet," he cackled.

Cherry gasped. She just couldn't be the reason Lana would lose her land. "Oh! " she cried, backing up. She groped behind her for something she could use as a weapon. Her hands closed on a statue. She yanked it off its pedestal and knocked the priest over the head with it.

The blow stunned him, but only temporarily. He kept coming at her.

So Cherry hit him again. And again. And again. His screams awoke the others, who came running. Aunt Gert, who reached the study first, gasped when she saw the battered priest lying on her good rug.

She quickly checked his pulse. "He's dead, all right!" she exclaimed.

"I can't believe I killed him!" Cherry cried, dropping the statue, which shattered into smithereens. "I didn't mean to kill him; I just meant to stop him."

The girls gathered round a shivering Cherry. Midge put her arm around the frightened nurse. "You're not taking all the credit for this, Cherry," Midge said. "The bubbling inferno should have finished him off, but I guess evil dies slowly." She took Cherry by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. "Sometimes a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do," she declared.

Cherry blew her nose on a fresh handkerchief and nodded. Why, Midge was right.

"Think of all the women he hurt, Cherry. Why, it's as if you've saved all these people," Aunt Gert interjected.

"God knows what he would have done to us had you not stopped him," Lana said. "I would have done the same thing!"

"This is a clear case of self-defense," Jackie declared, covering the priest's body with her blue plaid bathrobe. "I'll call Hillary at the station and have this out of here in no time!"

Cherry suddenly felt very dizzy.

"Golly," she murmured, before fainting for the second time that day.

Cherry yawned and buried her head deeper in the lavender-scented pillowcase. "What a strange dream I had last night," she thought, opening her blurry eyes and taking in the warm sunny room. It took her a few minutes to realize she wasn't in her little room in the nurses' dorm of Seattle General Hospital, and that last night had been no dream!

She pulled the starched white sheet over her head. "Yesterday I broke my nursing vow and killed a man," she said, wondering if perhaps she should find a new profession.

"Huh? What did you say, Cherry?" Nancy murmured, half asleep herself.

Nancy had slept straight through the night. After the body had been removed, everyone agreed they would tell Nancy about the priest's death in the morning. "That girl doesn't need any more shocks," Aunt Gert had said firmly.

Cherry quickly filled her in on the incident, leaving out the gory details.

"Golly, you're brave!" Nancy exclaimed, tears welling up in her eyes. She hugged Cherry. "Next time, just wake me. It must have been terrible for you," she scolded. Cherry smiled. How like Nancy to put the needs of others first!

Cherry kissed her chum good morning. Suddenly, everything seemed all right again.

Nancy jumped out of bed. "I feel better than I have in ages!" she cried. She giggled when she caught a glimpse of herself in the vanity mirror. "I have bed-head," she laughed, patting her unruly titian hair into place.

Lauren burst into the room, dressed in her old familiar overalls, which had been freshly washed and mended. Behind her was Aunt Gert, with a sheepish grin on her face and a pot of coffee in her hands.

"I told her to knock," she said in an exasperated tone of voice. "I hope we didn't disturb you girls. It's just that it's almost noon and we hadn't heard a peep out of this room."

"Yeah, we've been up for hours scrubbing blood off the study rug," Lauren grinned.

Aunt Gert just rolled her eyes. "I've done my best with her," she chuckled. "God knows!"

While Nancy and Cherry had their coffee, Aunt Gert filled them in on that morning's activities. After breakfast, the group had explored the convent for a while and then taken up residence on the hammocks and swings dotting the lush lawn in front of the convent.

"I called Lauren's babysitter. Turns out she's the same Marge Rutherford I used to bowl with every Tuesday night. She's a swell gal. She's coming up at suppertime for a visit." She turned to Lauren. "She was awfully worried about you, Lauren, but she won't tell your parents if you promise to behave the rest of the week."

Lauren grinned. "I guess Miss Rutherford's a good egg after all," she said.

"And Midge has already found a new pet to add to her zoo," Gert reported.

"Yeah, there's kittens all over the place," Lauren said, pulling a tiny black kitten with bright green eyes out of her overalls. "I'm going to call this one Muffy."