Poison Pen (12 page)

Mrs. Keating was still staring, not moving. Suddenly Nancy realized that the woman wasn't looking
at
her, but rather
behind
her. A sixth sense shouted at Nancy to turn around.

It was too late. As she started to turn, a thick cloth pad was clapped over her mouth and nose. She gasped as a bitter, acrid stench assaulted her nostrils.

Then, abruptly, there was blackness.

N
ANCY SWAM SLOWLY UP
through a sea of dark mist. “Oooh,” she groaned as her eyes fluttered open. The inside of her head felt as if someone were pounding at it with a sledgehammer.

“What . . . ?” Gradually the objects around her came into focus, and Nancy realized she was in a leather recliner in a darkened room.

Where am I? she wondered, frowning.

Heavy velvet curtains shrouded the room's two big windows. To Nancy's left was a massive maple rolltop desk stacked with color-coded folders. Bookshelves flanked one wall, with a lumpy-looking velvet sofa in a shadowed recess between them. The adjoining wall was covered with framed photographs.

Feeling too weak to get out of the chair, Nancy squinted to bring the photos into focus.
Most of them were black-and-white group shots of men in uniform.

Soldiers . . . Bill Keating. Suddenly what just happened came flooding back.

She had come to warn Mrs. Keating. In her mind Nancy pictured the look of panic on Mrs. Keating's face—just before those hands came from behind and held the drug-soaked cloth over Nancy's mouth and nose to knock her out. She shuddered at the memory.

“I must be in the Keatings' house,” she said aloud. In fact, she guessed she was in Mr. Keating's study. Keating must have come in and caught her, she realized. But what had become of Mrs. Keating?

A slight movement from the lumpy sofa made Nancy's eyes snap over to it. She hadn't noticed before because the couch was set back in the shadows, but now she made out a human form lying there!

Forcing herself up and out of the recliner, Nancy made her way painfully across to the sofa. “Mrs. Keating?”

Nancy's eyes widened as she saw not Mrs. Keating, but Chris Trout lying on the sofa. His eyes were closed, and even in the dim light she could see that he was deathly pale. A bruised swelling marked his forehead just above the left eye.

He's out cold, Nancy realized. But why? What's he doing here?

Suddenly a wave of dizziness hit her. She
had to grab on to the bookshelf to keep herself from falling over. Clenching her teeth, she held on and waited for the spell of nausea to pass.

This is bad, Drew. If you don't pull yourself together, you'll never get out of here!

As she gazed around the room, the dim sound of a car engine starting floated in through the window. Nancy went over as fast as her wobbly legs would carry her. Pulling aside the heavy red curtain, she gazed out, shielding her eyes from the abrupt rush of sunlight.

She saw that she was in a room on the second floor that looked out over the porch roof. The white station wagon that she had seen in the garage when she arrived was now in the driveway. As she watched, the driver's side door opened, and Bill Keating got out.

“Come on,” he called, beckoning to someone who was apparently standing on the porch below Nancy. “We don't have time to argue about it now! Just get rid of the car. We can't leave any evidence that the girl was here. Then get out of sight!”

His words barely registered. Nancy tried to cut through the pounding fog in her head and think clearly. Whom was he talking to? She didn't have to wait long to find out. A second later someone hurried down the porch steps and ran to Nancy's car.

Mrs. Keating!

Nancy's stomach did a flip-flop. “Uh-oh,”
she muttered. “I think I've been missing one big piece of the puzzle.”

She put a hand to her aching head. “Think, Drew!” she told herself, scowling fiercely. It wasn't easy. Whatever Keating had used to knock her out must have been pretty strong. But even in her weakened state, some very disturbing ideas were beginning to surface.

I came here thinking that Bill Keating was trying to kill Maggie Keating to collect her insurance money, she thought. And I got that idea from reading the letter in Brenda's column. But I know that Brenda made that letter up—it wasn't real. She didn't know anything about Mr. and Mrs. Keating when she wrote it.

So isn't it reasonable to assume that the letter wasn't right? Isn't it possible that Brenda got part of the plan right—but was wrong about other parts?

What if Mrs. Keating isn't Mr. Keating's victim after all? Nancy reasoned. What if she's his accomplice?

“Of course. Why not?” Nancy murmured. It made sense, in a sick way. Both Mr. and Mrs. Keating had married thinking that the other partner was rich, and Nancy's investigation had shown that both were disappointed. But instead of trying to kill each other, they had teamed up to remedy the situation!

It all clicked. “That's why Mrs. Keating didn't want the police to come when she had
the accident with Brenda,” Nancy said aloud. “That's why she wouldn't confide in Rick after she saw Brenda's letter in the paper. She wasn't afraid her husband was trying to kill her—she was afraid Brenda had found out about the plot to
fake
her death and collect that million dollars in insurance! She was afraid of being caught!”

That also explained the way Mrs. Keating had been staring behind Nancy just before Mr. Keating knocked her out. Nancy shook her head in amazement. She sure had misread the situation. Now that Nancy thought about it, she realized that the odd look on Mrs. Keating's face hadn't been panic—it had been expectation.

She was just waiting for her husband to sneak up on me, Nancy thought angrily. And I thought she was in trouble!

The roar of the Mustang's engine made Nancy look down at the driveway again. Mrs. Keating had started the car. As Nancy watched, she drove away.

Hey, that's my car! Nancy wanted to shout. But she didn't think it would do much good. Besides, she had more immediate problems. Obviously, the Keatings planned on getting rid of her. She had to get both herself and the unconscious Chris Trout out of there before Mr. Keating came back to finish them off!

Still feeling unsteady, Nancy went over to
the study door and tugged on the knob. It didn't turn. The door was locked, of course. She'd expected as much.

She bent down and examined the latch. Not pickable. She couldn't see the locking mechanism, but from the look of it it was the sort where a section of the doorknob turned, too. A one-way lock. Strange—usually those were set up so that a person could lock and unlock the door from
inside
the room.

I'll bet Mr. Keating just took this one off the door and switched it around, Nancy guessed. It wouldn't be hard, and it would keep us in here very efficiently.

Going over to one of the windows, she struggled to raise the sash, but it didn't budge. Then she noticed that two stout nails had been driven into the wooden sill from the outside. They were holding the window shut.

She gazed out through the glass. If she broke the window, maybe she could shout loud enough to get someone's attention. . . .

That hope faded as she remembered the thick belt of trees that surrounded the Keatings' property. The place was isolated. From where Nancy stood, she couldn't even see any other houses. No one would hear her cries.

Just then another wave of sick dizziness swept over Nancy. She gripped the doorknob, but the whirling feeling grew stronger. Gasping, she slid down the wall to the thickly
carpeted floor and put her head between her knees.

She shook her head, trying to clear it, but if anything, she felt worse than she had five minutes earlier.

Suddenly she caught a whiff of that same bitter scent that she had smelled right before she lost consciousness. It was strangely familiar, but she couldn't place it. Nancy racked her fogged brain. I know that smell, but from where?

Just then a scene flashed into her head of her high-school chemistry lab. The teacher was holding up a beaker of some liquid and lecturing about it. “Quite dangerous . . . highly explosive . . .” And that same acrid taint hung faintly in the air. . . .

“Ether!” Nancy cried, snapping her fingers.

So that was what Keating had used to knock her out. He must have left some of it in the house, and the fumes were seeping into the air as it evaporated.

Nancy stood up and sniffed. The smell was strongest around the door and near the ceiling, so the ether was probably in the attic.

That was bad, she realized with a sinking heart. Besides the fact that the fumes were making her progressively weaker, if there were any sparks or open flames going anywhere in the house they might set off an explosion. . . .

Suddenly the war story she had heard Keating tell the other day in the bank rang in her
ears with a dreadful significance. He had built ether bombs during the war. All it took was a bottle of ether and a lit candle. She could hear his voice, saying, “A few hours later the ether fumes reached the candle flame, and—boom!”

Nancy had a sudden, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. “So that's how he's going to do it,” she whispered.

The entire attic is a bomb, and when it goes up, Trout and I go with it! The authorities will find a demolished house—and two very demolished bodies.

It was a horribly clever plan. Not only were the Keatings getting rid of Nancy, but they were also providing themselves with a stand-in for Mrs. Keating's body. Because all that would be left of Nancy were some unidentifiable remains!

T
HAT'S WHY
Mr. Keating had all those clippings about microbursts,” Nancy said, thinking out loud.

She knew she was talking to herself. Over on the sofa Chris Trout still hadn't stirred. Somehow, though, hearing her own voice made her feel a little less alone.

“It was research,” she said. “He's going to pretend that a minitornado touched down and demolished the house. It's perfect. No one can predict those things, and they touch down so fast that it's easy to miss them. Besides, there are no neighbors close enough to be witnesses.

“And that's why the ether bomb is up in, the attic,” she continued. “The house has to be wrecked from the top down, so that the microburst story will be convincing.” She glanced over at Chris Trout. “And poor Mrs. Keating
and her brother-in-law just happened to be in the study upstairs when it happened,” she added grimly.

It was a horrible thought. Nancy shuddered. “What am I going to do?” she asked.

She did have one thing going for her, she realized. She was sure Keating hadn't expected her to regain consciousness before the blast came. That was why he hadn't tied her up. He'd secured the doors and windows to minimize the risk, but he couldn't chance tying Nancy's arms and legs. If rope fragments were found in the wreckage, that might raise awkward questions.

She glanced over at Trout again. Still out. She couldn't count on his help—he might not wake up as long as they remained inside. The ether fumes were keeping him under.

How much time do I have? Nancy wondered desperately. She thought about Keating's story again. He'd said the ether bomb took a few hours to detonate. But the tunnel Keating had blown up must have been huge, big enough to hold an entire convoy of trucks. The Keatings' house was much smaller. Even if the candle flame was downstairs on the first floor, the ether fumes would reach it much more quickly.

Nancy felt a bone-chilling shiver. Groaning, she sat down on the leather recliner and dropped her head in her hands.

But then anger swept over her. “Get up,
Drew!” she told herself. She'd been in tight spots before. And she'd always found a way out. Nancy shook her head to clear it of useless doubts. She had no choice. She
had
to get them both out.