The Make-Believe Mystery (3 page)

Phoebe's lower lip began to tremble. She looked as though she was about to cry. “I spent a really long time last night writing a super-cool ending,” she said miserably. “And now it's gone! The whole story is gone!”

Nancy got off the swing. “We'll find the notebook,” she said with determination. “Phoebe, you come with me. Bess and George, here's what you should do.”

For the next half hour, the four girls searched for the purple notebook. Nancy and Phoebe retraced Phoebe's path from Mrs. Reynolds's classroom to her cubby to the playground. Bess and George looked in the lunchroom and the bathroom and the trashcans. But the notebook was nowhere to be found.

When they met up again just outside of their classroom, Phoebe said, “What could have happened to the notebook? It's all my fault!” She looked really upset.

“There are only two things that could have happened to it,” Nancy pointed out. “Either you lost it, or . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Or someone stole it,” Bess finished.

“Yeah. And if someone stole it, we'll have to find the thief,” Nancy said. “Our mystery short story is turning into a
real
mystery!”

• • •

“Let's write down the clues we have so far,” Nancy suggested.

It was almost five o'clock, and she and George were sitting in the Drews' backyard. They'd just finished soccer practice, so they still had their soccer clothes on.

The late afternoon sun peeked out from behind a bunch of clouds as the two girls leaned back in their lawn chairs and sipped lemonade. Nearby, Chocolate Chip was lying in the grass, busily gnawing on an old rubber bone. From the kitchen window came the sounds of Hannah preparing dinner.

Nancy had a notebook spread out on her lap. It wasn't the purple notebook, but her special blue detective notebook.
Her father had given it to her to write clues and suspects in, for when she was solving mysteries.

George stretched her long legs out in front of her. “Hmm, clues,” she said thoughtfully. “Clues,” she repeated. She glanced at Nancy and wrinkled her nose. “Uh, do we
have
any clues?”

“I guess not,” Nancy said. “But we
do
know some stuff. We know that the purple notebook was definitely in Phoebe's backpack this morning in class . . .”

“. . . so it disappeared sometime between before lunch and right after lunch, when she put her hair clips in her backpack,” George added.

“And the only time she left her backpack alone was right before lunch, when she was hanging out at her cubby—
yuck!”
Nancy cried out.

Chocolate Chip had bounded up and deposited the rubber bone in Nancy's lap. It was all wet and drooly.

Making a face, Nancy picked up the chew toy gingerly. Then she threw it to the far end of the yard. Chip barked and went bounding after it.

“Phoebe left the backpack in her cubby for a minute because Emily said she wanted to talk to her about something,” George reminded Nancy.

Nancy nodded. She opened her blue notebook to a clean page, picked up a pen, and wrote “Emily Reeves.”

Nancy chewed on the end of her pen. “Emily is on Brenda's team,” she said slowly.

George sat up in her lawn chair. “Oh, yeah, that's right.”

“And Brenda really wants to win the short-story contest,” Nancy went on.

George's eyes lit up. “Brenda and Emily must have teamed up to steal our story—and maybe Jenny and Alison, too!”

5

Copycats and Copyrats

B
ut why would Brenda and her teammates want to steal your story?” Carson asked Nancy.

It was Wednesday morning, and the two of them were having breakfast.

Nancy spooned some blueberry granola into her mouth. “I'm not totally sure they did, Daddy,” she said. “But Brenda has this bet going with Phoebe. If Brenda's team wins, Phoebe has to sharpen Brenda's pencils—for the rest of the year!”

“That's quite a bet,” Carson remarked, raising his mug of coffee to his lips.

“Plus, Brenda always likes to win, anyway,”
Nancy went on. “Plus, the only time Phoebe left her backpack alone was when Emily called her over to talk.”

“What if Emily really
did
call Phoebe over just to talk? And maybe someone else who's not even on Brenda's team took the opportunity to steal the purple notebook?” Carson pointed out.

Nancy considered this. “That's true, Daddy. I hadn't thought of that. I guess I'd better talk to Emily.” She grinned. “You're a pretty awesome detective.”

Carson laughed. “Detective's
assistant
is more like it, Pudding Pie.”

• • •

Nancy found Emily right before class, at her cubby. Emily was rummaging through her backpack, as though she was looking for something. Kids were starting to head into Mrs. Reynolds's classroom.

Nancy hung back for a second, watching. Emily pulled out a bunch of marking pens, then a pink hair ribbon, then a paperback book with a ripped-looking cover. Nancy wasn't sure, but she thought that the title of it was
The Monster That Ate New York.

Emily stuffed the markers, then the ribbon, then the book back into her backpack. Then she pulled out two purple notebooks.

Two
purple notebooks? Nancy did a double take. But Emily had moved a little, so her body was blocking Nancy's view. Nancy couldn't see what she was holding in her hands.

Without wasting another second, Nancy rushed up to her. “Hey, Emily!” she called out.

Emily whirled around. Her eyes widened. Nancy wondered, was it her imagination, or did Emily seem kind of nervous?

Emily hugged her backpack to her chest. Nancy couldn't see the purple notebooks. “Uh, hi, Nancy,” Emily said. “W-what do you want?”

“I wanted to talk to you about the short-story contest,” Nancy said with a friendly smile. “See—”

But before she had a chance to finish, Emily said, “Uh, I can't talk right now, okay?” With that, she turned and headed into the classroom.

Nancy frowned. What was going on? Emily was definitely acting weird about
something.

Just then Phoebe and Bess came up to her. “Hi, Nancy!” Bess called out. “Phoebe and I have been doing some detective work. Okay, so, what if there are alien life-forms here at Carl Sandburg Elementary School, and they stole our purple notebook to take back to their mother ship?”

Nancy giggled. Bess giggled, too. Phoebe cracked a smile, but her eyes were troubled. Nancy figured that she still felt bad about the notebook being missing.

“Listen,” Nancy said, trying to be serious. “I have a different theory.” She filled Phoebe and Bess in on what she and George had discussed the day before. She added the stuff about Emily acting weird just a few minutes ago.

“So you think Emily and Brenda and maybe those other girls on their team stole our story?” Bess said when Nancy had finished.

Before Nancy had a chance to reply,
Phoebe exclaimed, “I bet that's what happened! Nancy, you've solved the mystery!”

“Well, I don't know about that,” Nancy said. “We still have to—”

Just at that moment, Brenda passed by them. “Hey,” she called out, tossing her dark hair over her shoulders. “How's your
loser story
coming along?”

Bess marched right up to Brenda. “Why don't
you
tell
us,
Brenda?” she snapped.

Brenda frowned. She looked totally confused. “Huh? What are you talking about, Bess?”

Nancy ran up to Bess and poked her in the arm. She didn't want to accuse Brenda—or anyone on Brenda's team—without any proof. “Listen,” she said, smiling at Brenda. “Our, um, purple notebook is missing. You haven't seen it, have you?”

Brenda's dark eyes flashed. “Your purple notebook? You mean, the one with your story in it?” She began to laugh. “Wow, that was really dumb of you guys to lose it. Now you're
definitely
going to lose the contest!”

With that, she marched into the classroom.

“She is soooooo mean,” Bess said through clenched teeth.

“I think she's totally lying,” Phoebe said quickly. “Don't you think she was lying, Nancy?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe.” Nancy added, “We'd better get to class. The bell's about to ring.”

• • •

“Today we're going to start with a spelling review,” Mrs. Reynolds announced. “Jason, can you come up to the board and spell
pancake?”

Groaning, Jason went to the front of the room. Nancy picked up her pen and began to write
pancake
herself, in her spelling book. She had gotten as far as
P-A-N-
when a folded-up piece of paper landed on her desk with a quiet
thunk.

Startled, she glanced up. Bess was staring at her and wriggling her eyebrows.

“Is this from you?” Nancy whispered.

“From George,” Bess whispered back. Nancy peered across the room. George was staring at her and wriggling her eyebrows,
too. She pointed to the note that Nancy was now holding in her hand.

Curious, Nancy put the note in her lap. She opened it carefully, so the paper wouldn't make a rustling noise.

George had written:

I think I know who stole our story. And it's not who we were talking about yesterday. We have to talk right away!

“Nancy Drew!”

Nancy glanced up, startled. Mrs. Reynolds was frowning at her.

“I called your name three times,” Mrs. Reynolds told her.

Nancy quickly refolded the note in her lap. She hoped that Mrs. Reynolds wouldn't see. “I'm sorry,” she apologized.

Mrs. Reynolds held up a piece of chalk. “Would you come up here and spell the word
pioneer
for us, please?”

Nancy slipped George's note into the pocket of her jeans, rose from her chair, and started down the aisle. She heard the sound of snickering and turned around. It
was Brenda. Brenda always loved to see other kids get into trouble, especially Nancy.

Trying to ignore her, Nancy took the chalk from Mrs. Reynolds and began to write on the chalkboard. As she wrote, she wondered about George's note. What new information did she have? Who else besides Brenda, Emily, and their team members could have stolen “The Ghost of Carl Sandburg Elementary School”?

• • •

The rest of the morning seemed to drag on forever. As soon as the bell rang for lunch, Nancy hurried over to George's desk. “Well?” she demanded.

Bess and Phoebe gathered around George's desk, too. “What's going on?” Bess said.

George's eyes were shining. “Okay, guys, listen to this,” she said. “When I was walking into class this morning, I passed Jason and Mike.” She glanced around to make sure they weren't listening. “They were talking about how they finally came up with a cool story idea yesterday. And
that they're definitely going to win the contest!”

Nancy frowned. “Yesterday? Like, the same day our notebook disappeared?”

George nodded her head briskly, which made her brown curls bounce. “Exactly. And there's more. I heard Mike say something about cats and rats.”

“Cats and rats—just like in
our
story!” Bess exclaimed. “‘A tin brass goose, two blue rats, three whispering cats . . .'”

“Huh?” Phoebe said, looking puzzled.

“Don't you get it?” George said excitedly. “I think Jason and Mike and the guys stole our story so they could copy it and pretend it was theirs!”

6

Starting from Scratch

I
don't know,” Nancy said doubtfully. “There's no way the boys could get away with stealing our story. I mean, if they read our story on Friday and pretend it's theirs, we'd tell Mrs. Reynolds.”

“How could we prove it was our story, though?” George pointed out. “It would be the boys' word against ours.”

“That's true,” Nancy admitted.

“I know!” Bess said, bouncing up and down. “Why don't we get one of the boys to tell us what their story's about?”

“Oh, yeah, right,” Phoebe said, rolling her eyes.

“No, no, I mean it. I think I have a way.” Bess grinned and started walking toward the lunchroom. “Come on, guys. Just let me do all the talking, okay?”

• • •

The girls stood in line and got their lunch trays. Today lunch was chicken nuggets, peas, and fruit cocktail.

George glanced around. “Hey, where's Phoebe?”

“She had to go to the bathroom,” Bess said. She scoped out the lunchroom. “Great, there's Peter and Kyle! Come on, follow me.”

Bess made a beeline for the boys' table. Nancy and George trailed after her. They found Peter and Kyle making sculptures out of the chicken nuggets and peas.

“Doomsday Tower!” Peter said loudly. He made a tall stack of chicken nuggets on his plate.