The Pen Pal Puzzle Read online

  The

  Pen Pal Puzzle

  In the front hallway, Nancy saw a big envelope on the floor near the mail slot. She ran to the window and looked out. Someone was just dashing around the corner.

  Nancy picked up the envelope. A hand-drawn stamp of a weird monster was on the front. On the back was a return address:

  Vampire Pen Pal

  Big Graveyard

  London, England

  Nancy opened the envelope. Inside was a drawing of a vampire. In a bubble over the vampire’s head was a horrible message:

  “I suck the ink off letters

  and make them disappear.”

  Contents

  Chapter 1: Poster Disaster

  Chapter 2: The Missing Letters

  Chapter 3: Nancy Is on the Case

  Chapter 4: A Monster Clue

  Chapter 5: Returned Letters

  Chapter 6: Stamp Collector Suspect

  Chapter 7: Where Are the Stamps?

  Chapter 8: Parents’ Night

  1

  Poster Disaster

  Give me that!” Brenda Carlton said. She grabbed a blue crayon from Nancy Drew’s hand. Brenda took the crayon back to the table where she was sitting with Phoebe Archer.

  Nancy’s mouth turned down into a frown. She was used to Brenda acting selfish, but it still made her mad.

  “Hasn’t she ever heard of sharing?” Bess Marvin asked. She was one of Nancy’s best friends.

  “Yeah. She and Phoebe have plenty of crayons,” George Fayne said. She nodded toward the other girls’ table. It was next to the blackboard at the front of the classroom. “Brenda is just being mean.”

  George was Bess’s cousin. She was also Nancy’s other best friend. George was sitting at the same table with Nancy and Bess.

  “She is mean.” Nancy agreed. “But I’m not going to let her get me mad. I need to work on my pen pal poster.”

  Ms. Spencer’s third-grade students were working on their pen pal project for their language arts class. Each student chose someone special to write a letter to. They learned how to address the envelope. They even learned how to look up a ZIP code to help make sure their letters got to the right place.

  Now they were making posters for Parents’ Night. The posters were all about the person to whom they had written letters.

  George had written to a famous soccer player. He had sent her a big autographed photo of himself in his team uniform.

  Bess’s poster was all about her favorite book series. It included a letter she had received from the author.

  Nancy’s poster used letters she got from her pen pal, Pamela Morgan, who lived in England.

  Pamela’s parents were friends of Nancy’s father. Pamela, her parents, and her brother, Derrick, had spent Thanksgiving with the Drews.

  Pamela was the same age as Nancy—eight years old—but they had not gotten along at first. Nancy thought Pamela was stuck-up. But by the end of the visit, Pamela and Nancy were friends. Now they even wrote to each other.

  Nancy loved to write letters. She also loved to get mail. A letter from Pamela was extra special. Nancy had saved every one of Pamela’s letters.

  Bess noticed the envelopes peeking out from underneath Nancy’s poster board. “Those stamps are beautiful!” Bess said.

  Nancy nodded. “I know. The stamps are the most important part of my poster.”

  Nancy felt a tug at the neck of her sweater. Then something cold and slimy slithered down her back.

  “Eek!” she yelled, and jumped up.

  “Gotcha!” Mike Minelli said.

  Quickly Nancy reached back and lifted the neck of her sweater. Something sticky and wet fell into her other hand.

  “Ick! Is that a worm?” Bess asked. She looked as if she was going to be sick.

  “No, it’s a piece of spaghetti,” George said, looking at the long white strand in Nancy’s hand.

  “Yuck!” Bess said. “Mike Minelli, you are gross.”

  “Mike!” Ms. Spencer’s voice cut through the classroom. “Go back to your seat, please.”

  “Yeah, Mike. Go back to your seat,” Bess echoed.

  Mike went back to his seat. Nancy made a face. She tossed the spaghetti into the trash.

  “How’s your poster coming?” Nancy asked Bess.

  Bess beamed. She was very proud of her poster. “I still can’t believe a famous writer like Heather Talcott actually wrote me back.”

  “Was it scary to write to someone you didn’t know?” Nancy asked.

  “Was it ever! I must have used up a whole pad of lined paper. Finally I got it right. I told her my favorite Susie book was Susie’s Safari Adventure. I wrote about how I got goose bumps when the Jeep broke down and Susie and her brother were trapped. I thought the lions would eat them for sure.”

  Bess shuddered, then continued cutting out pictures of wild animals from magazines to paste onto her poster.

  “Susie couldn’t get eaten by lions,” George pointed out as she opened a jar of red paint. “She’s the star of the books.”

  “She could so get eaten,” Bess insisted. “Then the books would be all about her brother’s adventures.”

  Nancy smiled. Bess and George almost never agreed about anything. Even though they were cousins, Nancy’s two best friends weren’t at all alike. George—whose real name was Georgia—loved sports. She was the captain of her soccer team. Bess didn’t like doing anything that got her clothes dirty.

  The two cousins didn’t look alike, either. Bess was blond, with sparkling blue eyes. She was a little shorter than Nancy. George had dark brown curly hair and brown eyes. She was taller than Nancy.

  “My favorite Susie book was when she went scuba diving and found that old coin,” Nancy said.

  “Yeah! Then she figured out the coin came from a sunken ship,” George added.

  “I would never go scuba diving,” Bess said. “I don’t want to swim in the ocean. There are sharks!”

  “May I have your attention, class?” At the sound of Ms. Spencer’s voice, everyone looked up and stopped what they were doing.

  Everyone except Jason Hutchings and Mike Minelli. Jason had two crayons hanging out of his mouth so they looked like fangs. Mike had two sticking out of his nose. They were clowning around as usual.

  Ms. Spencer gave Mike and Jason a stern look. The boys put the crayons back on the table.

  “Double gross,” Bess whispered. “I don’t want to use any of Mike’s crayons. They were in his nose!”

  “We’ll be leaving for the post office field trip in ten minutes,” Ms. Spencer said.

  “But I’ve still got lots more monsters to draw,” Mike complained. He had written to the United States Postal Service, asking them to issue a series of famous monster stamps. He’d gotten a letter back thanking him for the suggestion, but they weren’t going to do the monster stamps. Mike decided he’d draw them himself.

  “It’s only Wednesday, Mike,” Ms. Spencer said patiently. “You’ll have time tomorrow and Friday to finish up your poster before Parents’ Night. Now, everybody, hurry and clean up.”

  Nancy, Bess, and George started to clear their table. Ms. Spencer had set up a place at the back of the classroom to store the posters. Some of the students had already begun putting their posters away.

  “Did you see Brenda’s poster?” Bess asked. She made a face to show she didn’t like it.

  Nancy looked over to Brenda and Phoebe’s table. Brenda was almost finished with her poster. It looked like the front page of a newspaper.

  “I like Phoebe’s poster better,” Nancy said. “I think her dog is cute.”

  Phoebe had a picture of her cocker spaniel at the top of her poster. She had cut out dog pictures from magazines and pasted them in each cor
ner. There was a bright blue border around the center, which was still blank.

  Phoebe had written to the River Heights Dog Owners Society. She wanted to enter her dog in a dog show. They had sent her a letter and an entry form. She was going to paste those in the center of her poster.

  Nancy was about to carry her poster to the back of the room when Brenda brushed past Bess. Brenda’s poster was shiny with wet paint.

  “Watch out!” Bess cried. The paint almost touched her new shirt.

  “Watch out yourself,” Brenda said.

  Nancy jumped back out of Brenda’s way. She didn’t want to get paint on her clothes either.

  Nancy’s hand hit something on the edge of the table. Then she heard a crash and a scream. When she turned, she saw Phoebe kneeling on the floor next to her poster. A jar of red paint had spilled all the way across the clean white center of Phoebe’s poster!

  2

  The Missing Letters

  Oh, no! My poster!” Phoebe wailed. She looked as if she was about to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” Nancy said. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “It’s totally messed up,” Brenda told Phoebe. She sounded almost pleased. “Nancy ruined your poster.”

  Phoebe sniffled.

  “It was an accident!” Nancy protested. She felt awful. She could imagine how bad she would feel if her poster had gotten paint spilled on it.

  Ms. Spencer came over and kneeled next to Phoebe’s poster. She gave Phoebe some wet paper towels. They began to wipe up the paint with the wet paper towels.

  “Wow! It looks like blood,” Jason said. He leaned over to get a better view of Phoebe’s poster.

  “That gives me an idea,” Mike Minelli said. He raced back to his own poster.

  Ms. Spencer and Phoebe cleaned off most of the red paint. But there was still a big pink splotch across the center of Phoebe’s poster.

  “That’s too bad about your poster, Phoebe,” Brenda said. “I guess one clumsy person can really spoil everything.” Brenda gave Nancy a nasty look.

  “You’re the clumsy one. You almost got paint on my shirt,” Bess said.

  “But I didn’t, did I?” Brenda said in a snotty tone of voice. “Nancy is the one who got paint all over everything.”

  Nancy felt bad about knocking the paint over onto Phoebe’s poster. All the mean things Brenda was saying made her feel even worse.

  “I’m sorry, Phoebe,” Nancy said again.

  Phoebe didn’t say anything. She just sniffled some more and glared at Nancy.

  “Okay, girls,” Ms. Spencer said. “It’s almost time to go. The bus is waiting downstairs to take us to the post office for our field trip.”

  Nancy put the crayons she had been using back in their box. Then she put all the art supplies away near the back of the room. Bess tossed some magazine scraps in the wastepaper basket. George wiped off their table.

  A few minutes later, everyone was lining up at the door to leave. They would stop at their cubbies in the hall to get their jackets on their way out.

  “Hurry up, slowpoke!” Jason yelled to Mike. “You’re the last one out.”

  “Okay, okay. I just had to add some blood to my vampire’s fangs,” Mike said. He rushed out to join the others.

  “Oops, I forgot my backpack,” Phoebe said. Phoebe came out a moment later with her backpack on one shoulder. She brushed past Nancy and joined Brenda at the cubbies.

  Nancy bit her lip.

  “She’ll get over it,” Bess said. She had already gotten her jacket from her cubby and was waiting for Nancy to get hers.

  “I hope so,” Nancy said. But she didn’t think it would be any time soon.

  • • •

  “I love field trips,” Nancy said as the bus pulled in next to the River Heights main post office.

  “But a post office is boring,” Bess said. She straightened her headband. “Why couldn’t we go to a bakery or a chocolate factory instead? Now, that would be fun!”

  “You liked getting a letter from a famous author,” George reminded her cousin. “That wasn’t boring.”

  Everyone got off the bus and lined up outside the door to the post office. A woman in a light blue uniform came outside and introduced herself. “Hi, my name is Mary Jo Donovan. I’m the postmaster here. First I’m going to give you a tour. Then I will answer any questions you have about the mail and how it’s delivered.”

  Ms. Donovan took the class inside the post office. She used a key to open a door marked Employees Only. Then she led them into a large room.

  The postmaster introduced the class to several postal workers. They also wore light blue uniforms.

  “Every morning we get bags and boxes of mail from all over the world,” Ms. Donovan explained. “Over here is where we sort letters for delivery. Some of the letters go in the post office boxes over there. The others get sorted by route. Then each mail carrier sorts the letters for his or her route and bundles them with rubber bands.”

  The postmaster pointed to some machines up on a counter. “Here’s where we weigh packages. This machine prints out a slip with the exact postage for each package.”

  “How much would it cost to send a person?” Jason asked. Several kids laughed at Jason’s silly question.

  “Well, that would depend on how much the person weighed, where you were sending him or her, and if the package was going first class,” Ms. Donovan answered with a smile.

  Nancy noticed Brenda and Phoebe whispering. Phoebe glanced up, and Nancy smiled at her. Instead of smiling back, Phoebe looked away.

  “What’s this?” George asked the postmaster, pointing to a large poster with pictures of lots of colorful stamps. Philately was written in big block letters across the top.

  “It’s pronounced fa-LAT-lee.” Ms. Donovan said the word extra slowly. “Does anyone know what that means?” she asked.

  Andrew Leoni raised his hand, and Ms. Donovan nodded at him.

  “It means stamp collecting,” Andrew said.

  “Very good,” Ms. Donovan said. “Stamp collecting is a popular hobby. In fact, when I was your age, I collected stamps. That’s one reason I wanted to work in a post office.”

  After the tour of the post office, Ms. Donovan said good-bye. Ms. Spencer led the class back to the bus. Soon they were back at Carl Sandburg Elementary School.

  “It’s almost time to go home,” Ms. Spencer said as the bus door opened. “Hurry and get what you need from the classroom and your cubbies.”

  Nancy was the first one back inside the classroom.

  “Are we racing?” Bess asked, trying to catch her breath.

  “No,” Nancy answered. “I remembered I left the letters from Pamela in my desk. I want to take them home with me.”

  Nancy reached inside her desk, but she didn’t feel anything. I know I left them here, Nancy said to herself. She bent down to look.

  The letters were gone!

  3

  Nancy Is on the Case

  They’re not here!” Nancy looked inside her desk a second time. “My letters are gone!”

  “Maybe they fell out and got thrown away when we were cleaning up,” George suggested.

  Nancy told Ms. Spencer about the missing letters. Ms. Spencer asked the class to help Nancy look for them.

  George looked through the wastepaper baskets. Bess looked under all the desks. Nancy checked the boxes that held the art supplies they had been using.

  Nancy noticed that Brenda and Phoebe weren’t helping. Instead they were whispering and giggling.

  I wonder if they took my letters, Nancy thought. She remembered that Phoebe had run back inside the classroom after everyone else had gone to the cubbies.

  Could Phoebe have taken them to get even with her for spilling paint on her poster? Would Phoebe be that mean?

  The bell rang, and Ms. Spencer dismissed the class.

  “Too bad about your letters,” Brenda said as she passed Nancy on her way out. But Brenda didn’t sound sorry.

  “Y
eah, too bad,” Phoebe echoed. She followed Brenda out, clutching her poster. She was taking it home to try to fix it.

  A few minutes later, Nancy and Bess and George were the only students left in the classroom. They were still looking for the letters.

  “It’s time to go home, girls,” Ms. Spencer said.

  “But we haven’t found Nancy’s letters,” Bess said.

  “We’ll look some more tomorrow,” Ms. Spencer said. She put her hand on Nancy’s shoulder. “I’m sure they’ll turn up,” she said.

  But Nancy wasn’t so sure.

  • • •

  Nancy spotted the familiar car as soon as she stepped out of the school building. Hannah Gruen was waiting to take Nancy to the mall. They were going to buy new sneakers for Nancy.

  Hannah was the Drew family’s housekeeper. She had lived with the Drews and taken care of Nancy ever since Nancy’s mother died.

  “How was your day?” Hannah asked as Nancy fastened her seat belt.

  “Not so good,” Nancy answered. She told Hannah about the missing letters.

  “Sounds like a mystery to me,” Hannah said. Hannah knew that Nancy liked to solve mysteries.

  Was it a mystery if you knew who did it? Nancy wondered.

  Nancy was pretty sure that Phoebe had taken her letters. But she knew it would be wrong to accuse her classmate until she had proof. So she didn’t say anything more about it to Hannah.

  • • •

  As soon as she got home, Nancy rushed to her room. Hannah was right. This was a mystery, and Nancy had to solve it quickly. Parents’ Night was only two days away.

  Nancy opened her desk drawer and took out a small notebook with a shiny blue cover. Nancy’s father had given her the blue notebook. She always used it when she had a mystery to solve. She wrote about suspects and clues in it.

  Nancy flipped to the first clean page. At the top she wrote “Missing Letters.” She thought for a moment, then wrote “Lost or Stolen?”

  Nancy didn’t think they were lost. George had checked all the wastepaper baskets, and the letters weren’t anywhere in the classroom. Someone had to have taken them. She crossed out “Lost.”