The Case of the Vanishing Veil Read online

  Nancy spread out the veil with the rose on the table. Its white folds fell gently to the floor. And then she lay the other veil over the top, so that the tulips encircled and nearly obliterated the rose underneath.

  “That’s the Thorndike crest!” Bess exclaimed. “Mrs. Strauss, where did you get that veil?”

  “For goodness’ sake,” Cecelia snapped, “will everyone please stop calling her Mrs. Strauss?”

  George and Bess looked at Nancy for an explanation.

  “Mrs. Strauss has the veil,” Nancy explained, “because she is really Rebecca Rose Thorndike.”

  “No,” Rose said, breaking her silence. “I am not Rebecca Thorndike — not any longer — and I haven’t been for years. I hated Brendan Thorndike. He was a cruel and selfish man. I divorced him and I didn’t take a dime of his money. All I’ve ever wanted was never to have anything to do with him again.”

  Jason stirred his tea and said, “You took his children and he hated you for that.”

  “I saved my children,” Rose said. “Look at that crest.”

  She walked over and looked down at the veils draped across the table and floor. “Look what happened to the single rose — my family. You can’t see it. It’s buried, practically swallowed up by the ring of tulips. That’s what it was like to be married to him. I was just something else to stamp his crest on, that’s all.” She wrinkled the veils with a swipe of her cane and turned her back on them. “When I saw him teaching our children to love money more than people,” she said, “I swore to myself I’d stop him. So I left and Robbie and Margaret grew up not knowing they were Thorndikes. They didn’t need to. His money would only have caused them misery.”

  “Oh, what’s a little misery when we’re talking sixty million dollars,” sniffed Cecelia.

  “I don’t understand something,” Nancy said. “If you never wanted to have anything to do with Brendan Thorndike, why did you live so close by?”

  “We didn’t, at first,” explained Rose, sitting down on the couch again. “After I took the children, I changed my name to Strauss and we lived in Europe for years. When I knew Brendan had given up looking for us, we came back and settled here in Maine, because I love this area.”

  Jason interrupted. “The truth is you loved living right under his nose when he didn’t know about it. But I’ve known about you for years. I knew exactly where you lived.”

  “If you did, why didn’t you tell Mr. Thorndike?” asked Bess.

  “Why should I have?” Jason said. “The last thing she wanted was to be discovered by the old man. And that’s the last thing I wanted, too. I was counting on her silence.”

  “Jason had gotten Brendan to rewrite his will so that we’d inherit the Thorndike money,” Cecelia said. “It would have ruined everything for an heir to be discovered.”

  Rose wasn’t listening. Her eyes glistened as private memories came back to her. “Robbie died suddenly at college, and then I had only Margaret,” she said, holding a velvet pillow as if it were a child. “Sweet, gentle Margaret. She married Jake Brody and they had a wonderful baby girl, Meredith. Then that terrible plane crash. I don’t understand why you people don’t see that life has enough pain without having to hurt people for money.”

  “Frankly,” said Cecelia, “I think life without money is a pain.”

  Rose shook her head sadly.

  “Meredith doesn’t know anything about this?” asked George.

  “No, I raised my grandchild the same way I raised my children — to be free, independent, confident in themselves, not in their name.”

  “Now I have a question for you, Rebecca,” Cecelia said. “If you didn’t plan to tell Meredith about her inheritance, why did you give her the veil and cause me all this nasty trouble?”

  “I didn’t want to give it to her,” Rose said. “I kept the two layers of the veil separate and hidden for years. But Meredith found the rose veil one day when she was packing her things to move out after the wedding. She loved it and begged and begged me to allow her to wear it — especially when she found out I had worn it myself.”

  “And when you saw the photo of Meredith in the newspaper,” Nancy said to Cecelia, “you started to worry.”

  “All this talk,” Frazier mumbled to himself.

  “Be patient, Frazier,” Cecelia said. She took a sip of tea.

  Yes, be patient, Frazier, Nancy thought to herself. Because otherwise the police may not get here in time.

  “I saw the photo of Meredith in the paper,” Cecelia went on, “and I said to myself, hmmm, that looks much too much like the Thorndike veil. I’d seen Brendan’s wedding pictures, you see. And I didn’t know that Rebecca had separated the two layers. Well, I said to myself, a nice, innocent, uninformed girl like Meredith shouldn’t be walking down church aisles wearing something like that. You know how people like to talk. I was afraid someone might photograph it, or tell her that her veil looked just an itsy bit like the Thorndike crest.”

  “And then Meredith would have asked Rose, and Rose might have told her the truth,” Nancy said.

  “You just can’t trust anyone to lie when you need them to,” Cecelia said glibly. “So my little brother and I thought and thought and finally came up with a scheme to steal the veil so Meredith would not have to be bothered by all that gossip. Of course, Frazier was supposed to destroy the veil. And if he had done what he was told to do, we wouldn’t be discussing this right now.”

  “But you’re the head of all of Thorndike’s companies now,” Bess said to Jason. “You must be rich. Why do you want to take what belongs to Meredith? It’s not fair,” Bess said.

  “I’ll tell you what’s not fair,” Jason Moss said, bolting from his chair and losing his composure for the first time. “In five days you have ruined what took me twenty years to set up. Twenty years of saying yes to that mean old man. Twenty years of doing his dirty work. Twenty years of jumping when he said jump. And you ruined it all — that’s what’s not fair. And that’s why you” re going to pay, and I don’t care. I’ve worked too hard to let you stop me.”

  “Frazier, dear,” said Cecelia, setting down her cup of tea, “once Jason catches his breath, I think it’s time for you to explain the rules of the game.”

  Frazier stepped to the middle of the room.

  “We’re going for a little drive down the rocky Maine coast. You, you, you, and you,” he said, pointing to Rose, Nancy, Bess, and George. “I will be your driver — but only up to a certain point.”

  Rose’s face showed no emotion at all, but Bess and George looked confused.

  Nancy finished his speech impatiently. “He means he’s going to drive us over a cliff and jump out at the last second,” she said.

  Bess grabbed George’s hand.

  “Nancy Drew is annoying and provoking,” Cecelia told her brother. “But don’t let her lure you into a lengthy argument. We’ve taken all the time we can.”

  Jason nodded. “Let’s go.”

  “I think there’s something you should know,” Nancy said. “Before I came in I called the police. They should be here by now. It will be better for you if you give up.” With all her heart, Nancy hoped that what she said was true.

  “Let’s find out,” Cecelia said, opening the door and pushing Nancy and the girls out first.

  Nancy looked all around the driveway and blinked twice. There were no police cars anywhere in sight. There were no police officers, either. She couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Her stall hadn’t worked, and without any help in sight she and her friends and Rose Strauss were about to be driven over the edge of a rocky cliff!

  16

  Reunion

  Nancy watched numbly as Jason tossed the veils in the trunk of the white limo and then hopped behind the wheel. She couldn’t figure out what had happened. They’d given the police plenty of time to arrive, so why weren’t they here?

  Cecelia shot Nancy a triumphant smile, then climbed into the silver car. And Frazier pointed a gun at Nancy and the o
thers, motioning them toward the rental car.

  “I want you to drive,” Frazier said, poking Nancy in the back. “Your friends and the old woman can sit in back. And don’t forget, everybody, buckle up for safety.”

  “You know I told the police all about you,” Nancy said, still stalling for time.

  “I’m not worried about the police,” Frazier said. “And when you’re just a splatter on a rock, I won’t worry about you, either.”

  He jabbed her with the gun and jerked his head toward Bess and George. “Hurry up,” he told them.

  Obediently Bess climbed into the backseat. But George and Rose hesitated. Nancy could tell they were looking for an escape route.

  “Now!” Frazier screamed, yanking the older woman by the arm.

  With dignity, Rose Strauss lowered herself into the car, and George followed.

  Nancy looked around. Still no sign of the police. Finally she gave up and took her place behind the steering wheel. Once all of his victims were in the ear, Frazier got in on the passenger’s side of the front seat.

  “Start the car,” he said, putting his gun away and handing Nancy a set of keys.

  Nancy drew the key up toward the ignition and hesitated before inserting it.

  “I said, start the car!” Frazier was so tense he was beginning to lose whatever control he had had. There was a razor’s edge to his voice.

  Nancy slowly fit the key into the ignition and turned it.

  But nothing happened.

  “It won’t start,” Nancy said in a low tone.

  Frazier pushed her hand away and tried the ignition himself. But the engine didn’t make a sound.

  “Rotten rental cars!” he shouted out the window at Cecelia. “It won’t start.”

  Cecelia shouted back, “Mine won’t either!”

  “None of them will!” called Jason.

  “Get out of the cars with your hands in the air!” said a stern voice through a megaphone. The voice seemed to come from everywhere. “This is the police. You are surrounded. If you have any weapons, throw them on the ground!”

  Nancy froze as she saw Frazier begin to reach for his gun.

  “Get out of the cars,” the megaphone voice commanded again.

  Slowly the door to the silver car opened and Cecelia came out, looking around for the unseen police. Then Jason Moss stepped out of the white limo. He kicked the tire angrily — a little too angrily, because he hurt his foot. But he raised his hands in the air.

  Meanwhile, however, Frazier stayed where he was. From her seat next to him Nancy could see clearly that Frazier was still going for his gun — and she was right in the line of fire. Just as his hand reached his belt, Nancy ducked. She held her head, waiting for the sound of gunfire.

  Then a voice cried out, “Frazier, don’t do anything stupid!” It was Cecelia.

  Frazier looked at his sister and, as usual, did exactly what she told him, He climbed out of the car and dropped his gun on the ground.

  After that, a dozen uniformed police officers moved quickly from their hiding places behind trees and bushes and large plastic trash cans. Squad cars and police vans roared down the street. Suddenly the whole neighborhood seemed to explode with activity.

  The officer in charge rushed up to Nancy’s car and looked in. “Is everyone all right?” he asked.

  “No one is hurt, if that’s what you mean,” Rose Strauss said. “But I think it will be some time before we’re all right.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the policeman. “Which one of you is Nancy Drew?”

  “I am,” Nancy said.

  “Come with me. I’ve got a Lieutenant Flood, Boston P.D., on a direct radio link,” said the policeman.

  As Nancy walked quickly to keep up with the officer, she asked why the police had remained hidden — and why the cars wouldn’t start.

  “Our mission strategy was to render the vehicles inoperable,” he said in an official voice. “So before you came out of the house, we removed the rotors from the engines to prevent them from starting. We’ve found that if escape is not possible, most suspects become completely cooperative. Luckily, that’s how it turned out.”

  He pulled a small piece of metal from his pants pocket. “This is the rotor blade to your rental car,” he explained. It looked like the small blade to a toy helicopter.

  While Nancy was still admiring their strategy, another officer handed her a radio microphone. She filled Lieutenant Flood in on all the details of the case.

  “So it looks as though Meredith Brody is the Thorndike heiress,” Nancy concluded.

  “I’ll try to keep this quiet,” Flood said. “But I can’t promise you that the newspapers won’t get a hold of it. There are always a few reporters hanging around here, day and night.”

  “Meredith doesn’t even know yet,” Nancy told him.

  “Well, you and her grandmother had better be here to meet her when she gets off the plane,” Flood said. “She’s going to need all the help she can get.”

  That night Rose called Meredith in Bermuda and told her to come home. And the next morning, Nancy, George, Bess, and Rose drove back to Boston to meet Meredith at the airport.

  When Nancy and her friends arrived, Logan Airport was in chaos. Just as Lieutenant Flood had predicted, the Boston newspapers had printed the whole story — or at least as much of it as they knew. Nancy wondered whether Meredith herself knew as much about her new inheritance as all of these people did. Lawyers, police officers, reporters and camera crews, politicians, and well-wishers with signs filled the terminal. It was a major media event.

  Lieutenant Flood, who was in charge of Meredith’s arrival, met Nancy by the main entrance. He sent Rose, Bess, and George in one direction with his assistant. Then he and Nancy plunged through the main terminal and talked as they walked. Flood used his size to help them get through the noisy crowd, and his badge to get them through security.

  “I’ve arranged a meeting room here in the airport,” Flood said loudly as they walked through the crowd. “Oh, by the way, we found a red wig in Cecelia Bancroft’s closet early this morning.”

  “I knew you would,” said Nancy. “She wore it when she pretended to be the minister’s wife, right?”

  “Of course she had an explanation for the wig,” Lieutenant Flood said. “But to tell you the truth, Nancy, no one at the precinct can understand half the things she says. For a while she almost had us believing the wig belonged to her dog. I think her bulb is loose in its socket.”

  Nancy had to laugh. Of all the people Nancy ever had caught, she would always remember Cecelia as one of the cruelest but also one of the most fascinating.

  “Meanwhile, Frazier cracked like a rotten egg, too. He’s admitted to everything — chasing you from the airport, pushing you off the Tea Party ship, slipping the knockout drug into your drinks at the Laugh Riot, The only thing he didn’t do for his sister was send you that phony veil. Cecelia did that herself.”

  Suddenly Lieutenant Flood winced and he reached quickly for his ear. Nancy knew that meant someone was squawking too loudly in Flood’s radio earpiece.

  “Plane’s landed,” Flood said, grabbing Nancy’s arm and hurrying with her toward the gate. “Keep the crowds back, boys!”

  The police pushed one way but the crowds pushed the other. In the middle of the shoving tug-of-war, Nancy began to feel like a football player in a rough-and-tumble Saturday afternoon game. But with Lieutenant Flood blocking for her, she finally reached the doorway to the gate.

  Everyone waited, watching the empty jetway. Five more minutes passed. Finally Meredith and Mark stepped into the terminal.

  Camera lights blazed, strobe lights popped, and the mob of reporters shouted and called out questions all at once.

  “Did you ever meet your grandfather?”

  “Do you feel different being rich?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Meredith said, looking frightened.

  Lieutenant Flood and his men quickly formed a protective
circle around Mark and Meredith and tried to move them through the crowd.

  Meredith was looking all around in confusion. When she saw Nancy standing just behind Lieutenant Flood, she pulled her into the circle and hugged her.

  “How’s Grandmother Rose. Meredith asked.

  “She’s tired,” Nancy said. “And she’s a little afraid to face you.”

  “What are you. going to do with the money?” shouted the reporters.

  It was hard for Nancy and Meredith to talk. They were being pushed and pulled this way and that and shouted at from all sides.

  “Congratulations, Meredith!” “Welcome home, Meredith!” people screamed.

  With Flood leading the way, Meredith, Mark, and Nancy finally reached the meeting room, where Rose Strauss was waiting with George and Bess. George gave the newlyweds a big hug and welcomed them home.

  At first, everyone stood in silence. Meredith stepped up to her grandmother. She seemed to want to hug her, but she hesitated. It was as though they were looking at each other over a wall.

  “Is it true, Grandmother?” Meredith asked. “Why didn’t you tell me before all this?”

  “It’s true,” Rose said quietly. “I know what you’re thinking. I know that you’re angry with me, Merry, but I had very good reasons. You didn’t know Brendan Thorndike. I believed I had to keep my children away from him and away from his money.”

  “Did my mother know?” Meredith asked.

  “No,” Rose said. “I never told my children.”

  “But he was my grandfather,” Meredith said. “You should have told me.”

  “You didn’t need his money, Merry, or all the pain he inflicted with it.”

  “You taught me to be stronger than that,” Meredith said. “You should have trusted me to decide about him for myself. Don’t you know who I am?”

  Tears formed in both women’s eyes.

  “You’re right. I can see that you aren’t afraid the way I was,” Rose said. “You’re right. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Merry.”

  They were silent again. Then, at last, Meredith and her grandmother hugged and cried.