The Old-Fashioned Mystery Read online

  “What’s your name, young man?” Mr. Marvin asked Gary. “I’d like to have a talk with your parents.”

  Gary and the other boy glanced at each other. Then they took off running down the sidewalk.

  “Hey!” Mr. Marvin called out. He sighed and turned to Nancy. “Do you know that boy’s name?”

  “It’s Gary something,” Nancy replied. “He goes to River Heights Elementary School. I don’t know the other boy’s name.”

  “Well, the next time I see him, I’m going to throw a snowball back at him,” Bess said with a pout.

  “You’ll do no such thing, pumpkin,” Mr. Marvin told her.

  “That Gary boy’s probably mad because someone from his school didn’t win the contest,” George guessed. “Sour grapes!”

  “Sort of like Brenda,” Nancy agreed.

  • • •

  When the dress rehearsal was over, Mr. Marvin took the girls to the Cranberry Café for some hot cider.

  Then they went to the Ye Olde Antique Shoppe.

  As they walked inside, Nancy leaned over to Bess and whispered, “Do you have the key to the city in a safe place?”

  Bess hugged her Muller’s shopping bag to her chest. “Uh-huh, it’s right in here.”

  Nancy nodded. “Good!”

  Mr. Ortiz, the owner of the Ye Olde Antique Shoppe, came out from behind the counter. He was tall and slender with grayish-black hair and tortoiseshell glasses.

  “Welcome!” he called out in a booming voice. “Can I help you lovely ladies find something? Oh, and you too, sir,” he said, winking at Mr. Marvin.

  “My dad wants to find a pretty antique necklace for my mom,” Bess piped up.

  “Oh, well, I think we may have a few of those,” Mr. Ortiz said.

  “We just came from a dress rehearsal,” George said proudly.

  “A dress rehearsal? You mean for a play?” Mr. Ortiz asked the girls.

  Nancy shook her head. “Uh-uh. It was a dress rehearsal for Sunday night at the River Heights Holiday Streetwalk. Bess won an essay contest, so she gets to present Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus with the key to the city!” She pointed to Bess.

  “I even get to keep the key until Sunday night,” Bess said, holding up her shopping bag.

  Mr. Ortiz looked impressed. “Well, my goodness!”

  The door opened just then. A family bustled in. Nancy recognized Melissa Adams from school, and her mother and father, too. The three of them were carrying lots of shopping bags.

  Mrs. Adams was also holding a small girl in her arms. The girl was squirming and fidgeting.

  “Quiet, Mandy,” Mrs. Adams shushed. “Let Mommy and Daddy shop for a few minutes.”

  “Hey, Melissa,” Nancy called out.

  Melissa’s eyes lit up. “Oh, hey, Nancy! Hey, Bess and George!”

  “Hi, Melissa,” said Bess and George.

  “Down!” Mandy said, thrashing around in her mother’s arms. “Mandy get down!”

  “Okay, okay,” Mrs. Adams sighed, setting Mandy down. “Don’t touch anything though. No touching!”

  “No touching!” Mandy squeaked. She toddled across the room. She stopped and picked up an antique pillow, then dropped it on the floor. She started to pick up a vase.

  “I’ve got her,” Mr. Adams said quickly to his wife. He set his shopping bags down and ran after Mandy.

  “Are you guys shopping for antiques?” Nancy asked Melissa.

  “My mom is looking for a silver picture frame,” Melissa explained.

  Nancy told Melissa all about Bess’s dress rehearsal. “Wow, that is so cool!” Melissa said when Nancy had finished her story.

  “Hey, guys, check this out! A real antique feather boa!” Bess exclaimed. She set her shopping bags down and picked up a black boa that was draped over a velvet chair. She put it around her neck. “How do I look?”

  “Like a movie star,” Melissa said, giggling. “You should wear that on Sunday night!”

  A few minutes later Mr. Marvin gathered up the girls. He held up a small Ye Olde Antique Shoppe bag. “I found the perfect thing for your mom, Bess. Why don’t we make a quick stop to the Book Nook?”

  “Sure, Daddy,” Bess said.

  The four of them said good-bye to Mr. Ortiz and to Melissa and her parents, too. Then they headed down the street to the Book Nook.

  The Book Nook was a cozy little bookstore filled with new and old books. Nancy went there often with her dad.

  The owner, Julia Sandback, waved from behind the counter. She was tall and skinny and had fiery red hair.

  “Hi, Ms. Sandback!” The girls waved.

  Nancy noticed that Brenda Carlton was there with her father. They were looking at cookbooks.

  Mr. Carlton and Mr. Marvin exchanged greetings. “We’re looking forward to your party this Saturday!” Mr. Marvin said with a smile.

  Brenda pretended not to see Nancy and her friends.

  “Doing some holiday shopping?” Ms. Sandback asked Nancy and her friends.

  “Yup!” George replied.

  “Plus, we just came from a dress rehearsal!” Bess added.

  Bess told Ms. Sandback all about the ceremony. Out of the corner of her eye Nancy saw that Brenda was eavesdropping. Brenda didn’t look pleased.

  Just then, Nancy saw something else. Gary from River Heights Elementary School was standing behind a display of gardening books. He seemed to be eavesdropping on Bess’s conversation too!

  “Hey you!” Nancy called out. “Gary! You’re the one who threw the snowball at Bess!”

  Mr. Marvin stopped talking to Mr. Carlton and turned around. He marched up to Gary. “You! I want to have a word with you!”

  A tall man with red hair emerged from the history section and put his hand on Gary’s shoulder. “I’m Gary’s father. What’s going on?” he demanded.

  Mr. Marvin told Gary’s father about the snowball incident. Bess looked mad, like she wanted to say something to Gary. Nancy took Bess’s arm and pulled her over to the children’s section. George followed.

  “Let’s go pick out books to ask Santa Claus for,” Nancy suggested.

  Bess broke into a smile. “Great idea! We can even tell Santa Claus in person on Sunday night!”

  Bess picked up a book of fairy tales. She and George started looking through it.

  Nancy peeked over her shoulder. Mr. Marvin was still talking to Gary’s father.

  I hope this is the last time Gary does something mean to Bess, Nancy thought.

  • • •

  Later that night Nancy yawned and crawled under the covers. She was exhausted from all that shopping.

  There was a knock at her door. “Yes? Who is it?” Nancy called out.

  Carson Drew, Nancy’s father, poked his head through the door. He held up a cordless phone.

  “Hi, Pudding Pie,” he said. “Pudding Pie” was Mr. Drew’s special nickname for his daughter. “Call for you. I think it’s Bess.”

  Nancy sat up in bed and took the phone from her father. “Thanks, Daddy,” she said. “Hi, Bess!” she said into the phone.

  “I have really bad news!” Bess said in a teary-sounding voice. “It’s the worst news ever!”

  Nancy frowned. Bess sounded really upset.

  “What’s the matter, Bess?” Nancy asked her worriedly. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s the key to the city,” Bess burst out. “It’s gone!”

  4

  The Search for the Key

  Nancy gasped. How could the key to the city be gone?

  “Okay, slow down,” Nancy said into the phone. “What do you mean, the key to the city is gone?”

  “It’s just gone!” Bess cried out.

  “Start from the beginning,” Nancy suggested.

  Bess took a deep breath. “O-Okay,” she began. “After Daddy and I dropped you guys off, we came home. I put all my shopping bags on my bed. Then we had dinner. After dinner we watched some TV. And then before I got ready to go to bed, I went through my shopping bags. I
wanted to look at the stuff we bought.”

  “Then what happened?” Nancy prompted.

  “The bag from Muller’s was missing!” Bess explained. “You know the one with my pink mittens? The one that had the key in it? It wasn’t with the other bags!”

  “Was the bag there when you brought all your other bags into the house?” Nancy asked Bess.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I was carrying a whole bunch of bags,” Bess said. “Anyway, I told Daddy what happened, and we looked in the car right away. But the Muller’s bag wasn’t there. We looked all over the house and even the yard. No bag!”

  “Hmmm,” Nancy said.

  “This is awful!” Bess said tearfully. “I’ve lost the key to the city. Mr. Farnsworth is going to be so mad at me. So will the mayor. So will Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus!”

  “Don’t worry, Bess. We’ll find it,” Nancy reassured her friend. But deep down, she wasn’t sure. What could have happened to the key?

  • • •

  “Okay, let’s go over everything that happened,” Nancy said.

  It was Saturday morning. Nancy, Bess, and George were sitting on Bess’s bed. They were having an emergency meeting about the missing key.

  “You had the bag after we left Muller’s,” George pointed out. “You showed us your pink mittens, remember?”

  Bess nodded. “I remember.”

  “Then we went to the Ye Olde Antique Shoppe,” Nancy reminded her friends. “Could you have left the bag there?”

  “Maybe,” Bess said. She picked up a teddy bear and hugged it to her chest. “My mom and dad tried to call Mr. Ortiz this morning—and Ms. Sandback, too. But their stores don’t open till ten o’clock on Saturdays.”

  “Don’t forget the Cranberry Café,” George said. “We went there right after we left the dress rehearsal.”

  Bess shook her head. “But I had the bag after we left there. I remember, because I looked inside to make sure the key was there.”

  “Oh,” Nancy said.

  Nancy twirled a lock of her hair and looked out the window. It had started to snow. The trees and grass were covered with white. It looked very Christmassy.

  Nancy loved solving mysteries. She had solved lots of mysteries before. And here was a really important mystery—the mystery of the missing key! She knew she could do it—if she just put her mind to it.

  Nancy looked at her friends. “We’re going to find the key by tomorrow night,” she told Bess. “I have a plan.”

  “You do?” Bess asked eagerly.

  Just then Mrs. Marvin popped her head through the door. She had a worried look on her face. “Bess, I think we should call the mayor right now and let him know about the missing key.”

  Bess jumped up from the bed and wrapped her arms around her mother. “Nancy thinks she can find the key,” she said breathlessly. “Please, can we wait to call the mayor? Nancy’s an awesome detective. I know she can find it!”

  Mrs. Marvin frowned. “I don’t know . . . ,” she said, hesitating.

  “Please, Mommy?” Bess begged.

  “Oh, all right,” Mrs. Marvin said finally. “But if the key doesn’t turn up by tomorrow evening before the tree-lighting ceremony, we have to let the mayor know. Understood?”

  “Yes, Mommy!” Bess promised.

  “So what’s your plan?” George asked Nancy.

  Nancy stood up. “I think we should go visit Ms. Sandback and Mr. Ortiz. We can ask them if they’ve seen the bag. And we can look around their stores, too.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Mrs. Marvin said. She dug into her jeans pocket and pulled out a set of car keys. “I’ll drive!”

  • • •

  Nancy, Bess, George, and Mrs. Marvin stopped by the Book Nook first. Julia Sandback was just opening up.

  “Good morning!” Ms. Sandback said merrily. “You’re my first customers for the day.”

  “We’re not shopping today,” Bess told her.

  “We’re looking for something we lost,” George added.

  Ms. Sandback raised her eyebrows. “Oh? What did you girls lose?”

  “A shopping bag from Muller’s department store,” Nancy explained. “A small one. Did you see it?”

  “We might have left it here last night,” Bess said.

  Ms. Sandback frowned and glanced around. “Hmm, a small Muller’s bag. I don’t think you left it here, girls.”

  “Could we look around the store?” Nancy asked her.

  Ms. Sandback smiled. “Of course!”

  Nancy, Bess, and George began searching up and down the aisles.

  They finally got to the last aisle in the store. But they still hadn’t found the bag.

  Bess bit her lip. “It’s not here,” she said in a trembling voice.

  Nancy put her arm around her friend’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, Bess. It could still be at Mr. Ortiz’s store.”

  They said good-bye to Ms. Sandback. She promised to keep her eyes open for the bag. Then they left and started down the street toward the Ye Olde Antique Shoppe.

  Along the way they passed the big Christmas tree. There were four kids from the junior high school decorating it. Nancy recognized Howard Nakamoto, who lived up the street.

  Howard and another boy were up on a ladder. They were wrapping a string of lights around the tree. Two girls were hanging silver and gold decorations on the branches.

  “Let’s walk faster!” Bess whispered to Nancy. “Seeing the Christmas tree reminds me of . . . you know!”

  The girls and Mrs. Marvin soon reached the Ye Olde Antique Shoppe. Mr. Ortiz was inside. He was standing behind the counter, polishing a brass owl with a cloth.

  “Hello again!” he called out to the girls. “You brought me a new customer, I see.” He smiled at Mrs. Marvin.

  “We need to ask you something, Mr. Ortiz,” Nancy said. “We might have left something here yesterday. Have you seen a Muller’s shopping bag?”

  “One of the small ones,” George piped up.

  Mr. Ortiz pushed his glasses up his nose. “A small Muller’s shopping bag . . . hmm.”

  “With a pair of mittens in it,” Bess added.

  “Oh, yes!” Mr. Ortiz nodded. “I did find something like that last night. It was over there on the floor, next to the marble statue.”

  “You found it?” Bess broke into a smile. “Yay, Mr. Ortiz! You’re our hero!” She began jumping up and down.

  Nancy and George grabbed Bess’s hands. “This is great!” George exclaimed. “Mystery solved!”

  “That was the fastest mystery we’ve ever solved,” Nancy said, laughing.

  Mr. Ortiz disappeared through a doorway. He came back out a minute later and handed Bess a small Muller’s shopping bag.

  Bess reached into it eagerly. Then she pulled out . . . a pair of red mittens.

  Her face fell. “These aren’t my mittens! My mittens are pink!”

  Nancy peeked into the bag. “And the key isn’t in there either.”

  “Huh,” Mr. Ortiz said, rubbing his chin. “That must be someone else’s bag, then.”

  “So you didn’t find another Muller’s bag in the store?” Bess asked him.

  Mr. Ortiz shook his head. “Nope, no other bag.”

  “Let’s look around,” Nancy said to George and Bess. “I bet your bag is in here somewhere, Bess!”

  “Just be careful back in the corner. I just got in some antique china and crystal, and it’s very fragile,” Mr. Ortiz warned.

  “Okay, Mr. Ortiz,” Nancy promised.

  Nancy led her friends through the cluttered aisles of the store. They looked under feather boas. They looked behind dusty old paintings. They looked inside big brass trunks.

  But Bess’s bag was nowhere to be found.

  “I guess it’s not here,” Bess said, looking disappointed.

  “I guess we’d better give up and look somewhere else,” George suggested.

  “I guess you guys are right,” Nancy said. She turned and started walking towa
rd the front of the store where Mr. Ortiz and Mrs. Marvin were talking about antique watches.

  And then Nancy noticed something . . . and stopped in her tracks.

  Against one of the walls was a glass case. And inside the glass case were rows and rows of antique keys, lined up in neat rows.

  Could one of them be the key to the city? Nancy wondered.

  5

  The Holiday Party

  Nancy called Bess and George over to the case full of antique keys.

  “Look!” Nancy said in a low voice.

  Bess and George stood on either side of Nancy. They peered into the case.

  “Oh, my gosh!” Bess exclaimed.

  “Is the key to the city in there?” George asked Nancy.

  Nancy bent down. “Bess, you would know better than George and me. What did the key look like, exactly? Do you see it in there?”

  Bess bent down next to her. “It was big and gold. The top of it was kind of oval-shaped. And it had the letters R. H. on it, for ‘River Heights.’ The letters were pretty and old-fashioned looking.”

  Nancy studied all the keys in the case. She didn’t see a key that fit Bess’s description.

  “I don’t see it in there,” Nancy said after a minute. “Do you?” she asked Bess and George.

  Bess and George shook their heads.

  “Did you girls find something?”

  Nancy whirled around. Mr. Ortiz was standing behind the three of them.

  “Uh, we were just—,” Bess stammered.

  “Looking around,” George finished.

  “I thought you girls were searching for a shopping bag,” Mr. Ortiz said in a stern voice. “There are no shopping bags in that case.”

  “We wanted to make sure to look everywhere,” Nancy said quickly. “Thank you, Mr. Ortiz! Let us know if you ever find that bag!”

  Then she grabbed Bess and George’s arms and steered them toward the front door. Nancy didn’t like how serious he sounded, and she wanted to get out of there before Mr. Ortiz asked them any more questions.

  • • •

  “You don’t think Mr. Ortiz stole the key to the city, do you?” Bess asked Nancy. “He’s so nice!”

  Nancy, Bess, and George were at the Double Dip. They were sitting at a booth in the corner, drinking hot chocolate. Mrs. Marvin had dropped them off there while she ran some errands.