The Sand Castle Mystery Read online

  “I hope it doesn’t rain,” Bess said. “That would ruin the castle.”

  “It wouldn’t dare!” Lisa said.

  “Let’s get up really early so we can have a fresh start on our castle,” Nancy said. “I can’t wait to try out the colored sand.”

  “Me, neither,” said Bess.

  “Want to come back to the cottage with us?” Nancy asked Lisa. “We can play cards.”

  Lisa shook her head. “I have to go to the dentist. My dad’s coming to pick me up in a little while.”

  “Thanks for coming with us,” Nancy said to Lisa. The girls all waved good-bye.

  That night Nancy, Bess, and George pored over the books on sand castles. Nancy got out some drawing paper and crayons and they drew some plans. George scribbled in a tall tower. “If we pack the sand in hard and use a Popsicle stick, we can cut in stairs,” Bess said.

  The girls worked all evening, stopping only when Mr. Drew came in. “Time for bed,” he said.

  “Already?” said Nancy.

  “You have another big day ahead of sand castle building,” he said.

  The girls washed and got into bed, but Nancy was restless. “I’m too excited to sleep,” she whispered.

  “Count sheep,” George said, yawning loudly. “Or better yet, count sand castles.”

  “Okay,” said Nancy doubtfully. She shut her eyes and tried to imagine a row of sand castles walking past her. “One sand castle, two sand castles,” she counted. Then she yawned, and soon she was sleeping.

  • • •

  In the morning, the girls were up bright and early. They had blueberry pancakes with Mr. Drew. “It’s Sunday and I don’t have to work, so I’m going to go to the beach later, too,” Mr. Drew said. “Maybe I should enter the contest myself since I have this free time today.” His eyes twinkled.

  “You can’t enter the contest, Dad!” Nancy laughed. “Only kids can.”

  “Well, you can’t blame me for trying.” Mr. Drew laughed.

  After the girls ate, they ran outside to the beach. “I can’t wait to try out the sparkly sand!” George said.

  “Hey,” said Nancy, “there’s a crowd around our castle.”

  “What are they doing there?” asked George. “Did we do that good a job?”

  Nancy frowned. They walked closer. “There’s Lisa,” George said, waving, but Lisa looked upset and didn’t wave back. The girls inched closer and Bess suddenly gasped. There in the sand, in big letters, was written STAY AWAY! Even worse, their castle was destroyed!

  Bess’s hand flew to her mouth. “How will we ever rebuild our castle in time?” she wailed.

  Nancy looked around the crowd. “Who would do such an awful thing?” she asked.

  Mrs. Thorton and Kurt the reporter came racing toward them. “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Mrs. Thorton said.

  Kurt took out a notebook. Nancy remembered how he had said trouble sold newspapers, and she didn’t like the excited way he was writing. What if the things he was writing caused more trouble? “What happened?” he asked.

  “We don’t know,” Bess said. “We just got here.”

  “This is terrible,” Lisa said. “What are you going to do? Are you going to take yourselves out of the contest?”

  “We won’t let this stop us!” Nancy exclaimed.

  “This happened because no one from out of town has ever entered the contest,” Jane said.

  “Now that’s not fair!” Bess said.

  “Is too!” Lara said, putting her hands angrily on her hips.

  “Girls,” said Mrs. Thorton. “I told you before that everyone can enter. Now we take our contest very seriously and we are going to find out who did such a thing and make sure it doesn’t happen again. In the meantime, why don’t you girls work at rebuilding your castle.” She shook her head. “And we can just erase this nasty ‘stay away.’”

  “Oh, no, it has to stay!” Nancy cried.

  “It does?” George asked. “But it’s disturbing.”

  “That’s why we can’t disturb it,” Nancy explained. “It’s evidence. It might just help us to find out who did this.”

  “How’s it going to do that?” Bess asked.

  Nancy chewed on her lower lip. “I don’t know yet,” she admitted.

  “Well, you’re the best detective around, so I bet you’ll figure it out,” George said.

  “If you think leaving that sign will help, then we’ll leave it,” Mrs. Thorton said.

  • • •

  Mrs. Thorton left and the crowd slowly walked away. The girls sat glumly looking at their castle. It was kicked in on one side. The top was lopsided and the moat Bess had started to build was filled in with sand.

  “How will we have time to rebuild?” Bess said. “We have just two more days.”

  “We can rebuild it,” Nancy said. “But what happens if someone comes back and kicks it in again?”

  “Nancy, you’re the detective. Who do you think did this?” George asked.

  Nancy looked around the beach. “I don’t know, but we’re all going to have to be detectives on this one,” she said.

  Nancy got her special blue detective notebook and pencil out of her backpack. “Suspects,” she said. “We need suspects.”

  “Do we have any?” Lisa asked.

  Nancy chewed on the end of her pencil and wrote “Suspects” at the top of the page.

  “What about the reporter?” George said. “Remember, he said trouble was good for selling newspapers.”

  “Reporter,” Nancy wrote down.

  “How about Jane and Lara?” said Bess. “They don’t think we should be in the contest because we don’t live here.”

  Nancy carefully wrote down their names.

  “James is always causing trouble. Maybe it was him,” Lisa said, and Nancy wrote his name, too.

  Next, Nancy wrote in big block letters “Clues.” She looked up. “We know why these suspects may have done it, but we don’t have any clues,” she said.

  Nancy jumped up. “We have to look around.” The girls all studied the castle.

  “I see something,” said Bess. She pointed to a whirly pattern on a footprint. Nancy crouched down, studying the print.

  “Let me see,” said George. George bent closer and then sighed.

  “What? Why did you sigh?” Nancy asked.

  George lifted up one of her sandaled feet. “That’s the special pattern on the bottom of my new beach shoes,” George said.

  “I know,” said Nancy, “we’ll take pictures of the scene of the crime. My father says that is a good way to discover clues.” She dug into her beach bag and got out the cameras. Each girl took a few pictures.

  Nancy was about to put her camera back in her bag when she noticed something about the sand. She pointed excitedly. “Look at the color of that sand!” she cried.

  The girls looked where Nancy was pointing. There was a thin line of green sand.

  “That isn’t the color we bought!” Nancy exclaimed.

  “But it is the color James bought!” cried George.

  4

  James’s Secret

  James did have green sand,” said Nancy excitedly. “But we have to prove that he was here and that he ruined our castle.”

  Lisa scanned the beach. “There he is now,” she said. She pointed to the water. James’s red head bobbed up and he suddenly splashed another boy.

  “Cut that out!” the other boy shouted. James splashed him again and then ran out of the water back onto the sand. When he ran past the girls, he stuck out his tongue.

  Bess stuck her tongue out, too, but George grabbed her arm. “Don’t make him suspicious of us!” George said.

  “Let’s follow him,” Nancy said. “But don’t let him see us!”

  James had stopped running and was busy putting on his sneakers. The girls walked toward him.

  Nancy suddenly froze. “Do you see what I see?” Nancy whispered.

  “I see James, our suspect,” Bess
said.

  Nancy shook her head. “Look closer,” she whispered. “He has a green stain on the side of his sneaker—just like the green sand we found on our castle!”

  James stood and started walking away from the beach.

  “It’s lucky he lives next door to our cottage. We can stay on our porch and he won’t even know we’re spying on him,” Bess said.

  The girls quickly ran to their porch. They saw James rush into his house and then come out carrying a bag of green sand. Then he slowly opened the sand and poured it into a wooden box.

  Just then Lisa sneezed. James looked up and his face went red.

  “Guilty!” Bess whispered, but Nancy shook her head.

  “We still need proof,” Nancy said. “My father always tells me you can’t accuse people without proof.”

  “Hey, what are you doing spying on me?” James said, standing up.

  “What are you doing with that green sand?” Bess demanded.

  James looked puzzled. “I bought this sand for my sister. I’m surprising her with a special sandbox,” James explained.

  Now it was Nancy’s turn to frown. “But we found green sand by our wrecked castle,” Nancy told James. “The same green sand that you’re using now.”

  “So what? I might have run by your stupid castle but I sure didn’t destroy it!” James said angrily. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that! What kind of guy do you think I am?”

  “The kind of guy who squirts sand castles with water guns,” George said.

  James shook his head. “I just wanted to soak you, not your dumb castle,” he said.

  James crouched down again. A flop of red hair fell into his eyes and he pushed it back. “I have to finish this before my little sister comes back from shopping with my mom. Green is her favorite color.” He looked at his watch. “She’ll be home any moment. Look, it stinks that your stupid castle was destroyed, but I didn’t do it,” he said. “Now scram so I can finish my work!”

  Nancy took out her detective notebook and found the suspects list. She drew a line through James’s name, then sighed. If James didn’t do it, then who did?

  “Let’s go back to the beach and work,” she said glumly to her friends. “Maybe we can find some more clues.”

  The girls walked down to the beach. They looked around, but all they saw was Mrs. Thorton hurrying away. Kurt the reporter was following her.

  “Hey!” George exclaimed. “Let’s follow them!”

  Nancy shook her head. “You can’t follow them if they aren’t moving,” she pointed out. “Look!”

  Mrs. Thorton was now standing very still watching everyone in the contest. Her mouth was turned down. “Why does she look so unhappy?” Nancy asked.

  “Maybe because of what happened in the contest,” Lisa said.

  “I know just how she feels,” Nancy said, sitting on the sand. She looked at the way the castle had been smashed in and she felt awful inside. She looked at the green sand and she felt mad. Then she looked at the STAY AWAY written in the sand. She took a finger and in a clean patch of sand wrote her own STAY AWAY.

  Nancy’s eyes lit up. “Wait a minute!” she said. “I’ve got it!”

  “Got what?” Bess asked excitedly. “Do you know who wrecked our castle?”

  “No,” admitted Nancy, “but I have an idea. Look at this!” Nancy pointed to the letters. “See how they slant to the left?”

  “Yes, so what?” Lisa asked.

  “I’m right-handed and the letters I wrote slant to the right! So whoever wrote this first one must be left-handed!”

  5

  Caught Left-handed!

  Nancy took out her notebook and found the page that said “Clues.” “Suspect is lefthanded,” she wrote.

  “But which suspect?” Lisa asked

  “Girls! Who would like some lunch?” Hannah Gruen called. Nancy looked up. Hannah was on the porch of their cottage.

  Nancy looked around the beach. Just about everyone else, it seemed, was leaving for lunch, too. “Do you want to come for lunch?” Nancy asked Lisa.

  Lisa stood up. “Sure, thanks. I just have to tell my dad,” she said quickly. “He’s over there on the beach.”

  “I can’t eat anything,” Bess said, standing up. “I’m too upset.”

  “That will be a first, then!” Nancy laughed, trying to cheer up Bess.

  The inside of the cottage smelled delicious. Nancy’s father was already at the table. “Macaroni and cheese,” he said. “Come sit down.”

  The girls waited quietly until there was a knock on the door. “Hi, I’m Lisa,” Lisa said to Hannah and Mr. Drew.

  “Any friend of the girls is a friend of mine,” Mr. Drew said. “Please sit down and eat.”

  Lisa was out of breath. “I ran all the way,” she said.

  The girls began eating quickly. “I can’t wait to get back to the beach,” Nancy said. “I just have to figure this case out.”

  “Finish your lunch first,” said Nancy’s father. “Remember, you can’t solve mysteries on an empty stomach.”

  When the girls were finished eating, Nancy started to clear the plates. “Oh, don’t bother,” Hannah said. “I know you girls are anxious to get back to the beach.”

  “Thank you, Hannah!” said Nancy. The girls ran back down to the beach.

  “Oh no!” George cried. “Look!”

  Nancy looked down, shocked. The STAY AWAY had been erased!

  “Who did this? And why? And how did they do it without anyone seeing them?” Nancy cried. She looked around at the other teams. “Lara! Jane!” Nancy called. Lara and Jane looked up. “Did you see anyone around our castle when we weren’t here?”

  “I wasn’t really paying attention,” Jane said. “Why? What happened?”

  “The ‘stay away’ in the sand is gone,” George said.

  Jane frowned. “Well, don’t look at us. We didn’t do it!”

  “No one said you did,” Bess told them.

  Lisa bent down. “This is terrible,” she said. “Now we’ll never find out who wrote it.”

  “Oh, yes we will,” Nancy said. “Or I’m not Nancy Drew the detective!”

  “Look,” George said, staring straight ahead. “Maybe this is a new clue.”

  Ahead of them Kurt the reporter was talking to Mrs. Thorton. He was writing something. “He’s using his left hand!” Nancy said.

  Kurt suddenly turned and looked right at the girls, almost as if he knew they were talking about him. “Look how guilty he looks,” George said.

  “Looking guilty isn’t the same as being guilty,” Nancy said. “Let’s go over and talk to him.”

  The girls walked over. Mrs. Thorton suddenly stopped talking. “Did you need something, girls?” said Mrs. Thorton. Her voice sounded funny to Nancy, as if she had been crying.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Kurt, his eyes bright.

  “The ‘stay away’ sign is gone!” George blurted.

  “What?” gasped Mrs. Thorton.

  “But we still have a clue,” Nancy continued. “We figured out that someone who is left-handed must have written it.” She looked at Kurt’s left hand.

  “Wait a minute,” Kurt said. “Why are you looking at me like that? Hold on. You don’t think that I wrote that ‘stay away’ in the sand because I’m left-handed do you? Why would I do that?”

  “You told us trouble sells newspapers,” Nancy said.

  “I write about trouble. I don’t make it!” Kurt exclaimed.

  “But you looked so upset,” Nancy said.

  “I’ll tell you why he’s so upset,” Mrs. Thorton said. “Kurt’s interviewing me for the newspaper.” Mrs. Thorton lowered her eyes. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone yet, but I’m thinking about retiring. Kurt’s trying to talk me out of it.”

  “She can’t retire!” Kurt said. “Without her, there really wouldn’t be a contest. She organizes the judges, the prizes, the whole ceremony.”

  “I don’t want my last contest to be one with troubl
e,” said Mrs. Thorton sadly.

  Nancy bit her lip. “Then it’s even more important than ever for us to solve this mystery.”

  “You come up with anything, you let me know,” Kurt said. “I’ll make it front page news. And that’s a promise.”

  Nancy pulled out her notebook and crossed off the word “reporter” on her suspect list. Then the girls went back to the sand castle and got to work. Nancy began making a patio out of tiny stones. Bess sprinkled the new glittery sand on the roof of the castle, and George went to get water to pack the sand down more.

  “Who would do such a thing?” Nancy said out loud. She often did her best thinking that way.

  “I’d better go check in with my dad,” Lisa said. “I promised I’d come see him when we got back from lunch.”

  “See you later, alligator,” said Bess.

  “In a while, crocodile,” said George.

  “It will be a thriller, gorilla,” Lisa called, laughing.

  Shortly after Lisa left, Katharine came by. She was wearing a bright yellow swimsuit and carrying a beach towel.

  “Here comes Miss Friendly,” said Bess.

  “Come on, that’s not nice,” Nancy said. “Give her a chance.”

  “Hi,” Katharine said, and Nancy smiled.

  “Hi back to you,” said George.

  Katharine suddenly dug into her beach bag and brought out a comb. “Want to borrow this? You can make cool patterns by raking it across the sand,” she said.

  “Sure!” Bess said. “Are you in the contest, too?”

  Katharine shrugged. “Oh, not this year,” she said. She handed the comb to Bess.

  “Oh, let me try!” said George.

  “I’ll just go get some more water,” Nancy said.

  Nancy ran to the water, swinging the pail. Lara and Jane were already there, filling their pails. “Hey,” Jane said. “How come you have so much extra help? First Lisa, and now Katharine.”

  “I think it’s nice they’re helping,” Nancy said.

  “Well, neither one of them would be helping if they could enter the contest themselves,” Lara said.