Action! Read online

  “I’m not asleep,” I told him. “Just concentrating. I’m trying to make myself feel the way Esther Rackham would’ve felt.”

  “Ah,” Luther said. “You’re becoming a method actor.”

  I pushed my hair back off my face and looked up at him. “A what?” I asked.

  “It’s a technique of acting,” Luther explained. “It means that you try to apply your own feelings and reactions to the situation that your character is in.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s working,” I admitted. “All I can think about is the mystery of Esther Rackham’s life.”

  He nodded. “You may be playing a role in a movie, but you’ll always be a detective first,” he teased me.

  “I know,” I said. “But Morris is counting on me. Everyone involved in the film is counting on me. And the production has already been hit with so many problems that I couldn’t bear to make it any worse.”

  Luther studied my face. “You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I just can’t figure out how to act like Esther.”

  He sat down next to me. “There’s still some time before everyone else gets here. I’d be happy to help you if I can.”

  “That would be great,” I said. “If there’s anyone in town who has insight into who Esther Rackham was, it’s you.”

  “I’m not sure even I can be too helpful on that subject,” Luther said. “No one knew much about Esther.”

  “But what about her diary?” I pressed. “In the script it says that Esther wrote down tons of details every day in her journal.”

  “It’s true. In fact, most of what we know about the River Heist comes from Esther’s diary,” Luther said. “She was a very detailed writer. She kept track of everything that happened to her from the time she was ten years old.”

  “Then I can just read her original diary, and she’ll tell me herself what she was thinking when she went out to that cave!” I said, smiling. I’d heard about Esther’s diary before, of course, but I’d never read it. The diary was kept in the town hall in an airtight container to make sure that the old paper didn’t disintegrate with time. “Do you think the mayor would give me permission?” I asked. “Or maybe there’s a transcript of it somewhere ….”

  “It wouldn’t help,” Luther told me. “In fact, I got the mayor’s permission to go through the diary again and transcribe it for this movie. Althea came with me. She was fascinated when I told her about the diary.” Luther blushed a tiny bit when he mentioned Althea Waters, the screenwriter. I suspected that there might be a romance brewing between Luther and Althea. “At the production meeting today, Althea and I are going to ask Morris to insert a few scenes of Esther writing in her diary,” Luther went on. “I think it will make the script much more authentic.”

  And it would give me even more scenes to perform in. Ugh.

  “But the diary doesn’t answer your questions,” Luther went on. “Because there are no entries for the day when Esther found Ethan Mahoney in the cave, or for the day before that.”

  I stared at him, surprised. “No entries at all?” I asked, my sleuthing sense on alert. When you’ve solved as many mysteries as I have, you develop a sort of “sixth sense” about things. And my sixth sense was telling me that a girl who’s kept a diary since she was ten doesn’t just stop writing the day before a heist by coincidence!

  “That’s the strange part,” Luther said. “It seems as if there were entries at one point, but someone tore them out. There are bits of paper still stuck in the old binding.”

  Another mystery. “Why would anyone want to tear those pages out?” I asked.

  “I don’t think we’ll ever know,” Luther said.

  “But she never told anyone what happened to her brothers. They got away!”

  “That’s true,” Luther said. “But there’s no reason to think Esther knew where they went. They certainly wouldn’t have kept in touch with her once she was married to the man they stole from!”

  I smiled. “I guess not.”

  “And it is thanks to Esther that we know a lot about what happened. For instance, she recorded exactly how much money her brothers stole from Ethan.”

  “I thought they took all his money,” I said.

  “They took everything he had in his office safe,” Luther told me. “There wasn’t a bank in the town back in those days; this was still frontier land. Ethan Mahoney kept all his profits right on the premises of the anvil factory.”

  “So they took all his profits,” I said. “But he still had all the anvils. Couldn’t he have simply sold them and rebuilt his fortune from the money he made?”

  “It was more complicated than that,” Luther said. “The money that the Rackham boys took included prepayments for anvils. The railroads were still being built at the time, and Ethan had gotten very large orders for hundreds of anvils. He was paid in advance.”

  “So when the Rackham Gang took the money, Ethan was left with a bunch of anvils that had already been sold,” I said.

  “Even worse, he was left with an order for anvils that hadn’t been made yet,” Luther said. “He had no money left to keep the factory running. He couldn’t make any new anvils. His business was bankrupt, and he was never even able to repay the money he’d been given by the railroad company.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I had always heard the story in a way that made it seem as if Ethan Mahoney continued to be a wealthy man even after the River Heist.”

  “There is some truth to that,” Luther admitted. “After Ethan and Esther both died, their heirs were surprised to receive a very large inheritance.”

  I frowned. “I didn’t think they had any kids.”

  “Ethan had children from his first marriage,” Luther explained. “He was a widower when he met Esther.”

  “She must have really loved him to be willing to marry him even though he was bankrupt,” I commented.

  “I guess so. Esther stopped writing in her diary after the wedding,” Luther said. “And once Ethan had told his story to the local marshal, neither he nor Esther ever spoke of the heist again.”

  “I imagine it was a strain on their relationship,” I said, thinking aloud. “After all, it was Esther’s brothers who committed the crime. That can’t have been easy on the marriage.”

  Luther shrugged. “They kept to themselves. They never even let anyone into their house. So nobody knows much about their marriage, or about where the money came from. Ethan’s son told people that his father had invested well with what little money he had left after the heist.”

  That didn’t seem quite right to me. If Ethan Mahoney had truly been bankrupt after the River Heist, he couldn’t have had very much money to invest. “But the Mahoney family is one of the richest families in River Heights,” I said. “Half the buildings in town are named after them.”

  “That’s true,” Luther said. “But later generations have added to the amount left by Ethan. And all of the Mahoneys have made a point of giving a lot of money to the city. It’s always seemed important to the whole family.”

  I thought about Mrs. Mahoney, the elderly widow who was one of the last living members of the Mahoney family. She’s one of my father’s clients, so I know her pretty well. Her husband was notoriously tight fisted with his money, but since his death, Mrs. Mahoney has given away huge amounts to charity. “Well, Mrs. Mahoney certainly thinks it’s important,” I said. “But her husband didn’t.”

  Luther nodded. “Cornelius Mahoney thought giving away money was a waste of time.”

  “I have a theory,” I said. “I think Mrs. Mahoney donates so much money because she wants people to forget what a nasty guy he was. If there are enough good works done in his name, everyone will think he was a great philanthropist!”

  A knock on the trailer door startled me. Janie Gracen, one of the production assistants, opened the door and stuck her head in. “Excuse me, but Morris wants everyone to meet in the production office before we start shooting for
the day,” she said.

  Luther stood up. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about moviemaking, it’s that when the director calls, everybody listens.”

  I stayed seated, all my nervousness returning in a rush. “I guess we’d better go,” I said, even though I didn’t want to do any such thing.

  Luther caught my expression. “Don’t worry, Nancy, you’ll be great,” he said. “I’ve known you since you were a little girl, and I know there’s nothing you can’t do once you set your mind to it.” He gave me a warm smile. “You ready?”

  “Sure,” I said, getting up. But I knew in my heart that I was nowhere near ready. Was I going to ruin the entire movie?

  A Fiery Start

  I hadn’t gotten three steps away from the trailer before I felt a hand grab my arm.

  “There you are!” cried George, her dark eyes accusing me. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “Yeah, we even went by your house to pick you up,” her cousin Bess added. “I figured you’d oversleep, as usual.”

  I mustered a smile for my two best friends. Even though they’re related, the two of them couldn’t be more different. First, there’s the way they look. George is tall and skinny with brown hair that she keeps cut short so it won’t get in her way. Bess is shorter and curvy, with long blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. And their personalities are just as different. While George lives for computers and other electronic gadgets, Bess lives for fashion and boys. Or at least that’s what you would think if you didn’t bother to get to know Bess well. Underneath her girly exterior beats the heart of a die-hard mechanic. She’s never met an engine she didn’t like. That’s why she made the perfect crew chief for the film.

  One thing Bess and George do have in common, though, is that they both love to tease me!

  “Nancy didn’t oversleep today,” George joked. “It looks like she underslept!”

  “She’s right, Nance,” Bess said, pulling a tube of lipstick out of her bag. “You look awful.” She held out the lipstick.

  “No, thanks,” I told her. “The makeup people will just tell me to take it off so they can put their own stuff on me.”

  “Well, at least tuck your shirt in,” Bess said.

  I glanced down at my T-shirt to find that one side was tucked into my jeans while the other side hung loose. I tucked the whole thing in. “I forgot to look at the call sheet, so I got here really early,” I told them as we all headed toward the production office. “Sorry I made you search all over for me.”

  “No problem,” George said. “I told Bess we should look in your trailer, but she said that was the last place you would be.”

  “Hey!” Bess retorted. “We’re talking about Nancy Drew. I figured she’d be out sniffing up a new mystery, not hiding in her trailer like a movie star.”

  “Nancy is a movie star!” cried Ben Alvarez, coming up behind us. He slung an arm around my shoulders. “She’s already saved our movie once with her detective skills—”

  “And now she’ll save us again with her acting skills,” finished his brother, Luke.

  The Alvarez brothers were known around the set for being playful. They liked practical jokes, and they liked to tease people. So I knew they were just kidding with me now. Still, I didn’t like to hear that anyone was expecting me to save the movie with my acting. It wasn’t much of a joke, as far as I was concerned.

  “She can’t save you if you get fired for being late to the production meeting,” Bess teased back.

  “Then we’d better hurry,” Luke cried. He grabbed her hand and pulled her into a jog.

  “Wait for me!” Ben said, running after them.

  “See you there!” Bess called to us over her shoulder.

  George rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “It’s like the Battle of the Flirts,” she joked. It was true. No matter what the situation, Bess always finds a boy to flirt with. But the Alvarez brothers were even bigger flirts than she was!

  George and I got to the production office just in time to see Morris Dunnowitz talking with Jake Brigham, the animal wrangler for the film. Jake was in charge of making sure all the animals we used were treated well, and did not get injured.

  “I mean it, Morris,” I heard Jake say. “I know it’s been a struggle, and I’m happy to take less money.”

  “I appreciate that,” Morris replied. “We were on a tight budget to begin with, and I wasn’t expecting all the added expenses from Herman Houseman’s scheme.”

  “Of course not,” Jake said. “I respect you for wanting to see the movie finished in spite of all that. Most directors would have given up. So I’m willing to take a pay cut.”

  Morris reached out and shook Jake’s hand, and Jake headed into the office.

  “Good morning,” I said, approaching Morris. He grinned at me. “You don’t fool me, Nancy,” he said. “I know you were eavesdropping.”

  “What?” I tried to sound offended.

  “Oh, please, you know he’s right,” George teased. “You’re always listening to other people’s conversations.”

  “All right. But I can’t help it,” I defended myself. “It just comes naturally to me after all these years of sleuthing.”

  “It’s okay,” Morris said. “If it weren’t for your detective work, we wouldn’t have a movie to make.” He pulled open the door to the office and held it for George and me.

  “It’s really nice of Jake to take a pay cut,” I said, stepping into the main production office. This was Morris’s headquarters, where all the producers and editors had their offices. A large group of people was already gathered around the common area, and were sitting on chairs, desks, and the floor.

  “You’d be surprised about how many people have offered to take less money,” Morris said quietly. “It’s as if Herman Houseman’s sabotage efforts just brought everyone else together. They all want to see this movie get made, even if they don’t get paid for it.” He glanced around at all the smiling, excited faces. “Look, Nancy. They’re all thrilled to be here, and it’s thanks to you.”

  My heart sank. Everyone certainly did look happy. It was a big change from when we’d last had a production meeting, before I uncovered Herman Houseman’s sabotage scheme. Back then, everyone was miserable. That’s because there had been so many mishaps on set that most people thought the movie was cursed. People had been grumbling and unhappy and ready to quit. But now they were all smiles. I could feel the excitement crackling in the air.

  But I didn’t share their mood. I was too nervous about the scenes I’d be filming later in the day.

  “Okay, everybody,” Morris called over the din. “Let’s make this a quick meeting. I’m sure we all want to get back out there and start shooting.”

  The cast and crew hooted and hollered their agreement.

  “So here’s the plan,” Morris went on. “We’re going right back to the beginning. We’ll re-film all the scenes we shot with Houseman—”

  The group broke into hisses and boos upon hearing the old actor’s name.

  “With our new star, River Heights’s own Harold Safer,” Morris finished.

  I joined in the clapping as Mr. Safer stepped up to stand beside Morris. As far as I was concerned, Mr. Safer was born to play the role of Ethan Mahoney. He’s naturally dramatic, whether he’s describing the latest sunset he’s seen, or the latest Broadway play. Mr. Safer owns the cheese shop in town, but his true love has always been the theater. I felt sure that he must have picked up some acting skills over his years of watching other people act.

  “So today we’ll start with the scenes that take place in Ethan Mahoney’s office,” Morris said. “First we’ll do Ethan at work, which is a quick scene. Next, we’ll go to the Rackham boys breaking in and fighting with Ethan. And after that we’ll do the scene where the Rackham boys and Esther visit the anvil office to case the joint. Let’s get to work.”

  Everyone scattered as I went over the shot list in my mind. My scene was going to be filmed third. Good. Tha
t still gave me some time before I had to get ready.

  “Hey, do you guys want to grab a snack over at the mess hall?” I asked Bess and George. The mess hall was a temporary building made of metal. Inside was the craft table, where the caterers set up breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and set out snacks all day. The idea was to keep everyone on set so they could eat as quickly as possible and get back to work. If they had to leave the production camp and drive to a restaurant in town, lunch hour would become lunch two hours.

  “No, thanks,” George said. “I had to help Mom stuff all that food into the car this morning. I never want to even smell another spinach quiche again. It took forty minutes to get it all packed.”

  I knew I should take George’s complaint with a grain of salt. Really, she was thrilled when she got her mother’s catering company hired to make all the food for the shoot. The old caterer had been fired after a big food-poisoning incident—one more example of Herman Houseman’s sabotage.

  “Count me out too. I have to get over to the Rackhams’ cabin set,” Bess said. “As soon as they finish the office scenes, they’re going to move on to the cabin scenes. And I still haven’t finished fixing the slanty wall on that set.”

  Before I knew it, my friends had hurried off to their jobs, leaving me alone with my stage fright. Harold Safer walked toward me, a plaid robe covering his Ethan Mahoney costume. He looked kind of silly, but I had gotten used to seeing people in robes. The costumers paid so much attention to every smudge of dirt and loose button on the clothes, and they didn’t want anything to ruin the effect. Even something as simple as walking twenty yards from a trailer to a set could damage the costume. So we all wore robes over our costumes to protect them.