Pure Poison Read online

  The senator got up. “Oh, and Teresa, I got you something else, too. I know you don’t like weapons, but sometimes it’s necessary to have one, and I’ve taken the liberty of getting one for you—with a permit application, of course. The gun is registered in my name for the time being, and you are not to use it or even handle it unless you are in life-threatening danger. You understand, don’t you?”

  The beautiful tennis player nodded.

  “It’s in my purse.” The senator walked into her bedroom.

  “Nancy, this makes me so nervous. I do not like weapons,” commented Teresa, twisting her fingers together nervously.

  “I know, but it’s a good idea to have one here tucked away. Trust me. We might as well put the dishes into the dishwasher,” said Nancy. She and Teresa began to clear the table. “Anyway, you won’t have to carry it as long as Dan’s with you,” Nancy reasoned.

  Teresa nodded. “I will feel better with Dan here.”

  Marilyn wandered back into the dining room, her bag in hand. “That’s funny,” she said, riffling through it, “I was sure I put the revolver in here. Well, I must have left it at the office, then.”

  “I did see you put it in your desk drawer,” Nancy volunteered.

  “Right. I thought I took it out later, when I left my office, but I guess I didn’t. Anyhow, you two girls’ll be okay by yourselves for a little while, won’t you? I’ll go get it and be right back.” The senator took her coat out of the hall closet, and Nancy heard the door shut behind her.

  As the two girls loaded the dishwasher, Teresa seemed completely preoccupied.

  “I’ve been thinking about what Marilyn said before, about changing my identity,” Teresa said. “Do you think maybe I could be a tennis coach at a school somewhere?” She tried to sound cheerful, but Nancy could tell that she was devastated by the thought of giving up her career.

  “Teresa, I know this is hard to believe, but it’s going to work out somehow. I’ll think of a way to save you and Marilyn, I promise.”

  But Nancy wasn’t absolutely sure that even she could help this time.

  • • •

  An hour later the phone rang. “I’ll get it,” Nancy told Teresa. They were sitting in the living room, watching TV and trying to relax. “Hello, Senator Kilpatrick’s residence,” she said politely.

  “Hi, this is Dan Prosky, calling for the senator.”

  “Dan!” Nancy almost shouted into the phone. “This is Nancy Drew!”

  “Nancy—hey!” cried Dan. “What are you doing in town?”

  “I’m working on a case, but I can’t really talk about it. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay, I understand. Listen, how’s Bess?”

  Bess and Dan had been very much interested in each other the last time Nancy and her friends were in D.C. It had looked like a budding romance—until the girls had headed back to River Heights. Dan hadn’t called or written, much less come for a visit as he’d promised. Poor Bess had been inconsolable for about a week. Then another cute guy had walked into her life, and she’d never mentioned Dan Prosky again. Still, Nancy knew Bess would have loved to see him.

  “She’s great, actually,” Nancy replied.

  “Not pining away for me?” Dan sounded disappointed.

  “Well, she’s no longer sitting at the window waiting for you to show up in River Heights,” Nancy confessed. “And I can’t say I blame her.”

  “It’s my own fault that I haven’t seen her, I guess,” said Dan. He sounded remorseful. “I haven’t been keeping in touch with anybody. It’s a lot of work, being the senator’s staffer, you know? And I thought I worked hard when I was a cop!”

  “I know how hard you work, Dan,” said Nancy. “Well, Marilyn’s not here. Actually, she’s been gone a long time, now that I think of it.”

  “Maybe she’s trying to call you—I’ll get off the line. Tell her I’ll be over at nine tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay. Looking forward to seeing you. So long until then, Dan.”

  “ ’Bye, Nancy.”

  Nancy hung up and looked at her watch. Marilyn had been gone for more than an hour. “I wonder what’s taking Marilyn so long,” she said to Teresa. “I hope she hasn’t had any trouble finding the gun. I wonder if there was a snag—”

  “Nancy,” Teresa burst out, on the verge of tears, “I don’t want that gun in this apartment! I could not shoot anybody—not even my worst enemy.”

  Nancy put her arm around Teresa’s shoulders and gave her a reassuring hug. “Don’t worry, okay?” she said. “If you really don’t want it here, Marilyn’s not going to force it on you. She’s just worried about you, that’s all.”

  “I will talk to this woman, Beverly Bishop,” Teresa said forcefully. “I will tell her she must keep silent!”

  “It’s no use,” said Nancy. “You already tried.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “I went to see her today, pretending to be you, Teresa. She believed my act, but she told me to forget it. She’s going to publish.”

  Just then the door burst open and Senator Kilpatrick came rushing in. “I tried to call you!” she said urgently. “The line was busy.”

  “Dan called, and we talked for a few minutes,” Nancy explained. “But you’ve been gone for an hour and a half!”

  “I had to take a walk to think.”

  Nancy looked closely at the senator. “What’s wrong, Marilyn?”

  The senator exhaled deeply. “Nancy, the gun is gone!”

  Chapter

  Six

  MARILYN KILPATRICK PACED across the room, shaking her head. “I can’t understand it. I mean, I couldn’t have lost it. Not a gun, for goodness’ sake!”

  The senator stopped in the middle of the room and looked at the girls helplessly. “This is a nightmare. An utter nightmare,” she groaned.

  “Where could you have left it?” Nancy asked, taking charge.

  “Nancy, I know I put it in my purse,” Marilyn said, her voice firm. “I had it in my hand when you were in my office. Then I put it in the middle drawer of my desk, right? You saw me do that. When I left for Beverly’s, I slipped the gun into my purse, because I was going to bring it home tonight.”

  The senator sank down into a club chair, a dazed look on her face.

  Teresa sat across from her older friend on the sofa, not saying a word, looking discouraged. Everything was going wrong for the two of them.

  Walking to the mahogany bookcase that covered one wall, Nancy considered this new dark turn of events. Something in what Senator Kilpatrick was saying didn’t make sense.

  “Marilyn, a gun, even a small one, is pretty heavy,” she said. “If it was missing from your purse, wouldn’t you have felt the difference in weight?”

  The senator sprang to her feet. “You’re right!” she cried. “It should have been lighter—but it wasn’t! I remember noticing how heavy my bag felt when I was at Beverly’s.”

  “Where’s the bag?” asked Nancy.

  “Right here.” Marilyn Kilpatrick carried the large navy purse over to Nancy. “Unless I’m losing my mind, it still feels heavy,” she murmured.

  Quickly, Nancy began searching the bag. Everything in it seemed harmless enough—a checkbook, a cosmetics bag, a package of tissues. But after a few seconds, Nancy pulled out a green glasses case.

  “What’s in this?” she asked, holding the case in her palm. It felt like a paperweight, it was so heavy.

  “I carry sunglasses with me everywhere,” the senator replied offhandedly.

  Nancy weighed the case in her hand again. “I don’t think so,” she said. Then, snapping open the cover, she pulled out a gray rectangular bar. “Lead,” announced Nancy grimly. “You didn’t lose that revolver, Marilyn. Somebody took it out of your purse and planted this heavy bar so that you wouldn’t notice the absence of the gun’s weight.”

  Nancy thought of the threatening note Beverly Bishop had received, doused in the senator’s perfume. Someone was trying to make Maril
yn look like a criminal, or set her up for something. . . .

  The senator sat down again, as if in slow motion, digesting the bitter truth. “But who?” she whispered. “Who would have done such a thing?”

  “Did you stop anywhere on your way home?” Nancy inquired.

  “Well, yes. I stopped for gas before I went to Beverly Bishop’s office. You don’t think Beverly could have stolen the revolver, do you? No, if she had seen the gun in my purse, she would have mentioned it in her book, not taken it.”

  “Anyplace else?” Nancy prompted her.

  The older woman searched her mind, her large brown eyes narrowing. “After I left Beverly’s, it was late, so I stopped to pick up our dinner. That’s all.”

  “Now, let’s see,” Nancy mused. “Whoever took the gun must have known beforehand that you had it, otherwise they wouldn’t have been prepared to plant the lead bar. That means it’s not just simple theft. Marilyn, if I were you, I’d report that gun stolen right away.”

  “I suppose I have to,” said the senator, picking up the phone, “although it’s not going to look good in print, my owning a gun.”

  “A lot of public figures own guns. And it’ll look much worse if you don’t report it and it turns up.”

  “You’re right, of course,” agreed the senator, phoning the police. “Hello, this is Senator Marilyn Kilpatrick. I’d like to report a missing weapon.”

  She was doing the right thing, Nancy knew, but she couldn’t help worrying. The gun might have been missing for several hours now—what if it had already been used?

  “I’ll make us some tea,” Teresa said, standing up. “It will help us to—to calm down.”

  Nancy smiled at her friend and continued to sit on the sofa, trying to figure a way out of this mess. Now there were two problems to solve: the missing gun and the deadly chapters. The senator had probably never experienced a worse week in her life!

  “There. That’s that.” When the phone was hung up a few minutes later, Nancy could tell the senator was feeling a little better. “All we can do now is hope it turns up.”

  “Marilyn,” Teresa said softly, coming back from the kitchen with three cups of hot tea on a tray. “It’s okay. I didn’t want a gun in the apartment, anyway. Guns scare me. I’ve seen too many.”

  “I should have thought and never gotten it,” the senator said, taking a cup and sipping the tea. “Thanks. This tastes good. By the way, what did Dan Prosky have to say?”

  “He’ll be here tomorrow morning at nine,” Nancy replied. She put her cup down.

  “Come on, now,” Teresa said. “Let’s talk about something else. We all need to get our minds off this, right?”

  “Right!” echoed Senator Kilpatrick.

  After the women had chatted for a while, Nancy said suddenly, “Oh, but wait a minute. Marilyn, Beverly Bishop is going to be on ‘Late Night’ at eleven-thirty. I read it in the TV section of the newspaper.”

  “She’s probably going to plug her book,” said the senator, leaning forward to flick on the TV.

  The eleven o’clock news was on, and as the anchor introduced a story about a consumer recall of tainted milk in Virginia, Marilyn picked up the remote control and turned off the sound. “I think we have enough problems of our own,” she said wryly, making Nancy and Teresa burst out giggling.

  Suddenly a handsome man appeared on the screen. “It’s Congressman Layton,” announced Nancy, leaning forward in her seat. Matt Layton was certainly handsome, but Nancy noticed an arrogance in his mannerisms that made him less than attractive.

  “Ugh,” said Marilyn with a frown, reluctantly turning the sound back on. “I suppose I should hear what he’s got to say,” she said. “It’s sure to be bad news—I spend half my time on Capitol Hill trying to undo the damage that guy does.”

  The voice of a network reporter filled the room: “Looking and sounding very much like a candidate for the Senate, Congressman Matt Layton today addressed a gathering of corporate leaders in downtown Washington, pushing his controversial economic reform program. As yet, he has not announced any plans to run against Senator Marilyn Kilpatrick in the next election, but political experts expect him to be a candidate. Tonight Layton stated that Senator Kilpatrick’s approach is out-of-date and said that his own views are far more representative of the opinions of voters as a whole—”

  “What nonsense,” fumed the senator. “If it weren’t for his looks, he’d be a used-car salesman instead of a politician. He’s the fastest talker I’ve ever heard—and believe me, there are a lot of them around here.”

  “And now for sports, here’s Paul Sa—”

  Marilyn pointed the remote at the TV, shutting the sound off again.

  “Too bad you can’t keep Layton quiet that easily, huh?” Nancy joked.

  But the senator didn’t find her joke funny. “The thing is, if Beverly Bishop ruins my reputation with that book of hers, Layton just might win my Senate seat,” she admitted, sinking back into her chair, the furrow between her brows deeper than ever. “Not that I mind so much for myself, but it would be a real tragedy for the state I represent—and for the country as a whole.”

  Nancy couldn’t help feeling the same way. Matt Layton could never replace Marilyn Kilpatrick; she was one of the most honest and compassionate people in office. Even now, with her career in jeopardy, she cared only about Teresa’s safety and the welfare of the people she represented. She had always been like that, Nancy recalled. In all the years the Drews had known her, the senator had always thought of others before herself.

  “Hey, there’s a photograph of Beverly Bishop!” shouted Teresa. “Turn on the sound!”

  “I’ve just been handed a news bulletin,” said the anchor solemnly. “Beverly Bishop, the well-known Washington columnist, was found dead tonight in her downtown office. Police are investigating, but the preliminary report says that Ms. Bishop appears to have been murdered. I repeat, Beverly Bishop is reported to have been murdered.”

  Chapter

  Seven

  BEVERLY BISHOP—MURDERED?” Teresa’s voice shook.

  “We’ll be right back after these messages, with a recently taped interview with Beverly Bishop. See it all on ‘Late Night’ at eleven-thirty.” The news commentator’s voice was smooth and professional.

  “I—I can’t believe it,” Marilyn Kilpatrick stammered, but she immediately recovered and went into action. “Nancy, get my car keys from the foyer, would you, please?” she asked, pressing the Record button on her VCR. “We can look at this interview later. Right now I think we should get over to Beverly’s office. I want to be there if the police find my file so I can tell them about the danger Teresa will be in if its contents are made public. Teresa, you stay here. Don’t forget to double-lock the door after we leave.”

  “I won’t,” Teresa mumbled, still a little stunned.

  Nancy walked to the front door. She couldn’t believe what had happened, either. Beverly Bishop, murdered! She had a feeling that the columnist’s death was somehow related to the book she was about to publish.

  “I’m ready, Marilyn!” Nancy called, holding up the senator’s keys.

  “Let’s go, then. We should be back in a couple of hours, Teresa.”

  “ ’Bye,” said Nancy, with a sympathetic look at the famous tennis player. “Don’t open the door to anyone, okay?”

  “I won’t,” Teresa said, and shuddered slightly.

  The two women slipped outside and into the car. The senator maneuvered the vehicle out of her parking space, and Nancy reached over to turn on the radio. A report of Beverly Bishop’s murder was sure to be on any news station.

  An announcer’s voice blared out of the car speakers with the gory details. “Bishop, known to her friends and enemies alike as ‘the Poison Pen,’ ” he said, “was apparently alone, working late in her office at the time of the tragic incident. The police found her body slumped over the desk, with the mouthpiece of her Dictaphone in her hand. A security officer at the
building reported that he heard a single gunshot at approximately ten P.M. Police theorize Ms. Bishop died instantly from the gunshot wound to her head.

  “In other news, it was a big day for Baby R., the six-month-old Philadelphia infant who’s at the center of a bitter dispute between—”

  Nancy clicked off the news. She needed silence to think. Obviously a lot of people had wanted Beverly Bishop dead, and at least one had even threatened her in the past few hours. But who would actually have murdered her?

  The streets of Washington were black and shiny from the light rain that had fallen earlier. As they sped along, Nancy glanced over at her friend. The senator looked extremely worried. Nancy realized she’d never seen Marilyn Kilpatrick that panicked before. Through all the troubles the high-powered politician had faced, she had always remained cool. Now her serenity was gone, and the senator was scared!

  “Look at all these people,” she said, stopping in front of Beverly Bishop’s office building. A ring of police cars surrounded the entrance, and a crowd of reporters and photographers blocked their way. They pulled into the one available parking space and got out. Marilyn Kilpatrick flashed her Senate I.D. card to one of the young police officers on the sidewalk in front of the entrance.

  “Go right up, Senator,” he said, looking a little awestruck.

  In seconds Nancy and Marilyn were walking up the stone steps to Beverly Bishop’s newspaper office.

  “Hold on, ladies,” said a burly cop just inside the door. “No one except police allowed in.”

  “But the officer outside just told us we could go up,” Nancy protested.

  “I’m Senator Kilpatrick, and this is my assistant, Nancy Drew,” Marilyn Kilpatrick said, trying to walk past before he could object again.

  The officer held out his arm to stop her. “This is a police matter, Senator—not an affair of state. I can’t let you in. Sorry.”

  “Officer, I assure you, it’s a very urgent matter—” Across the lobby, the elevator doors opened, and a grizzled man in a rumpled gray suit stepped out. The senator cut her words short.