Running Scared Page 6

  Chapter

  Ten

  NANCY FLUNG OPEN the door and rushed inside.

  Bess was backed up against the wall next to her bed, her face white as chalk and her eyes wide with fear. Gina Giraldi was standing in front of her. Her face was a mask of rage, and her hands were clenched into fists at her sides.

  “Nancy, help!” Bess cried. “She’s insane!”

  “Leave him alone!” Gina shrieked.

  Nancy ran over and quickly stepped between the two girls. “That’s enough, Gina,” she said. “You’re asking for trouble. Now get out of here.”

  The dark-haired runner spun around to face Nancy. “Aha, the lady detective speaks,” she sneered. “What I promise, I will do. Your friend will suffer if she does not do as I tell her.”

  Nancy took a step toward Gina. “If you do anything to Bess, it’ll be the dumbest move you ever made. If we have to call the police, you’re out of the marathon.”

  Gina’s sneer remained in place, but she left without a word. As Nancy closed the door, Bess flopped facedown on the bed.

  “Are you all right?” Nancy asked.

  Bess rolled over onto her back and looked at Nancy. “I’m fine. I was just afraid, that’s all. She’s the scariest woman I’ve ever met.”

  Nancy sat on Bess’s bed and put a comforting hand on Bess’s arm. “She was threatening you about Jake, wasn’t she?”

  Bess nodded. “The thing is,” she said, sitting up on the bed, “I’ve already decided he’s not my type.”

  “Not your type?” Nancy gave Bess a puzzled look. “How come?”

  “It was our lunch date that did it. All he’s interested in is running. He talked about how he likes being with the runners’ federation, how he used to run, how great he feels working with runners, blah, blah, blah. I tried to change the subject, ask him what kind of music he liked, or what kind of stores they had in the Netherlands, but he’d just start talking about running again.”

  Nancy couldn’t help laughing. “Sounds like you made the right decision,” she said. “I’m sure Gina will lay off you now.”

  “I sure hope so,” said Bess. She lay back down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling while Nancy changed into sweatpants and an Emerson College T-shirt that her boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, had given her.

  “When are you going to talk to George about Kevin?” Bess asked.

  “This afternoon,” Nancy answered, sighing. “I can’t put it off any longer.”

  • • •

  Nancy entered the lobby, wheeling the bike she had gotten from the second-floor marathon room. Seeing no sign of Annette or George, she went over to the message board, but there wasn’t any message for her there.

  Renee Clark was also there, with her trainer and Irene Neff. Nancy had just greeted them when a familiar voice spoke up behind her.

  “Hi, Nancy! How’s your vacation going?”

  Wearing a triumphant grin, Brenda Carlton walked over to Nancy.

  “Hello, Brenda,” said Nancy, stifling a groan. “Get any hot stories lately?”

  “Actually, I’m on the trail of something major,” Brenda said smugly. “I’m meeting Gina Giraldi later, and she’s going to give me the lowdown about who’s doing dirty deals.”

  Pointing a manicured nail at Nancy, she continued, “And I bet I find out who’s behind the attacks on Annette before you do. What’s that I see in your eyes, a little jealousy?”

  Nancy felt like strangling Brenda. Renee, Charles Mellor, and Irene Neff were eagerly drinking in every word Brenda said. Not only that, but Kevin and George had come up while Brenda was talking, and Kevin was listening. Now practically every suspect in her case knew that she was looking into the attacks on Annette!

  Speaking through gritted teeth, Nancy said, “Can I see you in private?” Without waiting for an answer, she pulled the reporter away from the group by the message board.

  “Hey, cut it out!” Brenda protested. “You’re hurting my arm!”

  Nancy let go, once they were far enough away to talk without being overheard. “Don’t you have any sense?” she snapped before she could stop herself. “You just broadcast it to everyone in the lobby that Gina could make trouble for people. What if Gina is planning to finger one of them? You might have put her in serious danger!”

  “You’re just worried that I’m going to show you up for the overrated fake you are,” Brenda purred. “Sorry, Nancy, but I’m keeping on this story. You’ll just have to read about who threatened Annette in Today’s Times.”

  Brenda strutted off, leaving Nancy simmering.

  As Nancy rejoined the others, Annette appeared, wearing silver-and-black running shorts and a matching top. “Ready?” she asked Nancy and George.

  “George just has to change,” said Nancy with a nod toward where Kevin and George were holding hands and talking quietly together.

  Tapping her foot impatiently, Annette called, “George, can we get going?”

  George looked up, slightly taken aback. “Oh—sorry. I’ll only be a minute,” she said. After saying goodbye to Kevin and arranging to meet him after the run, she hurried to the elevators.

  “Sorry I can’t go with you,” Derek, Annette’s trainer, told the runner, “but I have to meet with that fellow upstairs in the marathon office. Where are you going to run?”

  “In Grant Park, south along Lake Shore Drive,” Annette said. “If that’s all right with you,” she added to Nancy.

  Nancy ignored the slight touch of sarcasm in the runner’s voice. “Sounds fine,” she said.

  “Have fun,” Kevin told Nancy and Annette. “Well, I’d better go. I’m already late filing the piece I just edited.” He waved and headed for the hotel’s entrance.

  “I’m off, too,” Derek added.

  After he left, Nancy and Annette drifted over to scan the message board while they waited for George. There were dozens of memos, appointments, questions, and answers. Nancy’s eye was caught by an unusual piece of stationery with a red marbled design. Written on it, in a distinctive backhanded scrawl, was “Grant Park, 3:30. Fountain.”

  Nancy looked up as George reappeared, wearing a cutoff pair of orange sweatpants and a blue T-shirt. “Sorry I kept you waiting,” she told Annette. “And thanks for letting me run with you. You don’t know what a thrill this is for me!”

  • • •

  “Relax your arms!” Annette told George. “Your fists are clenched, and you’re wasting energy. It makes your whole body more tense.”

  Annette and George were running side by side through the park, with Nancy pedaling alongside. Annette had been giving George pointers as they ran, and George looked as if she were walking on air. Even if Nancy was on a dangerous case, she was glad that it gave George the opportunity to train with the best.

  The weather was cool, and there was a slight breeze. Somehow, in the park, the noises and crowds of the city seemed a lot farther away than they actually were.

  “You’re right,” George told Annette after taking several strides. “I can feel the difference already. Thanks.”

  Nancy smiled at George, but a sober thought kept nagging at her. Every time she had tried to talk to George about Kevin, she had been interrupted by something. It was hard getting George away from Kevin long enough to tell her, but now she would do it. If only she could—

  Zing! A high-pitched whining distracted Nancy from her thoughts. A split second later a piece of bark flew from a tree just alongside her.

  Huh? Nancy thought. What was—

  She jumped as a puff of dust kicked up just in front of Annette.

  With a flash of panic Nancy realized what was causing the disturbances: bullets.

  Someone was shooting at them—and using a silencer!

  Chapter

  Eleven

  ANNETTE! GEORGE!” Nancy shouted, stopping her bike with a jerk. “Somebody’s shooting at us. Head for cover!”

  The other two didn’t wait or ask questions but raced for the side of the pat
h.

  Her heart pounding, Nancy jumped from the bike and threw herself to the ground on the other side of the path from George and Annette. She was fairly sure this was the side the shots had come from.

  With a quick turn of her head, Nancy saw that the other two had taken shelter behind the thick trunks of two old oaks. “Are you guys all right?”

  “Fine!” George yelled back.

  “I’m okay, too,” Annette added.

  “I’m going to look around!” Nancy shouted to them. “Stay put until I get back.”

  “Should you do that?” Annette called. But Nancy was already on the move.

  She darted from tree to tree, heading away from the path and up a rise. The sniper would probably choose high ground, she reasoned.

  Even though she was behind a tree, Nancy felt exposed and defenseless. She fought back her fear and forced herself to look ahead for a clue to the shooter’s position.

  Nancy froze as a bullet whined by, chipping the tree just above her head. In the next instant she saw a flash from a thick tangle of bushes.

  Racing from tree to tree, Nancy headed toward the bushes where she had seen movement. She was about fifty yards away when a figure in dark clothes and a ski mask bolted from the brush and ran, away from Nancy.

  Nancy took off in pursuit. “Stop!” she yelled, but it was useless. The person reached a road that was at a right angle to Lake Shore Drive. He leapt into the driver’s side of a light blue car with a big scrape on the right rear fender. The engine roared to life, and the car screamed away as Nancy reached the road.

  Breathing deeply, Nancy tried to squelch her frustration. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the person at all!

  Just before the car disappeared out of sight, however, she noticed something that made her start. The car had an ICT placard in the side window!

  “Uh-oh,” Nancy said out loud. She hadn’t actually identified Kevin, but there were no two ways about it—she had to talk to George now.

  Nancy’s mood was grim as she walked back to where the sniper had hidden. She spotted a gleam of metal in the bushes, bent down, and picked up an empty bullet cartridge. A fast search uncovered two more, which she pocketed. Then she hurried back to the spot where Annette and George were still pressed against the tree trunks.

  “All clear,” she announced. “Whoever it was got away.”

  George’s face was pale as she emerged from behind her tree. Annette also seemed a little shaken.

  “Hey, look at that!” Nancy exclaimed as her gaze lit on a huge structure nearby.

  “That’s Buckingham Fountain,” Annette said.

  Water was pouring down the sides of the multitiered fountain to a pool that surrounded it. Something stirred in the back of Nancy’s memory, but she couldn’t bring it into focus.

  “Did you see the person?” George asked, breaking into Nancy’s thoughts.

  Nancy braced herself. George wasn’t going to like what she had to say. “No, whoever it was wore a mask,” she began. “The person jumped in a car and escaped.” She took a deep breath before adding, “I did notice one thing. The getaway car had a placard with the ICT logo in the window.”

  George stared blankly at Nancy for a moment. “ICT? But you don’t . . . you can’t think that Kevin is involved with any of this!”

  Nancy took another deep breath. “I hope not. But look at what this story is doing for his career. He could have caused any of the incidents. And now, the ICT placard in that car . . . I have to look at the facts, George.”

  Nancy saw a brief flash of pain in her friend’s eyes. Then George looked down and tugged at the cutoff hem of her sweats. “He just would never do any of those things, Nancy,” she said, still looking down. “You have to believe that.”

  “I want to, George,” Nancy said quickly. “But until I know for sure, I have to consider him a suspect.”

  Finally George met Nancy’s gaze. There was a determined glint in her eyes as she said, “Well, fine. I mean, I guess I understand. But I already know for sure, and I’m definitely going to keep spending time with him while we’re here.”

  George walked away, kicking some gravel on the path, then leaned down and ran one hand through the water in the pool.

  Nancy followed George with her eyes for a moment, then forced herself to deal with the case. Turning to Annette, she said, “Now that you’ve been shot at, we have to call in the police.”

  “But you said you wouldn’t! I trusted you!” Annette cried angrily.

  “I said I’d try not to. But now you’ve been shot at, and that’s where the police come in. Otherwise, we’re all in deep trouble.”

  “But what if they won’t let me run?” Annette demanded.

  “You’ll have to work it out with them,” Nancy replied. “Now, you and George wait here while I find a phone.”

  Nancy trudged up the road. Great, she thought. George is upset, and Annette won’t let herself be protected. So much for my fun weekend in Chicago!

  • • •

  Fifteen minutes later a police car drove up to the spot where Nancy had found a phone. Two plainclothes police officers got out.

  “Are you Nancy Drew?” asked one officer, a thickset man with jet black hair and long sideburns.

  When Nancy nodded, he said, “I’m Sergeant Lew Stokes, and this is my partner, Detective Matt Zandt. Where are the other girls?”

  “Waiting for us, back where it happened,” Nancy told him. “I’ll take you there. In the meantime you’d better take these,” Nancy said, pulling the three spent cartridges from her pocket and handing them to the sergeant.

  As they drove to the site of the shooting, Nancy told the officers about the other threats and the attempted hit-and-run, as well as about Annette’s being locked in the health club closet and her own experience at the Winning Margin.

  As she went on, she was aware that Sergeant Stokes was scowling. “We saw that thing with the car on TV,” he said at last, “but the rest is all news to us. Just what do you think you’re playing at here?”

  “We had hoped to clear everything up without a lot of publicity—” Nancy began.

  “You amateurs make me sick!” Detective Zandt exploded, speaking for the first time. He was a tall man with a red face and thick, brushed-back blond hair. “People get hurt because of people like you.”

  There was no point in arguing, Nancy decided, especially since she had been saying basically the same thing to Annette a few minutes earlier.

  At her direction the officers parked the car and made their way down to the path where Annette and George waited. The two police officers questioned the three girls about all of the threats and attacks. When Nancy mentioned Kevin as one of her suspects, George opened her mouth as if to object. Then she clamped it shut again and turned away.

  At last the questioning was over, and the officers drove the three girls back to the hotel, with Nancy’s bicycle loaded into the trunk. No one said anything, and Nancy found her mind wandering.

  Suddenly an image of the fountain in the park flashed into Nancy’s mind. “The fountain!” she said excitedly. “Buckingham Fountain!”

  “Nancy, have you lost your mind?” George asked. “What are you talking about?”

  Nancy whirled to face Annette. “There was a message on the board in the hotel lobby today that said, ‘Grant Park. Three-thirty. Fountain.’ Did you notice it?”

  Annette’s eyes flitted nervously. “A message? There were a hundred messages on that board. Why would I notice that one?” The runner’s cool self-control seemed to be cracking a little—not that Nancy could blame her. She had just been shot at.

  “We were shot at in Grant Park, at three-thirty, by the Buckingham Fountain,” Nancy explained, leaning forward excitedly. “That note was to tell the sniper where we’d be. But who else knew?”

  From the front seat Sergeant Stokes asked, “Any chance that the note is still on the board?”

  “We’ll be at the hotel in a few minutes,” his partner
spoke up. “We can find out then.”

  “Derek knew where I’d be,” Annette said, answering Nancy’s question. “But surely he’s not . . . Derek wouldn’t—”

  “I’m not accusing him,” Nancy said quickly. “I’m just thinking things through.”

  She glanced at George, who was looking at her with troubled eyes. “I know what you’re thinking,” George said. “That Kevin knew, too. Maybe he was there when we were talking about where to run, but I still don’t think . . . ” Her voice trailed off, and she stared straight ahead.

  Suddenly Annette snapped her fingers. “Nancy, I just remembered! I stopped off at the marathon office on my way to lunch. Someone asked me about good runs in the neighborhood, and I mentioned Grant Park, that I was going there this afternoon. Irene Neff was there at the time—she must have heard me. So was Gina. Either of them could’ve waited at the fountain until we came by.”

  “Does notepaper with a marbled design in red ring a bell?” Nancy asked.

  Annette shook her head.

  “At least we know that there’s more than one person involved here,” Nancy went on. “There’s the shooter, and the person who wrote the note to the shooter. So we’ve learned something.”

  But we’re not learning enough, Nancy added to herself, or fast enough.

  At the hotel everyone piled out of the car. “I want you all to stay close until my partner checks that board,” said Sergeant Stokes while his partner disappeared through the hotel’s entrance. “We’re not done here yet.”

  The three girls waited silently on the sidewalk next to the hotel’s curved entrance drive. Detective Zandt returned a moment later.

  “The note is gone,” he told his partner.

  Annette tapped her foot impatiently. “What now?” she asked.

  “We’ll need to see those anonymous notes,” Sergeant Stokes told her. “Then we’ll talk to Derek Townsend and, uh, let’s see . . . ” He consulted a list. “Renee Clark, Irene Neff, Charles Mellor, Gina Giraldi, and Kevin Davis. That’ll do, for now.”