The Stolen Show Page 6

  “He was there—in the stands,” I said in a low voice. “The man in the wolf mask. We have to find him!”

  George’s eyes went wide, and after telling Louise we were going to the bathroom, we ran through the big double doors to the stands. I peered out to where I’d seen him sitting, but he was gone.

  “Check the exits!” I told George, and we ran off in opposite directions. I looked everywhere. The parking lots were deserted—everyone was still inside, watching the last group of dogs be presented. Finally I gave up and went back inside just in time to meet George, who threw her arms up in defeat.

  “Why was he here, do you think?” George asked. “Just to watch you?”

  I shrugged. “Or to intimidate me, in case I thought about calling the police.”

  Just then my phone buzzed in my back pocket, and I pulled it out. A new text message from an unknown number was displayed on the screen.

  STOP SNIFFING AROUND AND OBEY, the message read, OR YOUR FRIEND WILL BE PUNISHED.

  I resisted the urge to throw the phone across the room and took a deep breath.

  George peeked over my shoulder at the message and swallowed hard. “Definitely trying to intimidate you,” she said.

  “Well, it’s not working,” I said through gritted teeth. “If anything, it’s backfiring. Because we are going to go after Bess. I’m done being obedient. It’s time to bite back.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Oncoming Storm

  “ALL BEST IN GROUP WINNERS, please report to the ring!”

  The announcer’s voice cut through my thoughts, reminding me that I still had to keep up appearances. If someone working with the smuggler was still hanging around and saw me missing from the winner’s circle, it might tip them off to our plans. And anyway, if we were going to rescue Bess, we needed to know where to go.

  “Okay,” I said to George. “Charles won his group title, so he’ll be out there with me. I’ll find an opportunity to ask him if he’s gotten any news from Interpol about the paper factories. They have to have some information by now.”

  George nodded. “All right,” she said. “And in the meantime—hand over your phone.”

  I pulled it out of my pocket and gave it to her. “Why do you need it?”

  “I want to try and use that text message to see if I can narrow down the location of the phone that sent it. If I use a hack I know, I might be able to triangulate its distance from the nearest cell phone towers—and figure out if someone sent from somewhere in the arena.”

  “Brilliant,” I said, as always amazed by George’s technological savvy. “I’ll meet you back here as soon as the presentation is over.”

  I left George and hurried to pick up Marge from Louise so we could join the other winners in the ring. Alice and Pia, Charles and Coco, Joe and Shirley, and Valencia and Hollywood were already there with their ribbons. Helen and Daisy walked out at the same time I did.

  “Congratulations!” Helen exclaimed. “Way to go!”

  “You too!” I replied.

  I found my place in line and turned around to see the final group winner step out into the ring: Angie and Marshmallow Fluff! Angie was beaming when she reached my side, and I leaned over to whisper in her ear. “I guess it will take more than a cruel prank to keep you out of the winner’s circle, huh?”

  Angie nodded, but a dark look crossed her face. “It’s not over, though, Nancy—not by a long shot. There’s still the battle for Best in Show tomorrow. Who’s to say the saboteur isn’t one of the other five people standing out here with us?”

  I turned to look at the other winners. Unless Charles was a double agent, which I highly doubted, he was off the suspect list. So that left Alice, Joe, Valencia, and Helen. Given that the jewel smuggler would have to keep winning shows in order to keep up the cover, it was a good guess that they were one of the people in the winner’s circle. But was the person who’d drugged Marshmallow also the jewel smuggler? It was possible, but unlikely—why bring unwanted attention to the show? After all, the sabotage was the only reason I’d started investigating at all—if it hadn’t happened, the smuggler would have been able to do their business without any trouble. If anything, the incident with Marshmallow put a big crimp in their plans. Knowing that, we probably had not one, but two guilty parties in this group.

  “Have you gotten anywhere with your investigation, Nancy?” Angie whispered.

  “It’s moving along,” I said vaguely.

  “Well, until you catch whoever did this to my sweet Marshy, I’m going to sleep with the chain on the door and a baseball bat next to my bed!” she said, her eyes narrowed. “Now smile!” She pointed at the crowd, and I smiled as hundreds of cameras flashed while we all posed with our dogs. Hearing the rough edge to her voice, I cast a glance back at Angie. Just because she probably wouldn’t drug her own dog didn’t mean she couldn’t be the smuggler—though it was hard for me to imagine it. But I knew better than to discount a suspect just because I liked them as a person. What if the saboteur was trying to take out a competitor and just happened to mess with the wrong dog? Angie didn’t seem like someone who would forgive and forget. She had to stay on the list.

  As soon as the pictures were done, I walked over to Charles and Coco. “Congratulations,” I said, shaking his hand. And then more quietly, “Any word from Interpol?”

  Charles ducked his head close to mine and said, “They’re getting close. They think the fibers came either from Papier Nouveau or Lapointe. Both factories have been shut down for a few years and were producing the kind of pulp that those fibers resemble.”

  “So what are you waiting for?” I asked impatiently. “Bess is in danger!”

  “These things take time, Miss Drew,” Charles replied. “We need to get confirmation and then a warrant for the current landowner to search the premises. We can’t just storm in there, guns drawn! This isn’t one of your American action movies.”

  “Fine,” I muttered in frustration. “Your jewel smuggler,” I went on. “I have a feeling it’s one of the people in the winner’s circle.”

  “I agree,” Charles said. “That would fit our profile—vague as it may be. Another reason why my focus needs to be here. The handoff of the jewels is likely to happen at the show—if not today, then tomorrow. We have to find the thief before it’s done!” He added, “Your friend’s safety is very important to us, mademoiselle, make no mistake. But we’re confident she will be safe as long as it appears you aren’t digging around. This case spans international borders. We must concentrate our forces on catching the smuggler, or risk losing him again.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Do what you have to do.” But like the owner of the Kerry blue, I didn’t really mean it.

  I considered telling him about the man in the wolf mask and the text message on my phone, but knowing what I was about to do, I didn’t want to give Charles any reason to keep me close. If he thought I was in imminent danger, he might put another agent on my tail, and that wouldn’t work with my plan—not at all. “You’ll let me know as soon as you find out anything more?” I asked.

  Charles nodded curtly. “You’ll be the first.”

  I hurried back to the prep area, to drop Marge off with Louise. I forced a smile onto my face and handed over the lead. “She’s all yours, Louise,” I said. “She’ll need to rest up for the big day tomorrow!”

  Louise reached out for the lead but grasped my hand instead. Her grip was surprisingly firm. She pulled me in close, bending me down until we were face-to-face. “Now listen, Red,” she said, her voice a low growl. “I wasn’t born yesterday. Something is going on here—I can see it written all over your face. Does it have to do with who drugged Angie’s dog? Do you know who did it?”

  I clenched my jaw and looked her straight in the eyes. “Louise,” I whispered carefully, “there’s more going on here than you know. And I want to tell you about it, but I can’t—not yet. But I’ll get it sorted out, I promise. You just have to trust me.”


  Louise backed up, surprised by my answer. “It’s trouble, isn’t it? Bad trouble?”

  I said nothing. But that was enough of an answer for her.

  Louise sighed heavily. “I trust you, Red. You’re just like your father—always doing the right thing, even if it’s the hard thing. But you’ve got to be careful, do you hear me? If something happens to you . . . your dad would never forgive me.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. “But for now, I have to go. George and I have something we have to do.”

  Marge whined at my feet and bumped her head into my hand. I scratched behind her ears. “Keep an eye on your mom, okay, Marge? I’ll be back before you know it.” And with a wave, I took off to meet George.

  As I was walking out to the front of the convention center, a discordant wailing assailed my ears. I found George sitting on a ledge inside near the door, my phone gripped in her hand. Both of our coats, her red parka and my black one, were tossed over her arm.

  “What is that noise?” I shouted over the din. “What’s going on?”

  George looked up and shook her head in dismay. “It’s an emergency warning—it goes out to all the phones in the area. There’s a huge blizzard coming, Nancy. It’s already begun.” She gestured out the wall of windows, where snow flurries were swirling through the air, the sky behind a solid wall of slate-gray cloud.

  “No . . . ,” I moaned. “Not now!”

  “If we’re going to make it out to find Bess, we’ve got to go right away. What did Charles say?”

  I told George about Interpol narrowing down the locations to two paper factories. “But they’re not going to go after her, George—they’re too busy trying to track down this smuggler. It’s up to us. We have to go it alone.”

  “But Nancy,” George said, casting her gaze around us to check for eavesdroppers. “Do you really think Charles is going to let us go off by ourselves to track her down?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him,” I said. “Charles is going to play it by the book—he has to. But by the book might be too late. I’m not willing to wait that long.”

  George nodded, but I could see a look of fear pass over her face. “For Bess,” she murmured.

  I squeezed her shoulder. “For Bess.”

  “And I think I may have a way to figure out which factory she’s being held at,” George added. “I managed to narrow down the location of the phone that sent that text message to an area of the city—La Cité-Limoilou. If I just check to see if one of those two factories is also in that area . . .” I watched as George pulled up the map on my phone to search for the location of the factories. “Hmm, it looks like Lapointe is south of us, so that can’t be right. Now for Papier Nouveau. Wait . . . yes! Nancy, Papier Nouveau is located in the La Cité-Limoilou area of the city! That must be it!”

  My heart swelled with the success. “Look out, Interpol,” I said, slapping George on the back. “You’ve got nothing on George Fayne, tech genius.”

  George handed my phone back to me and zipped up her coat. “Ready to go?” she asked.

  I pulled up my hood and pushed my hands into the tight leather gloves I’d brought with me for warmth. “Ready,” I said. “Let’s go get her.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Wolf’s Den

  A BLAST OF FREEZING WIND slammed into my body as the doors to the convention center slid open. George and I stepped out into the swirling maelstrom of snow, pulling our hoods close around our faces. It was late afternoon; I hoped we would find her before dark. I ran out to the street and threw my hand up into the air to hail a passing taxicab. It came to a stop, and the driver rolled down his window.

  “We need to get to the La Cité-Limoilou district, quickly!” I said.

  The man shook his head. “Non, mademoiselle—c’est impossible. The cabs are not going beyond Old Quebec, not until the storm has passed. You should seek shelter. Stay inside the convention center if you can!”

  “Please!” I begged him. “I’ll pay you double!”

  “Désolé,” the driver said. “It’s too dangerous!”

  “All right,” I said. “Just take us as far as you can, then.”

  The driver nodded, and George and I piled into the back seat. The taxi crawled along the streets, moving painfully slowly through the bumper-to-bumper traffic of people trying to get home before the worst of the blizzard hit the city.

  George’s leg was tapping impatiently against the floor, and she groaned at every red light. “We could have walked there faster than this!” she muttered under her breath.

  “Oh, don’t worry, we’re going to have to take the last mile or so on foot,” I said back. “At least this way we won’t be frozen solid by the time we arrive.”

  “I guess that’s true,” George said with a sigh, and spent the rest of the cab ride staring out the window at people dashing through the street, many of them carrying bags of last-minute groceries and road salt.

  After ten more minutes, the driver pulled over and turned his head to face us. “Alors, this is the end of the road, mesdemoiselles. Bonne chance!”

  I paid him and braced myself for the blast of cold as I opened the door. George and I huddled together at the corner and stared at the map on her phone, trying to find the quickest way to the Papier Nouveau factory. “Follow me!” George shouted over the howling wind, and took off at a jog down the street.

  We raced down side streets and through alleyways between buildings, stopping only so George could double-check the map on her phone. The frigid air burned my lungs, but I didn’t stop. All around us, the world was getting darker.

  Finally, when I felt like I couldn’t run another step, I heard George call out, “There!” I stopped and squinted through the falling snow to where she was pointing. I saw a nondescript, squarish white building up ahead, looking a bit dilapidated. Some of the windows around it had broken panes, while others were boarded up, the words DÉFENSE D’ENTRER! written on them in red spray paint. Keep out.

  Not today, I thought.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” I shouted to George.

  “Positive!” she answered.

  I nodded, and we made our way up to the building. A black sedan and an ATV were the only vehicles parked in the large lot behind the factory, and I went to kneel behind the car, motioning George to follow. “Look,” I said, taking a pen from my purse and using it to pry a grayish substance from inside the tire’s tread. I removed my glove and rubbed it between my fingers. “It’s the same kind of paper fibers we found back at the hotel. I think this is the car they took Bess away in. She’s got to be here.”

  “Wow!” George said, her face brightening with the satisfaction that we’d figured this out on our own. But then her face paled, and she swallowed hard. “Wow . . . ,” she said again. And I knew exactly why, because I felt it too. We knew where Bess was being held, but now we had to face the reality of breaking into an abandoned factory in the middle of a blizzard, where at least one potentially armed criminal was standing guard, and we had to do it alone.

  “All right,” I whispered, my breath visible in the snow-filled air. “Obviously we can’t just knock on the door and ask for Bess back with a basket of muffin—”

  “Mostly because we don’t have any muffins,” George cut in.

  “Right, right,” I agreed. “So we’ve got to come up with a plan. If we can just get a look inside first, scope out the situation . . .”

  “How about there?” George asked. She gestured toward a window on the nearest wall of the factory, which had a few old crates stacked up underneath it. “If we climb up on those boxes, and I put you on my shoulders, you’d be high enough to look through that window.”

  I nodded. “Let’s give it a shot. But we have to be quiet!”

  She bent into a crouch, checking all around us to make sure the coast was clear. A moment later we both ran low across the parking lot, the snow that was accumulating under our feet helping t
o muffle our footsteps. One at a time, we climbed on top of the pile of big wooden crates. Then, after taking a deep breath, George knelt down, and I clambered onto her shoulders, regretting the large ham sandwich that I’d downed at lunchtime. Luckily, though she was the same size as me, George proved to be as strong as an ox and managed to hoist me up with no problem at all. I grabbed onto the window ledge to steady myself, and rubbed away the condensation on the glass so I could peer inside.

  I found myself looking down onto a large open space, with a huge machine taking up most of the length of the factory floor. There were also large metal vats here and there, and piles of discarded paper and garbage moldering in the corners. In the center of the room, under a single bare lightbulb, two men were seated at a card table, playing cards and drinking from steaming paper cups. I scanned the room, craning my neck to see into every dark corner, when finally I saw it. A flash of yellow.

  She was sitting on a chair with her ankles tied to the legs. A large cloth was tied tightly around her upper torso and arms so she could use her hands, but not much. As I watched, I could see her trying to wiggle free from her ties, even using her teeth for leverage. Under the blanket they’d put over her shoulders, her blue dress was pretty filthy, but she looked unhurt. Plus, there was a sandwich and a glass of water on the table in front of her. I breathed a small sigh of relief.

  Good old Bess!

  “I see her,” I whispered to George. “She’s all right!”

  I could feel George’s whole body sag with relief under me, and I motioned for her to let me down. We huddled together in a crouch, shielding our faces from the worst of the wind and snow. “There are two of them,” I told George. “Sitting at a table playing cards. They’re a good distance away from Bess, but one of them is still facing her. She’s tied up on a chair near the wall, on the other side there.” I sighed. “Even if we snuck in, there’s a good chance he’d see us. And we’re no good to Bess if we end up captured as well. We need a diversion.”