088 False Pretenses Page 7

  Nancy remembered the Four Brothers. It was an old-fashioned diner shaped like a railway car, with shiny metal sides and a big neon sign that said Eats. She drove to it and parked near the entrance. Kyle wasn't there yet, but she and Bess went in and claimed a booth. While Nancy studied the menu, Bess scanned the jukebox.

  "Fabulous!" she exclaimed. "They've got every fifties and sixties hit I ever heard of, and a lot I don't know. Nancy, I think we wandered into a time warp!"

  "The prices are behind the times, too," Nancy observed. "I'm going to have to come here more often. Oh—there's Kyle."

  Bess waved out the window, then sat back with a contented smile. "Don't you just love the way he walks?" she demanded.

  "First one leg, then the other, you mean?" Nancy retorted. "Very original."

  "You!" Bess said, making a face. "What do you know about new love? You and Ned have been going together for ages. But this—this is new and wonderful!"

  Nancy had just enough time to say "I'll take your word for it." Then Kyle was standing next to the booth, giving Bess a big smile. Nancy received a slightly smaller one.

  "Have you ordered yet?" Kyle asked, slipping into the booth next to Bess.

  "We were waiting for you," Bess said, beaming.

  The waitress came over and took their order, then turned and shouted it into the kitchen in true diner fashion. As she walked away, Kyle asked, "Did you learn anything at Fortunato's place?"

  "A little," Nancy replied. "He obviously had had some contact with Broughton, and he didn't like it, or him. And he seems to be the kind of guy who might throw a punch when he gets upset."

  "He seemed a little scary to me," Bess added.

  Kyle frowned. "Wait a minute," he said, slapping his forehead. "I just remembered something about the night Broughton was killed and I was hanging around on the street downstairs. When I walked past the coffee shop one time, I peeked in and saw someone who looked familiar. I realize now it was Fortunato!"

  "Kyle, you're wonderful!" Bess exclaimed. "That means we can place him at the scene of the crime. He's obviously the murderer! We should tell the detective who's in charge of the case right away and have him arrest Fortunato."

  "Not quite so fast," Nancy said grimly. "If Kyle tells the police about seeing Fortunato, he's also placing himself on the scene. The police might think that Kyle's motive is at least as strong as Fortunato's and arrest him instead."

  She didn't say it out loud, but she thought that this sudden recollection of Kyle's was also very conveniently timed.

  Bess's face fell. "Oh," she said. "I hadn't thought of that. I guess you're right. Maybe we shouldn't tell the police yet. But at least we know to watch Fortunato."

  At that point the waitress arrived with their sandwiches and sodas. "Anyone want my pickle?" Bess asked. Nancy declined. So did Kyle.

  Nancy's BLT was just the way she liked it— crisp bacon, crunchy lettuce, and ripe, juicy tomato slices on toast that was exactly the right shade of brown.

  "What next?" Bess asked as she was finishing her hamburger.

  The waitress arrived right then and said, "Any desserts? You should try the banana cream pie. We make it ourselves."

  Bess's eyes grew wider. "I really shouldn't," she said in a tone that made it clear she was going to.

  "Why don't we share a piece?" Kyle said, putting an arm around Bess's shoulders for a moment. "One piece of banana cream pie and two forks, please."

  The waitress gave Nancy a questioning look.

  "I'll have chocolate pudding," Nancy said. "No whipped cream." To Bess and Kyle, she said, "I'll be right back. I want to make a call."

  The pay phone was at the far end of the counter, near the door to the rest rooms. As she approached it, Nancy spotted an Out of Order sign taped to the coin slot.

  "You need a phone?" the waitress called. "That one's broken, but there's a booth outside at the corner of the parking lot."

  "Thanks," Nancy called back, and changed course for the door.

  The telephone was inside a metal and glass booth with a folding door. There was a lot of noise from the traffic, but once Nancy slid the door closed it faded. She put in her coins and dialed David's number. Four rings, then his machine answered.

  She waited out the message, then said, "Hi, David, this is Nancy." She was about to ask him to call her at her father's office when she was distracted by a sudden squeal of tires. She peeked back over her shoulder and saw that a beat-up blue sedan had just sped into the diner parking lot. It was going much too fast, straight toward a row of parked cars. Just when Nancy was sure that it was about to crash, the driver swerved. The car went into a skid and began to slide sideways, heading straight for the phone booth.

  Horrified, Nancy grabbed the door handle and pulled, but nothing moved. The folding door was stuck. She couldn't get out!

  Chapter Eleven

  Frantically Nancy jiggled the door, but there was no time. The car was going to crash into the phone booth and flatten her!

  Then Nancy remembered the hard plastic receiver in her right hand. She lifted it high over her head and slammed it against the glass with every ounce of force she could summon. An eight-pointed star appeared in the safety glass, but it didn't shatter.

  "Come on!" she muttered through clenched teeth. "Break!"

  Again she struck the glass. Finally it collapsed in a shower of small greenish transparent pebbles that glistened in the sunlight. Before the last of them had tinkled to the ground, Nancy dove through the opening and rolled away from the booth.

  At the last moment the driver of the battered car seemed to regain control over it. It came out of the skid just two feet from the phone booth and started to move forward in the direction of the street. As it passed the phone booth, it fishtailed and the back fender struck the booth. The booth stayed upright, but the other panes of glass shattered.

  Nancy got to her hands and knees as the blue sedan reached the street and darted in front of an oncoming car. As horns blared, Nancy had just enough time to notice that the license plate on the sedan was covered with dried mud, and the driver's face was hidden by a ski mask.

  As Nancy stood up and brushed herself off, Bess and Kyle came running from the diner.

  "Nancy, what happened?" Bess cried.

  Nancy stared at the remains of the phone booth. "That phone booth was just wrecked," she said ruefully. "And I was almost wrecked with it!"

  "People like that shouldn't be allowed on the road," Kyle declared. "It's criminal!"

  "That's truer than you think," Nancy replied. "What just happened was no accident. The driver was wearing a mask. The question is, was his attack meant to scare me off or to get me out of the way for good?"

  "Nancy! That car!" Bess exclaimed. "There must have been half a dozen like it at Fortunato's wrecking yard. I bet he followed us here!"

  This thought had occurred to Nancy, too. Would a criminal choose a weapon that pointed so obviously to himself? He might, if he expected his crime to be taken for an accident.

  Something else also occurred to Nancy. At the moment that the blue car was skidding in her direction, Kyle Donovan was inside the diner with Bess. That meant that unless he had an accomplice, Kyle was probably in the clear.

  "With all this excitement, I totally lost track of the time," Kyle suddenly said. "Fve got to get back to the office."

  "We're on our way there, too," Nancy said.

  "We are?" Bess said in surprise. "Oh, okay." As they walked back across the parking lot, she added, "Since we're all going the same way, I think I'll ride with Kyle. That's okay with you, isn't it, Nancy?"

  "Sure," Nancy replied. As she said it, she realized that she had been looking forward to the drive downtown as a time to discuss what had just happened with Bess. Now Kyle was taking that time away from her. Well, she would simply have to talk to herself about the case!

  The clues pointed pretty clearly toward Fortunato as being the guilty party. The person who staged the attack on her just now ha
d to have known where to find her. She couldn't be absolutely positive, but she didn't believe anyone had been tailing her all morning. Fortunato could have followed her the mile or so from his place to the diner without her catching on, and he certainly had easy access to plenty of old, nondescript cars.

  Nancy parked in the lot behind the office building and took the elevator up. As the doors opened on her father's floor, she reminded herself that she still couldn't exclude a killer from Broughton's past in another town. If so, she was going to have a very hard time tracking that person down.

  Nancy went to Broughton's office, sat down at his desk, and pulled the telephone closer. The envelope with Broughton's resume was still in her purse. She glanced through it, looking for the section on employment history. Once she found it, she decided to work backward from his last job at a law firm in Omaha, Nebraska.

  Her call was answered on the first ring. "Backman, Turner, good morning," the receptionist said.

  Nancy quickly explained who she was and asked to speak to someone who could verify Jack Broughton's references. She didn't mention that Broughton was dead.

  A moment later a woman came on the line. "This is Alice Turner," she said. "May I help you?"

  Nancy explained once again. There was a long silence. Then Ms. Turner said, "I would much prefer not to be a character reference for Mr. Broughton."

  "May I ask why not?" Nancy replied.

  Another long silence, then Ms. Turner said, very slowly, as if choosing her words with care, "I have no wish to slander anyone. Let me just say that I would hesitate to entrust sensitive, confidential information about my clients to anyone whose honesty or discretion I had any reason to doubt. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a call on another line."

  Well! Nancy thought as she replaced the receiver. That was about as close to an accusation as a cautious attorney was likely to make. Apparently Broughton's career as a blackmailer had started before he came to River Heights. How much before? And why had he been hired at her father's firm with such a bad reference?

  Nancy was about to place a call to Broughton's previous employer, in Billings, Montana, when Kyle and Bess came in. Kyle was carrying three thick files.

  "These are the other files that Jack kept out longer than usual," Kyle reported. "Bess and I thought we should go through them together."

  "Good idea/' Nancy replied. "Whose are they?"

  Kyle put the stack on the desk and opened the top one. He scanned a couple of pages, then said, "This one's a start-up software company that's planning to go public early next year. That's always a sensitive time for a new company. Any negative information can cost the founders a lot of money."

  "Do you think that's what Broughton was looking for?" Bess asked.

  Kyle shrugged. "Maybe. But there's nothing to show that he found any."

  The second file was that of a local surgeon whose wife had died, leaving him with two small children. Most of the documents concerned trust funds. Kyle thumbed through them, then said, "I don't see anything out of line here, either. I suspect Jack was simply fishing, hoping to hook a big one."

  He opened the last of the files. "Winona Carlisle," he read. "In care of Crestwood Manor."

  "That's that very ritzy nursing home out near the country club," Bess remarked.

  Nursing home? Nancy's ears pricked up. Someone, probably Broughton or his killer, had promised David Megali some information about elderly clients in nursing homes. Someone, almost certainly the killer, had tipped off both the

  police and the press that Carson Drew was stealing from his elderly clients.

  "Here, let me see that," Nancy said, reaching for the file. She flipped through the pages. Winona Carlisle was apparently a very wealthy woman who owned several office buildings. The file also contained a list of substantial contributions to local and national wildlife organizations. There were check marks and percentages next to the names of some of the organizations, with a note at the bottom, "For will."

  Nancy showed it to Kyle. "That probably means Mrs. Carlisle's will, right?"

  "That'd be my guess," Kyle replied. "But you can check easily enough. If the firm drafted her will, there should be a copy in the file. The original wills—the ones that have been signed and witnessed—are kept in the vault."

  Nancy went through the file quickly, then again, more carefully. "No will," she said. She picked up the phone and dialed her father's extension, but there was no answer. She tried Margaret Hildebrand. "Do you know if the firm is holding a will for someone named Winona Carlisle?" she asked.

  "I'd have to check," the firm's librarian admitted. "Would you like me to find out? I can call you back."

  Five minutes later Margaret appeared in the office doorway, obviously very upset. "I don't know what Mr. Drew is going to say," she began. "This has never happened before."

  "What?" Nancy asked, though she could already guess the answer.

  "The last will and testament of Winona Carlisle should be on file here," Margaret said. "But I just checked in the vault, and it isn't where it ought to be. It may have been misfiled—I'm going through the whole drawer again—but I thought you ought to know right away."

  "Thanks," Nancy said. "You'll be sure to tell my dad when he returns?"

  The librarian nodded her head. "I sure will. He's going to be very unhappy when he hears."

  "So," Kyle said after Ms. Hildebrand left. "The vault was broken into the night Jack was killed. He really did surprise a burglar, just as the police said."

  Nancy frowned. "Not so fast," she said. "It could be that the burglar, if there was one, was after one specific thing—Winona Carlisle's will. And we know Broughton took a special interest in her and that the copy of her will is missing from her file. He could easily have taken it, and the signed will from the vault, then faked the burglary to cover his tracks. The question is, why? Was he extorting money from Mrs. Carlisle, or planning to?"

  "I still think Fortunato's the murderer," Bess declared. "Why else was he hanging around the night of the murder? And what about that car that nearly ran you down? You don't really believe it was being driven by a little old lady, do you?"

  "No," Nancy said, laughing. "But I can ask her when I see her." She phoned the nursing home and learned that visitors were permitted that afternoon, beginning in half an hour.

  "Do you want me to come along?" Bess asked.

  "I don't think so," Nancy replied. "We might have trouble getting more than one person in to see her, and a crowd might make her nervous."

  "Okay, then I'm going to run a few errands," Bess said. "Kyle, as soon as you can get away from the office, why don't we take another look at Fortunato's wrecking yard? I'm sure he's hiding something."

  Crestwood Manor was a former private mansion set amid acres of lawns and gardens. Nancy parked and went in the front door. When she told the man at the desk that she was the daughter of Mrs. Carlisle's attorney, he telephoned, then said that Mrs. Carlisle would meet her in the solarium.

  Nancy followed his directions to a room with many tall windows and cheerful wicker furniture.

  Mrs. Carlisle, a short, plump woman with thinning white hair and cool, shrewd eyes, was already there, seated in a wicker armchair. She was grasping a slender wooden cane with a silver head in the form of a bird.

  "You're Carson Drew's daughter, are you?" she began. "I suppose he's too busy to come speak to me himself. Well, girl, what is it? What do you want?"

  "I understand my dad's firm drafted your will," Nancy said.

  The woman's eyes narrowed. "Of course they did," she snapped. "And charged handsomely for the job, too! What of it?"

  "Do you know where that will is now?"

  "Don't you know?" Mrs. Carlisle asked. "It's supposed to be with my other papers at your daddy's office. Are you trying to tell me that it's not there?"

  "Well. . ."

  The woman banged her cane on the floor. Her voice rose, nearly to a shout. "They got to you, didn't they? They still think they're
going to lay their filthy murdering hands on my money! Well, I may be an old woman, but I still have a few surprises for them!"

  "Mrs. Carlisle," Nancy started to say, "I just—"

  "And for you and your father, too!" Mrs.

  Carlisle pushed herself up out of the chair and tottered on her feet. Thinking she was about to fall, Nancy took a step toward her. Just then, the elderly woman raised her cane in the air and brought it down toward Nancy's head.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nancy threw herself to the right as the cane whistled toward her. It missed, but Nancy felt the breeze as the cane went by. An instant later it crashed against the arm of the wicker chair.

  As Mrs. Carlisle raised the cane for another try, Nancy backed toward the door. Before she got there, it opened and a man came in.

  "Is there a problem here?" he asked, going up to Mrs. Carlisle.

  "Charles! Throw this young woman out— right now! And don't let her come back!"

  "You shouldn't excite yourself, Mrs. Carlisle," Charles murmured. "Would you like me to call down for a cup of herb tea?"

  "Get her out of here!" She pointed her cane at the door, narrowly missing his head.

  Charles turned to Nancy. "I'm sorry, miss/' he said politely but firmly, "I'm afraid you'd better leave. This way, please."

  As she followed him into the front hall, Nancy said, "I'm sorry I upset her. I didn't mean to. Maybe if I came back another time—"

  "I'm afraid that won't be possible," Charles said. He opened the front door and held it for her. "Our guests expect us to protect them from unwelcome visitors. If either you or your associate return, I'll be forced to have you arrested for trespassing."

  "Associate?" Nancy said, turning back. "But I don't—"

  She found that she was talking to a closed door. She knocked and rang the buzzer, but there was no response. Finally she gave up and went to her car. As she drove back downtown, she thought what a shame it was that Mrs. Carlisle had been so badly upset. Still, she had learned two important facts. First, Mrs. Carlisle was convinced that someone was after her money. And second, somebody else had recently shown an interest in the elderly woman. Nancy had a hunch that that somebody was involved in Broughton's murder. How to track him down? That was the problem.