Fatal Ransom Read online

  “I hope so,” Nancy whispered to George. She was pretty sure that her definition of “all right” wasn’t the same as Hal’s.

  Suddenly Amy jumped off the couch. “Everything is not going to be all right,” she said breathlessly. “I just thought of something.”

  She gestured to Nancy and George sitting on the floor. “Those two have a friend,” she said. “Someone who’s working with them.”

  “What?” Hal asked.

  “It’s true,” Amy said. “I’ve seen all three of them snooping around the mall together.” She pointed at George. “That’s how I knew who she was. The first time I saw her, Nancy Drew was sneaking up on Dracula. I stopped her, but before I could say anything her two sidekicks were behind her.”

  Amy looked desperate. “I’m telling you, Hal, there’s another one who’s probably looking for these two right now. And I bet she’s going to try to mess up the money drop.”

  “That’s it,” Sam said confidently. “I’m not waiting for your uncle to call in the cops.” He strode to the front door and opened it.

  “Stop!” Hal ordered.

  Sam wasn’t listening. “Dracula!” he called down the stairs. “Get in here.”

  Dracula came springing into the apartment. Nancy wasn’t surprised to see that he was the same kid she’d tried to follow at the mall.

  “Hey, dudes, what’s happening?” he asked jauntily.

  “Hal tricked us, that’s what,” answered Sam.

  “That’s not true!” cried Hal.

  “Just shut up, rich boy,” snapped Jed.

  “We’re not waiting until noon for the money,” Sam explained to Dracula.

  “Far out!” said Dracula, clapping his hands. “What’s the plan?”

  “I want you to go to a pay phone and call Lance Colson,” Sam told him.

  “But we can call him from here.”

  “No. I don’t want anybody to be able to trace any of our calls back here,” Sam said. “Tell Colson to have the money at the footbridge in exactly one hour.”

  Nancy glanced at her watch. Seven-thirty A.M. I must have been unconscious for several hours, she thought for a second. Then she realized that they might just get away with it because of the time change.

  “Tell him to be there in an hour or he’ll never see his nephew or the detective he hired again,” Sam added.

  Dracula stared at him. “You mean we really might have to kill somebody? I didn’t think that was part of the plan.” His voice was quivering. “I thought we were just going to make it look as though we had.”

  “We’ve got a new plan now,” said Sam. “I’m in charge. You just do what I tell you. And then meet us back here—wait outside.”

  Dracula still looked scared. But he managed an “okay” and left the apartment.

  Sam closed the door behind him and turned back to Hal—a cold, clear, calculating look in his eye.

  “I guess you heard that,” he said. “I’m in charge now.”

  Hal clenched his teeth. “Like hell you are.”

  Hal lunged for Sam. But before Nancy could see what had happened, a gunshot blast filled the apartment, and time stood still.

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  NANCY SPRANG TO her feet.

  “Hold it!” Jed hollered. “Or you’ll get the next one!”

  Hal Colson was slumped over in a chair holding his arm. Blood was seeping through his fingers. From where she was standing, Nancy couldn’t get a good look at the wound. But she knew that even a surface wound could be serious if enough blood was lost.

  “Hal! Oh, my God!” Amy shrieked. “Are you crazy?” she shouted at Jed. “You could have killed him!”

  “I could still kill you,” Jed said offhandedly.

  But Sam reached over and plucked the gun from Jed’s hand. “Who elected you president of this club?” he said disgustedly. “I’ll take care of this. You just tie them all up. The ropes are in the kitchen.”

  Nancy didn’t want to let that happen. She thought for a second about making a move on Sam, but there was no telling what he or any of them might do next. Nancy couldn’t risk getting someone killed. She’d just have to wait for a better opportunity.

  “You’ll never get away with this, you know,” she said.

  “She’s right,” George told Sam. “Why don’t you be sensible while there’s still time?”

  Sam swung the gun in her direction. “Is this your heart talking, babe? Or is it just your detective head?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said Nancy. “Just take a second and think about this. You haven’t really done anything—yet. But once you take that money, the cops will get you for blackmail and kidnapping. And you can’t even be sure you’ll get the money. How do you know Lance won’t figure out a way to trap you?”

  Hal winced. Jed had jerked his wounded arm behind him and begun tying him to a chair.

  “Stop that!” Amy cried, struggling in the chair where she was already tied. “Can’t you see he needs a doctor?”

  Blood from Hal’s arm was dripping onto the floor beside him. His face was growing whiter by the second. Nancy wondered how long he’d be able to remain conscious.

  “Look!” she said, pointing at Hal. “You almost have a murder on your hands!”

  But Jed acted as though he hadn’t heard a word she said. He grabbed her hands and pulled them behind her back, then forced her into another chair. In a few seconds he had finished tying her up and started working on George.

  “You’re smart guys,” George said helplessly. “Don’t do this.”

  Sam looked at her with mock sympathy. “You’re breaking my heart.” He bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “It’s too bad it had to come to this—especially after all we’ve meant to each other.” And he and Jed started to laugh.

  Hal jerked his arms, trying to break free, then fell back in his chair exhausted by the effort. “I should have known better than to trust you guys.”

  “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” Sam answered. “You never were one of us, really. Just a rich kid who wanted to play.”

  Hal’s head was drooping lower and lower. “Nothing is turning out the way I planned,” he said weakly. “All I wanted was fifty thousand dollars of my own money to go to the West Coast.”

  “With me,” Amy added.

  Hal nodded.

  Nancy still couldn’t figure out the money aspect of the case. Why should someone who was heir to a fortune only want fifty thousand dollars?

  “Why only fifty?” she asked. Visions of the Colson mansion, Lance’s Maserati, Hal’s Mercedes, and the trip to Saint-Tropez floated through her head. “Lance probably would have spent a couple of thousand dollars on you on that trip to Saint-Tropez.”

  “What trip?” Amy asked.

  Oops! Nancy thought. Had she said something she shouldn’t have? Maybe Amy—like Monica—hadn’t been part of the Colsons’ travel plans.

  Then Hal repeated, “Yeah, what trip to Saint-Tropez? This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “What trip?” Nancy looked at him in disbelief. “Lance showed me a travel brochure to Saint-Tropez,” she said. “He told me you two were planning a vacation there to patch things up between you.”

  Hal rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe it! I never realized he was such a creative guy.”

  “What do you mean?” Nancy asked.

  Hal looked at her and George. “I’ve been watching you two. Up until now I thought you were pretty smart.”

  “Up until now?”

  Suddenly Hal seemed to have revived. “A vacation to Saint-Tropez. That’ll be the day. My uncle would never spend that kind of money on me. He’d never take me on a vacation with him. Never in a million years,” he gabbled feverishly.

  He turned to Amy. “Remember that time I asked him if I could go on the school ski weekend?” he asked her. “He said no, not until I knew the meaning of a dollar. Since—since the day my parents died, he’s never let me go anywhere on vacation—
much less let me go on one of his vacations.”

  There was a new kind of pain in his eyes then. Nancy was beginning to think he was telling the truth.

  But if Lance hadn’t really been planning the trip, why had he bothered to tell her he was? Was there more to this than met the eye?

  It was time to look at the pieces of the case again. Nancy was sure she had considered all the angles—but maybe she had overlooked something.

  She thought about the first ransom note she had seen, the one on Lance’s stationery. Monica had sworn she had had no part in it. So had Hal. Then whose note was it?

  Monica’s? She hated Hal. She had told Nancy all about the financial trouble at Colson Enterprises. Hal’s? He hated Lance. He only wanted fifty thousand dollars out of this.

  The pieces didn’t add up. If Hal hadn’t known about the Saint-Tropez trip, and Monica hadn’t known about the Saint-Tropez trip, why had Lance been considering the trip at all? Especially when the company was having money trouble?

  Lance had to be involved in this case. But how could he have been? His car had been bombed! Someone had wanted him out of the way!

  Then Nancy caught her breath. Lance hadn’t been anywhere near the car when the bomb had gone off. He’d been in the house getting his briefcase—after he’d turned his key in the ignition. Was that just a coincidence? Now that she really thought about it, Nancy realized she’d never investigated anything related to Lance Colson. She had trusted him from the beginning.

  But now at last it was clear who was behind all this. It was hard to believe, but Lance must have been calling the shots all the time—right from the beginning. Why, he must have even run her car off the road!

  Nancy had to get to him. Confront him. Let him know that he’d been caught.

  She tried to stand up, but the ropes pulled her back into the chair.

  “Untie me!” she ordered.

  Jed just looked at her.

  George stared at her as though she’d gone insane.

  Nancy scooted her chair across the floor and right up to Sam. “Untie me,” she insisted. “Or I’ll—”

  “Or you’ll what?” asked Sam, his finger on the trigger of the gun.

  “Or I’ll see that when you’re all caught, you’ll spend the rest of your lives in jail.”

  “Wow, what a scary thought,” Sam said sarcastically.

  Jed smiled and shook his head. “I think we might as well go and get that four hundred and seventy-five grand, and then we can worry about jail.”

  Sam stared at Nancy first, then at George, then at Hal, and last at Amy. A new calmness seemed to have settled over him.

  “I think you’re right,” he said slowly. He turned to Nancy. “We’re going to go collect the money. Then we’re going to come back and kill all of you.”

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  NO!” GEORGE SHOUTED.

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” Sam shouted back. “You’re going to be the first one to go. You had too good a time making fun of me—pretending to like me. And no one gets away with that! If you two had just stayed out of this,” he continued, “everything would have been all right.”

  “Yeah,” Jed chimed in. “Why’d you have to go and ruin things? We never planned to hurt anybody. Without you guys, we never would have had to hurt anybody.”

  “Do you really think you have the guts to kill us all?” Hal asked weakly.

  “That’s the only way they’d ever get away with this,” Amy said.

  Great! Nancy thought. Thanks for pointing that out, Amy!

  “Don’t worry, Amy,” said Hal. “They’ll never do it.”

  Sam was starting to get nervous again. Once more the gun in his hand was trembling. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We’ve got some money to pick up.”

  “What are we going to do with them?” Jed asked.

  Quickly Sam checked the knots on the ropes. “They’ll be all right until we get back.” And he and Jed walked out the door.

  The four captives listened as Sam and Jed walked down the stairs. Out on the street, a car door slammed. Another one. And then a third—Dracula. The car started up and drove away.

  When the sound of the engine couldn’t be heard anymore, Nancy started struggling to free herself.

  “Sorry about all this,” she muttered to George.

  “You’re sorry! I was afraid I was going to get you killed last night at the mall.”

  “Part of the deal,” Nancy said.

  She glanced over at Hal. He was slumped over in his chair. His breathing was shallow, his complexion pasty. “I’m going to kill Lance,” Hal sat up suddenly and mumbled.

  He’s just figured it out, Nancy thought. Too bad it took us so long.

  Hal made another futile attempt to jerk free of the ropes. He fell back into his bloody chair and whispered, “Sam and Jed are fools.”

  “Let them take the money,” Amy said soothingly.

  “There won’t be any,” Hal said. “Lance will probably be long gone. Maybe he’s even out of the country by now.”

  “That’s probably what he was going to do with the extra four hundred thousand he added to the ransom note,” Nancy said.

  “I bet he’s headed for Saint-Tropez right now,” George added.

  “And he’ll get there, too, if we don’t stop him!” Nancy said, pulling against the ropes again.

  “Hey!” George shouted as she gave a quick lunge and stood up. The ropes fell limp around her.

  “All right!” Nancy cheered. “Hurry up and untie me. We’ve got a plane to stop!”

  Once Nancy was free, she and George untied Hal and Amy. “Let’s get out of here,” Nancy said, leading the way to the door.

  George and Amy supported Hal and helped him across the floor.

  Once outside Nancy saw that they’d been held prisoner in a garage apartment, which was near a large two-story house. She glanced around the yard for a second and saw someone dart behind a tree.

  “Come on out,” she shouted bravely.

  “Nancy?” the voice from behind the tree called. “Is that you?”

  “Bess!” George shrieked.

  But who was that stepping out from behind Bess?

  “Ned!” Nancy gasped and ran into his arms. “But how—when—”

  Bess was looking a little shamefaced. “You told me to use my judgment,” she said nervously. “Well, I did. My judgment told me to call Ned before I did anything else. So I called him at three o’clock yesterday afternoon. He drove here to help. I didn’t know if either of us would ever see you again, I-I’m sorry, Nancy.”

  Nancy leaned back against Ned and sighed. “Well, let’s talk about it later,” she said. “I’m awfully glad to see you—both of you. How did you find us anyway?”

  “I got worried about you,” Bess said. “I went to the mall to look for you. It was after twelve by this time, and I just walked around to all the different doors to see if I could find either of your cars in the parking lot. I saw yours there, Nancy, and then I really got scared.”

  Bess pulled something from her purse. “I kept looking around for hours for signs of a fight—anything that might be a clue. I was desperate, but I finally found this by the door.” She handed a folded paper to Nancy.

  It was the note George had tried to give Nancy at the mall—the note describing where the apartment was!

  George shook her head in wonder. “Those guys must have dropped it during the scuffle with me and Amy. Just before you got clobbered, Nancy—remember?”

  Nancy rubbed the back of her head. “How could I forget?”

  “I went to Ned’s house to meet him at six o’clock. I didn’t want to come without him,” Bess said. “I parked down the road and we sneaked over.”

  “We were just about to storm the place when we saw those two guys come walking out,” Ned said. “So that’s the kind of people you hang out with when I’m not around!” he added teasingly.

  “To tell the truth, I’m glad thos
e two left,” Bess confessed. “Ned or no Ned, I’m not big on heroic rescue attempts.”

  Nancy patted Bess on the arm. “Well, you sure acted pretty heroically.” She looked around the yard. Bess’s car was parked in the street, and a motorcycle was parked next to the garage. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

  “Now let’s get moving,” Nancy said. “Hal’s losing a lot of blood, and we have to stop Lance.”

  “Lance!” Bess exclaimed. “Stop Lance from what?”

  “From stealing Hal’s money,” Nancy said. “And running off to Saint-Tropez.”

  “I don’t believe it!” answered Bess. “He’d never do anything to hurt Hal.”

  “It’s true,” said Nancy. “I’m sorry, Bess, you’ll just have to trust me on this one.”

  She turned to George and Amy. Hal seemed to be slipping in and out of consciousness. “Bess, you take Hal and Amy to the hospital in your car,” Nancy ordered.

  “No! If you think Lance is involved in this, I want to go with you,” Bess said stubbornly.

  “Bess—get the car! This kid needs help now.”

  Nancy couldn’t remember when she had seen such anger in Bess’s eyes. It hurt her to know that Bess didn’t believe her. “I know it’s hard to accept,” she said more gently. “But the important thing now is to get Hal to the hospital. You don’t want to be around Lance. Trust me. Ned, would you give Amy and George a hand with Hal?”

  Ned stepped forward and carefully picked Hal up in his arms. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  As they headed for the car, Nancy ran back into the garage apartment. It was time to let the police know what was going on.

  Fortunately, the policeman who answered the phone was Sergeant Tom Robinson. Nancy had dealt with him a couple of times on previous cases, and he was a friend of her father’s. She knew she wouldn’t have to waste time getting him to take her seriously.

  “Two guys, that’s right,” she said into the receiver. “No, probably three guys. One has a Mohawk haircut, another is huge—a Goliath type—you can’t miss any of them. Pick them up at the east end of the footbridge in Liberty Park. Thanks, Tom. I promise I’ll explain this all later.”