163 The Clues Challenge Read online

  “Phew!” Nancy's whole body went limp with relief.

  “Let's get out of here!” she mouthed to Ned.

  “Sorry to bother you, Dennis,” George said, out in

  the living room. “It's just that, well, all these fraterni-

  ties start to look the same after a while. Can you guys

  tell me which one is Omega?”

  Nancy didn't stick around to listen to the rest. She

  and Ned climbed outside, shut the window behind

  them, and waited in the shadows of the frat house until

  George rejoined them.

  The Omega Chi Epsilon frat house was just a few

  doors down Fraternity Row. When Nancy, George, and

  Ned got there, they saw C.J. just ahead of them.

  “Your ankle's better?” Ned asked.

  C.J. nodded, twirling his cane in the air. “My ankle

  doesn't hurt at all, and I don't need this anymore.”

  When they got inside, Grant was waiting for them in

  the common room—a large room with a fireplace and

  wood paneling.

  “Ready?” he said, holding up a slip of paper. “The

  clue's right here.”

  Nancy and Ned flopped down on the couch next to

  Grant, while C.J. and George settled into a couple of

  battered chairs. Nancy shut her eyes and listened as

  Grant read the clue aloud.

  “ I am old and fat and wrinkled, yet people sing of

  my beauty,' ” he began.

  “ I live on solid ground, but my head is in the clouds

  . . .' ”

  As he spoke, Nancy tried to form a picture in her

  mind.

  “ I cannot speak,' ” Grant continued, “ yet I tell the

  stories of many, many people.

  “ I have rings, but you will find no fingers on me.' ”

  Nancy opened her eyes as Grant put the clue down

  on the coffee table in front of the couch. “That's it,” he

  said. “Any ideas?”

  Leaning forward, Nancy picked up the clue to study

  it. “Who can tell stories without speaking?” she

  wondered aloud.

  “Maybe it's a what. Maybe a book?” Ned suggested.

  “A notebook could have rings but no fingers,”

  George said. “And I guess a book could be old and fat

  and wrinkled. . . .”

  Grant frowned. “What about having its head in the

  clouds? That sounds more like a building.”

  His backpack was on the floor next to him. Grant

  pulled out his map of the Emerson campus. But as

  Nancy looked at it, she felt as if cotton was clogging her

  brain.

  For forty-five minutes they tried to reason out the

  clue, but couldn't get it.

  “Maybe we'll be able to think more clearly after we

  get some sleep,” Nancy said, but she hated to end the

  day feeling so unsettled.

  Brringgg!

  Nancy's eyes popped open. She fumbled in the

  darkness to turn off the alarm, then groaned when she

  saw the glowing numbers on the clock: 4:30.

  “Time to get up, already?” she mumbled, and lay

  quietly in the darkness.

  “Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Nancy finally said,

  turning on the light on her bedside table.

  George cracked one eye, then groaned and turned

  over, pulling the blankets over her head.

  “Come on,” Nancy said, laughing. “We only have an

  hour to get dressed, meet the guys for breakfast, and

  get to Clues Challenge headquarters before the horn

  blows at five-thirty.”

  She got out of bed and pulled on jeans and a

  turtleneck. “Now, where's my toothbrush and soap?”

  Nancy grabbed her bag of toiletries from the

  windowsill, then paused with her hand in midair.

  “Whoa,” she murmured, staring at the gnarled

  branches of a maple tree that rose out of the snow

  outside the window. “A tree! That's the answer!”

  “Come again?” George rubbed her eyes and swung

  her feet to the floor.

  “A tree can be beautiful even when it's old and fat

  and wrinkled,” Nancy said. “It can live on solid ground

  and still have its head in the clouds. It has rings . . .”

  “But no fingers!” George jumped out of bed, sud-

  denly wide-awake. “You're right! But what was the

  other part? Something about not speaking but telling

  stories . . .”

  “That's the only part I'm not sure of,” Nancy ad-

  mitted. “Maybe the guys will know. They're a lot more

  familiar with the campus than we are.”

  It took them less than fifteen minutes to get dressed

  and drive to Ned's fraternity. They found Ned, C.J.,

  and Grant in the kitchen making toast, scrambled eggs,

  and coffee.

  “Hi, there,” Ned said as the girls walked in. He

  stopped buttering toast long enough to give Nancy a

  big hug.

  “Hi, yourself.” Nancy leaned back and smiled up at

  his handsome face and dark eyes. “Do you guys know

  of any special trees on campus? Say, one that's big and

  old and wrinkled, and can tell many people's stories?”

  “Of course!” Grant said, slapping his palm against

  his forehead. “The legendary oak!”

  “What's that?” George asked.

  “It's this huge oak way back in the woods on the

  other side of campus. It's been around since before

  Europeans settled here,” Ned said. “It's a tradition to

  carve your initials on it.”

  “Which is how the tree tells the story of many peo-

  ple even though it can't speak,” said George.

  C.J. nodded, grinning from ear to ear. “When Mr.

  Lorenzo blows the horn this time,” he said, “no one's

  going to stop us!”

  A pale light was just snaking across the horizon when

  Mr. Lorenzo sounded his air horn at five-thirty sharp.

  The Omegas were ready. Within five minutes they

  had put on their skis and left the Sports Complex be-

  hind.

  “Did you see Joy's face when we shot out of there?”

  Grant said, grinning. “She couldn't believe we solved

  the clue before she did.”

  C.J. slid forward on his skis, heading toward the

  woods on the far side of the lake. He angled a quick

  glance back at Randy, who was skiing behind him. “It's

  more than five miles to the oak,” he said. “You're sure

  you're up for the trip?”

  Randy nodded. “Absolutely. As long as we can talk

  while we ski,” he said. “I was hoping you could tell me

  about the Clues Challenge sponsor.”

  “Mr. Lorenzo?” C.J. skied forward easily. Nancy was

  glad to see his ankle didn't seem to trouble him.

  “There's not much to tell. He just opened SportsMania

  a few months ago.”

  “What about before that?” Randy asked.

  “Beats me,” C.J. said.

  As she skied behind Randy, Nancy wondered at his

  questions. “I thought your article was about C.J., not

  Mr. Lorenzo,” she said.

  “Background information is an important part of any

  article. I like to get my facts straight,” he told her.

  But as they skied deeper into the woods, Randy's

  questions continued to
focus on Mr. Lorenzo. Did he

  have a special interest in college sports? Did C.J. know

  how long Mr. Lorenzo had lived in Emerson, or where

  he moved from?

  After a while Nancy tuned him out and concentrated

  on skiing. The path they forged was through dense

  forest. Every time Nancy breathed in, she smelled the

  sweet fragrance of cedar and pine.

  “I think we're getting close,” Ned said.

  Nancy began a searching sweep over the area with

  her eyes. There were plenty of oaks, but none that

  looked as big as the one Ned had described.

  “You think we took a wrong turn somewhere?”

  George wondered, when they'd been skiing for more

  than forty-five minutes. “I don't see—”

  “There!” Nancy stopped in her tracks and pointed

  with her ski pole.

  About twenty yards in front of her the branches of a

  huge oak towered over the other treetops. As they

  skied toward it, Nancy saw a massive tree trunk more

  than four feet across. Its bark was chipped and scarred

  from carvings that covered nearly every square inch of

  it.

  “That's the legendary oak, all right,” Grant con-

  firmed.

  Nancy saw a second set of ski tracks leading up to

  the legendary oak. They snaked through the woods

  from somewhere to the left of the path the Omegas

  had taken.

  “Whoever made those took a different route through

  the woods,” George commented.

  “Jimmy probably,” Grant said. “He hid the clues for

  Mr. Lorenzo.”

  C.J. tilted his face upward and then said, “There's

  the snowflake.”

  Nancy looked up, following his gaze. In the topmost

  branches of the tree, sunlight glinted off a plastic

  snowflake.

  “This one's mine,” she said. After stepping out of her

  skis, she hoisted herself on to the lowest branch. She

  reached for the next branch, then had to grab it wildly

  as her boot slipped on the icy bark.

  “Whoa!” she cried.

  “Careful, Nan,” George called.

  Nancy steadied herself, flashing a grin down at her

  teammates. “Don't worry,” she assured them.

  Slowly and surely, she climbed up to the next

  branch, and the next. She noticed that snow had al-

  ready been cleared from some of the branches—no

  doubt by Jimmy when he had hidden the clue. Footing

  on those branches was less slippery than where the

  snow was still thick, so Nancy followed the trail

  upward. She didn't pause until she saw the treetops of

  the evergreens that were thick around the oak.

  “Wow!” she murmured.

  Straight down, Ned and the others looked tiny.

  Nancy felt so giddy she had to clutch the branch even

  tighter to keep her balance.

  “Almost there.” She angled a look up at the plastic

  snowflake, which glowed in the sunlight just two

  branches over her head.

  Taking a deep breath, she placed her boot on the

  next branch and pulled herself up. She steadied her-

  self, then reached for a higher branch.

  With a chilling, cracking sound, the branch beneath

  her gave way. Nancy gasped as her boot slipped off.

  “Noooo!” she cried.

  In the next instant she felt herself falling into thin

  air.

  13. Into Thin Air

  Nancy plummeted downward. Her heart stopped in

  her chest as she caught a dizzying glimpse of snow-

  covered trees far below.

  Throwing her arms out, she grabbed a branch and

  her body jerked to a stop.

  “Ooooh!” Nancy's arms felt as if they had been

  yanked from their sockets.

  “Nancy!” Shouts of alarm rose up from below.

  Grunting, Nancy swung her legs around to grab the

  tree trunk with them. Her hands started to slip on the

  icy branch, and she wasn't sure how she did it, but at

  last she was sitting firmly on a solid branch.

  “I'm . . . all right!” she called down, her chest

  heaving.

  “What happened?” Ned's worried voice rose up to

  her.

  Nancy looked up, eyeing the broken branch. It had

  split just inches from the trunk. Now the branch hung

  at right angles to its original position, exposing the pale,

  splintered wood beneath the heavy bark.

  After taking a few deep breaths, Nancy climbed up

  for a closer look. She frowned when she saw the

  smooth slice in the wood. The cut ran about two thirds

  of the way through.

  Someone had sawn through the branch.

  Nancy shivered, thinking of what might have hap-

  pened if she hadn't stopped her fall. Then, pushing the

  thought firmly from her head, she climbed the rest of

  the way to the plastic snowflake and opened it.

  Four paper clues lay folded inside. So we're the first

  team to get the clue, thought Nancy. But someone

  came here first and cut through that branch.

  Nancy climbed quickly back to the ground.

  “I was so scared for you,” Ned said, giving her a hug.

  “That could have been a nasty accident.”

  “It wasn't an accident,” Nancy told him. “Someone

  sawed through that branch.”

  “What!” Ned, C.J., Grant, George, and Randy all

  cried at the same time.

  “Oh, man.” C.J. shook his head in disgust. “Someone

  has tried to stop us from getting every single clue.”

  “But who?” George wondered aloud. “Joy?”

  Nancy had been running over the list of suspects in

  her own mind. “I'm pretty sure Joy is the one who took

  my hat,” she said. “Maybe this is what she did in the

  woods last night.”

  “What about Dennis?” Grant asked. “He went

  AWOL when his teammates were brainstorming the

  second clue yesterday. He could have come here then

  and sawed through the branch.”

  “But how could Dennis have known where this

  snowflake was hidden?” Ned asked. “As of this

  morning, his team didn't even have the clue from the

  administration building.”

  Nancy grabbed her ski pole and poked the snow

  with it while she thought. “Someone tried to threaten

  Mr. Lorenzo into handing over the answers to the

  clues. Maybe it was Dennis,” she suggested.

  “Maybe,” said George. “But if Dennis got all the

  answers, why is his team so far behind in the Clues

  Challenge?”

  It was a question for which Nancy didn't have an

  answer.

  Nancy shot a surreptitious glance at Randy as she

  pulled her yellow team hat farther down on her head.

  Was he the blackmailer and saboteur?

  She shook herself. It was a pretty far-fetched theory.

  So far, the only thing implicating Randy was Mr.

  Lorenzo's intense dislike of him.

  “Heads up, everyone. Look who's here,” said C.J.,

  breaking into her thoughts.

  Nancy looked up to see Joy ski toward them through

  the woods. Hanna and the three other girls from Delta

  Tau stretche
d in a line behind her, skiing forward at a

  spirited pace.

  “Looks like we're ahead this time,” C.J. said to Joy as

  she came to a stop next to him. He nodded toward the

  slip of paper in Nancy's hand.

  “Not for long.” Joy gave a shrug, glancing at the clue.

  She popped off her skis and dropped her backpack.

  “I'll be back in a flash.”

  “Be careful near the top,” Nancy warned. “There's a

  broken branch.”

  “Someone sawed through most of it, so it would

  snap when it was stepped on,” George added.

  Joy's face was hidden from view as she pulled herself

  up onto the lowest branch. When she finally glanced

  down at Nancy, Joy's eyes flashed with irritation. “I

  suppose you're going to try to pin that on me, too?” she

  said.

  She reached calmly for the next branch and kept

  climbing. Her teammates gathered at the foot of the

  tree calling encouragement.

  “She sure doesn't act like she's guilty,” George

  whispered in Nancy's ear.

  “No, but maybe that's exactly what she's doing . . .

  acting,” said Nancy.

  She eyed Joy's teammates. All their faces were

  turned upward. No one was paying attention to Joy's

  backpack, which lay on a mound of snow next to her

  skis.

  Catching George's eye, Nancy held her finger to her

  lips. She moved quietly to the backpack. Crouching

  next to it, she pulled the zipper open slowly.

  Hmm, she thought, scanning the contents. Joy had

  packed an extra pair of gloves, sunglasses, protective lip

  balm. . . . Nancy saw nothing unusual—until her gaze

  landed on a small bottle with a prescription label.

  She glanced quickly over her shoulder. Seeing that

  Joy was hidden by the branches of the huge old oak,

  Nancy reached inside the pack and pulled out the

  bottle.

  The prescription label was partly torn. Nancy

  couldn't read the name of the person it was for. But the

  name of the medicine was still intact.

  “Comptamine,” Nancy breathed. The same drug

  that was used to spike their dessert at the pre-

  Challenge dinner!

  Gripping the bottle tightly, she made her way to her

  teammates, who waited next to their skis.

  “Find something?” Grant guessed, looking at the

  bottle.

  Nancy showed them the prescription bottle, then

  turned as Joy's teammates cheered. “Joy's on her way

  down with the clue,” she said, peering up into the