Hidden Meanings Read online

  “Where was he around noon today?” Nancy asked.

  “He said he was out running. I guess there’s no way to check that,” George said. “But I asked him if he’d ever been to Ben’s Back Room in Washington. He looked offended and said he never goes to bars. He doesn’t ever drink, because his body is a temple.” George raised her eyebrows. “Direct quote.”

  The girls cleared away their dinner trays, and George and Bess headed for the banquet room. Nancy went upstairs to check in with Gina, as promised.

  As Nancy turned into the corridor on the seventh floor, she saw Gina and Sally ahead, waiting by their room door. Ned was just slipping the keycard into the door slot. Nancy jogged down the hall to join them.

  As she drew closer, Nancy saw that Ned had stopped just inside the door. Bending down, he picked up an envelope that must have been slipped under the door. “You want to see what it is?” he asked Gina uncertainly.

  Gina took the envelope from him and briskly broke it open. Nancy watched as Gina removed a sheet of hotel stationery, with a typewritten message.

  From her position, Nancy observed that the note had the same typeface as the note sent to the chef with the shish kebab skewers. She glanced up to ask Gina if she could take this note to compare them.

  But before she could speak, Nancy took in Gina’s wide-eyed, trembling look. Gina was staring straight at Sally, her hands shaking.

  Taking the note, Nancy read it quickly:

  Don’t take any more photos. Next time, you may be the one to be set on fire.

  Nancy knew what Gina must be thinking. The threat wasn’t meant for Gina at all.

  It was meant for Sally!

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  LET’S GO INSIDE THE room,” Nancy said to the girls quietly. As they all stepped inside, she firmly shut the door behind them.

  Gina and Sally sat down meekly on their beds. Ned perched on the edge of a nearby desk. “Sally,” Nancy said in an even voice, trying not to alarm her. “We’ve all been assuming that Gina is the target of these incidents. But could someone possibly be trying to harass you?”

  Sally, looking shocked, began to twirl her hair nervously around a finger. “Me?” she said. “Why would anyone harass me? I’m just an ordinary high school kid.”

  “The note specifically calls attention to the photos in the display, your photos,” Nancy pointed out. “Let’s consider the other incidents. The first break-in, we know, was a hoax. But what about the second one? Nothing was taken. The room wasn’t even messed up. What could the thief have wanted?”

  Sally squirmed. “Gina’s jewelry wasn’t touched,” she said. “My only valuable was my camera, but I had it with me that morning. It wasn’t in the room.”

  Nancy nodded, her mind racing. “Suppose the intruder wanted your camera,” she said, talking out the case. “He would’ve realized then that you always have it with you. It’s possible, then, that the dead rat in the pasta was a way to scare you out of your room.”

  “After the rat appeared, we went to the café,” Ned recalled. “But you took your camera, Sally.”

  “Ralph, the bellman who was guarding your room then, did tell me that a man dressed as a maintenance worker tried to get in your room then,” Nancy said. “Maybe he was looking for your camera. Luckily, Ralph wouldn’t let him in.”

  “I did leave my camera in the room when the fire alarm went off,” Sally said. “When I came back, it was gone. But Gina’s clothes were ruined, too.”

  “I’ll bet our culprit burned Gina’s clothes as a diversion, so we’d still think she was the target,” Nancy said.

  Gina shivered. “We mounted the prints of Sally’s photos on the display,” she said. “Next thing we knew, it went up in flames.” She frowned. “But what about the poisonous shish kebabs?”

  “I haven’t figured out that part yet,” Nancy admitted. “It’s hard to imagine that anyone would go to all that trouble for the slight chance that Sally would choose a shish kebab out of that big buffet.”

  “Except that I love shish kebabs,” Sally said quietly. “And I had said so at lunch that day. We were sitting around talking about Middle Eastern food.”

  “Who was there when you said that?” Nancy asked.

  Sally thought for a moment. “Mr. Ruxton and Mr. Sharpless were there—and Jane Sellery and her roommate, Karen. The boy who got sick that night was there, too. I forget his name, but Jane knows him.”

  “What about the very first day of the conference, when Gina was knocked into the water?” Ned asked.

  “I had just been taking a picture of Sally,” Gina said. “The camera was in my hand. It was knocked into the water with me.”

  “And I had been taking pictures with it a few minutes earlier,” Sally added. “I was finishing off the roll of film I’d started in Florida.”

  An image popped into Nancy’s mind, and she snapped her fingers. Of course—the photos of Harold Karabell with Evan Sharpless!

  “I think I know who may be behind all this,” she said tersely. “A journalist named Harold Karabell. Remember the bearded guy in the picture with Mr. Sharpless? That’s him.”

  “Karabell?” Gina asked. She turned to Ned. “You just asked me if I knew him.”

  Ned nodded. “Nancy told me he was one of her suspects,” he explained. “You didn’t recognize the name, but that doesn’t matter now. What matters is why he wanted the pictures Sally took of him destroyed.”

  Sally winced. “Whatever his reason, he’s gotten his way,” she said. “He stole the negatives and he burned up all my prints. The pictures are gone for good. If we can’t look at them, we’ll never know what it was he wanted to hide.”

  “Well, if they’re gone for good, maybe all this trouble will stop,” Ned said. “Let’s hope so.”

  But Gina’s eyes flashed. “How dare he go after my friend?” she declared. “He must be punished. Two fires, the shish kebabs—someone could have been badly hurt. Nancy, we need you now more than ever. You must catch this Harold Karabell!”

  “I’ll do my best,” Nancy said gravely.

  • • •

  After a sleepless night, Nancy had a hard time getting up the next morning. Bess, scheduled for the breakfast shift in the banquet room, was long gone when Nancy finally sat up groggily. George was just putting on her lifeguard suit. “Call room service and order some breakfast,” she advised Nancy.

  “No, thanks,” Nancy said, yawning. “Seeing that dead rat the other night really put me off room service.”

  George laughed. “Well, you’ve missed the breakfast downstairs,” she said. “Make sure you stop by the snack table. What’s on your agenda for today?” The night before, Nancy had told George and Bess about the startling new twist in the case. They had agreed that their top priority now should be finding as much proof as possible to link Harold Karabell to the crimes.

  Nancy stretched her limbs. “I guess I’ll go try to grill Harold Karabell,” she said. “If we can learn what he’s trying to cover up, maybe he’ll confess to destroying Sally’s pictures. He usually runs when he sees me coming, but it’s worth a try.”

  “Did you talk to Ms. Peabody about getting Paul his job back?” George asked.

  “No,” Nancy said. “I’m sorry, George, but Ms. Peabody wasn’t in yesterday when I went to her office, and then it slipped my mind. I promise I’ll do it today.”

  But after George left, Nancy drifted back to sleep. She was awakened by the ringing of the phone. She answered it sleepily.

  “Sally wants you to meet her in the workshop darkroom right away,” Ned’s voice said excitedly. “She’s just found something that she thinks might give us the break we need.”

  Nancy was already out of bed. “Give me five minutes,” she said eagerly. “Thanks, Ned. ’Bye!” She bounded over to the closet and pulled a navy-and-white-checked T-shirt dress off a hanger. Dressing in record time, she was out the door in minutes.

  Nancy made her way to the Muskoka Lobby.
Grabbing a muffin from the snack table, she ran into the meeting room where the photography classes were being held. The door of the darkroom was ajar. “Sally?” she called, peeking in.

  “Nancy?” Sally’s voice rose. “Come on in.”

  Inside the darkroom, Sally triumphantly held up a sheet of photographic paper. Nancy saw what looked like dozens of miniature photographs.

  “My contact sheet!” Sally announced. “This morning I remembered I’d left it here. It’s a quick one-sheet print of all the pictures on one roll of film. A photographer looks at a contact sheet to decide which individual shots to print. That way, you print only the pictures you really want.”

  “Does it have the pictures of Karabell on it?” Nancy asked breathlessly.

  “Every last one of them!” Sally declared.

  The girls went out to a table in the meeting room to study the contact sheet. Half a dozen other students were busy with various projects, but Sally and Nancy were too excited to notice them.

  Sally picked up a small circular magnifying glass. Tucking her curly hair behind her ears, she bent over the tiny images. “It was a thirty-six-exposure roll of film, and I’d shot only five pictures on it in Florida,” she recalled. “So I was just snapping away that afternoon. That’s the only way to get a really good candid shot. It looks like I’ve got thirty or so shots here. Look.” She handed the magnifying loupe to Nancy.

  Nancy studied the sequence of photographs. She could see Evan Sharpless waving to the students and stepping onto the escalator. In four successive shots, he moved steadily up the escalator, looking all around. Then he stepped off at the mezzanine-level café and Harold Karabell entered the picture.

  “They’re not all great photos, artistically speaking,” Sally said. “That’s why I printed only five of them. Only one shot I printed had Karabell in it. Once Mr. Sharpless got to the mezzanine, he was too far away for me to get much, even with my telephoto lens. But there are several more shots on the contact sheet. Do you really think they might hold a clue?”

  Nancy peered intently at the sequence of images through the magnifying glass. She could see Evan Sharpless looking over his shoulder—nervously, she thought. In the next shot, he pulled a thick envelope out of his suit pocket. In the shot after that, he handed the envelope to Karabell.

  In the next shot, Karabell was looking inside the envelope, while Sharpless looked anxiously behind him.

  And in the next shot, Karabell pulled a thick wad of money out of the envelope!

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  SALLY AND NANCY STARED at the photos in uneasy silence. “Why would Evan Sharpless be giving this Karabell guy so much money?” Sally finally asked.

  Nancy swallowed hard. “There could be lots of reasons,” she said, speculating. “A gambling debt, a blackmail payment, a payoff for an informant. A Chicago Post editor I talked to said Karabell often depends on secret sources for his stories. Maybe Mr. Sharpless needed to use one of Karabell’s sources, and Karabell was the middle man.”

  “Or maybe it’s like Gina said the other day,” Sally put in. “Maybe Mr. Sharpless paid off the judges to award him the Hazelden prize.”

  Nancy looked skeptical. “I really don’t think its judges would take bribes,” she said. “They’re very well-known journalists. And from what I learned, I doubt Karabell would be a Hazelden judge.

  “Let’s go back to the idea that it’s a blackmail payment,” Nancy continued, looking over her shoulder. Suddenly she was very aware of not letting the others in the room overhear their conversation.

  “Karabell apparently is the sort of journalist who’s good at digging up dirt on people,” she went on quietly. “Maybe he dug up something on Evan Sharpless and then asked him for money in exchange for keeping quiet. The word is that Karabell’s career hasn’t been going so well lately. Maybe he needed the money.”

  Sally frowned. “That’s blackmail.”

  “Exactly,” Nancy replied. “That’s why Karabell doesn’t want those pictures around. He could be arrested for extortion. That’s a serious charge.”

  Sally looked down, awed, at her contact sheet. “What do we do next, Nancy?” she asked.

  “I think we should go to Ms. Peabody, the general manager, and ask her to call in the police,” Nancy suggested. “They can interrogate Karabell and get to the bottom of this case.” She glanced at the tiny images on the sheet. “Too bad those pictures are so hard to look at. If we want to force a confession, it would be more effective to have big, clear photos.”

  “I can’t enlarge them very easily without the original negatives,” Sally said. “But we could use an opaque projector to show them on a wall or something. Mr. Ruxton may have some ideas.”

  “Great,” Nancy said. “Find Mr. Ruxton and tell him what happened—show him the contact sheet and everything. Then see if you can get the enlarger. Meanwhile, I’ll try to track down Karabell.”

  Leaving the meeting room, Nancy hurried straight for Maureen Peabody’s office. The secretary there told Nancy that the general manager was in the Riverview Lounge. The new rooftop lounge was to be opened at a gala Saturday night, she said, and Ms. Peabody was checking out the last details. She added that the elevators had been programmed not to go up there yet, but Nancy could take the elevator to twelve and walk one flight up the fire stairs.

  Following the secretary’s directions, Nancy soon found herself walking out into a circular restaurant, with windows on all sides. The views of River Heights were spectacular. The tables nearest the windows were set on a lower level, giving the center tables a full panorama. Soft carpeting and upholstered chairs set an elegant tone.

  Maureen Peabody was standing by the windows with two men in suits. Seeing Nancy, she excused herself and came over. Nancy quickly told her what she and Sally had found. “We think this man may be extorting hush money from Evan Sharpless,” Nancy said. “He probably broke into Sally’s room and set both of the fires. He may even have been responsible for those deadly skewers at the banquet the night before last. I’d like to call in the police.”

  Ms. Peabody frowned. “You have very little evidence on which to arrest somebody,” she pointed out.

  “I’m not asking for him to be arrested—just to be brought in for questioning,” Nancy said. “If he’s innocent, he should be glad to help us.”

  Reluctantly, Ms. Peabody walked over to a phone and called the police. Then Nancy and Ms. Peabody hurried down to the lobby to meet them. Ten minutes later, they accompanied two police detectives to the sixth floor and hammered on Karabell’s door. There was no answer. “We can’t spend all day waiting around for a guy who might be responsible for two tiny fires and a couple of small break-ins,” one of the police detectives told Nancy.

  “But he might also be a blackmailer,” Nancy said.

  “You’ve got no proof of that yet,” the detective answered. “Call us when you do.” The two men headed back downstairs.

  Frustrated, Nancy went back down with Ms. Peabody to her office. “Maybe I could look on the billing computer and see if he made any more phone calls,” Nancy suggested, standing by the manager’s desk. “That might explain what he’s still doing here. After all, Bess and I both saw him yesterday after the display burned. There must be a reason why he’s hanging around.”

  “Fine with me,” Ms. Peabody said.

  Her secretary called up Karabell’s name on the computer. “Room 637?” she said. “He checked out at eight-fifteen this morning.”

  • • •

  Seething with frustration, Nancy trudged back up to the banquet room, where she grabbed a roast beef sandwich. Nancy asked Bess, who was waiting tables, to look out for Sally and tell her that Karabell had checked out. Then Nancy went to the darkroom, looking for Sally, but she wasn’t there.

  Next Nancy stopped by the pool. Sitting dejectedly in a deck chair, she told George about the morning’s discoveries. When she got to the part about Karabell checking out this morning, George sat up i
n her chair.

  “Eight-fifteen?” she repeated. “Nancy, he was here at the pool this morning. It was around eleven o’clock, long after he’d checked out.”

  Nancy stared at George, amazed. “Are you sure?”

  George nodded. “Positive.”

  “Then he is hanging around for some reason,” Nancy said excitedly. “Maybe we can still catch him!”

  • • •

  At six o’clock Nancy returned to her room, disappointed again. She had spent the afternoon hunting for Karabell. Armed with a layout of the hotel, she’d posted people at every strategic point—Bess at a side door just off the Muskoka Lobby, Ned in the meeting area, George at the employees’ entrance down in the basement, Stan Wasilick in the underground parking garage, and Ralph at the front entrance. She’d even convinced Ms. Peabody to offer Paul his job back and ask him to cover the loading docks where trucks delivered supplies.

  With Ms. Peabody’s help, Sally had used the office copier to enlarge the best shot of Karabell from her contact sheet. That way, Nancy was able to show a usable picture to each of the people on guard. Then Nancy had stationed herself in the lobby, next to a house phone, so that her various pairs of “eyes” could contact her.

  But by five o’clock, when the student editors came flocking back through the lobby, heading for their rooms, there had been no sign of Karabell. Reluctantly, Nancy headed upstairs to dress for the final banquet. Evan Sharpless would be giving his keynote speech there, and the newscaster might be the reason Karabell had lingered at the hotel. It’s our last hope, Nancy thought dejectedly.

  As she slipped into a hot-pink linen dress with a flared skirt, Nancy wondered wearily if Karabell wasn’t already long gone. She had his address in Chicago, but she doubted that the Chicago police would be willing to call him in for questioning. After all, the River Heights police hadn’t seemed interested in the case.

  Standing before a mirror, she pulled a brush through her reddish blond hair. I guess I could have put more effort into my appearance, she thought. Gina’s sure to be dressed to kill. But time was running out. If Karabell showed up at the banquet, she had to be there, not in the shower. Ned would understand, she decided.