A Crime for Christmas Read online

  The younger brother was named Joe, and he was headed right toward me with a very unhappy look on his face.

  “I was shooting the whole thing, so whatever it is you’re trying to cover up by having my brother arrested isn’t going to work,” the blond kid from the lounge spat, holding up his phone. “That was a bogus collar, and you know it.”

  A video? Talk about bad publicity. At least Carol wasn’t there to see it. It might not look good for the lodge if video of a police bust went online, but, even if it did, I was still okay with it.

  “I’m glad you documented it,” I said, catching him off guard. “Law enforcement’s duty to protect and serve is one of the most important responsibilities in a democratic society, and officers should be held accountable when they abuse their power or violate a person’s rights.”

  “I, uh . . . exactly,” he said, clearly confused that I’d agreed with him.

  “Even when that person may have broken the law,” I continued.

  “Hey! Wait a second! Frank didn’t break any laws!” he shouted. “That B and E charge is totally bogus!”

  “And the DIY Swiss Army lock pick Frank was carrying?” I asked.

  “A bent pair of tweezers doesn’t prove anything, and if you were good enough to make our tail, then you have enough experience sneaking around yourself to know it,” Joe argued. “I’m not going to fib and say Frank and I have never had to pick a lock on a case before, but those tweezers haven’t been used for anything but tweezing for years.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I’d opened a door or two I maybe wasn’t supposed to while investigating, and I definitely wasn’t a burglar.

  “Then why were you tailing Grant Alexander?” I asked.

  “Why are you working for Grant Alexander and the pipeline people?” he demanded in response.

  “I’m working for Archie Leach and the lodge, not . . .” I paused as the last part of his question sank in. “What do you mean, Grant Alexander and the pipeline people?”

  He eyed me for a moment before answering. “The pipeline’s not paying your tab?”

  “I don’t have a tab. You could say I’m the unofficial house detective,” I told him. “And I’ve never even met anyone from the pipeline.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that. Why do you think we were tailing Alexander?” he asked.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “He’s the co-owner of the eco resort that’s standing in the pipeline’s way. It just doesn’t make sense. I know there are some political land mines he has to navigate, but a business relationship with the pipeline would be a huge conflict of interest. Archie would never let that happen!”

  “You mean conflicts of interest like secret meetings with pipeline honcho Larry Thorwald?” Joe asked smugly.

  “It’s not that strange for a politician to meet with executives of a high-profile project like this,” I suggested.

  “Why sneak around and hide it, then? And what about the links we found between subsidiaries of the pipeline’s holding company and the representative’s campaign manager?” Joe prodded. “And the note Sheriff Poo-it stole had a phone number with the same area code as Thorwald’s.”

  “Did you recognize the number?” I asked after I stopped laughing at Sheriff Pruitt’s new nickname. Maybe I was going to find out what Grant wrote on that note after all.

  “I didn’t see it.” Joe looked as disappointed as I did. “Frank just told me it was a number with the same area code and the initials TS. Does that mean anything to you?”

  I racked my brain for a minute. “Nobody here with those initials that I know of. Who hired you on this case, anyway?”

  “No one. We hired ourselves,” he said.

  That sounds familiar, I thought. Archie may have given me the okay to investigate Chef K’s saboteur, but I had taken the break-in case on my own and dubbed myself the Grand Sky Lodge “house detective” without actually telling the people I was detecting for.

  “We flew in with the Bayport High Green Environment Conservation Club to join the pipeline protest, and figured the best talent we brought to the cause was our detecting,” he explained.

  Green Environment Conservation Club? Well, that solved the mystery of the odd GECCOS sign they’d been holding at the protest.

  “So we started digging into the pipeline’s finances to see if we could turn up anything shady that might help bring the project to a stop,” Joe continued.

  “And that led you to Representative Alexander?” I asked.

  Joe nodded. “Enough links that it’s definitely suspicious.”

  “Anything illegal?” I asked skeptically. I didn’t want to believe Grant could be working to undermine his own business. “Don’t forget, he’s a victim in this too. I saw someone break into his suite with my own eyes.”

  He looked stumped by that.

  “Nothing outright illegal yet, but there’s definitely a conflict of interest and maybe a lot worse. Something smells fishy, and where there’s smoke, there’s usually smoked fish,” he declared confidently.

  “Um, I hope your detecting is stronger than your metaphors,” I said.

  I knew one thing for certain, though: even if Frank or Joe had been involved in the break-in—and my detective instincts were telling me I could trust Joe—Frank’s arrest was definitely illegal and more than a little fishy in its own right.

  “Stopping the pipeline is a worthy cause, and I want to do whatever I can to help Archie and the Grand Sky Lodge succeed,” I said. “I’m not convinced you’re right about Grant, but there’s definitely something smoked fishy going on, and I’m going to help you and your brother find out what. Right after we get Frank out of jail.”

  “I hope your detecting is better than your skiing.” He held out his hand, grinning at my enormous cast. “I’m Joe.”

  “It’s much better!” I laughed and shook his hand. “I’m Nancy. Nancy Drew.”

  “Hey, I’ve heard about you!” he exclaimed.

  “And I’ve heard about the Hardy Boys,” I replied. “Looks like the world’s top teenage detectives are about to team up to solve a case.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Fire and Funk

  ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS Joe and I did was call our dads to try and get Frank out of jail. One of the perks of having a prominent legal eagle as a father is being able to call on him to solve problems like this one. He might be stuck all the way back in River Heights because of the snowstorm, but he’d just found his next client right here in Prospect, Montana.

  And it turned out Joe and Frank’s dad, Fenton Hardy, was a famous detective with his own set of law enforcement strings he could pull to help Frank out. It wasn’t just Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys teaming up; it was also our dads, in a double family team-up! Between Carson Drew and Fenton Hardy, we were hoping Sheriff Poo-it was going to be having a very bad day.

  I had a strong hunch I could trust Frank and Joe, so I believed Joe when he said that they had nothing to do with the break-ins. But even if I turned out to be wrong, the arrest had still been illegal. Due process exists for a reason, and I’d rather see a guilty person get to exercise their rights and be convicted justly than an innocent person wrongly imprisoned. If the police got to push around and arrest anyone they wanted without probable cause or sufficient evidence, we wouldn’t have a democracy. If Frank was guilty, I trusted myself to prove it during my investigation and bring him to justice, but not without proof. And definitely not with excessive force.

  Speaking of suspects, the last thing I asked Joe before we parted ways was what he knew about hot-pepper hand towels and herbicide. He looked at me like I was from outer space, and unless he was a better actor than I was a detective, his reaction was sincere. He didn’t know anything about either incident. If someone had paid Clark a golden nugget to sabotage the banquet and Chef K’s greenhouse like he’d claimed, I was pretty sure it wasn’t Frank. The sabotage might still be related to the pipeline, but Joe and Frank hadn’t stumbled on the connection ye
t if it was.

  It can be hard to admit when you’re wrong, but I definitely regretted calling out Frank in front of the sheriff. I took the case against myself to Archie, who didn’t exactly look happy to see me.

  “I appreciate your concern, Nancy, but I think cabin fever may be getting the best of you,” Archie said after I finished. “You’ve caught two suspects, and that’s more than enough for one vacation. What you need now is rest. The case is closed, thank goodness. From here on, the week should be smooth skiing!”

  I tried to protest but just got more of the same. Sometimes people want so badly to believe things are okay, they’ll trick themselves into thinking they are even when they really aren’t—even if it means ignoring facts. I was going to have to continue my investigation on the DL for the moment. Archie might not see it now, but it was for the lodge’s own good. There was a big chance that whoever hired Clark was still out there, and I was the only person trying to find them.

  Conducting an investigation from a wheelchair while pretending not to conduct an investigation is hard work, and I didn’t make much progress until that evening. Although I’m not sure “progress” is really the right word.

  With my stomach rumbling, I headed for Mountain to Table to meet Carol for the first dinner seating of the night and resume my covert surveillance of Chef K’s staff.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t take much surveilling to see the decorative Hanukkah menorah in the restaurant’s entrance erupt into flames.

  Carol had her phone out in an instant and was recording with glee as the maître d’ rushed to put the fire out with the fire extinguisher. Talk about a festival of lights! Luckily, these flames didn’t last eight days. They did incinerate the drapes and fill the restaurant with smoke, though.

  The “candles” on the menorah were made of plastic with electric bulbs shaped like flames, but it was a very real fire that erupted from them and set the drapes alight. And from the smell that lingered after the extinguisher had safely doused the flames, I knew exactly why.

  Butane, I thought.

  The only reason you’d smell lighter fluid coming from an electric menorah was if someone had tampered with it. The restaurant had just reopened after closing between the lunch and dinner shifts, giving someone time to meddle while no one was around. It was brilliant in a way, because everyone would think it was yet another accidental mishap in Chef K’s short run at Grand Sky Lodge. And I was starting to think the saboteur might want to keep it as short as possible.

  I’d have to take that info to Archie. He wouldn’t want to hear it, but I was pretty certain the sabotage hadn’t stopped with Clark’s dismissal.

  “Oh, this is pure social media gold,” Carol cooed as she posted the video to Instagram.

  Gold! If only she knew. It looked to me like Clark’s nugget-dropping benefactor was still in play.

  “Honestly, Nancy, I think you’re being paranoid. Sometimes an accident is just an accident,” Archie said dismissively later that night after taking an uncomfortable minute to process my theory about the spontaneously combusting menorah. “I think you’re just feeling guilty about that Hardy boy who broke into Grant’s suite being mistreated by the police. And I don’t blame you; the way Sheriff Pruitt pushed him around was shameful, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t guilty.”

  I knew right away arguing wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I was going to have to give him enough evidence that he believed it for himself. You know that thing I mentioned where people want so badly to believe something that isn’t true that they convince themselves that facts aren’t really facts? I learned on a case that there’s actually a psychological term for it: cognitive dissonance. That basically means the discomfort people feel when something proves the thing they want to believe is wrong. My dad likes to say, Just because someone tells you something you don’t want to hear doesn’t mean it isn’t true. I figured they were pretty good words to live by, but I had a hunch Archie definitely wouldn’t want to hear them.

  That changed the next day when half the lodge woke up to the smell of rotten sauerkraut.

  “What is that smell?” I asked the empty room as the odiferous funk of warm fermented cabbage assaulted my nostrils, pulling me out of a perfectly pleasant holiday dream about riding around the grounds in a one-horse open sleigh.

  I opened my eyes to find that my room smelled terrible. It smelled like hot, spoiled cabbage. Talk about a rude awakening.

  It was clear I wasn’t the first person to call Henry to complain about it. Every room on my side of the lodge and Mountain to Table’s dining room was filled with the same funky smell. It didn’t take long for the maintenance crew to find the crock of kraut inside the heating system, placed just so to deliver fermented air un-freshener into our rooms along with the heat. It also didn’t take long for Chef K to confirm that the crock in the vents was indeed the same one that Clark had pilfered along with the habaneros he used to spike the towels at the banquet.

  Guests were starting to check out, Carol was lighting up social media with pictures and posts about all the mishaps, and Chef K was on a full-steam-ahead cranky-chef rampage. She was obviously used to being the one doing the terrorizing, not being terrorized. She wasn’t the only one affected by the hot-pepper hand towels and fermented cabbage stink bomb, but causing mayhem for her and the restaurant certainly seemed like the prime objective of every mishap that had happened so far. What I didn’t know was who was behind it all—or why.

  Archie had to concede that a stolen fermentation crock full of rotten sauerkraut hadn’t dropped into the heating ducts by accident. Somebody had put it there. And with Archie’s hopes of smooth skiing thrown stinkingly off course, he finally agreed to let me find out who the stinker was.

  “We have too much riding on this week not to,” he admitted.

  Nobody’s week was going as planned. When I finished talking to Archie later that morning, there was a voice mail waiting for me from my dad. His travel prospects weren’t looking good. River Heights and the rest of the Midwest were getting slammed by another winter storm. Holiday air travel was a mess everywhere, and he might not be able to make it at all.

  I tried to put my disappointment aside and focus on the case.

  Now that my investigation was official, I tracked down Chef K for an interview as Mountain to Table prepared to open for brunch.

  It didn’t go well. She denied having any enemies who would want to sabotage her or the restaurant and then promptly kicked me out when I gently suggested it might be another disgruntled employee like Clark who she hadn’t been nice to. I could hear her yelling at her sous-chef as I left.

  The maître d’ apologized and suggested I come back later when she might be in a better mood. I thanked him for the suggestion, but I didn’t think another interview would get me anywhere.

  Chef K was being unhelpful to her own detriment. Her restaurant was suffering the most from all these so-called pranks. In fact, with the exception of the hotel break-ins, everything that had gone wrong had happened in her dining room, with materials she created or had access to. Could she be the one doing the sabotaging? Was she intentionally trying to frustrate my investigation to cover her tracks, or was she really that surly?

  I had just picked up my phone to make a call when it buzzed preemptively in my hand.

  “Joe!” I said as I answered. “Great detectives think alike. I was just about to call you.”

  “Frank is free!” Joe cheered over the phone. “Operation Hardy-Drew Dads had Poo-it so scared of a wrongful arrest lawsuit that Frank said he was quaking in his cowboy hat when he let him go.”

  “Score one for the good guys! At least I hope you guys are the good guys,” I (mostly) joked.

  “Har-har, Drew, very funny,” Joe said, but I could tell he was smiling. “The bad news is, Frank has been banned from the Grand Sky, so I’ll be flying solo for any investigating you need help with at the lodge.”

  That was frustrating, but not surprising. I had caught Fran
k spying on one of the owners, after all.

  “And,” Joe continued, “Poo-it conveniently lost the note with the number Alexander wrote down, and Frank didn’t happen to memorize it before the sheriff took the note from his wallet. So all we have to go on are still the initials TS and the fact that we know TS has the same area code as Thorwald.”

  “Ugh,” I grumbled. “What’s your next move?”

  “Well, Frank’s cover’s been blown, thanks to someone we know,” he jabbed.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “So I’m going to keep a tail on Thorwald, and Frank is going to work his nerd magic on the computer to see what else he can find out about the pipeline’s financial connections to Representative Alexander and his campaign,” he said. “And trust me, no one has nerdier magic than my big bro.”

  “Oh, is that so?” I asked, a grin creeping across my face. “I think my friend George may have something to say about that.”

  I explained that George was definitely the best when it came to online research and general investigative technology geekery, but he didn’t want to hear it.

  “Oh, it’s so on, Drew,” he said. “Well, George is going down. Frank is going to crush her.”

  “Who am I going to crush?” I heard Frank ask in the background.

  “Yes!” George shouted over the phone a few minutes later when I filled her in on the challenge. “I love a good hack-off!”