Summary: Nancy is investigating a spate of kidnappings in and around the River Heights area. Meanwhile, Frank and Joe are trying to prevent the MCA from getting robbed. The two cases don't seem to be related, but why do are they following the same geographical path? And what will they do when it turns personal?

Disclaimer: I don't own Nancy, Frank, Bess or Joe. Or anybody that you recognise, actually.

A/N: I find it impossibly weird writing a story with a character called Hannah (if you've read my profile, you'll know that's my real name). However, I have overcome these obstacles, and present for you...

"Meatballs," Nancy said with obvious satisfaction as she sat down to her dinner. "Thank you so much, Hannah. If I ever needed meatballs, I need them tonight."

Hannah laughed, but stopped as she saw the frustration written in Nancy's face. "New case not going so well, I take it?"

"That's an understatement. All day I was at the house of the second girl to go missing. All day! And basically all I found out was that she lives on a very low budget, and that she majored in German at college. I couldn't even find out which college, but I know she dropped out, and she's working at a bar. Nothing about her kidnapper, no-"

"Bess is coming over to see you this evening," Hannah cut her off. Nancy was becoming too prone to throw herself into work, and she got a little obsessive when it wasn't going well. "Staying the night. I promised her meatballs as well, but she can heat them up when she gets here."

"Did she call?" Nancy didn't bother to wait for an answer. "Maybe she can give me a hand. I have got a few clues, and I'm intending to head over to the first house again tomorrow. Bess can come with me, if she wants." Nancy had eaten her dinner quickly and precisely, and was finishing the last few mouthfuls. "Do you remember when she said she'd be over, Hannah?"

"She said about eight."

Nancy glanced up at the clock. It was seven-thirty already, and she still wanted to make a list of clues before Bess arrived. "Thanks for dinner, Hannah, it was lovely," she said absently. "I'll wash up later."

"You get on with your case," Hannah admonished her fondly. "You know I'll do the washing up."

Nancy thanked her before heading upstairs. She vaguely heard the phone ringing, but, knowing that Hannah was in the same room and suspecting it was for her father, she ignored it, focussing on the neat black ink of her two main clues. Hannah's voice interrupted her.

"It's for you, Nancy!"

"Oh?" Nancy appeared at the door of her room. "Who is it?"

"Frank and Joe."

Nancy was down the stairs quicker than you could say detective."Both Hardys?" she double-checked with Hannah as she took the phone.

"Large as life and twice as charming," Joe's voice came over the line. "Well, I am, anyway."

Nancy could almost hear Frank rolling his eyes in the background. She grinned. "Give me the phone, Joe." There was a brief moment of scuffling, before Frank greeted her cheerfully. "Nancy!"

She smiled at the sound of his voice. "Good to hear from you, Hardy. How's yourself?"

"As well as can be, considering that Joe is causing me significant physical damage trying to get the phone back. And you?"

Nancy laughed. "Impossibly frustrated by my new case."

"Three days ago, you were complaining that you were bored out of your mind," Frank pointed out, amused.

"Well, being confused out of my mind is better than being bored out of it," she admitted. "But don't you hate those cases where the perpetratorwants you to find them?"

"They always feel like wild goose chases," Joe affirmed, sounding muffled. "Probably because they normally are. Let me talk to her, Frank. I can scarcely hear."

"Go and get the extension, then." She could hear Joe grumbling, before Frank started talking once more and the sound died away. "Nan, you're not the only one with a confusing case right about now," he said. "You know, we rang you for a reason."

"Other than the pleasure of my company?"

"Other than that, hard as it may be to believe."

"Stop flirting and tell her about the case," Joe interrupted, now apparently having picked up the extension. "People keep breaking into art galleries, Nancy, and the latest one was a couple of towns away from you."

"Keep talking," she replied, intrigued.

"The weird thing is that they aren't stealing anything," Frank continued. "It's just a break-in, done by a pro by the looks of thing, and the paintings are moved around. It causes disruption but no damage."

"Maybe they're looking for a specific painting," Nancy suggested. "They don't know where it is, so they're just going to have to look for it."

"They're definitely moving systematically," Frank agreed, but Joe didn't.

"Why would they do that, and raise security? It's pretty easy to get hold of the catalogues for most of these places-in fact, a lot of them are on Frank's desk right now-and, since these guys are pros, they could definitely do it. Frank has a couple of other theories, though."

"I was thinking that maybe, since these guys are being dismissed as vandals by all the major galleries-"

"That's their aim!" Nancy continued, picking up his thought. "They want people to get used to them, not bother with higher than normal security levels, but-"

"But they get 'practice' at doing a seamless job, then when they do want to steal something-"

"They can almost walk in and take it," Frank finished. "That's what I was thinking, but I don't know. It's pretty far out there."

"Stranger things have happened."

"Yes, well, whatever," Joe interjected. "If Frank's theory is right, that means bad things for Chicago."

"Why Chicago?" Nancy asked.

"There's a big exhibition happening at the MCA in three weeks' time," Frank explained. "We think that could be their target. Joe and I are flying out there later today, to see if we can convince them to raise their security, but it's not really working with other galleries. There have been no thefts, no damage to paintings, it hasn't been in the media and it's not as though we're adult members of the FBI or anything. Why would they listen to two teenage guys with no evidence?" Nancy could hear the annoyance in his voice, so similar to her own feelings. "Especially when one of those guys is too busy flirting with the receptionist to pay proper attention to the tour."

"Hey, she was hot!" Joe defended himself. She laughed. Joe would always be Joe. "Anyway, Nan, we were hoping you could go and check out the latest break-in. It's in Beneden."

"Beneden!"

"Your case taking you there tomorrow?" Frank guessed, correctly.

"I've got to go over the second girl's house and see if I can find out anything else about the mysterious kidnapper," she confirmed.

"Second girl?"

"Three girls have gone missing now. The third girl's father rang Dad to ask him for help-one of his old-time clients."

"Got any ideas what's going on?"

"Yes, but-" She heard somebody come in through the door. "Got to go. Bess is here."

"Bess is there?" Joe asked hopefully.

"Sorry," Nancy grinned. "You're no competition for Hannah's meatballs, which are fully occupying her attention at the moment." Frank chuckled. "I'll catch up with you guys when you're in Chicago, though. It'd be good to see you both again. It's been a while."

"It has," Frank said quietly. "We'll let you go, Nan. I'll ring you when we've found out where we're staying, see if either of us have made any progress."

"Okay," Nancy agreed. "See you, Frank. You too, Joe."

They both wished her goodbye, and she hung up, walking into the kitchen. It didn't escape Bess' notice that her friend was humming cheerfully under her breath.

"Haven't seen you singing since you and Ned broke up," she commented in surprise. The nasty bust-up had been almost six months beforehand, but Nancy still seemed to be getting over it. "Was that him?"

"Who? Oh, no, not Ned. Just the Hardys."

"I see." Bess' smile was broad. If anybody could get Nancy's mind off of Ned at last, it would be Frank. She grinned and began to plot.

NDHB

"So that's the situation," Nancy said at last, laying out the rather pitiful clues in front of her. "Three girls have been kidnapped over the past week, the last one two days ago. That was when I was called. They've all been within fifty square miles of River Heights, and at the first two houses the kidnapper has deliberately left a clue-though it wasn't recognised as a clue at the first house."

She spread the bits of paper in front of her. "This is the first." She passed it to Bess. "It's from a Shakespearean sonnet, though I don't know which number." There were two printed lines obviously torn off from the page in a book of some sort.

"How did they not notice it in her room?" Bess asked. "Her parents?"

"She doesn't live with her parents," Nancy replied, rather sadly. "She lives in an apartment on her own. I can't even work out when she first went missing. Jen's workplace eventually called the police to report her missing, but she wasn't a very committed waitress and it wasn't the first time she'd missed work without telling anyone."

"Well, surely you can date the disappearance by the day she stopped showing up," Bess said practically.

Nancy shook her head. "She normally only works Mondays to Wednesdays, so she could have gone missing any day that she wasn't working-or any day that she was supposed to be working, if she was on her way home, or if she just didn't go in. It was a week before they reported her missing."

"That's really sad."

"The next girl, Delilah, has the same sort of story-she was working as a barmaid, despite being underage. She was reported missing by her landlord. She was a college drop-out; I don't know which college, but she was majoring in German and minoring in English Lit. The clue this time is here-" she handed it to Bess. "I know that-it's from Oliver Twist. I had to study it in high school. That's the chapter where Oliver meets Fagin's gang of pickpockets. Perhaps a reference to her criminal activities, I don't know. As far as I can tell, Delilah had been tried once for petty theft, but she was determined not guilty. Her landlord told me that, though, and he was very protective of her. Not very helpful at all, so it might not be true."

Bess looked down at the paper. "I've never read Oliver Twist." This time, a whole page had been torn out of the novel, with various lines underlined. "I don't get it, Nan, are they trying to give us clues? I'm not an expert, but that reference to being 'not thoroughly awake' sounds like she's been drugged."

"I know. I feel like I'm being led into a trap," Nancy agreed frustratedly. "I wish there was something else I could do, but I've already been to the libraries in the area. Only two people have checked Oliver Twist out in the past twelve weeks, and you can see them here. Neither of them were connected to Delilah, and both of them have returned their copy unscathed in the past week. I tried to go into the bar, see if I could ask a few questions, but they asked for ID."

"What about the sonnet?"

"I looked that up. I have it written down here, somewhere-" She rooted amongst the papers on her desk. "It's from Sonnet 92. I got the complete works out of the library-you can read it in context if you want. It's on my bed."

Bess did so. She shivered. "I don't know, Nan, that's kind of creepy. All that stuff about life not staying."

"I know," Nancy replied. "I wish there was something else I could do, but my main attention has to be on the girl I'm actually supposed to be finding. That's the third girl." This time, Nancy had a picture, and several pages of information.

"I recognise her," Bess said.

"I'm sure you do. Her situation is very different to the other girls'. She's hardly on the fringes of society; in fact, she's a very successful judo instructor. I took three classes with her last year. Bess, it's Anthony Johnston's daughter, Alice."

"Then why hasn't it been in the papers?" Bess frowned, confused. Although not of national repute, Anthony Johnston was famous locally for his energetic campaigning for human rights. He had poured thousands of dollars and countless hours into raising awareness of child and teenage poverty in the area.

"Mrs Johnston has been very ill recently," Nancy replied. "He doesn't want to worry her with press attention-that's why he called Dad instead of the police. I'm going back over there tomorrow, to see what else I can find."

"I'll come," Bess offered immediately. "Doesn't Anthony Johnston have a son about our age?"

Nancy rolled her eyes. "I thought we had an agreement about boys on cases?"

"I've seen pictures of the guy in the paper, with his dad!" Bess argued. "He's cute!" Seeing Nancy's look, she changed the subject. "What time are we leaving tomorrow?"

"About as soon as you can bear it," Nancy said. "Possibly a bit earlier. Their house is in Beneden, and the Hardys asked me to do some of the legwork for their latest case. That's what that call was about." She grinned. "Up for going under cover?"

Sonnet 92 can be read at http :// en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Sonnet92 (take out the spaces)

Chapter 9 of Oliver Twist can be read at http :// www. literaturepage. com/ read/ olivertwist-66.html (same again)