J.M.J.

A Final Chapter

A/N: Hello and welcome back! This is part 3 of the "Chapters" trilogy which begins with Curse of the Scottish Play and The Arrow and the Chalice. If you haven't read those two, you'll probably have a lot of questions about what is going on in this one. I try to explain where I can, but that's not so easy to do without just reiterating the entire first two stories, so the best thing would be to check those ones out before starting in on this one.

As any of you who have been following this series from the start knows, I abandoned this story for a few months. I'd like to apologize for that and thank you for not giving up on me entirely. I've had a lot going on in my life since then, including putting a ton of work into an original idea. I also was dealing with some burn-out on the whole fanfiction scene, mostly because I really didn't like the way this story was turning out. I've been rewriting it, and I think it's a lot better now. At least, I hope it is!

That being said, if you think you've already read chapter 1, you haven't read this chapter 1, so go ahead and take a look at it. You won't want to miss it, because I get right into the action. My plan is to post on Mondays and Thursdays from here on out, but that's not set in stone by any means.

Thank you again for reading this and for your patience in waiting for it. Thank you especially to everyone who left reviews on the original version: sm2003495, max2013, MAN UTD, BMSH, Guest, EvergreenDreamweaver, and Cherylann Rivers. I really appreciate your input, and hopefully I'll do better by you all in this version.

Chapter I

"It's about time." Ned Nickerson was leaning against his car with his arms crossed, waiting more than just a little bit impatiently for Frank Hardy to be ready to go. When Frank finally appeared, carrying an armload of bags, he jumped up to his feet. "You're going to make me late for my date."

"Only if you drive about thirty miles an hour the whole way to River Heights," Frank retorted. He stopped, struggling to hold onto all the bags. "Will you open the trunk?"

"Oh, right." Ned pressed the button on the key fob, and the trunk opened.

Frank dropped all his bags in at once, making the back end of the car sink down. "Thanks for giving me a ride and a place to crash, by the way."

Frank was twenty and Ned was twenty-one. They were both attending Emerson College, near River Heights. Frank was from Bayport, half the country away on the east coast. He'd come to Emerson to study forensics, as the otherwise small college had one of the best forensics programs in the country. This was the end of his second year there.

He had driven out to Emerson at the beginning of the semester, but by sheer bad luck, someone had crashed into his car in a hit-and-run accident while it was parked outside his apartment. The accident had done a lot of damage, and the car was going to be in the repair shop for at least another week. To make matters worse, his lease ran out right after finals week, and his landlord wasn't willing to let him stay there even an extra week without renewing his contract for another three months. When he had told Ned about his problems, Ned had offered to let him stay at his parents' house, where he was going back to since he couldn't stay in his fraternity house over the summer. The only problem was that Ned had a date with his girlfriend, Nancy Drew, that evening and was in a hurry to be on the road.

"You're sure your parents don't mind me staying at their house?" Frank asked again when they were in the car and Ned had pulled away from the curb.

"Nah," Ned assured him. "For that matter, when I called them about it and told them about your predicament, Mom offered to let you stay before I could even ask."

"Well, I have to admit, this is better than paying for a hotel for a week," Frank said. "Especially when I'm supposed to be saving my money."

"Hopefully this isn't hurting your chances of getting a summer job back home," Ned commented. "It's hard enough to find jobs that start and end at the right time."

"I don't have to worry about that," Frank replied. "I already found a job a couple months ago, and it doesn't start till the middle of June."

"Doing what?"

"Dad's secretary is going on maternity leave from the middle of June to the beginning of August, so he offered to let me fill in for her."

"So your dad's basically paying you to help him solve mysteries," Ned concluded. "Don't tell Nancy about that. She'll be green with envy."

Frank laughed. "She shouldn't be too jealous. After all, she only a few months away from getting her private detective's license herself. That's one step ahead of me."

"A few months from applying for her license, anyway," Ned corrected him. "She has to be twenty-one before she can even submit the application. After that, it'll take at least another six months. I'm sure she'll have everything done as soon as she can, though."

"Knowing Nancy, she will," Frank agreed.

Ned glanced at the clock on his dashboard. "Speaking of Nancy, I really am going to be late if I have to drive all the way over to Mapleton to drop you off and then come back to River Heights. I'd better call her and let her know."

He grabbed his phone and placed the call. Nancy picked up a few moments later.

"Hi, Ned! You're not checking up on me to make sure I'm remembering our date this time, are you?"

"No," Ned told her. "You said you'd remember this time, and if a guy can't trust his own girlfriend, who can he trust? Besides, you're not working on a mystery right now. Unless – you haven't found one since this morning, have you?"

"Nope," Nancy replied with a chuckle. "And even if I had, I would have put it on hold until tomorrow. So, what is up?"

"I was just letting you know that I'll probably be a little late tonight," Ned told her. "You heard about Frank's car, right? Well, now that school's out and his apartment's lease is run out, he needs a place to stay until it's fixed. Our parents are letting him stay at our place, so I have to drop him off there before I can pick you up."

"I've got a better idea," Nancy said. "We were just going to go out for dinner and a movie, right? You can pick me up. We can all go over to Mapleton, drop Frank off, and then you and I can have dinner at a restaurant there. We can still be back in River Heights in plenty of time for the movie, it works out to the same number of trips back and forth, and I'll get to see you a little earlier."

"Sounds good, especially that last part," Ned replied. He glanced at Frank. "As long as Frank doesn't have any objections –"

Frank, who hadn't been able to hear the conversation, shrugged. "As long as she's not suggesting that I walk to Mapleton, it's fine with me."

"He says the walk will do him good." Ned smirked. "We'll be there in about two hours."

As Ned ended the call, he reached into the pocket of his coat to make sure the little box was still there. It was, and he held it tightly. This was going to be an evening he'd never forget.

A little more than two hours later, Ned pulled up into the Drews' driveway. Nancy had been watching from the window and came hurrying out as soon as she saw the car. Frank surrendered his place in the front seat to her and climbed into the back. After greeting Ned, Nancy turned around to say hello to Frank.

"How'd your finals go?" she asked after they had exchanged greetings.

Frank groaned. "Ugh. Don't remind me. I passed everything, and that's the main thing. It was grueling, though."

"Says the guy with the four-point-oh GPA," Ned added.

"Hey, that's why it was grueling," Frank defended himself. "If I didn't care about my grades, it wouldn't be half as bad."

"Not to mention that now that you've got four semesters down with straight A's, you have to keep that reputation up," Nancy said. "It's only going to get worse from here."

Frank nodded. "Yeah. And then there's going to be graduate school and licensing and boards."

"Sounds fun." Nancy made a face. "You'll probably wish you would have gone for something less intense like Joe before it's over. Speaking of which, how's Joe doing? He's actually been talking to me on a regular basis the last few months, so I've been taking that as a good sign."

"I think that's a fair assumption," Frank replied. "He seemed pretty normal the whole time I was back home for Christmas break. He's even been sending me some weird memes that I'm at a complete loss to understand, so that's a good sign. I think."

"That's good," Nancy said. "For a while there, I was afraid things would never go back to normal."

"Not as much as I was," Frank admitted. "I just hope it doesn't start up again."

"It's been over two years," Ned protested. "That Lynn Morgan or Helena Markovich or whatever her name is must have given up by now."

Nancy and Frank exchanged glances. They weren't so sure. Two years earlier, a mysterious woman who had given her name as Helena Markovich one time and Lynn Morgan another had appeared out of nowhere, intent on getting revenge for a case that Fenton Hardy and Carson Drew had solved seventeen years ago now. It had been a terrible case for several reasons, not least of which being that Carson's wife and Nancy's mother had been killed in a car accident while the investigation was still in progress. There had been two suspects who had modeled a series of murders off Sherlock Holmes mysteries. These two had been brothers, Cliff and Dan Moriare. Cliff had been killed before he could be captured, but Dan, who had not done any of the actual killings and was therefore only an accessory, had served almost fifteen years in prison before being released early for good behavior. Where this strange woman fit in was hard to say, especially for Frank and Joe who had never heard the full story. Whatever had happened, Fenton had never wanted to talk about it.

The case two years ago hadn't been any better. Basically everything had gone wrong from beginning to end. Several other people who had also been enemies of the Moriares had been murdered. The daughter of one of them, who was named Clarissa Margot, had disappeared in September and no one had been able to find a trace of her since, except when she turned up briefly near River Heights in December. The mysterious woman and Dan Moriare had also found an ally in a boy who had only been seventeen at the time, Terry Shanth, who had implicated himself in the murder of his own mother just before vanishing as Clarissa had. These people had also arranged for a self-styled Robin Hood, who had nonetheless been very helpful to Nancy, to be arrested, and made sure he thought that it was Nancy who had turned him in. None of the culprits had been captured, except for a few hired guns who hadn't known much of anything. The worst of all was that both Joe and his friend Iola Morton had gotten shot. For a long time after that, Joe had been very depressed and just barely willing to work on any cases. It was only recently that he had started to make a comeback. The last thing any of them wanted was for that case to be repeated.

Nancy shook off the dour mood after a minute or two. "No sense worrying about it."

"Yeah." Frank tried to smile. "She's probably forgotten all about us by now."

"Say," Nancy said brightly, determined to change the subject. "How's Callie doing at Princeton? I'm still impressed that she's actually going there. Sure makes me look pathetic."

Frank smiled for real at the mention of his girlfriend's name. "She's doing great. She's got an almost perfect GPA, she's made a lot of friends, and she loves it there."

"She probably loves it so much she's sorry to have to go back to Bayport for the summer," Ned teased him.

"Not a chance," Frank replied. "We've both been counting the days till school gets out. Of course, neither of us bargained on a whole extra week."

After that, the conversation turned to light subjects. It wasn't far from River Heights to Mapleton, but Ned took a short cut off the highway to speed things up anyway. There were several sharp turns in the road, and Ned had to slow down to get around them. It was a good thing he did. He had scarcely gotten around one of the corners when he had to slam on the breaks to avoid an overturned car on the road.

Nancy, Ned, and Frank stared at the mangled wreck in horror for a moment, and then bolted out of their own car to see if there was anyone inside who needed help. Frank reached it first and bent down to look inside. Suddenly, he felt someone grab him from behind. He tried to break away, but the assailant clapped a piece of cloth over his nose and mouth, and a few moments later, everything went dark.