"Breaking news! I just figured out who Daryl is selling out to!" said the voice of Jake Rogers. "This guy! Can you believe this dorkoid is the ringleader of some sort of clearing house for military secrets? And Mr. Clueless just left behind his journal which is full of secret phone numbers, telemetry encodings, et cetera, et cetera. I don't understand it all, but I do know he's willing to pay top dollar to get it back."
"Yes, but where is the journal?" Nancy asked. As if by magic, the dead teenager answered her question.
"Just in case, I taped it under one of the book cartons at school. But I doubt he'll give me a lot of trouble, just a ton of cash."
Nancy smiled as she popped the VHS tape out of the player. "Bingo," she said.
She heard the door open. "Who is it?" she asked stiffly, before turning to see that the intruder was "Detective Beech", the "police officer" who had "hired" Nancy on this "mission" which had so many scare quotes around it, Nancy knew immediately it was a fake. She had pretended to go along with it, however. How else was she supposed to recover that missile?
"Detective Beech! I wasn't expecting to see you here!" Nancy said.
"I just thought I'd drop by and see how you're doing. You seem kind of in a hurry," Beech said.
No, I'm just startled that a creepy stranger has broken into my aunt's house uninvited, Nancy thought. Not that this was her aunt's house. Aunt Eloise lived in an apartment in New York. This house had no owners, something Beech would have known if he really was a local police detective.
"I am in a hurry," Nancy said. "I have to go to the bathroom."
"Oh," Beech said. "Have you located Jake's notebook yet?"
"I've figured out who the killer is," Nancy said. "Mitch Dillon, the HVAC guy." Nancy had known that from the start, and so had Beech. Which made him extra-stupid, for pointing her in the direction of the high school students.
"Good work, but do you have solid proof?" Beech asked.
"I'm getting it tonight," Nancy said, making things up off the top of her head. "Daryl and I will confront him at the pharmacy tonight. Connie will be on back-up, if we need help. Did you know she's a champion at judo?"
"No, I didn't," Beech said. He graciously stepped aside, to let Nancy pass. "Well, don't let me keep you."
Nancy paused for a second, while next to Beech.
"What is it?" he asked.
She couldn't very well tell him that she had no idea where the bathroom was in this house. So she did the next best thing. She stole the gun out of his pocket and clobbered him over the head with it.
When Detective Beech woke up four minutes later, he was in handcuffs. It wasn't long before he was arrested for his role in selling military trade secrets, as well as being an accessory to the death of Jake Rogers. Nancy had turned in all the evidence to the police, as an anonymous concerned citizen.
It feels good to do the right thing for once, Nancy thought. Or...mostly the right thing, anyway.
Nancy kept tabs on the situation for a few weeks, but it turned out she didn't need to bother. Nobody noticed that four pages were missing from Jake's notebook. Four very important pages that earned Nancy a cool two million dollars...