Disclaimer: The characters Frank Hardy, Joe Hardy and Fenton Hardy are borrowed from the series of Hardy Boys books by Franklin W. Dixon. The characters Nancy Drew, Carson Drew, Ned Nickerson, George Fayne and Bess Marvin are borrowed from the series of Nancy Drew books by Carolyn Keene.
Warnings: This story includes as an on-going sub-plot an incestuous homosexual relationship between Frank and Joe Hardy. Slash Warning! While none of the scenes are particularly graphic or explicit, there's no mistaking what's going on. There is also an implied lesbian relationship between George Fayne and Bess Marvin. If these sorts of things make you uncomfortable, I strongly suggest you stop now and go read some other story.
Summary: Nancy Drew is missing and Frank and Joe Hardy step in to investigate. This story is a sequel to The Mystery of the Celibate Corpse, although it is not necessary to read that story first.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Chapter 1: Missing
"So what do you think of the apartment?" Frank Hardy stood in the middle of the comfortable living room with his hands on his hips watching his brother Joe explore the surprisingly large attached kitchen.
"This is great! I can't believe you were able to get such a great place so close to campus."
"And it has two bedrooms," Frank reminded him.
Joe grinned at him. "Is that so Dad will have a place to sleep when he visits?"
"Yeah, while you're sleeping on the couch!"
"Oh, thanks!" Joe walked into the living room and flopped down on the aforementioned couch. "It's hard to believe that Dad still doesn't know we're doing it."
Frank shoved Joe's feet off the couch and sat down next to him. "Maybe he does know and is just pretending not to. It's probably not something he'd want to accept."
"Could be. But at least we're monogamous." The phone rang and Joe grinned. "Unless that's your girlfriend calling!"
"No doubt!" Frank laughed as he leaned over to pick up the phone from the side table. "Hello?"
"Hello? Is this Frank Hardy? This is Bess Marvin. I don't know if you remember me…"
"Of course I remember you. You're Nancy Drew's friend."
"Yes! Frank, I need your help. Nancy's missing!"
"What?! Since when?" Frank beckoned to Joe and held the phone at an angle so they could both listen.
"She's been missing for three days. Her father reported her missing yesterday and the police found her car parked in front of a house on Oakmead last night. The residents didn't know anything about it. They said her car had been there a couple of days but they didn't see who left it. None of the neighbors had. I'm so worried! It's not like Nancy to stay out of touch."
"You're right. What can I do to help?"
"Can you meet me and Ned, Nancy's boyfriend, today? We could meet you at Nick's Coffee Shop at noon."
Frank glanced at his watch. It was just after 11:00 am. "Yeah, I think we can make that. Is it all right if I bring my brother Joe?"
"Of course, please do! And thank you so much!" The relief in Bess' voice was palpable, even through the phone.
"We'll see you around noon. Bye." Frank disconnected and looked at Joe. "Nancy is way too professional to stay out of touch for three days."
Joe nodded in agreement. "Something's wrong. We'd better get up there."
"Right."
They arrived at Nick's Coffee Shop a little bit after noon. Bess and Ned were seated at a booth close to the door. They were both wearing the stiff expressions of people trying to hide worry, although Bess was having more success than Ned. Joe and Frank slid in opposite them.
"Thank you so much for coming," Bess said. Her voice betrayed the worry she was managing to keep off her face. "I just didn't know where else to turn."
"When did you realize Nancy was missing?" Frank asked.
"Two days ago, on Saturday." Bess looked quickly at Ned. "Ned and Nancy had a date, but Nancy didn't show. When he couldn't reach her on her cell phone or at home, he called me."
Ned nodded. "I got the answering machine when I called the house. Mr. Drew didn't see the message until Sunday and that's when he called the police."
"Was Nancy working on a case?"
"I think so," Bess said, "but she wouldn't tell me anything about it."
"Did the police go through her computer?"
"They might have, but I doubt they would have found anything. Nancy told me once that she encrypts her case files for privacy."
"She's very professional," Ned murmured.
"Yes she is," Frank nodded in agreement. "So I'd like to look at her files anyway. I bet Nancy left a key for accessing her files, just in case."
"If she was working on a case." The doubt in Ned's eyes made him look vulnerable.
Frank studied his face. "You don't think she was working on something?"
"I don't know. Nancy didn't always talk to me about her cases. It's just…" Ned hesitated and his eyes looked bright.
Frank wondered if he was going to cry. "What?"
"I asked Nancy to marry me last week. She was supposed to give me an answer on Saturday." Ned's voice broke and he covered his eyes.
"You think she got cold feet?" Joe asked in surprise.
"Nancy's so independent…"
"She's also too honest not to give you an answer," Frank interrupted. "If she had reservations about marrying you, she'd tell you."
A small sob escaped Ned and he nodded slightly.
"Do you think Mr. Drew would let us look through her things?" Frank asked Bess.
"I'm sure he would. He knows you and I know he's worried about Nancy."
"All right. Let's stop by Mr. Drew's office and talk to him. Nancy's already been missing three days. I don't want to waste any more time." Frank picked up the tab and left a tip for the waitress, even though he and Joe hadn't ordered anything.
"Thank you, Frank," Bess said. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, which she had wadded up to microscopic size. "I'm afraid I have to get back to work. You'll let me know what you find out?"
"Of course." Frank looked at Ned. "Do you want to come with us?"
"If you don't mind."
"No problem. Nancy's important to you. It's natural you'd want to know everything."
Ned nodded, his worried smile managing to look both relieved and grateful.
"I'll call you later, Bess, ok?" Frank said.
"Thank you." She hurried up the street, heading back to her job at the pharmacy.
"Why don't you ride with us?" Joe said to Frank. "I'll take the back seat."
The three of them climbed into Frank's car and he drove to Carson Drew's office. Carson's receptionist, Ruth Barnes, greeted them with worried surprise.
"Frank and Joe Hardy! I didn't expect to see you. And Ned! How are you holding up?"
Ned shrugged, obviously in no mood to discuss his worry with the town's biggest gossip.
"Is Mr. Drew in?" Frank asked. "We'd like to talk to him for a moment if he's available."
"Let me make sure he's not busy." She tapped the intercom. "Mr. Drew? Frank and Joe Hardy are here to see you. Ned is with them."
"Send them in."
"You can go in," Ruth said, as if they somehow had not heard Carson speaking.
"Thanks."
The three of them went into the rear of the office and found Carson waiting for them in the hallway outside his office door.
"Come in," he beckoned to them and led the way inside. "Please take seats," he offered as he settled on the edge of the desk. "I guess you heard Nancy is missing."
"Yes. Bess Marvin called us." Frank sat down, and Joe and Ned followed suit. "Mr. Drew, do you know if Nancy was working on a case?"
"I think so. She was spending a lot of time in her room on the computer. That's usually a sign that she's working on something."
"Would you permit us to look through her files? There might be clues to her disappearance."
Carson studied them thoughtfully. "Normally, I'd say no, but under the circumstances…"
"Did the police check her computer?" Joe asked.
"They did, but they said there was nothing unusual. They found a few encrypted files, but that was it." Carson frowned. "But they only looked at it for a few minutes. I don't think the Chief is too concerned about the situation. Despite your work on that last case, I still think he underestimates her abilities."
Frank nodded. "I suspected that might be the case. But I think I understand how Nancy's mind works, from a professional point of view. I might be able to find something that the cops couldn't."
"I appreciate the offer, Frank," Carson said. 'The truth is I'm really worried. Nancy has never gone this long without contacting me. I'm afraid she might be in serious trouble."
"I'm worried about that, too," Frank agreed.
Carson stood up and went around his desk to open the top side drawer. "Here are my spare house keys. Are you going with them, Ned?" At Ned's nod, Carson continued. "Good. Ned knows the alarm code. Please let me know what you find out."
Frank accepted the keys from Carson with a nod. "Hopefully, we'll find something concrete, but we'll let you know either way."
"Thank you."
Outside Carson's office, Joe touched Frank's arm. "He's really worried. I know he said it, but I was watching his body language. He's starting to freak out."
"I know how he feels," Ned murmured.
"I saw it, too," Frank said. "Let's get over to the house. There have to be clues on Nancy's computer."
At the Drew house, Frank unlocked the front door and Ned turned off the alarm system.
"Nancy gave me the code to the alarm system after…" Ned paused and flushed. "After we became intimate. She said that since I would be sleeping here sometimes I needed to know how to turn off the alarm if I was leaving the house early in the morning."
"Makes sense," Frank said absently. He led the way up to Nancy's room.
Ned's brow wrinkled in surprise. "Have you been in Nancy's room before?"
Frank glanced at him. "A few times. The first time we worked on a case together we were using her computer."
"Oh."
The three of them entered Nancy's room. It was neat, but still had that look of having just been left, as if Nancy had only moments before grabbed her belt pouch and hurried out. Ned sobbed faintly and blinked back tears.
Joe patted him on the shoulder. "Hang in there, Ned. Nancy's tough. We'll find her."
Ned managed a grateful nod, but his eyes remained bright.
Frank sat down in front of the computer. "First thing I want to do is check the history in her browser. I want to see what sites she visited last. We'll look in her email as well." He glanced at Ned. "We'll skip anything that looks personal. After that, we'll go through her documents, starting with the recent ones. If Nancy didn't expect to disappear, she won't have done any housekeeping on her computer. It should look just as she left it."
"Assuming the cops didn't wipe out anything," Joe muttered.
"True," Frank acknowledged. "But if they only spent a few minutes on it, they shouldn't have done too much harm." As the screen brightened, he brought up the browser and dropped down the history list. "That's interesting. She visited quite a few missing children's sites. And she hit Google, too. I bet she was looking for someone." He cut and pasted the site names into a text file so he could save them. "Let's check email."
Ned leaned over his shoulder. "Most of those are from me."
Frank nodded. "Looks like it. And most of her sent mail is to you, too. The rest of it looks like the usual stuff: book store ads, a clothing website, her other friends. None of this looks useful." He closed Nancy's email and sat back. "I wonder if we should have the cops get her cell phone records."
"What about her recent files?" Joe asked. "You said you wanted to look at those."
"I do." Frank sat forward again. He went through all the files in the recent files list. One of them was encrypted. "This is the one we need to get into."
"Do you really think you can crack it?" Ned asked.
"I can't crack it; I want to find her encryption key. She'll have left it somewhere as a precaution. But it won't be on the computer." Frank turned around and scanned the room. "Nancy is very smart. She wouldn't put it somewhere where it could be found accidentally, but she would want someone who was deliberately looking to be able to find it."
"There!" Joe said abruptly. He crossed the room to a set of shelves installed on the wall by the window. Nancy had several knickknacks on display. Joe picked up a beautifully carved and painted miniature replica of an Egyptian mummy case. "It's a crypt, sort of," Joe said as he carefully opened it. Inside, resting under the linen-wrapped mummy doll like a pillow was a folded piece of paper. Joe unfolded the paper and grinned. "Bingo!" He returned and handed the paper to Frank. A long string of letters and numbers was printed neatly across the paper.
"Good job, Joe!" Frank grinned at him. "Remind me to reward you later."
Joe grinned back. "Will do."
Frank turned back to the computer and opened the encrypted file. At the prompt, he typed in the key. After a brief hesitation, the screen refreshed to display the unencrypted document. "Excellent!" Frank exclaimed. He began to read, with Ned and Joe reading over his shoulders.
"Wow!" Joe exclaimed. "A missing kid. That's sad."
The document contained a neat summary of Nancy's notes on her current case. She was searching for a missing eleven-year-old girl. The girl, Jolene Winters, lived with her mother and stepfather. The mother had sole custody and was not on speaking terms with the father. The father was out of the country and Nancy's notes indicated she had not yet been able to speak with him. Nancy had talked to the police and discovered they considered the girl a runaway. Her notes on that conversation conveyed her disgust with Chief Jones:
Chief Jones interviewed Mr. and Mrs. Quito the day after they reported their daughter missing, but only because Mr. Quito is a prominent local businessman. Chief Jones dismissed the whole thing as an "unhappy child of divorce" situation. He said Jolene's friends had told him that she was unhappy at home. He is positive the girl will turn up after a few weeks, none the worse for wear. I disagree. I also sensed something going on in that house, but it did not seem to me the usual stepparent conflict. Mrs. Quito insists her ex-husband is involved, but a kidnapping by a non-custodial parent usually happens within the first year or two after the loss of custody. Mrs. Quito and Mr. Winters have been divorced for five years and Mr. Winters has never sued to regain custody. He never even sued to change his monthly visitation. I need to talk to him.
Frank looked over his shoulder at Joe. "What do you think?"
"I think we need to retrace Nancy's steps. We need to talk to all the same people she did."
Frank nodded in agreement. "That's what I think, too. Let's take this with us." He queued the document for printing. He also printed the file where he'd stored the information from Nancy's browser. "Ned, will you tell Mr. Drew and Bess what we found? I want to get home and start working on this right away. I want to do some background research on these people."
"Sure."
"And try not to worry." Frank put a reassuring hand on Ned's shoulder. "I'll keep all of you informed of our progress."
"Thanks."
They dropped Ned off at his car by Nick's Coffee Shop and returned to their apartment. It was nearly six o'clock by the time they got home.
"Man, I'm starving," Joe said. "I'll start dinner."
Frank caught him by the wrist. "Do you want your reward before or after dinner?"
Joe grinned. "Maybe I'm not that hungry! And I know sex helps focus your thoughts."
"That's kind of what I was thinking."
"Cool! Let's go to bed. I'll cook later."
They moved into the bedroom, shedding their clothing as they went.
"I really like this," Joe said as he crawled onto the bed and rolled onto his back. "We can do this whenever we want and not worry about Dad walking in on us." He sat up on his elbows. "He doesn't have a key, right?"
"Are you kidding?" Frank laughed. "You and I are the only ones with keys. Once I've got you in a compromising position, I don't want anyone interrupting us." He climbed onto the bed and lifted Joe's heels up onto his shoulders. "Hand me the lubricant, would you? It's in the top drawer of the nightstand."
Joe stuck in arm into the drawer and felt around. "Oh, here it is." He handed the tube to Frank and pushed the drawer shut. "Don't people look at you funny when you buy this stuff?"
"That's what self-check at the grocery store is for."
"Aha."
Frank squeezed the lubricant onto his fingers and worked the cream into Joe. Joe arched his back with a sigh.
"That really feels good. It's been like a month since you've been in me."
"No it hasn't!" Frank chuckled. "You just want it all the time."
"And you don't?"
Frank chuckled again. "Maybe I do." He shifted forward and put himself into Joe with a firm thrust of his hips. Joe gasped and grabbed Frank's knees. Frank pounded his hips firmly against Joe's bottom, driving himself in hard and deep.
"Oh yes!" Joe groaned. "Keep doing that!"
Frank kept doing it, grinding himself against Joe until they were both moaning with deep pleasure.
"Ahh!" Joe finally cried aloud. His head rolled back and he arched up, pressing his backside against Frank as orgasm sent shuddering spasms through his body. Frank grabbed Joe's thighs and groaned deeply in response, his body shaking as orgasm swept him too. "Oh!" Joe gasped as his body slowly unclenched. "I really, really like doing this with you, Frank. That was so good!"
"Oh yeah!" Frank agreed. "I can't imagine doing this with anyone but you." He patted Joe's legs. "And you know what? It helped. I just realized something. I think Nancy suspected the mother of knowing something."
"Really? I didn't see that."
"The mother kept insisting her ex-husband was involved, but I don't think Nancy believed it. She hadn't talked to the ex-husband yet, but her notes didn't make it sound like she thought he was responsible. We need to interview the Quito's and we need to talk to the ex-husband. I want to get a feel for these people."
"But you'll Google them first, right?"
"Definitely." Frank pulled out of Joe and sat back. "Do you mind cooking while I search?"
"Nope. But print everything. I want to go over it with you while we eat."
"Will do."