"You want beauty. Beauty at any price. For me, it is truth I want. Always truth." — Hercule Poirot
To: [Joseph Hardy]
From: [Nancy Drew]
8/19/21 10:33 a.m.
Re: Inspiration
Hi Joe,
I got your text that your and Frank's stakeout was a success. Congrats on solving another case! Great work as usual. So it's a little embarrassing that I have to admit that I'm making slow progress on my Boston case, and I've been here almost six weeks…if only dastardly villains made as many foibles and stupid mistakes in real life as they do in the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series. I've gathered a couple of solid pieces of evidence, but nothing that will bring a conviction in court.
But at least I had time to write this scene for you. You've mentioned that the characters of Frank and Joe seem a bit too prude to be believable teenage boys, so I wrote a risque scene to try to rectify that, finishing with a cliffhanger that makes Joe question his career. Don't let it get you too excited.
Nancy
The Case of the Missing Dog
"We've got to help Vanessa find her dog," Frank said to Joe as he rang the Benders' doorbell. He leveled Joe with a hard stare. "And we will stay focused and professional, treating her just like any other client. Unless you can't handle it?"
"Yes, I can handle it. Quit acting like a smartbottom, Frank," Joe snapped, then focused on trying his best to ignore his racing pulse and sweaty palms.
Vanessa opened the door in tears. "Oh, thank goodness you're here! Bowser's been missing for an hour now."
Frank flipped to an open page in his notebook. "Where did you last see him?"
"My bedroom."
Joe's veins froze to ice. He shot Frank a pleading look, but Frank wasn't looking at him.
"Then Joe and I will follow procedure and begin this Missings case by searching the place where the subject was last seen."
Joe's knees wobbled as he and Frank followed Vanessa up the stairs to her room. Frank entered with ease, but Joe tentatively peeked around the corner first. There were an awful lot of pink items that Joe didn't feel comfortable around: lamps, drapes, pajamas...the bedspread.
"Come on in, silly," Vanessa teased him, taking Joe's hand and pulling him into her bedroom. Joe's hand burned where she touched him.
"And what is, um….the...exact location that you last saw Bowser?" Joe croaked in a last, desperate attempt to behave professionally.
"He was sleeping on the edge of my bed, leaning against the wall."
"Then Joe will examine your bed," Frank commanded.
Joe felt Frank and Vanessa's eyes boring holes into him, waiting expectantly. Beads of sweat on his forehead, Joe tentatively approached Vanessa's bed. If Indiana Jones could overcome his fears to recover the lost Ark, then Joe could overcome his fears and touch a girl's mattress.
"Er…you said that your dog was…right here?" Joe said, peering at the space where the bed met the wall.
"Yes," Vanessa said desperately. "Do you see any clues?"
Something caught Joe's eye. He took a deep breath, then put a knee on Vanessa's bed so he could bend over and examine the object closer. It appeared to be a small piece of cloth. He counted to three and quickly tugged it out of the crack and onto Vanessa's bed, where they could all see it clearly.
It was a pair of Vanessa's panties: pink and silky with lots and lots of lace.
Joe screamed in terror, scrambling off the bed and backing toward the exit, keeping his eyes on the bed as if afraid that Vanessa's underwear would chase him. Once safely out of her bedroom, ignoring the sounds of laughter, he turned to flee but tripped over a vacuum cleaner and fell down the stairs. He had one final thought as he blessedly lost consciousness: I'm only accepting G-rated cases from now on.
To: [Nancy Drew]
From: [Frank Hardy]
8/23/21 12:41 p.m.
Re: Favor
Hi Nancy,
Thanks for the kudos on my and Joe's recent case. Joe read me your email and I got a nice laugh out of it. He would like you to know that he is not afraid of female undergarments or the word "smartass," and he is going to give you a wedgie the next time he sees you.
My mom got some good news from your publishers. They're going to publish The Tower Treasure in January—congratulations, Nancy! But...they want three additional completed Hardy Boys manuscripts by December 20th (they say it should take no longer than 40 days to fully write and edit each book). But, if The Tower Treasure doesn't sell, there is a chance that they might not publish the sequels. Seems ridiculous to me—why not have you write one additional book at a time, after they know that they want it?—but Mom says it's a test, to see you if you guys are able to crank out Hardy Boys books at rapid speed. My mom doesn't want to pressure you while you're in the middle of a case, yet there's no way she can write three entire books in under four months all by herself (plus she has her deadlines for her adult series, too), so please think about it and give her a call.
I also have some news that's crazy on a personal level. I'm sure you remember when Biff told you years ago about his abusive father that walked out on his family over a decade ago. Well, Alan Hooper, Sr. was found murdered thirty miles outside of Bayport. Biff and his family seem more shocked than anything else. The three of them say that none of them had any contact with him before his death. They cooperated with police interviews, they said that they don't want updates on any investigation. The entire situation is creepy and weird and I don't want to leave this mystery unsolved. I would really appreciate it—and so would Chief Collig—if you would come back to Bayport and help me look into it. It would be a classified case: you, me, and Chief Collig would be the only people in Bayport who'll know that we're helping the assigned detective. I'm enrolling in classes at Bayport Community College, so I'll be around for a semester, at least.
If you transfer your current case to Joe, I think it will be solved quicker. I suspect that you're stymied because your subjects aren't interested in friendship with a woman. You'd have to sleep with them to get their guards down. With Joe on the case, he'll be laughing and bullshitting with those guys in no time, no sexual favors required. Of course your detective abilities are just as good as Joe's, and I'm only asking you to agree to this transfer as a personal favor to me (and to my mom, if you want to shoot for this publishing deadline). Please consider that Bayport might need you more than Boston does.
Frank
Friday, August 27, 2021
Four days later, Nancy waited for Joe at a nondescript diner a couple of blocks away from a Peter Pan bus station.
The door banged open and soon Joe stood next to her table. "Stand up," he ordered.
"Right here?" Nancy asked with trepidation.
"Right here. Come on, nobody's looking."
Nancy knew that it would be much worse if Joe surprised her later, at an unsuspecting moment. She slowly, guardedly stood up. Joe grasped the back of her pants and yanked upward, causing Nancy to yelp in sudden discomfort.
"Now everybody's looking," Joe grinned, taking a seat and looking at his menu. Nancy sat and waited until their fellow diners had lost interest before she pulled out her wedgie as discreetly as possible.
They placed their orders and waited until the waitress left. "That was a good scene that you wrote, though, Nancy," Joe said. "Any chance you can actually include something like that in these three Hardly Boys books you and my mom will be writing? Maybe you can name one of them The Hardly Boys and the Mystery of Where Babies Come From."
"A parody scene of our own books?" Nancy asked. "I highly doubt it. Tell me again why you don't like a book series named after you."
Joe briefly held his hands up in surrender. "I apologize. We've been through this before. I'm not ashamed of the books, I'm just not excited about them. I'm sure I'll be more excited if I ever get asked to do interviews. Or if I have a case that I really want you to write about. Or if I get asked for my signature by cute, screaming girls."
"Walk me through it one more time," Nancy insisted. "What exactly is it about the Hardy Boys books that makes you roll your eyes?"
Joe was silent for a moment, and Nancy was grateful that he was taking her question seriously. He'd read The Tower Treasure and viewed the prospectus for the series. "I get why the formula is there," he said. "A tearful victim begging for help, every chapter ending with a cliffhanger, at least one menacing warning to stay off the case, a chase scene, resolution, something saying 'tune in next time.' It's one coincidence after another, which stretches believability, but readers will forgive you for it. And it's kind of endearing that the bastardly villains tie up the heroes in loose knots, explain the whole plot, and then leave the heroes alive and alone with a ticking bomb…rather than just shoot them. All of that is forgivable in children's lit. I guess my problem is with the characters."
"Characters?" Nancy asked. "You don't like that the character of Frank tends to be the brains of the operation?"
"Well, Frank is the brains of our operation, and my ego's not so big that I can't admit it," Joe said, his admiration for his brother evident in his tone. "I'm fine with being the funny one, the chick magnet, the brawn who'd rather bust a safe open than waste time figuring out the combination. But people are more complex than the stereotypes that you're forced to use in these books. Like…I know that I get angry a lot, but I also get over my anger a lot more quickly. Whose anger do you find more terrifying, mine or Frank's?"
"Frank's," Nancy replied quietly. Frank's anger was rare and smoldering, and she was glad that she'd never been on the receiving end of it.
"Exactly. So even though my character is 'the angry one,' it's more complicated than that. And Frank and I truly are best friends, but damn do we fight sometimes. Why do you think we chose not to live together? Fighting is a sign of a close relationship, not a superficial one." Joe took a break to send a brief text, most likely informing his family that the case transfer was proceeding as planned. He put down his phone and continued. "And people make mistakes, characters are people, so characters should be making mistakes. Good people do bad things, bad people do good things, and it's hard to decide what the right thing to do even is. And kids can't be bullshitted. Kids can recognize when characters aren't real, when nothing is complicated and everybody always, easily does the right thing."
"And all the time, in the real world, good people do the wrong thing for the right reasons," Nancy mused, continuing in Joe's line of thinking. "If it's just undeveloped characters, good guys against bad guys, then it's just a superficial cops-and-robbers—"
"New subject," Joe announced. "This conversation isn't helping you to go to my house and mass produce Hardy Boys books. Think of it like...some people read books to escape, some people want to read about the world as it should be, but I'm the kind of reader who wants to read about life as it is. I'm hoping the books are a success, by the way. I'm not sitting on the sidelines hoping that they'll fail. Oh—and happy 20th birthday, a few weeks late."
Nancy laughed. "I'm eighteen forever, remember?"
"Let me tell you how Frank and I solved our recent case," Joe said as their food arrived. After lunch, Nancy sat in Frank and Joe's Honda Accord, briefed Joe on the Boston case, and handed him a copy of the case file that she'd compiled. Soon after that, Joe was on his bus to Boston and Nancy was driving the Honda back to Bayport.
A/N: Nancy is indebted to Arglefumph "The Nancy Drew Dude" Michael Gray, whose bonus chapter in The Stay-At-Home Detective (available on Amazon) inspired the scene on Joe's fear of women's undergarments. I had to re-write the chapter from memory, since I gave the book away and have no idea where it currently is. Thanks to Arglefumph for his permission to use his idea; the chapter is funnier in his book.
I'm posting an extra chapter because I did the math and somehow these chapters are really short (average 2800 words), not sure how that happened? They felt long when I was writing them! I'll never go above three chapters per week because I have a sneaking suspicion that my readers have other things going on in their lives as well. ;)
Big kudos to Margaret A66, Cherylann Rivers, Al, sm2003495, novembershowers, and Cherry for kind reviews on the last chapter. I'm happy yet nervous that there are so many Prequel fans reading this; hoping you still enjoy this twisted tale, even though the tone will be totally different. These characters are all grown up, unfortunately! JB